The Keeper's Curse (15 page)

Blood. Where was she?

“
Some of these signs are circles, with stars in them. What are
they made out of?”

Blood. She opened her eyes now, trying to take in her
surroundings. It was hard to see, because it was so dark, but she
knew she was cold. The ground was hard like stone, and just as
cold.

“
Excellent. Now, you will see a bit of light. These are
candles. Do you see the candles?”

Light was coming from somewhere. Where was it coming
from?

“
Candles. It’s the only light in the room, Emmy. Find them.
Find them and decipher the blood messages on the wall.”

She groaned, rolling around on the floor, looking for where
the light was coming from. It was so dark and cold – she needed
some light. Her body however, refused to cooperate. It was useless,
as if she had no control over herself. And then she began to hear
whispering.

“
Whispering – what is the whispering saying, Emmy?”

It was quiet at first. Soft, and off in the distance. She
could barely make it out, just enough to know it was a
woman.

“
What woman?”

She didn’t know. The voice wasn’t familiar. Or was it? No, she
had heard this woman. Once before ... but where –

CRASH

Emmy sat
up, the suction cup on the side of her head snapping off. She saw
Willow bending over, mid-writing, her face twisted in shock. The
suction cup that connected the two of them trailed onwards toward
the glass wall full of palewraiths, plugged in. Except there was no
more glass. The tank had exploded, the liquid pouring out in waves,
destroying Willow’s office. The palewraiths floated out,
disappearing into nothing within seconds.

“
W – what the
hell
–”

“
We should get you out of here,” Willow interrupted her. She
grabbed her arm, dragging Emmy through the liquid.

Ms.
Spillet nearly had a seizure when she saw what happened, the liquid
oozing through the office, destroying the carpet and furniture.
Willow waved it off with some ridiculous story of a student
throwing a rock through her window, breaking the glass.

Ms.
Spillet rushed off to get the caretaker, leaving Emmy and her
counsellor alone.

“
What happened?” Emmy whispered loudly.

“
I haven’t the slightest idea,” Willow whimpered. “In my
thirty years of studying brainwork this has never happened before.
I didn’t even know a dream could break a downloader. What on earth
is in that head of yours?”

Emmy felt
all her hopes come crashing down around her.

“
Trust me, whatever’s wrong, I have never heard of it. Here,”
Willow said, handing her the paper she had written on. Emmy held it
up to the light. From the looks of it, the writing appeared to be a
cross between Chinese and Arabic, but even that wasn’t quite
correct. It seemed to be a language entirely composed of swirls.
“This is all I can give you. It seems to be me writing the dream
down that broke the downloader, but here it is.”

“
Is there another downloader in the area?”

“
Unfortunately no. Oh, it’ll take me forever to fix
this.”

“
Can I use it again? When you fix it?”

At this
Willow shifted uncomfortably in her wet clothes. “I would prefer
you didn’t.”

Emmy was
taken aback. “But it’s written down now! All I would need to do is
play it.”

Willow
stared at the front door, refusing to look at her. “Yes, but what
is in your head may not be built for a dream downloader. If I were
you, I would let this go.”

“
I can’t let it go!” Emmy wailed. “You’re my counsellor and I
need your help.” She wanted to tell her about Breckin as well but
she had a feeling it would only unsettle Willow even further. “Are
you afraid of what’s in my head?”

“
That’s beside the point,” Willow replied, sidestepping her
question. “If anyone finds out about this you could be taken away
to the House of Troubled and Disturbed in Ministrial. I’m not
risking my career or your future over this.”

So that
was it. Breckin would drive her crazy, she would fail her exam, and
her mother would be stuck in prison, possibly for the rest of her
life.

Emmy
glanced back down at the swirly language. Unless. Unless she snuck
in to use the downloader.

***

She was
lucky she had yoga for her next lesson, which required very little
thinking power, as she was slowly unravelling into a frayed
mess.

Unfortunately she had also forgotten that today was their
first marked grade in her peacekeeping class.

Jade must
have misinterpreted her expression as she wrapped her arm around
Emmy and gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, I told you –
Persy, Teddy and I have your back. We’ll get you at least a pass,
okay?”

“
Um, yeah, about that,” Persephone said. “I just found out
that we don’t get to pick the teams today. We’re fighting with the
eleventh graders. They get to pick teams.”

After
everything that had happened, Emmy didn’t have enough energy to
care anymore. She would try her best of course, but if she failed,
she failed.

“
Do you want me to try and get us to sway Flin into making
sure the two of us are together?” Jade asked.

“
Thanks, but it’s okay.”

The
throng of students was much larger due to the double class. Emmy
could tell who the older kids were instantly, from the smug, almost
sadistic expressions on their faces. This was nothing but target
practice for them.

After a
few minutes Babbage and Flin stood in front of the students,
silencing the nervous chatter.

“
There’ll be five teams today, but the marks will be
individual,” Babbage begun. “I’m going to call up the five students
in eleventh grade who improved the most in the past month. They
will pick who they want.” He held out a small piece of paper, and
read the names aloud, “Siobhan Barrett, Raphael Thorne, Cyrus Crow,
Addison Nightingale and Alexander Rathers.”

Emmy
could have jumped for joy. Even from a distance, she saw Alex’s
expression brighten. Alex would protect her.

The three
boys and two girls headed to the front, a fair distance apart, in
the order they had been called. Siobhan, without falter, shouted
out Breckin’s name. Without volition, Emmy’s ears perked up, and
she watched him make his way through the crowd to stand at
Siobhan’s side, without any surprise on his face. Emmy had a
feeling he was always picked first in these situations.

