Big Bad Academy

by Sophie Stern

“That’s right,” a deep voice says. “Go to sleep little wolf.” I start to feel dizzy, and even though I move to snap my jaws at my captor, I can hear him laughing at me. “You wolves are always so slow after a run. You make it too easy.”

  Then everything fades away.

  I WAKE UP IN A CAGE.

  I’m cold, and I feel like I’m going to puke, and I’m back in my human form. I sit up and look around. I’m in a round room. No, scratch that: a tower. From the looks of things, it’s one of the lost towers of the forest. There are quite a few, and none of them are very important or often thought of.

  They’re just...abandoned.

  There are legends and myths surrounding the towers, but the truth is that nobody really knows what they were used for. Did witches live here at one point? Maybe vampires? I have no idea. All I know is that that’s where I am, and I’m not alone.

  In the other cages are the missing shifters from my pack: Frank, Angela, Leah, and Erin. They all stare at me silently.

  “You’re here,” Frank finally says.

  “Sorry for the late arrival.”

  “Better late than never, old friend,” Leah smiles gently.

  “How’d he get you?” Erin whispers, and I can smell the fear wafting off of her. “What’s he going to do to us? Why are we here?”

  Erin looks close to tears, and I look at the other shifters. They all look strangely well-fed, but looks can be deceiving. I’m just happy they aren’t dead. Who knows why they’re being kept alive here? The other shifters exchange wary glances. They don’t want to say what’s been happening. I’m guessing they want to spare Erin, but they can’t do that.

  Not now.

  “What is it?” I ask. “Who’s done this?”

  “He’s acting out a fucking book,” Angela finally spits out, and I’m shocked by her language and anger. “He keeps us here and doesn’t let us shift or run around or do anything. He drugs the food, and he drugs us, and we just stay here.”

  “Rotting away,” Frank adds silently.

  Leah is strangely quiet.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.

  “He’s not human,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “The man who’s taken us. He’s not...he’s not human.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I growl, but I instantly regret it because Erin starts to cry and shake with sadness.

  “There, there,” a deep voice says, and I look over to see him. It’s the man the other packs described as looking for the academy. Instantly, I know. He’s tall and strange-looking, just as they warned, and he has a wolf tattoo on the inside of his wrist. “I didn’t mean to take you, little one. You were an unfortunate accident when I couldn’t nab your leader the first time.” He turns to me then and shakes his head.

  He’s obviously unhappy with me.

  Does this guy blame me for his failures?

  It’s then that I realize what he is.

  “You’re a vampire,” I finally realize.

  “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!”

  “You want shifter blood because you think it’ll make you stronger.”

  It won’t.

  It’s a rumor started long ago, probably by other vampires. Who knows? The rumor states that when a vampire drinks the blood of a shifter, they’ll become stronger, faster. Wilder.

  None of it’s true.

  People have tested this theory in safe and unsafe ways, but the truth is that while a shifter’s blood will feed a vampire, that’s all it will do.

  It won’t safe them.

  It won’t make them more immortal than they already are.

  “Oh, you stupid wolf,” the man says. He takes a step forward and then another. He moves until he’s right out of my cage, and fuck, if this guy doesn’t completely just stink.

  It’s been ages since I’ve smelled anything this bad. Hell, maybe I’ve never smelled anything this bad.

  The vampire reeks though, and he walks around my cage, touching the top like it’s his.

  This is why the wolves blew the horn of howling.

  I heard it.

  They know where we are, I realize, and they’re going to come for us.

  All I have to do is keep this guy talking, keep him moving and distracted, and soon the other wolves will come. They’ll save us. I just know it. They have to, right? That’s what a pack does. The entire time he staring at me, though, I’m looking around and trying to find ways out of the tower.

  There’s a trapdoor in the floor, which I assume leads to a ladder or a spiral staircase. There are windows lining the top of the tower, where we are, but the glass panes are broken out of most of the windows. How old is this tower? Why here?

  “Clever wolf,” he mutters. “Don’t bother trying to escape.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’d hate to have to hurt you before your mate arrives.”

  My blood runs cold and I look up at the vampire in shock. He knows it, too. I do a terrible job of hiding my surprise. The other wolves seemed just as shocked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.

  “Oh, I think you do,” he shakes his finger at me. “It took quite a bit of planning and research, you know, to bring this little plan together. She wasn’t an easy girl to find. She changed her name, actually, to keep me away.”

  Heather.

  This is the guy who was stalking Heather.

  I wrack my brain, trying to come up with anything else she might have said that could give me a clue as to what kind of monster he is, but I come up empty. All I know is that this guy scared her and was stalking her. She was worried he’d come to the book signing, and that was one of the reasons she didn’t often – or ever – do events.

  He scared her.

  And now he’s trying to destroy the pack.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  “So many reasons.”

  “Why don’t we start with one?” I say drily. The guy actually gives me this weird, evil grin, and then he gestures to the other wolves.

  “Their blood has made me stronger,” he says.

