Abaddon's Mark

Chapter Thirteen

Theon sat in the shadows. He watched as Nillon stumbled upon the scene.

Frankly, he had been there when the spell happened, but that was beside the point.

Bringing Graydon and Naena was... news.

Their reactions toward one another were improvisation and yet so well done. She snapped things at him and he was reaction as if they had planned it out ahead of time, as if he understood what she meant. It wasn't just sword and shield. It was a give and take. She was angry and bitter and attacking but Nillon didn't know that. Graydon knew that Nillon didn't know and used that to his advantage.

When Naena left, that was the end of that story. When Graydon left, chuckling as he went, Theon knew that it was a part of their plan to break Nillon.

Six people dead.

That brought the body count for the year up to eight. A high count, given all else going on. Given all else going on, it really wasn't that high.

Theon waited in those shadows as Trathor made his presence known, brought by Luren, too late.

Which spoke volumes for both the mess Hellfire had made of themselves, and the fracturing that was clearly taking place in the university's coven. When Nillon exploded the way he had, the whole school should have been put on alert. A Salord's explosion would leave the mage unharmed but rip apart anyone and anything caught in its path.

Including the Seven.

Luren didn't look surprised, but the man had always been a coward. He likely stood back and waited for someone else to arrive who he could follow in.

Trathor looked around and grimaced.

"Discard the bodies, not a word to be said about this," Trathor said.

The body count for Trathor raised to forty-seven. Those were only the known bodies.

Naena's count was still zero. Theon's was one hundred and fifty-six., but his count didn't quite matter when one considered he killed innocent people and knew it was for the sake of the world.

"Surely someone will notice," Luren protested. "Surely someone here was of a family which counts."

"Surely not," Trathor snapped. "If it comes up, then it comes up, but I doubt it will. Dispose of them."

"Yes, sir," Luren said, his face and body angled away from Trathor.

Terror filled the area.

Theon had never been able to figure out what Trathor held over Luren, but he knew it couldn't have been something simple.

"No motion of Theon?" Trathor asked.

"No, none," Luren countered.

That was when Theon slipped away. For there was only one reason why he would not be out there standing in the midst of the bodies.

He climbed back into his study through the window, noting that no one had come close to the spell he laid over the entrance. Once inside, he went to the cupboard and reached behind everything else to retrieve a bottle of the very best alcohol from Trathor's office. The spell was worked into the back of his cupboard to make the grasping easier and to move past the dean's protection spells.

For, where else might he have been taking his stash from all those years?

He took the almost full bottle to his bathroom and dumped most of it out. Then he returned to the study portion of his rooms and sat at the desk. He dropped his head onto his desk and tipped the bottle, spilling just a little across the surface and destroying a letter he had been working on to the Seven to petition a name.