And something was wrong.
He was half hunched over his food container, clutching his stomach with one hand, while he wiped actual dripping sweat off his brow with the other, eyes narrowed at the food.
What was happening?
I shoved my paper and pen into the pocket of my studded leather jacket, intending to go over there to check—obviously because both Winter and Evira cared about him, so they’d want me to. Especially Win. That was clearly the reason.
But then Vaxan got up and staggered out of the Cafeteria, knocking against a table, and then one of the walls in the process.
A rush of adrenaline shot through me as I noticed the vampires, Andrew and Pierce, follow after him.
Right after him.
What the ever-loving fuck was happening?
Turned out,I’d had to double back to the fucking Cafeteria.
And it had cost me too much time.
Well, more like, it had cost Vaxan too much time.
Those fuckers had clearly snatched him up down the corridor before he’d made it very far—either to his room or the Infirmary was where I’d figured he’d been headed—and they’d vamp-sped him all the way across to the other side of campus.
Seeing as though I didn’t possess animal-like reflexes or scenting abilities, I’d headed back into the Cafeteria and performed a tracking spell on something connected to him. For my purposes, something he’d touched—his food container—had been enough for a small-scale, small-distance tracking spell.
And now I was striding through the early afternoon sun beating down on the fields of the Loxley campus grounds.
According to my spell, I was now just a hundred feet out from where Vaxan was.
It was leading me to the motorcycle path near the grassy mountain.Andthe vampire sun-safe zone that ran along near it. It was like that area atSanctum Sands Beachthat had a shielding dome that filtered sunlight into a harmless ambient glow. Well, the zone here only ran along part of the path. It was just enough that if vampires or those sensitive to the sun got caught outside when the sun rose—something that had been known to happen with a load of drunk academy students being a part of the whole academy experience thing—they had a protected path back to the main building and the dorms. But there were still danger zones if they weren’t careful.
And as I hurried closer, I saw it was being used to its fullest right now—the danger zone parts.
Fucking shit.
No.
My gut twisted, bile rising in my throat, as I took in the scene.
There Andrew and the other fuckface, Pierce, were standing in the sun-shielding area while Vaxan was lying out right under direct sunlight on the grass, two spikes driven through his forearms that were now a bloodied mess.
And the sun… it was shriveling his skin.
I could see him trying to maintain calling his scales to the surface to protect himself, but they were fading in and out all over.
And he was also coughing up frothing white foam onto the grass, which was getting all over his tank with him trapped in place. He was trying to move his legs to somersault to dislodge the metal stakes driven through his arms and deep into the ground, which I figured he could normally pull off well with his Basilisk agility.
But not now.
Not hurt like this—in several ways.
The image of him rubbing his crown with a concerned look earlier made a whole lot of sense now. There was an enchantment imbued in it that protected him from the sun. So, he’d had that worried expression because he’d felt it needing charging.
And him clutching his stomach and staggering out… all that became clear as their voices reached me.
“It worked excellently,” I heard Andrew saying, then high-fiving his buddy as they stood over a pained Vaxan.
Pierce told him, “Even your senses couldn’t pick up on that glamor. You thought you were eating your steak and mashed potatoes, but it was a whole lot of grain and fruits—poisonous to your kind, yeah?”
