Hunter Trials (The Vampire Legacy Book 2)

by Rita Stradling

“How was yesterday?” he asked, and from his tone, I could tell that he had absolutely no idea what happened at orientation. “Did you manage to skip the assembly?”

  “Nope.” I folded up the now-empty muffin wrapper. “Your cousin railroaded me into going. I guess Sebastian blackmailed Mitch into it. Then, after the assembly, Mitch insisted on sitting in my doorway like some watchdog and passed out cold. I even managed to sneak Bailey by him while he was asleep. He might not be my biggest fan this morning.”

  “How was last night with Sebastian?”

  “Horrible,” I admitted with a shudder. “I mean, it was just more of the same. But if you can think of any possible way to get me out of being around your cousins daily, please tell me.” After a second, I realized how rude that sounded. “No offense.”

  Justin smirked and pulled me into his side. “I’m actively trying to find ways to get my cousins away from you, but they’re infinitely more powerful than me in this world.”

  At that moment, I decided to forgo telling him about the more traumatic parts of orientation. Those shadows would forever remain in the past.

  “Anything you can tell me about your day, or is it all top secret?” I asked as I reached up and threaded my fingers through his at my shoulder.

  “I can tell you that I’d have rather been hanging out with you,” he said, clearly meaning that he could tell me nothing about his internship.

  We headed up the front steps of the school and squeezed through the doorway with the rest of the crowd, spilling into a spacious entrance. The air was blissfully cool in the main corridor. Wide hallways spanned out to either side of us, and a large stairway led up to a second story. Beams of light filtered in from overhead skylights, illuminating groups of students funneling in all directions. Voices and running feet echoed all around us, like the low burble of a river.

  Justin and I maneuvered through the crowd to a long line of red lockers. At the wall, I paused and turned fully to face him. “Okay, how about we do lockers together and dinners together, and then I’ll reserve lunchtimes and class time for hanging out with potential new friends and the scholarship club?”

  Justin’s brows shot up. “You sound like you’re trying to divide custody of yourself.”

  “I’m just trying to manage expectations. I want time alone with you every day, but I also want to make time for friends. I don’t want them to start excluding me, thinking that I’m only interested in being with you.”

  Justin narrowed his eyelids at me. “You’re assuming that I want to spend that much of my day with you. You know what they say about people who make assumptions, right?”

  “Fine. Just lockers together then.” I rolled my eyes. I was ninety percent sure that he was kidding, but heat still rose into my cheeks.

  “What if I want lunch and dinner, and they get locker time and classroom time?”

  I shook my head, but butterflies took wing in my belly, replacing my embarrassment. “Lunches are for friends. Dinners are for boyfriends. Everyone knows that.”

  “And you never want to hang out with my friends?” he asked with a smirk on his lips.

  Damn. That was an asshole move. But the answer was pretty much hell yes to that.

  “You can bring them to dinner?” I suggested, sounding unsure even to my own ears.

  “January.” He shook his head. “Everyone knows that dinners are for boyfriends.”

  “Justin.” I threw back my head, groaning. “Come on. I need things to be organized, so I’m not worrying about this stuff when I should be focusing on school.”

  He chuckled and kissed me quickly on my lips. “That’s fine; though I wasn’t planning on eating all of my dinners at the school cafeteria.”

  “I didn’t mean that you had to have dinner with me. You don’t ever have to hang out with me. That’s not what I meant.” A new blaze of heat licked up my cheeks. “I just meant that those are the times I’ll be prioritizing hanging out with you because during the other times I’m prioritizing friends, and I don’t want you to be hurt by that.”

  “I get it. And…” he paused to give me a wide grin, “don’t be embarrassed. I want to spend time with you.”

  “Always giving me such a hard time,” I grumbled as I busied myself with shoving my backpack into my locker while actually taking a moment to hide my face.

