Fallen University: Year One

Then the room was plunged into darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

Screams of panic echoed in the hallway outside. Kingston grabbed my hand and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the commotion. Spots of magical lights floated here and there, but not enough to get a sense of what was going on.

Since the Combat gym was in the basement, there wasn’t even any natural light to alleviate the crushing darkness. I heard a crashing noise to my left and saw an energy ball blast off to the right. There was nothing but chaos all around us.

“What is going on?” I shouted. My voice was swallowed up by the frantic screams of everyone around me, or so I thought. Seconds after I shouted, I sensed Kai beside me.

“Lights went out,” he said shortly. “We don’t know why. People are so on edge from the last attack, they’re freaking out about nothing. Owen’s fighting with the wall. Just students so far, no teachers.”

“Do you see Jayce or Xero or Hannah?” I was rapidly gaining a new appreciation for vampires.

“This way.” He took my other hand and it sent a shockwave of pleasure up my arm to my brain. I didn’t fight it or revel in it, just let it be. His touches happened so infrequently that they usually got me a little bit high, but I was too freaked out to enjoy it.

“Jayce!” I called as soon as I sensed him.

“Piper! Can you get them to calm the hell down and stop blowing things up for no reason?” Jayce groped for me in the dark, then threw his arms around my neck and kissed my forehead.

“They can’t hear me,” I said. “I can’t do anything.”

I wasn’t sure how true that was, but the sheer panic radiating off all of the dark bodies around me was rattling my brain. I couldn’t focus enough to draw persuasion up to the surface to use, and Hannah was still lost somewhere in this crowd.

“This way,” Kai said shortly.

Jayce moved around behind me and kept his hands on my shoulders as we pressed forward.

“Hey! Let go!” Hannah blurted when we finally reached her in the crowd.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s us.” I groped for her face in the darkness and almost poked her in the eye. “Kai can see in the dark. Grab on and come with us, we have to find Xero.”

My heart was beginning to pound frantically. Xero had been the focus of so much hate and fear over the last few months, I was terrified that someone was going to use this as an excuse to hurt him. Or worse.

Kai led us in a zig-zag through the crowd, shouting instructions like left and right and get down! That last one was to dodge a stray energy ball that some moron had fired blindly. It must have been dark energy because I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it as it singed my hair.

“Where the fuck is he, Kai?” I felt like we had walked through the whole labyrinth, and someone was still shaking the walls. I got the terrifying image of the whole castle crashing down on our heads and forced it out of my mind.

“I don’t know, I can’t see him,” Kai growled between his teeth. “You’re sure he was down here?”

My heart nearly stopped. He hadn’t been in the locker room at all earlier. I hadn’t picked up his warm, fiery scent. The note Hannah had passed me earlier about some students jumping him—what if they’d done it? What if he was lying broken and hurt somewhere?

Kai had come to a complete stop. We huddled together in the dark, scrunching closer every time someone ran blindly into us.

“Come on!” The vampire dragged us sharply back the way we’d come, then took a few sharp turns. He finally stopped, then let go of my hand and pushed my shoulders until I was standing flat-backed against a cool, solid wall. The others joined me moments later as Kai lined us all up.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting Xero,” he said shortly. “Don’t move.”

We all held hands. Kingston, me, Jayce, and Hannah. The chaos had only increased around us. The floor shook

in rhythmic bursts. The ceiling lit up with electricity sporadically. I cursed the teachers for how slow they were to respond to literally any emergency. Where the hell was Beedle? He, at the very least, should have been down here before this even started.

“Nobody move!” Toland’s voice boomed through the darkness, amplified somehow. It dwarfed the earth-shaking crashes, which stopped almost immediately. “There is no need to panic.”

Easy for him to say. He wasn’t missing his person. I chewed my lip, slowly going insane. Where the hell was Xero? I was just about to break away from the wall and wade into the dark after Kai when I smelled the pure aroma of fire. Xero.

“Got him.” Kai shoved him toward the wall next to Kingston.