Chapter 27 #3
Before I could retort, Kyle burst out of the hallway we’d just used. Damn it. I’d hoped we’d lost the hunters in the tunnels. Kyle looked as surprised and dismayed to see us as I was to see him.
Now what ?
I glanced at the students to make sure they were all okay. The man, the bear, and the wolf were standing in front of the fire mage, shielding her. A little mouse peeked out from the pocket on the man’s shirt, wiggled her little mouse nose and ducked back down again. They looked okay for the moment.
Levi moved further away from me. I wanted to grab him and throw him behind me with the other supes. How was I supposed to protect him when he was so far from me? Was he trying to make himself a target?
Shit. That was exactly what he was doing.
My pulse throbbed in my neck. A shrill ringing filled my ears.
Stress was a fucking bastard.
“Professor Boyle? What’re you doing here?” Kyle’s gaze flicked to the older man.
“Someone stole the Amulet of Truth.”
Kyle’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s gone? But how?”
“Obviously one of these creatures took it.”
I snorted, needing to take control and redirect their attention. “You know your own people want to take that thing on a walk-about, right? Tammy was telling me all about how you refused to let it out of your sight. She thinks you’re wasting its potential.”
The man’s face turned stoney. He faced Kyle but kept his gun pointed at us. “Is this true?”
Kyle scowled at me. “Tammy would never.”
“Trust me, she did.” I shrugged, keeping my eye on the hunters as Levi inched further from me. “How else would I know the thing glows when it senses magic? Different colors for different magic. I had a hood over my head, remember? The only way I’d know about the amulet is if she told me about it.”
“Shut up,” Kyle bit out.
Professor Boyle pointed his gun at Kyle. “Where is it?”
Huh. That had worked out better than expected. I waved my hand behind my back, motioning for the students to move toward the stairs. I heard shuffling behind me, but the professor must have too, because he pivoted to point the damn gun at us again.
“Stop where you are.”
Out of the corner of my eye, something shimmered.
Oh fuck. Levi had shifted. If he’d given me another minute, I could have had them fighting one another again.
I wanted to be angry at him, but at the same time, he was magnificent.
His horns stretched toward the ceiling. His hooves scraped at the concrete. His big bovine nostrils huffed.
The professor’s eyes widened at my amazing boyfriend. His gun wavered like he suddenly wasn’t sure where he should point it. The wolf and the bear shifters snarled behind me, rallying again now that they felt the pendulum swing in our favor.
Then Levi charged the professor, making himself the most threatening target.
“No, Levi,” I shouted.
His muscled chest heaved and his thick thighs flexed. If he hadn’t been aiming his impressively long horns at the professor’s chest with deadly intent, I would have been swooning.
But, oh God. Was Levi going to gore him? Was the professor going to shoot him ?
I held my gun like a useless lump of metal. I was too scared of hitting Levi to fire the thing. The professor pulled the trigger on his gun. Nothing happened. The professor pulled the trigger again and again. Still nothing.
“Don’t! Stop!” Kyle was yelling at Levi too.
Then Kyle, the asshole, raised his hand. Something metallic glinted under the harsh light.
Fuck no. I couldn’t do anything about the professor because of his proximity to Levi, but I had a clear shot at Kyle.
I fired my gun. Kyle grunted as his legs collapsed under him. His weapon—a can of pepper spray—clattered to the ground.
Horror filled me as the professor kept trying to shoot at Levi, but my minotaur didn’t slow. He dropped his head and scooped the professor up with his horns and flung him over his head. The professor landed with a thud and a grunt. His gun tumbled across the hard floor.
I darted forward. Kyle was still breathing. I hadn’t killed him. Thank God. But blood was pouring out of a wound on his shoulder. The kid was surprisingly stoic. He only grunted when I pressed on the wound to stem the bleeding.
The professor was not so calm. He was shouting and moaning and crying. Perhaps he’d broken a few bones when Levi tossed him to the ground. Levi didn’t seem to care. He spun the professor onto his stomach and held him down with his hooved foot on the man’s back.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Levi? Are you okay? Did he shoot you? ”
Levi grunted. “I don’t think there were bullets in that gun.”
“Thank fuck.” I swallowed hard and felt a little dizzy as relief washed through me. That could have been so much worse…
Kyle groaned. I glanced down at him. Blood was still seeping out of his wound.
Oh God, I’d shot someone. Kyle hadn’t even been armed. There would be a police inquiry. And how the hell would I navigate an interrogation when I couldn’t talk candidly about supernatural beings?
“We need to call for help.” I didn’t want to face what was coming next. But what choice did I have?
No one volunteered to do that.
The man who’d been fighting to get his bear shifter girlfriend free from the hunters when the pipe burst was pulling her toward the steps with an exit sign hanging over it.
She’d shifted back, as had the others, but she wasn’t moving, no matter how much he tugged on her arm.
“Come on, Christa. We gotta get out of here.”
“Hold on, Gord,” Christa said.
Before they could run, Nelson arrived at the top of the stairs with a handful of people I didn’t know. His gaze swept over the area as he barked orders into his phone. He pointed at Gord and said, “Stay there.”
Surprisingly, Gord did as commanded.
Nelson pulled out a couple of zip ties and gave them to his sidekicks, who pushed Levi and I out of the way. They secured Kyle’s and the professor’s arms behind their backs. Kyle whimpered, but the professor was a lot more vocal until someone gagged him .
“When things went to shit, Teague called in reinforcements,” Nelson explained.
“These folks are with campus security, but they have connections with the SC. They’re supes.
They’re going to take care of this mess for us, because they had their heads up their asses and didn’t catch on that they had a whole contingent of hunters on their turf. ”
One of the security guards ducked his head, but another snarled.