She,
however, was slightly surprised she hadn’t heard Breckin’s voice or
felt his presence, and only when she focused did she realize she
had. She had just been too nervous about the test to notice. It was
almost as if ... she was getting used to him.

Raphael
went next, picking a boy Emmy didn’t recognize that she figured was
his friend.

Cyrus
Crow was up next.

He
smirked and shouted out, “I want the rookie.”

Jade
stiffened beside Emmy, validating what she feared. He couldn’t
possibly mean her, could he? She glanced at Alex, who looked
confused as well. Why would anyone pick her? She was
terrible.

Apparently she hesitated too long because Babbage shouted,
“Rathers, he means you. Go.”

She made
her way through to the front in rigid steps, not bothering to
glance at Jade or Alex, who would be giving her pitiful looks. She
stood beside Cyrus Crow, who gave her what should have been a
smile, but it held nothing friendly in it. Knowing if she looked
too long at him her anger would show, she turned jerked her head to
the left, her gaze drawn to Breckin.

At first,
Emmy thought he was staring at her, but then she realized his gaze
was slightly to the right of her, directed at Cyrus. Cyrus looked
oblivious to it, but she had a feeling he did know Breckin was
staring, and just chose to ignore it.

Breckin
didn’t stop the intent gaze through the whole team picking, and
only looked away when Babbage blew the whistle, sending the
teenagers to scatter into the woods.

Besides
Cyrus, Emmy didn’t know any of her teammates’ names and only
recognized a few. She did the only thing she could do, and that was
to follow Cyrus, doing her best to use him as a shield. As ragged
as her nerves had been during her first peacekeeping lesson, it was
nothing compared to this. The eleventh graders only had one more
year’s experience than the people in her grade, but they were twice
as fast. The insane thing was, Cyrus, on top of this, was better
than most of them.

He would
shout out a word now and then, such as “trip”, “fall” or “turn”,
and whoever he was fighting with would do just what he said. Emmy
figured out pretty quickly he was a driver. When he was
opponent-free for a few seconds, he turned his head to the side,
his eyes on her.

“
If you’re going to use me as a shield, at least cover my
back, will you?”

She was
already irked with him for taking away her opportunity to fight
with Alex, but she did as she was told.

Soon she
realized she had no choice. Babbage and Flin whizzed by every few
minutes, grading the entire time. If Emmy did nothing, she would
probably do just as badly in her evaluation as she would if she got
taken out. Her attempts at defence were feeble, especially with her
dominant hand in a cast, but maybe she would get some marks for
effort. Despite her annoyance, she had to acknowledge her
incredible luck at having Cyrus to hide behind. The nurse had said
Cyrus wasn’t from Methelwood, but Methelwood had the best
peacekeeping program in the orbs – where was this boy
from?

Halfway
through the class, she didn’t care anymore. She felt half smug and
half guilty, eyeing her fallen pupils in the vicinity. The dirty
looks they threw at her indicated they were not happy the rookie
had gotten farther than they had.

Just when
Emmy was starting to wonder if Cyrus was unbeatable, something
threw him backwards, nearly knocking him over, causing Emmy to
wobble as well. Emmy looked over her shoulder and saw Breckin,
green fire in his eyes.

“
You are so
predicable,
you know that?” Cyrus said, throwing a ball of
palewraiths in his direction which Breckin smoothly
sidestepped.

Breckin
didn’t reply, but instead did a back flip onto a tree, hanging on
with just his feet. He threw another blow at Cyrus.

Emmy took
a few steps back, certain this wasn’t going to end well. She saw
several other students in the distance heading their way, growing
closer by the second. She figured the best thing she could do at
the moment was get out of there. Cyrus couldn’t protect her
anymore, and she didn’t stand a chance against a group.

Without
looking behind her she made her way down a clean path without any
marks, considering it was her best bet to get away from everybody.
A few minutes later she realized that also made her incredibly easy
to find, having left the only trail of footsteps in the snow, and
came to a halt. She was surrounded by oak trees – it was probably
best if she climbed into a tree and hid from the rest of
class.

Just as
she was about to take her first step up the tree closest to her,
she heard a soft growl from behind her. She froze and turned
around, expecting to see a student to fight – instead, she let out
an involuntary scream.

Standing
maybe twenty feet away from her, white as the snow itself, was a
lion. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen: enormous,
with luminous fur that reflected the sunlight. A thick mane framed
his face. The only colour he possessed was in the eyes, which were
pure gold without any pupils. Despite the lack of pupils, she knew
he was looking straight at her, in the same eerie way the raven
had, with its white eyes. That otherworldly wrongness.

It lunged
at her just as she screamed. Emmy dropped to her stomach, rolling
to the side. The lion raced passed her, digging his heavy paws into
the snow to stop himself, and turned around.

Her brain was frozen, not knowing what to do. Was this some
part of the test? No, that didn’t make any sense. This was a
lion
. What sort of lion
lived in a forest in winter?

He let
out a roar and headed for her again.

The
palewraiths. She needed the palewraiths.

With her
one good hand, she summoned all her will to conjure one, and threw
it at the lion. It hardly slowed the beast down.

Closing
her eyes, she did it again, throwing one after the other without
relent. The lion whimpered, thrown onto his side. This was Emmy’s
one chance to run. She got up and bolted back the way she had come.
She didn’t hear the lion come after her, how far behind was he
–?

She ran
straight into something solid, causing her to wobble backwards.
Emmy looked up and saw Cyrus Crow, staring down at her without any
expression.

“
Where did you go?”