The Hunter's Curse (Monster Hunter Academy Book 2) Read online

  “Professor Garrison, I must take exception to your tone,” Robbins continued heavily. He looked pissed to be put into the position of defending the monster hunting minor, but he was the dean of our program, even if he didn’t have a magical bone in his body. Certain protocols had to be observed, and Garrison was totally not playing the usual game of academic respect. “I understand your frustration, but I assure you I’ve been working closely with Commander Frost to find our best path forward. We’re doing everything in our power to find an effective method for collaboration between our two departments. I merely ask that you respect the process as we are evolving it.”

  “Respect.” Garrison curled his lip. “That’s all you ever cared about, isn’t it, Dean Robbins? The respect of those you secretly feared. The fear of those you could intimidate. Your time will come, little man.” Garrison now sounded like a long stretch of hard road, and Dean Robbins stiffened.

  “Professor Garrison,” he snapped, but Garrison waved him off.

  “Frost saw and didn’t share what he knew. You’re worse. You can’t even see what’s right in front of you. How else can you explain having witnessed the arrival of our brothers and not sending up the alarm? Rest assured, there will be hell to pay for that.”

  I blinked, narrowing my eyes on Garrison. Had he said “brothers”?

  Zach stepped forward. “You don’t have to do this,” he began, using his inside demon voice, and Garrison turned his head so sharply, I was surprised it didn’t whip off his neck.

  “You have grown lax, Zachariah, but no more lax than Commander Frost here,” Garrison sneered as both Robbins and Frost took a careful step back, clearly aware that something had gone very wrong with the professor. “Dean Robbins I can almost excuse. He doesn’t know any more than what he’s told. But you I would have expected more of.”

  Then he spoke another word, not quite Latin or Akkadian, but it nearly froze my blood. The stacks of books started sparking, and plumes of smoke billowed down the long aisleways. The stench of sulfur filled the air.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Robbins blustered, lifting his hands even as Frost squared his shoulders and jutted out his chin, a man clearly on the edge of a brawl. All he needed to do was crack his knuckles. “What’s going on here?”

  Garrison shot Robbins a derisive look. “Our cross-departmental collaboration is a very simple one, Dean Robbins. We’ll keep you here and well entertained while our brethren seed the ground of this campus for its harvest of pain. Wellington Academy will pay for Zachariah Williams believing he could defeat us. Starting now, I think.”

  The library erupted in fire.

  27

  “Nina!” Turning toward me as I threw up my arms reflexively against the boiling smoke and sparking flames, Zach yanked me to his side.

  Chaos reigned around us. Easily a third of the demonology students had turned on their peers, and a vicious hand-to-hand brawl was underway—kicks and punches making do when shouted Latin curses and flailing crosses failed. Frost shoved Robbins to the side and was grappling with Garrison, whose body contorted in horrifying ways, the demon inside him practically bursting through his skin.

  Zach shook me back to focus. “Hey, we need to get out of here. The guys can handle this, but Garrison is a good guy, honest. If demons have gotten to him, they’re potentially everywhere. And if you’ve amped me up in some way, I want you by my side until I figure out exactly how. My family demons are mixed up in this, but that’s not all that’s going on.”

  He jolted, looking to the front of the room, and I realized he was communicating with one of the other guys—a communication I couldn’t hear because I’d removed my hand from my bracelet. Screw that. I yanked off the narrow metal band, and voices filled my head.

  “Entryway secured,” Liam reported. “I’ve got salt everywhere there’s a door or window—we’re good. You guys need to bolt, though. The board in the war room is lit up like a Christmas tree, and all the hottest locations are here on campus. Something’s here, and it’s pissed.”

  “Agreed,” Tyler shouted, and I spun around to see him fighting with a knot of students who were experiencing the same contortions as Professor Garrison—how many demons were we talking about here? “We’ll lock down Lowell and keep this group inside. Go. Get these bastards at their source.”

  “But where are they coming through?”

  Tyler’s response was buried beneath a demon roar, and I jerked my gaze across the room to see Grim pummeling the crap out of a student who had now morphed into a full-on demon. “Portal sites all over the damned campus,” Grim gritted out. “But don’t be an idiot. What do they like the most?”

  I snapped my focus back to Zach, who was already nodding. “Unconsecrated ground,” he muttered. “Has to be.”

  Zach and I turned toward the front doors of Lowell Library and took off, pausing only briefly as Liam blocked our path. “Take these,” he ordered, shoving two small cloth go-sacks at me, the crest of Wellington Academy visible in the corners. Maybe they did sell these kits in the bookstore.

  I didn’t have time to explore the goody bags as Liam shoved us through the door, his already uncorked vial of salt ready to repair any damage we did to his protective line. Then we were through the foyer and out the front door of the library.

  Hitting the bright, open expanse of campus again was almost a religious experience, especially given what we’d just left behind. There was no smoke, no sulfur here. The sun shone cheerfully over manicured walkways and lush green space, and while there were still a few students around, it was remarkably quiet—idyllic, really.

  We hustled forward, and once we breached the ancient wall to the central campus, things changed. There were more students here, for one, and they eyed us oddly. More oddly than usual? It was so hard to tell.

  “They’re not possessed, are they?” I asked, as Zach and I forced ourselves to slow down. We didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves until we knew exactly what it was that was looking at us.

