Hunters of Chaos

by Crystal Velasquez

  “You mean, he does,” I corrected her. “He’s still out there somewhere.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Lin said. “I can’t believe we have to do this three more times. Don’t these evil Chaos whatevers even know who I am?”

  “They do now,” Doli said. “You’re a Wildcat. And that beats pampered princess any day.”

  The old Lin would have bristled at that comment, but instead I saw pride on her face. It must have felt pretty great to be respected for something she was instead of something she had.

  I had just crouched under the yellow tape, stepping on a plank of wood set up by the archaeologists—Did they know they were working for a demon god?—when I caught a flash of movement. A figure, silhouetted against the lightening sky, stumbled away from the site, running to hide behind a tree before we noticed her. But I’d know that golden-blond hair anywhere. “Nicole!” I shouted.

  Catching my gaze, Doli took off running and caught up to Nicole easily, trapping her against the cliff wall. The three other Wildcats ran to catch up, Jason trailing behind. Soon we all surrounded her.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  Nicole sneered at me, narrowing her eyes. “What? A girl can’t go for a run in the morning? You get three friends—”

  “Four,” Jason interrupted.

  Nicole rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You get a few friends and suddenly you think you own the place.”

  Doli scoffed. “You can’t seriously expect us to believe you went running in your jeans and those shoes.”

  We all looked down to take in her expensive Jimmy Choo ballet flats.

  Nicole’s eyes shifted nervously. She cleared her throat. “I don’t give a flying fig what you believe,” she said. “Besides, you’re the ones who have been trespassing here, taking coins that don’t even belong to you.”

  “Coins?” I said. “How could you possibly know about . . .” I trailed off, slowly putting the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. I looked at the other Wildcats. “The last time I talked about the coin Jason found at the excavation site was when we were in the library—the day we thought we heard someone outside, eavesdropping on us. Remember? The only people who knew about it were the five of us and . . . Dr. Logan.”

  Understanding dawned on everyone’s faces.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “You’re the one who’s been spying on us for Anubis!” So many things made sense now. I’d thought Jason had led the demon bat to the temple, but I realized that Jason would never have done that. Nicole, on the other hand, had told me to stay away from Doli; she’d egged on fights between Lin and me; she’d tried to tease me out of meeting with Ms. Benitez. Maybe being assigned as her roommate had been no accident. She’d been a horrible roommate to Shani, too, I remembered, possibly hoping that Shani would give up and transfer to another school. It hadn’t worked, but she tried the same tactic on me, beginning with spilling the mocha latte on my laptop. Anubis and his minions hadn’t been able to stop us from coming to Temple, so they did what they could to keep us apart once we all got here. “How long have you known about us?” I demanded.

  Nicole brushed her hair away from her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, sure you do,” Shani offered. “And I’m betting we have you to thank for locking the school gate the night Anubis got away!”

  Nicole’s eyes widened. “You can’t prove anything!”

  “Can’t I?” Shani asked with a slow grin. “You know there are security cameras all over this school, right? You roomed with me—do you doubt my ability to hack into that system?”

  Nicole opened her mouth to answer, but no words seemed to come. They weren’t needed, anyway. Her guilty expression was enough.

  Lin gasped. “How could you, Nicole?”

  “Oh, who are you to judge me?” Nicole spit out. She skewered Lin with a look, as if she were searching for a target to hit. “You used to be important around here, but now you’re just a thief who hangs out with rejects.”

  Bull’s-eye.

  I watched Lin’s face harden her into the take-no-prisoners mean girl I’d first met just more than two weeks ago. I thought she was about to give Nicole a verbal body slam, and I had to admit, that was something I desperately wanted to see. But Lin just leaned in, narrowed her eyes, and let out a deep, menacing growl from deep within her tiger self. Any self-respecting human would have peed her pants.

  Any human.

  But as it turned out, Nicole wasn’t strictly human.

