by Meg Collett
“That’s why I’m here,” Zero said beside me. “Something’s—” She flickered into a shadow and reappeared, twisting into a kick that connected solidly with ’swang’s jaw. “Something’s up.”
“Really? You don’t say?” I snapped and threw a knife straight into the white orb of the ’swang in front of me. It yelped and fumbled back into the trees.
“What’s with her?” Zero asked Ollie.
Ollie cracked her whip again, and another ’swang slunk backward with a growl. “First day of school.”
“I see.” Zero disappeared and flashed to a ’swang, cutting its throat before materializing back into the shadows beside me, her lightning-fast movements flicking blood onto my coat.
“Watch it! This is new.”
Ollie grunted as if my complaint further illustrated her point. She dove forward in a series of whip cracks, her silver knuckles flashing on her fist as she engaged.
The three of us moved like the inflating lungs of a great beast. On every inhale, we surged outward with our weapons to take down the aswangs pouring out of the woods, their mouths foaming and eyes white. On every exhale, we contracted backward, shoulders touching, backs to each other. It was a dance we’d practiced in the last few months. It was also the only time we ever saw Zero.
But Zero had been right about tonight: something was up.
The attack wasn’t calculated. With this many ’swangs, we should have been in trouble. But they moved disjointedly as though they’d had one too many drinks before prowling the night. The fear manipulation in my mind was barely more than a throb in my temples. I had yet to hear an aswang’s telltale tick tock sound.
“Where the hell are they coming from?” Ollie shouted, her golden hair dripping blood.
I had a cramp in my arm, and I’d long since run out of throwing knives. I only had my short blade. The thought of letting myself get bit had entered my mind several times, but that foam in their mouths worried me. Every instinct told me to stay away from that.
“Where the heck,” I growled, slashing my blade across the snout of the nearest aswang to force some fighting room, “is your pack?”
“Question of the fucking night. Zero, need help over here—”
Before she could finish, Zero had ghosted from my side and appeared beside Ollie, who was surrounded by four ’swangs. Zero hacked at the ’swangs with her machete.
“We need to think about retreating,” I called over their grunts as they worked to clear a path back to me.
But as I finished off my aswang, more came in. They headed straight for me, eyes burning, and cut me off from the others.
“Uh, guys,” I called as I backed up toward the woods.
Not smart. They came from there too. Nearly twenty aswangs filled the little clearing, and no one was protecting my back.
“Zero!” Ollie yelled.
Zero flashed to my side. “This is bad,” she said.
It was worse than bad. We were overrun. We’d lost our formation. Our backs were against a wall of aswangs, and we had no backup. No other hunters. No pack of Ollie’s ’swangs.
Ollie let out a howl of pain that I felt in my heart. I spun toward her. She had an aswang on her, its teeth latched onto her forearm.
Without thinking, I shouted, “Zero, go!”
Zero didn’t hesitate. As soon as she went, the aswangs leaped at me.
One hit my back, knocking me to the ground. I dropped my blade. It skittered across the earth and gleamed in the moonlight, just out of reach. A ’swang stepped on my hand, pinning it in place. Above me, they growled at one another, snapping teeth like dogs around their dinner, posturing for the first bite. Their foaming saliva dripped onto me in thick splatters.
Ollie screamed from a great distance, “Sunny! We’re coming!”
A tendril of fear worked down my spine. I felt it coming. The pain.
I closed my eyes.
My eyelids turned a bright pink.
Yelps splintered the air above me.
I opened my eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again against a bright white light. A gust of wind swept across the clearing, bending the trees and pressing me against the ground. I cracked an eyelid open. The aswang nearest me spooked back, but not fast enough. A crack sounded, and its head exploded into a smattering of blood and gore.
All around us, the aswangs fell. I shielded my eyes as I looked up even higher. One huge light hovered in the sky, bobbing to and fro, raining hellfire down on the aswangs.
Across the clearing, Ollie shoved a dead ’swang off her and rolled onto her side. Guts and blood coated her front and streamed down her face. Her eyes locked on mine. She was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear her over the thumping above us and the sharp cracks of gunfire. The buffeting wind nearly bowled me over. I dug my fingers into the cold ground and held on.
Zero had gone, but she wasn’t far. She hated bright lights.
One last crack sounded. The wind lessened, and the light faded.
Without the spotlight in my eyes, my vision cleared, and I saw what I hadn’t seen before.
A helicopter rose higher into the air, guns whirring at its side. Men in black flight suits and balaclavas hung out the open doors. They stared down at us before the chopper turned and took off across the woods.
Straight toward Fear University.
I surged upright and almost fell right back down. Blood had turned the ground slick. All around us, aswang bodies were piled in heaps. Some still twitched, breathing their final breaths.
Zero reappeared, darkness curling like smoke on her skin, and stared at the blood at our feet.
Across the way, Ollie stood shakily. “Who the hell was that?” she asked.
Zero shook her head. “Couldn’t get inside. Too bright.”
I picked up the short blade I’d dropped. With a swipe across my jeans, I cleaned the blood from the blade and sheathed it on my belt. “I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s heading toward home.”
