Denerim Confidential

Chapter 21

Max stared at the clock at the back of the small classroom as it ticked down its last seconds. When it hit eight on the dot, he raised his fist and shook it, a triumphant grin on his face.

"Lillian, mark this day. This hour. This second. I have been waiting for this moment ever since I transferred to Denerim."

"Waiting for what?" Lillian asked absently, paging through the stack of debriefs as the five trainees took out their notepads.

"Cullen Rutherford is late. I didn't think he had it in him." Max chuckled.

"So far he's only twenty seconds late," Lillian pointed out. "I'm guessing he won't be much longer."

"I know. So we'd better hurry. Come on, let's start the class and make him interrupt us when he gets here." He raised his voice. "Good morning, everyone. Since Agent Cullen Rutherford has not seen fit to join us in a timely manner—" he punctuated this with what he knew was a shit-eating grin, and was rewarded with similarly amused smiles from the trainees—"I guess we'd better get started. Agent Folmas, let's cover the most common mistakes from the scenarios last week, shall we?"

Cullen being Cullen, Max had no doubt that he would be there within the next three minutes. But the door at the back of the lecture hall stubbornly remained closed.

At five minutes after the start of class, Max was amused—had the ever-organized Cullen Rutherford slept in, or Maker forbid, forgotten ?

At ten minutes after, he began to worry.

At twenty minutes after, he knew something was very wrong.

Max could feel the unease growing among the trainees, too. Cullen might be a stern and uncompromising taskmaster, but he was never an unpredictable one. The idea that he might be late almost had to signal some kind of catastrophe. Or a broken alarm clock, Max reminded himself. Cullen was only human, after all.

He took a breath and forced himself to focus on the lesson. "Taura. You were the only one who neutralized Agent Folmas in the simulation."

Taura's severe features arranged themselves into a satisfied half-smile, and she practically glowed as she anticipated the coming praise. Max forced his own expression to be neutral; Taura was competent, but he didn't care for her mean streak. "Can you tell us how ..."

Max's question was cut off when the door at the back of the room exploded off its hinges.

His first, ridiculous thought was, Wow, Cullen's really upset that he's late. But then he heard the unearthy scream of rage, and saw the shape fly into the room, and reality hit him like a hammer.

"Abomination!" Lillian yelled.

The creature looked at her and shrieked, its twisted mouth opening so wide that its jaw seemed almost unhinged. There were still hints of human in the possessed mage, but only hints. The demon within had molded his shape to its will, lengthening the fingers into claws, stretching the skeleton to over eight feet tall. The tattered remains of a blue Enchanter's suit clung to its form. The bulging muscles at its shoulders only served to emphasize how stooped and thin the rest of its form was—but then it wrenched a desk from its bolts and threw it directly into the middle of the room, and its strength became clear.

"Trainees! To the back of the room, now!" Max barked.

He drew his sword and began moving forward. Behind him, he heard Lillian take the safety off her trusted sidearm. Since Lillian couldn't use the Templar arts, she alone at this Circle carried a gun. Max found himself simultaneously envious and relieved as he ran to face the monster toe-to-toe. He had fought an abomination once, long ago, at a Harrowing gone badly awry—but then he'd been one of five Templars sent to watch over the ceremony. Two-on-one odds might sound good, but not when the one was a magically infused monster.