Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2)

by Oxford, Rain

  “Isn’t the council supposed to do something?”

  “From what I can tell, they’re not doing anything. Stephen sure as hell isn’t doing anything to help.”

  “Has anyone told him what’s going on?” I asked. They both gaped at me, wide-eyed. “Sorry to interrupt, but it’s not like you’re whispering or anything.”

  “Well… I’m sure Clara knows, and she would tell her father.”

  “I’ll see what Clara knows. They may not be treating her the same way because everyone knows she’s holding all the strings.”

  “Why would you–”

  “You’re Devon Sanders, right?” the second woman interrupted. She smacked her friend’s arm. “He’s the one Cody was talking about. Can you help?”

  “I can try.” I may not have wanted to work with them, but no one had the right to treat others like dirt. “Have there been other instances where the teachers were involved?”

  “Professor Anderson refers to Stephen as ‘That Bastard’ all the time. I know that’s not physical or even an attack on us, and none of us have been willing to confront him, but Stephen is like a father to many of us. Professor Anderson and Professor Hendricks are constantly criticizing us for stupid things, and we’re pretty sure it’s because they hate vampires.”

  * * *

  After class, Darwin and I went to find Hunt. It was the last day of the full moon, so Henry was busy. We found Hunt easily, but had to wait outside when we did because we could hear the argument even with the door closed.

  “You can’t tell me not to be with him!” Remy screamed at her father.

  “You cannot expect me to be okay–”

  “Of course I expect you to be okay with it! You should be happy for us! At least you know your daughter is safe!”

  “I cannot rely on Rosin when his loyalties are split.”

  “You make him do too much as it is! He’s been avoiding me all semester because he can’t handle keeping your secrets from me! What’s this damn key Vincent is looking for?”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “I overheard you and Keigan arguing last night. What key?”

  “Knowing that could get you killed.”

  “Like Cooper was killed?”

  “Yes. However, Cooper didn’t know anything; I believe he was just unfortunate.”

  “If you don’t quit with the secrets and constantly scheming with people, you’re going to end up losing everything.”

  A low growl made Darwin and me turn. Alpha Flagstone did not intend to harm me, so my instincts hadn’t warned me of his approach.

  “Devon and Darwin, you should both know better than to eavesdrop,” Hunt said through the door.

  I opened it and the three of us entered. “I wouldn’t learn anything people don’t want me to know if I didn’t snoop, hack, and eavesdrop. Besides, all you wizards with your familiars don’t have to eavesdrop; you can just send others out to do your dirty work for you.”

  “It is not so easy having a familiar,” the headmaster lectured. Flagstone growled and put his arm around Remy’s shoulder.

  Darwin scoffed. “When Devon gets his familiar, I hope it’s a dog so I can have him fetch food from my house.”

  “Getting back to the matter at hand, something needs to be worked out between the vampires and the others,” I said. “This isn’t people fighting for hierarchy; many of the students are harassing the vampires that are not fighting back. Most of the vampires seem to want any place available to them. Don’t get me wrong, there are some vampires who don’t hesitate to fight, but this is cruel.”

  “Humans had to go through stages to eradicate segregation. We are making progress.”

  “Yes, and that’s good, but this is your school, and your students can’t learn in this environment.”

  “What do you suggest? If I limit the interaction of the students, they will feel like this is a prison. I cannot put cameras up like a public university has. If I separate the classes, then it will encourage unequal treatment. Next we would have separate drinking fountains.”

  “We don’t have any drinking fountains,” Darwin pointed out.

  “Remy, order some drinking fountains,” Hunt said absentmindedly. “This is not an ideal situation, but it will take time. Kale will tell you if he ever gets around to teaching that this community was not constructed overnight. Wolf shifters and even wild wolves used to work with vampires to protect each other. I have faith that you and Clara can handle the disputes until they die down.”

  “Let the students handle it,” Darwin suggested. Everyone looked at him and he shrugged. “Dad says it doesn’t take a litter to build a pack. There are a lot of students here who want peace and routine in our school; we want it to be a safe and secure home away from home. It’s only a few dozen who are ruining it for the rest of us. I say let the other paranormals see the vampires as part of the pack.”

  “How so?”

  “Human colleges have sports, so you can start something like that. Clubs, too, which everyone would be interested in. Come up with a committee of students with treasurers and whatnot, and let them plan and design extracurricular activities. Graduation is sooner than with human schools, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do with some fun and stress relief.”

  “It sounds good to me. You will be in charge of setting up the committee. Your father might have mentioned a few times that you were good at that sort of thing.”

  Darwin shrugged and blushed. “He’s always bragging on me. I don’t know why, when I can’t even shift.” He turned and walked out.

  “How did it go in the underground level?” I asked Flagstone. “What did you find?”

  “It has been taken care of,” he said vaguely.

  I rolled my eyes. “What did you find?”

