The Haunted High Series Boxed Set

by Cheree Alsop

  My muscles tensed and nausea rolled over me. The effects from Vicken’s bite made me feel sicker than if I’d had the flu for a week. The chills were already setting in and every muscle in my body ached. My throat was so dry my tongue felt like sandpaper. I couldn’t even move without my breath catching in response.

  The man named Scarnaugh approached the table. He had a healing wound down the side of his face as though he had been recently scratched. I entertained a vague hope that one of the mythics had done it. When the lab technician grabbed my right arm, I wanted to yank it free, but I could barely move.

  “Look at his hand, Dr. Fagrin. We may want to reconsider using this limb,” another technician pointed out.

  Dr. Fagrin walked quickly around the table and surveyed my palm. I was so used to the burn that I had almost forgotten about it. The sight of the ragged edges and the raw flesh didn’t bother me, but his lips tightened into a thin line at the sight of it.

  “If he’s an Alpha, why didn’t this heal?” he demanded of the technician.

  “Maybe it’s a fresh wound. It hasn’t had the chance to heal yet?” the man replied, ending the thought in a hopeful note.

  Dr. Fagrin pinned me with a glare. “Is that true?”

  I decided there was no harm in telling the truth. “It’s from demon fire. It’ll never heal.”

  He watched me for a moment, then a corner of his mouth twitched and he shook his head. “These kids and demons. They must be playing way too many video games. Break the other arm.”

  Mr. Scarnaugh relocked the manacle around my right wrist and walked around the table to undo the left one. When he picked it up, Dr. Fagrin looked at it as though it would sprout wings or scales or something.

  “What’s that?” he demanded.

  “A tattoo,” the technician replied. “It says Sparrow.”

  Dr. Fagrin gave me a surprised look. “A bit young for a girlfriend, aren’t you? And a tattoo, for that matter. I’m sure you got scolded for that one. No worries. We’ll make sure this Sparrow knows you died for a good cause.” He nodded at Scarnaugh.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said as calmly as I could. “Werewolves heal. You already know that. Why do you have to perform tests?”

  “Why go with hypotheses when we can have facts, Finnley?” Dr. Fagrin replied.

  The lab technician bent my elbow at a ninety-degree angle and moved my arm to the edge of the table. Before I could pull away, the other technician pinned the top half of my forearm and elbow against the table.

  “No,” I protested. “You don’t have to do this!”

  Scarnaugh glanced at Dr. Fagrin for approval. At the doctor’s brief nod, the technician lunged with all of his weight and slammed down on my forearm. A sickening snap was followed by pain so intense I nearly blacked out. I closed my eyes and breathed so quickly I felt as if the air was only going to my throat and back. Chills ran up and down my body, and spots flashed in front of my closed eyes.

  “You’ve compounded it, Mr. Scarnaugh,” I heard Dr. Fagrin said with a tone of disapproval through the pain-filled fog in my mind. The indifference in his tone was sickening. “If it has any chance of healing tonight, you must do your best to at least straighten it.”

  My eyes flew open in time to see the technician grab my arm at the elbow while Scarnaugh held my wrist. An ugly, jagged, bleeding mess showed in the middle of my arm. My forearm was bent at an unnatural angle with white pieces sticking out. The fact that I was looking at my bones made me feel close to passing out.

  “As you wish, Dr. Fagrin,” Mr. Scarnaugh said.

  He rocked backwards and yanked. This time a yell escaped my lips so loud I felt my voice tear.

  “Finn!” I heard Vicken shout from somewhere across the wide room. “Let him go, you motherless curs!”

  I blacked out for a moment, and when I came to, tears were streaming down my cheeks. My eyes focused on the doctor’s red glasses hovering in front of my face.

  “Finnley, don’t give up on us now,” Dr. Fagrin said. His tone was teasing with its sincerity. I had never hated a face so badly as I did at that moment.

  I struggled with my right arm against the restraints, but my body didn’t want to move. The pain in my left arm was agonizing. A glance over showed that it was lying on the table. Pain warred with numbness that somehow hurt even worse. I watched in a sort of shock-induced detachment as blood dripped from the wound to a white bucket someone had placed on the floor below the table. The sight of the red blood splashing on the white plastic sides of the bucket was hypnotic.

