Fur 'n' Fang Academy: The Complete Series: A Shifter Academy Adventure

by C. S. Churton

  “Just in. Two-way anti-portal wards like the ones in the castle are harder. It’d take the best part of a year to forge a new one.”

  “A better question,” Mei said, “is why he’s digging it up.”

  I made to step from the treeline and found my path blocked by Cam’s arm again.

  “Too dangerous,” he said.

  “That’s Dean,” I said for the third time, wondering if there was something wrong with Cam’s ears. I flicked a glance to Leo. “I’m done not giving our friends the benefit of the doubt.”

  I shoved Cam’s arm and he let it drop, but I could see him squaring his shoulders, ready for trouble. Apparently, he didn’t share my sentiment.

  “Dean,” I shouted, stepping from the cover of the trees. He froze, then jerked his head up to stare at me. His eyes were wide in the pale moonlight, and his arms from the elbow down were in his wolf form. He must’ve partially shifted to speed up the digging process. Neat trick. I’d have to get him to teach me that. Once I’d finished proving to the others that he wasn’t doing what they thought he was doing.

  I walked towards him, aware of the others following behind me, and I could feel the air crackling with tension from both directions.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to keep my voice as conversational as possible, but with every step I was finding it harder and harder to believe he could be doing anything other than disrupting the ward.

  “Go inside, Jade. This is none of your business.”

  “You’re my friend. That makes it my business.”

  “I mean it!” He rose to his feet, his misshapen claws hanging by his sides. “You don’t want to get caught up in this. Any of you. Just get inside. Please.”

  I shook my head and folded my arms across my chest. I wasn’t quite close enough to see all the way down his hole, but it looked deep.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on. We both know what’s down there.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” he said. “But you do.”

  “No,” I said softly, my voice barely carrying above the gentle evening breeze. “I don’t. I can’t walk away and leave you in trouble.”

  “Go!”

  “We can help you.”

  “No-one can help me.” He sank back to the ground, his claws trailing in the loose dirt. They blurred, like he was going to shift back, and then solidified again. “But at least this way I won’t lose my pack.”

  “Your pack?” I said, trying to keep him talking. If he was talking, he wasn’t digging, and maybe, just maybe, I could make him see sense before he did something we couldn’t undo.

  “You think I want this?” he said, glaring at me. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red, and I didn’t know if he was going to attack me or break down and cry. He did neither. “I have my orders. I’m already dead if this gets out. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

  “It was you!” Mei said. “The chimera, the cuffs, all of it!”

  Shit. Shit, she was right.

  “Why?” I asked him. “Why did you do all those things?”

  “I told you, I had orders! I never meant for anyone to get hurt. I didn’t know Brendon would be doing an evening lesson with no-one else around. I came back as soon as I realised. And you were never meant to come across the chimera. Fletcher should have found it on his nightly patrols, and he could have handled it easily. And I made sure to set the ward for the cuffs close to Blake’s office. You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I do,” I said, sinking into the mud next to him. Behind me, I felt rather than saw Cam tense, but I ignored him. “Why didn’t you tell us, Dean? We could have helped you.”

  He sucked in a breath, and then grimaced as his arms blurred again. This time, he allowed them to revert to their human form.

  “My father is alpha. I couldn’t turn my back on him. You know what that would mean.” He straightened. “And I won’t turn my back on him now.”

  He lunged forward, reaching down into the hole. I dived at him, knocking him away, but as he rolled, I saw something clutched in his hand.

  “The ward!” Leo shouted.

  My nose twitched and then wrinkled as I caught the scent of burning flesh. I stared at Dean’s hand.

  “It’s silver? The ward is silver?”

  Dean dropped it to the ground and drove his heel down onto the disc.

  “Dean, stop. Your hand…”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dean grunted. He lifted his foot, and I saw the disc lying in two pieces, each half bearing part of a complex rune.

  “What have you done?”

  “Get out of here, Jade,” Dean said, holding his injured hand to his chest. “They’re coming.”

  “Who’s coming?” He stared at me, his face expressionless. “Dean, who’s coming?”

  “The calidra.”

  “Calidra? What the hell is a calidra?”

  I spun round to the other three, but they were already backing away. Cam snagged my hoodie with one hand and started dragging me back.

  “Jade, we’ve got tae go.”

  “Dean!”

  “My pack’s coming,” he said. “They’ll protect everyone. But you have to get out of here until they arrive.”

  “Your pack?” I twisted loose from Cam’s grip. “I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Leo said. “He makes it look like Blake and Alpha Draeven are losing control of the academy. And then his pack comes in and saves everyone. They’re making a play for control. They want to overthrow Alpha Draeven.”

  “Alright, I’ll go,” I said. “But not without you, Dean. Whatever these calidra are, they sound bad. You’re in just as much danger as anyone else.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You’ve done your part, okay? You destroyed the ward. No-one can say you disobeyed your father. Now get inside with us until it’s safe.”

  He looked torn. And I didn’t care what he’d done, I didn’t care what his pack were trying to do, that was my friend, and I wasn’t going to let him stay here and risk being killed. I reached for him and he shook his head.

