“Why aren’t I burned?”
“Your own fire cannot hurt you,” he said.
“Cool.”
“Your clothing, however, is another matter.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that.” I pulled the hoodie off and tossed it aside, still smouldering. I was going to have to buy a new one from my limited funds. That, or make do without. Apparently, Blake’s free replacements only applied to first years.
Underwood glanced up at a clock on the wall.
“Alright, that’ll do us for today. We can pick this up tomorrow.”
“Joy,” I said, stooping to retrieve my ruined hoodie. I paused when I reached the door, throwing an uncertain look at Underwood.
“Maybe I can’t do it,” I said. “Maybe I can only use my magic through direct contact.”
I wasn’t sure why, but that bothered me. I didn’t like this magic, didn’t want it… but I didn’t like the idea of it being deficient, either. People round here thought I had enough deficiencies without adding to them.
“I think we’re a long way from reaching that conclusion,” Underwood said. “We need to work on your focus.”
Right. I wished I hadn’t asked.
Much as I wanted to head right to bed – which was how I felt after every session with Underwood – I stopped in my dorm only long enough to ditch the hoodie and grab my bag, then headed down to the library. We only had a few weeks to work on this case, and I’d be damned if I was going to let Madison get the better of me.
I spotted Mei and Cam, and made right for them, tossing my bag on the table. I glanced around with a frown.
“Where’s Leo?”
Mei shrugged. “No sign of him.”
“Great.” That was what I got for trying to help the outcast. He’d ditched us. Like this case wasn’t impossible enough to start with. “Don’t suppose any of you have cracked it while I was gone?”
Mei shook her head. “We’ve found some books on pack law for murder, but they all say the same thing.”
“Death sentence?”
“Death sentence.”
“Crap. That’s not going to cut it. Is there anything in the case notes that might help?”
I grabbed the folder from the middle of the table and started reading aloud.
“Suspect left a number of scent trails all over the area in which the body was discovered.” I lowered it and looked at the other two. “Okay, so no witnesses, then, right? Maybe he was there for someone else. We need a timeline.”
Mei started jotting down some notes. What we really needed was to speak to the ‘suspect’ and hear his side of the story. I wondered if Lewis would let us have a chat with whoever was going to be playing him. I made a note to ask tomorrow.
“The victim lived alone, and the body was discovered the following evening, after her absence being noted at her place of work that morning. A co-worker went to her house and discovered the body.” Okay, well, that was something. “That makes the co-worker another suspect.”
“Why?” Mei asked. “There’s no motive.”
“That we know of,” I said. “But we need to dig deeper. We don’t have to prove the co-worker is guilty, just cast enough doubt in Lewis’s mind that he can’t convict. We’re going to need to speak to her.”
I rifled through the notes.
“Him,” I corrected myself. “Len Munroe. We should ask him why he was the one who went round, and how well he knew the victim. What else do we have?”
“A statement from the head enforcer,” Cam said, shoving some papers aside and pulling up a single sheet. “They arrived within the hour.”
He passed the sheet to me and I scanned it.
“Within an hour seems quick. Better than the 999 response time in my area.” I paused, chewing on my pen. “Wait. That’s actually really quick.”
“Portal?” Mei said.
“Yeah, maybe. But look.” I passed her the sheet, along with the witness statement. “He finds the body at two a.m., and the enforcers are there by quarter to three. That’s forty-five minutes for him to get over the shock, contact the enforcers, and for them to organise a team – in the middle of the night – and get out there. Portal or not, that’s fast. I mean, you find a dead body, it’s going to take you a few minutes to get your wits together, right? We need to know exactly what time he made that call.”
Mei scribbled down some more notes.
“What if our guy’s guilty?” Cam said. I shrugged.
“Then we find a reason it’s not his fault. I’m not letting Madison win this one.”
Mei nodded vehemently, and Cam held up his hands.
“I can think o’ better things to be doing of an evening, but whatever ye say, lass.”