  When Lin stepped closer to her, the acrid smell of fear filled the air around Nicole. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. But as I watched, Nicole’s sky-blue eyes receded into their sockets until they were hard little onyx marbles. Muddy brown fur grew like weeds until her peaches-and-cream skin was covered with it. Gone were the perfect cheekbones, the expertly tweezed eyebrows, and pert button nose. It their place was a wide, bulbous black nose, a high, sloping forehead, and sunken jowls. Before our eyes, Nicole’s face, which I had thought was so beautiful, transformed into that of a beady-eyed scavenger—framed with gorgeous blond hair.

  Marilyn Monroe was a hyena.

  Just when I thought nothing else could surprise me. Were there any humans at this school? Temple Academy was turning out to be a much crazier place than I’d thought. I stumbled backward, unable to form a coherent sentence. “What? Huh? How did . . . ?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” said Shani, gaping at Nicole in utter disbelief.

  Lin, if possible, looked even more unnerved, her hand flying to her mouth. “Did I make that happen?” she asked guiltily.

  Doli, the first to recover from her shock, approached Nicole calmly. “In a way,” she said. “Nicole, you’ll tell me if I’m wrong, but you’re not a human who can turn into an animal, like us. You’re an animal that can turn into a human, right?” At Nicole’s silence, Doli nodded as if that had been all the confirmation she needed. “I’m guessing Anubis granted you that power, but it takes a little effort to maintain the illusion.” Doli cast an appreciative glance at Lin. “You just scared some of the human right out of her,” she said.

  Lin let her hand fall to her side and gave Doli a slow smile. “Cool.”

  Nicole whimpered, emitting a noise that sounded like goofy laughter but was probably a cry for help.

  “Relax, Nicole,” Doli said. “We’re not going to kill you when it’s four against one—”

  “Five,” Jason chimed in.

  Doli smiled. “Right. Make that five against one. That’s just bad sportsmanship. We’re going to set you free. But there is a saying among my people. It goes . . .” Then she said some beautiful-sounding words in her native Navajo language.

  “Pretty,” I said. “What’s it mean?”

  “ ‘When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, strike first.’ In other words, you’d better not cause us any more trouble, because we will strike, and a scrawny hyena is no match for the Wildcats. Got it?”

  With a voice that sounded like boots crunching on gravel, Nicole looked right at me and said, “You are fools.”

  I stepped closer until our faces were only inches apart. “What was that?”

  “Did you think you’re any match for a god?” she said. “You’re so proud because you defeated the bat, but Anubis’s plans are so far beyond you. The battle means nothing when Anubis has already won the war.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  Nicole gave me the same infuriating smirk she often had as a human. “You don’t really think I’m the only hyena at this school, do you? That I am the only one in his service?”

  I took a small step back and shuddered. “There are others?”

  “Aww . . . ,” Nicole said, reaching out with her still-human hand and stroking my cheek. “You’re so cute. You don’t know anything!”

  In a flash, Jason stepped forward and batted Nicole’
s hand away from my face. Nicole emitted another whooping laugh, this time full of satisfaction. But we quickly closed in around her and joined in a chorus of warning growls.

  Immediately, teacup-size hyena ears sprang up through Nicole’s blond hair like the Mickey Mouse hats they sell at Disney World. The effect was so funny that despite the tension in the air, we collapsed into helpless giggles.

  Nicole eyed us nervously, seeming to sense the shift of power. As my laughter died down, I felt my confidence return. “We may not know who the others are,” I began, “if there are others. But we know you. And you won’t be bothering us anymore. In fact, you’re going to talk to Mrs. O’Grady tomorrow and tell her you lied about me attacking you and that you’re very sorry, am I right?”

  Nicole looked away, clearly resentful that, for once, I was the one in charge. Reluctantly, she nodded her head.

  I leaned in. “And tell your boss we’re coming for him.”

