"You can." The muscular professor regarded me. "My husband is the head of security for Gregory Hall."
I rocked back a step. "He's ..."
She held up a hand. "Not Bernard who died. He was in charge of the fifth floor under my husband, Harry. Harry reviewed the footage of what happened a hundred times and talked with every student that hit the emergency button."
"Including us," Richard said.
"Harry says that you saved everyone in those dorms. Well, almost everyone as three of the fifth-floor guards died after they negated your panic button three times. Harry is having a meeting with all staff about taking the students seriously when they call for help."
"Thanks," I said as I pressed a hand to my chest over my racing heart. "But the real credit goes to my dog. She's the one who woke me up. She can sense vampires and scions. Oh, and second credit goes to Susie for knowing what to do and locking down all four of the lower floors within five minutes."
"The cameras also caught you throwing a three-hundred-pound man ten feet when he tried to stop you from saving your classmates' lives." Professor Whitney regarded me with a raised brow expression that clearly told me to take credit where it was due. "You're in the right school. Now that I've acknowledged that, I'm telling you in no uncertain terms that you are not ready to participate in the Senior Hunt in three days. You are allowed to drop out."
My eyes felt suddenly hot, and I had to blink rapidly to hold back unexpected tears. "Sebastian Holter is making that impossible."
"He has power here. I'm not going to deny that, but you still have a choice, January."
If only that were true.
"I'd like to see you come into your full potential. I'm not the only teacher at this school who feels this way. Saving lives is what we do, and clearly, you're a natural at it. That all will be cut very short if you die within the first month of coming here."
I nodded. "I wish I had a choice, but I don't."
She sighed. "All right. I usually save this lesson for later in the year, but as it's a lesson you'll need, as soon as the other students are finished, we're going to learn the mechanics of killing a vampire. I'll also show you the array of weapons you'll have access to in the trial. I'm going to suggest you go with a sharp knife for the beheading blade. It’s best you work with something you’re familiar with so you don’t end up injuring yourself."
The words made me want to throw up.
Thirty minutes later, the nauseous feeling only got worse. Professor Whitney had lined up seven model torsos with transparent skin that showed bones and organs beneath, and each were on a tether. There were several x marks painted on each torso, and we were instructed to stab the bodies while they swung on the tether. The air smelled astringent and acidic, like lemon cleaner. I fisted a smooth light wood stake. In most ways, it reminded me of a fat, pointy baton that I was instructed to hold like a slasher knife. We waited in seven lines; a student would run to the front, stab at the swinging body, and then run to the back of the line. It weirdly felt like lining up to hit a pinata at a birthday party, but instead of candy flying out, crimson liquid sprayed onto our arms.
The boy before me ran for the model corpse, slammed his stake into an x mark, and yanked it out.
"Good, Roger!" Richard called over. "Make sure your arm is straight. No chicken wings."
Roger rushed off, and the torso swung at me. Holding my breath, I jogged up and brought my stake down. The tip hit the flesh and glanced off the bone.
"Do it again, January!" Professor Whitney went behind the torso and pushed it. The fake cadaver came flying at me, and I jumped out of the way but not fast enough. The rubbery flesh smacked into my arm. "Do it again. Imagine that you're fighting a real vampire. You're one of the only ones here who's been attacked by one."
I thought of the red eyes of the vampire as it looked through the hole in my door. Little pig, little pig, let me in. I stabbed. My stake made contact, sinking in an inch, and wrenching from my hand. The stake swung away with the body, only to fall and clatter to the cement.
"Better, but still terrible." Professor Whitney scooped my stake from the ground and tossed it over.
I grabbed for it, but the wood hit my fingers, bounced off and skittered across the ground.
The dummy came swinging at me again, and I dodged it and grabbed my stake before rolling to the side.
"Again, January," Professor Whitney called. "Everyone else, find another line. Mia and Richard, focus on the other lines."
I jumped up with my stake and stabbed at the torso, missing entirely and just barely able to catch myself from falling. The torso swung back and slammed into my shoulder.
