The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)

He hoped fervently they wouldn’t run into Renmark and Esmerelda on their journey back through the manor. They hadn’t followed Lintz and Gaze, but Alex knew the blast they had sent at the other two professors wouldn’t have kept them knocked out for long. He pictured them like beetles scuttling through the hallways, sending their brand of nasty, lashing magic at the backs of any students unfortunate enough to encounter them.

Gaze can handle them, if it comes to it, thought Alex quietly, praying he was right.

As the sheet of white magic wore off, Lintz hurled his bombs, each one crackling and exploding in a different, more elaborately destructive way, and Natalie forged the intense spells of her ill-learned dark arts, her golden light tinged pink and dark blue in succession. Alex knew it was time for him to use what he had learned, to keep the Head at bay.

“I’ve been waiting decades to do this!” bellowed Lintz with a broad grin on his face, his moustache twitching with excitement as he launched bomb after bomb, his arm never seeming to grow tired. It was like watching a machine—one hand reaching for a bomb as the other threw it with impressive speed.

Conjuring the familiar black and silver beneath his hands, Alex sent a shivering stream of anti-magic at the Head. It swirled, snaking between the galactic mist of the magical remnants that still glimmered in dust-like particles in the atmosphere. The whole front of the manor was drenched in a fine golden fog, and the anti-magic cut through it easily.

Alex noticed Lintz looking at him oddly with an expression of interest and understanding, his gaze moving from Alex to follow the snaking dark ripple of the conjured anti-magic. The professor smiled, casting a conspiratorial wink in Alex’s direction as he returned, with satisfaction, to his bombs. Twisting his hands with swift dexterity, Alex launched some of the spells he had read in the notebook. A spell of anti-magical incapacitation, designed to make one’s opponent freeze solid. He saw the spell hit the Head, but frowned as it seemed to do very little. It annoyed the Head, but no more than that. Alex sent another new one—a corkscrew of energy that was supposed to burn the skin and inflict intense pain on the victim. Again, it didn’t seem to do more than irritate the Head, like a minor itch or a bug-bite. Alex knew it should have done far more than that, but it wasn’t reacting the way it would on an ordinary magical individual. Perhaps it didn’t work as well on more powerful beings, thought Alex with a twist of annoyance and panic.

Frustrated, he conjured the sparkling silver shape of a longbow and filled the center with dark energy that solidified the weapon. He held it tightly in one hand and manifested arrow after arrow with his other as he touched it to the glittering black string. Leander had been right—the bow was difficult and tricky, but the arrows were worth the effort. They fired at the Head with deadly accuracy, hitting him hard in the shoulder and arm, jerking his body with each impact. They didn’t seem to hurt him much, but they knocked him back time and time again.

A hoarse cry erupted from the Head’s throat as an arrow hit him in the heart, the pain evident in the pitch of his scream. From that moment, Alex aimed for the heart, but the Head was ready for it.

Dropping the bow and arrows, Alex forged a hefty spear, crafted from the purest energy. It buzzed and thrummed as Alex swiftly shaped the weapon to a razor-sharp point and poured his focused power into the very center, instilling the spearhead with an added layer of anti-magic that would explode on impact. Launching the spear, Alex watched its glittering, streamlined body as it glided along with thrilling speed. He was certain this was the thing to cause some real damage to the Head. As it neared, however, the Head snatched it and gripped it frozen in mid-air, before turning it around and sending it straight back toward Alex.

Alex ducked just in time, the spear shattering against the doorframe behind him, but he was hit in the shoulder by the stream of golden energy that quickly followed from the Head’s other hand. The magic didn’t harm Alex, though, as a flurry of frosty flakes drifted down from the small tear in Alex’s pullover and a scorch mark tainted his skin beneath.

Alex stood, a deep frown furrowing his forehead as he brushed off the burn. Two weaving tendrils rippled along the Head’s hands, so starkly contrasted, and yet moving in perfect harmony across the paper-thin skin of the hooded figure’s fingers.

Black and silver still surged beneath Alex’s palms. The Head eyed Alex with a curious glint in his inhuman eyes. It was as if they were frozen within the battle, focusing only on one another.

Alex held his breath. He was beginning to understand what the Head was. A mix of light and dark, gold and black. An impossible thing.

“We should run,” whispered Natalie. She looked drained of all energy.

Alex nodded. They were overpowered. At this rate, they’d be dead in minutes.

“You go!” shouted Lintz defiantly, with a look of heroic resignation on his face.

“We can’t leave you,” insisted Alex, but Lintz batted him away.

“Go!” he repeated, as he turned to face the Head with a roar that boomed like overhead thunder. “I should have done this years ago!” he cried as he began to throw two bombs at a time while skidding magical traps along the floor to snatch at the Head’s feet. His hands moved so quickly they were a blur.

Alex faltered, but Lintz shoved him and Natalie roughly toward the manor doors during a brief few seconds of quiet in the middle of a particularly brutal barrage.

“I said go,” Professor Lintz whispered with a bittersweet smile.

Reluctantly, Alex and Natalie did as he asked and sprinted back inside the manor with the sound of exploding bombs echoing in their ears. They tore through the hallways, Alex shouting his call-to-arms at the top of his lungs as they ran.

“WE MUST FIGHT! JOIN US! THE TIME IS NOW!” His voice rang through the corridors, imploring any and all remaining students to come out of their rooms and join him.

The Head was back. Lines had been drawn. Sides had been taken.

The war had begun.





Chapter 30





A large group of students had gathered at the entrance to the Head’s quarters, students who hadn’t been out on the front lawn, but Alex frowned as he counted the number of people present. There weren’t as many as he had expected from his rallying cries, and yet no one else seemed to be arriving. The last few stragglers had trickled into the ranks.

“Is this everyone from the manor?” he asked.

Ellabell stepped forward from the group, her sparkling blue eyes prickling with the glitter of held-back tears.

“This is everyone,” she said firmly.

“How can this be everyone?” whispered Alex in disbelief.

Ellabell sighed heavily, a hand raised to her heart as if she were physically trying to stop it from breaking. “A big group of us were hiding in the library when Renmark and Esmerelda came,” she began. “We weren’t expecting them, and they ambushed us. It didn’t matter that we begged and pleaded for our lives. They were… merciless. Only a few made it out.”

“You were there the whole time?” asked Alex, his stomach twisting in knots.