  I gestured for the other girls to back off, and as soon as they did, Nicole scurried away, her shoulders curving and ripping through her expensive blouse, wiry hair sprouting along her arms. I had never seen anything as hilarious as Hyena Nicole loping through the woods in True Religion jeans and ballet flats.

  As we walked back toward the dorms, enjoying the cool night air, Jason asked all kinds of questions about what it was like to be a big cat. He said he’d had trouble accepting it at first, but now that he’d gotten used to the idea, he wanted to know everything.

  “Is that why you were so good at lacrosse?” he asked. “I mean, some of the moves I taught you took me years to learn, but you picked them up like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “There’s so much we don’t know yet about our powers. If Ms. Benitez ever wakes up, maybe she can help us figure it all out. I have more questions about that temple, too.”

  “Oh, that’s right! I never got a chance to tell you,” Jason said.

  “Tell her what?” Doli asked.

  “You know the other night when I saw you change into a human?” he said.

  “He saw you?” Lin stared at me.

  “It was an accident,” I explained. “We’ll talk about it later. Promise. Go on, Jason.”

  “Well, the reason I was looking for you was to tell you that I figured out the temple couldn’t be Anasazi. Remember how I told you that all the Anasazi settlements were on the same meridian?”

  I nodded. We’d had that conversation right after I’d seen the green-eyed cat for the first time. Where is the cat, anyway? We hadn’t seen it again once we’d entered the temple.

  “After I figured out what the meridian was, I mapped it out, and the temple is nowhere near the line. There’s no way it is an Anasazi structure.” He shrugged. “But I guess you figured that out already.”

  “Kind of,” I agreed. “I think that’s why Dr. Logan was so quick to take that Roman coin from you. He didn’t want anyone to know that the temple wasn’t Anasazi, because it was a great cover.”

  “Poor Mom,” he said again. “She’s got all these archaeologists all over the country talking about the Anasazi temple. What’s going to happen when they start poking around and realize it’s something else altogether?”

  “Are you kidding?” said Shani. “They’ll have found a real-life temple of evil from every civilization they’ve ever studied. They’ll be stoked.”

  “Plus, at least they’ll see that the Brotherhood of Chaos was real, and Ms. Benitez will be vindicated. Maybe they’ll finally publish her paper!” said Doli.

  “I don’t know, you guys,” I added. I turned to Jason. “Anubis was able to get your mom to agree to move the whole school to protect his secret. Who knows what other crazy plans he has in mind.”

  Jason took a deep breath. “As long as none of those plans involves my mom . . . ,” he said.

  “Tell her Dr. Logan was a jerk anyway,” I offered. “She’s better off.”

  Jason smiled. “Will do. Speaking of my mom, I’d better get home now. With any luck, she hasn’t woken up yet to find out I’m not there. See you around, Wildcats.” He smiled at each of us, lingering an extra second or two on me, then headed down the path toward his house.

  Out of the side of my eye, I saw Lin gazing after him as he went. But when she noticed me watching him too, she huffed in frustration and turned away. I sighed. I could take on an evil demon god, but I had no clue how to fix Lin’s broken heart. There had to be a way to have Jason in my life without hurting my friend.

  We reached the circle of benches outside of Radcliff Hall a few minutes later. I noticed Lin looking at our dorm with worried eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Lin bit her lip. “I don’t know if I can go in there. Everyone hates me.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “We don’t. Besides, Doli told me she went to check on you after what happened and you weren’t in your room or in the common room, so you must have hidden out in someone’s room, right?”

  “No.” Lin hesitated. “I stole Antonio’s keys and hid in the jet.”

  No wonder Doli hadn’t been able to find her! “He’s really touchy about people going near the jet without permission,” I said, remembering how he’d reacted to Nicole.

  “I’m aware of that,” Lin said miserably. “I just didn’t know where else to go. Now that everyone knows I’m a thief, how can I even show my face?”

  “You can start by telling us why you did it,” Doli said evenly.

  Shani sat down on the back of one of the benches, resting her arms on her legs. “Yeah, why would someone as loaded as you are turn into a klepto?”

