Winter Break

by Ivy Hearne

  Hunters’ Academy

  2: Winter Break

  Ivy Hearne

  Hunters’ Academy 2: Winter Break

  Copyright © 2018 by Ivy Hearne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  Published by Belgate Press

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author or authors.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Hunters' Academy 2: Winter Break

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Hunters’ Academy Books

  About Hunters’ Academy 2: Winter Break

  SANTA’S CLAWS HAVE come to town...

  The worst part of having to stay at the Hunters’ Academy over the winter break is the pure boredom of it. With most of the other students away for the holidays, Kacie has little to do but read and watch movies...and practice all the hunting moves she learned in her first semester.

  When her boredom sends her on a run into the nearby human town, she discovers something horrific preying on the local children. But of everyone still on campus, she’s the only one who can see it—and that means she’ll have to put those hunting skills into practice much sooner than she expected.

  Fans of Dragon School, Fallen Academy, Secret Keepers, Vampire Academy, and Harry Potter will love Hunters’ Academy!

  Winter Break is episode 2, a short holiday special for readers of Hunters’ Academy—expect a new episode every month (and apparently some special stories in between, too!)

  Chapter 1

  The problem with spending the winter break at The Hunters’ Academy was that it was nothing like wizarding schools in books and movies. It didn’t have moving staircases or talking paintings or any of that stuff. We didn’t even have any ghosts—not that I knew of, anyway.

  It looked like a wizarding school in a book. The buildings were really old and made of blocky stones. But the nearby village—the only place to go shopping or out for a meal or anything—didn’t have a cute little pub or shops catering to the magical kids nearby.

  And worst of all, there was practically no one else there over the break. My hunting partner, Souji, and I were the only ones from our dorm. I didn’t know if Souji didn’t have a family to go home to or what. He couldn’t tell me, either, because he was a panther-shifter—or a werepanther, maybe; I didn’t know which term he preferred—who couldn’t shift. I’d seen him in his human form exactly once.

  His exceptionally hot human form.

  Though I tried not to think about that since he’d been injured at the time from trying to help save me.

  Anyway, I couldn’t go home because the only way we had been able to get my parents to let me attend at all was to pretend that I was going to some really fancy overseas school. As far as they were concerned, it was way too expensive to fly me home for the holidays. I would go visit them over the summer—after my first year ended.

  Assuming I survived that long.

  Right now, though, I was more worried about dying of boredom than I was about failing to complete my first year’s studies and tests.

  All we had to do while we were stuck at boarding school over the holidays was read, watch TV, and wander down to the kitchens every so often for meals. There weren’t even enough students in residence to bother opening the dining hall every day. We usually ate in one of the conference rooms in the Administration Building—everyone called it “the commons room” even though it wasn’t labeled in any way.

  Souji and I were hanging out in the first-floor lounge of our dorm, watching Netflix and eating popcorn I’d made in the microwave. Every so often, I would toss a kernel up for Souji to snap out of the air. When he succeeded, he gave me that feline grin of his. I wasn’t sure if he actually enjoyed the game, or if he saw it as honing his hunting skills. Or maybe he was just doing it to placate me. Anyway, we were both bored.

  I know I was, anyway.

  “God. I need to just go do something.” I pushed the popcorn bowl onto the end table next to me and stretched my arms above me. “Want to go for a run?”

  Souji tilted his head to the side and pushed his paws out in front and behind him in a luxurious feline stretch. When he pulled his legs back in, however, he tucked his paws under and laid his head down on them.

  “No?” I heaved a put-upon sigh. “You know that’s no way to treat your hunting partner.”

  Hunting partners. It was a term I had learned when I joined the Academy. Think lab partners, but with more death. Also, it wasn’t restricted to just one subject. Hunters’ Academy partners worked together on everything. Sometimes we would team up with other duos, but mostly our job was to learn to work together.

  If we functioned well together, we would be partnering all the way through the Academy. If we didn’t...well, we might be assigned to new partners next year. Or we might get kicked out of the Academy entirely.

  And getting kicked out came with some unpleasant side effects. Like having your memory of the Academy and everything associated with it completely wiped.

  In my case, the horrific migraines I’d had for four years, from the time I was twelve, would almost certainly return. Those could kill me.

  So for me, the options were pretty much Souji or death.

  Nobody had told me the whole story of what happened to Souji’s first partner. But I knew she was dead. No one else had been willing to work with the un-shifting shifter, and I had come into the program late—it had taken them a lot longer to track me down because of the magic blocking me my psychic powers and causing those migraines.

  Anyway, it meant Souji and I were stuck with each other.

  Honestly, I hadn’t inquired too closely into how his first partner had died. I was a little worried that my options might be Souji and death. I didn’t want those anxieties confirmed.

