“But you kinda lied to them about the--”
“It won’t matter. We should be done tonight, and knowing angels, they aren’t going to wait until their podcast to tell everyone about you. It will mean that attention will be focused on you instead of me.” The beautiful succubus smiled as she spoke, and I felt my heart spin a bit in my chest.
“Oh, I still don’t quite see why you lied.”
“This school is strange. Everyone remembers your name. Maybe your magic wore off?” She raised her eyebrow and looked at me.
“The lady in the office forgot,” I pointed out.
“True. Maybe some of the kids are powerful. I wasn’t getting that from Kristen though. Do you feel different? Like maybe your magic has weakened?”
“I dunno. I don’t feel any different. Would there be any other reason that they would all know my name? It hasn’t happened before. Everyone seems to forget me.”
“I won’t forget you, Sherman,” the brown-haired girl whispered to me.
“Ahhh. Thanks, I--”
“Do you think that they were pretty?” Charlotte interrupted me.
“Uhhh, the angel girls?”
“No, the other girls that were just here shooting you lovey dovey eyes. Ugh, that Kristen was almost sitting on your lap. Talk about making it obvious.” Charlotte growled a bit. “She probably thinks we are siblings.”
“Uhhh, isn’t that the idea? Don’t we want everyone to think we are siblings?”
“Yes, I suppose.” The winged girl sighed and stood from her seat next to me. “Do you see any vampires around the school? I need a target.”
I looked around the campus for one of the fanged monsters. I noticed what I thought was one walking from the classroom buildings toward the office building. He wore a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches over a cream colored dress shirt, and dark blue jeans. The ensemble was completed with leather top-sider boat shoes. His hair was a curly black, but his complexion gave him away. He was white as porcelain and had a reddish glow to his eyes. I knew he was a vampire without him even barring his fangs.
“He is one; about to enter the office.” I pointed at the man.
“Oh, good! He looks like a teacher. This will be easy. I’m going to go figure out who he is and which class he teaches. I might be able to leave the wolf’s body in his office. That will make this super easy. We’ll be heading back to Hell before dinner.” The girl seemed euphoric, but my heart only sunk.
“Charlotte, do you, ahhh, I ahhh, know that Satan wants us to finish tonight, but do you think he would let us take some time off? We just got to the apartment, and I kind of wanted to get used to the place.”
“Nope, Satan doesn’t really take time off. He won’t let us either.” The girl shrugged.
“Every time we’ve gone into his throne room, he is sitting there with all the other succubi all over him. It seems like he is always taking time off,” I said.
“Shhhh,” she hissed with a finger to her lips. “He might be listening to us.”
“He can do that?” I squeaked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. We shouldn’t be talking about that stuff in the open anyway.” She gestured to the quad. “We have a job to do; the reward for doing well will be more work. If we do poorly, well, let’s just do well. Okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I would want that,” I thought she whispered softly, but I couldn’t quite hear her over the crowded murmur of the quad.
“I didn’t hear you. What did you say?” I asked with interest.
“I’m going to go walk into the office and see if I can find out more about that vampire teacher. If I don’t see you before your wrestling practice, I’ll see you when you bring the alpha to the ambush area. Make sure you get out of my way when I attack and don't get involved in the fight. He can kill you with a flick of his finger. Do you understand the plan?” she asked, and her purple eyes glowed a bit.
“I think so. I just go to practice and then get him to follow me by the building.” I pointed at the map at the ambush spot. “What if I can’t get him to come with me?”
“Just strike up a conversation or something. I dunno. He’s a jock meathead. Ask him about his championships and trophies or something. Trust me, these kind of guys just want to talk about themselves all the time, especially washed up teachers.”
“I don’t think he is really ‘washed up’ Dr. King seems muscular,” I whispered.
“If he was strong, why would he be teaching physical education at a high school?” she asked with a shrug.
“I dunno, but he is an alpha. Aren’t they supposed to be strong?”
