The Hunter's Call (Monster Hunter Academy Book 1) Read online

  The moment I spoke, Frost took a step back.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he breathed, his eyes going wide. “You’re monster bait.”

  13

  “You know, I’m getting a little tired of everyone calling me that,” I groused.

  Frost looked like he was going to break a few teeth from clamping his jaws so tight together, and the guys all seemed credibly perplexed except for Grim, who simply looked pissed. I was beginning to think that was Grim’s signature look.

  Frost recovered first, turning on Tyler. “You brought her here to campus? When?”

  “Technically, she found us,” Tyler clarified. “And it was two nights ago. We were coming back from meeting with Dean Robbins, and I saw someone come through the west entrance—which was crazy enough. Then I saw what was following her. A Tarken land worm.”

  Frost scowled at me. “When did monsters start following you? Close to the campus?”

  Probably not my best look to admit to all the guys at once that I’d lied to them, but I had lied to them, and there was no point in sugarcoating it. Plus, hopefully Tyler had already explained the truth.

  “No, not close to the campus. I mean the other night I was more or less close, but I’ve been dealing with monsters pretty much my whole life.”

  To my surprise, Frost only nodded. Thankfully, none of the guys looked shocked either. They looked equal parts interested, proud, and—in Grim’s case—still pissed off. I appreciated his consistency.

  “When it starts, it starts young,” the commander said. “It’s generally believed to be a condition in the bloodline, and there’s nothing you can do about it, as far as getting rid of it. I’m sure you’ve wondered.”

  I grimaced. “Actually, I never really thought about the idea of being bait before a couple of days ago.” I studiously avoided looking at Grim. “I always just thought I could see things that other people couldn’t see, and they could see me back. I didn’t think they were actively trying to seek me out. And as to bloodline…I guess. My mom never seemed to have too much trouble with it.”

  He grunted. “And your father?”

  I felt the blood score my cheeks, though I should have expected the question. “Unknown. He wasn’t a part of our lives. I have no idea if he’s even still alive. Mom never talked about him.”

  “But she knew what you were.”

  I frowned, not liking where this was going. “She knew enough, yeah,” I said, my words clipped. “She taught me how to protect myself.”

  “Her name?” he asked, and the question was so abrupt, I answered honestly.

  “Janet Cross. I’m in Boston to find her family, actually. That hasn’t been going so well.”

  “We can help with that,” Frost said, with such assurance that I wanted to believe him. “And it’s not all bad news. Generally, people with a genetic predisposition to be monster—ah, aligned—also have a fair amount of natural-born hunting ability.” He looked at me with more critical eyes. “They also are required to be part of a registry. It’s a registry that doesn’t get much attention anymore, and may not even be maintained, now that I think about it, but since we’ve found you, you should be added, along with the lineage you know about.”

  The caution of my single mother, long used to keeping out of the public eye, reared up, and I smiled politely but noncommittedly at Frost. “That would be interesting,” I allowed. I had no intention of providing my name for any such registry, but I couldn’t deny I was intrigued.

  I’d wanted to find my mother’s family, but maybe I’d been going about this all wrong, especially since that search had been going nowhere. Maybe I should start focusing on my dad. My mom had always been very clear that my father never knew I existed and shouldn’t be blamed for not being a part of my life, because that had been her decision alone. She’d always been rather defiant on the point, and I’d never wanted to press.

  I’d also never felt like I’d been missing out because I didn’t know my father. Mom had been plenty of parent for me, and from what I’d seen of the fathers of my classmates, I’d come out on the winning side of that equation more often than I would have expected. But if he was still around somewhere, and he knew my mom’s family…it was worth a shot. That didn’t mean I had to enroll in any freak show registry, though. I needed to shoot down that idea pronto.

  “So, if I have this natural-born ability, is there any point in me taking classes?” I asked.

  Tyler frowned at the question. “Of course there’s benefit to you taking classes. You don’t even know what you’re fighting.”