Punctuating my sentence, more cracking gunfire sounded farther away, closer to the school.
“Let’s go,” Ollie said, face grim.
We took off running through the woods.
T H R E E
Ollie
It was taking us too long to reach the school.
I ran on rubber legs. With every step, I questioned if I might fall. I sent Zero ahead to the school, but she wouldn’t get close enough to make a difference if there was a fight.
If Dean had come to kill us all.
But why save us from the aswangs to then fly to the university and slaughter everyone?
My gut twisted. Maybe he wanted me to see all their dead bodies and hold the injured as they died. Maybe he wanted me to pay.
I ran faster, not feeling the pain in my arm like I should have from a real aswang’s bite—one not sick and foaming at the mouth with white eyes. Something was wrong with these ’swangs, and I felt nothing but a dread so deep it permeated my marrow. My eyes burned with tears. They spilled over and tracked down my cheeks.
Please don’t let them all be dead.
I burst from the woods by the bay and aimed straight for the fence line. Above, in the center of the school, the helicopter’s bright spotlight splintered the darkness. It landed within the school’s boundaries, its thumping blades slicing through the air.
I raced along the fence and skidded around the corner, my feet tearing across the ground as I focused on the front gate. Behind me, Sunny gasped as she stumbled over the loose rocks.
I paused and half-turned to her.
“Go on!” she shouted, waving me forward. “Go!”
I took off again at a mad sprint, knowing she only had her close-quarters blade. She had hardly anything to defend herself with if more aswangs attacked or if Dean had brought more than just the few soldiers in the helicopter. I left her behind. I had to know. I had to know if everything was over.
I wanted to stop and vomit. A sharp fluttering filled my stomach.
I flung myself through the open gate. The helicopter perched on the grass near the courtyard. The red- and white-checkered umbrellas flapped in the wind, the chairs scraping across the stone as the rotors slowed.
Hunters, guards, and professors stood around, their hands on their guns, their eyes roving between their colleagues and the chopper.
I readied my whip, lashing it behind me, and strode toward the large metal bird.
“Ollie!” Luke shouted from somewhere near the barracks.
I didn’t slow.
I was going to kill Dean. Tonight, he was dying.
But instead of his handlebar mustache and paunchy belly, a tall form clad in tight blue jeans, worn cowboy boots, and a plaid shirt stepped out of the helicopter. When she straightened, her hand holding back silken auburn locks from her pale face, I slowed.
The helicopter’s engine shut off, and the university was nearly silent.
Then everyone’s hands lowered from their guns.
I stopped a few feet from the woman, my hand still firmly gripping my whip, my silver knuckles tucked tightly in my other hand.
I lifted my chin. “Who the fuck are you?”
The woman arched an eyebrow. She was stunning, with a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Her eyes were a startling shade of gold, almost orange in the right light. Her body was all legs, but somehow, she looked like she’d come straight off the runway and not like a lanky deer.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
She smiled at me warmly. Openly. Like she knew me.
“Ollie,” she said, flooring me completely. “It’s so good to finally meet you. I knew your mother.”
* * *
“Why don’t you get your old friend here a cup of tea while you’re at it, Clint?”
Mr. Clint pursed his lips at my challenge. He didn’t even deign to look at me.
“Ollie,” Luke said quietly beside me, “just calm down. She saved our asses out there.”
I swung my pinched gaze to him. I was still coated in blood and guts. It had almost dried in the time it had taken us to rally the hunters outside, shut the gates, check the grounds, reassure the students, and set the night back to right. Now we—myself, Luke, Mr. Clint, a few professors, trusted hunters, and her and her goon squad—were gathered in Dean’s old office. It was a tight squeeze, and I was prickling with unease.
Shit, I was electric with unease. I could have powered an entire freaking solar farm with my unease.
This was a bad idea.
The words to snap back at Luke, you weren’t out there, died on my tongue. They were a low blow, and I wanted to save those for her.
“It’s all right,” she said, smiling at Mr. Clint and then me. “She’s a spitfire, just like Irena.”
I hated her southern drawl. Her easy smile. The lines fanning out from her eyes like she spent a lot of time smiling.
And I really, really hated how my mother’s name rolled off her tongue so easily, as if she had known Irena Volkova.
It seemed like everyone had known her but me. The woman I knew had been frail and sickly, scared of her own shadow. One night, she put me in a closet and told me to stay there until she returned. She never did. I stayed in that tiny dark space for almost a week and a half, surviving on a bottle of Coke, before someone found me, half dead from dehydration and starvation. I hadn’t felt a thing. I’d just waited like my mom had told me to.
For years I thought she’d left me that night, but instead, just a few feet away in the backyard, Killian Aultstriver had murdered her.
Funny how the truths that governed our entire lives turned out to be lies in the end.
“This is Marley Summers. She was a few years ahead of me in school,” Mr. Clint was saying when I tuned back into the conversation happening in Dean’s office. It looked the same as he’d left it: the desk haphazardly disorganized, the bookshelves stuffed with all his knickknacks, the same smell of tobacco and spice. “But while we appreciate your assistance during the attack, I think we all want to know what you’re doing here.”
