Chapter 27
Gina didn’t even attempt a normal seminar that night. Smart, because all anyone wanted to do was talk about the morning’s attack.
“Why now?” a wolf kid asked. “I get that the twins are a big deal in the Darkkin world, but why attack now?”
“Good question,” Gina said. “Wulf? Cora?”
“We don’t know the why for the attack… yet. Darkkin politics are the longest of games,” Wulf said. “Twenty-five or twenty-six years ago, our dad killed an old vampire. He wasn’t really trying to kill, but that was the result. Mom and Dad think this was a response to that.”
“They waited a quarter of a century to respond?” Kiley Price asked.
“Wulf is right. Vampires plot and move at their own pace,” Gina said. “Decades can go by and then there is a sudden flurry of activity, then more decades go by.”
“Is all this because Chris and Tanya upended the Coven’s world?
” Alice, my wolf friend, asked. She, by the way, was not fooled by my young kid persona.
Her nose told her instantly who I was when I tried to fool her.
When I gave her a lecherous leer, she shot one right back at me.
Told me to see her when I had given my witch wolf girlfriend the boot, then winked when I stuttered a denial.
“Maybe. We don’t know. But vampires are people first, supernatural second, like all of us,” Gina said. “The Coven has many factions, with far-ranging and deep-seated beliefs and ideas. Chris and Tanya certainly did turn it on its head. I was around for that, and the results were pretty explosive.”
“Are we safe?” an older witch I didn’t know asked.
“We are. Mr. Jenks and Mal, with the help of the FBI, have revised our security procedures and added additional protective measures. Omega drones will be in all hallways too. The teaching staff have warded every door in the place to prevent any kind of gas attack under each door. The entire security program has been reviewed by Demidova security experts and given a gold star.”
“And our backup is staying?” the same girl asked, glancing my way.
“Craig, you going anywhere?” Gina asked.
“No ma’am.”
“And he’s listening,” Vesta said.
“What do you mean by that, Vesta?” Gina asked.
“He is keeping his intent talent alert,” Vesta said.
“How does that work, Craig?” Gina asked.
“It’s always working. My parents and Greenacres sorta beat that into me. But now it’s more active. I can’t even help it. Vesta’s dad said it’s like when someone gets in a car accident and then is super alert when driving after that.”
“Okay, good analogy,” Gina said.
“I’ve done that,” Steve the werewolf said. “It fades over time.”
“Yes, it does. Now would be the worst time to stage another attack because Craig’s radar is hyperactive. Therefore, the enemy should wait.”
“Better wait a long time then, because I’m not forgetting this morning any decade soon.”
“Do they know? That it was him?” another witch asked.
Gina turned to Cora and Wulf.
Cora cleared her throat. “They almost certainly do. Anything to do with Declan, Stacia, and Vesta is a big deal. The Coven is definitely aware of her new gigolo.”
“Not really a gigolo if he doesn’t charge,” Vesta said.
“Jokes aside,” the witch said, turning to me. “Can you sense them now that they know?”
I looked at Vesta and she nodded.
“If people think bad thoughts about this place, I sense it. Right now, there are multiple students thinking bad thoughts about us. They range in degree from slight fear to Humans First type biases. But that’s no different than last semester.
No one is actively intent on attacking us.
In fact, most fear the very idea of it. What idiot wants to attack werewolves and witches? ”
“You can feel people hating on us?” the girls asked.
“I sense threats. I have to concentrate to figure out other stuff, but anything threatening is front and center. Jocko over there hates me. Clear as day.”
Everyone turned to look at Jacques, and he did a great impression of who me?
“How did you kill those vampires so fast and without even being able to see them?” Kiley Price asked with a frown.
“Secret Vulcan death thoughts,” I said.
Kiley’s frown became a glare.
“Warlock,” Vesta said.
“What?” Kiley asked.
“He’s a warlock, Kiley. Even more so than my dad. Sure he’s my guy and all, but he’s also kinda, sorta a biomagical weapons system. Unparalleled threat detection system, automatic, unsighted aiming system, and various levels of on-bod weapons, both close quarters and ranged.”
“He uses that Intent stuff in Wytchwar,” Tessa said.
“And he has his own protocol,” Cora said. “Which, unless you missed it, is deadly.”
“Can be deadly,” I corrected. “Can be just painful.”
“Painful?” Wulf asked.
“Like rock salt under your skin painful,” I said.
“Shit, that’s nasty,” Steve said.
“Better than losing a head though,” Vesta said.
“True.”
