Sacrifices Read online

  “That fight tonight … ugh,” Addie said, shuddering.

  “It’s just going to get worse,” Loch said quietly. “This place was a pressure cooker to begin with.”

  “And now Breakthrough’s turned up the heat,” Burke said wearily. “It doesn’t make sense. If they want us, why’re they trying to kill us?”

  “Survival of the fittest,” Loch said, shrugging.

  “Well I’m just about fit to be tied,” Burke muttered.

  “Maybe the lid will blow off the pressure cooker,” Addie said thoughtfully. “The more rules Breakthrough makes, the more everyone rebels against them. Which reminds me…” Addie reached into her blazer pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a half-pint bottle of vodka. “Courtesy of Muirin,” she said, as the others stared at her. “It makes a good excuse, if we’re caught together.”

  So at least Muirin’s still helping, Spirit thought uneasily. She just wished she could be sure Muirin wasn’t just giving them all enough rope to hang themselves. The four of them—the five of them—had been the ringleaders of what passed for a rebellion here since last October—and Muirin knew all the details. If she rats us out …

  “Good for Muirin,” she said, a little too forcefully. The others stared at her. She won’t turn us in, Spirit thought desperately. Muirin never does things just to please people.

  As she wrestled with her fears—it hurt to distrust Muirin, but things had gotten so bad lately that Spirit kept expecting them to get even worse—Addie lit one of the cigarettes. They handed it around the circle, waving it in the air so the place would smell of smoke. When it had burned down, Addie held it up carefully, concentrating. In the light of the flashlights, Spirit saw the paper go soggy, and there was a faint hiss as the ember went out. Addie’s Gift came from the School of Water. There wasn’t much water in the air, but there was enough that she could douse a cigarette.

  She dropped the butt fastidiously to the floor and opened the bottle. “Time to become a teenaged alcoholic, I guess,” she said. She poured a little into the palm of her hand and dabbed it on her cheeks and neck. “No way am I actually drinking any of that,” she said, passing the bottle to Spirit. “I don’t want to be off my game for even a second anymore.”

  Spirit copied Addie’s gestures. The vodka was cold, and it smelled worse than rubbing alcohol. She’d thought vodka was supposed to be odorless and tasteless.

  Burke slopped himself lavishly with it, and even ran his wet hands through his hair before passing the bottle to Loch. Loch carefully soaked his shirtfront in it, grimacing. “This stuff’s never going to replace my Cuir de Russie,” he said, forcing a smile. “So. Who wants to go first?”

  “I will,” Spirit said. “Ovcharenko picked Trinity for his sparring partner today in Systema, but she wasn’t having any. She ran off. Anybody … seen her?” Spirit finished awkwardly.

  “She’s assigned to my table. She wasn’t at dinner,” Addie said. “I guess she could have just skipped it.” There was a moment of silence. None of them wanted to say what they all knew: Trinity had joined the missing.

  “I heard the Systema classes are going to be combined,” Burke said. “They’re going to be longer, too.”

  “But that means the advanced students are going to be in with—” Loch began.

  “People like me,” Spirit said, trying not to sigh. “Hey, if I get killed, maybe it will get me out of Dance Committee,” she joked weakly.

  “Not even death gets you out of Dance Committee,” Addie said. “But they picked you? That’s great! I kept telling Maddie you’d be good for it, but you know what she’s like.”

  Spirit stared at her. “After everything you told me about Dance Committee, you think me being on it is a good thing?”

  “Yes, considering how they’re going to be doing the Spring Fling. There’s going to be a general announcement on Sunday, but the Committee already knows, and Maddie Harris’s incapable of keeping a secret, so I know. She probably already sent you an email about it.”

  “I must have missed it,” Spirit said. “What secret?”

  “This year, the Spring Fling’s going to be a joint dance between Oakhurst and Radial. It’s still going to be held here, but our Dance Committee will be combining with the Macalister High Dance Committee. And half the meetings will happen in Radial. So that means you can spy!” Addie said.

  “On what? Because it’s a little hard to spy if you don’t know what you’re spying about,” Spirit said after a moment.