  “Hey,” someone called over, and Justin did the chin nod before his focus moved back to me. But the spell was broken, and I realized that, somehow, while I was standing there jabbering away about my division of time, Justin’s whole pool party crew had chosen lockers beside ours. Clearly, Justin’s friends had forgiven him for telling them to take their drugs and booze and get the fuck out of his house. Several people in the crowd even waved to me, including the redheaded guy who I’d nicknamed Spineless Corey.

  Someone slammed in beside my locker, and Mitch Holter looked over. “Thanks for the note, Dirtbag.”

  “Go find another locker, Mitch,” I said.

  “I do what I want.” He shot me the bird and shoved his backpack in, locking it up after him and walking away.

  “Great,” I murmured as I peered around at the group, noticing that basically everyone from my floor was standing around, talking.

  My god-awful neighbor Amber stood central in the crowd along with another all-too-familiar face. My former lifelong best friend Char and I were in a weird, quasi-close space right now. I had a good reason not to trust her. She was the one who outed my relationship with Justin, which ended up causing us a world of trouble, but no matter if she was continuing to prove to be a bad friend, I still loved her. I always would.

  Maybe she felt my gaze, because Char spun around, threw up her hands and exclaimed, “January!”

  She hopped over, her two strawberry-blond braids bouncing up and down. Her whole body collided into mine, pinning me to my locker. “Oh, yay! You’re at my school. I completely forgive you for avoiding my calls for the last few days.”

  “Shit, Char,” I said as I gently pushed her back by her shoulders. “I promise you, this time was involuntary. My phone broke, and I have a new one.”

  “Well then, give me your number, silly. What do you have first period?” she asked as she pulled out her phone. “And wow, look at your skirt. You look like a nun.”

  Like me, Char elected to go with a pleated skirt, but she’d hemmed the material to her lower thigh, making it look stylish and cute. I was actually the only girl in view wearing my skirt at almost nearly knee-length, but if my skirt went higher, there was a very real possibility that I’d flash Justin’s hickey on my upper thigh.

  “It’s fine,” I said with a smile as I pivoted back to Justin, who had turned away from his conversation to unnecessarily glare at Char, making it clear that he still despised her.

  “Do you still have my schedule?” I asked him pointedly.

  Justin handed it over. When I turned back to Charlotte, her smile had dimmed, and I could kick Justin for it.

  I stepped completely between the two, and Char and I exchanged schedules, seeing that we had absolutely nothing together. An unexpected pulse of relief bloomed in my belly, and I immediately felt guilty for it as I looked at Char’s crestfallen expression.

  Damn.

  Her lip trembled like she was going to cry. “Maybe I could transfer into one of your classes? Can I take a picture of your schedule?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  All classes were in block periods. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I had World History, Advanced Anatomy, Government and Political Science, and Literature. To my dismay, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had a five-hour block of Physical Education and Calculus II.

  “Thank goodness it’s Wednesday,” I grumbled before doing a double-take at our schedules more closely for a second. “Am I missing a class?”

  Char had one more than me, and it looked as if I had a two-hour lunch. Not that I was complaining.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a mistake?” Char shrugged. “Anyway, is J
ustin taking you to the Senior Hunter’s Ball?”

  “Is that like Homecoming?”

  “Sort of … if instead of a football game, the homecoming court all competed in hunting down a vampire in front of the whole school.”

  A chill ran through me at her words and the giddy way she said them. I shouldn’t be surprised. It was an Academy that trained vampire hunters, of course, they would be hunting vampires.

  “I can’t believe that I can finally say the word vampire in front of you.” She giggled. “Anyway, the nomination rally is on Friday, and pretty soon, it’s all anyone is going to be talking about. The dance is seniors only and supposed to be amazing. Can you help me get my bestie Amber Davenport nominated for—”

  A loud bell rang through the halls, and everyone started to disperse. Char rushed away without finishing her sentence, catching up to her group of friends. The misery that had crossed her face a moment ago had completely vanished, and even though I felt bad about it, I hoped that Char didn’t find a way to transfer into any of my classes. Char had found her own place in this school, and more than anything, I wanted to find mine.