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t care. This was your fuck up and you know it,” Nelson said. “And check their phones. Make sure they didn’t get word out to their asshole associates.”
“We need to get out of here,” Levi said. “They must be right behind us.”
“No,” Kyle said on a panting breath. He was pale and sweaty from pain. “The other doors in that room are closer to an exit. The rest of them went out that way instead.”
I was surprised he offered even that much information. Since no one had come running after us, I suspected he was telling the truth, which made me wonder why he’d come this way.
“There’s a video feed,” Levi said, already moving on to his next concern. “The professor used it to watch us come in. Can we kill it?”
“Yeah. I heard that through the comms. It’s been dealt with,” Nelson said.
“What about the human police?” I asked.
Nelson shook his head. “Humans harming supes falls under SC jurisdiction. ”
“What’ll happen to them?” I pointed at Kyle and Professor Boyle. Then I noticed I had Kyle’s blood on my hands.
I itched to wipe them off, wash them, something. But I didn’t have anything except my clothes. I shoved my hands in my pockets. Hopefully we could get to our car without being stopped so no one would see them. At least it was dark out now. That would work in our favor.
“It’s up to the SC.” Nelson shrugged. “They’ll live, but they might wish they hadn’t. We don’t take too kindly to hunters.”
I winced. Yeah. I could imagine. I didn’t like what these people had planned to do, but I still didn’t want them tortured or executed. The supes could call me a snowflake. Whatever. I’d been called worse.
One of the campus security guards approached us with a couple of phones.
Nelson narrowed his eyes at the woman. “What?”
“No messages. No calls in the last half hour,” she said.
“Good. That means the others don’t know we’ve grabbed these two,” Nelson said. “And with any luck, they won’t know that everyone escaped together.”
While we were talking, Levi had shifted back to his human form and was approaching the group of students. They thanked him for getting them out of the room. Levi shrugged it off, saying he couldn’t have done it without everyone’s help.
Gord was pulling on his girlfriend’s arm again. “Let’s go. We need to get out of here.”
“Do you have some place safe to stay? Somewhere the hunters don’t know about?” Levi asked .
“Gord, hold on.” Christa swiped tears from her face with a shaky hand. “No. They know where we both live. Do… Do you think they’ll come after us?”
“They’re hunters,” Levi said. “It’s what they do.”
“H… Hunters?” The woman paled. “But… But…”
“You aren’t safe here. Not until they’re dealt with. But if their organization has records on you, you might not be safe even then.”
Gord balled his hands into fists. “I won’t let them get her.”
“They’re seasoned fighters,” Levi said. He glanced toward the tunnel we’d just been in, as if expecting more people to burst out with guns blazing any second now.
The security guards who’d come with Nelson were already hauling Kyle and the professor away.
“Listen, we don’t have time to waste. But you know as well as I do, they will be coming for you.
If you want to be safe, come with us. We have a place where you’ll be protected until we understand more about what we’re up against. From there, you can decide what you want to do.
Or, if you want to get back to your families or packs, we can arrange safe passage. ”
I stared at Levi. He was never assertive, never commanding. So, to see him like this was… Well, it was sexy, to be honest.
The young supes spoke quietly amongst themselves. A moment later, one of the women stepped forward and said, “We’re coming with you.”
Levi nodded sharply. “Let’s go.”
Fin reached into his pocket. He pulled out a set of keys and held them out to me. “You won’t be able to get everyone in your car. Take my van too.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean? You’re coming with us.”
Fin pursed his lips and shook his head. “They don’t know about me.”
“What about you?” I asked. I had my suspicions, but I still wasn’t clear about what’d happened back in that room.
“I’m a water mage,” Fin whispered. “I joined the group because I thought it’d be a good way to find other people like me.”
“But… But…” I had a bazillion questions. The one that came out was, “How did you fool them?”
“You wear a talisman, don’t you?” Levi asked.
Fin nodded and tugged the necklace he’d worn almost his whole life out from under his shirt.
The metal medallion had a series of lines crisscrossing it at strange angles.
It didn’t look like anything meaningful to me, but apparently, I was wrong.
“It hides my magic. Nana got it for me when my magical abilities kicked in.”
Levi nodded and tapped his chest. “I have a similar rune tattooed here. Yours seems to block all trace of your magic, though. Even from other supes.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. I almost wiped my hand down my face until I remembered the blood. Then I stared at my cousin. “You have magic? How on earth do you have magic?”
“We need to go,” Levi said. “Can we talk about this later?”
Fin opened his mouth to protest some more. I grabbed his hand. Screw it. I didn’t care if I was getting Kyle’s blood on him too. I would drag my cousin out of here if I had to. “Come on. Don’t make this difficult.”
“They don’t know I have magic,” Fin said. “I’m safe. I can learn more about what’s going on.”
“No way,” I bit out.
“I’m an adult, Pow Cow,” Fin said. “And I went to training with the Nana-nator the same as you.”
“And I said no fucking way.”
Levi eyed us both. “I agree with Parker. It’s too dangerous. They’re going to be pissed, and a pissed-off hunter is unpredictable.”
“Leaving now will put a target on my back. Staying is safer.”
“If they get in touch with you,” Levi said, “and I don’t know how they could, when you don’t have your phone anymore. But if they email or whatever, just say that the experience frightened you and you decided to return to Willow Lake with us. You’re young. They’ll believe it.”
They stared at one another for a long moment before Fin dropped his gaze and nodded. He didn’t look happy, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was coming with us.
“Finally,” Gord said. “Can we get the hell out of here now?”
I agreed completely.