Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2)

by Shawn Knightley

  I was gentle at first, making sure that my theory was correct. My eyes started to glow red. The scarlet red of my magic swirled around my fingers. Then I let it seep into McKenzie’s skin. I envisioned exactly what I wanted to happen, McKenzie’s skin healing at a rapid pace, her hair growing back in long blonde locks, the brightness of her blue eyes fluttering open.

  The students behind me began to gasp and whisper. I knew it was working before I permitted myself the privilege of opening my eyes. And when I did, even I was blown away by the result. McKenzie was halfway healed. Her skin was regaining its texture and the wounds of black charred skin and red flesh were regrowing more vibrant than they were before. Her hair grew back into long strands of bright blonde. Maybe even brighter than when she went to sleep. And her eyes were luminous when she finally opened them. She laid there completely still as I finished healing her. Then the second she was back to herself, she shoved me right off the bed and into the dresser.

  I watched her look down at her body. Her white nightgown was burned to a crisp and there was nothing but her bare skin. Some of the students began to giggle. I quickly opened up one of her dresser drawers and yanked out a long sweater. She caught it when I threw it at her and pulled it over her head. People behind us moved to back away from the thick smoke. Xavier opened a window to help air it out. And everyone else circled around me like vultures seeking their prey.

  “What did you do?” one of them asked.

  “She nearly killed McKenzie,” another chimed in.

  “To be fair, she did heal her after.”

  “But what does that matter?”

  “She’s too dangerous. She shouldn’t even be here!”

  “What’s to stop her from burning the entire academy to the ground? The whole tower could have gone up in smoke.”

  “All of you get out!” McKenzie screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Not one of them moved to leave. They just stood there staring. But they did let McKenzie through the circle of students forming around me as I leaned into the dresser.

  McKenzie walked right up to me and examined me as if she was seeing me for the first time. And however she felt about me before, it was much worse now.

  “You could have killed everyone,” she said. “Are any of us safe around you?”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know, how can we know?” she shouted. “Maybe Lothar was a fool to spare you after all.”

  I’m not one to cower. And I’m definitely not one to wallow in self-pity. McKenzie had just made a mistake. And I wasn’t about to let her get away with it.

  I summoned the magic inside of me and let the red glow pierce through my eyes, saturating the room in a red hue that let me see with even more clarity. McKenzie backed up away from me along with everyone else, knowing that whatever I was doing, it wasn’t a good idea to get too close to me.

  “I want a new roommate,” she whined. “I can’t live with this…thing!”

  I let the red light seep through my palms and extended them out like I was some sort of sorcerer. Anything to make them afraid. There was a time when I wanted to be loved. By an audience, a crowd, maybe even a fan base who followed every single song I wrote and performed. Those days were long gone. If I was going to be respected it would be because they feared me. And now more than ever, I needed them afraid.

  A few ran out of the room, fearing the worst was about to happen. McKenzie got angry and started getting into position to shift. If I had to tear into her once more just to get the point across then so be it.

  “You forget that I hold the record now for the fastest time getting through the trials,” I said to her. Then I shifted into a lycan with glowing red eyes and the fog of my crowning magic crawling out to protect me.

  Everyone remaining ran right out of the room. Including McKenzie. I waited until everyone had scattered and I shifted back into my normal form. I grabbed my trench coat then went directly for the open window, sitting on the ledge and letting my legs dangle beneath me. It wasn’t the worst drop in the world but it was more than two stories high.

  ‘Here goes nothing.’

  I jumped out of the window and felt my body drop down to the grass in the courtyard below me with animal-like ease.

  I had terrified everyone in my dorm, I burned my room to a crisp, I nearly killed McKenzie, and I would probably be expelled before sunset. Not the best start to my academic career.

  8

  I ran to the first place I could think of. Rodrick’s study. I kept to the shadows and didn’t let any of the students see me. The hood of my trench coat was up and I stepped with as much lightness as my feet were able. When I reached the area of the stone floor that opened up to his study it wouldn’t open. I pressed every stone I could just like I saw both Lothar and Devon do to reveal the hidden passageways in the academy. Nothing worked.

  ‘Do I have to make an appointment?’

  I searched about frantically. I had no idea where Rodrick slept or where his private chamber was. And I didn’t want him hearing about what happened from anyone else but me. I had to tell him about my dream, the brand on Devon’s shoulder, and the way my magic got out of control. He needed to know. Someone who wasn’t against me needed to hear my side of the story first.

  A hand gripped my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I turned around Lothar was standing there staring at me as if I had just committed a crime. Which by any normal human standards I had.

  “It’s not my fault,” I stammered. “I…I…”

  “Come with me,” he said softly. Then he took my hand in his and led me away under the dimming sunlight covering the hallways and toward the library.

  ‘You think now is a good time to check out a book?’

  “Wait,” I said to him, trying to get him to stop as he pulled me along. “I need to explain.”

