I took the key in my hand, a bit stunned that he would offer his private room to me. “Are you sure?”
“Just leave it in good condition and you’ll be fine. Rodrick is away overnight for a meeting with the vixra about the recent problems with the shield over the fortress. He should be back soon and I want to be there to explain what happened before anyone else gets the chance.”
He scooted the wooden chair back with a loud screech and I followed. Before he could turn away and lead me to his quarters I decided now was as good of a time as any to ask the other question that had been burning away inside of me.
“Did you know my brother?” I asked.
He stopped and turned to face me. “No. I never had the opportunity. I was assigned a mission in Ireland to hunt down a lycan over there causing trouble. I did hear about him though before his death. He was very gifted. Just like you.”
He walked over to the door and opened it, waiting for me to follow him. The second the door opened the wind blew through the library. I caught a whiff of his scent in the air. It was the perfect combination of sandalwood and pure vigor.
“Are you coming?” he asked expectantly. “I don’t have all night. Rodrick will arrive soon.”
I got up from the chair and followed him to the door down hall to his private quarters. They were hidden in one of the side towers. Tucked away from everyone else and far larger than the room I shared with McKenzie. I gathered that being a Vontex came with certain privileges. There was a huge bed with soft white sheets, a stone fireplace, an array of swords hanging from the wall, and his own walk-in closet. Not that he needed it. Like most men other than my father he was a man of very few aesthetic possessions. Some black shirts, trousers, leather boots, and his trench coat. The rest looked as though it was decoration provided by the academy.
“Will you be alright here?” he asked.
“Sure.” I placed the journal down on the nearby desk and took off my trench coat. “I just want to get a couple more hours of sleep before class.”
“Good. I’ll leave you then.” he moved to shut the door.
“Lothar?” I sat on the bed and pressed my lips together, hoping I wasn’t about to cross the line after he had been so generous to me. It was an unexpected kindness that I had grown used to not receiving from anyone.
He stood at the door in silence, waiting for me to speak up.
“Can you promise me something?” I asked.
“Only if its something I can deliver.”
“Please don’t think you need to keep secrets to protect me. The whole reason I’m here is because my father thought that secrets would keep me alive. It did the exact opposite. It led me right into the enemy’s arms.”
He considered my words carefully before answering. I knew deep down inside that it wasn’t entirely up to him. If Rodrick or the vixra told him to keep things from me he probably had no choice but to comply. I saw the mixture of conflicting thoughts running around in his mind.
“I promise,” he said. Then he shut the door and I was left alone in his private quarters. I had a few more hours before class started. I wasn’t about to lose them to the mountain of endless worry that seemed to follow me wherever I went now.
‘Can’t control it,’ I thought to myself, repeating Lothar’s words over and over again until they stuck. ‘Can’t control it. Can’t control it. Now sleep. And try not to set Lothar’s room on fire.’
9
No offense to Alina, but Beginners Controlled Shifting was quickly becoming my favorite class. Not because I particularly enjoyed the feeling of my bones breaking or because I didn’t still feel the pain now and again. But getting into the details around shifting were fascinating to me. I had already learned how to focus on my center and shift from there rather than focusing on one body part. The benefit of that being it made my shifting feel more seamless. Not watching one finger break at a time was a relief. Shifting from the center of my chest outward was also faster.
I walked into the classroom to see the words “Shifting with Objects” written on the white board. I grinned and headed for the table in the back corner where I sat during the last few classes. Which didn’t seem like an overly dramatic thing to do. That didn’t stop the entire class of students from going silent the second I entered and watching me as I sat down in my chair. I silently wrote my name down on the parchment before me and kept my head down as if I didn’t notice and didn’t care that they were obviously just talking about me.
‘Let them be afraid.’
The only favor I wanted to gain was with the Vontex. And I already seemed to have Alina’s approval.
“Open the books before you to page 142,” Professor Huxley stated as he walked into the room and twisted the knob on the podium. He wasn’t one for playing it safe or letting anyone in the class get used to the idea of ease. Everyone shrieked a bit as the intensity of the enchanted ceiling grew stronger and moonlight shined down on our desks.
“Pull off your hood, Miss Winters,” Professor Huxley said.
McKenzie reached for the hood of her trench coat and let it down. I quickly realized why she was wearing the hood. It wasn’t because she was covering her head from the moonlight above us. It was because her hair was still growing back from having been burned to a crisp. Her scalp was covered in baby hairs that were only the length of half my forefinger. To say it was a frizzy mess would be an understatement. Not to mention that it was spotted with soot.
‘Did you sleep in the dungeons to avoid me?’
She shot me an evil glare and I realized my suspicion might have been accurate.
Some of the students started laughing. McKenzie’s cheeks turned pink.
“Silence!” Professor Huxley shouted at the front of the class from his podium.
