Rodrick came marching in with an alarmed look on his face. I had never seen him so shaken. The man was usually made of stone. At least from the few times I had been around him. The real him anyway.
“What’s going on?” Professor Addair complained. “I’m in the middle of a lecture.”
“It will have to wait,” Rodrick said once he reached the front of the aisle between the rows of desks.
“A bit late now,” she bickered.
“It’s an emergency.”
Professor Addair put her hands on her hips like an irritated teenager and rolled her eyes. Rodrick didn’t pay any attention to her.
“Everyone must return to their dormitories this instant,” he said. “There’s been a breach in the shield protecting the fortress. I’ve been working with the vixra to try keeping it up but somehow our enemies have broken through. The fortress has several layers of protection but we stand a better chance if all year one and year two students retreat to central locations rather than being spread out across the fortress. You’re not skilled enough yet to partake in proper defense of the academy.”
My heart started hammering in my chest. I wasn’t sure why but I knew his words were for me. All this was happening because I was here. Someone was after me.
Rodrick’s gaze shot in my direction, holding my attention with little to no effort. Everyone started filing out of the classroom for safety including Professor Addair. I stayed glued to my seat. Once everyone else was gone he walked right over to me. I felt my heart begin to hammer in my chest. I couldn’t discern if it was from nerves or him coming closer to me.
“Lothar told me what happened to your dorm, Miss Blackburn.” His voice was like velvet rubbing up against my body and making me weak. It was deep, masculine, and commanding. My body was having the same reaction it had when I first saw Devon disguised as Rodrick on the train. “You won’t be safe there.”
“Lothar permitted me to stay in his quarters,” I mumbled. “He said he’s rarely there.”
Rodrick shook his head. “That’s on the eastern side of the fortress, right where the breach took place. My private quarters are underneath the fortress. You will stay with me until this problem can be fixed. We can’t risk having a Blackatter being discovered at the academy. Every single enemy we have will descend upon us like a plague if the secret gets out that we’re harboring more than one Blackatter.”
I swallowed hard and slowly stood up from my chair. He extended his hand out to me and I took it. His skin was warm. Inviting. A spark jolted through my arm and made my body go tense. He closed the space between us and set his hand on my cheek. A need was quickly rising inside of me. A need that wasn’t met the night Devon ensnared me and had my body pinned up against the wall in his cleverly planned disguise.
“Come with me,” Rodrick said as he made the gap between us none existent, pressing his body up against mine.
‘Devon said there was something between Blackatters. Is this what he meant?’
That was when I noticed his scent. It was overpowering. But it wasn’t the scent I associated with him. It was…different.
‘The potion.’
I pushed Rodrick away from me and searched about the room. I thought everyone had left. I saw them leave. I was wrong. The more I tried to focus the more I saw the classroom in a blur. The students were still surrounding me. The class was full. Professor Addair was watching us with giddy eyes as she waited for the potion’s effect to wear off. I turned around and saw the blurred sight of my own body. I was sitting in the chair with my eyes shut and my hands resting on the table with the empty vial still in my hand.
‘This is a hallucination. It’s not real.’
“Come with me, Riley,” Rodrick said my first name as though he had been dying to since the moment we met.
I shook my head, refusing to give in. If this was the discipline Professor Addair was speaking of, she was right. It was a challenge. And I was determined to prove I was up to the task of defeating it.
“No,” I thundered. My voice seemed to echo about the room, shaking away the blurred effect and revealing my reality more and more as the seconds went by.
“I can’t protect you here,” Rodrick insisted, trying to get a hold of my arms and pull me in close once more.
I shoved him away again, only this time with more force. “I don’t need you to protect me. I want to learn how to protect myself.”
“You don’t have the skills.”
“I’ll learn.”
“There’s no time.” His eyes tried to lure me in once more. Only now I was too aware of my surroundings to be fooled.
