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A Hunters’ Academy Story
Ivy Hearne
My parents had always intended for me to attend the Hunters’ Academy.
I was less certain.
I mean, I had been brought up to believe that the evil coalition of supernaturals who wanted to subjugate humanity, the Lusus Naturae, needed to be eradicated, or at the very least kept under control.
I was absolutely on board with that idea.
But I didn’t know how I could end up being part of that fight.
As a bobcat shifter, I wasn’t clear on how I could participate. Sure, I had my teeth and claws, but I had never been much of a fighter.
My parents were determined to have me continue the family tradition of Academy attendance, though. So when Ms. Allen, our wealthy neighbor, offered to sponsor my early application to the Academy, Mom and Dad jumped at the chance to send in a request for me to attend The Applicants’ Ball, an annual spring tradition where applicants to the Academy were invited to show off their particular skills at some point during the party.
My formal invitation to attend arrived two days before spring break.
Turning over the envelope, I examined the thick, cream stationery and my address in hand-drawn calligraphy.
The weight of it in my hand turned into a ball in my stomach.
I’m not sure I want to go.
But I couldn’t say the words out loud to my parents.
I was an only kitten, unusual within bobcat clowders—our clans tended to have multi-kitten litters. As it was, I was my family’s only chance at having a legacy Hunters’ Academy graduate.
I couldn’t let them down.
If it was that important to them that I have a chance to be admitted early, I would give it my best shot.
So on the first Saturday of spring break, I put on the semiformal pink dress Mom had picked out, climbed into Ms. Allen’s Lexus, and went with her to the nearest Academy portal, where we stepped through to the school.
I can do this.
I have to get into the Hunters’ Academy. For my parents.
* * *
I HADN’T REALIZED THE Hunters’ Academy had an actual ballroom, but that’s where The Applicants’ Ball was held—a small ballroom in what Ms. Allen, also an Academy alumna, call The Auditorium Building.
The parquet floor gleamed in the soft light, and dancing couples swept around the room—mostly adults, as most of the potential students, anxious expressions on their faces, sat in the chairs lining the walls.
But all I could think was how my claws would scar the floor as I walked across it in my shifter shape.
I was nervous since my skills were limited to the ability to turn from human to bobcat and back again.
Even that wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except for the fact that to make the shift, I generally had to be entirely naked. And at fourteen years old, there was pretty much nothing worse than the thought of ending up naked in front of a room full of people.
Ms. Allen drew me across the room. “Kitty, I’d like you to meet the Hunters’ Academy headmistress.”
A tall, thin woman with long dark hair and luminous silvery eyes greeted me politely. Ms. Allen deposited me into one of the chairs against the nearest wall.
Now what to do?
“She’s a wraith.” A girl dropped down into the chair to my left.
I glanced over at her. She was pretty, with dark hair and bright blue eyes that sparkled as she grinned at me.
“Who is?”
“The headmistress.” She tilted her head toward a woman standing a few feet away. I blinked, startled. I had already forgotten her—not surprising, I realized, as that was standard for wraiths. People forgot them almost immediately.
“I’ve never met a wraith before,” I said. “Have you?”
“Oh, tons.” She waved her hand airily. Then she paused and shrugged. “Or at least two or three. I don’t really remember.”
We both dissolved into giggles. I already liked her.
“Do you know anything about what they’re doing to test the shifters?” I asked nervously. “I’m a little worried about shifting in front of all these people.”
“I heard something about that. They do want to see part of the shift, so they’re allowing shifters to change in some dressing room and come out in their animal forms and then shift back to human under a sheet.”
“Like a bedsheet?”
“That’s it exactly.” She held out her hand for me to shake. “Hi. I’m Ella.”
“I’m glad that’s how they’re doing the shifts. My sister and I are really hoping to get in,” a voice from behind me said. I turned around to find a guy with eyes the same color as my new friend’s.
“Isn’t that why everyone’s here?” I asked.
“Yeah—but our reason for wanting to get in is that there’s supposedly a new Hunter in Residence who’s a shifter, and he’s doing some interesting things with the Academy pack.”
