Shifter’s University

by K. R. Thompson

  Logan faltered, his injured arm giving way. I shifted back, letting my borrowed magic melt away. He shifted, too, immediately pulling his shirt off to get a better look at his injury.

  I had been on my way to him, but now I froze midstep. The light from a couple of the lanterns that had been left behind played on the muscles in his arms and chest.

  Wow isn’t the word for that.

  He noticed I’d stopped moving and looked up, a frown furrowing his brow. “Are you all right, Claire?” His shoulder forgotten, he strode over to me, worried, as he scanned me for any sign of injury.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” My voice sounded shaky and not at all fine, but it was the result of the sight of his bare torso, not from my part of the fight. I noticed a pair of round holes in his shoulder. Twin rivulets of blood ran down his bicep to his elbow. “We need to get you some help. Tell me his bite wasn’t poisonous.”

  “It isn’t…or at least, I hope it isn’t. Water serpents are only lethal when they are in water. The most he’ll give me is a sore shoulder and possibly a scar or two. Luckily for us, you chose a good fighting spot.” His eyes narrowed, and he scowled. “Are you crazy, or what? You never should have let him goad you into coming here.”

  I bit my lip and gave him a slight shrug. “I’m sorry?”

  At that, his serious expression fell away, and he laughed. His smile transformed his face, and while he hadn’t been at all bad to look at before, now he was gorgeous. I couldn’t stop gaping at him.

  He stopped laughing and became serious again. “By the way, the wyvern was extremely cool. I think you might be the first one who has ever attended Shifter’s.”

  “So that’s what I was. I wondered since I could only see part of me.”

  “Yep. A wyvern. Very similar to a dragon,” he said, his grin returning. “We should go flying sometime.”

  Is that a date? Is he asking me for a date? The voice in my head was giddy with excitement, but logic had already set in. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to shift into a wyvern again. That was your magic and Victor’s. I just borrowed it.”

  “Well. For the record, you can borrow my magic anytime,” he replied, then his eyes narrowed as he looked over my shoulder.

  “Logan wins,” someone exclaimed. “Pay up, Montrose. I told you he would.”

  I turned to see another guy root in his pockets for money, looking none too happy.

  Lacy bounded over to me. “I’m glad you’re okay. I thought you were right behind me when the fighting started, but when I looked, you were gone.”

  “I’m fine. Logan won,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face, hoping like crazy that no one else had seen what I’d become.

  Another guy I had seen at the Earth House rushed up, his blond mane of hair looking wild. His face was flushed, as if he had just ran the mile from the school to the Peak.

  “Irin, what is it?” Logan asked, stepping around me. “What’s happened.”

  “It’s the Dark Watch,” Irin replied, breathless. “Imperium is under attack.”

  The Dark Watch had struck with more force than the previous time from the looks of the chaos and the blood that painted the grass.

  I should have flown back and helped. Guilt wracked me as I stared down at the still body of one of the students I had seen earlier at the Peak. Apparently, he’d fled back to campus only to find himself in the middle of an even worse fight—a deadly one.

  I hadn’t wanted to leave Claire and Lacy to return to the school on their own, not knowing what they’d find when they arrived. I came back with them, but now regrets were rocketing through me. A flare of pain through my injured shoulder reminded me it would have been difficult to fly at best, and might have been impossible.

  The Watch had killed at least four of Imperium’s students, their bloodied bodies scattered in the courtyard. A wail rose on the air. Everyone looked toward the houses. My stomach dropped as I watched someone throw herself to the ground near a still form near the Earth House. The wail ceased, replaced by a heartbroken howl as the girl shifted to wolf, no longer able to contain her grief.

  “Mia,” Claire whispered the instant before she ran to her friend.

  “Claire, wait,” I shouted, but she was already well on her way across the courtyard. When she reached the wolf’s side, she melted to the ground.

  “Oh no, it’s Anna,” she exclaimed as I caught up with them. While Claire wasn’t nearly as vocal in her grief as the wolf, tears streamed down her face. I wanted more than anything to comfort her, but I stayed back, and stood behind them as Lacy joined in, dropping to her knees next to Claire. The two girls clung together, their arms looped around the wolf, who seemed oblivious to them.

  I looked down at the girl on the ground. There was a gash across her throat, no doubt from a blade. The Dark Watch believed silver blades had to be used to kill shapeshifters. I was struck by how similar Anna and Claire looked. They had the same dark hair and build.

  It could have been Claire if she hadn’t been at the Peak tonight.

  That thought spiraled into another. She wouldn’t have been there at all if it hadn’t been for Victor. This was the second time he’d said or done something that had kept Lacy and Claire away from the school when it was being attacked.

  If I was a nice sort and didn’t suspect him of helping the Watch, I would have begrudgingly thanked him.

  But I wasn’t nice…and he wasn’t innocent in what happened here tonight. Not by a long shot.

  The only good thing to come from this was I now knew Claire wasn’t responsible for the crystals breaking. She hadn’t been there to affect them in any way. She is Yokai, but this wasn’t her fault.

  I spotted Victor lurking by the side of the main house, and it was all I could do not to go over and kick his ass—for more than a dozen reasons.