I wanted him. Maybe even a part of me needed him. The part that Devon said longed for him so my bloodline would continue. I didn’t really need a potion to tell me how potent that need was. I sensed it every time I was in a room with Rodrick. It didn’t matter. I had bigger problems to handle.
“Rodrick,” I said his name with venom in my voice. “You need to leave me alone.”
My eyes flashed open. I was back in my own body and looking down at my desk. Rodrick never stormed in. The shield over the fortress was never breached. I was safe. And most of all, I could feel the potion starting to wear off.
Professor Addair saw my eyes open and walked down the aisle toward me, her expression beaming with pride.
“Not bad,” she said. “You made the second best time of anyone in my class to break through the potion’s spell.”
“Who holds the first?” I asked.
“Rodrick Everleigh, the Dean of L.I.T.”
I scoffed. I should have known. Then the realization struck me. Professor Addair didn’t look a day over twenty-five. She was young with a tight body, voluminous hair, and perfect skin. There was no way Rodrick could have been taught by her. Their ages were too close.
She must have seen the confusion written all over my face because she dropped the facade and shifted right before my eyes. She wasn’t a young beauty. She was older. Perhaps in her sixties. Her hair was speckled with strands of gray and her face had grown tired with wrinkles. Professor Addair was a master shifter.
“As I said, Miss Blackburn,” she whispered in a deep and almost masculine voice. “You will find the simplest of things will distract you. You must find a way through it. And it appears you did.”
She took the empty vial from my desk and shifted back into her younger form before the next student opened his eyes and overpowered whatever hallucination he was having. From the stunned expression in his eyes, I safely assumed it was of Professor Addair.
‘If only he knew.’
“Well done,” she said to him as she came by his desk to pick up his empty vial and headed back to the platform at the front of the class.
As it turned out, Rodrick wasn’t the only one at the academy carrying a secret. There was more than one master shifter at the academy.
12
I slowly walked through the halls of the fortress, keeping to the shadows so no one would see where I was going. My dorm was uninhabitable but that didn’t mean I wanted the entire student body knowing where I was sleeping. I could hear students whispering about me as I walked by. The last thing I needed was the rumor mill to spread even more lies.
‘I heard the magic inside her is evil.’
‘I don’t care. I’d do her. She’s hot.’
‘I’ll bet she thinks she’s better than us.’
‘She would never survive without the professors fawning over her.’
‘Her father was an MP. I guess privilege follows her everywhere. Even the lycan realm.’
I hid my face under the hood of my trench coat, not wanting anyone to see my cheeks turn red. But they weren’t red from their venomous lies. I had thoughts of Rodrick running through my mind. The potion Professor Addair made us take revealed our greatest temptation. Mine was clearly Rodrick. Not entirely surprising given that Devon disguised himself as Rodrick. He knew all along that Rodrick and I were Blackatters. And that I’d be drawn to him.
Now the question remained, was the temptation reciprocated? Did Rodrick feel drawn to me? I tested that theory in his study. He resisted me with ease. Hell, he practically kicked me out. I wasn’t about to test it again and risk my place at the academy.
I shook my head in frustration. In the end, none of it mattered. I couldn’t allow my impulses to sway me toward any man. At least for now. I had to become a Vontex. No matter what it took. And it didn’t matter to me that Lothar said the Vontex aren’t meant to enjoy what they do. The single outing I had with them replayed in my mind over and over again. The way I killed the lycan, the way my instincts served me, the smell of blood on the streets. It was more violence than I had ever seen. And the aggressive part of me that changed when I became a lycan loved every second of it.
Once I was certain no one was looking I slipped through the proper halls leading to Lothar’s quarters. I wanted some alone time before I went to get some food. The potion left a queasy feeling inside my gut along with some dizziness. A much-needed rest was in order.
I stopped in my tracks once I noticed that Lothar’s door was jutted open. A single smell assaulted my nostrils. The scent of old blood wafted through the air and collided right into me. I sniffed a little harder to discover another smell. Something burning. Human flesh.
