by Oxford, Rain
“No,” Henry said. His mouth was dry despite the blood leftover.
His father gave him a disapproving glare. “You knew what would happen if you left.”
“No.”
“We tried to stop you from killing them, but we were too late. After you killed that woman, you turned on us.” Yet their clothes were flawless.
“No,” Henry repeated, choking on his tears. He didn’t remember hurting Zoe, but he remembered the hatred and anger of his jaguar. “I don’t believe you!”
His mother gave him her best offended look. “We have never lied to you! Besides, you should be kissing our feet in gratitude for saving–”
“Luana!” Matheus barked, cutting her off.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” she said.
“Saving… Where’s Scott? Even my jaguar wouldn’t have killed my baby!”
“You tried to, but when you turned on your father, I saved your nasty little half-breed.”
Henry gasped with the pain of losing his wife and the relief of not losing his son. “Where is he? I want to see him.”
Matheus glared. “Why? So you can kill him too? Luana didn’t save him just so you could finish the job.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him!”
“You tried to.” Luana shrugged. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. Your jaguar has always been stronger during the full moon. I hid him to protect him because we love you. Because we are the only ones who love you, I gave him to a very nice family of shifters who are not freaks like you. I tried to give him a good life by getting him away from you. If you want him back, I’ll tell you where he is, but don’t ever try to come home. You’ll be on your own and the next time your jaguar takes over, don’t come crying to us when you kill the kid.”
Henry couldn’t catch his breath over the tightness in his throat and chest. He didn’t want to believe them, but he knew his jaguar was too powerful. “Don’t tell me where he is. I wouldn’t be able to–” His throat shut, cutting off his air. That was fine; he didn’t want to breathe anymore.
His mother knelt on the floor and put her arms around him. “Good. I knew you would see reason. Every time you leave us, someone ends up dead. As long as you never leave and never try to turn us in, the child will live a long and happy life. He’ll never know his father is a freak who killed his mother.”
Henry’s throat opened just enough for him to throw up before he passed out.
The next two days, he couldn’t even move over the heaviness of depression. On the third day, and every day after until the full moon returned, he was just numb.
* * *
For a few seconds, I held still, kept my eyes closed, and clinched the ring in my hand. I was sweating, shaking, and nauseated. Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw Darwin. “Are you okay?” he asked. I barely managed a nod, which wasn’t enough for him. “Do you know what happened? Do you know where you are?”
“We’re in Henry’s house,” I said, letting him help me sit up. “We need to find Henry’s parents.”
“Are they in trouble?”
“They will be when I find them. I’m going to skin them alive and feed them to the kappa. They need to suffer.”
“What did they do?” When I didn’t immediately answer, he knelt in front of me. “What did you see?”
“Henry didn’t kill them. First of all, they’re not his parents; they kidnapped him when he was a baby. Second, they made him think he was a freak and that he killed everyone he loved. Then they took his son. They threatened the life of his newborn.”
“Henry has a son?!”
* * *
When we returned to the school, the first thing we saw was the swarm of students in the courtyard. I parked haphazardly in the middle of the driveway and addressed the closest student; Becky. “What’s going on?” Her expression was of shock. Most of the students looked horrified, sick, and shocked.
“They’re dead,” she said, her voice a little too vacant.
“Who?”
She just shook her head, so Darwin and I pushed through the group and went to the infirmary. The first thing I noticed when I entered was Mack unconscious on one of the tables. The second thing was that Watson and Nightshade were there, placing cool packs on Dan and Mack.
“Where are the others?”
Dr. Martin’s expression was grave. “Len, Kristen, and Conner died. We put Caleb and Nathan in a cooling unit, but only to make their last moments more comfortable.”
“What?!” Darwin screeched. “You can’t just let them die!”
“We kept trying to cure them of an illness, when we should have been trying to keep them cold long enough to find the culprit before the fever killed them.”
“Where is Hunt?” I asked.
“We don’t want him down here. For some reason, everything goes wrong when he’s down here.”
“Dan and Mack have a week at the most, now that we know to keep them cool,” Watson said. “You, Logan, Vincent, Keigan… Get everyone you can on this. You have to kill the wizard who did this, or more will die.”
“We don’t know who’s doing this!”
“Then figure it out!”
I realized I had never seen this man angry, and it wasn’t something I wanted to see again. There was something very powerful about him. “Show me Len’s body. He was the first to show symptoms, so maybe my instincts will pick up on something.”
The morgue wasn’t meant to hold many bodies. Nightshade took me across the hall and into the morgue, where the bodies of Len, Kristen, and Conner were on exam tables.
“I thought you would have them in the coolers.”
“We haven’t had the chance. We started cooling treatments right before they died.” She handed me some gloves, which I put on.
Len was a quiet guy who always picked up whatever lesson we learned and was happy to tutor anyone who was having trouble. He never meddled with anyone. Unfortunately, whatever happened to him was not natural. His arms and chest were charred. His face wasn’t as bad, but it was very red.
“Why does he look like he caught fire?”
