Shadow Phantoms - H.P. Mallory Page 0,41

and who had believed the lies and shimmering dreams Duine had floated before them. ‘Join me and I’ll make you rich and powerful’. Men were weak and Duine used his magic to exploit them.

Maybe I did too, in my way.

As the first man fell to the ground, I moved onto the next, working my way down the line. With that part of their life gone, we could let them go and they had the option of starting over and becoming better men. It was still a punishment of sorts, but I also thought of it as a kindness. Sometimes I wished someone would excise all those bad memories from me; the people I’d killed; the look in their eyes as they died.

At the end of the ceremony, I was exhausted, though I tried not to show it. The prisoners were dealt with, and my followers were happy. Even Eirin gave me a ‘clever boy’ smile.

All very good; but now what?

I had a handful of people with which to fight the army of the King’s Alliance, and they would be coming for me even harder than before.

What now for the Order of the Templar?

TEN

EMMA

I walked through the fog into Stonehollow Cemetery.

Jupiter and Kevin trailed slightly behind. Stopping inside the wrought iron arches, I gave them a chance to catch up. The freezing air clung to my skin. When I stood still, the cold intensified. The snow-chipped wind sapped the warmth from my blood and I bounced on the toes of my boots, bunching my hands in the fabric of my sweater vest to keep the chill away.

Should’ve brought my coat. I shook my head at myself.

Before the sun rose, early Salem mornings were dark and bitter cold. Guess that’s why these classes are usually inside, I thought.

I shouldn’t have been surprised though. I was almost never all the way prepared. Basically, the total opposite of a boy scout.

Jupiter and Kevin were close. I started walking again. They fell in step beside me.

“God, this place gives me the creeps,” Jupiter said as she glanced around herself, her eyes wide.

Kevin flattened the slight poof of auburn hair against his forehead, probably going for an extra square inch of warmth. “If by ‘the creeps’ you mean ‘the get-me-the-fuck-out-of-heres,’ then I agree,” he said.

A silvery mist settled over the rich, damp soil. I had the irrational fear that I would slip through the mulched earth and into one of the graves below. I managed to ignore it.

Stonehollow had an entombing quality about it. Whether a person was living or dead didn’t matter. While you walked in the graveyard, your soul hung in the cemetery’s clutches like the mist. I nestled my hands between my shirt and sweater vest, ignoring the goose pimples on my arms.

“Are we almost there?” Kevin asked. His teeth chattered. Jupiter wrapped an arm around him, lending a generous portion of her coat.

“I think it’s just past this little grove,” I said. We scanned for the grave our class was meeting at, but the shroud of mist made it difficult. We walked through an alley of vine-covered tombs, each in a different stage of decay. The stately marble structures had large open faces. You could see stone coffins hidden in the shadows. And the gnarled faces of gargoyles above the open doors.

The cemetery was vast and littered with the veiny roots of haunted looking trees. Their limbs dropped and bent, trunks twisted into the ground at odd, ugly angles. One patch of trees ran almost down the length of the cemetery, and we neared its center slowly. There were still several minutes until my wrist watch struck seven.

Kevin sighed. “Professor Undress-her better have some kind of magical heat set up over there, or I am gonna be pissed.”

“Don’t piss out here; it’ll freeze to your leg,” Jupiter said. “And stop calling Professor Draper that! It’s inappropriate.”

“I can’t,” Kevin said unapologetically. “It’s just so clear that every chick in Salem wants that professor to undress her as soon as humanly possible. It’s sickeningly obvious. Not that I’m an exception...”

Kevin quirked an eyebrow suggestively.

“I mean, honestly, what’d you expect, Kev?” I asked, raising my eyebrows back at him.

Yeah, Jupiter agreed, nodding. “I mean, think about it. He’s the first decent looking professor we’ve ever had, and he appears to be younger than a hundred and fifty, so—by Elmington faculty standards—he’s a certified hunk. It’s not his fault he isn’t a gargoyle.”

Understatement of the century.

The absolute last thing I needed was Kevin and Jupiter picking