“Wait. There’s just one pack at the Hunters’ Academy? For all the shifters?” I had never heard of anything like that—we had clowders and we had clans and we had packs, but for the most part, shifters tended to stick to their own kind. We didn’t have mixed packs.
“Yeah—he’s finding new ways for different kinds of shifters to work together, to become better fighting units to work against the Lusus Naturae.”
Fighting. There was that word again. I didn’t know if I would be able to do it when the time came. Even as a kitten, I had played more gently than the other kits in my clowder.
I stared down at the floor and chewed on my bottom lip nervously. “So you’re both shifters, too?”
“Wolves,” the brother said proudly. “I’m Henry Tyson.”
“Kitty Moore,” I said.
Henry’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously? You’re a cat shifter named Kitty?”
“Technically it’s Catherine. I guess my parents thought it would be cute to call me Kitty.”
Henry smiled me indulgently. “Well, it definitely suits you. You are absolutely precious.”
I blushed, and then I frowned, not certain what to think of that. No one had ever called me precious before. Certainly not anyone my own age.
But Henry was also probably the most beautiful guy I’d ever talked to.
It’s fine if he calls me precious, I decided.
Ms. Hush strode to the center of the ballroom and clapped her hands for attention.
“Hello, and welcome to the interview portion of your application for admission to the Hunters’ Academy.”
I glanced around. There were about fifty kids in the room with me. I wondered how many of them were actually going to get in. Granted, everyone here would have a chance to try again if it didn’t work out now. That was the whole point of the Early Admissions Ball.
The youngest applicant in the room looked about twelve and the oldest about seventeen. I knew that some of them were here after having been turned down the year before for regular admission.
Ms. Hush was still talking. “We’ll begin with the shifters, and from there we will move on to the magic users, then vampires. After the vampires, we’ll test the additional specialties, such as banshees, wraiths, and other smaller groups.”
My palms started to sweat, but that wasn’t a terrible thing. When I was nervous, I found it easier to hold my bobcat shape than my human one. I just hoped that wouldn’t be a problem when it came time for me to shift back into my human form later.
My new friends and I made our way back to the rooms in the vestibule outside the ballroom.
A steady stream of people moved into the bathroom, and animals came back out, making their way back to the ballroom. The three of us stepped into line.
“You couldn’t tell what kind of shifters we were?” Henry asked. His sister grinned at me.
“Cats rely more on vision than on smell,” I explained.
“Quit teasing the poor girl, Henry.” Ella leaned in confidentially to me, looping her arm through mine. “Henry knows perfectly well that cat shifters have different abilities from wolf shifters. I think he simply likes you. That’s why he’s being so ridiculous.”
Henry laughed aloud. “I do like her. And I’m not being ridiculous. When we all get to the academy, we need to find each other.” He looped his arm through mine on the other side. “There’s no need for any of us to sit alone at meals. And you can ignore my twin. She thinks she’s much cleverer than she actually is.”
Ella slapped at him, making contact with his shoulder. “I am not. I am exactly as clever as I believe I am.” The two of them laughed, and for the first time since I had embarked on this scheme of Ms. Allen’s, I felt like it might turn out okay.
* * *
MY AUDITION WENT WELL enough. I left my fancy party dress hanging in the dressing room, stepped into the interview room in my bobcat form, and followed Ms. Hush’s instructions while a panel of people I assumed were Academy instructors watched. And then I moved under the sheet that two assistants, probably students, held up for me. I turned back into my human self.
Two female shifters in their own human forms helped me wrap the sheet around myself toga style, and I answered a few questions.
I barely remembered later what they were. Something about my reasons for wanting to go to the Academy—I answered with a discussion of my family’s long history of association with the Academy and my belief that the Lusus Naturae needed to be defeated—and then moved back toward the dressing room.
By the time I re-entered the ballroom, I was finally comfortable enough to take a plate of fruit and cheese, along with a glass of vaguely fruit-flavored punch.
It wasn’t long before the Tyson twins joined me. “We should trade numbers before we leave,” Ella suggested.
“Absolutely.” I pulled out my phone.