“He did… from the inside.”
“His clothes?”
“Burnt. We already checked and there was nothing odd in or on them, no chemicals or metals. The students just burned to death from the inside out. They died of a fever.”
There was nothing I could find on him or the other two. No defensive wounds, needle marks, scabs, cuts, or bruises… No one attacked them. “This is way too clean.” I took off the gloves. “Maybe fear will make people talk.”
Chapter 8
Darwin and I returned to our room to discuss who might have a motive for killing students. At this point, we were willing to consider that someone with a motive might have hired someone with the skill to pull this off.
The knock at the door was anxious, or at least as anxious as a knock could be. “Come in,” Darwin said.
Astrid entered and I stood. “I don’t mean to keep disappearing on you,” Astrid said.
Regina was a jealous and suspicious woman and I always thought she hadn’t trusted me to be faithful. In reality, she was deflecting her own guilt, which I probably knew subconsciously. Astrid was a different matter. She would never cheat on me, never lie to me, and never try to hurt me. She might eat a neighbor or two, but nobody was perfect. Although Astrid had flaws that were inexcusable and unforgivable, they didn’t change the fact that Astrid made me who I was.
“You have blood on your lip,” I said, not realizing until I pointed it out.
She wiped it off and licked her finger. “The bags are messy. Do you suspect me of making those students sick? You were asking me about them the other day.”
“I can’t see how you would have a motive. Besides, you weren’t near Nathan, Caleb, or Dan, were you?”
“I don’t recognize the names. I might have come into contact with them, but I never questioned them. What about Henry? The vampires talk as if Henry was arrested for standing up for shifter rights. They’re
talking about unjust laws.”
“The fae and other shifters are saying the same thing,” Darwin said. “As far as they know, Henry spent all summer keeping the council from kicking the shifters out of the country.”
“Why would they think–” I stopped myself as I realized who I was talking to. “You told them that, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Do you want me to break him out of the council’s hold?” Astrid asked.
“Not just yet. We have until Monday. If we can, we need to find his parents and find Gale’s angle.”
“Are we sure Gale is to blame?” Darwin asked. “We know the council is evil.”
“We don’t know, no. But we don’t have enough information to take down the council, so we might as well work on taking down Gale. We know he’s going to try something if he hasn’t already. Speaking of…” I went to Astrid. “We don’t know what Gale might try next, so I’m going to kiss you,” I said evenly. Darwin gaped, but Astrid smiled brightly.
“Okay.”
“I have a legitimate, scientific reason.”
“I don’t care. Do it anyway.”
I leaned down and she put her arms around me. I stepped forward until she was trapped between me and the door. Through her thin shirt, I felt her heart skip a beat, which seemed odd to me. I knew she had a beating heart, so maybe it was the fact that she was affected the same as a human was. Her mouth was two inches from mine, but it was her eyes, not her fangs that I focused on. The brown was almost completely overcome by multiple shades of rich green.
“If you don’t stop thinking and kiss me, I will bite you.”
“Making threats isn’t the best way to–” She cut me off by pulling me down to close the gap and kissed me. The softness of her lips was the first sensation, followed closely by warmth that sent a current running through my body.
My instincts always warned me when I was in danger, in the presence of a dangerous person, or about to miss an important clue. I was often exactly where I needed to be when I needed to be there in order to solve my case. It usually came on like a relentless urge to go, only to fade away when I was in place. Never before had I felt like everything was perfect.
I forgot everything and got lost in the moment for some time. Hell, it was long overdue.
That taste. Not only did she smell like strawberries, but she tasted like them, so I figured she must have eaten them. That wasn’t all, unfortunately. I also tasted blood.
I pulled away slowly, hesitant to give up the moment, and was rewarded with a small moan in protest. While she was savoring the heat still lingering between us, I pulled a black marker from my pocket, hiked up the sleeve of her left arm, and marked a small ‘X’ on the inside of her upper arm.
“What’s that for?” she asked as I capped the marker and tossed it at my desk.
“Gale can take someone’s form if he has their DNA and he might be after you next. Don’t let anyone see that, and he won’t know to replicate it if he tries to trick us.”
She grinned. “And you’re a hundred percent sure I am me because I’m that good a kisser?”
“I guess that may take further study. We might need to do that a few more times. Don’t you have work to do?”
She made a mockingly unreal cough. “Oh, no, I must be coming down with something. I should probably stay in bed all night. And since you’re on a day schedule, I guess you should too. Might as well share one bed.”
Darwin interrupted with an audible gag. “Please. That’s so cheesy I think I got cavities.”
“That isn’t the saying,” Astrid argued.
* * *
Saturday morning, a heavy knocking woke me. “It’s Saturday!” I yelled.
“The council is here for Darwin’s test!” Addie yelled back through the door. “He needs to meet them in the auditorium in half an hour!”
Darwin groaned and climbed out of bed without being told. “I’m going to get coffee,” he said, walking out with just his boxers on.
