Her soft snores were the only response.
Relief surged through me at knowing my friends were safe. Well, as safe as they could be.
Fear also flowed within me as I thought about the humans and tried to figure out who might be helping them.
It was someone who could erect a magical barrier. That got rid of the werewolves and a lot of the other races.
Was it a student? Or was it one of their parents?
It had to be a student. They had to have gotten the intelligence that they needed to split the three of us up from another student.
I wanted to find them and introduce them to my claws.
“Kiko,” Loralie whispered.
“Hm?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
I chuckled. “Go back to sleep. I’m not moving until you wake up.”
There hadn’t been any noise that suggested the humans had radios on them. And with my hearing, I would have been able to hear even an earpiece.
If we took out the humans guarding us, would they be able to alert the others somehow? Even if we took them out, how were we suppose to get past that damn door?
“Potion time,” one of the humans, the one who had hit me, said.
Loralie jerked awake. “I need to get you out of here.”
“They do a head count when they give us the potion,” I whispered.
Loralie bounced her leg as she thought.
“Did your guards have radios?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve seen. Plus, I doubt they could use them with how deep we are underground,” she whispered. “Time to fight?”
With a deep breath, I calmed myself, focused on my inner animal, and pulled. It was sluggish, but I was able to lengthen and thicken my nails into claws and my teeth into fangs.
“Fight,” I growled.
“What are you planning?” Rathik hissed. “You agreed that we couldn’t—”
“Drink up, snakeboy,” the human ordered.
“Mist and slash,” I growled at Loralie.
She snapped her fingers, giving me the sign, and as she covered the human’s head in a cloud of black shadows, I used my claws to cut his throat. Unable to cry out and alert the other guard, he fell silently.
“Round two,” Loralie said and began crawling through the other students towards the second human guard.
He didn’t know what hit him.
“That all of them?” Loralie asked.
“Yes,” Rathik said. “There aren’t any more in this room.”
“Let me scout on the other side of the door and then if it is safe, I will open it,” Loralie said and disappeared before I could object.
I growled my frustration.
“Do you guys practice combined fighting attacks like that often?” Antoine asked.
“That was the coolest thing ever. I wish I had been able to see it better, though. Stupid darkness,” Ainsley muttered.
“Is anyone hurt?” I asked just loud enough for everyone to hear.
“No,” most said.
“There are a lot of humans around the campus, so for now, we are just going to move everyone into the cell on the opposite side of the hallway.” That one didn’t have the same type of door, so they could escape easily if needed.
“Where are you going to go?” Antoine asked.
“Loralie and I are going to try to free the teachers. Once we know it is safe, we will come back for you all,” I said.
“You two are not going alone,” Rathik hissed. “You can’t fight all those humans.”
“We aren’t going to fight them all,” I said and rolled my eyes. “We are going to free the teachers, so they can instruct us what to do.”
“Who made you the leader?” Norma snapped.
She was always trying to start trouble. It was time to put a stop to it. Marching right up into her face, I asked, “You want to walk out there, get killed, and risk getting every other student on campus killed? Or do you want to sit down, shut up, and let us handle it?”
The tension built, but after a moment she scoffed and walked away. “I won’t be crying when they toss your corpse into a fire.”
The door opened and Loralie said, “If they kill us, you have no hope of surviving, trampy vamp.”
Norma flipped her hair as she stomped past Loralie, not bothering to respond.
“Ready?” Loralie asked.
“Take me with you,” Rathik insisted.
“It will drain me too much to take you, too,” Loralie said softly. “I’ll keep her safe. Promise.”
He hissed and slithered down the hall.
My entire body froze as fear of his form consumed me.
Loralie set her hand on my shoulder and said, “Let’s go rescue our favorite patchwork doll.”
The joke should have cheered me up, Frances hated when we called her that, but a sense of dread filled me instead.
What if this was the last time I saw Rathik?
And all I could do was stare in fear.
Chapter 37
FRANCES
“Psst,” Loralie whispered behind me.
I turned my head and stared at her mouth and nose sticking up from the small shadow my body made on the floor. “What are you doing?”
“It’s too bright in here. I need a shadow so I can transport Tsukiko and I inside fully,” she explained.
“If we sit side by side, will that give you enough shadow?” Dante asked.
Her lips pulled up in a wide smile. “See, I knew he was more than just pretty. We’re going to teleport and then take out your guards. ‘Kay?”
“Stop talking!” one of the guards yelled.
Slowly, so we didn’t draw attention to ourselves, we pivoted until the entire side of our body was pressed together. He was so warm that I almost jerked away, but I held my place.
Tsukiko and Loralie popped up behind us.
“Evening, gents,” Loralie greeted and waved at the guards.
They aimed their guns at her and Tsukiko. “Who are you? How’d you get here?”
“Did anyone report losing students?” The other guard asked and reached for his belt where a handheld radio hung.
“Kiko, left. Lor, right,” I ordered and charged down the center.
Kiko leapt over the students sitting between us and the guard on the left. Loralie flew around the side of the room and by the time she reached the guard on the right, her scythe had materialized in her hand.
As they cut them down, I snatched the radios from their waists.
“When did you learn to move like that?” Dante asked.
We ignored him. Now was not the time to get into it.
“Everyone stay in the room and don’t make much noise. We aren’t sure the routes their guards are taking yet and we don’t want to alert them that we aren’t being watched,” Loralie ordered everyone.
“What is going on?” Himari, a tiny female fox with seven tails, asked.
“The humans have taken over the school. They have the teachers locked up, but we’re working on a plan to free them. We aren’t sure what the humans’ plan is since they aren’t taking pictures, torturing, or experimenting on anyone. There is a magical barrier around the school and we aren’t sure what type of barrier it is, so we are hesitant to try to break through it,” Tsukiko answered.