  Lin bowed her head and whispered, “I’m not rich.”

  We all looked at one another, completely confused. “Of course you are. Your dad’s an ambassador; your mom’s a famous actress . . . ,” I said, repeating Lin’s favorite speech.

  “That was before,” Lin cut in. “My dad’s accountant turned out to be a con man who cheated him out of millions. And my mom got cut from her last movie so they could hire a younger actress. That Marchesa bag was their parting gift to her so she wouldn’t talk about it in the press.”

  “But if all that is true, how can you afford to go to this school?” I wondered aloud.

  Lin sighed. “Principal Ferris is an old family friend. She met my mom in college when she was studying abroad. Anyway, she agreed to waive the tuition fees, provided I make a donation to the school someday, after I graduate.”

  Doli folded her arms and turned to Lin. “You mean to tell me all this time you’ve been on my case about being here on scholarship, you’ve been here on one too? You tortured me about that!”

  Lin shifted her eyes away guiltily. “I know, and I’m sorry. But you don’t know what it’s like for me! I have always been rich. Everyone knows that. And you may not think so, but there’s a lot of pressure that comes with having money. When I found out that we were . . . poor”—she contorted her face as though the word left a disgusting taste in her mouth—“I was so embarrassed. I figured the bigger deal I made about you not having money, the fewer questions people would ask me.”

  “And the stealing?” I prompted.

  She sat heavily on the bench next to Shani’s legs. “I’ve been collecting things that I could sell online so I’d have money to buy clothes and jewelry—keep up appearances. That was the plan, anyway. Stupid, right? You all must think I’m an idiot.”

  “No,” Doli said.

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “Totally,” Shani said, nodding emphatically. When Doli and I glared at her, she lifted her hands and shrugged. “What? You thought no one would notice when all the stuff missing around school shows up for sale from the same eBay seller? Even she admits it was a dumb plan. But look.” She climbed down from her perch atop the bench and sat down next to Lin, throwing her arm over her shoulders. “Who cares what those snooty girls think anyway? Half of them are only like that because they were trying to imp
ress you. But now that you’ve got us, you can just be yourself—which happens to be pretty cool.”

  Lin gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Shani.”

  “But what about Nicole?” said Doli. “What if she reports Lin and tries to get her expelled?”

  “I don’t think she will,” I replied. “Not after the scare we put into her tonight. But, Lin, it wouldn’t hurt if you apologized to the girls you stole from.”

  “I will. And I promise I’ll return everything I took, starting with Antonio’s keys.” She looked at each of us with genuine affection on her face. “Who needs designer clothes anyway when you’ve got the Wildcats as friends?”

  “Hear, hear!” Shani said. “Now, if you don’t mind”—she stood up and pulled her blue hair under her nose and sniffed at it—“I need to go wash the bat smell out of my hair.”

  We laughed and followed her toward the dorm. As we got closer, I noticed that the lights were on at full power. If I had to guess, I’d say the lights came back on at the same time that the Chaos Spirit’s light went out.

  Later that night I got a text from Jason.

  Mom just got a call from the hospital. Ms. Benitez is awake.

  chapter 22

  TWO DAYS LATER SHANI, DOLI, Lin, and I were sitting in the uncomfortable chairs of the hospital’s waiting room. I was jittery with impatience. Today was the first time since Ms. Benitez had woken up that she’d been allowed visitors, and I couldn’t wait to see her. Even though I’d been told she was all right, so many things I’d been told lately had turned out to be lies, I wouldn’t believe it until I could see for myself.

  At last a young nurse in light blue scrubs entered. “You can all go see her now,” she said.

  I tore out of my chair, eagerly following the nurse down the hallway to room 218. When we got there, she gestured for us to go inside. But now that I was there, I hesitated. I was scared that I’d find Ms. Benitez still unconscious with wires and tubes crisscrossing her body. Slowly I took a step in, followed by the others.