‘Lothar, what the hell are you cooking in there? I thought you rarely used this room.’
I slowly went up the final few steps and pushed the door open a bit more, just enough to see inside and make sure I wasn’t intruding on Lothar. I froze in place at the sight before me.
Nurse Roslyn was lying dead on the floor in the center of the room. A river of blood spread from the wall to the floor as though she had fought off her attacker and was dragged to her death from one side of the room to another. Her mouth was wide open, her pale skin was stained with crimson red, her bodice was ripped apart, and worst of all, her eyes were stuck staring at the ceiling.
I took a deep breath and stepped closer to her, being careful not to disturb the blood stains all over the floor and track them everywhere. Once I was close enough, I knelt down and felt for a pulse on her neck. I stopped before I touched her skin. There was no need to feel for a heartbeat. My heightened sense of hearing told me the truth with the utmost cruelty. Her heart wasn’t beating. Nurse Roslyn was dead.
A door opened and slammed shut outside the room. I jumped up in surprise, unsure if I should hide or remain right where I was. Footsteps came nonchalantly down the hall.
‘Lothar will know I didn’t do this. He has to!’
Only it wasn’t Lothar who appeared in the doorway. It was McKenzie.
“Jesus Christ,” she cursed, taking a bold step into the room with me and getting a closer look at the body.
I looked down at the body and back up to McKenzie, waiting to see what she would do. Or worse, what she would assume.
“Is she-” McKenzie started, unable to finish her sentence.
“Dead? Yes. Definitely dead. I can’t hear a pulse. Can you?”
McKenzie shook her head. Her eyes couldn’t tear away from Nurse Roslyn. I even saw a hint of sadness in her eyes. “How did this happen?”
My brows furrowed at her words. She must have known I was waiting for her to accuse me of the worst because she started shaking her head.
“Look,” she muttered. “You’re capable of a lot. You’re a reckless twat and an elitist cow but I don’t think for an instant that you meant to kill me. And you’re not capable of this kind of brutality.”
‘Elitist? Me? You’ve obviously never met my dad.’
“Aren’t all lycan capable of this kind of brutality?” I asked her, not quite believing that she wouldn’t instantly accuse me of doing this.
“Yes. But you healed me when you didn’t have to.”
“Why are you here anyway?”
“I came to see Lothar.”
‘Naturally.’
She stepped over the blood and got a closer look at Nurse Roslyn. Once she was sure alongside me that Nurse Roslyn was dead she let out a huge breath and then headed out the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To the Dean’s office. Where did you think I was going? We need to report this. There’s a murderer on the loose inside the fortress.”
The second she said that every single hair on my body stood up. She was right. Whoever did this was likely still around. And they obviously found a way through the shield. Or worse, we had another traitor among us. Again!
“Wait here,” she said.
She didn’t give me much of a choice before she fled the room and ran down the stairs.
A light flickered from the corner of my eye. That was when I saw it. Nurse Roslyn was holding my brother’s metallic bracelet tight in her hand. I could see the broken black leather side straps on either side of her closed fist. I reached down to touch her hand. It was ice cold. And clearly, the body had been there a while because it was impossible to get her hand open to pull my brother’s bracelet out. She was already in rigor mortis. Her body had been there for hours.
‘Oh, no. What if she was bringing the bracelet back to me? What if the killer was here waiting for me and she walked in first?’
My mind ran wild with the possibilities. I dashed over to the door to wait for Rodrick to come in and to get away from the stench of rotting flesh and aging blood. It was nearly enough to make me puke.
Just as I heard heavy footsteps enter the hall and come up the stairs I saw a faint light flicker in the room. I turned back toward the entrance to see Nurse Roslyn’s wrist light up. My brother’s bracelet was glowing inside her tight fist.
My thoughts went from bad to worse.
‘The bracelet. It started to burn me. What if whoever did this to her found her because she had the bracelet? Did she die because of me?’