  “Give him a laceration on his right leg and a burn on his left. I’m hoping the palm’s not an indication that werewolves can’t handle a little heat,” Dr. Fagrin said. “Next, we’ll work on some internal bleeding and perhaps an eye. He has two. Let’s make the best of our evening before the moon rises.”

  The sound of the doctor’s footsteps walking away met my ears.

  Panic burned away the lethargic numbness. I didn’t know if my body could handle any more pain. My thoughts focused with excruciating precision. I wasn’t sure if it was my werewolf instincts fighting to survive, or if my mind and my body finally agreed on something, but the sudden clarity felt as if someone had turned on a light switch. I was done being an experiment. The Mythic Labs had definitely lost their luster, and someone needed to pay for the pain that had brought hundreds of demons to feast.

  Mr. Scarnaugh walked past the head of the table toward my feet carrying a handheld butane torch. Before he could pass me, I yanked my right hand and felt the handcuff snap. I grabbed the man’s sleeve, hit the torch out of his hand when he spun toward me, and shifted my grip up to his throat.

  I pulled him down so that his face was inches from mine and I growled, “Release my throat.” My words were scratchy from the yell of pain, but he got the message loud and clear.

  “Do it, Zed,” he instructed in a strangled whisper.

  I turned my head to look at the other technician. “If you do so much as nick my skin, Scabby here gets his throat ripped out. You understand?”

  Zed nodded quickly. I tensed at the feeling of the cold blade slipping beneath the zip tie. The man could easily have turned it into my jugular, but he must have read about werewolf reflexes. There was no way I would die without taking at least Scarnaugh with me. Zed freed the zip tie with a flick of his wrist and then quickly backed up.

  “What’s going on?” Dr. Fagrin demanded from the other side of the operating arena.

  “Undo the cuffs, now!” I growled.

  The sound of the doctor’s running footsteps met my ears. “Don’t do it!” he yelled.

  Zed looked torn between obeying me and listening to his boss.

  I tightened my grip on Scarnaugh’s throat. Already, the man’s eyes were rolling back in his head from the lack of oxygen. I could hear the labored wheeze of his breath past my tight grip. He had only a few seconds left to live.

  The thought of all of the mythics the man had helped to hurt filled my mind. I had seen the shape they were in as we helped them up the stairs. Some could barely walk. Others had been missing fingers or toes, ears, or eyes. By the way the man had so quickly obeyed Dr. Fagrin’s order to break my arm, I knew he had no empathy for those he had helped to dismember and maim in the name of the knowledge the doctor held so dear. In that brief second, my thoughts flitted to the school. What kind of damage would men like this do to the students there if they got their hands on them? If Lark could get inside the school to leave the note, couldn’t they sneak in as well?

  The image of the students strapped to tables like mine and being experimented on made me tighten my grip. I felt the man’s cervical vertebrae give way. His legs collapsed and he fell lifelessly to the floor.

  “Kill him!” Dr. Fagrin shouted.

  I picked up the butane torch Scarnaugh had dropped onto the table and threw it with deadly accuracy at Zed. The torch hit his head with a sickening thud; Zed fell to the ground in a heap.

&
nbsp; The thought of Dr. Fagrin reaching me while I was still captive filled me with focus. I sat up as much as my manacled, broken left arm would allow and yanked at the handcuff on my left foot. It snapped easily, with the right following. I fumbled with the handcuff around my left wrist. It hurt to even touch it. I gritted my teeth and was about to pull when a gun touched the back of my head.

  “Don’t even try it, Finnley.”

  “Try what?” I asked in a voice so calm it surprised me.

  “Don’t start with me,” Dr. Fagrin said. “If you break that handcuff, you get it in the back of the head with one of your own guns. I’ll experiment with your blood when you’re dead. It may not have as powerful of an effect, but right now, I’m willing to take that chance.”

