Ashes of night, p.5
Ashes of Night, page 5
part #5 of Haunted High Series Series
“Look at the wimp,” Rhett called up. “You going to hang around up there all day?” He laughed, then said, “Come on, guys. He’s not going to make it.”
Fueled by the boy’s words, I opened my hands again. The rock wall sped by so fast the details blurred. I hit the ground with a thump that made dust rise from beneath my shoes. I turned to find the other werewolves watching me. By the looks on their faces, I had apparently done something right.
I cleared my throat. “So, was that the first leg of the Gauntlet?”
Lunera grinned and turned away. Rhett rolled his eyes. “I thought you were stupid before. Thanks for confirming it.”
Durnin and Ross laughed and followed Rhett. I guessed doing one thing right didn’t account for much in the Gauntlet.
Determined not to ask any more stupid questions, I trailed behind the others. It wasn’t many steps before I caught up to where they were staring up the wall on the other side of the canyon.
“Up and over,” Lunera said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
Rhett threw me a challenging look. “What’s wrong, cur? Afraid of a little climb?”
I didn’t reply. Lunera started up. She made it look easy, placing each hand and foot methodically to climb up what looked like the nearly sheer face of the wall. Rhett moved further down, then started up his own path.
“This is my least favorite part,” Ross grumbled. “Tall people weren’t made to climb.”
“Stop complaining,” Durnin said. “You try scaling a wall with my arms and legs. At least you have a decent wingspan.”
I moved away from the pair and began to climb a few feet from Rhett. I had never actually tried to scale the side of a cliff before. I figured if I got stuck, I could keep an eye on how Rhett was doing it and move over to follow him.
It was slow going. The sun was beating on our backs by the time we neared the top. Sweat trickled down my shoulder blades and stung the lash marks across my back. My throat was dry and my forearms ached from carrying my weight by my fingertips. I took my time, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to make sure I didn’t get winded. Luckily, the others didn’t seem in a hurry, either. Each of us concentrated on clearing the top and gaining a much-needed rest. We were almost there. I just needed to take my time.
A shout made my fingers slip from their handhold. Fortunately, my other hand and my feet were secure. I looked up to see Lunera slide past Rhett and then tumble from the wall. Everyone watched, shocked, as she hit the wall once about halfway down before she landed with a thump at the bottom. Any hope I had that she might survive the fall vanished at the sight of her broken body and her head twisted at an unnatural angle. Red spilled out to cover the dirt around her.
Rhett swore above me. I thought about the way Lunera had fallen, sliding past him before she plummeted to the ground below. He could have caught her. It may have pulled him from the wall or threatened his progress, but for a moment, he’d had the chance to save her life.
I saw the same realization on Rhett’s face. Horror warred with guilt in his eyes as he stared down at her body. His gaze shifted from the girl to me. The emotions were replaced by a wall of anger.
“Too bad that’s not you down there, cur,” Rhett growled.
“Yeah, cur,” Durnin said in a shaky voice. “You should join Lunera.”
The sound of her name had a sobering effect on the group. Rhett grunted, then continued his climb upward. Ross and Durnin followed. I couldn’t help picturing Lunera’s family in the spectator room at the Den as they watched their daughter plummet to the ground. Perhaps the Pack considered her too weak to join them, maybe she didn’t have what it took to survive at the Den, but she didn’t have to die. She would have been welcome at the Academy. Of that, I was certain. I gritted my teeth and climbed upward with the vow that I would help any other child of the Den find safety before falling to such a meaningless death.
I pulled myself over the lip of the cliff in time to see the others enter a large tunnel. We were about two-thirds of the way up the canyon. The lip I rolled onto had been dug about twenty feet into the wall of the canyon. The tunnel the others walked into snaked into the wall at an angle. The ceiling, sides, and ground were cement. I could only imagine how long it had taken to build.
“Divide and conquer,” Ross said from inside.
My ears were met by a high-pitched humming sound when I ducked into the darkness. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the grays of the wolf. When they did, I wanted to leave the tunnel again.
The tunnel split into five branches that ran side-by-side. Within each branch, I could see the source of the sound. Saws of every shape and size littered the small tunnels. Some were as tall as me while others were no bigger than my hand. These popped up at random places from the floor and swung from the ceiling. It looked as though we had stepped into a house of horrors where the horror was getting chopped into little pieces.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I asked.
All three boys looked back at me.
“Does it look like a joke?” Rhett shot back levelly.
I nodded. “Actually, it does.” I gestured toward the saws and then at the cameras suspended every few feet down the tunnel. “It looks as though this pack you’re so eager to join is just as eagerly awaiting the chance to see you get shredded to pieces. Is this really how they expect their sons and daughters to prove their worth?” I shook my head. “If that’s what it means to be in a pack, I’m glad I don’t have one. You guys need to seriously rethink your allegiance here.”
Durnin looked at the saws and then back at me. “But we don’t have a choice.” The whining in his voice carried a heavy dose of fear.
“Yeah,” Ross agreed. He glanced at one of the cameras as if worried about being overheard. “If we don’t go, we’ll get fed to the bears.”