“We tried your ‘better things’,” I reminded him. “It landed us with killer hangovers and a day scrubbing the main hall.”
“Worth it, though.”
“Dunno. I still can’t remember half of it.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Sign o’ a good night.”
“A better night will be after we wipe that smug look off Madison’s face.”
I grabbed one of the textbooks and flipped it open and tossed another to Mei.
“See if you can find anything about enforcer response times. I’m going to start checking historical murder cases.”
There had to be something in here that could help us. There was no way Lewis would assign us a rigged case, and that meant we were missing something. I just had to work out what.
“All students, all students.” Blake’s voice burst from the speakers in the wall. We looked up from our books, and Mei’s pencil stopped scratching across her notepad. “We are going into lockdown procedure. If you are inside a room, turn off the lights, lock the door and wait until an instructor tells you otherwise. If you are not in a room, proceed to the nearest room and seal yourself inside. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
Chapter Ten
My pen tumbled from my hand and rolled onto the floor.
“The door,” said Cam, jumping to his feet. “Quickly.”
“We can’t,” Mei said. “The library doors don’t lock, and they open outwards.”
“Shit. What dae we do?”
They both turned to me.
“What are you looking at me for?” I sucked in a breath and fought down my panic. “Okay, look, we’ve got two choices. We either try to barricade the doors as best we can and hope for the best, or we make a run for it and find another room to lock ourselves in.”
“We could hide,” Mei said. “Here, in the library.”
“It would take someone two minutes to find us,” Cam said.
“It’s settled, then.” I grabbed my phone from my bag – habit, since there was no signal down here – and crammed it into my pocket. “We make a run for it, the three of us together. We go left, get to the end of the corridor, and take a right. There’s a shifting lab down there. If we can get in, we can lock the door, and we’ve got the cages if we need them.”
The other two nodded. Mei looked pale, and I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“Hey, we got through that crap with Brad last year, right? This is a piece of cake.”
She bit her lip and nodded again.
“Ready? Let’s go.”
The three of us hurried towards the door, and I paused when we reached it, slamming my hand on the light switch and plunging us into darkness – just in case. Then I tilted an ear to the door and listened closely. Movement outside. Shit. I flapped my hand frantically at Mei and Cam.
Get back, I mouthed. I eased back, dropping into a crouch. I lifted my head and sniffed tentatively at the air, then frowned. I knew that scent.
Someone grabbed hold of the doors from the outside and tugged at them. Cam stiffened beside me, but I laid a hand on his arm and shook my head. None of us needed to be running headlong into danger.
Light streamed in as the door opened and a figure hurtled itself through the opening. The figure spun ro
und, and the light fell across her face.
“Tiffany!”
She let out a strangled cry, and I pushed myself out of my crouch.
“Jade?”
I nodded. “Come on, you can’t hide in here. It’s not safe.” I hesitated as a thought struck me. I’d never seen Tiffany alone before. “Where’s Madison?”
“I don’t know. She had an argument with Dean earlier. She went looking for him. She told me to keep working on the case. She could be in trouble!”
“We can’t think like that now,” I said. “She’s probably in the dorms. We need to focus on getting ourselves somewhere safe. Come on.”
I shoved my head out of the door and checked it was clear, then the four of us hurried down the corridor as quietly as we could, pausing every half dozen steps to listen for anyone coming. We’d reached the end of the corridor when the scream ripped through the air.
I jumped and spun around.
“Which way did it come from?”
A snarl rang out, and this time I didn’t have to ask, because I could see the huge white wolf down the corridor – standing directly between us and the shifting lab. I shoved Tiffany back.
“Go! Back the way we came. Quickly!”
Too late. The wolf had seen us. It snarled again, a guttural sound that echoed along the deserted corridor, and took a step towards us.
And then I saw the body lying on the floor behind it, blood pooling around it. I was wrong. The corridor wasn’t deserted. If we ran, the wolf might follow us – or it might return to its prey.