Gina let us all just talk and the teachers moved around among the students, dipping in and out of conversations. After an hour, Gina let us go.
“Hey Craig, wait up,” Freia said as we left.
I stopped and Vesta did too.
“Um, I called my mom today,” Freia said, looking around nervously. But she was nervous of me, not the people around us.
“Like most people, I presume,” I said.
“I told her my vision had come true and that it was you killing vampires,” she said.
“’Cause that’s what happened,” I said, frowning.
“Yes, yes, of course. It’s just my mom’s reaction,” Freia said, her blue hair swinging. Today she wore an artfully crafted outfit, curated to look like she was a living anime character, but clearly the height of some kind of emo-goth-manga fashion. “She knew your mom.”
“You never told me that,” I said.
“You never told me that either,” Vesta said.
“She had the room across the hall from Da-Ni. When I mentioned the vampires and you killing them, she had like this outburst. Like a loud ‘Hah!’ I asked her what that was about. She said it all made sense now.
“Craig, my mom said that your mother had an incident here her first year. She went to a frat party at Theta Beta Theta. Someone slipped something into her soda. She was found the next morning, passed out, pale and anemic. Arcane’s medical officer said she had been blood raped…
by a vampire. Da-Ni changed after that. Mom said that’s why she went to Golf Alpha.
No vampires. But when Mom first heard about you, she was intrigued.
When I told her you killed eight vampires in your underwear, she said that was why your mom got so interested in warlocks. She made you to kill vampires.”
I had no response. Nothing, my brain running down the meaning of her words. Rape? Blood rape? Drugged? Changed?
“Um, Craig?” Freia asked.
“Freia, you just dropped that on him like a sack of bricks,” Vesta said.
Theta Beta Theta. My feet started moving, my eyes not really seeing anything.
I was aware of Vesta following, of Freia staring after us.
I left the building, people saying words at me, but I didn’t hear them.
Feet moving. Vesta shadowing in silence.
It was dark and cold. I was dimly aware I didn’t have a jacket.
Didn’t matter. Vampires. Date rape drugs.
The words Rohypnol and GHB floated up. Theta Beta Theta.
The wind coming across Lake Champlain was cold and bracing, but I just squinted and leaned into it, my chilling torso ignored. Felt kind of good as I headed downhill. Turned on a side street. Stopped in front of a large, rough-looking building with the Greek letters over the door.
Vesta stood some distance back. Maybe ten feet.
Voices approached. I triggered my glamour, feeling the tingle across rapidly freezing skin.
The voices got closer… male… aggressive yet not angry.
I glanced at Vesta, who stood in the shadow of a large spruce tree on the edge of the property.
The snow at the base was thin, not even to her ankles. Windswept.
“Hey! Fucknuts!” a male voice yelled. At me. I turned. Three large males. Headed toward the house. Directly where I stood in the shoveled walkway.
“You casing our beer, townie?” the shortest asked.
“What? Beer? Why would I want your beer? What beer?” I asked, the first words out of my mouth since Freia had spoken.
“Don’t play stupid, moron. You townies take our kegs right off our porches,” the same guy said as they got really close. Their intent was violent, my guilt already established. But I had questions.
“You store your beer on the porch, people take it, and you still keep it there? Who’s the moron? And look at me… do I look like I can cart off a keg?”
“Then what the fuck are you doing on our sidewalk?” the biggest asked.
“Staring at this rohpy house,” I said.
“Roofy? What the fuck you talking about, short man?” biggest demanded.
“Rohpy as in ropypnol… date rape drugs? I know you know what I’m talking about.”
“Why you asking questions, you little shit?”
“Because some asshole drugged my mom twenty-five years ago and blood raped her,” I said.
“Hah. Twenty-five years, kid? Shit, it was probably my old man,” shortest said, laughing.
“Well, they found her with two pinprick holes on her neck so yeah, probably your needle dick dad, eh bug fucker?” I asked.
He roared and jabbed. I dodged right and then I slapped him. That’s right. Slapped. Mr. Jenks told me not to punch anybody since I had hit Fife in the gut. And never in the head.
This kid went down like a tidal wave had hit him. The biggest one roared and reached for me, reaching down for twelve-year-old Craig. Seventeen-year-old Craig grabbed the right arm, swiveled a hip into his middle, flexed and bent, opposite arm under the ribs, and biggie went ass over noggin.
A roar of voices from the door of the frat house and feet pounding my way. It was mostly a game of dodge from there, jumping, spinning, flexing left then right. And all the while, I felt Vesta’s cool gaze watching me.
Then the flashing blue lights put an end to it.