Page 131 of The Tribes of Magic
They were hungry.
CHAPTER 2
SORCERY SQUARED
“What did you do, Savannah?”
Nala kept her eyes on the horde of Cursed Ones and her spear ready. She must have cast some kind of spell on it. Sparkling, swirling rivers of magic slid up and down the length of the weapon, and the metal tip was smoldering red.
“This wasn’t me. They’re not here because of me.” I indicated the horde of Cursed Ones.
Nala spared me a flat look, then quickly turned her gaze back to the beasts on our doorstep. She clearly didn’t believe me, and could I really blame her? I’d already summoned one monster today.
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed in terror. Like mannequins, the Cursed Ones’ heads all turned at once. They listened. The scream came again. In a rush of hunger and rage, the Cursed Ones stampeded back the way they’d come from. The earth rumbled with their footsteps. The sky echoed their savage snarls.
Nala and Orion ran after them, and I wasn’t far behind. We made it to the Castle’s front lawn in one piece. How long we’dstay in one piece was another question altogether. The place looked like a war zone.
Black SUVs were everywhere. What were the Watchers’ cars doing here? And where were the Watchers? I didn’t see a single one of them anywhere. I did see the Knights. Most of the SUVs had tipped over, and the Knights were using them as barricades.
I heard the sickening gurgle of the Cursed Ones. I saw the saliva dripping from their feral mouths. I shivered at the red glow in their inhuman eyes. I smelled smoke and coughed on ash.
The Knights were fighting the Cursed Ones with magic. The Sorcerers blasted off arms, and the Metamorphs tore at them with teeth and claws.
The Cursed Ones hardly seemed to notice. They just kept on coming. They didn’t feel pain or fear or exhaustion. They felt nothing at all. Nothing but the irresistible urge to bite and destroy and spread the Curse. It didn’t seem to matter to them that the Knights were immune to the Curse. They stalked forward, marching on the Castle like zombies of the apocalypse.
I stepped forward, shaking out my hands, clearing my throat. Then I shouted as loudly as I could, “Oh, Cursed Ones!”
The army of Cursed Ones stopped.
They turned.
They turned their sick red eyes on me.
The Cursed Ones started moving again, or at least some of them did. They looked very confused. Half of them were still frozen near the SUVs; the Knights were having an easy time taking them down. The other half of the Cursed horde was on the hunt.
I felt the piece of chalk in my hand, and something clicked. Instinct took over. I dropped to my knees on the paved path and hastily drew the first rune that popped into my head. Somehow, I knew it was the answer.
The shrieking phantom appeared again, like I’d summoned it to me.
“Deal with them,” I told the phantom.
It screamed and shot toward the Cursed Ones. It wove through the horde, but instead of going between the Cursed Ones, it went through them. Every target it hit dissolved immediately upon impact. It was just like that time back in Bayshore’s Forbidden Zone, when Conner returned the Cursed Ones’ souls to the planet.
The phantom continued its zigzag flight pattern until there wasn’t a single Cursed One left. Then it disappeared, its mission complete.
“It’s gone. The phantom is gone.” I hunched over, breathing heavily. I felt like I’d just run ten kilometers in the blistering heat.
The Apprentices didn’t move a muscle. They gaped at me like I’d grown a few extra heads.
Nala’s gaze flickered from the rune at my feet, to me. “You summoned the phantom to deal with the Cursed Ones. You knew they were here. Somehow, you knew.”
I didn’t deny it. She was right. As soon as she said the words, I knew they were true. Back in the classroom, when I’d drawn the rune to summon the phantom, some part of me had known about the danger lurking nearby. Some part of me had known the Cursed Ones were here. And my subconscious had magicked up the solution: a phantom that could defeat them.
“That was no ordinary phantom. It was a Dispelling Phantom. Where did you learn powerful magic like that?” Nala watched me like I was a bomb ready to go off.
“I…I don’t think I learned it. I think I just knew it.”
Nala shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