  “Well,” Loch said thoughtfully, “Leaving aside how hard it’s going to be to escape from this place, running away doesn’t do us any good if Oakhurst just drags us back again.”

  “Right,” Burke said, nodding.

  “So we need ammunition. Leverage. Something to make them back off—or even shut them down. We know the Shadow Knights and the Gatekeepers—Oakhurst’s beloved ‘honor society’—are the same bunch, so no matter what we’ve been told, the Big Bad is centered here, not something we’re being protected from by being here.”

  Addie snorted rudely. “If this is protection, I’d hate to see what danger is like.”

  Loch grimaced in agreement. “So, since the one thing actually in Oakhurst that’s weird … er—weirder—than everything else here is the oak tree in the Entry Hall, that’s what we should be looking at.” Loch went on. “Maybe it’s a clue.”

  “‘Interfering stranger beware! Touch not the Sacred Oak sealed by the Druid Merlinus. Herein is imprisoned the son of the Great Bear, Medraut, Kin-slayer, Parricide, and Most Accursed. Turn you back, and flee,’” Spirit said, quoting Muirin’s translation of the runes burned into the trunk.

  “Right,” Loch said, nodding. “And everybody knows it was Merlin locked up in a tree, not Mordred—so what else do we know that isn’t true? And how do we find out? We know there was a biker gang using Oakhurst as a clubhouse before the school was started here. The newspaper clippings all said ‘local gang,’ and I’m betting at least some of them are still in the area. I’ve thought for a while that if we could talk to them, we might find out something that would help. I just couldn’t figure out a way to do that from here. So that’s where you come in, Spirit.”

  “Me?” Spirit said. “Do I look like Lois Lane? Or Batgirl?” Okay, maybe Batgirl, she thought, remembering what Trinity had said in the Locker Room.

  It was just a few hours ago. And now Trinity was … gone.

  “The Spring Fling’s in three weeks,” Addie said. “And considering what’s happened at all the dances lately…”

  Spirit nodded reluctantly. “We have three weeks to either find a way out of here—or find a way to protect ourselves,” she said.

  “What we really need to make that happen is to know what the Shadow Knights are after,” Burke said. He made a face. “Yeah, I know, they’re evil—but if Oakhurst is a means, what’s the end?”

  “If Elizabeth Walker was right, and the Reincarnates are playing out the Arthurian Mythos over and over again, what Mordred wanted was Arthur’s throne.” Addie waved her hands, as if to underscore her exasperation with the ridiculousness of it.

  The most unbelievable part of everything going on at Oakhurst wasn’t even Merlin or Mordred. It was all of them—or some of them, at least. Just before the Shadow Knights arrived, Oakhurst had gotten a new student. For some reason, Elizabeth Walker had come to Spirit to tell her a story Spirit had found nearly-impossible to believe.

  * * *

  “It is all part of the curse that fell upon Britain when Mordred betrayed Arthur and sold himself to the Dark,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “Everyone involved in any way with Arthur’s kingdom is doomed to be reborn over and over until either the Shadow or the Grail triumphs. One must destroy the other.”

  “So why doesn’t anyone remember all this?” Spirit wanted to know.

  “The Shadow Knights do, but only if they turn to the Dark. Their master, Mordred, wakes their memories. I do not know about the Grail Knights. Possibly Merlin
wakes theirs as well. But when they are reborn, they have no memories of their past lives.”

  “But—I don’t get it. If they’re reborn over and over and fight the war over and over, why hasn’t anyone noticed until now?”

  “Because until the spirit in the Tree was freed, they had no leader and no direction,” Elizabeth said simply.

  * * *

  Elizabeth had called them “Reincarnates.” Elizabeth/Yseult’s Gift had been precognition—she’d called it “prophecy”—and it had awakened early, causing her to dream her true life until she was forced to believe in it. She’d said there was no “Elizabeth Walker,” only Yseult of Cornwall, wife of Mark, lover of Tristan. Sorceress, healer. A figure out of Arthurian Legend.

