by Ben Reeder
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, I have to be at school, too, you know. It’s kind of my job.” He turned west and before long, we were pulling up in front parking lot of Kennedy High School. Dr. C came to a stop behind my black Mustang just long enough for me to hop out, then he took off.
Ren floated down as I opened the driver’s side door to grab my backpack. “Is that it?” he asked.
“For now, yeah,” I said as I slung my backpack across one shoulder. “Rest of the day is pretty much yours.” I started toward the doors.
He smiled at that. “I can finish weeding the herb garden and work on my house a little. What about this afternoon? Can I help then?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I stopped at the base of the steps up to the doors. “I’d feel better if you were flying the perimeter, but you’ve done more than your share. And…I don’t think this is something you need to burden yourself with. This is the first chance we’ve had to get to some of these guys before the cops do. And we owe Collins plenty for letting us get them first.”
“Okay,” Ren said with a broad smile. “Is it okay if I do a couple of runs around here, today, though?”
“Sure. Why don’t you do a quick scan before you head home?”
“Okay! See you after school!” he said, his words getting faint as he sped away, leaving me to face the tedium of the rest of the school day on my own.
Chapter 2
~ We do great things in under the cloak of night, but in the light of day, we are still but men and women among the cowan ~ Grandmaster Phineas Mobray, 16th century Council head
School hadn’t gotten any easier while I was away at the Franklin Academy. Blowing up a three-hundred-year-old building hadn’t helped things, and news of that had travelled fast. After two periods of whispers behind my back and snickers every time I spoke up in class in English Lit and French, I was more than ready for Art class. I pulled my sketch book out of my bag and turned to the piece I was currently working on, a line drawing using vanishing point perspective.
“Here we see the aspiring nutjob in his natural environment,” someone said from behind me in a bad East Coast accent. “Note his posture, the hunched back, the intense stare, and the crappy drawing. Among freaks and weirdos, this is known as ‘working on my art’ and is often an excuse for not getting a job or having a real life.” Half the class erupted in laughter, and I turned to face my tormentor, Jake Riley.
“What’s the matter, Jake?” I asked. “Did mommy forget to pack your crayons today?”
Jake stood up, all six feet, two inches of testosterone fueled beef slowly rising from his seat with a dark look on his face. The leather of his letter jacket creaked as he flexed a little. “You better watch yourself, freak,” he said.
“Or what?” I asked, letting a smile creep onto my face.
“Or bad shit is gonna happen. Karma’s a bitch, right?” His groupies laughed in unison, their hair not moving a millimeter.
“And so are you,” I said before I thought about it. The laughter stopped, and a wall of jocks closed in around me.
“Watch your mouth, freak,” Jake said, holding a thick black marker in front of my face. “It’s gonna get the crap beat out of you someday.” He tossed it over my shoulder, and the rest of the jocks started shoving me around, laughing the whole time. A few seconds later, the crowd evaporated, leaving me disoriented for a few seconds., When I got my bearings, I saw that my drawing had several thick black lines drawn through it.
“Something wrong, Mr. Fortunato?” Mr. Weber asked as I grabbed the sketch pad and bit back a curse. I looked up to see him approaching his desk.
“Nothing I can’t fix,” I said, casting a glare at Jake and his cronies. I sat down and flipped the page to start working on something new. It was hard to forget that I’d just taken down four heavily armed men with nothing more than a stick and some pretty rocks in a glove when I had to let Jake and his gaggle of clowns push me around. I wanted to see the look on their faces, though, after I magicked away the marks they’d left on my first drawing.