I sighed and got dressed. I knew Darwin could do it, I just worried that something was going to go wrong. He returned a few minutes later and got dressed in his usual t-shirt, hoodie, and jeans. With a small flash of light, his hoodie turned a sickly yellow.
“Did you get the amulet?” I asked. He pulled it out of his desk to show me and then slipped it into his pocket.
“I decided not to do it.”
I groaned. “Don’t do this now. We worked really hard to get you prepared and now that we can finally get this over with, you’re getting cold feet?”
“People are dying. Who cares about the test?!”
“They aren’t going to suddenly get better if you get expelled. Right now, Henry is locked up and Astrid isn’t very reliable. This is a lot to handle on my own. If you want to give up and run back home with your tail between your legs, I can’t stop you, but don’t blame their deaths on your fears. The best way you can help them is to pass your test so you can stay here.”
After a moment he nodded sadly.
On the way to the auditorium, I thought I saw a flickering fire in the forest to our left, but it was gone when I looked again and Darwin said he hadn’t seen anything. We arrived at the auditorium a few minutes later.
Logan Hunt, Asrik Watson, Remington, and twelve members of the council sat behind a long table set up in the front of the room. Just like the school board, the wizard council was designed for thirteen members. Also, just like the school board, the council was missing members. According to Darwin, James Chambers was replaced within a month, but they were very hesitant about replacing John Cross. They acted like John’s chair was cursed.
The youngest man in appearance was Kale. The oldest, I’m pretty sure I saw being uncovered on a mummy documentary. If the ancient wizard’s chest wasn’t moving along with the slow, wheezing breaths, I would have thought it was an early Halloween prank.
My uncle sat to the right of the frail man. In his lap was Ghost, who was apparently entertaining himself by flicking and pawing at the mummy’s robe sleeve.
“Darwin Mason?” Grayson asked. My roommate nodded. “Your father wanted to attend this meeting, but there was a last minute complication regarding his pack, so he will not be able to make it.”
Darwin’s mood sunk further, yet the wizard didn’t seem to notice or care. Instead, he introduced the rest of the members of the council. Most of the wizards were forgettable because there were so many. The thirteenth member still hadn’t been decided on.
Kale sneered at Darwin and me. “Did you think this was a team test or were you afraid to leave your babysitter outside?”
“Ante gamisou,” Darwin responded.
Kale looked at Vincent, who ran his hand through his hair. “It’s Greek,” my uncle said, answering Kale’s unspoken question. He opened a black folder in front of him to reference. The other members of the council each had a folder, but they didn’t bother to open them. “We need to finish this up quickly. Mr. Mason, please confirm aloud who and what your parents are.”
“My father is Alpha Maseré Mason, wolf shifter. My mother is Anya Mason, forest fae.”
“What can your mother do?”
“Everything a typical forest fae can do. Her specialty is camouflage.”
“Okay. We are meeting today because it was determined that you inherited no paranormal adaptations necessary to live in our community. Please confirm this aloud.”
“I have been labeled a throwback, yes.”
Vincent continued reading from the folder instead of looking up or acknowledging the term. “You attended Logan Hunt’s school for paranormal children, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Headmaster Hunt’s children’s school and orphanage were designed with safety measures to be a supportive and structured environment for children of paranormal citizens, no matter what skills the child may or may not have. The university, however, lacks these safety measures. It states that you were allowed in based solely on your intell
igence, yet where it asks for your I.Q.…” my uncle trailed off to give Hunt a glare. “… It simply says, ‘staggering.’ I trust this means your intelligence has never been measured.”
“I beat a computer chess match when I was three. I tested fluent in twenty languages before I was accepted into the sapling at fifteen. Is life not a better test than a few silly questions?”
“Why didn’t you decide to go to a human university?” the ancient council member asked. “With your history, it shouldn’t have been a problem, and you have no magic to interfere with electricity.”
“I like traveling. When I graduate, I want to do what my dad does, and there’s no point in spending years and thousands of dollars on a degree I don’t need. I read and learn for enjoyment; I don’t need a classroom.”
“Then why are you here?” Vincent asked.
Darwin took a moment to consider it and finally shrugged. “My parents went here. My friends are here. If it weren’t for this place, I would probably be lost in my computer. I was always ready to leave. Since I could remember, we were moving. Nobody but my parents liked me and that was okay; I didn’t really like anyone else, either. Do you know how much it sucks to feel like you’re surrounded by idiots? It wasn’t until I got to the sapling that I learned about talent. No matter how much knowledge I have, everyone can do something I can’t, whether it’s drawing, pacifying others, magic, or whatever. I’m glad. I’m no less weird or awkward, but I’m not as lonely here.”
They were silent for a moment until Grayson leaned forward with discomfort. “Your reason for being here is obviously sincere and entirely worthy in our opinion. Unfortunately, the issue is your safety. Your intelligence alone cannot protect you from an attack. Furthermore, even if it could, allowing you in based on skills that have nothing to do with magic or shifting would be unfair to others in your situation.”
Hunt cleared his throat. “I am going to point out that it is actually my decision, as it is my school.”