About ten minutes later, Ms. Allen came to gather me up. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Instead, she said, “I’ve just been informed that you’ve been chosen to join the Hunters’ Academy under a new program. You’ll stay at the academy for the rest of the spring break and take a few remedial seminars to prepare you for your first classes next fall.”
She looks so pleased that I couldn’t bring myself to explain how nervous that made me.
“But I didn’t bring anything,” I protested.
“Not to worry,” she said. “I knew this was a possibility, so I had your parents pack a suitcase.”
A suitcase packed by my parents? I couldn’t live for a week on that.
At the sight of my distress. “Oh, darling, not to worry. It’s only a week. If they missed anything, we’ll have someone deliver it.”
The churning in my stomach subsided a little bit.
I glanced up to see a man with the same bright blue eyes as the Tyson twins talking to them.
Before Ms. Allen dragged me away, I was able to speak to Ella.
“Can you believe it?” she said. “Henry and I get to start today. This very night. We’re going to be moving into one of the dorms.”
“Me, too,” I announced.
Ella squealed, throwing her arms around me. “I am ever so delighted! We’re going to have an amazing, wonderful time. I can’t wait to be in school with you.” She cast a sly glance her brother’s direction. “I know Henry feels exactly the same way. But even more so.”
As she left, I puzzled over her comment about Henry. Even more so? What did that mean?
Well, no matter what it was, I had time to figure it out. Because starting tonight, I was a brand-new Hunters’ Academy student.
Little did I know how terrifying that night would turn out to be.
Not to mention the next week.
* * *
“WELCOME TO NORTHANGER Abbey.”
I tilted my head to one side and frowned at the graduate student leading me to my room. “I thought this was just the underclassmen’s dorm.”
“Oh, it is. But the Resident Assistants are gearing up to do a literary theme, so we decided to start early. Each floor has been given the name of a classic novel. We’ll have study nights each week and be reading the books.”
“An English teacher came up with this plan, right?”
A blush climbed up his face. “Well. Yes. And I had something to do with it, too.”
Ms. Allen smiled. “Perhaps you could simply lead us to Kitty’s room?”
He stuttered out an affirmative and led us to the third room on the left. It took him a few seconds to fumble a key into the lock. “We’re having to put everyone in currently unoccupied rooms, so we’re a little spread out. I’m afraid you’re the only one on this floor.”
I glanced down the long, empty hallway. “No one else?”
He shook his head. “Not until school starts back up. Is that a problem? It’s only six nights. The early-admission students leave Friday.”
I paused to consider it. I guess if I get too frightened, I can call Ella. Maybe even go to her room.
“No. It’ll be fine,” I said aloud.
But later that night, as I lay in my room alone in the dark, I wasn’t so sure.
I made the mistake of downloading a copy of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and starting to read it.
The book was clearly meant to be a comedy on some level, but Catherine Moreland’s panic over the weird things she saw in Northanger Abbey hit a little too close to home for me right now.
Especially since I was also a Catherine who had just met a Henry.
How many psychics are there attending Hunters’ Academy? And were any of them involved in naming the floor or assigning me a room on it?
Being totally alone on this dorm room floor didn’t help, either. Despite knowing the whole academy was warded, part of me was terrified.
I finally gave up on reading. I wanted to give up on sleeping too, but I knew that the seminars starting the next day would leave me exhausted if I didn’t. So instead, I shifted into my cat form. At least if I ran across anything evil, I’d have my teeth and claws to use against it.
I leaped lightly onto the mattress, prepared to sleep there.
But on second thought, I snagged a blanket with my claw, tugged it off the bed entirely, and dragged it underneath the bed, where I finally curled up and fell asleep.
In the middle the night, a sound woke me.
I came awake almost instantly, already half-aware of what I might have heard out there. A door opening and closing. Maybe my own door.
I perked up my ears and carefully drew in a breath of air through my mouth, dragging the molecules over the Jacobson’s organ that allowed me to take in information about my surroundings.
There it was. A scraping along the floor in my room, the smell/taste of something foreign.
Someone—or something—was in my room.
I remained perfectly still for another instant, waiting to see if whatever was out there did anything.
Footsteps made their way closer to my bed.