  Only the legend was real.…

  And if I’d believed her, instead of thinking she was crazy, maybe she’d be here now, Spirit thought miserably. Elizabeth had been terrified by what she knew, and the next morning she was gone, just the way so many Oakhurst students had vanished since.

  “Elizabeth said Madison Lane-Rider and Muirin were sisters—or Reincarnate sisters, anyway,” Spirit said. “And that Mark Rider was another one—Reincarnate, not sister. And probably Teddy, too.”

  “Huh,” Loch said, frowning. “Didn’t Muirin say the only reason Ovcharenko was interested in her was because she was Madison’s sister?”

  “Well don’t remind her,” Addie said. “I don’t think she’s put it all together. If she decides she’s a Reincarnate, she’ll probably decide that Guinevere isn’t exciting enough and want to be Cleopatra.”

  “She’s got the makeup thing down already,” Loch said with a smile.

  “Too bad you don’t get to choose,” Spirit said. I’d choose to be in some other story. “But Elizabeth said something else. She said none of the Reincarnates knows who they are until someone awakens their memories.”

  “So Ovcharenko makes five Reincarnates we know of,” Burke said. “He wouldn’t know about the others any other way. And that means Mordred has to be the one ‘awakening’ them.”

  “But if Mordred’s doing that for the Shadow Knights … Where’s the wizard to wake up the Grail Knights?” Spirit asked.

  “I still want to know what Mordred—and everybody else who’s trying to turn us into playing pieces—wants. Because England is that way,” Loch said, pointing. “And nobody ever mentioned Mordred wanting McBride County, Montana. But he’s here—if he’s here—so what does he want now?”

  “I’d settle for knowing who the Knights of the Round Table are supposed to be,” Spirit said. “Not everybody with magic is a Reincarnate. But some of them are.” Not me. Some of you, she thought, looking at her friends. Some of the people who actually have magic. “If the Shadow Knights are the bad guys, that makes the Grail Knights the good guys. So where are they?”

  And if Mordred is somewhere around here “awakening” Shadow Knight Reincarnates, and Muirin’s a Reincarnate, how can we know for sure that Mordred hasn’t awakened her too…?

  She really wished she hadn’t thought of that.

  * * *

  The wind cut through Spirit’s winter coat as if she wasn’t wearing one, and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly as she stepped out of the train. There wasn’t even a platform, just a sign and some guardrails located at the top end of Main Street. The sky was overcast and, March or not, the air smelled like snow. Chris Terry said they were going to get snow again tonight—and he was a Weather Witch, so he certainly knew. It’ll probably be August before it all melts, Spirit thought miserably.

  The one good thing about the Dance Committee’s first joint meeting was getting out of class for the afternoon (including Systema), because the rest of it—Spirit thought—was pretty much a recipe for disaster. There was a rumor going around Oakhurst that after the Spring Fling Radial would be declared in-bounds. Considering everything Muirin’d told her about the hostility of the Townies to the students, letting the two groups mingle freely probably just wasn’t going to end well. Oh, well, I guess I’m about to find out, she thought dolefully.

  Spirit crossed the street to get to the sidewalk. Maddie Harris, Kylee Williamson, Chris, and Dylan were ahead of her. They were looking around as if they’d found themselves on an alien planet. Hoth, maybe. When they were all out of the car, the whistle blew, and the train moved slowly up the track so it wasn’t blocking the road. It would stay here until it took them back to Oakhurst, unless someone called it back up to the school before that. The spur line connecting Radial and Oakhurst had been finished last week, and the new track ran in a big oval connecting the school and the town. At least the train meant all they had to do to get to Radial was schedule the trip. The “line” ran Oakhurst’s single passenger car behind the switching engine normally used to bring Oakhurst’s cars to and from the main line. It wasn’t fast, but it didn’t need to be.

  “This has to be Hell,” Zoey said feelingly as she hurried to catch up with them. Spirit had to agree. If her only two choices were join the Shadow Knights or spend the rest of her life in Radial, she’d give serious thought to joining the Shadow Knights.