The bell for lunch couldn’t ring soon enough. Before the sound had stopped echoing through the halls, I was out of my seat and halfway to the door. Lucas was waiting by my locker, his canvas lunch bag slung over his shoulder. He stood at eye level to me, something he had only been able to say for a couple of months, since he’d been growing both upward and outward. Neither of us were varsity linemen, but we’d both started to show some muscle. On Lucas, it showed up in definition. The black concert t-shirt he had on was stretched across his chest like it was a half-size too small. He’d taken to wearing his hair longer and combed back while I was away last semester, and it looked damn good on him. Pale white arms wrapped around his chest from behind, and Monica’s face popped up over his right shoulder. Even Lucas’s new bulk couldn’t hide the dangerous curves of that girl, and she had more than enough of them pressed up against his back. I let myself grin a little at how good they looked together. Monica had certainly blossomed after she’d gotten away from Thraxus’ vampire den. She certainly smiled more often, especially when Lucas was around. For that matter, the same was true of Lucas.
“Hi, Chance,” Monica said. She’d dyed her hair black and had gone with a nod to Morticia Addams with her make-up, leaning toward darker shades on the eyeshadow and blood red lipstick. Her hair was the same color as Lucas’s was, straight where his was wavy. “Hey, baby,” she purred in Lucas’s ear. “You still takin’ me to prom?” Blood pressures went up in every guy and even a few girls within earshot of her voice. In my locker, I found a brown paper bag with Mom’s handwriting on it. It hadn’t been there this morning. Mentally, I thanked Ren and made a mental note to get him a whole jar of peanut butter and honey. Or honey peanut butter. Or honey peanut butter and honey.
“Of course,” he said, his own voice dropping an octave. “It’s only the biggest dance of the year, and I’ll be there with the hottest girl in school.” She giggled, and he turned and kissed her cheek.
“I’m gonna need insulin or something,” I said while I grabbed the bag from my locker and closed it. “You two need a room… or a cold shower.”
“Yeah, now you know what you and Shade are like,” Lucas laughed. “So, how did your uh, errand go this morning?”
I turned away from the locker and we headed for the cafeteria. “We were almost too late. Something must have spooked them into kicking off early, because they hadn’t even finished with their biggest party favors.”
“Party favors…as in plural?” Lucas asked, his eyes getting a little wider.
“Yeah, the usual fireworks, covered in putty, then wrapped in chains and covered in nails, broken glass, you name it. Maximum damage dealer. The other one was some kind of chemical thing. Dr. C is going to look it over tonight. He thinks it’s either a chemical explosive or maybe some kind of poison gas.”
Lucas pushed the doors open to the cafeteria and stepped inside, turning back to face me as we walked toward our table. “But you caught them, right?”
“Yeah, he did,” Shade said from behind me. She wrapped one lean arm around my chest and thrust her cell phone out in front of me.
“False alarm at Truman High School?” the caption read below a fuzzy pic of the four gunmen running toward the door.
“Who took this?” I asked.
“Couple of seniors who didn’t have class until second period,” Shade said. I turned around to face her and kissed her, only allowing myself to grab her hair for a second to give a gentle tug. Her chin lifted, and her eyes closed as she let out a soft sound from the back of her throat.
“Hi there,” I said.
“Hello to you, too, mister.” We pulled away and headed for the table. Wanda was already there, her head bent over her cell phone, the hair all black for a change. She looked up when she heard us coming and tossed the phone down on the table.
“Hey guys,” she said, her tone flat. The screen on her phone displayed a photo, but it was too far a
way for me to make out. Not so for my werewolf girlfriend.
Shade leaned forward and hit the button on the cell phone. “Wanda, you need to stop obsessing over Giselle,” she said. “It’s been three weeks, sweetie. It’s time to stop.”
“I know,” Wanda sighed. “And she’s been with her new girlfriend for two weeks. I kinda hoped it would take her longer to get over us. Is it really too much to ask for her to pine away and die without me?”
My lips pressed hard against each other to keep from showing my amusement at her snark. “Maybe a little,” I said.
“Well, I wish her and the new love of her life the boring existence she craves,” Wanda said.
“Not everyone deals well with the stuff we do,” Lucas said. He looked over at Monica for a moment and his smile got a little brighter. I struggled to keep my poker face on and not look away. Being my friend had cost Lucas and Wanda terribly over the past couple of years. Wanda had been abducted and beaten by a group of vampires, and Lucas had lost his family and been threatened by the city’s most powerful vampire.
