“That’s why they have people like the Sandman,” Pete said. “Well…not him specifically, but people that visit the worried parents. The recruiters almost always talk the parents around. It’s really not that dangerous here.”
“Dude. People died today,” I said as Ethan emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips. Steam billowed around him and I had to rip my eyes away from the droplets of water clinging to his muscular chest. Yup, not looking, not looking at all.
“Yeah, but that hardly ever happens.” Pete shrugged.
“Wild is right,” Ethan said at his trunk. He pulled off his towel and I jumped, jerking my gaze to the metal bed frame in front of my face. Things were getting awkward. “Today’s challenges had a record high death rate. Someone is going to get fired for that. I can guarantee it.”
Pete rolled out of his bed and grabbed some sweats before hugging them to his chest and heading for the bathroom. Hopefully that meant stripping down in front of everyone and drying your balls wasn’t common practice among men bunking together. At least not for everyone. Thank God, since I had no balls to dry.
“You coming?” Pete asked.
I jerked my head at Gregory, who was staring at me. “You go. I want to look and see if there are any boxers in here. I’d rather…freeball it.”
“Spoken like a guy who’s never played any sports,” Ethan said, stepping into his underwear.
Now would’ve been a great time to take up smoking and excuse myself outside.
“What’s next for tomorrow?” I asked, digging through my trunk to keep from peeking at a truly well-formed rear end. Not that I should know that about him or even notice it.
The water turned on again and I breathed a small sigh of relief when Gregory skulked into the bathroom.
“Should be a free day.” Ethan shrugged into a shirt before climbing to the top bunk with his phone. “One day on, one day off. Tomorrow, we can explore the mansion and meet up with other people.”
“And after that?” I pulled my hat down a little more and headed toward the door that led out of the portable. Maybe I’d just take a walk around the small domicile in the guise of securing our sleeping area. After lights out, I’d sneak in and take a quick shower by myself.
“Another trial. We’re stuck together in a team now, so you bastards better not blow it.”
I huffed. “You didn’t seem too worried about your buddies in the last trial.”
I barely saw him shrug as I turned the door handle. “I’m no one’s caretaker. If people can’t keep up, that’s their problem.”
“Where are you going?” Orin asked from the far corner, staring at me with his deep, solemn eyes.
“Just to…” I made a circle with my finger. “Just to make sure things are good. Go ahead and hit the hay. I won’t be long.”
An hour later, after I’d made a million laps around the portable, I finally snuck back in, my limbs sore and my eyes drooping. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I needed a good sleep and to wake up from this terrible nightmare. What I wouldn’t give to be back home, to be in my own bed and to hear the twins snoring on the floor below me.
Deep shadows pooled in the corners of the room and a small slice of light cut across the middle of the floor from the bathroom. Rhythmic, deep breathing indicated the guys were sound asleep, the mounds of bodies snuggled into the crappy lumpy mattresses.
I quietly grabbed the sweats and underwear I’d set out and slipped into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. A square area with four shower heads was stationed in the corner, the heads definitely too close together for comfort. Green tile stretched from the shower area to under a urinal, and two toilet stalls were tucked in behind that. One sink with ample counter space stretched away with a large mirror hanging over it.
Unable to help it, I curled my lip at the setup. I bet the ladies’ dorms and bathrooms were nicer. Girls’ stuff was always nicer. And we didn’t pee on the floor.
The shower spray was hard and warm, pelting my skin and melting away all the stress and worry. I hoped my dad was taking my leaving okay, and that Buck hadn’t stormed to the farm demanding my head.
Homesickness pinched my gut as I shut off the water, a quick clean all I could afford under the circumstances. I turned, reaching for a towel on the stand next to the shower, when the door swung open and a sleepy, puffy-eyed Pete trudged in.
I froze.
He froze, his gaze rooted to my chest.
“Boobs?” he said in a hasty release of breath. He jolted and his eyes flicked downward, but I was already moving.
I’d been caught out as a girl, and on my first damn day.
Copyright © 2019 by K.F. Breene & Shannon Mayer
All rights reserved. The people, places and situations contained in this ebook are figments of the author’s insane imagination and in no way reflect real or true events.
Chapter 1
Standing in a shower, buck naked, in a crappy little portable sometime after midnight, being caught out as a girl by one of my teammates was the last place I wanted to be. Check that, the last place I wanted to be was here in the Culling Trials at all.
I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my middle, realizing belatedly that guys didn’t cover their chests, but what else was I supposed to do? Let the girls hang out? Yeah, that was not happening. Besides, maybe the towel thing didn’t matter—that ship had sailed.
“Crap,” I muttered, grabbing another towel and draping it over my shoulders in an even more awkward arrangement.
“I just saw boobs,” Pete whispered, his face bright red and his eyes wide. “Why do you have boobs?”
A disembodied voice cut through the air. “You’ll want to watch who you tell—”
I startled at the unexpected, if familiar, voice and Pete shrieked.
Orin stood in the far corner, his face blank and eyes piercing as he stared at Pete.
“How long have you been there?” I gasped, pulling the towels tighter around me and scooting into one of the toilet stalls.