I crouched down below, peering out from under the bed frame. Even with my cat vision, though, I couldn’t see much in the dark. Outside, the moonlight was faint, filtering in through the window without giving much illumination.
A vague shape wafted toward me.
It stopped a few feet away, as if examining the bed I’d been in.
A cloud passed over the moon, and I couldn’t see anything at all.
Another slight scrape, a low creak, and then a quiet click was all that alerted me to the fact that my door had opened and closed again.
I crept out from under the bed and concentrated on shifting into my human form.
But by the time I had opposable thumbs again and could open my door, whatever had been in my room was long gone.
Sticking my head out the door, I peered up and down the hallway. Nothing.
I shut my door and locked it, though locking hadn’t done all that much good before. This time, I sat on top of my mattress, huddled into a blanket, staring at the closed door, wondering what on Earth was going on.
Who would want to come into my room and why?
What did they want?
And how far would they be willing to go to get it—whatever it might be?
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING AT breakfast, I poured myself a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and made my way over to Ella and Henry.
“Eeeuuww.” Ella wrinkled her nose at my coffee. “How can you drink that stuff? It’s disgusting.”
I ignored her question. “Did anything strange happen to either of you last night?”
“Strange? Why? Are you all right?” The concern in Henry’s question sent a little thrill of happiness up my spine.
I waved away his worry. “I’m fine. But...” My voice trailed off.
The twins both leaned toward me.
“Yes? What happened?” Henry asked.
“I’m not entirely certain. But last night—or early this morning, I guess—someone came into my room.”
“What did they do?” Ella asked.
“Nothing. Whoever it was stood over my bed for a few seconds, then left.”
Henry frowned. “What did they look like?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t see their face.”
Now both the Tyson twins were staring at me with frowns on their faces. “Why not?” Ella asked.
“Because I was under the bed.” When the twins simply kept staring, I added, “In my cat form.”
“Are you sure you didn’t dream this?” Henry ask.
“I’m certain. I never did really get back to sleep.” I waved my mug in Ella’s direction. “That’s why I need the coffee.”
“You should stay with me tonight,” Ella said.
“Or better yet,” Henry said thoughtfully, “we should all stay in Kitty’s room. That way if anyone tries sneaking in again, we can catch him.”
“Or her,” Ella said.
“Or it,” I suggested. “But don’t you think I ought to report all this to someone?”
“And say what?” Henry’s tone turned tentative. “Um. Hi. I had an intruder in my room, but I don’t know who or what it was or what they looked like. What should I do?”
“Okay, okay.” I flapped a hand toward him. “We can try it your way first. I’m on the third floor.”
“Great. Let’s just hope it comes back tonight.” With a grin, Henry scooped up a giant forkful of sausage and eggs and shoved it into his mouth.
“Yeah. Perfect. Let’s hope.” I drank the rest of my coffee, wondering just how hopeful I really had to be.
* * *
THE VERY FIRST SEMINAR we went to that morning was run by the Hunter-in-Residence—the same one that the Tyson twins had said wanted so badly to meet—along with a student.
“Hi. I’m Reo Souji, and this is Kacie DeLuca.” The Hunter gestured toward the girl at his side as he introduced them. “You can call us Reo and Kacie. We are two of the leaders of the Academy pack.”
The two were a study in contrasts. Reo was tall, muscular and wiry, with shiny dark hair and beautiful skin. Kacie was much smaller than Reo. With her pale skin and blonde hair, she could have fit in perfectly in any Nordic country.
“We’ll be going to go for a shifted run later in the afternoon,” Reo continued, “but before we head out, want to talk about and demonstrate some of the advantages that the Hunters’ Academy pack has over other packs.” He gestured to Kacie to pick up where he left off.
“Our pack is extraordinarily well-connected to one another,” Kacie said. “And that means we are better able to communicate and work together when we come up against a foe of any kind.”
Foe. Students at this campus use words like foe.
The thought made my stomach hurt.
I glanced around the room to see if any of the other ten or so shifters in there felt the same way. Instead, I caught sight of Henry. As Kacie spoke, he tilted his head back a little and sniffed, a frown creasing his forehead. He and Ella gave each other confused glances. They were clearly thinking the same thing, whatever that might have been.
