And since she’d been through one or two of them, she’d know.
She gave him a hard stare. “When you and Caleb closed the hell-gate and released your father’s powers, you are sure you sealed it properly? Right?” she asked again.
He gave her a droll stare. “Are you seriously asking me if I said all the words? ’Cause yeah, I basically said it. Yeah. Almost in the right order. With all the right syllables.”
She rolled her eyes at his play on one of his favorite movies, Army of Darkness, that he’d made her see enough times that she now groaned out loud at the mere suggestion of it. “Yeah, it was definitely an N word… necktie… nickel… nectar.”
“Nekoda.”
“Not funny… Nick.”
“Yeah, I know. I suck as a dung-eating boyfriend.”
Kody snorted. “No. There, you don’t. Other departments…” She rocked her hand at him.
“Thanks.”
She flashed an attractive grin and winked. “Any time, baby. Any time. Hail to the queen.”
Suddenly, Stone started making a low howling noise from where he stood with his class, lined up against the opposite wall. And he wasn’t the only one. Mason. Alex. Justin.
Every one of the shape-shifters. They were all but whining and barking.
Well, that can’t be good. Especially when added to everything else that had already happened. It was as if they were reacting to something only their animal senses could detect. Like the way animals fled or panicked before natural disasters.
This just keeps getting better and better.
The teachers and staff who doubled as Squires, and knew about the preternatural students, began to get nervous that the shape-shifters were about to expose themselves to the “baretos” or normal humans who knew nothing about the supernatural world that coexisted with them and attended St. Richard’s. The Squires were all charged with protecting and concealing the identity and existence of the Were-Hunters.
“Attention, students!” Mr. Head said over a bullhorn as he walked down the hallway. “Your teachers will be dividing you into groups for either the cafeteria or the gym until such a time as we have power restored. Please move quickly and quietly to your assigned area.”
Nice. Good way to divide out the student body without the baretos being the wiser. This way if something caused the preters to break into their animal bodies, it wouldn’t freak out or endanger the uninitiated. Or betray the existence of the Were-Hunters.
Unfortunately, because the staff members didn’t know better and had no idea she was actually a corporeal ghost, Kody was placed in the baretos group. Nick, who worked part time as a Squire for an immortal warrior, was sent to the gym with the shape-shifters and the humans who knew about them. It was so aggravating to keep secrets. But as much as the humans thought they knew, there was a lot more to this world than even they suspected.
And no one could ever know who or what Nick really was. Not with the bounty on his head. Even a Squire might be tempted to take a shot at him. There were very few he could trust with that knowledge.
As Nick entered the gym, Brynna, whose entire family had been Squires for generations, sidled over to him. “Scary, isn’t it?”
“Highly unsettling.” Nick glanced over to Stone, who seemed to be struggling to hold on to his human form. He was sweating and shaking. Pale. While the two of them had never gotten along, Nick almost felt sorry for the werewolf.
Nah, not really. Stone was too much of a pack animal bully for that. He enjoyed using his superhuman strength and psychic powers to push others around.
As if on cue, Stone shoved his girlfriend, Casey, back when she moved to check on him, and growled ferociously at her.
Casey screwed her face up as she twisted her arm out of his fierce grip. “Ugh! Hope you die from whatever rabies ails you, Stone.”
Stone hissed at her, then grimaced at Nick. “What you looking at, trailer park?”
Not much.
But that made Nick curious about one thing.
“Hey, Bryn… if the Were-Hunters break into their alternate forms, how much human would be left in them?”
She glanced over to Stone. “In theory, especially in the case of Stone, those who have human hearts would remain cognizant of their behavior and in control of themselves.” Her gaze went to Alex Peltier. “Those who are Katagaria…” They were the ones who held animal hearts and weren’t as human as their Arcadian cousins.
“Let me guess. We’d be on their menu?”
“Like Brian on Scott,” she said, using the name of the football player who’d taken a bite out of his best friend after he’d played Madaug’s demon-enchanted Zombie Hunter game. “But we do have enough Squires here that they should be able to quell them before that happens.”
“The should in that sentence doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.”