“I was keeping watch,” Orin said as I locked the stall door.
“On what, the door or my ass? Because you didn’t do a bang-up job on the former.”
“I was distracted by your neck. You have a strong heart. Your blood pulses in a very nice rhythm—”
“Did I just see boobs?” Pete mumbled, clearly to himself. “I couldn’t have. I’m dreaming. Sleepwalking. But dang what a dream!”
“Close the damn door, Orin,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “We don’t need the whole place hearing this conversation.”
The door clicked as I hurried to dress, donning a sports bra before pulling on my T-shirt and boxers. The cloth stuck to my damp skin as I wrestled it into place, all the while listening to Pete’s mumbling.
“They were perfect,” he said, whispering. “Round and perky with pink nipples. That isn’t right. Right? He’s a…he. Guys don’t have…”
I unlocked the door and pushed out of the stall, grabbed Pete by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. I leaned into his face, schooling my expression into a hard mask.
“You didn’t see boobs, got it?”
His widened eyes stared at me, but it wasn’t because of my thinly veiled threat. He was still lost in the vortex of female anatomy that had interrupted his midnight pee.
“Shake it off, man.” I slapped him across the face, just hard enough. “They are for feeding kids, for cripes’ sakes. Every second adult has them.”
He blinked slowly before his eyebrows pinched above his nose. “You have boobs?”
“He’s not the brightest crayon in the box,” Orin said with an eye roll.
I curled my fingers around Pete’s neck. “As far as you are concerned, no, I do not. I am a guy. I have a dick and a flat chest. Got it?”
Understanding lit Pete’s face, and a grin twisted his lips. “I saw your boo—”
I increased the pressure on his neck, willing him to understa
nd. I didn’t want to hurt Pete. I liked him.
“It is really surprising human males are tolerated with this type of behavior,” Orin drawled.
“They aren’t all like this,” I said, remembering when Rory, that lying bastard, saw me naked by accident once. He’d walked into the bathroom while I was showering, thinking it was Tommy. When I’d unknowingly flashed him, he’d simply apologized, turned his back, and asked if we needed anything from the store. He hadn’t said a word about it ever again, not even to tease me in front of my brother.
Pete needed to grow up.
I was about to help him.
“If you mention this to anyone, I will kill you,” I said, low and rough. “I will slit your throat in your sleep and let you bleed out in that cozy little bed out there. You saw me in the final trial—you know I’m not bluffing. I could do it.”
I was totally bluffing. But he didn’t know that.
His face paled as he wheezed around my fingers. He nodded his head adamantly, fear finally cutting through his confusion and humor.
“I am pretending to be a boy to save my brother,” I went on. “I’m here in his stead. He’s not even sixteen—he never would’ve made it this far. If you mess with me, you are messing with my family, do I make myself clear? I will kill for my family.”
A strange sensation pulled at my stomach. An assurance. A confidence in what I’d said. That primal part of me wasn’t bluffing. I would do what it took to save my family, and this place would give me the tools to protect them. I felt that as surely as I felt the ground under my feet. And to keep Billy and maybe eventually Sam out of this, I would use those tools violently if need be.
“They don’t bring people in that young,” Pete struggled to say through his squeezed windpipe. “It’s against the rules.”
“He is incapable of focusing on the threat to his life,” Orin said. “Fascinating. That or he trusts you implicitly.”
I released my hand and stepped back before pointing at myself. “Boy. I am a boy.”
Pete rubbed his throat. “Yes, fine, I won’t tell. But…” His brow furrowed. “They don’t even take geniuses below the age of seventeen. The academy isn’t just about academics—people have to be a certain age to properly control their magic before they can be tested.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “Mr. Sunshine said he got it cleared.”
“Who?” they asked in unison.
“The Sandman. Sideburns. My own personal Grim Reaper. When he checked me in, he said he’d gotten Billy cleared. It was pretty clear then that he knew I wasn’t Billy. I assumed he didn’t say anything because it would look bad on him if he showed up with the wrong kid.”
“Why not just bring in you?” Orin asked. “You’re the right age, aren’t you?”
“He said something about my electing not to come. But I never saw a letter or anything.”
“Oh. One of your parents must’ve filled out the form,” Pete said. “Though why would they opt out for you and not your brother?”
I wondered the same thing, though a larger issue nagged at me. “It wouldn’t have been my parents to fill out that form.” I couldn’t bear to elaborate. I didn’t want to talk about my mother dying early, or the role my father might’ve inadvertently played in my other brother’s death.
Thinking of Tommy—
“Could a sibling have filled out the form?” I asked.
Pete shook his head. “It has to be a legal guardian.”
“Then who would’ve—”
“Hey!”
We all jumped. Ethan stood in the doorway with a glower. “Can you guys shut up? It’s late and I’m tired.”
“Sorry,” Pete nudged me with his elbow, “I was just talking with my bro here.”
I rolled my eyes and made my way out of the bathroom, thinking on what Sideburns had said. Wondering why the school had gone after Billy so aggressively, well before it was prudent, even if I was mysteriously excused. Something wasn’t adding up. Or, I should say, another something wasn’t adding up. I needed to know why my family was a target—why my mother had tried to keep us out of this life.