  As he spoke, I looked around without moving my head to see anything that might help me. My heart skipped a beat when my gaze landed on the knife Zed had dropped after he cut the zip tie. It was a small surgical blade; the razor-sharp part was only about two inches long and bowed out slightly for accuracy. It lay near my left hand. But I didn’t know how to get my hand free and use the knife without getting myself killed first.

  “I should have killed you when you were weak and in that cage,” the doctor continued.

  “You should have,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, there’s one thing you didn’t plan on.”

  “What’s that?” the doctor asked in an irritated tone.

  I knew my next action was going to hurt, badly, but I had no choice. If it worked, it could save my life. If not, at least I wouldn’t be taken to pieces like Lark. I hoped Drake could forgive me.

  “I’m an Alpha,” I replied. I sucked in a breath and time slowed. Within the space of a heartbeat, I closed my eyes, willed the phase to come, and felt my body respond with the speed of adrenaline and need burning through my veins. As my fingers pulled together to make a paw, my left hand slipped free of the manacle. I grabbed the knife and spun on my knees. Using the force of my momentum, I slammed the blade through Dr. Fagrin’s glasses and into his good eye.

  His scream echoed around the room as he clutched at the knife. I swore I heard the ghost of answering screams from mythics he had hurt echoing his cry. I completed my phase from my leap off the table and onto the doctor. He hit the ground on his back with me on top of him.

  I snarled and my lips pulled back to reveal a mouthful of fangs ready to tear him apart the way he had done to Lark. But before I could act, his hand shot up and he grabbed me by the throat.

  He shouldn’t have been able to hold me back. There was no way a human who spent his time in a laboratory would have been able to hold an Alpha werewolf at bay, especially one fueled by rage, pain, and adrenaline the way I was.

  But his movements had knocked his glasses askew. They hung from the knife in his eye, leaving what should have been his bad eye looking up at me. Instead, writhing green flames showed as the pupil of a black demon eye.

  “Hello, Finnley Briscoe.”

  The sound of the Wiccan Enforcer’s voice coming from Dr. Fagrin’s mouth sent a chill down my spine. I growled and snapped at her, but she held me easily away.

  “You have Chutka’s heart pieces,” she said.

  She closed the eye that wasn’t hers and I felt her pull as if she was searching my memories.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find them myself,” she said in a haughty tone.

  Alarm spiked through me at the feeling of her combing through my mind. She tossed memories ruthlessly aside without a care for the way she tattered the edges of my remembrances of my mother, of Drake as a baby, watching Dad ride the motorcycle he had sold when we were young, helping Drake ask his first crush out on a date.

  The feeling of her ruining such priceless memories made me seethe with stagnant frustration. I couldn’t get her out of my head; I didn’t know how to fight back. She would find the memory of the demons and Chutka’s heart pieces. I could feel her getting closer. I saw Lark throw a smile at Brack. The huge, hulking warlock grinned in return. I was running, my feet slapping the pavement as demons climbed over each other in their efforts to reach me. We were almost there. I had to make it.

  Just before she saw the location of the heart pieces, a memory whispered in the back of my mind. I grabbed it with all of my strength and shoved it at her, effectively blocking out the one she searched for. I felt her arms tremble with the strength of the memory, and I focused on it, giving it all of my power.

  I stood in a circle of green flames. My friends were around me. I could feel Dara’s hand giving me strength to reach through the fire. I lunged forward and grabbed the key from the Demon Knight’s chest. With stark clarity, I heard again the strange shrieking noise that had come from him when he collapsed in on himself. His arms and legs were pulled inward, followed by his torso, and then his head. It was shocking to watch it again, to see one of Chutka the Shambler’s subordinates fall.

  I had seen it in real life. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. I realized with a start that I was feeling the Wiccan Enforcer’s shock. She had no idea the Demon Knight had been killed. With her surprise came regret and agony. She had loved him. Surprise filled me. She had loved him and I had killed him. I needed to die. She would kill me to avenge her love, and then she would release Chutka the Shambler into our world to destroy it.

  The menace of her thoughts sent fear shooting through me. Her hand tightened. I could see the loathing and loss in her eye as she watched me struggle.