  “Don’t you see? I deserve this. People have been hurt because of me. I just… I want it to be over.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Leo ground out, surprising me. “You betrayed Alpha Draeven. You’re not getting out of it that easily.”

  “Stop it! Both of you. Cam, get Leo out of here.”

  “I’m staying with you.”

  I rolled my eyes. This was not the time for chivalry. If I was going to get everyone out of here safely, then I needed Leo to stop antagonising Dean. We could sort all of this shit later – when no-one was dead.

  “Can we at least agree that we all need to get inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Dammit, Dean,” I snapped, reaching for him again. “I will knock you out and haul your arse back to the castle if I have to – and probably get myself eaten in the process. And that’ll be on you. You haven’t hurt anyone yet, not so bad a couple of days with Fenwick wouldn’t heal them. Do you really want to change that now?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “Good. Then come with me. Come with us. The ward can’t be fixed. You’ve done your job. And I don’t care what orders your father gave you, I don’t believe he would want you to give your life for this. And what about Madison? How will she feel if you die out here?”

  “I…”

  But I wasn’t done.

  “God damn you, Dean, there are people here who give a shit about you, and none of us want to watch you throw your life away. So move your damned arse and get inside. And if your father has a problem with that, he can take it up with me when he gets here.”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “Oh, so he cares that much that he’s willing to risk your life, but not his?”

  “No! What he’s doing is much more dangerous.”
<
br />   A cold shiver ran down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the winter air.

  “What’s your father doing, Dean?”

  He hung his head, avoiding my eye.

  “He’s making a move on the druid grand council, and then he’s leading a war party. To Dragondale.”

  “Kelsey!” Leo said. “Jade, you’ve got to open a portal. Right now. You’ve got to try.”

  “If I could, I would, I swear. Dean, this is madness, you know it is. You’ve got to stop it.”

  “I can’t. My father has given his orders, and the pack have wanted this for a long time.”

  “And you?” I pressed. “Is this what you want?”

  He shook his head, still dodging my eye.

  “I want to go back to how it was – when my biggest worry was whether the pretty girl like me, and if my roommate was going to climb over the wall.”

  “Good,” I said, snatching at his arm. “Then let’s make that happen.”

  “How?”

  “Come with me. I’ll explain on the way.”

  He searched my face for a long moment, and I hoped he couldn’t see that I had absolutely no idea how to back up my words. All I knew was that I couldn’t let him stay out here and be killed waiting for his pack.

  Eventually, he nodded. My shoulders slumped in relief.

  “Alright, let’s go.”

  The five of us moved across the uneven ground at a jog, and the academy was in sight when Mei flung an arm out to the side.

  “Look! A portal.”

  “Shit. Run, now.”

  I kicked my legs into a sprint, intent on following my own advice. The portal was between us and the academy, but maybe we could make it past before whatever came out of it oriented itself. If we were lucky, that might be enough. Or it might not.

  The surface rippled, and I skidded to a halt and steadied my breathing.

  “Jade, what the hell are ye doing?”

  “Saving the day. I’ll be right behind you. Go!”

  “Nae chance.”

  “I mean it. I’ll slow it them down, and then be right behind you. Get help.”

  I lifted my arm and readied a fireball. If the calidra were here, then I’d go down fighting, not running. I pulled my arm back, and a figure tumbled from the portal and hit the ground hard, rolling. What on earth…?

  “Jade, no!” Leo shouted, making a grab for my arm. The fireball flew off to one side, hitting the ground hard and scorching the grass.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s Kelsey.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I stared at the woman as she got to her feet and straightened the ridiculous cloak she was wearing. It was bright red, and covered what might have been normal clothing underneath, but it was so dark now that it was hard to make out. Red hair framed her freckled face, and she probably would have been pretty if her eyes weren’t wide with panic.

  “Leo, thank goodness!” she said, fixing her eyes on him. Her shoulders sagged with relief that I suspected was a little premature. She frowned at the burning grass, and then at me. “Was that a fireball?”

  “Kelsey,” I said, my voice odd to my own ears. “You’re Kelsey?”

  “Yes,” she said, holding out her hand. “Kelsey Winters. And you are?”

  I glared at her outstretched hand and ground my teeth together.

  “The person whose life you ruined.”

  “I don’t…” She looked around our small group.

  “You don’t understand?” I said. “You don’t get it? Well, maybe this will help.”

  I yanked up my trouser leg, revealing the pale circle of white scar tissue, the one left there by her teeth. The girl’s face went even paler.

  “Jade, this is nae the time,” Cam said, tugging at my arm. I shrugged him off.

  “I had a whole future planned out,” I told Kelsey. “Until you came along and ripped it to shreds with this.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, and seemed to mean it, but I didn’t care. Sorry wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

  “They didn’t even punish you.”

  “She was under a rage spell,” Leo said. “Get yourself under control.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been under one every day since.”

  “What?” Kelsey said. “But how?”