“Can I just point out that even the cruelest creatures in this world don’t feed their young to others?” I replied.
The two boys looked from me to Rhett.
“What do we do?” Ross asked, his voice quiet.
Rhett glared at me. “We make it through the tunnel and face the last leg of the Gauntlet. It’s what you’ve trained for.” He crossed his arms as he glared at his friends. “Ross, do you really want to disappoint your grandma? And Durnin, you take first every year in the obstacle courses.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t trying to kill me,” Durnin replied with his gaze on the cement floor at his feet.
Rhett sighed and spoke so that his voice was just audible above the hum of the saws. “I know it looks scary, but you’ve trained for this. You can do it, both of you. We’re going to come out of the Gauntlet and get our brands together. Who’s with me?” He held out his hand.
Ross immediately put his on top. Durnin hesitated, glanced at me, and then put his hand on the others.
“I can’t let my family down,” the werewolf said by way of apology.
“They let you down by expecting you to do this,” I replied, eyeing the saws. “Death by bears sounds pretty inviting right now.”
“Wolf up, freak,” Rhett growled. He looked at his friends. “I’m doing this in wolf form. There’s not much clearance in there. You’ll be more agile.”
He pulled his shirt off, followed by his shoes and shorts. The others turned away and did the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rhett fold his shorts into a tight bundle and then wrap the drawstring around it. He tied a loop in the end before he phased.
Grateful for the shorts Kiyah had given me, I quickly did the same. I phased and was in wolf form in time to see all three boys duck their heads and ease the cord of their shorts over their snouts and one paw. Using a series of practiced motions, their bundled shorts soon rested across their shoulder blades.
It took me far longer to figure out how to make it happen, but after several ungraceful, ridiculous movements that no doubt caused plenty of hilarity to the spectators at the Den, my shorts rested between my shoulders where they wouldn’t impede my movements.
I looked up to see that the others had already started their journey inside the tunnels. Each had chosen a different one. I figured that was part of the rules. Grumbling inwardly to myself about the idiocy of blind followers, I picked one of the two remaining tunnels. The thought that Lunera would have taken the last one if she had survived reminded me how serious my situation was.
The saws were no joke. I ducked one that swung above my head, sidestepped another that would have sliced through my paws, and narrowly missed the next one that shot from one side of the tunnel to the other suspended on some sort of metal line. My heart raced and I could barely catch my breath. I felt as if I was on the edge of dying. The realization of my impending doom ran through my head.
I was about to jump over another saw when a thought struck me. I had done this before.
It wasn’t real, of course. I would definitely have remembered my life hanging by a thread as I maneuvered around a metal-toothed obstacle course. I may not have lived it, but I had played a game similar to it.
Drake and I used to play video games together after school if we weren’t hanging out with friends. One of his favorites involved getting a character from the beginning of a deadly maze to the exit. One of the segments looked pretty much like the challenge I faced. Drake used to run his character through in a mad dash, dodging, jumping, and rolling whenever he could to avoid the saws, bombs, and lasers, but his method inevitably resulted in the character’s demise. I, on the other hand, had found it best to take it slow and figure out the patterns of the objects trying to kill me. Once I knew where they were predetermined to hit, I could easily make my way to the other side. It drove Drake crazy and made me the winner enough times that we eventually quit the game.
A scream sounded. My heart clenched at the thought of what one of the other boys was experiencing. I gritted my teeth and willed my mind to accept my route instead of Drake’s. The wolf side of me that demanded I escape such a dangerous place acceded to the reasoning of my human side. I pulled my tail between my legs so it wouldn’t get cut off and counted the seconds between the next saw’s movements.
Two seconds, a slash, then the saw after it shot up from the ground to about stomach height before it disappeared back into the cement. After it, a swinging saw sliced through the air low enough to sever my spinal cord. I counted to three, watched two saws jut in from either side of the tunnel, then a third one bigger than me rose from the ground and cut through the tunnel completely. It spun for four seconds before it lowered slowly back down.
A grim grin that probably appeared like a snarl to the spectators crossed my face. I had this.
Each second matched the beat of my heart as I twisted and dove, ran, then paused before throwing myself into the next available watching position. No matter how many times I wanted to dart forward, I made myself wait for the count. The fresh air at the end of the tunnel drew closer. I didn’t allow it to make me careless. Instead, I counted to ten the way Julianne had taught me and willed my thoughts to remain calm. Within each beat, I memorized the motions of the blades. They lost their power as life-ending instruments able to cause pain and death; instead, I saw only objects to be dodged, game pieces to be avoided. In the back of my mind, I pretended I battled Drake for a chance to win the game. The thought kept me calm with its familiarity, and I found myself at the other end of the tunnel before I even realized it.
“I lost a finger,” Ross was in the middle of complaining when I emerged.
Ross and Rhett both shot me surprised glances.
“You’re harder to kill than you look,” Rhett said. His expression left little doubt how he felt about it.
I phased in the corner and pulled on my shorts. When I turned back around, I caught him staring at my back that had begun to bleed again as a result of the phase.