  “No, I need to explain,” he insisted. “I should have warned you about this. Someone should have. But the truth is that so little is known about the Blackatters. Their existence is so rare now that the vixra usually cart them away faster than we can learn more about them.”

  “Huh?”

  He didn’t answer me. He just continued tugging me along with him until we entered the empty library. None of the lights were on and the curtains were drawn over the window. I gathered not many students chose to study during the day, preferring to come out at night under the moon’s energetic light. He reached for a candle in the corner and lit it. It was stronger than it appeared. The light from the flame lit up a quarter of the library.

  “Another vixra enchantment?” I asked.

  “We couldn’t run this place without their magic,” he said. “It comes in handy.” He locked the doors to the library so no one could intrude on us and left the lights off so early rising students wouldn’t suspect where we were. The lock slamming down felt like the cell to a prison door sealing me shut inside. Then he took my hand into his once more and led me deeper into the aisles of books. To my surprise, I could touch them now.

  Lothar pulled a bunch from off a bookshelf and tossed them to the side, letting them drop to the floor.

  ‘That’s not how I was taught to treat books.’

  Behind the shelf was a small wooden trap door. Lothar pulled it open to reveal a pile of hidden leather-bound books. He reached inside for one in the center of the pile and handed it to me. I took it into my hands.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “The personal diary of a Blackatter that lived in the 19th century. He wrote extensively about the visions he had in his sleep. And how to handle them. You might find it useful.”

  “Visions?” My ears perked up.

  “The students outside ran to the professors in their private quarters near mine. I heard them shouting about how you started a fire in your sleep.”

  I shuddered. He knew without me needing to tell him. “It… it was an accident. I never meant-”

  Lothar placed his hand on my shoulder, trying
to reassure me. “Tell me in slow and complete sentences everything that you saw from start to finish,” he asked.

  I took in a deep breath and tried to remember everything from the beginning. I was prepared to have to defend myself and tell Rodrick exactly what happened and how I healed McKenzie. I wasn’t, however, prepared to share the details of my dream just yet.

  Even so, I did exactly as he said. His face didn’t falter. His expression didn’t change. And most of all, I never felt like he was about to hand down some impending judgment on me. Even though I was thoroughly convinced that what I just did was probably worthy of expulsion from the academy.

  Once I was done, he led me over to some chairs in the back and sat me down at one of the large study tables. He took a seat next to me. Not across from me. Which for whatever reason felt odd. I didn’t spend too much time worrying about it. My mind was running amuck.

  “Rodrick never explained to you the abilities that come with crowning magic, did he?” Lothar asked, flipping through the leather-bound journal to find a specific page.

  “A little. But I figured he was leaving things out. I’ve gotten used to people keeping secrets around me.”

  Lothar sighed. “If I ever keep things from you its because its the only way to protect you.”

  ‘Don’t give me that rubbish. That’s what my dad kept saying.’

  “But why? Why would you concern yourself with protecting me?” I asked. “Is it just because Rodrick wants you to, or because the vixra think I’m special?”

  “You are special, Riley.” He stopped flipping through the aged pages of the journal and looked at me. “Blackatters are rare because they’ve been hunted down for centuries. Their extraordinary gifts make them an asset to our kind. Our enemies have done their best to destroy every Blackatter bloodline because they create the strongest among lycan.”

  I could feel my cheeks turning red. I knew what he meant by creating strong lycan. As in… procreating.

  “By ‘our enemies’ do you mean the Dolch Erbe?”

  He stifled a laugh. “You had your first class in lycan history, did you?”

  “Taught by Alina.”

  His brow furrowed. “A little out of sequence from the syllabus. But it’s her class, I suppose.”

  “Or maybe she wanted me to make the connection.”

  “Maybe. The bottom line is that your crowning magic imitates certain types of magical abilities that even the lowest echelon of witchlings possess. One of which is having visions. They will often happen in your sleep given that you’re not a full-blooded witchling. Take them seriously. Not everything that happens in them will come to pass but you can use them to prepare for possible outcomes in the future.”

  “If that’s true then I’m in deep trouble. Devon will capture me.”

  “We don’t know that. The dream could very well have been a warning. It helped us to learn one thing that we didn’t know before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Devon has betrayed the lycan way. He’s more than likely joined the Dolch Erbe. If we find him, we can kill him. Here it is.” He left the journal open for me to read. In it was an entry in very old ink and even older cursive penmanship. The likes of which didn’t really exist anymore. People don’t practice penmanship like they did in those days.

  I pulled the notebook over to me. Inside was a list of instructions.

  It read: Preventing the crowning fire.

  Below was a list of things to do before going to sleep to prevent the room from catching fire with my magic as I slept.

  “It was a magical fire?” I asked.

  “It appears so. That’s why you and McKenzie were burned by it. Man made fire can’t harm you anymore. It’s one of the perks of being a lycan. Magical fire, however, is lethal to nearly every living creature.”

  There was a list of herbs that I needed to mix along with a special way of spreading it around the room. As I continued reading I saw an image of a circle. It looked as though having a layer of the mixture of herbs around the bed before I went to sleep along with chanting certain incantations would do the trick.