I kicked off my trainers. Cam grabbed me and hauled me back a step.
“What are ye doing? Yer can’t shift in time, it’ll kill ye.”
“No choice,” I said, shoving him off me. “Someone’s hurt. Look!”
Cam swore, and the wolf advanced on us again.
“Alright, I’ll shift. You run.” He pulled his hoodie over his head, and the wolf paused, switching its gaze from me to Cam.
“We’ll both shift. Whoever he doesn’t go after drags that person to safety.”
Cam didn’t look happy, but there was no time to argue. Not if we were going to shift. I hurriedly yanked off my clothes and tossed them aside.
“Mei, Tiffany, you need to find an instructor and tell them the wolf’s here, and someone’s hurt. Go!”
I gave them a shove, and they both took off at a run back the way we came. The wolf’s eyes flicked to them.
“No, you don’t, you dumb beast,” I snarled, and it looked back to me. “Yeah, that’s right.”
I didn’t even bother crouching down to shift, I just embraced the heat and let it rush through me, pounding in my ears. I screamed as my shoulders burst from their sockets, and beside me, Cam’s nose lengthened into a snout, and fur erupted all over his body. He was still only half-shifted when the wolf threw itself at him, teeth bared. I screamed again, a feral noise that was neither human nor animal, and all fear for Cam.
I landed on all fours, fully wolf, and I didn’t waste time worrying about how I’d shifted so quickly. I threw myself forwards, intercepting the white wolf mid-air and slamming it into the wall. The corridor shook from the force and the pair of us hit the ground hard. I sprang to my feet a half second faster than the other wolf. It shook out its head and stalked towards me again. We circled, each looking for the other’s weakness. It was a male, it had to be. He was bigger than me and carried more muscle. But his movements weren’t as lithe as mine, and I’d have bet my dew claws I had more experience fighting than he did.
A blur of movement caught my eye – Cam had finished his shift. He prowled forward, his eyes locked onto the rogue wolf. I snapped my teeth in his direction, then nodded at the prone figure. He gave a rumble of protest, then loped down the hall.
The other wolf leapt at me, but I had better control of my shifted form than him, and a sidestep sent him sailing harmlessly past me. He spun clumsily and snarled again, and I clocked the cuff around his wrist. Shit. He was a student. Probably a first year who’d lost control. What the hell was he doing out of a cage?
He snapped his teeth at me, and I dodged again, my mind working frantically. If he was a student, I couldn’t hurt him. He wasn’t acting from malice. What he needed was help, not a chunk ripped out of his throat.
He lunged again, this time plucking a mouthful of fur from my hide. I snarled and snapped my teeth. If he kept up like that, I wasn’t going to have a choice.
He jerked his head aside, dodging my warning snap, then lunged forward with half a dozen snaps that were anything but warning. He meant to sink his teeth into me and do some serious damage. There weren’t many things shifters couldn’t fully heal from – but our bites were one of them. And I had enough scars.
I ducked my head and barrelled into him, barging my shoulder into his chest. He staggered back, off balance, and I ground my teeth together and pushed harder. My claws scrabbled for purchase on the bare stone floor, and I shoved again, driving him back – and away from Cam and his injured charge.
The white wolf snarled his fury, pushing back against me and gaining not an inch. He might be stronger, but I had balance and co-ordination on my side. And the ability to think like a rational human being. One who was wondering how long it’d take Cam to get safely out of here, and how the hell I was going to get this student back into his human form before anyone got gnawed on.
My distraction cost me. One second, I was shoving with everything I had. The next, he sidestepped, and I was barrelling down the hall away from him. With a triumphant snarl, he fixed his eyes on something at the far end of the hall. Someone.
I spun on the spot and lunged after him, grabbing hold of his tail. I thrashed with the full strength of my neck and shoulders, and he yelped in pain. Immediately, he lost all interest in his downed prey.
Which would be great, if I wasn’t his new focus.