“Dating me is not like dating a cop,” Wanda said. “And I’m not an adrenaline junkie. New Essex is just a dangerous city sometimes.”
“Most of the time, these days,” Lucas said. “Now that you’ve had us looking for it, Chance, it’s like someone’s turning New Essex upside down. Someone even tried to break into the store last night.”
“Is your grandfather okay?” I asked.
“He’s fine. It’s the guy who tried to break in who needed a doctor. Grandpa put a round of birdshot in his ass. And I’m not being metaphorical or anything. I checked our rare book side, too. He’s been getting requests for some books we’ve never heard of before. He found one of them, and if he can get it, we can shut the doors for the rest of the year and not worry about going broke. He’s just not sure he wants to.”
“What about the admin side, Wanda?”
“It’s nuts,” Wanda said. “I looked up the numbers here and all through the district, and it’s like there’s something in the water. Fights, drop-outs, expulsions, they’ve all spiked. Most of them coming from the fringes. The Nordic groups, the black magic crowd, the wanna-be Kabbalists and Golden Dawners. All of them are acting like someone put a cattle prod to their butts.”
“And evidently, they’re going out to the woods to do their ceremonies,” Shade said with a curl to her upper lip. “I can’t tell you how many stray dogs and cats the pack has saved from groups of idiots in the woods with black robes and sacrificial knives. Sad thing is, I don’t think we stop more than a third of them, judging from the sites we find after they’re done. I know you don’t want us to kill anyone, Chance, but I’m this close,” she held up her thumb and forefinger touching, “to crippling the next piece of shit who thinks gutting some poor dog is going to summon a tentacled Elder God or Cthulhu.”
“I’m not sure I wouldn’t help you,” I told her. “Something’s going on, but I’m not seeing a pattern.”
“If what you stopped this morning is part of where all of this is heading,” Shade said, pointing to her phone and the article on its screen, “then we need to find that pattern fast.”
“Faster than fast,” Lucas said. He pulled Monica to him and kissed the top of her head
“Dr. C and I are doing what we can, but this is the…” I stopped as my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. The number on the screen started with a California area code, so I put it back in my pocket.
“Aren’t you going to check that?” Shade asked, her voice a little too casual.
“Nah, it isn’t as important as what we’re talking about,” I said. She raised one eyebrow as she caught the half-truth. “So, where was I?”
“You were about to tell us all about your thrilling heroics this morning,” Lucas said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That nearly went sideways fast. When we got there, they had already left. Ren helped us find the sniper, but that delayed us long enough that they got to the school and almost got shots off.”
The rest of the story took up most of lunch, but in the back of my head, the things we’d talked about first were still churning, and the text I’d received was still waiting. Once the bell rang, I kissed Shade and headed for AP Forensics. At least in that class, Dr. C had my back, and I could take a moment to make a quick call on the way, since Shade had to go the opposite direction for tennis class. Most of our classes were on different sides of the school this year, and it made for a long time between study hall and lunch, and from lunch to Sociology II, which we had together. Once I finished with my call, I hustled to catch up with Lucas and Wanda, and at least give the appearance of being on time to class.
An infinite number of seconds later (I counted), I quick-stepped through the door to Sociology a microsecond before the bell rang, my hair still wet from the showers after Weight Training. Mrs. Bendis had us work in small groups on maps of Egypt for the last half of class, and we got assigned agricultural resources.
“Damn you smell good,” Shade whispered to me while we were cutting out the map symbols with Sasha Morgan, one of Shade’s friends from cheerleading. “Whatever you showered with, I have to get you more of it.”
“Just whatever is in the shower dispensers,” I whispered back. “And not much of that. I think I still smell like a locker room.” Her eyes got distant, and I could tell she was thinking sweaty thoughts when she licked her lips and leveled a smoldering, green-eyed look at me. Monkey brain hooted happily in the back of my head, and I didn’t disagree.