  Then I saw the headmistress near one of the other houses.

  I touched Claire’s shoulder. When she looked up at me with her sad eyes, I told her I’d be right back.

  I left them and waited to speak to the headmistress. She looked tired. This night had taken its toll on her. “I know you and a few others were not here tonight, Logan. I’ll address that in the morning once everything else has been sorted out,” she promised, her tone still as firm as ever. “We have our dead to take care of tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I think you might want to hear what I have to say. I know who has been helping the Dark Watch penetrate our shields.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You have my attention, Mr. Fairmont. But be sure of who you are willing to reveal as our enemy, for I can assure you that justice will not be merciful.”

  She took Claire, Lacy, and me to her office, and I repeated what I suspected about Victor, then I pulled the scale out of my pocket and gave it to her.

  “He also tried to drown me earlier today,” Claire added.

  I looked at her, incredulous. When was she going to tell me that?

  Seeing the look on my face, she continued, “At first, I thought I only fell into the lake, but when I saw Victor’s serpent coiled around you, I remembered the moment before I blacked out. I remember being pulled under the water and dragged down by his coils. I know it was him. Lacy was there to save me, thank goodness.”

  “It would appear you have been in need of constant saving today, Ms. Pratten,” the headmistress said dryly.

  We stayed silent. It wouldn’t do to tell the headmistress that Claire had been the one to save me on the Peak. That would open up an entirely different conversation…one I didn’t want to have. Instead, we all stood there looking at one another for an uncomfortable moment of silence.

  The office door swung open, and Victor stepped into the room. Claire and I exchanged a startled glance—how had we missed her summoning him?

  He stood apart from us. A long section on one side of his face, from hairline to chin, was scorched. That hadn’t come from me, I thought, trying to keep the grin from showing. That had been all Claire and her wyvern.


  “Information has come to light in your involvement concerning the Dark Watch,” the headmistress told him without preamble as she lifted the scale up for him to see. “Had you only been involved in luring lowerclassmen to lakes and off school grounds, I would have given you another chance, as I have Mr. Fairmont. However, there is proof against you and lives were lost tonight. For that, a price must be paid. You are hereby banished to the Forest of Lost Souls for your crimes, Victor DeVenoss.”

  He didn’t so much as blink at the verdict. Instead, his gaze was locked on the scale in her fingertips, as if he wondered how it had been found. As two upperclassmen came into the office to take him away, his attention turned to me. “This won’t be the last you’ll see of me, dragon boy,” he promised darkly. “I’ll find you on the other side.”

  Then they grabbed him and took him away.

  The door slammed shut, and I flinched. It sounded like an ending. A gunshot…or the thunk of a guillotine. Even though I knew he wasn’t in the section of the forest that would take his soul yet, he was as good as there.

  “Now for you,” the headmistress said in an even tone, as if she regularly banished her students and it was of no consequence to her. “This will be my last warning for each of you. If I hear so much as a whisper that any of you have disobeyed Imperium’s rules and left the grounds during this next week, you will be following Victor DeVenoss to the forest. Is that understood?”

  All three of us nodded in unison.

  The headmistress gave us a hard look for a moment, her lips parted as if she was deciding on whether to say anything more. Then she sat down behind her desk, picking up a sheet of paper and a pen.

  No doubt getting ready to write a letter to Victor’s parents and explain why they won’t be seeing him again.

  The headmistress’s eyes flicked up, and she waved us away. “You are dismissed. Please close the door on your way out.”

  I felt as if I were tiptoeing the entire way to the door, worried she’d change her mind at the last second.

  When we were out and I pulled it shut, I let out an uneasy breath and gave Claire a smile.

  “I’m going back to the dorm. I’m not feeling well,” Lacy announced suddenly.

  “I’ll come with you,” Claire offered.

  Lacy waved her off. “No, I’ll be fine. Just going to lay down. Today was too much excitement. It’s catching up with me.”

  “All right.” Claire didn’t sound sure, but she stood and watched her friend go.

  “Where to?” I asked, knowing she must be wanting to go somewhere or do something if she wasn’t heading straight to her room.

  “Could you just walk with me? I have questions.”

  “Sure.”

  We left the main hall and made it back outside before she asked the first one. “I didn’t like Victor, but I feel responsible—as if I’ve murdered him somehow by sending him away.”

  The feeling was mutual, but I didn’t want to tell her that and have her feel even more guilt.

  “Could you take me to the spot where the Forest begins? I feel like someone should have at least been there to witness him leaving.”

  In no way had I seen that coming. “Yeah, I can take you.”

  We walked in silence as we crossed the courtyard and passed the houses to the forest.

  “The Forest of Lost Souls is this close to the dorms?” she asked. I didn’t have to look at her face to know she was surprised; the shock in her voice was clear.

  “It’s not far,” I admitted, leading her up the path we had taken before to the overlook. I grabbed a fallen branch and made a torch so we would be able to see.

  Halfway up the mountain, I made a sharp right onto a smaller path that was visible from the freshly trampled grass and broken limbs. In a few places, there were furrows in the dirt, evidence the two shifters who had been tasked with exiling Victor had to drag him a few times.