There was someone I could ask who might know. Rory. And tomorrow, a rest day, I’d find that miserable, two-faced, cowardly sonuvabitch and force information out of him.
One way or another.
Chapter 2
A siren blared through the crappy little portable, echoing in the small, close space. I startled awake, sitting up on my top bunk and smashing my head on the ceiling.
“Owww.” I pressed my palm to my forehead.
The lights flicked on, dim, showing that it was still not quite light outside.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” someone shouted in at us.
An object clattered across the floor. A moment later, small blasts filled the space, crackling and popping. Someone shouted outside.
“What’s going on?” Pete thudded against the floor below me as I scrambled to the bunk ladder.
Ethan threw his legs over the railing of his top bunk and leapt to the ground, landing in a half crouch.
“He’s a douche, but he’s an agile douche,” I said, attempting the same thing and half sliding, half falling from mine. Amazing that I could run across a log while being pummeled with arrows and spears, but could barely manage dropping out of bed. Then again, there was no adrenaline pumping despite all the noise. These theatrics were irritating, certainly, but not dangerous.
Another set of mini-explosions drowned out the shouts and yells from outside—fire crackers meant to scare and drive us out.
The door burst open, and a woman with short platinum hair and thin lips stepped in. Her clothing style said she was part of the program. “Get moving! Let’s go, slugs!”
“What’s going on?” Ethan yelled over the blaring siren.
“Your second trial starts in half an hour. Get to the gate or get a ticket home. Let’s go!” The woman peeled away from the doorway as we staggered forward, sleep drunk.
“Today is supposed to be a day off,” Ethan called after her as she strutted down the narrow lane leading to the other portables. People waited in their clusters, their crews, rubbing their eyes and huddling together against the early morning chill. More kids surged out of the mansion, their movements jerky from the shock of being woken up just after the butt crack of dawn.
Pete stretched and then groaned. “I’m still sore from yesterday.”
“We all are. That’s why we’re supposed to get a break,” Ethan groused.
“Head to the buses.” The woman stalked toward us, motioning us to the buses. “Load up.”
“When was the last time the academy changed stuff up like this? They’ve always had a day of rest between each trial,” Gregory asked Pete.
He shook his head. “Wally would know.” He pointed. “There she is!”
Wally broke away from a group of girls and jogged toward us across a broad stretch of lawn, waving her hand like she was stranded and flagging down a rescue plane.
“She’s not supposed to leave her group, I don’t think,” Pete said softly.
Ethan rolled his eyes and shoved me forward before grabbing Pete by the shirt and yanking him after me. “Hurry up. They’ve been known to leave without people.”
“Suddenly the team player?” I asked Ethan dryly as Wally caught up to us.
“I need someone to trip if we’re being chased by beasts,” he replied. Funny enough, I didn’t think Ethan was kidding, not for a second.
“Only three times in the history of the Culling Trials have they altered the format,” Wally said breathlessly. “This is very exciting.”
“Why do you think they’re changing things?” Gregory asked. “Do they want to hurry us into school, maybe? But really, what’s an extra few days?”
A line of chartered buses waited for us in the mansion parking lot, the doors open and an attendant standing by each. I didn’t see Sunshine or Rory anywhere.
“Which one should we choos
e?” Pete asked.
“Follow me.” Ethan cut through the crowd.
At the fourth bus from the end, the attendant held up her hand. “Room for one more group. Let’s go.”
“That’s us.” Ethan put out his hand to stop another group of five guys who stood much closer to the bus. “Find another bus,” he told them with a haughtiness that seemed as grotesque as it was useful, given they all deflated and backed away. He glanced back at us. “Come on.”
“Why this bus?” I asked, seeing no distinction between this one and the rest.
He didn’t answer, only strode past the empty seats at the front. Near the back of the bus, he stopped next to a seemingly random seat and jerked his head at the occupants. “You’re in my seat. Move.”
The two starry-eyed girls fell over themselves to get out of his way, batting their lashes and showering him in sweet smiles.
I scowled at them. “Grow a spine, ladies.”
“You too. And you.” Ethan motioned for more seats to be vacated, this time by equally starry-eyed guys before taking his seat and nodding for me to sit with him. The way both genders reacted to him was unreal.
“People just do what he says?” I asked Wally as the displaced kids found new seats and the bus door slid shut.
“He’s a Helix.” She shrugged and sat.
Apparently, that was answer enough.
I slid in beside Ethan as he pulled a square of thicker type paper from his pocket. After a cursory look around, he peeled the corners away and read the sheet. His hand slid to his belt where his wand stuck out of a canvas holster.
“Do you have your cell phone on the other side, nerd?” I asked with some snark. I didn’t plan to mention that I was so poor, I neither had a phone nor a belt to put it on. “You should at least get a leather belt. It’s way cooler.”
The bus shimmied to a start, following behind those in front. The sun lit the interior and a few people started chattering.
“Did I hear right that you don’t know anything about magic?” Ethan asked, refolding the paper and tucking it into his pocket.
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