Shifter Falls Academy: Year One
L.C. Mortimer
Published by Sophie Stern, 2020.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SHIFTER FALLS ACADEMY: YEAR ONE
First edition. January 14, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 L.C. Mortimer.
Written by L.C. Mortimer.
Also by L.C. Mortimer
Swords of Darkness
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 1
The Lost Fallen
Outbreak: A Zombie Novel
Shifter Falls Academy: Year One
Shifter Falls Academy
Year One
L.C. Mortimer
Story copyright by L.C. Mortimer
Cover design by Melody Simmons: www.bookcoverscre8tive.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Deleted Scenes
Author
Just Another Day in the Zombie Apocalypse
Chapter 1
*
He is young, so full of hope
Reveling in tiny dreams
-Five Iron Frenzy, Dandelions
For everyone who still believes in magic.
When the first shifters were created, they were strong. Wild. Powerful. Impossibly fast.
They were everything: and then they weren't.
Now shifters are hunted. They're hated. They're despised by everyone in the entire world, and that poses a pretty big problem for me because, well, I'm one of them.
On the eve of my 18th birthday, I discover that I have the shifter gene. Usually, shifters learn to change into their animal forms long before their birthday, but I guess growing up in foster care and struggling to survive caused my body just a little bit of stress.
Now I'm changing into a cat without any notice and struggling to change back, and as it turns out, I only have one option: Shifter Falls Academy.
It's a school for people like me, and it's hidden away deep in the Wolf Mountains.
I don't want to go to this school.
I don't want to go hiding away until I learn to use my powers.
I don't want any of these things, but the truth is that monsters are real, and they're coming after me with everything they've got.
Chapter 1
“Hello? Are you stupid?”
The woman in front of me had a short haircut and a big glare. She was shaking her finger at me like I didn’t hear her the first five times she asked me for wine.
“Ma’am,” I grit my teeth. Calm. I had to stay calm. There was no reason for me to freak out on her, right? I couldn’t risk getting fired. That would be awful. Nope. Instead of yelling at her or jumping over the counter and punching her, the way I wanted to, I took a deep breath.
A lot could be said for taking a deep breath.
“I’ve already explained that we don’t sell wine here.”
“Why the hell not?” She was practically yelling, although not quite, and I could see the other patrons in the convenience store looking over at me. A few of them looked sympathetic, but mostly, they look worried. Not for me, of course: for themselves. Nobody wanted to deal with someone having an outburst at their local Speedy Spot Stop.
“I don’t make the purchasing decisions, ma’am.”
“And stop calling me ma’am!” The woman just got more and more angry. “The problem with your generation is that you have no respect.” She snapped.
“I’d be happy to call my manager if that would be more convenient for you,” I said drily. Kimberly wasn’t at work today. It was her first day off in three weeks and she was spending it with her husband and their toddler. Yeah, there was no way in hell I was calling Kimberly. If this woman asked for a manager, the only number I was going to be calling was the police non-emergency line to report a disturbance of the peace.
“No,” she snapped. “Forget it. And while you’re at it, forget all of this.” She gestured to all of the items she had brought up to the front counter with her while shopping. Great. So I was going to get to re-shelve all of that. It wouldn’t be a super big deal, but it was time consuming and just so boring. She stormed out of the shop and tried to slam the door behind her, but we had this anti-slamming technology that prevented anyone from actually slamming it. Instead, it closed very, very slowly. She stood outside, staring at the door. Finally, she growled and walked back to her car.
“Well, I never,” said a woman. I turned to see a nice older woman standing in front of the register. I pasted a smile on my face and shoved aside the other woman’s un-purchased items.
“Can I help you?” I said nicely, but inside, my blood was boiling. I hated this job sometimes. I hated that I had to be polite, even when I didn’t want to. I hated that my income totally depended on being nice to people. I probably should have fought harder to try to find something else, but hey, I lived in Growl Valley.
Where else was I supposed to work?
This place wasn’t exactly a hotbed of job possibilities.
“You didn’t deserve that,” the old woman said nicely. She placed a single bottle of water and a granola bar on the counter.
“Just comes with the job,” I said. I rang up her items. “$3.22.”
She handed over exact change and then smiled at me.
“You have a good attitude,” she said.
“Thanks.”
I wasn’t really sure what else to say. I didn’t feel like I had a good attitude. Most of the time, I felt like I was barely holding myself together and now? Now I felt like I was on the verge of totally snapping. It wasn’t that big of a deal - that woman who wanted wine - but the way she treated me made me feel horrible. It was like when she looked at me, she didn’t even see a real person. I understood that working at a convenience store wasn’t exactly something to be proud of, but my job had gotten me a lot of things: a paycheck, for one. It had enabled me to move out of my foster family’s home and into Fiona’s.