Professor Whitney let out a sigh of exasperation. "Again. Use your imagination like I said."
Pain pulsed through my shoulders and sides. I'd always assumed that exercising for a week straight would make me stronger, but I felt weaker than ever. As the model corpse swung at me again, I tried to think of the vampire, but my mind skipped to another face. Sebastian Holter glared down at me. "Win the Senior Hunt."
Anger surged into my heart, and I stabbed down, sinking my stake into the corpse's stomach. No bone stopped my stake, and it slid deep into the abdomen. I wrenched back my stake, and fake blood dripped onto the cement.
"That'll just piss the vampires off and give them time to kill you." Professor Whitney grabbed the torso out of the air. "Aim does matter here. Hit them in the heart or not at all."
The ribs were so much harder to stab through. I once thought I'd managed, but Professor Whitney called, "That's Roger's hole. Find your own."
The day remained cool, but sweat dripped down my front, streaking the fake blood splatter on my chest. Mitch found me an hour after, covered in fake blood and stabbing at the torso like I was auditioning for Norman Bates in a gender-swapped remake of Hitchcock's Psycho.
"We'll do this Thursday," Professor Whitney threatened as I trudged away from the class.
Every centimeter of my right arm ached like it had been beaten within an inch of its life.
"Professor Sharp is having us meet in the stadium pit." Mitch's gaze flicked over me. "We’re heading straight to Mystical Arts then?"
I knew he was joking, but the idea of heading back to my empty room was not at all appealing.
I could just feel Sebastian’s watchful eyes there. It might have all been in my head, but Mitch was paranoid enough to watch everything he said outside of a party setting.
Clearly, Justin hadn't taken the same precautions and paid for it.
"On a scale of one to ten, ten being raw sewage and one being straight from the shower, how bad do I smell? Like, real answer."
Mitch looked me over. "You smell like you took a bath in mop fluid, but you look like you were part of the chainsaw massacre and you were the one with the chainsaw."
I could live with that. “Well, it matches my mood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Blackburn Academy Stadium had a second, underground entrance with a heavy metal door. The area that Mitch called the stadium pit was larger than I'd guessed. The ceiling was probably forty feet above us, and the walls were smooth as glass and sloped in on all sides.
When I pointed it out to Mitch, he said, "Vampires can climb walls."
Well, if that wasn't terrifying as fuck.
The structures around the space were higher than I expected too. Many of them were twenty feet tall bridges connected through the space. There were several places to take cover, and I found my eyes searching out the best hiding spots. I knew it was the opposite of the point of the hunt, especially as I had to win it in order to find Justin.
I was both desperate to win so Sebastian would release Justin's whereabouts while at the same time, I was questioning if Sebastian had him at all. This could just be another sick mind game. Without an outright confession, I couldn't be sure. Maybe he was just using this to his advantage.
Professor Sharp took one look at me and started chewing her gum like
she was trying to gnaw it into pieces. "I'm sensing a pattern here, Miss Moore."
The seniors had occupied the nearest platform to the teacher, and Mark patted the space beside him and smiled down like my front wasn't drenched in fake blood. "Saved you a seat."
I wanted to ask him why, as I barely knew him, but I knew that was probably me taking my sour mood out on someone who didn't deserve it at all. Thankfully, Mitch jumped up, grabbed the lip of the platform, and did a pull-up, taking the spot Mark saved for me. I shrugged and did the longer route over to the ramp, taking the seat between Mitch and Amber.
She looked me over as soon as I sat, glancing at my stained shirt and turning forward. "You have this one day where I will not comment."
"Thanks," I muttered dryly.
"So, yeah. Who can name the four Elite physical powers?" Professor Sharp paced back and forth in front of us, smacking her gum as she talked. "Anyone? Yeah." She pointed to a petite girl that couldn't be older than fourteen.
The girl went to her tiptoes. "Speed, agility, strength, height."