“God, you two,” Sasha Morgan moaned. “Get your minds out of each other’s pants.”
“We didn’t say anything,” Shade said in a chilly tone. “And we’re not all over each other.”
“You’re mentally undressing each other,” Sasha chuckled. “Why don’t you two just do the deed and get it over with? It’s not like you’re virgins or anything, right?” Shade and I both looked away at that. Neither of us were, but that had never been a choice we’d been allowed to make. My cheeks burned at the memories that brought up, and I could see Shade’s face turning red as well.
“Well, it’s not really…” I started.
“I mean, we’re technically…” Shade said at the same time.
Sasha’s mouth fell open and her eyes went wide. “Oh, my Goooood,” she whispered. “You’re both… Brad has been lying his ass off this whole time!”
“What has he been saying?” Shade demanded. If her tone was chilly before, it was subarctic now.
“Just the usual stuff ex-boyfriends say about their con…er-girlfriends. I mean, the way you two were all over each other, everyone just assumed you…and you,” she turned to me. “I mean, no one figured you for a virgin, either. But it totally makes sense!”
“We’re…not,” Shade said.
“You’re not?” Sasha said. We both shook our heads. “But you haven’t…?” We exchanged a look. I wasn’t sure how much we wanted anyone else to know about our relationship, and I could see the same uncertainty in her eyes. “You haven’t! Why not?”
“Can we not talk about this?” I asked.
“Sure,” Sasha said in a tone that said to me that while we weren’t going to talk about it, she sure as Hell intended to, even if it wasn’t with us.
When the bell rang, both of us were out the door before anyone else had cleared their seats. We ended up standing next to my Mustang, Shade leaning against me while I leaned against the side of the car.
“What a damn day,” I muttered. She nodded, her forehead against mine.
“Yeah,” she said. “And you keeping things from me didn’t make it any easier.”
“Keeping things from you?” I asked.
“I can tell when people are lying, Chance. I saw you calling someone after lunch. And there was that text. Are you going to tell me who it was?” She pulled back from me and looked me in the eye.
“No,” I said. “Not yet. All I can tell you is that it isn’t anything bad. There’s nothing to worry a
bout.”
“Even you don’t believe that,” she said.
“That it isn’t anything bad? Of course, I do.”
“You’re worried. Chance I can smell it, I can hear your heartbeat change and I can feel the way your muscles tense when you’re not being honest with me.”
“It’s for a good cause,” I said.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” she said and stepped back from me. “It better be worth it to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I don’t like being played, and I really don’t like it when you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Shade, I’m your gothi, not another Were. You might be an Alpha, but I’m just as stubborn as you are. And I’m not stupid. Certainly not stupid enough to break your trust.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But neither one of us is very bright and shiny in the morals department. Even now.” She turned and headed for her car before I could say anything, but then, I didn’t know much of what to say anyway.
“Love you,” I finally said when she was about fifty yards away. She stopped and turned, the brought her right hand up. In rapid succession, she flashed her pinky, then formed her thumb and index finger into an L shape and finished with her thumb and pinky up, the American Sign Language letters I, L & Y. Then with a half-smile and a sigh, she turned back and kept going. I got in my car, certain this day couldn’t get any worse.
My day got worse the minute I pulled up to the warehouse Dr. Corwin and I had been working out of. Outside the main doors waited a semi-circle of blue cloaks, and I couldn’t see Dr. C. What I did see was a bunch of parimiirs in staff mode.
“Gentlemen, ladies,” I heard a smooth, familiar voice say. “I cannot allow you to take custody of my clients, nor can I allow them to languish in captivity for a moment longer.” I only knew of one person who could stand in front of a crowd of Sentinels and pull off a line like that.
Chapter 3
~ We go to dark places and witness fell and terrible things, so others need not. ~ Sydney Chomsky, wizard