“Biggest fish in a small pond? I’m not worried, Sherman. You shouldn’t be either. Just bring him to that spot and get out of my way so I can work. Understand?” she asked.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Good. I’m going to go figure out who this vampire teacher is. See you later tonight.”
The brown-haired succubus gave me a small smile and an even smaller wave, and then she turned to stroll toward the office on the far side of the quad. I watched her walk for a few moments, but even though the sight of her wonderful backside should have made me feel happy, I couldn’t fight the dread filling my stomach. Her plan seemed much too simple to work. But then again, Charlotte was a professional succubus assassin, and I was just a guy that was good at video games. I was probably making too big of a deal out of Dr. King’s muscles and obvious power. I had seen Charlotte fight plenty of times, and she could handle herself.
Except for the few times she hadn’t been able to handle herself. The dark angel, Ashley, had absolutely scared my friend, and the rakshasas tiger demon, Divyia, had almost killed Charlotte when we tried to escape. Both of those times my succubus partner had fought them in a fair fight though, and this time Charlotte was planning on making a surprise strike against Dr. King. It would probably be okay.
Or so I hoped. I didn’t want the beautiful succubus girl to get hurt again, and I also didn’t want to do that podcast tomorrow. Maybe that was the real reason that Charlotte had told Kristen that I would do it? The succubus might have just been stringing the angel girl along to see her reaction. Or mine. The idea sounded all sorts of manipulative, but then again, she was a demon.
Chapter 4
I walked into the classroom part of the gym a few minutes before practice was supposed to start. I didn’t see any students, but I heard the distant echo of conversation from the boy’s locker room to the side. It wasn’t clear exactly what I was supposed to do at practice, so I made my way toward Dr. King’s office. Before I could get there, both the massive orc and the big werewolf stepped out of the room.
They were both giant men-monsters, but their size appeared to be magnified when they stood next to each other. They seemed to take up half of the classroom’s empty space with their shoulders, muscles, and fighting presence.
“The first light of the dawn reveals the soul of the true warrior of the gods. When he rises from the ashes of the Earth, he hungers for fresh blood and the endless drug of victory.” The orc’s voice was somehow whispered, but intense at the same time. He leveled a large finger at me and continued. “Are you prepared to join the gods of Earth and the Stars as a true champion of valor? Are you ready to feel the blood of your enemies flow from the fiery hot molten magma where your struggling bodies have been tossed?”
“Ohh yeah. I think Sherman is ready. Look at the battle stance. He’s got the cream. Oh yeah. I can see it. He’ll work hard. No showboating or grandstanding. He’ll do what needs to be done when he needs to do it. Just like the hawk that goes out into the storm to find the duck dressed as a chicken. Sherman is going to be the slippery monkey. Yeah.” Dr. King nodded at me. The two men took one single step and it carried them across the whole classroom to stand next to me.
“The warrior needs to be armored before battle. The gods of Earth, Stars, and Sky demand tribute from the newly birthed combatant.” Mr. Hellsig touched me on the s
houlder and then held out a wrestling uniform with his other hand. The suit was the school colors, and I took it from him with trembling hands.
“You’re gonna need to protect the manly bits and pieces as well.” Dr. King handed me a clear plastic bag. Inside was a jockstrap and plastic ear protecting armor.
“The training will destroy your mind, body, and soul. But then you will be reborn as the champion of your own universe. It will make you into the man that you have always dreamed that you wanted to be. You should make haste. The penalty for being late to your destruction only brings more destruction,” the orc said as he gestured to the locker room behind me.
“Yeah. So we’ll be starting in five minutes. Meet out on the mats and we’ll do a warm up. Ohh yeah.” Dr. King nodded at me.
“Okay,” I said as I looked down at the equipment they passed me before I walked into the locker room.
