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“Please, spare me!” she whimpered. I realized it was Stacey, an Alchemist who hung out with Gwen.
“You made your choice,” a man sneered from behind the doorway.
“I was going to get the mark of Miriam’s Chosen,” Stacey insisted in a shaky tone. “I didn’t get the chance—”
“You had your chance!” he roared as he stepped through the doorway. The heavy boots of an Executor landed, and I saw that it was Leroy Benson. “This curse has been brought upon the school by all those who do not bear the mark of Miriam’s Chosen. The only way to free ourselves is to rid the school of this plague!”
“Leroy, stop!” I screamed, but it was too late. Black magic swirled out of Leroy’s fingers and curled around Stacey’s throat.
“Valerie, help me—!” Stacey screamed, but her pleas died the moment Leroy’s death magic touched her. Life drained from her eyes, and her body collapsed. Her skin turned gray and shriveled around her bones. Her eye sockets hollowed out as Leroy sucked the life straight out of her.
I never believed the coven could turn on me.
Stacey’s last thought echoed in my mind. My stomach clenched all over again as the coven lost another witch.
Leroy had dark Mortana magic, but he wasn’t an exceptional supernatural. He’d gotten lucky that the Waning had spared him his powers for the time-being. Something told me he’d find a way to execute anyone he wanted, whether he had magic or not. The Executors had decided to kill anyone who hadn’t joined their movement, thinking it would save them from this mess.
It didn’t matter that Stacey was on their side—that she’d intended to join Miriam’s Chosen. She was considered an enemy as much as the rest of us.
Anger billowed in my chest. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have magic right now. I was going to choke this motherfucker out myself.
“You fucker!” I screamed. There wasn’t a word to describe the deep, dark, horrible being this guy was. I started toward him, and Leroy looked up with a smile on his face, like he was pleased with his handiwork. He noticed me for the first time, and his features turned into a sneer.
There was something dark in his eyes… darker than I’d ever seen before. Leroy was an ass, that was for sure, but the strange look in his eyes hinted at something more sinister.
“You want to be next?” he taunted. “I can arrange that!”
He threw a battle orb, and I instinctively tossed up my hands to create a shield, but my magic never came. Nadine sprinted forward and grabbed my arm, yanking me backward.
Leroy’s orb flew past me the same time a second battle orb whizzed over my head. It sizzled with energy unlike I’d ever seen before. It flew down the hall toward Leroy with the intent to kill, but he ducked out of the way, and it missed him entirely.
I whirled around, and I realized Charlotte had been the one to come to my defense. But she wouldn’t be throwing many battle orbs any time soon. Leroy’s orb might have missed me, but it’d connected with Charlotte’s chest. She gasped for breath as Miles and Chloe tried to hold her upright. It wasn’t a killing orb—Leroy apparently intended to have fun with me first. But I could tell it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
Leroy’s laughter echoed down the hall. “The disgraced priestesses themselves. Killing you should solve all our problems.”
Dark magic billowed from his fingertips as he walked toward us. Nadine shoved me. “Run!”
We didn’t have the magic to fight Leroy, and he could literally take us all out in one go. We had no choice but to flee. We ran down the hall, Leroy’s laughter echoing behind us. A battle orb whizzed by our heads just as we turned the corner. I heard it explode, but we were already winding down a second hallway, getting lost in a labyrinth of twisting corridors I no longer recognized.
“Where’d you go, pretty priestesses?” Leroy’s voice sounded around the corner. “I know you couldn’t have gone far.”
The hall broke off in so many directions, and we passed by long corridors and turned down others. Students and professors ran through doorways and passed through hallways ahead of us. I saw a large group with a bunch of cats running alongside them, and my heart gave a start when I spotted Nadine running alongside them.
But she was right next to me! One of the guys wore the same shocked expression as I did.
Of course he had, because he was me.
“Did you guys just see—?” Grant started.
“The rules of spatial reality don’t apply, remember?” Nadine said as we kept moving.
That was freaky, but we didn’t have the time to stand around contemplating it.
Screams echoed off the walls, but they died abruptly. Several thoughts entered my mind, each one overlapping the others so I couldn’t make them out. My skull pounded as I tried making sense of them, and my vision blurred.
“Lucas!” Nadine cried as I steadied myself against the wall.
I gulped. “The Executors are killing people.”