The footsteps were getting closer. And it wasn’t just McKenzie and Rodrick. There were guards behind him heading inside to see what happened. They all brushed by me as they entered Lothar’s quarters and saw Nurse Roslyn lying dead on the floor.
Rodrick went stiff at the sight of her. His eyes were the only part of him showing a clear expression. He was in shock.
A hand came up to my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin from the sudden contact. As it was, I let out a small yelp, getting everyone’s attention in the room.
It was Lothar.
“Riley, what happened?” he asked me.
“Yes, I think we’d all like to know that,” said Rodrick.
McKenzie glanced over to me as if to say, this is where you come in.
I cleared my throat and started talking. “I found her this way.”
“When?” Rodrick asked as he knelt down to take a closer look at the body. He didn’t bother checking for her pulse either. None of us could hear a heartbeat.
“Not even ten minutes ago,” I answered. “I just got out of Professor Addair’s class and she gave us this potion. At first, I thought it was the potion still inside me doing something weird but then I smelled Nurse Roslyn’s blood and I knew it was real. I came over to make sure and that’s when McKenzie walked in.”
Lothar stepped into the room. “I told you what happened with Riley’s dormitory,” he said, directing his words to Rodrick. “I offered her a temporary place in my quarters given I rarely use it.”
McKenzie’s jaw clenched. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at me with squinted eyes.
‘Don’t get the wrong idea, you insecure twat!’
“And why was Miss Winters here?” Rodrick asked.
She let down her arms and placed them on her hips. “Lothar said something about getting me new accommodation until our dorm room was fixed,” she said. “I came around to see if a new room became available before I headed to dinner.”
Rodrick lifted up Nurse Roslyn’s arm and inspected it as if he was wearing spectacles. Or maybe that was just me watching the intensity with which he examined her skin. He let go of her arm and moved h
er tights up her legs.
“Are you sure that’s appropriate?” McKenzie asked, a bit stunned by what she was seeing.
“Help me,” Rodrick said to the guard who knelt down to look up her other leg.
“What are you doing?” I asked a bit mortified.
“What do you smell here, Miss Blackburn?” Rodrick asked me. “Consider this your crash course in human anatomy from a lycan perspective. What do you smell?”
I stood there dumbfounded. McKenzie sniffed at the air as if Rodrick had asked her the question and not me. Then her eyes flashed once she understood.
“Blood,” I answered. “Flesh. And…”
“And what?” Rodrick asked.
“No,” Lothar said, suddenly seeming to understand whatever it was that Rodrick had discovered. He went over to the body and started removing Nurse Roslyn’s blouse.
“Seriously, what are you doing?” I asked. My jaw was nearly on the floor from their blatant disrespect. They weren’t coroners. Was this how they treated the body of the man who shifted into being my brother’s form before it was sent home? Was it some sort of standard procedure?
“Um…I…I smell…”
Rodrick ripped open Nurse Roslyn’s blouse and I saw something on her left shoulder. It was a mark that I instantly recognized. A brand meant to look like a tattoo. The same one I saw in Alina’s class. The symbol of the Dolch Erbe.
Rodrick stood up from where he knelt down and let his eyes roll over to me. That was when it hit me. I felt like a complete idiot for not having noticed it sooner.
The body wasn’t Nurse Roslyn. It couldn’t be. Because the smell hidden under all the flesh and blood was male.
The tattoo on the left shoulder of the body started to glow. It turned a bright shade of blue as the edges became more defined.
“Everyone get out!” Lothar yelled.
The glow from the brand became too much. I had to raise my arm to block it from my view as it overpowered the entire room. Only that didn’t help. Because there was an equally bright glow permeating from my body. Right where my brother’s bracelet left a burn on my wrist. I squinted my eyes to see what the hell was going on. To my shock, a tattoo was showing right where the bracelet had the previous night. Only my skin didn’t have a burn mark anymore. There sat the symbol of the Dolch Erbe, right on my flesh.
Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2) Page 12