  “It wasn’t just your shifter curse you passed on when you bit me,” I said, stepping forward and shoving her with both hands. She hit the ground and stared up at me. “It was your damned rage spell, too, except no-one knows how to cure a second-generation curse. You passed it on to all of us.” I curled my lip up into a snarl. “And your magic.”

  I held my hand out to one side, and another fireball sprung into existence.

  “Jade, stop,” Leo said, putting himself between us. I cocked my head at him.

  “Don’t think I won’t go through you, Leo. She needs to pay for what she did.”

  “This isn’t you. You forgave her. You know you did.”

  “Well, maybe I changed my mind.”

  “Jade,” Cam said from right behind me, and the fireball blinked out at the sound of his voice. I glared at my empty hand with a hiss. “We can deal with this later. We have to get out of here before the calidra arrive.”

  “Calidra?” I heard a tremble in Kelsey’s voice. Quite the coward, this halfbreed who’d savaged me. She hadn’t been so scared when she was attacking a human.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You won’t be around long enough to meet them.”

  “Leo, get her out of here,” Mei said.

  Leo offered Kelsey a hand and she took it, letting him pull her up, and then she set her jaw and stepped from behind him.

  “I did something to you that can never be forgiven. I deserve to be punished for it. And if you want to settle up when all this is done, then I won’t fight you. But right now, we don’t have time. Dragondale is under attack.”

  “Good.”

  “Not good,” Cam said. “Pull yerself together. That means there’s only one druid academy left to fall.”

  “No.” Kelsey shook her head. “Gryphonvale and Selkenloch have been cursed. If Dragondale falls, Raphael will have control of all four primal plants, and their elemental cores. He will be unstoppable.”

  I should care, I knew that. Somewhere deep down, a nagging voice told me that should matter to me. It was easily silenced. There was only one thing that mattered to me, and it was spilling the blood of the halfbreed in front of me.

  “Fuck’s sake, Jade,” Cam said. “Snap out of it.”

  “Sure. As soon as she’s dead.”

  “Kill me later,” Kelsey said, lifting her chin. “Right now, if I don’t bring help to Dragondale, a lot of innocent people are going to die.”

  A flash of movement caught my eye to our left, and it took me a whole second to process it. Leo got there first.

  “Another portal. Someone from Dragondale?”

  Kelsey shook her head. “I came alone.”

  “The calidra,” Dean said grimly.

  A pair of horns emerged from the portal, and a shudder ran through me. Each of the black spiralled spikes had to be as long as my body. Then a twisted, reptilian head came through, large enough to support the protrusions without any difficulty. It fixed a pair of small, dark eyes on us as the rest of its body followed in from whatever shade of hell it had come from. The creature was four-legged, and taller than the chimera we’d faced in this same clearing. Its hide was covered in long, straggling hair that had matted in some places, but from the neck up and knees down, it was covered in thick green scales. It opened its mouth opened wide, revealing two rows of long, jagged teeth, and screamed in fury.

  The sound snapped me out of my obsession. What the hell had come over me? Kelsey was the least of my problems right now.

  “Get out of here,” I said to my friends, holding a hand out to my side and conjuring another fireball. “Get Kelsey to Blake, he needs to know what’s happening. I’ll hold the calidra off for a
s long as I can.”

  “I’m staying,” Cam said, moving to stand beside me.

  “Me, too,” Mei said, flanking me from the other side.

  “This is my mess,” Dean said.”

  I turned to Leo.

  “Don’t say a word. Get her to the castle. Now.”

  I threw the fireball at the calidra, hitting it square on the nose. It bellowed in fury and broke into a shambling run.

  “I think ye just pissed it off.”

  Cam and Mei were already yanking off their clothes, but they needed time to shift.

  “Come on, you dumb beast,” I shouted, moving away from them and throwing another fireball, and another. Both of them hit their targets, and the beast turned and came after me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Leo and Kelsey dart towards the castle, but I didn’t dare look at them directly. I had no idea how intelligent the calidra was, and I couldn’t risk it seeing them escape. I needed to keep it focused on me.

  The downside to this particular plan rapidly became apparent – the beast had four legs, and all of them were longer than my two.

  I took off at a run, swearing with breath I couldn’t spare as I went, luring the creature away from the academy and my friends. I could hear it pounding along the ground behind me, could feel the earth shaking under its weight.

  I threw a glance over my shoulder – it was gaining on me. My foot slipped over the damp grass, almost sending me crashing to the floor. I stumbled and caught myself, doubled over as I pushed myself on, not daring to stop for long enough to regain my balance.

  It screeched again, and it sounded so loud that I knew it could be only feet behind me – and still gaining. One more slip and I was finished.

  Jaws snapped right beside my ear and I lurched away. My legs tangled with each other and I smashed into the ground with a startled yelp. The beast was moving so quickly that its momentum carried it straight past me. I sucked in a breath and rolled, then pushed myself to my feet. I paused for a second and hurled two more fireballs at it for good measure, but it didn’t so much as flinch.

  I started running, this time back towards Cam, Mei, Dean, and the academy. It didn’t matter how many fitness sessions Fur ‘n’ Fang made me attend, there was no way I was outrunning this beast for long.