“What the – ?” I uttered before a small white object whipped past Mark’s head. Nikolas slammed the door shut before the creature reached us, and it veered away sharply to spiral upward toward the massive chandelier hanging from the arched ceiling.
“What is it?” I asked as I tried to follow the creature with my eyes.
“Goddamn kark eggs hatched while we were . . . ” Mark’s voice was drowned out by squeaks and flapping wings, and my eyes went wide as hundreds of the tiny creatures zoomed around the corner and headed straight for us.
Chapter 9
NIKOLAS REACHED FOR me and drew me behind him. As soon as the karks saw that there was no way out, they swerved away from us and began to zoom frantically around the hall, looking for another means of escape. By the time Sahir, Jordan, and Olivia showed up, followed by Terrence and Josh, there were karks everywhere. The small white bodies careened up the large curved staircase, through open doorways and down every hallway, swerving around people with amazing agility and speed.
“Don’t hurt them!” yelled Sahir, grabbing Josh’s arm to stop him from swiping at the creatures with a long thin sword. Sahir need not have worried. The karks were so tiny and fast that they were almost impossible to hit.
“Do you realize how long it takes to breed karks?” Sahir ducked as one of the creatures shot toward him. “We can’t kill them.”
“What the hell are we supposed to do with them?” Josh yelled back.
“We have to round them up somehow.”
I looked at the mass of white bodies whipping around us and shook my head. I couldn’t see how on earth anyone was going to catch these things. Pulling away from Nikolas, I ran over to Sahir. “How do you catch them?”
“Normally you’d use a spray made from scarab demon pheromone. Karks can’t resist it. Unfortunately, this batch was not supposed to hatch yet and I didn’t see a bottle of spray in the crates.”
I put a hand over my head when a Kark flew close enough to hook my hair with its tiny clawed wings. “So, what do we do about them?”
Sahir studied the situation. “I have a sedative that might help slow them down. I’ll go get it, and you try to keep these people from killing them.”
“Me? How am I supposed to stop them?” I asked, but Sahir was already running away.
Someone squealed, and I whirled around to see Olivia batting at two Karks that were zipping around her head while Jordan was bent over, holding her sides and laughing. Mark, Terrence, and Josh were running around the hall chasing after the creatures as a dozen warriors burst into the hall and stopped short at the pandemonium before them. I saw Chris among them, and his eyebrows shot up when he spotted me in the middle of the hall. I shook my head to let him know this one was not my doing.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” Tristan bellowed, and I looked up to see him on the second floor landing with Celine. Celine looked down on me with a sneer on her beautiful face as if I was somehow responsible for the whole thing. Why the hell did everyone assume I had something to do with this?
Tristan started down the stairs with Celine on his heels, and twice they had to stop as Karks fluttered around them like large white moths. I couldn’t contain my smirk as I watched Celine swipe at them.
“Who is responsible for this?” Tristan demanded in a commanding voice that carried through the main hall. “Where is Sahir?”
“He went to get some kind of sedative to knock them out,” I told him when no one else answered.
Tristan stared in displeasure at the scene before him. “How did this happen?”
“Ask them.” I pointed at the other trainees. “I was with Nikolas.”
Behind Tristan, Celine’s eyes narrowed on me, but she said nothing. Her hand went to her pocket, and for a few seconds I half expected her to pull out a knife and come after me with it.
“It was an accident,” Jordan said. “We laid all the eggs out after breakfast and turned them as Sahir instructed. We just went back to turn them again and they were all hatched.”
Shaking his head, Tristan strode into the center of the chaos. “I want these things caged before they make an even bigger mess.” To punctuate his words, a splatter of white landed in Celine’s straight black hair, and the female warrior shrieked as if it was acid instead of poop. I almost laughed before I got a whiff of the kark dung. I immediately slapped a hand over my mouth and nose at the noxious odor that was a mix of rotten eggs and dead skunk. If we didn’t round the karks up soon, this place would reek of it for a month.
My first thought was to use my power to calm the karks, but common sense told me there was no way I could handle this many at once. Still, it might work on some of them and that was better than nothing. At least they weren’t demons, so I could not hurt them or cause them to go nuts.