Professor Huxley was a no-nonsense older gentleman who had clearly seen a thing or two over the years. His skin didn’t show age because he had wrinkles or age marks, but rather because he was worn. A silver scar with four long lines ran down from the bottom of his left eye to the corner of his lip. I imagined he was in some grand fight against another lycan and got swiped across the face by his opponent’s long claws. And yet, he was still here. He was tough. He was old. And he was gnarly. Like a biker who retired from gang life and got stuck teaching students along the way. I liked him from the start. He, however, wasn’t so crazy about me. I could live with it. After all, I tolerated living in my father’s house during the peak of my teenage angst years.
I turned the textbook in front of me to page 142 like he said and read down the page. It was a detailed chapter on shifting with an item in hand. Beginners would shift with their clothes. I had already accomplished that with my final shift during the trials. Now I would learn to shift with something as small as a thimble and eventually something larger like a suitcase.
Professor Huxley read us through the chapter then started calling on random students to answer questions about what they just read, proving whether or not they paid attention. Failing to answer resulted in him turning the intensity of the moonlight up a notch and the entire class getting angry at his victim. The moonlight was invigorating but only to a point. Then it became a constant struggle not to shift and get embarrassed by lack of control. Needless to say, everyone learned to pay attention really fast. Including me.
I wasn’t always the best student but I had a good memory. I had to while practicing my music and learning new languages. Memorizing what to play on my guitar and sing at the same time isn’t as easy as it looks. And the only reason musicians make it look easy is because they practice every single day. I could see Professor Huxley had a blank expression on his face when I answered his question after he called on me without hesitation. Then he looked for his next victim.
“Get up,” he ordered.
We all did so and stood a short distance from our desks.
“Take the pen from your desk and hold it in your hand,” he instructed. We all did so in silence. “I want you to focus solely on your hand
. Learn to make the pen shift along with you as an extension of your body. Like an extra limb. Once you’ve mastered that you can shift from your center just like we practiced earlier this week but not a second sooner.”
Professor Huxley guided us through the process as he paced slowly back and forth up the aisle between the desks. I shut my eyes until I could create the image in my head without any mistakes. He usually made us have the visualization ten times before we were permitted to let the shifting process run its course. If we made a single mistake in the visualization, we had to start over. Some of the students ended up staying late when they got the details wrong. And Professor Huxley always knew. He had an eye for detail. I could appreciate that.
I squeezed my eyes shut and envisioned the pen in my hand molding into my skin and shifting with my fingers until the nails became claws. Then it drifted up my arm and to my body. Once I did so successfully in my mind, I started over again.
I opened my eyes to see what everyone else was doing. They appeared deep in thought, practicing the visualizations.
I shrugged and figured I was in the clear to go ahead and shift given that I finished. So I held the pen in my hand and let it slowly shift into a paw. First I focused on the pen, having it weave into my fur and bind with my body until my skin absorbed it. Then my fingernails turned to claws, followed by the palms of my hands turning into pads for my lycan paws.
Watching it happen was as fascinating as it was gross. Even so, once I started I couldn’t look away.
The fur on my body didn’t look right. It wasn’t black with silver streaks as it was before. It was turning green. An awful shade of fluorescent green that made my nose wrinkle at the sight of it.
‘What the hell? It’s definitely not supposed to look like this.’
I tried to shift back, thinking I must have made a mistake and shifted improperly. That was until I felt someone’s eyes watching me. It was McKenzie. She was staring at me while pretending to focus on what she was doing. And I swear I could see a grin forming on her wicked face.
The green color shot up through my arm and took aim right at my heart. That was when the pain started. It felt like acid running up my veins and puncturing me with each beat of my heart. I could hear it thundering in my ears, trying to reject whatever was happening.
Professor Huxley was on the other end of the classroom. And I would be damned before he saw this happening and made me an example of what not to do like he did the other students when they messed up.
I shook my hand over and over again, trying to focus on getting it back to a human shape with the pen in my hand. It wouldn’t budge. In fact, the harder I tried the more the burning cascaded through my chest like a bad case of acid reflux. I started feeling it higher in my throat and wondered if I might throw up green goo if this continued.
‘Fine. You want a show, McKenzie? I’ll give you a show.’
I shut my eyes and focused on the crowning magic inside of me. I imagined it piercing through my skin and wrapping around me like a glove, holding me tight and purging the poison from my body. Whatever McKenzie put in my pen to embarrass me was strong. My magic was stronger.
I heard the class starting to giggle. Clearly a few noticed what was going on with me as my hand turned an even brighter shade of green. Along with the fur still forming on my palm as it shifted into a paw with long claws.
That didn’t last long. I opened my eyes and saw the room in a hue of red light. My crowning magic was coming out to play. And McKenzie was the first one to freak out.
She moved away from her desk and backed into the wall behind her, clearly fearing that I might use my magic against her.
‘I’ve got bigger problems than your ego.’
“What is going on here?” Professor Huxley said as he rushed to the back of the class to see my hand in the weird state overpowering it.
‘Not for long.’