  Speaking of consistent… I slanted him a skeptical look. “You know, last time I looked, I was surviving on my own with my trusty little knife. No spells, no magic backpack, no problem.”

  A ripple of some emotion I couldn’t quite define rolled through all the guys, and I hooked my thumbs into my jeans pockets for added you’re-not-the-boss-of-me emphasis. I wasn’t here to make friends. Even my attraction to Tyler, while still an ever-present pressure in my mind—and in various other parts of my body too—wasn’t enough for me to lose sight of the fact that I was the outsider here. The super happy outsider. Getting more outside all the time.

  Then Frost spoke. “Think about what we experienced here today, Ms. Cross. Not one, but four fire bulls, all in one place. The first one was supposed to be an illusion. It was planned—a lesson that was on the books for today and dutifully recorded in the logs. But what showed up wasn’t an illusion. It was real, and these are creatures that hunt in pairs, not packs. The fact that three more appeared and took over the battle is deeply concerning.”

  “Well, it’s not all that concerning,” I countered. “You guys handled them pretty well.”

  “We did,” Frost said, and I’d been the child of a professor long enough that I recognized the smug satisfaction of a trap neatly sprung when I heard it. I winced inwardly.

  The commander didn’t make me wait long.

  “And the reason why we were able to handle them is because these young men have been trained in the skill of magical command and group fighting. You have not. Typically, when you’re a lone fighter, you make the most of what you have on hand, or fashion makeshift weapons that serve the purpose of defeating the monster you encounter or simply driving it away.”

  He gestured to my hand, and I fought the urge to put it behind my back. I was still carrying my short iron knife—my short, iron, and very definitely down-market knife. Bastard.

  Frost continued. “Generally, these implements are made of iron, like yours is, which is also the primary ingredient in officially designed weapons, so your instincts are sound. But what you probably don’t have are weapons fashioned for particular types of monsters. Physical, spiritual, elemental, extra racial.”

  I couldn’t help myself, the last category sounded kind of cool. “Extra racial? What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

  Frost waved vaguely. “When we think of monsters, we tend to default to outsized creatures of fantastic skills and proportions, like the fire bulls. But in some cases, the monsters we fight look like us with only a few key differences. Maybe they are skeletonized, maybe they have the appearance of elves or vampires. Either way, they require their own set of weapons. Weapons you do not have.”

  “Fair enough.” I’d never come across any rabid garden gnomes, but it was good to know they were probably out there. “So, like, werewolves?”

  “Werewolves and all were creatures fall under the designation of shapeshifter,” Frost explained, not missing a beat. “As such, they make up their own category. There are some shifters that morph into and from human form, but there are also several varieties that shift from domestic animals to their wilder variant. It is not an exclusively human variant.”

  “Huh.” I felt my curiosity grow, and, unbidden, the image of my tree watchers across from my apartment building flitted across my mind. So were those guys extra-racial monsters? And what did that mean, exactly?

  I didn’t mi
ss the satisfied smirk on Tyler’s face at my obvious interest and resisted the urge to flip him off. Because I was an adult that way. “Well, I guess it’s probably useful for me to know some of that stuff. I can’t argue with that.”

  “Good,” Frost said. “Typically, Wellington doesn’t allow students who are not formally approved by the board to audit monster hunting classes, but we make many of our own rules here in this part of the campus. I’ll advocate with the board that we expedite your enrollment as a full-time student.”

  I lifted my hands. “Hold up a minute,” I protested. Tiny shoots of anxiety poked through the ever-fertile soil of my brain. “I don’t need to do all that, right? I only need to sit in on a few classes, like as a guest.”

  Despite my earlier temptation to officially enroll at Wellington, I knew it was a bad idea. Yes, it would be extremely helpful to know a little bit more about the monsters I was facing and what might make them go away, but I wasn’t about to sign up for regular classes. I’d go back to college when I was ready. My degree in premed studies was at least two years away from being completed, but it had proven to be a valuable course of study. And I’d gotten access to all sorts of useful tools during my labs, so that was a bonus. I would definitely go back to school, but not right now. I wasn’t ready for that.