"Yep. We also call it S-A-S-H." She ticked them off on her fingers. "We do it in that order because that's the order of importance to keep you alive while fighting vampires and their scions. They're stronger than us; they can jump higher than us; they heal instantly. The one advantage we have is the potential to be faster and more agile. It only takes one hit to the chest to immobilize a vampire. Any human can do it." She tapped her chest. "So, while having strength is usually the power everyone wants, it's not the one that makes us the most effective killing machines."
Killing machines. The words sent a shudder of revulsion through my body. Professor Sharp's gaze skipped over to me.
"As not all of you grew up in our society, why doesn't someone here say what Elites do after they graduate Blackburn Academy." Professor Sharp pointed over at Amber. "Miss Davenport."
"Solo or paired mission hostage rescue." Amber sounded almost bored by the words. "If the Hawthorn Group suspects the vampires have living victims, one or two Elites will sneak into the hive before the soldiers and secure the victims before the soldiers attack."
"Good. Yeah. Let's always try to remember that the soldiers train to kill as many adversaries as possible while our main objective is to kill vampires as quickly and quietly as possible so we can reach the victims undetected."
The words hit something deep inside me. Last summer, when my best friend Char and I were talking about college, she had automatically known that she was going to go into psychology. The moment she said it, too, I'd thought, oh, that makes sense. But when she'd asked me what major I was going into, I had nothing to say. I did well in most of my classes; math was a bit more of a struggle than others, but not so much that I didn't enjoy it. My favorite subject by far was art, but that was the one major I'd been determined never to pursue. Nothing fit me, and I didn't quite fit into anything.
But when I heard Professor Sharp's words, it was like the future career clicked into place. It was as if I finally had been told the one occupation I was born to fulfill. And I wanted it. For the first time since I came to Blackburn Academy, I wanted to be part of this world. How did a mission so pure as saving innocent lives from unspeakable horror become so convoluted in the hands of powerful Elites?
Professor Sharp went on to explain that while Elites could take on any job within the Hawthorn Group, from doctor to strategist to art design, we always had to be ready to fulfill Blackburn Academy's core mission of saving humans from the vampires.
"Is it true that we're not going to get paid to do this?" the girl Cynthia from my freshman PE asked from where she leaned against one of the gray structures. Cynthia had drawn colorful doodles all the way up both her pale arms, and she wasn’t wearing makeup today, making her look closer to twelve than high school age. Baby fat clung to her face which made her appear like a much younger kid.
"No," Professor Sharp said as she paced back and forth. "It's true that you get the same salary as all soldiers." There was a chorus of grumbling, and Professor Sharp lifted her chin and talked louder, "This is fair because your job is much higher risk, but you only have to work about a fourth of the hours soldiers do. Also, who here is going to be depending on an income from this work, right?"
Cynthia raised her hand, and Mitch grabbed my elbow and pushed my hand into the air.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry." Professor Sharp shrugged. "Well, it's usually one in twenty of you who do, and often, you can take on a second job within the Hawthorn Group or Academy that is understanding that your first priority is to the mission, or you can live on a more modest income. A prime example of an Elite with two jobs would be dear old me. I have a job here teaching all of you twice a week, but if a mission calls that requires me to respond, I'll need to leave right away. You two aren’t the only Elites out here who grew up poor. You can stop raising Miss Moore's hand now, Mr. Holter, please."
As soon as Mitch dropped his hand from my elbow, I leaned in toward him. "Is Justin's butler an Elite?"
"One of the bastards, yeah,” Mitch said. It seemed so draconian to use the word bastard with its original meaning. It felt like they were saying that there was this subclass of royal bastards that weren't quite at the level of Elites but were above the mundane people due to their lineage. He lifted his brows and then leaned in a little. “Gina Roberts thinks my father is trying to kill her, so she’s been paying that butler a small fortune to guard her against him. Everyone thinks she imagines things."
From Mitch’s tone of voice, Gina didn't imagine shit. Gina Roberts could see the future. As Gina and Mitch’s father were siblings, clearly, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree—or the apple was fused to the tree, and they rotted together. I hated to agree with Amber, but Mitch’s family was seriously fucked up.