There were about twenty boys in the room, and most of them had finished getting changed already. A few of them nodded to me, but they all seemed to be having a heated debate about who the prettiest girl at school was, and they didn’t seem interested in halting their conversation to introduce themselves. It was probably for the best. I didn’t like the idea of changing in front of them, and I also wasn’t looking for friends, we’d be gone from the school tonight if things went according to plan.
I opened my locker and took off my clothes as quickly as I could. I had kind of avoided the whole “getting naked in a locker room full of guys” thing at my previous high school because my teachers had given me a pass to just sit and read. When I had changed this morning, the other students had already left, so I didn’t have to worry about them seeing me. So this was the first time anyone other than my parents had ever seen me naked, and my hands trembled as I took off my underwear.
I half expected someone to snicker, or to laugh, or call out how weak I looked, but none of the other boys seemed to even notice me, and I got the athletic cup on with only a few seconds of awkward fumbling. As soon as the thing was strapped onto me, I squirmed into the tight uniform, and then looked at the weird half helmet that was supposed to go over my ears. The device had what looked like eight straps, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it over my head.
“I can help you. Uhh, Sherman, right?” one of the boys asked. He was shaped like a devil, with rocky skin, a long tail, small wings, and an ugly horned head. But he lacked the glow to his eyes and didn’t reek of evil. I guessed that he was a gargoyle.
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said as he took the helmet from me.
The gray skinned monster-boy twisted the device in his fingers and then passed it back to me. “Just put your head through there and it will fit. You might have to adjust the bottom clasp to make it tighter.”
“Thanks,” I said as I took it back from him.
“No problem. I’m surprised that you don’t know how to put it on. I heard you were some sort of state champ from another school.” He shot me a toothy smile that I guessed was supposed to be nice, but his razor teeth made him look like something out of a gothic nightmare.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked with surprise.
“Everyone at school is talking about it. I’m excited to see what you can do at practice.”
“Uhhh. Jeez.” I forced a smile to my face that I was sure looked more like a grimace. “I’m not really good. I don’t know how that rumor started.”
“Really? Dr. King didn’t even have you try out. Everyone at school is saying that you were a state champion, but then you quit to play video games in Japan,” the gargoyle kid spoke with amazement, and a few of the other boys on the team stopped their conversations so that they could hear us.
“Uhhh. I’m not that good at wrestling. I think you are all going to be disappointed. I’m pretty good at video games, though.”
“We gotta get in there!” one of the boys hissed from the other side of my locker, and we all shuffled out into the main area of the gymnasium.
The gym was the typical high school set up. There were six large mats placed on the wood floor, and the stands, basketball hoops, and dodge ball cages had all been pushed or swung away from the center area. Dr. King and Mr. Hellsig were already at the center mat, and the two men were engaged in a whispered discussion.
“Good afternoon team,” Dr. King said when we all moved to the side of the mat. “Did you all meet Sherman? He’s got the cream, and will be working in the one hundred and six class. I’m thinking that he’s gonna be a real chicken hawk, and do the things that need to be done when they need the doing. Yeah.” The werewolf man touched the sides of his ski goggle looking sunglasses when he spoke.
“Thanks for joining the team,” the gathered boys all said in scattered replies. They were a complete mismatch of races. Gargoyle, elf, dwarf, zombie, tiger-man, lizard man, sasquatch, angel, an insect man with two arms on each side, and even a huge ogre were present.
“Coach Hellsig is gonna be leading you all in a short warm up exercise. Then I’m going to be making an ah-sess-ment of our new team member while the rest of you split into some drills that coach Hellsig will lead. Yeah. Let’s get going.” The werewolf clapped his hands, and we all turned to the massive orc-man.
“Warriors! We will run!” the orc gestured for us to stand up, and then he led us around one of the large mat circles in a jog. After a few laps around, I started to feel my heart hammering in my chest, and then the orc shouted at us to shuffle sideways. I saw the other boys turn to face the inside of the circle, and they made sideway skipping jumps to keep the same jogging speed. I followed their movements and almost tripped a few times when my clumsy feet collided together. Fortunately, I didn’t fall, and I soon had figured out a somewhat graceful way to do the movement. Then we switched directions by facing away from the circle, and I kind of had to relearn the shuffle with my left foot in the lead.