  He looked to Hunt. “Devon, you need to focus on finding the witness and keeping the vampires and wizards from killing each other. Rosin and I have everything else taken care of.”

  I turned and walked out, frustrated, but not surprised. Although Hunt was not forthcoming the previous semester, I thought I could at least trust him. This time, it looked like Hunt was either up to no good, or he was very worried about something.

  Or both.

  * * *

  The next night, when I showed up for my earth training, I found a note taped to a tree at the edge of the forest.

  Devon,

  I have to miss our appointment.

  Sincerely,

  K. Langril

  Great. That was very clear. However, when I thought about it, it wasn’t the professor’s normal, neat handwriting that I had seen in other notes to the class. It looked like it had been written in a hurry.

  Snow began to fall then and I had no real reason to stick around the creepy forest at midnight, so I returned to the dorms. It was my intention to ask Darwin to take a look at the book I found in the library when I got back to my room, but Addison and Amelia were there. Darwin had already recruited Amelia into helping him set up a student activities committee. Addison was clearly trying not to irritate Henry, as if she finally realized he wasn’t just being a jerk.

  “If you can affect moods, can you help Henry?” Darwin asked Amelia. Addie sat up in Henry’s bed, hopeful but unwilling to beg.

  Amelia looked pained and blushed. “I’m trying not to use my magic for a while. Things didn’t go very well last time.”

  I fully expected Darwin to push, as he always did, but instead he just patted her knee in sympathy and returned to reading his manga to her while she thought up clubs.

  * * *

  Friday and the weekend were more of the same; fights between vampires and the other students, fights between Addison and Henry, and sappy mush between Darwin and Amelia. Amelia and Darwin were together every minute and he acted so goofy around her that I usually had to leave the room.

  On Tuesday, Professor Langril was still missing, but Dr. Martin was his sub. Everyone sat down immediately and waited without a word to see what the
doctor would do. It was actually funny, since class was always set off with some explosions and usually screaming from Mack.

  The entire class, with the exception of Mack, loved Becky’s scorpion. The scorpion apparently loved Mack and was often seen chasing the guy around the room.

  Dr. Martin stood in the front of the room and fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot. He didn’t look like he had ever dealt with students before. “Okay, what does Keigan normally have you do?”

  “Make potions,” Becky answered helpfully.

  “He said we could make a poison today,” Tali lied.

  Jessica nodded. “He also said we could try it out on Mack.”

  We ended up making a sleeping potion. Although Dr. Martin was extremely good at making such concoctions, he was not the best teacher because he expected us to already be advanced. I felt like I was a high school chemistry student in a graduate chemistry class, which was not a phenomenon I was familiar with or happy about.

  Either way, we did end up learning a lot.

  On Wednesday afternoon, I was heading to lunch when I ran into Erik and Clara in the hall. Erik was frantic about something and furiously working the gray substance, which I had learned was a kneaded eraser.

  “Whatever it is, the headmaster will do something,” Clara told him.

  “He didn’t last time. Now people are dying!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked when they noticed me.

  “It attacked us!” Erik exclaimed, startling three other students that were passing by at that moment.

  I could understand their flinches since the vampires shouldn’t have been out yet. The hallways had no windows, but the exterior door was only ten feet away and there were windows in other halls.

  “We were looking for Hunt’s office, but we kept getting turned around and ending up back here,” Clara explained calmly. Erik nodded furiously as nervous energy built up inside him.

  “Alright, you two need to get into a closet or something and I will take care of this,” I said without thinking. It wasn’t as strange as I would have thought that my first instinct was to get them somewhere safe. I noticed the two brown blankets on the ground at their feet, which they must have used to make it as far as they did.

  “It’s down there killing people!” Erik said. There was a panic in his eyes that was more human than anything I had seen since joining the paranormal community.

  “I know, but it won’t help to get everyone out if they all burn up in the sunlight.” As I spoke, I reached out for Darwin’s mind. “Hey, do you know where Zhang Wei is?”

  “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

  “Something is going down in the underground level and I might need his tracking senses.”

  “On it.”

  I led Clara and Erik to the closest closet and then made my way to the door that entered into the underground, where Henry was waiting. “I thought Darwin was sending Zhang Wei.”

  “Jackson antagonized Li Na and she bit him. Zhang Wei is dealing with it. I should at least be of some help to you.”

  I nodded and opened the door. The underground level was dark, which I expected, but there was no light at all. Last time, the torches only went out when nobody was around. This time, the torches were unlit and it was as silent as a grave.

  “The vampires must have turned out the lights in order to hide,” Henry said. “It makes sense; they can see very well in the dark.”

  “Good for them, I can’t see anything.” I pulled out my penlight and clicked it on. I wasn’t expecting Henry to be so close, so the first thing I saw was his eyes, which were almost entirely pupil and had the reflective silver that cat eyes had. He flinched away from the light as his pupils contracted. “Sorry,” I said, aiming the light away from him.