The first skill that we were perfecting—zipping—was also the hardest to learn. I was with the first and second-year Elites, and we stayed gathered around Professor Sharp as she sent all of the juniors and seniors to do something she called a zip flip. Though the professor was talking, I couldn't help but look over as the twelve juniors and seniors blurred into motion. They moved so fast it was almost hard to see their figure at all. One by one, they headed up a ramp, leaped off the ledge, and either stumbled or rolled and kept running. One figure did a flip entirely in the air, landed, and then zipped off. From the blur of fiery red hair, I was pretty sure it was Amber.
"January, over here," Professor Sharp called, wrenching my attention away from the Elites. The purple-haired teacher bounced in one place with her hand on one hip, chowing down on her gum until she had my full attention. "We're all going to get to that level, but we need to be able to zip first. I know half of you here have already zipped, right? Show your hands if you think you can do it for ten feet without falling down?"
Ten students raised their hands. I couldn't help but notice that there were only six girls in the entire class of thirty. I'd been warned that the boy to girl ratio was high, but I didn't realize how outnumbered one in five was.
"As I said before, every one of you has the ability to acquire all of these skills. Every single Elite that’s come through here in the last decade and a half has zipped by graduation." She snapped her gum. "You are your only enemy here. You are the one who will let yourself down or get yourself killed." Professor Sharp said this matter of fact in her rapid-fire pace, sounding almost bored. "Who can tell me the ABCDs of Elite powers or the Elite Alphabet or whatever you want to call it? Yep. Charles." She pointed to the small, curly-haired freshman-looking boy beside Cynthia, who had his hand up for every single question Professor Sharp had asked thus far.
The guy kept his hand raised. "Aim your energy ..." he motioned forward and pointed his hand at the ground. Then the kid did a dramatic open step where he widened his stance before adding, "Balance your body, center yourself, dispel disbelief.” His form blurred, moving about ten feet to the left. A little puff of red dust filled the air. I was pretty sure that the ground was made of
that same packed, red clay they used on baseball fields.
“Great, Charlie, and good stop. You’re ahead of the class.”
Charlie smiled like he just won a hundred bucks. On a structure a little bit to the left of Charlie and Cynthia, a much larger kid with dark hair and sharp eyes leaned into the beefy student beside him and whispered something. The beefy boy clapped a hand over his mouth and laughed into his palm. When the sharp-eyed boy caught me looking at him, he smirked and mouthed the words, "Slut."
That little shit.
This had the kid's friend laughing so hard he wheezed, but when my gaze cut over to the blond friend, the kid seemed to choke on his laugh. He gasped, grabbing everyone’s attention.
"Tyler Holter and Bobby Davenport," Professor Sharp snapped.
So, this was the infamous little asshole. Tyler didn't look much like Mitch or Sebastian. The kid didn't have that cold, forbidding beauty of his brothers. He had a thick jaw and square forehead, and the guy's body was more linebacker than quarterback. The word "bruiser" immediately came to mind.
Professor Sharp crossed her arms. "You seem to have forgotten quite a lot over the summer. Why does no one disobey me in Mystical Arts?"
Tyler sneered. "We weren’t doing shit."
"That's not the answer to my question. The reason no one disobeys me in my class is that I'm the only Elite willing to put up with you. Not only am I one of the oldest Elites with all powers, but I’m also the only qualified Elite willing to have an outside job. Do you know what that means for me? It means absolute job security. It means that I am irreplaceable. It means that unlike everyone else in this school, I'll simply kick any one of you out of class. I've worked here for six years and kicked a total of two students out of my class, both times for bullying. There was nothing I could be threatened or bribed with to let them back in. Both Elites graduated unqualified to go on missions for the Hawthorn Group. No one at the Hawthorn Group cares enough about money to put time aside to train them. No one misbehaves in my class."
Hunter Trials (The Vampire Legacy Book 2) Page 21