I flashed my crowning magic through my palm and pushed out whatever it was inside the pen. Some sort of ink that McKenzie put inside that was meant to hurt me. Or just make me a target for Professor Huxley’s lectures on everything that could go wrong. Either way, she wouldn’t win. Scarlet red swirls of light spiraled through my palm. My hand shifted back into human form so fast that I nearly gasped from the agony of my bones reforming too fast. The acid feeling dissipated and traveled through the veins of my arm once more. Only this time, it was making an exit.
Green pus started oozing out of my hand as it turned back to normal. I rolled my hand over and let it fall to the ground with a splat as the other students watched, half intrigued and half ready to throw up from the awful smell. In all honesty, it was enough to make me wrinkle my nose too. My heightened sense of smell made it even more potent than it already was.
“Who thought it would be funny to place corspine in Miss Blackburn’s pen?” Professor Huxley shouted across the large classroom. His voice echoed from wall to wall.
McKenzie didn’t bother trying to hide. She was too busy attempting to keep her face as straight as possible.
Professor Huxley took the pen into his hands the second it reappeared outside my body and examined it. “If only you kids would focus on your studies half as much as you do wasting my damn time,” he fumed. Then he took the pen and threw it into the white board. It landed with the pointed end stabbing the center. “Miss Blackburn,” he said my name sternly as he turned back to face me. “I realize you had a rather uncomfortable moment just now but please refrain from using your Blackatter abilities in my class. Next time request to go see Nurse Roslyn if you have a problem. I prefer Blackatters keep their abilities to themselves until you are very much aware of how to control them. I think we can all agree that you’ve showcased your inability to do so just yet.”
‘Ah. So you heard about the dorm room too, did you? Word gets about around here.’
McKenzie had a smug look on her face as though she had won in the end.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Well, now you do. I expect you above all others to exercise good judgment in my classroom. Along with everywhere else. Blackatters are meant to be leaders. Not followers. So start acting like a leader by setting a good example and not stinking up my classroom with corspine.”
“I didn’t put it in my pen,” I argued. “Someone else did.” I shot a look in McKenzie’s direction, knowing it was her but having no proof.
“You kids are always playing tricks on each other and acting like this is a game. Why don’t you be the first to try being above such nonsense, Miss Blackburn? Show me you have the same focus your brother had.”
Not the right thing to say. I didn’t like being reminded that everyone else at the academy knew my brother and apparently I was the last person to know he was even here. One thing stood out to me though. Those who mentioned my brother spoke highly of him. The only person to utter a word against him was Rodrick. And that was only because he assumed the worst. That Dirk had betrayed the lycan.
I stiffened and bowed my head to Professor Huxley, letting him show his dominance and trying to convey an apology. McKenzie could win this one. I still managed to absorb the pen and shift with it before anyone else.
When class was finally over I waited for everyone else to leave before, tolerating their glares and name calling as they left. I heard just about every slur one could.
Show-off.
Teacher’s pet.
Freak.
I did my best not to internalize it as I got up and quietly headed back to Lothar’s private quarters for a break. Only I didn’t want people seeing me walk there. The last thing I needed was the other students getting the wrong idea about me and my mentor. I had enough stress already.
When I got back to his quarters, I saw a large box on the bed addressed to me.
‘I guess the secret is out to someone.’
It was from Alina.
I opened it to find the most beautiful electric guitar I had ever seen in my ent
ire life. A Paul Reed Smith and empty sheet music pages for writing music.
Attached was a note.
SOMETHING TO OCCUPY YOU BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP. MUSIC ALWAYS HELPS ME RELAX. MAYBE IT WILL KEEP THE BAD DREAMS AT BAY.
-ALINA
She wasn’t wrong. I used to play until my fingers were raw and I got cramps in my hands from holding the pick during the late night hours back at my dad’s house. It helped me to relax in a way nothing else in the world was capable of doing. And maybe it would get me through until I had the right mixture of ingredients I needed from the journal’s recommendation.
I took the guitar into my hands and started playing some notes from the most recent song I wrote. The same one I ended the show with at the pub before Devon sank his teeth into my neck. I shut my eyes and refused to let the image of his face transformed as Rodrick haunt me. Or the knowledge that even though I had this beautiful guitar, I wouldn’t be able to play it in front of a crowd again.
I picked up the sheet music and wondered if I could start writing again. All I needed was the right mood. Maybe that would help me sleep. That was when I noticed the top page had writing on the back. It was another note from Alina.
ELLINOR HAS REQUESTED THAT YOU COME WITH US ON OUR HUNT FOR WEREWOLVES TOMORROW TO GET YOUR FEET WET. BE READY AT NINE PM.
On our hunt? Getting my feet wet?
‘Oh Lord! She’s going to take me with the Vontex tonight when they leave the academy to hunt down newly bitten werewolves.’
I recalled what Lothar said to McKenzie the first night we met. There were no previews when it came to what the Vontex did. I already got one in the graveyard. I was about to get another whether I liked it or not.
Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2) Page 9