I had one way to find out.
I focused on shifting my mouth partway, just enough to create the Jacobson’s organ that would allow me to figure out what kinds of shifters were in the room. I hadn’t been entirely honest with the Tyson twins before. Cats do rely mostly on their vision—but our sense of smell is certainly superior to humans’.
Wolves—or at least their shifter cousins—tended to keep their enhanced sense of smell no matter what form they were in. I, on the other hand, had to shift a little in order to gain that particular extra sense. In my human form, I maintain particularly good night vision. But in my cat form, I can take apart smells, figure out what they were and where they came from.
Now, I could smell a mix of shifter types in the room. Mostly predators. Wolves, another bobcat, a couple of birds of prey.
Reo, standing at the front of the room, was some kind of big cat.
And then, from the girl standing next to him, I smelled... something different.
Kacie Deluca didn’t smell like any shifter I’d ever encountered. She smelled all wrong, in fact. Every shifter I ever encountered, no matter their animal type, smelled wild, like the ocean or the sky or the forest.
Kacie didn’t smell like that at all. She didn’t smell like she belonged in the forests. She didn’t smell like she belonged among the animals.
Moreover, the sense of power coming off her was almost palpable. The air around her crackled with electricity. But she didn’t smell like a magician, either. She was something I had never encountered before.
And that something frightened me more than a little.
“Our stronger connection comes from more than mere training,” Kacie continued. “It gives our pack a huge advantage over the Lusus Naturae. We are better prepared to go up against them than most other packs.”
Reo jumped in. “We’re hoping that eventually all the packs on our side will join us. In the meantime, though, every shifter who attends the Academy is required to participate in our ceremony.”
Ceremony? What kind of ceremony?
Kacie kept talking and I listen more attentively, hoping she would answer my question without me having to ask it directly.
“By joining in the ceremony, you are agreeing to participate as a member of the Academy pack,” she said.
“That means we can call on you to join the fight against the Lusus Naturae at any moment, any time,” Reo emphasized. “If you want to leave, now is the time.”
For a brief moment, I considered walking away. I wasn’t sure that I was committed enough to the fight against the Lusus Naturae to take part in some weird ceremony designed to bind me to the rest of a pack.
Anyway, my pack was the bobcat clowder.
At least, it had been.
Although people often joined different packs when they went away to school, I had never heard of them ending up joining a mixed pack. As far as I knew, this is the only one like it in existence.
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Ms....” Reo glanced down at the list in front of him. “Ms. Moore. You have a question?”
“I was wondering...what kind of binding will we be doing?”
Kacie and Reo glanced at each other. “It’s magical,” Kacie finally said.
“It has psychic elements,” Reo added.
“And there’s no way we can join the Academy unless we participate in it?” another shifter asked—another wolf, if I was reading him right.
I have to participate.
I didn’t have any option. My parents had been academy graduates, and I needed to be one, too. Whatever ritual these two were expecting me to participate in, I would do it. If I had to leave this odd, mishmash of a pack later, I could do that, too. I hoped.
At the front of the room Kacie reached up and wrapped her hand around a pendant she wore dangling from a chain around her neck. Whatever she was doing started with a greenish glow seeping out between her fingers on the pendant. Within a few seconds, however, that slight glow turned into bright green ribbons of light and power that spooled out and waved around her, looking somehow familiar.
I realized there were twelve of the ribbons—enough for all the people in the room. They began to strike out and wrap around each of us in turn.
Not like ribbons, I realized. Like snakes. With all those tendrils of green light waving around her head, Kacie looked like an ancient painting of Medusa. And the tentacles felt like power, pure magic as they tightened around each of us, holding us still in our seats. The final two wrapped around Kacie and Reo.
When she had all of us in the grasp of her power, Kacie closed her eyes and... well, the best way I had to describe it was that it was like she was taking over my mind.
There was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to scream as I felt her rifling through my memories, tasting and testing for whatever it was that she was looking for. When she was satisfied with what she discovered, the tendril of power burrowed deep inside me even as it stretched out to touch someone else, too, ending up back with Kacie, diverting some part of my essence to her.