  “You’re certainly under no obligation,” Frost said smoothly. “But there are a fair number of benefits to enrollment that hopefully the students here will help you understand.” He glanced to Tyler, correctly figuring out that he was my connection here. “You’ve told her about the collective?”

  I practically jolted out of my clothes, then went absolutely still, my eyesight narrowing to a pinprick. Fortunately, no one seemed to be watching me.

  “The what?” I asked carefully, trying to keep the chill out of my voice, and probably not at all succeeding. I didn’t care. This was it, the word ringing through my brain like a klaxon bell. The danger my mom had warned me about all those years ago. All the terror of that night, that horrible night rushed back over me as if it was happening right here, right now.

  I’d been thirteen years old, if that, and I could still see her in my mind’s eye, the blood seeping from her shoulder, her eyes wide and unfocused. “The collective,” she’d gasped, while all I could do was focus on how frail she looked, how frightened. Why had I gone out with her that night? Why had I put her in danger? How had I not seen the giant, scale-covered lizard beast before it had leapt out from the darkness and snapped its enormous jaw closed over her left arm? I’d gone instantly ballistic, my knife up and slashing like a whirling dervish, and the monster had dropped her with a squawk. But it’d been too late—too late. There’d been so much blood.

  But at Frost’s mention of the word collective, the rest came flooding back, stabbing at me relentlessly. “Four men, all together. Bonded as one. They’ll—they’ll hurt you. Destroy you. Worse than monsters ever could. If you ever see them—you run. Promise me you’ll run!”

  She’d started shaking at that point, trying to reach for me, blood welling up from her shoulder with renewed energy. I’d promised on the spot, of course. I would have promised about anything to quiet her down. She’d passed out, and so had I, and when I’d awakened to find her safe and whole, I’d buried the memories and thrown away the key.

  Now here I was, smack in the middle of a goddamned collective, without a single clue what it was. Or why it was going to kill me.

  I cleared my throat, and tried again. “The what?”

  Frost turned his attention back to me, though once again, he didn’t seem to take issue with my question or my tone.

  “The collective is a tight-knit group of hunters who have agreed to be formally linked in their efforts. We encourage it for any particularly capable groups that come through within a single year. Over the course of your studies here at Wellington, you establish a trust level for your fellow members in the collective, and they for you. Solo monster hunters generally don’t last very long, I’m afraid. The fact that you have is a testament to your grit, but it’s not an ideal situation.” He gestured to the guys around me. “And you’ve already formed a connection with an existing group.”

  “Got it.” I shrugged, working harder to ignore the panic welling up inside me. I’d barely met this group of guys, they were all members of a double-secret frat that was apparently going to destroy me, and their Paul Bunyan commander wanted us to join hands together and sing campfire songs?

  Even if my mom hadn’t encouraged me to run like hell, this was never happening. Setting aside the idea that they apparently could hurt me worse than monsters ever could, I had no plans of relying too much on anybody, let alone a group of college boys who were eventually going to graduate and move on with their own lives. With my luck, I’d start really getting into the groove of us working as a team when I found myself rolling solo again with just me and a nail gun for company. That sounded like a very bad idea.

  And that was assuming they hadn’t already killed me first.

  “Ah…there are other bonding possibilities for, um, add-on hunters,” Liam spoke up, sounding almost apologetic. Either he’d picked up on my growing unease, or the possibilities in question sucked ass. This kept getting better and better.

  Frost nodded. “The peculiar demands of monster hunting have existed for centuries, perhaps even thousands of years. Groups have had to form unexpectedly, even urgently. The spells are old and would need to be studied for modern application, because I’m not sure of all the ramifications, but they do exist. I’ll look into it.”