  “I smell fear, but nothing else unusual.” He started off down the hallway without another word, so I followed. Henry stopped to sniff at every closed door we passed and then moved on within a few seconds. A few rooms were open, but they were all empty.

  “Is everyone gone?”

  “No, they’re in their rooms. I can smell their fear, but they are only hiding. Whatever it is they’re hiding from, it has no scent.”

  A few minutes later, we were still making our way further in when my instincts suddenly fired up. Danger… surrounded… Something was horribly wrong. I headed for the infirmary, which was only a few hundred feet away. When I turned the corner, I froze. Dr. Martin was faced-down on the ground in the open doorway, lying in a pool of blood.

  I tried to go to him, but Henry grabbed me by the upper arm to hold me back. “Wait, something’s in there. I can hear it.” The words were barely out of his mouth when I heard glass break.

  I leaned to the left to try to see through the doorway, but we were too far down the hallway. My sense of danger increased and my light flickered. There was a torch on the wall right beside me, which I took from its sconce. I didn’t bother patting my pocket; I had left my lighter on my desk. “Hold this,” I whispered to Henry, passing him my penlight. When he took it, I focused on the heat that built in my chest. I didn’t know how to control fire, but I had done it before.

  Just as I had the first time, I imagined fire; the color, the flicker, the light, the smell of wood burning, and the heat. I imagined heat from my memories flowing through my body out and into torch. I ignored the painful throbbing in my head and concentrated on the heat, which spread from my thoughts to my chest and finally into the torch. Flames erupted.

  I marveled at the fact that six months previous, I had no idea I could do this.

  Henry clicked off my light and handed it to me to put back in my pocket. As I stepped cautiously towards the door, I decided I would start carrying a knife on me if I couldn’t have my gun. Screw Hunt’s rules.

  Just before I rounded the corner, the sense of danger vanished. I waved the torched over the entrance and heard nothing, so I peeked around the doorway, prepared for something to jump out at me.

  The room was empty.

  “Try to get a scent,” I told my roommate. Henry stepped over Dr. Martin to enter the room while I crouched beside the doctor and started to turn him.

  “Wait, he’s not–” Henry was cut off as the doctor moaned loudly and tried to roll over.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy,” I said. “Where are you hurt?”

  He struggled to sit up, so I helped, careful to avoid the blood that was soaking his entire front. He wiped the blood from his face, seemingly startled by it. “It’s not my blood,” he said. “I was getting blood ready for the vampires… when something attacked. It came up from the ground.”

  “I take it your attacker did this?” Henry asked. I held the torch out so that it lit the room dimly.

  There were chunks missing out of the north wall and the sturdy wooden work desk was in pieces. Most shocking, however, were the claw marks… on the ceiling. “What the hell did it claw the ceiling for?”

  “It might have been trying to get to the other students,” Henry suggested. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now. A bear shifter could reach the ceiling, but he would not be able to hide his scent. Was it a creature you recognized?” he asked Dr. Martin.

  “I didn’t see it. The lights went out right before it attacked. It wasn’t furry, though. It struck my arm when I wasn’t able to get out of the way in time.” He indicated his left arm, which was bent out of shape badly enough I knew he had at least two breaks as well as a dislocated shoulder. “It was very solid and fast.”

  “You need to get your arm taken care of,” I said. Of course, I felt silly telling that to a doctor.

  “Who do you take a doctor to?” Henry asked me.

  Dr. Martin shrugged his right shoulder. “It’s not that bad. I’ve had a lot worse back in–” He cut himself off, suspiciously. “The… country I came from.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “Um… Germany… I come from Germany.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We need to get everyone upstairs without them getting
cooked. We have no idea when the creature could come back. If we wait until night…” I looked up at the ceiling. “Darwin, how many vampire supporters do we have?”

  “More than we have instigators.”

  “See if any of them are willing to put up with another roommate or two for the night and find some blackout curtains.” I broke the connection and reached for Remy’s mind. She wasn’t nearly as welcoming of the intrusion. “There is something in the underground level that attacked Dr. Martin. We need to move the vampires out and search entire the floor.”

  I received an image of a library and frowned. Right before I asked her why the hell she wanted me to go to the library, I realized it was the C-One library, which had no windows.

  “If someone could block the light from the glass door that leads out over the courtyard, most of the inner hallways don’t have any sunlight,” Dr. Martin suggested.

  “Think we can get them to the main C-One library?”

  “It’s not far. We can do it if we can block the light from that one door.”

  “I will get some blankets to block the light with,” Henry volunteered. “Gather everyone up and wait for me to return.” He left.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to have that looked at…?” I asked, realizing as I did that there was no point; the lump above his elbow had reduced in size to half of what it was before. “Is healing yourself like that a normal wizard power?”

  He shrugged his right shoulder again. “It is there, but not here.”

  “Oh, god, are you related to Professor Langril or something?”

  “I guess you could say we’re brothers.”

  “You have different last names. It’s not normal for brothers to have different last names.”