As she waved her hands in the air, she called the magical tendrils back and braided all the snakes together, taking the disparate parts of each of us, the sum of who we were, and plaiting them it into a long cord of power that drew from all of us.
Then Kacie began adding it to a much thicker rope that she had developed at some point.
That rope contains some part of all the shifters in the Academy pack, I realized.
Kacie might not be a shifter animal, but she was clearly an indispensable part of the pack. I was sure of it.
A new sense of all the other shifters in the room slammed into me as Kacie used the braided rope to pierce each of us, one after the other.
When she was done, I could almost hear the thoughts of the others around me.
I could certainly sense their emotions.
It was a disconcerting sensation, but I could imagine how it might help in a battle. Assuming you didn’t get too distracted by your packmates getting hurt.
“Welcome to the pack,” Kacie said softly when she was done.
“Now we’re going for the shifted run,” Reo said. “It will give you an opportunity to begin getting used to your new packmates. Please note that although this bond attenuates with distance, meaning it gets thinner and less pronounced, it never completely goes away. You will always have some sense of your packmates’ well-being from now on.”
The thought of what it might be like to be seventy years old and sensing my packmates from my school days beginning to die off flashed through my head.
I could deal with that later. Much later. Right now, it was time to run with the rest of my pack.
* * *
THE RUN THAT DAY WAS absolutely glorious. I hadn’t expected it to be so amazing. But when we shifted and took off into the woods that surrounded the academy, high in the Colorado mountains, it was like every unfulfilled dream of shapeshifting I ever had.
As an only child, I had missed out on what it was like to have an extended family, to grow up surrounded by packmates other than my parents. We attended clowder meetings, but that was about it.
Running with the Hunters’ Academy pack was what I had always imagined having a huge family would be like.
As we crisscrossed through the woods, we practically danced with each other, leaping over and across not only our pack mates, but obstacles in the woods—streams, fallen logs, and anything else that got in our way.
I could hear the rustling of small creatures, prey, not only with my own ears, but with the senses of my packmates.
We were that closely connected.
Henry and Ella ran beside me. Their wolf forms were beautiful, silver and gray, a beautiful contrast to my own tawny fur.
By the time we finished, we were exhausted. We descended on the cafeteria en masse, all the shifters ravenous after their energy expenditure, both running and shifting. When we were done, all I wanted to do was collapse and sleep.
As I devoured a giant plate of spaghetti, I saw Reo and Kacie watching over us, smiling benevolently.
Whatever Kacie was, it apparently didn’t extend to allowing her to shift and run with us. She might be the glue that held this pack together, but she wasn’t really a shifter at all, just as I had suspected.
She was interesting. I would have to keep an eye on her once I officially started classes here. I wasn’t entirely certain where she fit in.
“Ready to go up to your room and see if we can catch a ghost?” Henry asked.
“I know you don’t really believe me,” I started.
“Ignore him. He thinks he’s funny. He’s wrong.” His sister rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, whatever it was that you saw, we need to check it out,” Henry reassured me.
“Do you think we should tell someone official? Like maybe Reo or Kacie or someone?” I glanced at the two pack leaders, who were sitting across from each other eating now. Another pack member had joined them. I didn’t know who he was, but I could feel him through the link that connected me to all the pack—and he looked an awful lot like Reo. I’d be surprised if they weren’t related somehow.
“We could tell them,” Henry said. “But how will you feel if it turns out to be nothing? If it’s just me and Ella helping you, then no harm, no foul if it turns out to be a big fat nothing.”
“That’s true,” I admitted reluctantly. “But what if it turns out to be something more than we can handle?”
“Then we have these fancy new pack connections. I bet we can use them to call for help.” Ella flipped her hair back behind her shoulder. Now that I’d seen her in her wolf form, I could see the silvery glints in her dark hair. Henry had the glints, too.
Their identical expressions, eager and interested, delighted at the thought of ghost hunting, cracked me up. “Okay, okay. Give me an hour to wind down, then come on up. I’m in room 332.”
* * *
“WHY ARE YOU UP HERE all by yourself?” Ella demanded as soon as I opened the door. “It’s totally creepy.”