  Spirit had been hearing what a “one-horse” town Radial was ever since she came to Oakhurst. She’d been pretty sure it couldn’t be that bad—she’d grown up in rural Indiana, where you could drive for miles without seeing so much as a gas station—but now that she saw Radial, she realized everyone’d been right. Radial was a one-horse town that didn’t even have any horses.

  Radial’s main—and only—street was about two blocks long. It held a pizza joint, a combination newsstand and video rental place, a laundromat, a couple of empty storefronts with signs in the windows that said COMING SOON (though they didn’t say what was coming soon), and something about the size of a 7-Eleven that proudly proclaimed itself the “Radial Superette.” The second floors (of the buildings that had them) held lawyers’ offices, the Chamber of Commerce, the Radial Echo (the local newspaper), and something that just said it was “County Services.”

  And that … was about it. The Association Library was out at the edge of town. Further out along the State Road was the little local hospital, and beyond that the high school all the kids in the county went to.

  That was it.

  “Hey, freedom! And the company of our fellow students! Hey, you know, guys, we should show them what we really do at Oakhurst!” Dylan spun around, waving his hands in “wizard” gestures. He was a dark-haired, green-eyed boy about a year older than Spirit was. His Gift was School of Earth: Dylan was a Jaunting Mage; he could jaunt—or teleport—objects. He used his Gift to make life unpleasant when he could. Or he had, before Breakthrough moved in.

  “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life as Comrade Ovcharenko’s chew-toy?” Kylee asked with deadly mockery. “Or maybe you’d like to be part of the foundation of one of the new buildings?”

  “Nobody’d know,” Dylan said sulkily.

  He’s right about that at least, Spirit thought, looking around. It was the middle of the day, but the only sign of life was lights on in some of the stores, and the people in the pizzaria.

  Chris laughed as a sudden gust of wind made the others stagger. “Dyl, they always know. And what they don’t find out, they make up.”

  “Oh my god, I thought it was cold on campus!” Maddie Harris wailed. “I’m going to die out here! Where are we supposed to go?”

  “Town Library,” Kylee Williamson said briskly. “It’s this way.” She pointed and strode off. The others followed.

  Radial didn’t look any better from close up. The thought of pizza made Spirit’s mouth water, but—like Chris said—they’d know. After a minute or two, though, she was so cold she didn’t care about anything but getting out of the wind. She tucked her chin into her scarf. It didn’t seem to help.

  “Look!” Dylan said, pointing. He’d stopped, so it was either stop and look or trample him. Spirit looked.

  In the distance, the new Breakthrough Adventure Design Systems
building was visible. Breakthrough made computer games: the building could have been dropped into any one of them and looked perfectly at home. It was a featureless cube of gray granite, and the top was crenellated like a medieval castle. There were flags flying from the walls, and each one had the Breakthrough logo on it—a black dragon coiled around a medieval tower. At first Spirit had thought it was right behind the Main Street buildings. Then she realized it couldn’t be. It was huge. Bigger than the largest Walmart Superstore that had ever roamed the Earth—just the parts she could see were a terrifyingly impressive amount of work to have accomplished in barely eight weeks. How had they built all that so fast? And in the dead of winter?

  “Just the building covers ten acres,” Dylan said excitedly. “The business park covers at least fifty. They’ve nicknamed it ‘The Fortress’—I was talking to one of the guys who’s going to work there, and Clark said it’s capable of being completely sealed off and locked down so nobody can get in from the outside—it’s completely self-contained—you could live in there for weeks! That’s why they put the outside walls up first, to hide the fact they’re digging massive cellars that go down for miles—”

  Clark. That’s Clark Howard, the Breakthrough codehead who tried to make trouble for Loch at the Sadie Hawkins Dance.

  “And it probably has its own nuclear power plant and an antigravity device and if they want to relocate it can fly,” Kylee said derisively. “Dylan, you are so full of bull.” Cold as it was out here, their first sight of The Fortress had stopped all of them in their tracks.

  “It’s got its own generators,” Dylan said, unabashed. “Solar panels instead of a regular roof. It’s like a whole city in there! Clark said they’d probably be able to sell electricity to the town once it’s up and running.”