  “So, this is all very mundane.” I held up my schedule to Justin as we headed toward the back of the school. “Where’s the “slaying monsters” classes and all that?”

  Justin stopped before a classroom and smirked. “You’ll see.”

  “All right, fine.” I shook my head. “Can I at least see your schedule?”

  “Sorry.” He clicked his tongue. “You don’t get class time with me. It was previously agreed upon in the January custody agreement.”

  “Stop making fun of me,” I gritted out as I headed into the classroom, only to have him follow me in.

  Instead of desks, there were rows of tables that sat two each. I scanned the mostly empty room face by face but saw no one familiar, and so I slipped into the first desk. Justin stopped next to me, leaned down, and gave me a quick kiss.

  I was going to tell him that he should just take the seat beside me when he said, “I just did that to establish that I’m not, whatsoever, hiding the fact that you’re my girlfriend.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. He was addressing an old wound between us, and I was grateful to him for it. Up until recently, I thought he was hiding my existence from his friends and family because he was ashamed of what we had. It had turned out that he was hiding me to protect me. Growing up pretty much homeless, I had more than one guy try to keep me as their dirty little secret before I told them to fuck off forever. I already knew, consciously, that Justin wasn’t ashamed of me, but it warmed my heart each time he proved it.

  He grinned and promised, “See you at locker time.”

  Then Justin walked to the back of the room and took a seat next to a guy that immediately gave him some sort of complicated handshake.

  I set out my notebook and three primary color pens and waited for the bell to ring and my classmates to choose their seats. A burst of excitement lit in my belly as a couple of girls passed and loaded into the table beside me.

  “Hey,” Mitch fell into the chair next to mine, and he immediately laid forward onto his desk.

  Oh, hell no.

  “Go away, Mitch.”

  “Shut up, Dirtbag,” he grunted. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Damn it,” I whispered as I peered around the room, but everyone was filing into seats all around us. I turned to the girl on my other side and asked, “Would you mind swapping?”

  She leaned forward and peered past me. Her eyes widened, and she mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to Justin, who looked all too amused in the back of the room. He threw up his hands.

  “Help?” I whispered.

  “Shut up, you’re fine,” Mitch said with his mouth squished into the table. At least he smelled better than yesterday.

  “Can you stop? I know that your brother is blackmailing you into babysitting me, but I was actually hoping to make a couple of friends in my classes. You’re friend repellent.”

  “Just keep insulting me, Dirtbag. It’s all going on the tally.”

  “If I just keep doing this to you, will it overload your brain?” I popped my middle finger up and down over and over again.

  Mitch opened one eye at me. “My mind is vaster than you can ever comprehend.”

  “Stop … stop that, young lady. Right now.”

  I sat up straight and looked to the front where a woman held onto her chest like she was seconds from a heart attack. Her eyes were so wide that I could see the whites all around her brown irises. I expected to see anger on the teacher’s face, but her expression was much closer to fear as she glared at my raised middle finger. She was perhaps in her late-seventies or early-eighties with cropped white hair. She looked all together prim and proper, wearing a smart pantsuit and jacket along with thick-rimmed glasses.

  “Sorry, I …” I glanced around and noticed that pretty much the whole class was riveted on me repeatedly flipping off Mitch Holter. Most looked horrifically mesmerized as if they were watching a car crash in progress.

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” I whispered as I clasped my hands under the desk.

  She inhaled a shaky breath. “You’re our new student, I presume. How about you come up here and introduce yourself before we get started?” She gestured to the front in a way that I knew would be very hard to refuse. “Come on up here, please.”

  I pushed back my chair. Justin caught my gaze as soon as I stepped up to the front of the class. His mouth might have been smirking, but his eyes were warm.

