When I open my eyes, I’m back in Angus’s bed, with Tobias’s words ringing in my ears.
Go to them. Their blood calls for you.
I lie there trying to process the vision. It’s similar to the ones I’ve had before, but not exactly. I felt Tobias’s energy differently this time, and the message… it was more urgent this time.
I take in a deep breath and wait for the eeriness to subside. Then a voice speaks directly into my ear.
“Go to them. Their blood calls for you.” He sounds like Van, but the tone is different. Van’s voice is huskier, softer, where this voice is harder, less airy, more forceful.
“You must go to them. The shadow walkers need their nightbird.” His voice is calm, yet insistent.
“Tobias?”
“You must go to them. Now!”
My body is jolted back and I feel him leave me. I’m awake and I’m overcome with a horrible sense of foreboding. I close my eyes and I seek out the energy of Marco and Angus and Van. I can’t sense them at all.
No. Wait… there. Marco’s airy and light. Angus is earthy and grounding. Van is flowing cool and liquid. There they are. My three men. They’re safe and sound.
But according to Tobias, they won’t be for long.
Chapter Fourteen
JOELY
The guys’ house is deep in the woods to the east of the main campus. It takes an eternity to follow the meandering path through the woods that brings me to the path around the lake. I jog past the little dock where Angus and I first spent time together. I’d give anything to go back in time to that moment. That perfect moment before I knew anything about the Nightbird and the prophecy and evil vampires and soul-sucking magical Vessels.
The path gets more crowded as I get closer to the dorms and I realize the protests and rallies are still going on.
Great.
I’m about to turn back, make my way around the other side of the lake by the dorms when I get a flash of warning from Tobias. Ravens and screaming and bloody fangs.
“All right,” I whisper. “I’ll go this way.”
I keep going along the path taking the fork that will take be past the infirmary and Lakeside Dorm and allow me to skip the south end of the quad. When I step out from behind the dorm, I realize it doesn’t matter one bit. There are so many people filling the quad that they’ve spilled out between the buildings.
The plinth that used to hold the statue of the university’s founder has been converted to a makeshift stage. It’s about a hundred yards in front of me to my left. A young woman stands with a microphone in her hand, rallying the crowd.
“Are you ready to hear Porter Allbright tell you how he’s going to make the Society of Ancient Magic great again?”
Cheers explode from the ravenous crowd.
I have no idea where I am supposed to be heading, but I am sure I want to be as far away from Porter Allbright as possible. I turn around, reassessing my plan, waiting for a cosmic correction from Tobias. If I follow behind the infirmary and then the botany lab, that will bring me to Timbray Commons which is almost to the other side of of the quad.
I take two steps in that direction when I bump straight into Quinn Allbright.
Her eyes go wide when she realizes it’s me. “Joely. Hi. I… I wasn’t expecting to see you.” She’s breathless and her cheeks are pink.
It’s her.
I fight to keep my bearings. “Have you seen my sister?” I ask. “Have you seen Kate?”
“Katie?” She takes a moment as if she’s thinking, trying to remember. “I’m not sure—” She glances over my shoulder and her face goes pale. “Oh. I have to run. Bye Joely!”
I glance behind me but I have no idea what she was looking at. If the world wasn’t so completely messed up, I think I might actually like Quinn. She’s a nice girl and she seems really kind. Whatever. I can’t think about that now, or how she looked so frightened just now. I have to save my wolves.
I push through a line of protesters and then I pick my way through the trees toward the infirmary. If there was a path here, it’s long since overgrown.
A branch snaps behind me, and before I know it, Porter Allbright is there. He grabs my arm and I’m about to scream when he slaps a magical spell over my mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, glancing over his shoulder as a group of protesters gather on the lake path. He pulls me deeper into the trees, and then we’re out on the other side, behind the infirmary. Allbright tugs me along until we’re on a small footbridge that crosses over a little pond that feeds off the lake.
“I was wrong to come after you. I didn’t think things through. We don’t have to fight.” He glares at me and I realize his eyes are the same shade of green as mine. “If I take off the muzzle, will you promise not to scream? I just want to talk.”
He has a scar up near his hairline that still looks fresh. I wonder if that’s from when I hit him and decide that it is and that makes me happy. I hope he never forgets it.
“Look, we got off on the wrong foot,” he says as if our first encounter was a simple squabble.
“Wrong foot? You tried to kill me,” I say.
“And I took
