Darkness, Tome 5 : The Council

The next evening I walked quietly up the hall next to Toa. Charles and Jonas walked closely behind. I’d only had four hours of sleep and was still travel worn. My limbs ached and my head hurt. Regardless, I was being called on to face a test with a bunch of really old and highly experienced magical people. Toa wouldn’t comment on why they wanted to see me so quickly, but his clenched jaws and flaring nostrils indicated it was not only highly irregular, but also dangerously suspect.

“You need to relax,” Tao instructed in an eerily calm voice. “When you expect a test, you freeze up and overthink. This cuts down your working memory and you have a harder time pulling the correct answers out of your brain’s storage space.”

“You lecture like Toa, and you glide around like Toa, but this breezy thing is throwing me for a loop. Where’s the frustration? Or the panic?” I glanced at him sideways. “Am I speaking to your evil twin?”

“While I don’t love your sense of humor in these instances, it is less troublesome than your spells stemming from fear. So for that, I am thankful.”

“How do you listen to that guy?” Charles muttered.

I couldn’t help the chuckle.

Toa turned right at the end of the corridor into another long hallway. Charles’ hand on my back made sure I followed.

“This is the beginning,” Toa continued. “They will ensure you are actually a black level power. They need to check Dominicous’ and my findings.”

He turned left suddenly, nearly jostling me, taking us through an empty room. It was then something occurred to me. “Where is everybody?”

I thought back. From the second I stepped out of my room I hadn’t seen a soul. We’d gone through, what felt like, miles of hallway. We’d passed doorways leading to sitting rooms. One gave a quick glimpse of a piano and recreation area. They’d all been empty. What should’ve been high traffic time for this race of people was instead a ghost town.

Then I felt it. A presence. Something lingered on the walls and loomed around us. I felt eyes on me, the feeling clawing between my shoulder blades. Watching from some unseen place. Speculating. Analyzing.

I glanced up, almost certain I’d see bats on the ceiling. Maybe mice on the crown molding.

“Toa?” I ventured, my voice uncertain. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“They are listening. Waiting. Watching. They are hoping to gain the upper-hand. They are wasting their time.”

We turned into a doorway and cut diagonally across a large room. Books lined the walls and desks and couches loitered around the floor. Not one desk had a reading lamp, and the lights were so low the sharp edges of the desk were hazy in the darkness. Humans probably needed to walk with a flashlight if they wanted to read anything.

After another couple of turns, we stopped in front of a closed door. A blur of movement down the hall caught my eye, dragging my gaze right. A small slice of black melted into the wall at the very end, someone having just walked out of sight. Goosebumps spread across my arms at the unseen watcher, but that feeling of eyes on me was still there.

I glanced behind as Toa knocked, feeling people around me. Body heat, breath stirring the air, huge bodies still and silent…Somehow they were masking themselves from my sight. They were here, though. Watching. Creeping around like boogeymen in the night. I knew it.

Come out, come out wherever you are.

I tore the blanket off my magical inlet and let the elements rush into me, spreading out in my body and spiking my blood. I wafted my magic out, feeling for spells. Like a black light at a crime scene, suddenly I could see.

I recoiled backwards. My fingers tingled with magic, ready to unleash hell.

“You should have done that immediately exiting your suite,” Toa said in a monotone.

Like a heat map of whites and grays, I could see bodies lining the wall. Standing idly, some in two’s and three’s, they just stood around, staring at us. Because of the spell, I couldn’t make out features or even sex, but I could make out the plain outlines of their faces, and most stared straight at me. Magic swirled around them, glowing patches of white making up the spell moving. Add a chain and some sheets and you had what lived in your attic the night before Christmas.

“You are not meant to see them, Sasha. They are employing some advanced magic to stay hidden,” Toa said without inflection as he stared at the door. “They’ve grossly underestimated your ability. I half wonder if they’ve underestimated mine. Absurdity.”

“Don’t people usually come out from hiding when they’re spotted?” I asked quietly.

“Usually. But you are a silly human. Surely you can’t unmask the great leaders of our race.” Toa’s voice dripped with sarcasm. He was not impressed.

I focused in on the largest being, who was standing behind the gap between Jonas and Charles. He stared right back at me. I got the feeling that he didn’t think I could see him.

Which would make him either deaf or stupid, and I didn’t think he was deaf.

“Is someone right behind me?” Charles asked in a whisper with wide eyes.

“What gave it away?” Jonas mumbled in a low voice. “Sasha’s magic pulsing your power, her look of terror, Toa’s comments, or the body heat on your back?”

My eyes lost focus as I saw with my magic, analyzing the spell and its construction. Somewhat advanced, it had a lot of little nuances and intricacies. But compared with what Toa was teaching me, and with what Delilah had done with my help, this was nothing. Child’s play.

Higher level of magic, indeed.

I checked the spell on the next person and the next. Almost to the letter, they were all the same.

Well, when it worked, why strive for originality. Except…

“I see now why you said always tweak your spells just a little from the man next to you,” I admitted to Toa. “Makes it harder for the enemy to pick them apart en masse.”

“If you spent less time questioning, and more time doing, your rate of learning would excel dramatically.”

I rolled my eyes, working on all the spells at the same time. When they were the same, it was really just a matter of duplicating the effort. No thought involved.

“Will you have the energy, though, Sasha?” Toa commented in that same monotone. The man was always on teacher mode.

And unlike usual, I was so thankful for that fact!

With a flourish, I set everything in motion, feeling my energy drain. I tugged on the blood link with Stefan, sensing an immediate surge of energy riding a wave of love. I could handle this counter-spell alone, but since he was in a meeting with Dominicous and some council dude, he didn’t need energy just yet. I might as well keep stocked-up—I had no idea what might come in the next few minutes.

Bodies wavered into view, eerie white glow turning into a shimmer of bronzed skin. Charles glanced behind him, startled, and then directed his gaze down the hall. After a pronounced shiver, he muttered, “Not cool, bro.”

I continued to stare at the large man right behind Jonas and Charles. He had a mop of curly hair and bulging muscle all over his seven foot frame. The man was a goliath.

I couldn’t help myself. “Boo!”

The man’s eyebrows slid down his nose until they’d made a solid vee. Other people down the line glanced at their neighbor. Then leaned forward and glanced farther down the row. Gazes all came to rest on me, some in shock, many in anger.

“That’s not how you make friends, Sasha,” Charles said in a low voice. “Not that you’d want to befriend people who think creeping around and standing behind a guy without saying anything is an okay thing to do. It’s kinda fucked up. Just sayin’”

Jonas rolled his shoulders as his eyes hardened. He must’ve agreed but he couldn’t do anything about it now. Unlike Charles, though, he hadn’t turned around to glance behind him.

The door clicked before it swung open on silent hinges. The same man that checked us into the establishment stood before us, that damned smile once again twisting his lips. His feathered hair was no less 80’s, and unlike me he seemed well rested.

Drugs?

“Well, hello again,” he said, stepping back from the door. “Please come in, we’ve been expecting you.”