  He’s drank from the wolves? Gross. Frank looks ashamed. Angela and Leah just look angry. I get it. Stealing someone’s blood to drink it is a total violation. They must feel sad and worn out and even a little dirty. They don’t have anything to be ashamed about, though.

  What this monster did to them isn’t their fault.

  None of it is.

  If anything, it’s my fault for failing them.

  “You leave my wolves alone.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” the man says. “Now that I have you, we can move on to the next portion of the book.”

  “The book?”

  “He’s acting out one of his favorite books,” Leah says helpfully. “It’s by an author called Heather Smith. She wrote this book where a hero captures four evil wolves who have been causing a ruckus in town and in their pack. He thinks we’re the wolves.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Oh, but you are,” the man says. “There’s just a problem right now.” He looks over at Erin, and I know what he’s thinking. Apparently, he didn’t want to take her. If he’s trying to play out a fantasy of a book he likes, then having her around is pointless to him. If anything, it’s going to cause him more trouble because he doesn’t want her here.

  “Just let her go,” I grit out.

  Please, don’t do anything stupid.

  Silently, I wish or hope or dream that he won’t do anything wild or crazy in this moment. You know, like kill Erin. I close my eyes and shake my head. When I open my eyes, the vampire is watching me curiously.

  “What do you care what happens to her? She’s not your mate.” Then his eyes narrow. “Are you lovers?”

  “What?” Erin shrieks. “Gross! No! He’s like my brother.”

  “There is nothing going on between us,” I say.

  “Heather is your mate,” he says. />
  “How did you decide all of this?” I ask him, not wanting to give away the fact that he’s totally correct.

  “Ah, curious as to how my plan came to be?” He gestures to the room.

  A little, but I also don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how curious I really am. What is it about Heather that this man is so drawn to? Why did he latch onto her stories?

  “Not going to answer?” The vampire raises an eyebrow. “It’s no bother,” he shrugs. “I’ll tell you anyway. Might as well let Erin hear why she’s going to die.”

  Erin, brave as she is, doesn’t even cry. I can smell her sadness and fear, though. We all can.

  “When I became a turned vampire, I learned everything there was to know about my new world. I was taught about immortality and how the world of the dead was different than the world of the living. I learned that if I was going to maintain my strength, I’d need to drink blood; however, I quickly learned that acquiring and consuming blood was wildly time consuming.”

  He raises a finger as he talks and uses it to gesture about. His hands are weirdly long, and I wonder how no one pegged him as a vampire before. I’m guessing the wolf tattoo threw people off. If someone was going to guess he was a creature, they’d definitely go for shifter over vampire.

  “One of the best ways to learn about the creatures I could potentially drink from was to read, so I did. I spent a century reading every book I could get my hands on, and then I came across Heather’s. Her story was different than the others.”

  He pauses, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of asking him about it.

  “How was it different?” The vampire rubs his hands together. “Well, I’d already known about fated mates, but her story was so specific, I realized very quickly what I was looking at. She was mated to a wolf and she had no idea. I tried to reach out to her, to tell her, but she pushed me away.”

  “You’re her stalker,” I suddenly realize. Searching my memories, I try to remember the name she gave me. “Blake.”

  “Ah, so you aren’t a complete dolt.”

  “Never said I was.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the vampire says. “Now that you’re all here, Heather is certain to come, and when she does, I will claim her as my own mate instead.”

  “What the fuck?” I say, and I jump to my knees because the cage is too small for me to stand up in.

  He was trying to get a rise out of me, and it worked, and I hate that it worked.

  “Ah, you don’t like that idea, do you?”

  “She’s my mate.”

  “Not anymore. I’ll take her as my own and you’ll be doomed to have your mate dreams continue until you go crazy locked up here in this tower.”

  “You’re going to leave us up here forever?”

  “That’s what happens in Heather’s book, and since it’s essentially a prophecy, who am I to tempt fate?”

  He looks at me smugly, as though he’s won, but he hasn’t won.

  All I’ve gained from this interaction is the knowledge that this dude is definitely a total, complete psychopath, but it doesn’t matter because I know something he doesn’t.

  While he was monologuing, the pack arrived, and they circled the tower. They’re everywhere. There must be at least a hundred wolves outside of this place, and Heather is with them. Judging by the tension in Frank, Angela, and Leah’s bodies, they can smell our packs, too. They’re trying not to get their hopes up. I can tell.

  Still, we aren’t out of the woods yet. Blake hasn’t gotten this far by making mistakes. He’s gotten this far by evaluating every possible outcome and figuring out what’s going to allow him to win.

  But then something happens he wasn’t planning on.

  “Blake, darling? Are you up there?”

  It’s Heather’s voice.

  She’s here.

  And she’s calling to the vampire.

  Instantly, his eyes light up and he runs to the window.

  “Heather?” He asks. “You came.”

  “Of course, I came,” she says. “I’ll always come for you.”

  Even though I know this is a ploy to get Blake’s guard down, her words still make me wildly uncomfortable, if not a little sick.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Blake sounds excited, and his back is turned to all of us as he looks out of the window and down to Heather. He’s so distracted that he doesn’t notice the trapdoor sliding open. He doesn’t notice Gaston carefully climbing out of it. He doesn’t notice the stake that Gaston has in his hand.