  “Good to know,” I said, wiping my hands off on my jeans again like it was super ordinary for me to be sweating buckets on the cool spring day. “But first things first. You said there were some classes I could benefit from. Are there any that are being offered this semester? I know we’re kind of toward the end of the year, but I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

  “Battle readiness, for sure,” Tyler put in.

  “Weapons,” Liam added. He’d picked up his pack somewhere along the line, and now he patted it. “Particularly ones that require a small footprint. You’d be amazed at what I can fit in this backpack.”

  “Identification,” Zach offered, running a hand through his jet-black hair. “Always better to know what you’re facing and how it reacts to various attacks. You can save a lot of time that way, and maybe some skin in the process.”

  “Fitness,” Grim rumbled. We all looked at him, and he gave me a thin smile. “Because it looks like you’re going to be running a lot, Monster Bait.”

  Irritation rippled through me as the guys laughed, but Grim didn’t back down from my irritated gaze. I noticed, despite not wanting to, that his chin was perfectly chiseled and his mouth almost sculpted, set into his granite-jawed face like a gift for women everywhere. I wanted to hate the guy, I did hate the guy, but he sure was easy on the eyes. Even if he was an asshole.

  Frost brought his hands together in a sharp slap, and I jolted, the energy of that slap seeming to electrify the air around us.

  “Then it’s done, at least this much. We’ll talk tomorrow. Meanwhile, we need to do a perimeter check—”

  “Nina doesn’t,” Grim grunted, surprising me. “She should go. To class.”

  “Excellent idea. Plan on meeting at the library after class—seven o’clock.” Frost waved to me and Tyler absently, then refocused on the other guys.

  I narrowed my eyes at the summary dismissal, but then Tyler took my hand to draw me away and I didn’t care as much. Something about touching him always felt so incredibly right, in a way I didn’t want to explore too closely.

  Blowing out a long breath, I tried to refocus. I needed time to think, to regroup, to pick apart my mom’s long ago warnings and square them up to a group that’d been nothing but helpful since I’d met them. Well, mostly helpful, anyway. Except for…

  “What’s with Grim?” I asked Tyler as soon as we were some distance off, aiming toward the main campus. Every stride awa
y from Frost and his suggestion of the collective was a step in the right direction, as far as I was concerned, and I remained acutely aware of Tyler’s hand on mine. Aware and unreasonably happy about it. “He seems like he’s perpetually midsnarl.”

  “Nah,” Tyler said easily. “That’s just his way. We don’t know a lot about him, honestly. He showed up the first day of second semester and got dropped in with us even though he didn’t have the credits. We didn’t mind. He’s a fucking baller when it comes to monster hunting. And any kind of hunt, for that matter. He’s fast and brutal, and you need both. He also knows a hell of a lot about monsters without the benefit of all of Liam’s books. He’s a good guy to have on your side.”

  “Well, he doesn’t seem to be a fan.”

  Tyler laughed. “Consider yourself lucky. He doesn’t even talk to most women, though he has his share of groupies. He doesn’t have much use for anybody outside of us. He’ll grow on you, though. Trust me.”

  I grimaced, then poked at the bubble of questions that were blowing up in my mind, even though it was now super clear that Mom had been warning me specifically about the monster hunters of Wellington Academy. I didn’t have to run away in the next thirty seconds, though. It was broad daylight, and I’d identified the threat. I could leave at any time—so what would it hurt to learn more about what it was I was running from? “So he’s part of your collective thing?”

  “Absolutely. We formed as an official group midway through our sophomore year. And Frost is right. There’s undoubtedly a way for you to join the group too, but it’s super old lore, and we haven’t really had to study it. Hell, they don’t even teach collective magic anymore, not formally. But we’ll figure it out if that’s something you want to do.”

  I smiled, appreciating that Tyler was at least trying to keep from bum-rushing me into taking classes and joining his secret treehouse club, though any sort of hesitation clearly went against the grain for him. He was determined to lead the monster hunters of Wellington Academy into battle, and he wanted me on board in whatever way he could get me.