“It is a little weird,” Henry agreed. He glanced up and down the hallway. “It seems like they could at least give you a temporary space down on floor two with the rest of us.”
“Is everyone else on the second floor?”
“As far as we can tell,” Ella said.
That made me feel more than a little odd. Why would the academy officials assign me a room so far away from everyone else? It was like they had painted target on me. That didn’t seem quite fair.
“Come on in.” I pulled my door open wide, and the Tyson twins strolled in, glancing around interestedly.
At the last minute, I thought to whip the stuffed lamb I slept with off the top of the bed and shove it under a pillow. When I glanced up, though, Henry’s blue eyes were twinkling at me. He’d seen the move.
“There are only two beds,” I said lamely. “I don’t know where everybody can sleep.”
Ella waved her hand airily. “No problem. Henry can sleep on the floor in his wolf form.”
“Me? Why don’t you do that?”
“Oh, I could. But I don’t want to. So you can instead.”
I laughed at the way the twins picked at each other. Through our pack connection, I could feel the affection between them.
And if I let my senses stretch out just a little farther, I could feel more, sense the ways that the various pack members interacted. Even the ones who didn’t really like each other all that much felt the pack bond. It seemed, at least from what I could tell, to override any personal dislike.
“I wonder if we could use the pack bond in any way to search for the ghost?” I mused aloud.
“It’s definitely worth a try,” Henry said.
“Kind of like a séance.” Ella immediately plopped down on the floor and started scrabbling her purse. “I’ve got a washable marker somewhere in here. We can draw a circle on the floor and see if we could summon the spirit.”
Henry and I cast skeptical glances at each other. “Doesn’t that only work for magic users?” I asked.
Ella shrugged. “I don’t know, but it can’t hurt.”
I’m pretty sure it could hurt, but I didn’t say anything aloud.
“Should we wait after dark?” Henry asked.
Ella heaved an irritated sigh. “I guess so. What are we gonna do until then, though?”
“Maybe we could just hang out,” Henry suggested.
So the three of us settled down to talk together until after the sun had set. Then we could do a séance and see if we could get whatever it was that had interrupted my sleep last night to come back.
* * *
I DON’T KNOW WHEN WE all fell asleep.
Sometime around the point that we had started talking about family history. Sharing the similarities and differences among our packs.
Our old packs, that was.
I woke as my door was slowly creaking open.
The moon was no brighter tonight than it been the night before, but whatever it was opening my door was less careful.
Either that, or I was more alert.
I sent a frisson of worry shimmering across the pack lines connecting us.
I felt it when Henry and Ella came awake, though neither of them showed any outward sign of it.
After a few seconds, Henry flicked one ear up, then back down, as if he were dreaming.
The creature outside my door stepped into the room.
I still couldn’t tell much about it. It was roughly human-sized and shaped, but beyond that, I didn’t really know.
Maybe it was a vampire, coming to feed on me?
I wanted to attack immediately, but I could almost hear Henry saying, “Wait another minute.” I was sure it was a message sent through our new bond.
I suppose it wasn’t fair to have already decided the intruder had nefarious intent. But I simply couldn’t believe that anything that wished me well would come sneaking into my room in the middle of the night without any warning.
No. This was definitely not the kind of creature I wanted snooping around without supervision.
Even if it wasn’t part of the Lusus Naturae, it was at least not a part of the official program this week. And that creeped me out.
As it came closer, I got a better look at it. A female of some sort. Her hair waved wildly around her head. And when she got close to the bed, her voice rasped, “I’m sorry.”
I suppressed a shiver.
“I have to do this,” she continued. “We can’t allow you to be here. You have to die. I have to kill you.”
I felt more than heard the intruder take deep breath and then saw her silhouette as she raised her arms high above me. “This is for the Lusus Naturae.”
What moonlight there was glinted off something metal—a knife of some kind, I guessed.
As I moved to try to jump out of its way, Henry and Ella leaped to my defense, jumping straight from being what looked like sleeping wolves to becoming attacking wolves in a heartbeat.
Whatever the creature was, she was strong, and fast. With a single spin, whipping out her arms, she slammed the twins back against the dorm room wall.
