His voice was broken and sounded wet, which couldn’t be a good sign. I found him under a plank of wood. I put both weapons down and pushed the wood off him. “What happened?”

“Crash came here looking for you,” he whisper-groaned. “You shouldn’t have taken something from him. He’s madder than a gator with a sore tooth.”

“I’m not sorry,” I said as I helped him sit up.

Eammon shot me a look. “No? He killed the other trainees. I couldn’t help them, all there was, was screaming.”

Horror, ice and fire, roared through my veins. “What about the other teachers?”

“Tom and Louis are out of town. I went down in the first explosion of magic. Sarge fought him off, chased him out of the crypt. No idea where Corb is, he was on his way back from a job that took him to the edge of Savannah.” Eammon coughed again, and when I moved to help him, he pushed my hand away. “You’ve caused enough harm.”

I stood and stumbled away from him, forcing my feet to bring me to where the other trainees lay strewn about. Their bodies were still, but I saw chests rising and falling. Triage, we needed triage.

Luke was closest to me, and his body was curled around something. I bent and touched his shoulder, tentatively. Bite wounds covered him. Big bite wounds from an animal with a long muzzle and huge teeth. What the hell was Crash? I turned Luke over, and his eyes stared up at mine, amber gold. And he mouthed one word. A name.

“Sarge.”

He shuddered and convulsed under my hand, froth foaming his mouth. One of the other trainees groaned and rolled—Chad by the looks of it. “He’s alive!” I yelled. “Eammon, he needs help! They all do!”

A hand on my shoulder all but threw me backward, and I found myself staring up into Corb’s very angry eyes. “This is your fault. We lost four good people, all because of you.”

I slid backward, feeling the weight of his words like blows, but I pulled myself together. “They aren’t dead. And I didn’t do this.” Crash had, or so Eammon had said, but he hadn’t seen Crash. Only assumed. I trusted Luke’s word over his that Sarge had something to do with this.

“Yeah? Well, why did he do it? What did you take from him?” Corb pushed me backward with his size and all the anger flowing through him. His hand went to the gun at his side, and he pulled it from its holster. “Give it to me. Give me the knife. I know you have it.”

I swallowed hard, looking at Luke as he trembled under the weight of what was happening to him. Sarge had done this to him. He’d changed him.