Neither man waited long enough to see what would crawl out of that pit.
Damn good thing too, since nothing ever did.
“Fucking hell, Boneboy. When you bluff, you bluff hard.” Silt stepped out from the trees behind me.
“Don’t play unless you believe you can win,” I told her. “Where did you come from?”
“About two minutes that-a-way.” She motioned in the direction Kayleigh had gone. “Our little bench clearing makes a fantastic make-out spot. Or it would have, if my date hadn’t just been interrupted.”
“You date?”
“Fuck you, Skeletor. Pretty sure I get more action than your crazy ass.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, when Vibe came out of nowhere with some injured normal—”
“Are they okay?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, my date’s taking them to the med center now. I promised Kayleigh I’d come find you and help.” She looked in the direction the two Shifters had gone. “Who were they?”
“Students, I think. Regular ones, not Capes. Adam and Jake, both Beast-shifters. Shouldn’t be hard for school security to track them down, especially with Adam’s broken arm.”
“What would you have done if I hadn’t showed up?”
“Guess we’d have seen whether that full-Walker thing was just bullshit.”
“And if it was?”
“Then I’d have done my best to at least take the fuckers down with me.” I was a Crow. Silt and I were both training to be Capes. Wasn’t like either of us expected to die of old age.
“You need a better name than Boneboy,” Silt decided.
“Tell me about it.” I took one last look back at the clearing before we left it behind. “Why didn’t they smell you?”
“I’m an Earthshaker,” she reminded me. “Nothing to smell here but good old natural dirt.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.” I paused. “Sorry about your date.”
“They say anticipation just makes the final victory all the sweeter.” Silt grinned. “Besides, there are worse things than having a Crow owe me a favor.”
I thought that over as I followed her back into the woods. “Want backup when you head down to Texas?”
“If we both live that long, you mean? It’s a deal. Fair warning though; Brownsville’s a lot worse than Los Angeles.” A few minutes later, she shook her head. “I think that was the first time I’ve ever seen you smile.”
“When?”
“Back there. Staring down the Shifters.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Might be the first time I have smiled since coming here.”
“Please don’t do it again.” She shivered. “Scariest fucking thing I ever saw.”
CHAPTER 33
It was a long time before we were allowed to leave the clinic, even though most of us had made it out of the woods unscathed. The girl we’d saved was named Sue, but I tried not to hold that against her. She’d gone into the woods to meet Jake for a moonlight stroll. Instead, she’d found both Jake and Adam, neither of whom had romance on the mind.
The good news was that, other than a concussion and numerous scrapes from sprinting through the woods, Sue was going to be fine. Bad news was that she had seriously shitty taste in men. You’d think guys like Jake would have signs around their necks: will hunt for pleasure. Nah. People like Jake blend right in with those around them. It’s people like me that normals get all worried about.
Guess I can’t blame them for that. Crows are a horror show waiting to happen, right?
When we were done at the clinic, it was on to campus security, where I got to tell the exact same story three separate times to four different people. I left out my threats, for the most part. Wasn’t sure the real Capes would have approved. Was positive nobody wanted to think about me killing someone, raising them, and using them to murder a family.
As threats go though, that one had been fucking golden.
By the time we were done with security, they’d captured both Shifters. Adam had actually gone back to his dorm room like a moron. Jake had tried jumping the wall and getting the fuck out of town. Neither succeeded. Wasn’t sure what was going to happen to them, but I hoped it was something nasty.
It was somewhere around one or two in the morning by then, and everyone else headed back to the dorm. Not me. I was tired, yeah, but also kind of juiced from almost dying… and I wasn’t sure yet what I’d do when I saw my roommate. The whole Shifter thing had pushed the rest of my night into the background, but I was still pissed off. So instead of going back, I found a bench—not the bench in the fucking woods, thank you very much—and laid down on it, looking up at a sky whose stars were mostly masked by the lights around me.
More than three months at the Academy, and things just kept getting more confusing, a big old ball of chaos spiraling in unexpected directions. Classmates that hated me. People digging into my past. Powers too weak to be Capes but still too much for a normal to handle. Tessa and her tits. And facing down two Beast-shifters… what the hell had I been thinking?
Life at Mama Rawlins’ had been simple. Keep order. Protect the little ones. Fuck up anyone who got in the way. There was nothing simple about the Academy. Rescuing Sue had been a Cape thing to do, but it had been stupid too. I didn’t know her. Didn’t care about her. Yet I could have easily died trying to save her.
It wasn’t the dying part that bothered me. Thing about meeting death when you’re five is that you lose that feeling of invincibility early. Stench of blood, smell of apple pie, and nothing in front of you but mortality at its most unflinching, sprawled across the kitchen floor. I’d known from that day on that death was unavoidable. Wouldn’t be many who cared when I was gone… the Beast-shifter had gotten that much right.
It wasn’t the dying part that bothered me. It was