When I was facing away from the group, I saw that Dr. King was actually doing the same warm-up exercises as the boys were; he was just a few feet outside of the circle so that we wouldn’t be disturbed by his presence. I thought it was kind of cool that he was working out with his students, and I felt a pang of remorse when I remembered that Charlotte would kill him in a few short hours. The alpha werewolf seemed like a nice guy, and I kind of didn’t want him to die.
The orc switched back to running, but then he lifted his arms up in the air with a series of pumping motions when each of his feet landed. The boys all mirrored his movements, even the ant-man, who did it with all six of his arms. It was getting a bit hard to breathe when I threw up my arms, and I was sucking in air with ragged gasps of pain.
Coach Hellsig moved sideways again, and he alternated from holding his hands in the air high over his head to slamming them down on the mat with a thunderous clap. The rest of the boys were prepared for the motion, and they fell into a synchronized movement so that they slapped the ground at exactly the same moment as the orc. I tried to keep up the pace with them, but my lungs were screaming, and my slap against the ground seemed to fall half a second after everyone else’s, no matter how much I tried to speed up my movements.
The orc moved into the center of the circle and then lowered himself onto his back. The rest of the team followed his movement to the ground, and I saw them push up with the flat of their hands against the map. This bent their backs into an “n” shape with their stomachs pointing to the ceiling of the gym. I tried to do the movement a second after I saw them and my spine protested with a rapid fire of cracks along its length.
The orc lowered his back to the ground and then performed the tortuous movement again. I grunted with the effort, but my back didn’t snap again, and I felt my stomach thrust up into the air. We did it three more times, and then the orc rolled to lie on his belly.
We followed his movement, and the muscular man lifted his arms and legs away from the mat like he was Superman. We all held the position for a few moments, and my arms started shaking. When I felt like I couldn’t hold them for anoth
er second, he lowered them to the ground to rest for a few moments. Then he repeated the motion, and I wanted to cry. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me already for the work I had done in PE, and this was just compounding the agony.
“Stretch out the muscles. The gods don’t get cramps. They only get the surge of POWER that comes from destroying their enemies on the field of battle.” The orc was on his feet now, and was pulling his arm across his broad chest to stretch out his shoulders.
The next ten minutes were actually enjoyable. The coach led us through some gentle stretches that loosened all of my aching muscles. It was over too soon, and then he paired the team up for sparing.
“Star Conqueror, your place is with Dr. King. He’ll be teaching you about the endless battles raging between the forces inside your own body, soul, and mind. THIS IS THE KIND OF BATTLE THAT MOST MEN LOSE, but not you. No, you will rise to defeat the child in your soul and emerge as a powerful man-god fit for worship.” The orc raised his green arms in the air while he shouted and he clenched his fists together when he dramatically brought them down at the end of his short monologue.
“Yeah. Let’s see what kind of stuff you’ve got inside of you. I’m thinking it is the cream of the crop, but it could be the chocolate in the pudding or the sinew of the muscle. Come with me. Yeah.” The wolf man had walked over by me while the orc spoke, and he gestured for us to walk over to a mat on the far side of the room.
“We are going to start with some of the basic--”
“Hey!” There was a loud shout from the far side of the gym, and it cut off the werewolf’s sentence. I looked over to where the shout had originated, and saw that another werewolf had entered the gym.
This one was somehow bigger than Dr. King.
He had blonde colored fur, instead of Dr. King’s brown, but he had just as many muscles and must have stood three inches taller. The werewolf was shirtless, but wore a tight pair of red wrestling pants on. He also had a yellow bandana around his head, and he led a group of uniformed wearing boys into our gym.
Werewolf!: Hell High Book 3 Page 4