  ‘Might have been nice if Rodrick warned me about this type of thing before I set my roommate on fire.’

  Lothar read the entry along with me. “There are a few strange items here. I’ll tell Rodrick to make a special request to the vixra for some of the rarer ingredients. They’ll provide it. Especially after Ellinor Prescott hears you made a declaration of intent to become a Vontex.”

  I stared at my hands, wondering if I should be so bold as to ask the one thing that had been on my mind for days. “Why did you choose it?”

  “Choose what?” he asked.

  “To become a Vontex.”

  “Why do you ask? Are you having second thoughts?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I just wanted to know what led you down this road.”

  He sat beside me and thought for a few seconds before answering. Then he shrugged as though the answer was obvious. “I chose this road because the Vontex are the best. And I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I would never live my life again in a way that was only half an existence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sat back in his chair. I could see the sorrow in his eyes as he recalled the memories and I suddenly regretted asking.

  “I was a mess before I came here,” he started. “I left home when I was sixteen. Got involved in the wrong crowd and took up drinking and drugs. The worst kind. I lived for the next thrill and didn’t so much as consider the consequences. Not even after I had a heart attack a few years later and landed in urgent care at the hospital. The same day they released me I went right back to a pub and drank myself to the point of passing out. That was the night a lycan found me in a dirty alley and bit me. I have no idea why he didn’t finish the job and just kill me. But when I woke up Alina was staring down at me. She brought me here and got me through the trials. It took me two weeks longer than most initiates because my body was already so weak from the abuse I put it through. She stood by me through all of it. She’s the only soul in the world that never gave up on me.”

  I sank back into the chair and tried to shrug off my curiosity about why their relationship didn’t work out. Or how they still got on so well and managed to work together.

  “In the end, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he went on. “It gave me a purpose where I had none before. I got clean, I could think clearly, and I could transform my body into something powerful, strong, and violent. I had more dominance over my own life as a lycan than I ever did as a human and I knew from the start that I couldn’t waste it. So I finished the trials and followed in Alina and Jake’s footsteps to become a Vontex. And in time, I surpassed them and was appointed as master of the Northern Vontex. It was the best thing I could do to make up for the mistakes I made in the past.”

  “Did you ever find the lycan that did this to you?”

  He smirked. “No, and I don’t intend to. He didn’t finish the job and devour me like a fresh piece of meat. He gave me a gift. Not to mention that I was blacked out in an alley in a bad part of London. I wouldn’t know where to start looking even if I wanted to.”

  He caught me staring at the red scar from the lycan bite on his neck. I tore my eyes away once he realized where they were settled.

  “Do you regret this happening to you?” he asked.

  I set my hands on my lap and twisted them nervously under the table. “I regret that I won’t have the life I wanted for myself. I don’t regret that I still have a shot at life. It’s not the life I would have chosen but its better than being dead. If I’m going to be a lycan then I want to be one of the best. Just like you did.”

  He seemed to like that answer. “We can’t change the things that happen to us, Riley. If you’re going to be a lycan, be the absolute best that there is. You already beat McKenzie’s record for the fastest time completing the trials. Why stop there?”

&nb
sp; His words sounded like a challenge. One I was more than willing to accept.

  “Don’t spend time pining away for things you can’t change,” he said. “I wasted many years of my young life doing exactly that. It’s a waste and it’s selfish.”

  “You wouldn’t change a thing?” I asked.

  “Only the things I had control over. The things we can’t control are a waste of time and energy to think about.”

  I wasn’t sure why but my thoughts instantly shot to my father. The way our relationship was always full of tension and only strained harder when I tried being independent. I knew now more than ever that his intentions weren’t exactly malicious. He was trying to protect me in the only way he knew how. By caging me. Only the cage grew smaller and smaller as I grew up. I wanted nothing more than to break free of it. And the second I did, disaster followed.

  “What would you change?” he asked me.

  I hesitated, unsure if I should share something so personal. In the end, he was honest with me. I could give that back to him. “My relationship with my dad,” I said softly.

  “Will he ever change?”

  “No.”

  “Will you ever change?”

  “Not in the way he wants me to.”

  “Then accept the relationship for what it is and don’t struggle against it. Only focus on what you can directly control. It’s the only way to survive today. So many people get caught in the trap of worrying about what they can’t control and fighting against it with everything they have. Don’t be like them. Make the most of your time here. As you know, time can be stolen from us in an instant.”

  He closed the leather-bound journal and handed it to me. “Study material,” he said with a gentle nudge of the book in my lap.

  I nodded and silently agreed to read it from cover to cover.

  “Given the state of your room you’ll need new accommodation,” he said. He reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a large black iron key with intricate detailing. It looked ancient. “Stay in my quarters. I’m hardly ever there and you’ll be safe from the prying eyes of the other students. Not that you need to worry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a student establish a reputation for being dangerous quite as quickly as you have.”