The woman looked at me once more. It seemed like she wanted to say something. I would guess that something was on the tip of her tongue, but she seemed to change her mind and she just took off instead. I shrugged and looked around. A couple of other people were still browsing. I waited until they checked out. Once they were gone, I went about re-shelving wine lady’s stuff.
By the time I finished, it was almost the end of my shift. It was a 24-hour convenience store, and I usually worked weird hours, but not overnight. Especially not tonight. Tonight was special, at least to me. Nobody else might understand the importance of an 18th birthday when you didn’t have a family, but...well, it was important to me.
Caleb came in at 9:00 to relieve me from my duties. When he walked inside, he took one look around the room, sniffed, and then turned to me.
“Long night?”
I never really understood how Caleb always seemed to know when a night had been long or rough. It was like, some sort of super-power.
“You have no idea.”
He shook his head, walked around the store for a second, and then came up front.
“Looks okay,” he said. “There are no spills or broken items. Inventory all seems to be in place. Did a customer give you crap?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?�
�
“Debbie Downer wanted wine.”
“But we don’t sell wine.”
“Exactly,” I shook my head. “And I mean, I explained that, but it didn’t seem to matter to her.”
“Unfortunate,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“It’s fine. It’s just that tomorrow is my birthday and I was kind of hoping for a chill, easy-going night.”
“Hey, happy birthday. Any big plans?”
“Nope.”
“But it’s your birthday,” he protested. “You have to celebrate.”
“I’d love to, but, you know, things have been a little crazy lately.”
Caleb knew me well enough to read between the lines. I moved out of my foster parents’ home a month ago and got the job here right away. I started renting a little room from Fiona, who was a nice middle-aged artist with her own studio. Overall, things were looking up for me, but I didn’t have a lot of money. What I did have went to transportation, rent, and food, and apparently, food was a lot more expensive than I ever really thought possible.
“Hmm,” Caleb considered what I said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then he darted into one of the aisles of the shop.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He emerged with a packet of cupcakes and two milks. Then he grabbed a lighter from the front counter and ripped open the cupcakes.
“Giving you a birthday party,” he laughed. He held up a cupcake and the lighter and sang Happy Birthday in a loud, off-key way that only Caleb could. I laughed when he sang, and when he finished, I blew out the light from the lighter.
“Did you make a wish?” He asked.
“Of course.”
“What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you,” I grinned. “Or it won’t come true. Those are the rules, right?”
He sighed dramatically, as though he couldn’t believe how unfair it all was, and then he nodded.
“Okay, okay. Your secret is yours. This time.” He winked at me and we ate our cupcakes together and sipped the milk. Then a customer came in, and I quickly cleaned up all of the food and drinks while Caleb helped them with their purchases. I clocked out and grabbed my stuff, and then I waved goodbye to Caleb.
“See you tomorrow,” he yelled cheerfully.
“See you.”
I pushed open the door and, unlike Wine Lady, I let the door close naturally behind me. Then I started walking home.
It was a cold night: chilly and crisp. I walked quickly even though it was a pretty safe town where nothing bad ever happened. I didn’t really like walking home alone, but I wasn’t about to ask Caleb to lock up the store just to walk me home and I definitely couldn’t afford a car or anything like that. With my next paycheck, I was planning to buy a bike. At least that way, I’d have some way to get around quickly.
I looked up at the stars for a brief second before turning my eyes back to the road.
“No time for dreamers, love,” I whispered to myself. That was what my favorite foster mom, Kendra, had always said. No time for dreamers, love. It meant that even when life got hard or things felt out of control, you had to focus. The world would pass you by if you let it, and the world was a cruel, vicious place.
I kept walking, looking around. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong tonight. It was a weird feeling. Every once in awhile, I’d get a strange feeling, but usually it had something to do with work. Like maybe, I’d have a feeling that I needed to restock something because there was about to be a rush for it.
But this?
This was different.
I glanced over my shoulder and shoved my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket. Why did everything feel so cold tonight? I wasn’t far from home: maybe a ten-minute walk, but suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t get there soon enough. I walked faster, quicker, and then I turned a corner and walked into a big, hard wall.
Only, it wasn’t a wall at all.
It was a person, and he didn’t seem very happy to see me.
I looked up at the man who had found me. No – the man who had hunted me. This guy had definitely been watching me, and every warning bell in my body was going off. What the hell did he want?
He was tall and even in the darkness with the low street lights, I could see that he was unhappy. Menacing.