  “You’ll pay for his death,” she hissed.

  A shout made both of us look over just as Vicken barreled into me with the force of a battering ram. Hundreds of voices filled the Labs. I wondered for a moment as I lay there in shock if Dr. Fagrin’s security guards had managed to call for back up. But the people who pushed through the curtains didn’t wear lab coats or carry clipboards. These people were all different shapes and sizes. Horns, scales, feathers, and every skin color imaginable blended together. The mythics had come for their revenge.

  Within the charging mass I made out the forms of a few of the mythics we had rescued. They looked battered but triumphant, worn but overjoyed at the presence of their loved ones. They had indeed been rescued, just as I had promised. They were safe and they had come to set the others free. Mythics rescuing mythics. It was as I had hoped, a world where prejudice was gone, if just for that moment. They fought against the same enemy, and that had given them what they needed to band together.

  Among them, I caught sight of Dara and Alden. Lyris’ short black hair was visible to the right of a tall vampire. The glimpse of my team filled me with hope.

  “Back away from the werewolf,” the Wiccan Enforcer barked out. She rose to her feet in Dr. Fagrin’s body.

  The mythics slowed, forming a circle around us. Vicken stood in front of me to protect me from the demon.

  “You’ll have to go through me to get to him,” Vicken replied.

  He crouched with the grace of a mountain lion. Threat emanated from every line of his body. He turned as the Wiccan Enforcer circled, keeping himself between us. The crowd of mythics drew slowly closer.

  “I can accept that,” the Wiccan Enforcer said.

  She pulled the knife from Dr. Fagrin’s eye and threw it with a speed that would have caught any other mythic off-guard; however, she chose to mess with a vampire who had just drank his fill of werewolf blood and had been given the antidote for the demon bite that had nearly killed him. Vicken was at full strength, and if his reaction to my blood in the forest was any indicator, he was feeling better than ever.

  He caught the knife and chucked it back faster than my eye could follow. Before the demon could pull it out from where it lodged in her throat, the vampire was there, shoving it deeper. She stumbled, but he didn’t let go.

  “Hold her,” someone commanded.

  A man of small stature with thick-soled shoes and pants that dragged the ground regardless of their hemming stepped forward from the crowd. He held up his hands.

  “Stefan
, Georgia, join me,” he said.

  Two others crossed into the circle and held up their hands.

  “Any others who know the chant, join in,” the woman with green hair said.

  Lyris and Brack stepped from the circle. Others filled the space between the crowd and where Vicken held the Wiccan Enforcer at arm’s length. At the first man’s nod, chanting in a language I didn’t recognize began. It started quietly as though those who spoke were unsure of the words. But as the chant continued, the voices strengthened until their words echoed off the walls and ceiling, bouncing back to us and amplifying until it felt like hundreds of people spoke.

  I realized with a start that they did. Everyone in the circle, regardless of race, features, or age, took up the chant, mimicking the words the first man said.

  The Wiccan Enforcer struggled to break free. She clawed at Vicken’s arm, but he didn’t let go. I limped closer in my wolf form, ready in case she tried to attack my friend.

  “He’s not your friend,” she said to Vicken. Red touched her lips as she spoke. “That werewolf will betray you. He’ll betray your family. He’ll be the reason your sister dies and your mother never comes home. You’ll be a disgrace, an outcast. You’ll be covenless, a wandering wraith, and all because of him.”

  Vicken closed his eyes. Her hands tightened on his arm. I realized she was pushing thoughts at him, defiling his memories the way she had mine to find his deepest, darkest secrets and use them against him to make him weaker. It was her last chance.

  “You’ll never be good enough to lead them. You know it’s true,” she continued. “Because you don’t understand your coven’s intolerant ways, it’ll undermine your ability to lead. Those who follow you will laugh behind your back. They’ll mock you. And all because you became friends with that werewolf.”

  She drew closer to him, talking all the while. “Your parents warned you about him, and now where is your mother? It’s all his fault; you know it is. You should blame him. He’s nothing but a cur, a mongrel, a mutt who’s taken away those you care about.”