“What?” I snapped. “Happy to see me bleed?”
Rhett appeared momentarily ashamed. He shook his head as he turned away. “I didn’t know you weren’t healed from the lashing.”
I crossed my arms in front of my bare chest. “It doesn’t make a difference here.”
“Yeah,” Ross said as he wrapped a piece of cloth he had torn from his shorts around his hand to stop the bleeding from his missing index finger. “At least the blood means he’s not some kind of demon.”
“Demons bleed,” I replied quietly. I kept my gaze on Durnin’s tunnel. “Any sign of him?”
Rhett shook his head. The thick scent of blood from the tunnel was impossible to miss.
“I heard a scream,” Ross said.
Rhett nodded. “I did, too. I just hoped it wasn’t bad, but he’s not here.” His voice was gruff to hide how he felt about it. He turned away. “Come on. We’re almost done.” The cold detachment in his voice didn’t fool me. He couldn’t hide his sorrow at the loss of his friends, but he knew he had to keep going. I found myself respecting his strength even though I couldn’t understand the way he blindly followed Meg’s command.
Ross and I followed the werewolf out of the tunnel. The setting sun lit another branch of the canyon in golden light below us. Five ropes hung suspended from stakes in the ground.
“So we climb down and that’s it?” I asked hopefully.
Rhett glanced at me. “You can tell yourself that.”
“What?” I asked. I looked from him to Ross. “Tell me what I’m missing.”
Ross pointed without a word toward the other end of the canyon fork. I followed his finger to a huge cement barrier across the entire canyon.
“We climb another wall?” I guessed.
Rhett shook his head. “We survive.” He grabbed one of the ropes and walked toward the edge.
“We’ve done enough surviving,” I said. “This is stupid.”
When Ross ignored me and joined Rhett at the edge, I finally snapped. I grabbed Rhett’s throat and lifted him up so that we were eye to eye with his feet dangling over the edge of the canyon.
Surprise by my strength and his precarious situation showed on the eighteen-year-old’s face.
“What do we survive?” I growled.
“Th-that,” Rhett said, his voice tight past my grip. “Ross sh-showed you. Th-the dam.”
I took a step back so Rhett’s feet could touch the ground, but kept my grip on the taller boy’s throat. I looked at the wall and then back at him. “That’s a dam?”
Rhett nodded. “It’s holding the water back.”
“And then?” I prompted.
“When we reach the bottom of the canyon, they send the water down,” Ross said from where he waited at the edge.
Chapter Five
I let Rhett go. He hunched over with his hands on his knees and drew in a breath. The realization of what he was implying sunk in. My hands clenched into fists as I stared at the canyon.
“So we survive a flood,” I said. “That’s just great. And these are normal situations for werewolves?” I looked at Rhett and then Ross. “It doesn’t bother you that you have to survive these extremely unnatural scenarios in order to become a member of your pack? You know this is ridiculous!”
Rhett glanced at Ross, then met my gaze. “It may be ridiculous,” he began. His eyes found one of the cameras on a pole above us. He looked back at me and said, “But you don’t understand. There’s nowhere else to go. If we don’t pass the Gauntlet, we gladly go to the bears.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
His voice was heated when he replied, “Because a werewolf without a pack isn’t a wolf at all. We need each other to survive, to give us purpose, to exist for something other than ourselves. Without the Pack, we’re nothing.”
I shook my head. “Do you hear yourself? I’ve survived sixteen years without a pack of werewolves. You know why? It’s because I have friends! And they have my back just like I have theirs. They may not be werewolves, but they’re the only pack I need.” I motioned toward the canyon. “I don’t need this, but do you know why I’m doing it? I need to survive to free my best friend.”
“The vampire?” Ross asked with a tone of disgust at the word. He had lowered himself to sit on the edge of the wall as we talked
I nodded. “That vampire has saved my life many times, and I have saved his. We’ve bled together, been tortured, chased, stabbed, and burned, but we’re still here because we’ve got each other’s backs.”
For a moment, I saw through the stalwart wall that Rhett hid behind. His dark gaze flickered and the bravado that held his shoulders back and made him appear confident slipped.
“You might have all that,” he said quietly, “But we don’t. Our only chance at a real life is to receive the brand and be accepted into the Pack.” The wall came back up and he glared from me to Ross. “In order to do that, we need to survive the flood. I’m going down.” He grabbed the rope and swung over. “It’s your funeral if you choose to stay up here.”
I watched them climb down several feet before I eased myself over. It wasn’t like I actually had a choice. I may have had a pack back at the Academy, but I wouldn’t be returning to it if I didn’t survive the flood. The last thing I wanted to experience was being fed to bears. I had already faced one demon-possessed bear in my lifetime, and one was more than enough.
True to Rhett’s word, the floodgates on the dam opened the moment our feet hit the ground. The roar of the raging water echoed so loud within the canyon walls I had to fight back the urge to cover my ears.
“Find something to grab onto,” Rhett told Ross and me. He met my gaze. “And whatever you do, don’t let go until we’ve gotten past the first rush. You’ll be swept under by the debris.”