  But I wasn’t thinking about any of that at the moment. I just wanted to get out of the dorm and away from the empty, echoing hallways.

  Of course, I wasn’t entirely certain that the empty, echoing woodlands that surrounded the campus would be all that much better. But at least it would be a change of scenery.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” I asked Souji. I bent over and started pulling on the snow boots I had lugged down to the room with me in anticipation of this exact moment.

  Well, except I had hoped Souji would go with me.

  He closed his eyes and turned his head toward the window.

  “Lazy,” I accused.

  He chuffed out a laugh.

  I headed toward the door. “Okay, then. If you’re not going to go run with me, I’m going to go to town.”

  Souji’s ears perked up at that. I swear he liked causing people in town to have minor heart attacks when they saw the giant “pet” leopard I sometimes traveled with. Occasionally he would bring me the ridiculous jeweled collar and leash that we used in public places as a hint that he wanted to go into town. The leash itself was totally decorative. He could snap it in an instant if he wanted to, given his shifter strength.

  I’d heard some of the shifters thought the leashes were degrading. Souji seemed more amused than anything—it was simply another one of the workarounds that enabled us to function as a team. I eve
n had a special license for him, supposedly. I suspected it was really simply a magicked-up plastic card.

  “Sure you don’t want to go?” I wheedled. But this time, he just shook his head slightly and rested it back down on his paws.

  “Okay. You’re missing out on big fun, though. I’m going Christmas shopping.”

  He didn’t even open his eyes for that one. I wasn’t all that excited, either. But I needed to go ahead and get it done. Our temporary headmistress, Ms. Gayle, would arrange to have a Swiss postmark put on it.

  Someday I would have to actually go to Switzerland to figure out what I was supposed to have seen while I was in school there.

  The Colorado Rockies are pretty, though, too. Even if they aren’t the Swiss Alps.

  I enjoyed listening to the snow crunch under my boots as I made my way down the long drive to the road below. The school sat in a broad valley formed by a glacial plain, off the main road that wound down around the mountain. The crisp, cold, clear air blew away all the cobwebs in my head as I inhaled deeply.

  It was amazing to look at the world around me and see it without the sharp aura of a migraine, with its painful visuals like glass shards boring into my skull.

  I felt like I was finally learning to be a human again—right at the same time that I was learning how to be different from most humans.

  I took off at a gentle run down the road itself, reveling in the knowledge that I could run without being felled by headache pain at any moment.

  Although the town was only a few miles away, we rarely made it down there. As far as the local inhabitants knew, we were just a small private school for exceedingly wealthy children. I sometimes worried that I didn’t know how to act like a rich snob, though I could have easily played the role of scholarship kid. Most of my classmates came from long lines of hunters and many of them were snobs of a different sort.

  But I couldn’t pretend to be a scholarship kid with a pet panther. If you thought teacup Yorkies were expensive, I'd hate to see the bill for a domestic panther. So instead, I was Kacie the Panther Owner.

  The walk to the downtown stores was exactly what I had needed, even if the destination wasn’t a cute little English village with a kid-wizard-friendly tavern. But the mountain town did have occasional tourists, so the single storefront street was decorated with them in mind. And despite the relatively few shops, the lights and tinsel strung up along the walkway did make the entire place more cheerful.

  I strolled down the sidewalk, enjoying the tinny sound of Christmas carols floating in from somewhere nearby—probably one of the stores with its doors open. As I got to the town library, directly across the street from the tiny, local grocery store, I paused to admire the decorations on the lawn. One of the standouts was a full-size wooden nativity scene complete with Mary, Joseph, baby, and the usual barnyard animals. But there were also life-size statues of a few local animals, like an elk and a moose both checking in on the child in the manger. I laughed out loud when one of the fat chipmunks on Mary’s shoulder chittered at me and I realized it was real.

  Directly across the lawn from the creche stood a tiny house, painted all white, with gingerbread edging. A small wooden picket fence surrounded the house, and signs inviting people to get their picture taken with Santa faced outward on all sides. A line of parents and children snaked out the door and through the gate. There were more people standing there than I had ever seen in one place in town before.

  I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except they were all perfectly silent. I’d had to fight not to jump back when I noticed them standing there. Parents and children alike stood in line without talking—or moving, even, except to take one step forward when the next child in line went into the house. None of the babies cried. None of the children fought with their siblings. It was like no line of kids intent on seeing Santa that I had ever witnessed before.

  It set off every instinct I had begun to develop as a hunter.

  And I had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

  Chapter 2

  Ugh. I wish Souji was here.

  I should have made him come with me, even if he didn’t want to.

  I knew that wasn’t fair, though. Hunting partners weren’t meant to be joined at the hip.