  “All right,” the teacher said, “We only get a couple of transfer students every year, so we’re always really curious. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and where you’re from?”

  Rolling back my shoulders and standing straight, I said, “Hi, my name is January Moore. I’m from Brightside. I used to live on the other side of town, but I competed in the trials and got a scholarship.”

  There was an expectant silence after my words, and after a few seconds, the teacher cleared her throat, “Well, okay. Do we have any questions for January?”

  The girl who was sitting beside me raised her hand. She had long, shiny black hair and beautiful, doll-like features. She was almost too pretty; like you wondered if there was some sort of magic involved there. Considering my whereabouts, who knew?

  “Penelope?” the teacher called.

  The girl smiled at me and asked, “How did you get a perfect score in the trials?”

  “By screwing Justin Roberts,” someone said so low, it was probably supposed to be a whisper, but it carried in the classroom.

  Across the room, Justin stood from his chair, but Mitch was faster. He rose out of his seat, stomped to the table behind ours, grabbed a kid by the back of his head, and slammed the kid’s head down. The move was so quick and so violent, I almost didn’t believe what I was seeing.

  The guy’s head popped back up, and blood gushed down from his nose. He tried to cover it with a hand, but blood streamed down his fingers. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything against your family.”

  “Go get cleaned up, Brian, and then please return to class,” the teacher said, and there was just the slightest tremor in her voice.

  Brian spilled out of his chair and rushed from the room. As if nothing out of the ordinary just happened, Mitch retook his seat, and everyone looked back at me expectantly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  What the actual fuck just happened? The Bad Boys Club members warned me that the school’s Elites could get away with murder at Blackburn, but I thought it was just something you say. Clearly, it wasn’t that great of an exaggeration. Mitch just walked up, slammed a guy’s head into his desk, and then plopped in his seat and laid his head down, looking like he was about to take a nap.

  The class wore the full spectrum of expressions. Several people looked amused, others looked impassive, and a few were white-knuckling their desks.

  “Penelope’s
question, January,” the teacher prompted as she leaned in toward me. Crow’s feet wrinkled around her big brown eyes, and small fissure lines led out from around her tense smile.

  “Uh?” I blinked rapidly and shook my head. “The perfect score. Yeah. The accommodation I chose was to have all of the lights out. I snuck past everyone and eventually swiped night vision goggles from one of the alumni. I pulled them over my head and just walked through.”

  “Very resourceful.” The teacher nodded. “Anyone else have a question?”

  Aside from Justin, no one even met my gaze, so I headed back to my seat.

  “Well,” the teacher said on an inhale. “As most of you know, I’m Professor Abbot, and this is World History. Please pass your textbooks down the rows. Last year, your studies were more focused on the American history of supernatural populations. We talked about the native creatures that existed before the great migration of the eighteen-hundreds by vampires, sidhe, and lycanthropes. We discussed the local settlements and their relationships and history with the populations around them. This year, we’re going to be looking at the more ancient vampire origins, from Mesopotamian Ekimmu to the Scottish Highland Baobhan Sith. As there is so much territory to cover, we will be mainly focusing on vampires, whereas in past years, we had a broader creature subject matter.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mitch murmured in a quiet voice from beside me.

  I was so engrossed in what the teacher was saying that I had no idea what Mitch was talking about for a second.

  “You’re welcome,” he said again.

  I leaned down over the desk. “You didn’t do that for me, and I wouldn’t thank you if you did.”

  “I just passed you your textbook, you salty dirtbag.”

  “Oh.” When I looked down, I saw the thick World History textbook he placed beside me.

  “Can’t help but notice that you’re still talking shit even after you watched me slam that guy’s head into the table. Aren’t you scared that you’re next?” He cracked his knuckles.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’d still be talking shit if it was my head you slammed into the table. At least I hope I would. Anyway, shut up, I’m trying to listen to the lecture.”