  There were footprints here and there pointing in the direction we had come. Their task was already done.

  A few yards more and the atmosphere changed, becoming thick and foreboding.

  “This is it,” I said, stopping when I couldn’t manage to take another step. This was the place where Victor had been physically thrown to his end, though I couldn’t see anything else past this point. Everything looked blurry and uncertain, with shapes that slid back and forth in hues of green and brown.

  “It feels as if there is a wall here,” Claire whispered, reaching her hand out to touch the magic that separated the two sections of forest.

  “There is a wall here. The coven keeps it in place,” I explained. The magic shimmered under her touch, then sent a shock through her fingertips when she kept them there too long.

  “Ow.” Her hand went to her mouth as she sucked on one sore finger.

  “Sorry. I should have warned you about that. It gets worse the longer you touch it.”

  “Between keeping the shields up to keep the Watch out and then this wall to keep us out, it’s no wonder Hadley looked preoccupied when I saw her last,” Claire said.

  “Yeah, I’d say being one of Imperium’s witches could definitely be a juggling act at times,” I agreed.

  “So what happens once you enter here?” she asked, her eyes locked on the wall.

  “You become locked into what your animal spirit is and eventually your human side dies.”

  “You’re telling me that there are only creatures in there?”

  “Well, not really,” I admitted, not happy to tell her the rest of what I’d heard happened there. Claire turned to me and waited, obviously not going to let me stop there. I sighed. “They say that the creatures in there fight with one another once their human counterparts die. Then, after a while, the creatures die, too.” I saw questions lingering in her eyes, so I continued. “We are shapeshifters. Two souls in one body, forever connected. Taking away one part of our soul—whichever part—only causes the other to suffer.” I turned my attention back to the wall, unable to look her in the eye any longer. “It’s the Forest of Lost Souls, Claire. Those behind this wall haven’t just been punished. They’ve been given a death sentence.”

  The two weeks that passed after the Watch’s attack went by in a haze. I functioned in classes, but didn’t really comprehend anything. Finding out the Forest’s secret and attending Anna’s funeral, along with the other three murdered students had been hard.

  “You need to go home,” Lacy said suddenly, peering at me from over her Advanced Histories workbook. We’d been doing homework. Neither of us had said anything in over a half hour, so she’d caught me off guard and knew it. “You need to go home. You’re homesick, Claire.”

  Not homesick. There wasn’t anything at my foster house that was worth missing. Except Blake. I definitely missed my brother. If that was what homesick was, then yeah, I had it. “Maybe a little,” I agreed.

  “You should ask the headmistress if you could go out to the city with Logan this weekend. Everything has been quiet since Victor left. I’m sure she’d let you go if you asked,” she suggested.

  “Maybe.” I realized I’d do just about anything to see my brother again—even if it meant braving the wrath of my foster father to figure out where he’d gone. I gave Lacy the first genuine smile I could remember since the Watch attack. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she answered with a shrug as she went back to concentrating on her work. “That’s what friends are for.”

  It took me most of the day to get my courage up, and even then, it wavered the instant I raised my hand to knock on the thick wooden door. I hadn’t been here since the day the headmistress had banished Victor. I was shaking badly enough I accidentally knocked once before I meant to.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Every inch of me trembled when I opened the door and stepped inside. I could feel the stir of my fox inside me, wondering if now would be a good time for us to scamper off and hide.

  “What can I help you with, Ms. Pratten?” She was si
tting behind her desk, the spelled round globe that had marked me for the Earth House in front of her, as if she had been inspecting it.

  “Um…” I began uncertainly.

  She lifted a brow, no doubt wondering if I had lost my sanity as well as my ability to speak.

  “I was wondering if I could go to the city with Logan tonight,” I said in a rush of words that were a near jumble. “To help with finding other shifters.”

  She frowned and didn’t say anything for a few seconds, making me wonder if she was psychic and heard my thoughts. “I suppose. Tell Logan you have my permission to accompany him.”

  “Thank you!” The two words sounded like one, but I didn’t care. I gave her a bright smile and rushed out the door faster than I could have run as my fox, nearly barreling over two shifters in the hallway.

  They were the same two who had taken Victor away, and my wonderful mood instantly left as I wondered if they were there to take away someone else who hadn’t made the cut at Imperium. I was reminded of who I was—a Yokai—someone they would all fear if they knew my secret.

  In a school that was there to help hide the existence of shifters, I knew I would be the first one they would drag away if they ever found out.

  Taking Claire into the city wasn’t a good idea, in my opinion. True, she had the headmistress’s permission. That was the only reason I had her with me now. Still, I was second-guessing this entire trip. Taking her back to the place I rescued her from sounded like pure madness. Per the headmistress’s directions—according to Claire—I was supposed to drop her off, do whatever I needed to in the city, then come back later to pick her up.

  I smelled a rat in those directions, but I didn’t say anything.

  Instead of my usual way of entering the city via my dragon, I opted for a taxi that dropped Claire off in front of her old house. She was nearly out before I grabbed her hand. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”