“We have to warn everyone,” I say. “Do any of you know which professors live in the school and which live in the village?”
“I can call my dad,” Piers says immediately. “My phone still has battery.”
“Great. Do that. He can reach out to the professors living in the village,” I tell him. He immediately pulls out his phone and walks a bit away.
“I know where the professors’ quarters are,” Owen says.
“You go there,” I say. “Warn them.”
“I have weapons in my dorm,” Bennett says in a low voice.
Sawyer glances at him in surprise. “You do?”
“I do too,” I tell them. “We’ll head toward the dorms. We need to get everyone up and out.”
The manticore roars again, mingling with the sound of some other monster I can’t identify. The sound echos down the hallways until it reaches us.
“Piers, go with Owen!” I shout at him as he hangs up the phone. “Sawyer, Bennett, with me.”
We take off in different directions. More sounds are starting to bloom out of doorways and hallways; monster roars and human screams. I’m running full-tilt toward the residence hall. I can only think of Erin.
We have to skirt several semi-dangerous monsters we run into in the hallways, but they seem to be preoccupied fighting each other. When we get to the residence hall it’s full of students, all holding candles, flashlights, and makeshift weapons, fighting off monsters who’ve already swarmed the hall. I’ve no weapons yet, however, so I’m basically useless. I dodge and weave my way to my dorm, losing Bennett and Sawyer in the chaos.
I burst through my door to find Erin cowering in the corner of our room. Cleaver sits in front of her, hackles raised, growling … but he wags his tail when he sees me.
“Avery!” she gasps. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I admit to her, rushing to my dresser. I pull out all the gear I can grab - the knife Professor Helsing gave me, a couple daggers from my parent’s cabin, my rope, my flashlight, and after giving it a second thought, the container of iratxoak I used to get Piers’ blood. I’ve been feeding them crumbs and using them to do little tasks all year, so I’d hate to see them get gobbled up by some bigger, more ferocious monster now. I turn back to her. “You need to get out, Erin. Take Cleaver and escape. He’ll protect you.”
She glances down at Cleaver, who’s still standing resolutely in front of her.
We’ve made a few weapons in PW—I grab some and shove them into her hands. “Take these in case things get bad,” I tell her. They aren’t great, but they’ll do in a pinch. “I’ll help you get out of the school. Right now, it’s the most dangerous place you can be. It’s filled with monsters.”
She looks so frail, huddling on her bed and clutching a spear we built together, her face pale. “I’m scared,” she whispers.
“So am I,” I tell her. I kneel down and pet Cleaver. “Stay with Erin, boy,” I tell him. “Protect her. Okay?”
He licks my face. I suppose he understands.
“We have to go, Erin,” I tell her.
She swallows and nods. She gets off the bed, shaking, and throws on her winter clothes. I go to the door and wait until she’s done, but every second makes the line of tension inside me draw tighter. The screaming and shouting in the hall grows ever louder.
“Outside and into the woods,” I tell her. “I’ll try and help you along.”
Erin clutches the spear and nods again. I throw open the door.
It’s chaos. There are more monsters clogging the halls, with students fighting through them; blades swinging, claws slashing. I yank Erin behind me just as Cleaver leaps onto an al mi’raj—the rabbit-looking monster with a two-foot-long horn somewhat like a unicorn’s—and tears its throat out before it can get to us.
We push our way through the bedlam. I keep Helsing’s long knife out in front of me, slashing at any monster that gets in our way. As we stumble out of the residence hall and into a more open area, I hear someone calling out.
“Singer! Black!” Luiza de la Cruz blocks a vicious attack from a swooping harpy, slashing across its belly with a longsword. The half-bird, half-woman shrieks and tumbles to the ground in a bloody heap. Luiza runs up to us, covered in the harpy’s fresh blood.
“I’m trying to get Erin to safety,” I tell her.
Luiza’s eyes lock onto Erin’s face and she nods. “To the forest?” she asks, not even looking at me.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Can you get her there? You guys can take Cleaver.”