NOVEL NEXT Chapter 24
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Another group of students ran past Anna, helping the injured as they went. They’d cleared eleven classrooms. No dead yet. No dead people. At least, none that they saw.
There had been monsters. Dead or dying. Mr. Deville used an obsidian battle axe he’d summoned from somewhere that glistened with dripping liquid flames. Crimson, like blood, the flames splattered as he’d swung his heavy blade with its stout hilt. Each drop of fire elicited howls of pain from any monster it touched.
The blood flames – as Anna had come to think of the flaming substance on Mr. Deville’s axe – soaked into the metallic flesh of the monsters to rising wisps of steam. It smoked like it burned them where it touched, but merely sputtered out wherever it fell on non-living matter. He’d used it to decapitate the smaller monsters, killing them with swift, efficient, sizzling strokes.
When the transformed teacher had pulled a weapon as black and glisteningly deadly slick as the enormous horns on his bovine head out of nowhere, it had pretty much confirmed to Anna her suspicion that maybe he wasn’t entirely on the up and up with his magic. Because it was dark. He’d performed spells on some of the larger monsters that Anna was certain were against the Covenants.
They’d also found blood…in the classrooms.
There was some blood and Anna couldn’t help wondering if the people it belonged to had survived. Was it students? Teachers protecting their students? Or was it the security contractors that got paid truckloads of cash to protect the children of the uber wealthy?
The private security contractors still on campus had been doing their jobs protecting students and ferrying them to safer areas of the building. But many of the students and teachers in this wing had broken and ran when the monsters attacked. And that was okay. They weren’t trained for this kind of thing. Running had probably saved a lot of them.
However, it made it a bitch of a time trying to determine if any of them had been dragged away and eaten.
Mr. Deville crept up to the door of the next room with his new protégé attempting to be stealthy behind him. It was getting less awkward, and honestly, less scary with each room. This next class, however, brought Anna’s anxiety levels back up to at least eighty percent. Anna could sense her ice had frozen a monster in place partway into the room with its rear suspended outside of the building. It had been an imperfect catch, and the nasty creature was working itself free.
So, at the very least, there was one monster who she and Mr. Deville needed to worry about possibly dealing with. She resolved to bury it in ice as soon as she had a clear shot. But for now, she focused on watching the silent hand signals that the minotaur was giving her after his first peek through the window on the classroom door. Three fingers, then pointing to the left. Two fingers, then he pointed to the right. Monsters or monster bodies is what it meant. Three to the left and two to the fight. A hand flat, palm down, people maybe alive.
Anna’s eyes widened with questions that Mr. Deville stopped with tilt of his head, some raised eyebrows, and a stern shake of one admonishing finger. Right! The teen elementalist nodded agreement. Later. When they were sure it was safe to talk.
Then the door had been opened and the minotaur was hurling fireballs and a spell that made a wounded monster that had corned three people screech with a dizzying resonance. Swallowing, Anna gulped down her fear and followed the teacher into the room before turning to her responsibilities on the right. Anna hadn’t been carrying a weapon anywhere on her when the emergency started so she’d created a shield out of ice to cover one arm and protect herself. For killing monsters, the elementalist had manifest a shaft of ice that she could reform into a sword, a spear, or a mace as needed. So far, she hadn’t actually needed to use her armaments.
That didn’t last long.
There were two barricades in this room. On separate sides of the room. The room was dim and the light filtering through the ice wall was mellow and tinted ever so slightly blue.
This was fine. But the monsters were alive and though they’d been distracted, working their way through a mountain of desks and chairs toward what may or may not have been living people. Okay. She could do this.
Anna stayed far back from the monsters that were easily twice the size of a school desk and many times the weight of one. They were still not moving all that nimbly on their stubby rubber legs. One even seemed to have ‘flat tires’, and its feet flapped flatly as it hopped like a happy dog expecting treats and pats toward her. Except that Anna was the treat it wanted to eat.
Anna had kept her elemental magic near the surface, and she focused it through the makeshift sword, aiming it at the creature coming toward her. For a second, just a second, she hesitated. The monster had a lolling tongue and what had once been handlebars flopped on either side of its one-eyed head like ears. A floppy eared cyclops motorcycle monster, that flapped like a its feet as it happily struggled toward her. Like an oversized excited puppy, or a demented metal and rubber seal.
It was cute. And it liked her.
That was why she hesitated. Frozen with the inability to bring herself to kill someone so sweetly innocent looking, she almost hesitated too long. Then she saw the monster slip in a pool of blood. Saw the blood on its teeth. And she remembered.
It wasn’t cute.
It didn’t like her.
It just wanted to eat and kill.
So, she shot it. First it was just an ice spike that flowed like a flash of light from the tip of her sword. Then it was a steady stream coating the monster’s entire body, weighing it down. It slowed but not quickly enough, getting uncomfortably close before it was completely encased in ice and unmoving.
Anna sighed with relief then shrieked as another monster came from her right. Raising her sword, she was just barely in time for the thing to impale itself on the lightweight weapon. But it was big and heavy.
“Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.” She fed ice magic through the sword and into the monster, scrabbling backward in panic.
