Each tiny bolt strikes where I aim, focused and precise, driven by fury so pure it feels almost calm.
One creature down. Two. Three.
They fall in rapid succession—smoking, silent, and dead.
Deacon Park watches me with his mouth hanging open. Vera’s looking at me like I’m a stranger. Even Nina’s frozen midway through creating a giant fireball, her eyes wide as they scan my body, as if staring long enough will answer her questions.
“Go!” The word tears out of me. “Get out of here! Now!”
They scramble over bodies and debris, heading for the tunnel that leads to the surface.
I turn to another cluster of trapped people. Rebecca Gibson’s hunched in on herself, and Henry Baker’s bright green eyes are wide with terror, his eternal enthusiasm gone.
Electricity arcs from my palms. Four bolts hit four creatures, and four smoking bodies drop to the ground.
“Move!” I scream at them. “Get to the exit!”
They run, and we run with them, our footsteps echoing off the stone walls as the tunnel to the surface stretches on and on with no end in sight.
Logan clears a path with fire while I watch our backs, throwing lightning at anything with red eyes. Others run alongside us, their faces pale and tear-streaked, their clothes torn and bloodied.
The air changes first, turning cooler and fresher. Soon, moonlight spills down from an opening ahead.
We burst from the cave, and for a second, I think we made it.
Then the howling starts, hellhounds pouring out behind us. Way more of them than should be possible are coming out of multiple cave exits, red eyes flooding the rocky hillside.
A girl goes down screaming to my left. I spin and throw a bolt of power that electrifies the hellhound, but her throat’s already torn out, her eyes staring at nothing.
That’s Margot. Well, itwasMargot, the fourth-year who was desperate to replace Logan as proctor, who drove me crazy with her overly perky personality.
Now, she’s dead.
Hellhounds are swarming the hillside, red eyes in every direction, and people are falling, dying, and screaming for help that isn’t coming.
The clouds start churning, and the wind picks up, whipping my hair across my face.
My small electrical bolts are too contained to cut it out here.
In the cave, I could aim. I could pick off the hellhounds one by one, methodical and controlled. Out here in the open, with creatures swarming from every direction, one blast at a time isn’t enough.
I need more power.
I needlightning.
I need the sky.
Thunder rumbles from swirling clouds, as if the storm’s talking to me, calling to me.
Logan’s hand closes around my wrist. “Don’t.”
“It’s the only way to kill them all.” I try to pull free, but his grip is iron.
“I can compel a few witnesses, but this is too many.” He gestures at the chaos around us, at the forty-plus people fighting for their lives. “The Council will find out.”
The wind howls, the temperature plummets, and static builds in the air until my skin prickles with it. Fire and red eyes scatter the hillside, and everywhere I look, people are fighting and falling.
But they’re not just people. They’re my friends, and I can save them.