They hit with a resounding thud, and I winced on their behalf. I felt the pain of their impact shudder through me as it poured down the lines that connected us. But it was a distant pain, and I didn’t allow it to distract me. Pain was good. The pain meant they were still alive.
But then the creature was coming toward me, her mouth open in a rictus smile, exposing pointed teeth.
I focused on that smile, that face. That evil, ugly, face. Even though time seemed to stretch out around me, I knew there wasn’t enough of it for me to completely shift before the creature hit me.
But I had been practicing partial shifts all my life.
With a single hand, I swiped at the creature just as it let out a horrific screeching noise and was suddenly on me, attacking with all her might.
But I got my one swipe in. Even as the monster was screaming, I had hooked one claw into an eyeball.
Whatever this thing was, it was definitely alive.
Her scream intensified and I clung to her for dear life, my claws imbedded in her eye as she tried to shake me off.
Ella and Henry stood up woozily, rubbing their heads.
Help me, I sent across the lines that bound us to one another.
Instantly, Henry and Ella jumped into the fray, each clamping down on one side of the intruder’s body.
Wolves like to take their prey down and then kill them cooperatively, I remembered from some social studies class I had taken.
And in this case, cooperative meant with me. Henry pulled the creature down from behind while Ella clamped down on an arm the creature had thrown up in front of her face at the last minute. Between the two of them, they wrestled her to the floor.
And without hesitation, I slashed my half-shifted hand across her throat, claws extended.
The horrific shriek turned to a gurgle, the noise bubbling out of the wound I’d made in her throat.
The three of us were still standing, watching the creature bleed out, when my door burst open and virtually all the pack members on campus tried to rush in at once.
“We’re okay, we’re okay,” I called out.
Everyone out the hall started talking at once.
“We heard you.”
“I knew you were in danger.”
“I could tell there was a problem.”
“I knew there was somebody who had broken in.”
Apparently, not only was I able to kill monsters when the time came, but I was also the member of an extended pack that knew when I was in trouble.
I liked that.
I was beaming by the time Reo and Kacie made their way through to the front of the crowd and through my door.
Reo frowned down at the body on my floor.
“Looks like a banshee,” Kacie said.
“Yeah, and it’s one we admitted to the Academy yesterday.” Reo sounded worried.
“She said she was going to kill me,” I said.
“I believe you,” Kacie said shortly.
“Whatever she was, she was up to no good.” Reo nudged the body with his bare foot.
“You know,” Kacie said, her tone turning thoughtful, “banshees can often foretell their own deaths. I wonder if she was here to try to stop it?”
“She might have foreseen her own death, but the last words she said were that she was doing it for the Lusus Naturae,” I noted.
“It’s a good thing you killed her, then,” Reo said.
The twins and I beamed at each other.
“I’ll take over here,” Reo said. “Why don’t you gather up your stuff and go stay with Ella?”
I couldn’t think of any better plan.
I didn’t really sleep, though.
The next day’s seminar consisted of strengthening our pack bond and practicing moving together in ways that would allow us to fight together.
But I already knew that I could do that.
For the first time, I didn’t feel anxious about what was coming next.
“I’m excited about school starting next fall,” Ella said as we packed up to leave a few days after that.
“Me, too.” I closed my suitcase and grinned at her. We headed toward the portal that would send us home again, meeting up with Ella’s twin on the way out. “I still wonder why the banshee was out to get me, though.”
Henry reached down and took my hand in his, squeezing it as we walked along. “I think that’s something we need to look into next year.”
I smiled at him. “Absolutely.”
When Ms. Allen stepped through the portal to escort me back home, I smiled at her.
We had won.
Now I knew where I belonged.
I was going to stay at the Hunters’ Academy. I knew how I was going to join the fight against the Lusus Naturae when my time came.
And until then, I was going to learn everything I could.
With Henry and Ella.
And a whole new pack.
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About Ivy Hearne
IVY HEARNE SPENDS HER days dreaming of heroes and monsters and the heroines who tame them. She writes young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy and fully expects to find herself someday transported to a world of fantasy and magic, where her snarky tendencies will win her the respect of the realm—and probably a crown, too.
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