I almost rolled my eyes. Mr. Clint almost sounded like he had a backbone. But I refrained. I didn’t want to be mean. I liked Mr. Clint, and if I were being honest, he did have a backbone. He was one of the few good ones left. He—
“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk in front of a student.”
I blinked at the cowgirl newcomer. She was staring right at me. “Oh, you mean me. I’m not really a student.”
“Good point, Marley,” Mr. Clint—Mr. Backbone—said. “Ollie, why don’t you go back to the dorms? I’m sure you have homework.”
I laughed. When no one joined in, I glared at them—even Luke, who was staring a hole into the rug. “You’re joking, right?”
“You must be what, eighteen?” Cowgirl Jane said kindly, smiling. “You’re just a—”
“I’m old enough to have killed plenty of aswangs. I’m not just a student. This is my school, and whatever you have to say you can damn well say in front of me.”
Her smile didn’t falter. And it wasn’t a fake smile either. She meant it. Like it reached her eyes and shit. “Ollie,” she said as if she was about to break horrible news to me, “this isn’t your school. It belongs to everyone. I’m here to help you.”
I crossed my arms. She had a point about the school, but I wouldn’t admit that. “You might have gone to school with Mr. Clint back in the day, but that doesn’t mean shit to me.”
But it did, the tiniest little bit, because she said she had known my mother. And for all I wished it didn’t, that still meant something to me.
“I understand more than you know,” she said. She looked over at Luke, her eyes flickering with sadness. “I also knew your father and mother, Luke. They were older than me, but we ran with the same crowd. I hope your mother is doing well.”
Luke’s jaw flexed. At any mention of his father, he turned into Ice Man. “She is. Thank you.”
But honestly, what kind of name was Marley Summers? It gave me hives. I scratched at my arms. “Obviously, it’s been a while since you were here, Marley, since you’re, like, really old. But just so you know, things have changed. Times are—”
“We know all about the times, thank you, Ollie.” Mr. Clint raised his brows at me. “It’s time for you to go back to your dorm. The guards will let you into your room.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Mr. Clint’s eyes swept over to Luke then back to me. But not before I caught the recognition passing between them. They’d talked about this. About excluding me. Even before Marley Who The Fuck Ever showed up. I dropped my arms and glared at Luke. “You’re in deep shit,” I snarled at him.
He had the good grace to grimace.
“Ollie, I won’t ask you again,” Mr. Clint threatened.
“What?” I scoffed at him. “Are you going to give me demerits?”
Mr. Clint smiled. “No. How about Saturday school sessions for the next month?”
“You’re joking.”
“Two months, then. And if you don’t leave right now, I’ll make it the entire semester.”
Luke turned to me, his voice low. “Just go.”
“I belong in here.” My throat tightened around my words, and I was horrified to hear my voice crack. What the hell? Was I about to cry? What was happening to me? “I’ve fought many people and nearly died many times. I deserve to be in this room.”
“I know, Ollie,” Marley said. It looked like she wanted to walk over and pull me into a hug. The bitch. “I know you’ve sacrificed so much. But let us take over, okay? Just be a student for once. You’re right. You deserve that.”
Luke had me at the office door with his hand around my arm before I processed what was happening. My cheeks were wet, and I tasted salt at the corner of my lips. Opening the door, he sidled me into the hall of the admin wing, his own body staying in the office. He pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“Go to my room,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you everything later.”
He closed the door in my face.
I stared at the rich golden-brown wood grain as my eyes swam with tears. I let them fall. What was wrong with me? Normally, I would have torn this door down to get back into that room. Battered my fists against it and shouted obscenities until they let me back in. But my arm was too tired to lift, and my voice felt too weak to yell. My shoulders slumped. I stood there and cried.
I was just … tired.
I don’t know how long I stood there. Long enough that when I turned to walk away, I did so on my tiptoes in case anyone inside heard me and realized I’d been standing outside for minutes, crying.
Once I was out of the admin wing and back in the third-floor hall, I swiped at my face to clear away the tears and walked normally. The gym, behind the wall of glass that stretched along most of the hall, was dark, the punching bags hanging from the tall ceiling like bodies swinging on an invisible breeze. To my right, large windows interrupted the exposed brick walls. They overlooked a serene landscape of summer in Alaska. It looked so peaceful and bright beneath the moon, the trees standing sentinel against the evil within them, the farther mountains smiling down on us like white-hatted giants. No one would ever have thought that less than two hours ago hunters had been killing monsters in these woods.
My arm pulsed a wave of heat at the thought. Sunny had cleaned the bite and bandaged it, but it still felt feverishly hot. Not painful. Not even close. Just hot. Just wrong. I almost wished it would hurt the way it normally did when a ’swang bit me. The foaming saliva and the bright white eyes worried me. Something was wrong with the aswangs that had attacked tonight, and we wouldn’t know what until Sunny and the other nurses finished the autopsies.
A few of the hunters who had fought the ’swangs had tossed around the word “rabid.”
My stomach heaved. For a horrible second, I thought I might be sick. Please don’t be rabies, I thought. Not that. I didn’t want to die slobbering at the mouth and acting like a crazed fool.