But I didn’t know what a guy like this would want from me.
Growl Valley wasn’t exactly known for being a place where people got mugged. That just wasn’t this town. No: Growl Valley was the kind of place where people came to get pregnant and have babies and start families. It was the kind of place where people settled down and retired. It wasn’t the kind of place where people attacked one another.
As long as I’d lived there, I’d never heard of someone being attacked by a stranger on the street, but I suppose there had to be a first time for everything.
I stared at the guy, waiting for him to say something like, “Give me all of your money.”
He didn’t speak, though.
He just looked at me.
And then, as he watched me, a sly grin spread over his face. It was gross and scary and it made me feel like my heart was racing a million miles a minute.
“Get ready to run, little girl,” he said.
“What?” I squeaked out.
Then he morphed.
His entire body changed. His clothing ripped and tore. Buttons popped and flew every which way, and I wondered why nobody was around to witness what was happening. Did nobody care that I was personally in turmoil? What the hell?
He stopped looking like a man and looked instead like...well, like a creature. He got smaller and then bigger, and his skin was quickly gone and replaced with thick fur. His face elongated into a snout.
A wolf.
He had morphed into a wolf.
Chapter 2
I didn’t wait to see what the wolf was going to do.
I turned around and took off running. My feet hit the sidewalk and then the road as I made my way back where I had come from. What the hell was happening? I heard the wolf howl, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before he caught me.
After all, I was just a girl, and everyone in Growl Valley was asleep.
“Help!” I screamed as I ran, but nobody came to save me. There was no one. It was just me. I raced, running down the road, but then he neared. On impulse, I turned off the main road and down a side alley. Maybe there would be a place to hide, to escape. Nobody was coming. There was no help. It was only me, but as I neared the end of the alley, I realized I’d made a fatal mistake.
“No!” I screamed as I reached the gate at the end of the alley. It blocked me from moving any farther down. I didn’t turn around, but it didn’t matter. He was there. He’d found me. Whether he’d been chasing me visually or tracking me from my scent, it didn’t matter. He was here, and I was about to die.
And I hadn’t even turned 18 yet. My birthday wasn’t for another three hours, and it killed me because I so desperately wanted that. I wanted the chance to be a grownup. I wanted to be able to prove myself as an adult.
Now I was being robbed of that.
Now everything was about to be stolen from me.
I shook the gate, trying to figure out if there was any way I could climb it, but I knew I couldn’t. Too bad I was a human and not a creature like that guy. Something small could fit through the wide slats, but not me. Not a human.
I risked a glance over my shoulder, just in case my instincts were wrong, but they weren’t. He was there, and he was prowling toward me.
I turned back around and closed my eyes.
Think, Charlie, think.
There had to be a way, right?
There just had to be.
But there wasn’t.
This was it.
This was how I was going to die.
I started to scream and shake the fence. This wasn’t fair. None of it was fair! I had only just started li
ving! It wasn’t okay that I was going to die like this.
It.
Just.
Wasn’t.
Fair.
I shook the gate again and the wolf got closer, but suddenly, he seemed so far away because something was happening to me. I started to feel dizzy: really dizzy. Then I started to feel nauseous.
Shit.
What was happening to me?
When people said your life flashed before your eyes when you were about to die, is this what they were talking about?
Because this felt horrible.
I felt like I was going to puke, and everything hurt. My skin hurt. My eyes hurt. Even my bones hurt, and then I was small.
I looked up at the wolf, and it might have been my imagination, but he seemed just as surprised as I was that I had shrunk. I didn’t know what had happened. He definitely hadn’t gotten bigger, though. It was definitely me that was smaller. I backed up clumsily. Somehow, I couldn’t seem to get my feet to work.
That was when I looked down.
I didn’t have two feet anymore.
I had four.
I’d turned into a tiny creature with four legs.
It probably should have freaked me out, but all I thought was that it meant I was going to be able to squeeze through the slats on the fence. The fence was like eight feet high and made of steel, but those slats were definitely wide enough for a small animal – me – to squeeze through. I didn’t hesitate. I just ran.
The wolf seemed to realize what I was going to do because he shrieked and threw himself at the fence just as I wiggled through it. I had no idea how long the fence was going to hold, but I kept running. I didn’t look back at him to see if he was coming. I just kept going, moving. I had to. There was no choice.
There was no way I was going to let this guy get me.
No way, no how.
Using four legs instead of two was harder than I should it should have been, and I ran more slowly than I probably should have, but I kept moving. The wolf was still howling, which meant I had time to get away and to hide before it came around and started looking for me.
Shifter Falls Academy- Year One Page 1