He pivoted almost on the spot with a gracefulness born of panic and agony, and his teeth snapped shut an inch from my face. I snarled and backed up, still holding his tail clamped in my jaws, forcing him to move with me.
He lunged and snapped again and I dodged, losing my grip on his tail as his yellowed fangs came within a quarter inch of my nose. Shit, that was close. I liked having a nose. I watched him closely, waiting to see if he would go after Cam again, but even enraged and ruled by his beast, he wasn’t dumb enough to turn his back on me a second time.
Behind him, I saw Cam nuzzle the prone figure, but whoever it was didn’t move. He took the figure’s shredded hood between his teeth, and dragged him backwards, towards the shifting lab.
Good. I didn’t need to buy much more time. The other shifter saw the movement too, and I lunged at him, getting his attention back on me with a swift nip to his tail. He spun, bellowing with outrage, and one of his feet slipped from under him.
I threw myself into him, shoulder first, and caught him off-balance. My bulk slammed him to the floor, and he writhed under me, trying to get loose and snapping his teeth at the air. I kept out of his reach, ducking my head back so he couldn’t get a grip on me. He kicked out and landed a foot in my stomach, crushing the air from me. A second kick, both legs this time, threw me off him and sent me crashing to the ground.
He scrambled to his feet and closed the gap between us, and I lunged to my feet, mouth open and gasping in air. I started to circle, keeping some space in between us while I got my breath back. The first year circled too, tracking me with his eyes, but his movements lacked any subtlety, and he telegraphed each attack, making it easy for me to dance aside. But I couldn’t keep this up forever. I’d been lucky he hadn’t been fast enough to follow up on his kick while I was winded. I couldn’t count on being lucky again.
Footsteps pounded along the corridor and I swung my head round to see Shaun running towards us, then back to the first year in time to dodge the snap he aimed at my face. I snapped my jaws in retaliation, driving him back a step.
“Jade!”
I snapped at the ot
her shifter again, then leapt back out of reach, several feet closer to Shaun but still half the corridor away. He pulled a baton from his waist, and I immediately recognised it. I dipped my chin, and he tossed it towards me. I crouched and jumped straight up, snatching it from mid-air, and landed on steady feet.
Baton clenched between my jaws, I stalked towards the wild first year. He snarled and lunged himself at me again, too inexperienced to know any better attacks. I sidestepped and then as his body drew level with mine, I shoulder-barged him, knocking him sideways into the wall. He thudded into it and then hit the ground, and before he could get up, I was on him. I pinned his shoulder with both of my front paws, my claws finding purchase in his flesh, and jabbed the baton against the cuff around his wrist.
His outline blurred and I jumped off him, and spat the baton onto the floor. He’d shift back to his human form in a matter of moments now. The fur covering his body was already thinning, and I could hear the cracking of bones under his skin.
“Well done, Jade. Good work,” Shaun said, retrieving his baton while staying out of range of the wolf’s claws, which flailed as his body fought against the change. I dipped my head in response to Shaun, then grabbed my clothes in my mouth, and darted into the shifting lab.
I burst through the open door and then skidded to a halt. Cam was there, human and half dressed in a pair of cargo trousers that only reached halfway down his calves, and he was crouched next to a prone figure, pressing a rag to the stomach wound I could smell even from here. At once, I rushed to his side, whining low and urgent as I stared at the figure. At Dean.
“I dunno,” Cam answered my wordless question. “He’s in a bad way.”
He was right. The blood had already seeped through the cloth.
“Not just him,” Cam grunted, leaning harder against the wound. He nodded off to the corner, and I looked over there in horror. A second figure was propped against the wall, bleeding and barely conscious. One of the academy’s shifting instructors. Brendon. He must have been giving the student a lesson, but gods alone knew how the kid had busted out of the cage. There’d be time enough to worry about that later, once everyone was safe.
Fur 'n' Fang Academy: The Complete Series: A Shifter Academy Adventure Page 28