  I hadn’t exactly dressed for hunting. I was wearing a heavy sweater and snow boots, and the only weapon I carried was a small dagger, easily hidden. I’d even left my long, blonde hair loose that morning, enjoying the feel of it streaming out behind me as I ran.

  My instructors had tried to convince me to cut my hair short, but I refused. Suddenly their warnings that it could provide a handhold to opponents worried me more than it had before.

  I pulled it over one shoulder and plaited it into a single braid. Then I wound that around one fist and tucked it up under the knit hat I’d pulled down over my ears.

  The people in line ignored me as I walked past them toward the hut. No one even protested about me cutting into the line as I walked directly in front of the people at the front.

  No babies crying, no toddlers racing around, no bored teenagers whining, no parents complaining, no one on their phones.

  There’s something horribly wrong here.

  And as soon as I stuck my head through the door, I saw exactly what it was.

  Santa sat on his big chair inside, all right, and a woman in a green and red Christmas elf costume stood across from him snapping photos.

  All that was normal enough. What wasn’t normal was the thing sitting on Santa’s shoulders.

  I cataloged the whole scene in the blink of an eye.

  It was about the size of a toddler, but gray and naked with long, spindly arms and legs. Its prehensile toes gripped Santa’s shoulders and it leaned around his head, its gray, protruding belly flattening the Christmas hat Santa wore. Its ears were pointed like a dog’s, its face smashed and scrunched like a pug’s. An evil pug’s. And with its spindly fingers, it gripped the head of the child sitting on Santa’s lap, something poisonous and red strobing between it and the child.

  The little boy on Santa’s lap should’ve been cute. He was blonde with big green eyes and a dimple in one cheek. And although I wasn’t good at guessing children’s ages, I would put him at about three—or at least an age at which he should have been chattering to Santa about what he wanted or perhaps even crying and trying to get away from the jolly old elf. But instead, he sat perfectly still, a vacuous expression on his face.

  I froze for a split second, part of my mind trying to categorize the thing atop Santa according to the books I had been studying that listed the various Lusus Naturae.

  The other part of my mind screeched in horror and tried to skitter away. But I pulled myself to my senses and acted at about the same time the creature—which I’m sure was an imp—realized I was there.

  I didn’t even have a knife out, but I leaped forward and scooped the child up in my arms, snatching it out of the imp’s grasping fingers. Spinning around, I shoved the boy into his mother’s arms and hustled her out of the hut. Standing in the doorway, I waved at everyone and announced, “I’m so sorry. Santa is taking a break. He’ll be back...um...later. So you’ll have to come back another time.”

  As if my words broke the spell they were under, suddenly I was faced with a normal crowd again, one full of people grumbling about being sent away after standing in line.

  I ducked back into the hut just in time to see the imp jumping out the tiny window. With a curse, I barreled out the door, jumping over the short white fence to follow it.

  The imp scampered over the lawn and across the street behind it, heading directly for the stone wall that rose straight up to the next level of the switchback road, a good twenty feet above this one.

  I was prepared to turn left or right to follow the creature along the ground.

  I was not prepared for it to leap up, dig its fingers and toes into the sheer rock wall, and clamber up almost as quickly as it had moved along level ground.

 
; At the bottom of what suddenly looked like a cliff to me, I stared up at the imp’s rapidly retreating form. It jumped onto the road and turned to stare back down at me with an evil little grin before disappearing entirely.

  I leaned my hands on my knees, breathing heavily. I could have followed the road to the switchback and ended up in the same place, but that thing was fast. It would be long gone by the time I got there.

  If my hunting partner had been here, he could have jumped up after it.

  Crap. I should have called him.

  Psychically.

  Which I supposedly could do now. The Hunters’ Academy instructors had agreed that my abilities were unblocked. But I wasn’t any good at using them yet. When I tried, I either failed to send anything at all—or I broadcast whatever I was thinking to everyone on the school grounds.

  And I still couldn’t tell which one, most of the time.

  But plenty of people had helpfully let me know when I had accidentally sent out the message about my roommate Erin’s friend Colette having toilet paper on her shoe.

  I didn’t much like Colette. And now everyone knew it. Including Colette.

  Anyway, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to reach Souji with my psychic abilities, even if I’d tried. And it’s not like I could have called him on his phone. If he had one, I didn’t know about it.

  I might as well try to let him know what was going on now. Leaning my back against the wall, I took one more look up to make sure the imp hadn’t returned. Then I closed my eyes and focused on sharing what had happened with Souji.

  I didn’t know whether I’d been successful, but at least I’d tried.

  I hadn’t felt anything. I never felt anything when I tried to use my powers. I hadn’t felt any kind of surge since I’d sent out my psychic blast while I was fighting my former tutor, Shane, back when I’d discovered he was aligned with the evil Lusus Naturae, the supernaturals who believed all humans should be subject to their rule.