  “It had to be here,” Heather calls out. “Because of the book. Tell me you read it, Blake. You did, didn’t you?”

  “Of course, I did,” he says. “I did it all for you.”

  “Well, I did this for you, too,” Heather yells out.

  “What?” Blake asks, confused. He doesn’t even have time to turn around before Gaston leaps forward and jams the stake into his body. He doesn’t even cry out before he’s killed. He just dies. Gaston jumps back as Blake’s body ages all at once. All of the years he spent as a vampire catch up with his physical form and almost instantly, he’s no longer young and handsome, but old and shriveled, and then he’s nothing more than a skeleton.

  Gaston looks at his handiwork before turning back to me.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Let Erin out first.”

  Gaston moves to her cage and lets her out. Erin instantly leaps out of the tiny cage and all at once, all of her emotions seem to catch up with her, and the little wolf starts to cry.

  “This is so not fair,” she wails. “What the fuck was happening?”

  I should chastise her for cussing on school grounds, but there’s no way I can bring myself to do that. Not Erin. Not after everything we’ve been through.

  “I’m sorry,” Gaston says. “We got here as soon as we could.”

  “Hey!” Heather’s head pops up through the trapdoor and she climbs into the tower. She’s followed by both my dad and Maxwell, who quickly assess the situation and start letting the other shifters out. Heather takes one look at Erin.

  “You’re okay,” she grins, hugging her. Then she adds, “You must be cold.”

  Since we were all taken as wolves, we’re all fully nude, which doesn’t really bother us being wolf shifters, but she’s right: it’s still cold.

  “Here,” Heather pulls off her long coat and hands it to Erin.

  “Thanks,” Erin takes it and wraps it around herself.

  Then Heather comes to me and drops down in front of my cage. She reaches through the bars and strokes my cheek gently.

  “You gave me quite a scare,” she murmurs.

  “How did you know to use a stake to kill him?” I ask.

  “That book was the only story I ever wrote that used a male vampire,” she shrugs. “I figured if he was going for authentic, well, then he was probably one himself.”

  “You definitely did an amazing job saving everyone.”

  “Hey,” Gaston calls out. “I did all the dirty work.”

  “He’s right,” Heather smiles. “Your pack saved the day, Flynn. I was just along for the ride.”

  “Well, why don’t you let me out of this cage now?” I whisper. “And then I’ll take you for a better ride, okay?”

  She grins and reaches for a key.

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Heather

  As soon as we’re back in Flynn’s room, our clothes come flying off and I throw myself at him. I can’t believe that he actually almost died. It shouldn’t be possible to be as scared as I was without physically fainting, but I managed to keep it together even when I was fake-flirting with Blake.

  I’m just glad that somehow, we all made it out of there alive.

  Well, except for the vampire, but, uh, fuck that guy.

  Nope.

  I’m done holding back with Flynn.<
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  I’m done second-guessing myself or worrying that I’m not good enough or that it’s the wrong time. We’ve wasted enough time already, and the truth is that destiny or not, I want him. I don’t care if this is something we’re unable to totally avoid. I don’t really care if this was destined from before the time we were born.

  All I care is that this is the guy I want to be with more than anyone else in the world.

  Somehow, we end up entwined on the bed, kissing wildly, passionately. My entire body feels like it’s on fire. It’s not and aching and all I want is him. My vision seems to cloud as I lose focus of everything except him. He’s all I see. He’s all I can think about.

  I just want him.

  But he stops me, grabbing my wrists, and he holds them.

  “Heather,” he’s breathless.

  “Flynn, what’s wrong?”

  “If we do this, then everything changes,” he whispers. “The dreams will stop. The mating...we’ll be mated.”

  I realize what he’s saying. I may be a writer and not a shifter expert, but I know what he’s trying to tell me. Our relationship will be solidified. The bond between us will be finished. Complete. Even if we were to break up or leave each other, it wouldn’t matter because our relationship would always bring us back to the other.

  But then I realize something else, too.

  That’s what I want.

  I don’t want to live in a world without Flynn.

  I don’t want to go back to life without him.

  Yeah, I love being a writer, but being without Flynn is also really, horribly boring. My life before I met him was monotonous. I love my cats, and I love my books, and I love my fans, but Flynn pulls me from the world inside my head I so often get stuck in. Somehow, he manages to yank me out of that hole where being a writer is the only thing that seems to matter.

  He reminds me that there’s more to the world around me.

  He helps me to feel alive.

  “I love you,” I whisper. He completely stills. He’s shocked. I can’t smell him or scent him or read his emotions or anything like that, but I can clearly see the expression on his face. He wasn’t expecting this. Not from me. Why would he?

  For a couple of weeks now, Flynn and I have been barely more than roommates. Oh, there’s been the occasional kiss when we can’t seem to control ourselves and there’s been incessant longing, but that’s it. We haven’t slept together, and we haven’t said that we love each other.