“How could he do that without his powers?”
“He’s taken the DNA of another necromancer and imbued a gun to use the power of necromancy,” she explained, and I shook my head. The man was no better than a human. “I've been keeping in contact with him all this time. He's the one who has been teaching me and your aunt to conceal and locate the relic with our magic. I'm sorry that I kept it from you, but he's not evil. He's not working with the humans because he wants to. He's working with the humans because he's trying to find a way to release his soul,” she repeated in defense of him again.
“Everything he’s done to release his soul has been evil.” My fists clenched as anger waged a war inside of me.
“But his actions don’t make him evil. When he realized that my son could possibly destroy the relic, he reached out to you.” She took a step forward.
“What do you mean he reached out to me?”
“The call you got to tell you the relic was in the dig site.”
My finger twitched, and irritation flared within me. “Okay.”
“All of the human specimens are reanimated. To start, the human is killed. He's told me the process, and I'm here to warn you about it. That's where I've been. I’ve been meeting up with him.” She frowned, reaching her hand up, but I stepped back before she could touch my shoulder.
“You should have told us. Nobody trusts you anymore. Trust is essential in war, Mom.”
“I know… Fates, Alister, I'm so sorry.”
I sucked in a deep breath and shook my head. “So what? They kill humans and then what?”
“They add technology to their bodies, and then they’re reanimated… He has found a way for human specimens to use technology. But the most important thing about them is that they—”
A brutal shriek pierced the air, and we whirled around toward the center of campus to see a student being ripped apart by a human specimen. It was brutal. Snapping of bone and tearing of tissue rang out in the silence.
Then panic ensued within the campus grounds, and another student, a witch, threw her arm out toward the specimen, and magic exploded towards it before dissipating as soon as it reached it.
“He told me that they had finished, but I didn't know that they would use them to attack so early,” she murmured, and I sent her a sharp glare before sprinting toward the witch with vampire speed, who the specimen had set his sights on next.
“Alister! No! Don’t go near it without a weapon!” Mom screeched, but I couldn’t pay her any mind. Not when students were at risk of being torn apart.
I made it in between them and focused on my power before realizing that my ability didn’t work on artificial blood. I went to rush it, but my speed was nothing.
My gaze widened. Supernatural abilities were not working at all against it.
I heard the screams of my mother before the specimen held up his hand to me with a little hole in his palm.
“Vampire. Strengths: speed and strength—now void. Weakness: blood loss—about to be activated,” it stated.
A bullet shot from its hand faster than I could dodge without my magical energy working through me, and it tore through my stomach.
I turned toward the student behind me. “Get out of here,” I gritted my teeth, pushing my hand into the open wound as blood soaked through my fingers and dripped down to the ground.
Shifting back to the specimen as my gaze blurred, my mother raised a large rock over her head as she snuck up behind the specimen.
The familiar tingle of healing did not come, instead, a sharp aching pain erupted from my stomach. I dropped to my knees at the same moment my mother crushed the specimen in the head with the rock.
The crunch of its skull sounded as it went down. She stood above it and beat the head into mush before dropping onto her knees next to me. She pushed her hands over mine to keep pressure on the wound. “The human specimens have been injected with that horrible crystal tourmalyke that has been altered, and the magic of supernaturals just won’t work with them. Keep applying pressure. There are no specimens within the general vicinity so your healing should kick in soon. I’ll help kill them.” She squeezed my shoulder before getting up and rushing over to help the rest of the staff that had fanned out on campus.
Rowan swung a long sword, slicing the heads off of a couple while Rhett went hand-to-hand with them before Rowan came and sliced their heads off.
Panic hit our bonds as Wren and Damien stepped out from the shadows next to me.
“Alister!”Wren dropped beside me on her knees, digging around in her bag before pulling out a healing salve and scooping a generous amount up with her fingers and moved my hand off my wound before smearing it over and inside of it. She did the same for where it tore out the back of me.
Tears poured down her cheeks as she made sure my wound was smothered in her salve.
The pain was excruciating until Damien looked down at me, and his eyes flashed silver.