  “I don’t think so,” he murmured back. “I think we need to focus on what Garrison actually said. The campus is being prepared, like fertile ground. I think the combination of fewer students on campus and the arrival of the horde has set some sort of stage. I’ve never seen a full-scale attack like this before. It’s just not the way demons usually work. They generally prefer to do things quietly, under the radar. This…this just doesn’t track with that.”

  I shot him a nervous glance. “You don’t think someone is helping them, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No way. It’s too disjointed for that. I think it’s just a perfect storm of some very strange undercurrents happening at Wellington Academy mashing up against my family demons deciding to make their move. Shitty timing, but it’s happening so fast that it doesn’t feel strategic, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. I could totally see what he was saying. But that didn’t make me any happier. “Well, if this was somebody’s strategy, we kind of would be screwed. So maybe let’s hope nobody’s paying too much attention.”

  “Agreed,” Zach said tightly, then glanced ahead again. “Okey doke. Here we go.”

  I turned forward again to see what had caught his eye, but it didn’t take long to figure out. We’d entered campus through the barrier wall from the monster quad, which arguably should mean we were in a more protected location. But the students here were watching us with a malevolence that outstripped anything I’d seen before…and they were glaring from the doorways of classroom and administrative buildings, even the bookstore, ducking in and out like they were getting bitten from unseen mosquitos. Actually—exactly like that. As I squinted, I could see ephemeral clouds of gnats erupting every time a door opened.

  “What’s this about?” I muttered. “Did something die and no one moved the corpse?”

  “You brought them here, didn’t you?” a girl shouted from the doorway of one of the buildings. “They’re not bothering you, so that means you brought them.”<
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  She yelled this at both of us, and Zach and I exchanged a startled glance. So many options, so little time, and I wasn’t in the mood to mince my monsters. “Brought what?”

  “The flies,” she moaned, waving her hand again and then darting back inside. I saw them more clearly then, clouds of insects swarming in bunches, scattering the few students who dared to venture out of the classrooms.

  “Scati,” Zach said abruptly, and of course, he was right. My eyes widened as I stared at the tiny flying demons. “Smaller this time, but every bit as obnoxious. They can’t alight on anything, at least. They have to stay airborne because the entire campus is consecrated ground other than the demonology department, which has different wards. But you know…”

  He frowned, glancing up and down the quad as more plumes of the gnat-like creatures swarmed over the empty sidewalks. “If there’s enough of them in a space and nobody takes them out, like if their energy outstrips that of the humans here, they’ll eventually tip the balance. At that point…man. The entire campus will become open territory. That’s gotta be what they’re doing. Crowd all the demonology students into Lowell Library, distract them with a fight, and then seed the campus.”

  “And they’re coming from a portal,” I put in. “I mean, you heard Grim. That’s got to be Bellamy, right? So we go there, close the opening, and we’ll be good to…”

  I broke off as we passed the center of campus, heading toward the western sector that was also outside the main wall. New voices sounded ahead of us, coming from the general direction of Bellamy Chapel. There were shouts, chants, roars of approval that only got louder as we moved, and we shifted into a flat-out run. By the time we cleared the wall, the din was deafening. Zach and I skidded to a stop, and I could only gape.

  The protestors from the Wellington Academy monster quad had apparently picked up a new cause. They marched in front of the now-opened doors of Bellamy Chapel, waving colorful signs and shouting at the top of their lungs. “Burn it down! Burn it down! Let the demons be unbound!”

  “What in the hell?” I demanded.

  Zach groaned, his gaze darting everywhere. He ran his hands through his dark hair, leaving it standing on end. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

  “We cannot allow fear to rule us anymore!” an all-too-familiar voice shouted, and I wheeled around, my eyes going wide as I took in Merry Williams standing with the bullhorn that she completely did not need at the front of the crowd. “If we free the demons, let them be our friends, we will free ourselves from fear. Demons deserve rights too!”

  “Is she insane?” I whispered. Zach could only shake his head.

  “Look behind her.” I saw it then. Students entering the chapel in a cheerful line like it was some sort of circus fun house. “That’s not good,” Zach said. “It’s not safe.”

  As if on cue, an unearthly howl sounded from inside the chapel, loud enough to drown out Merry’s bullhorn speech.

  “That’s just sound effects,” she insisted to the cheering crowd. “This entire building is like a movie prop. They’re trying to scare you the same way they’ve scared people throughout millennia. Don’t fall for it! Demons deserve their freedom—demons are our friends!”

  At that moment, the doors of Bellamy Chapel burst open, and an enormous hand reached out, grabbed Merry around the waist, and pulled her inside.

  The crowd went wild.

  28

  I’d never seen anything like the chaos that prevailed outside Bellamy Chapel. Half the students were overcome with giddy delight at the manifestation of a demon hand as big as a smart car. Half were terrified out of their minds. As Zach and I fought our way through the crowd, however, they mostly seemed like they had absolutely no idea where to run.

  “Get out of here,” Zach shouted. “Get back to the main campus.” But it was no use. The closer we got to the chapel’s front doors, the more students seemed to be in our way.

  “The church! We have to get to the church.”

  “No,” Zach howled, but his voice was drowned out in the chaos. We were swept along with the tide of students, and as we entered Bellamy Chapel, we pitched forward, suddenly no longer inside the building but dumped out onto an open plain, the grass beaten down and burnt, the trees leafless and cowering beneath an unforgiving wind.

  “Portal,” Zach gasped as we struggled upright against the gale. We weren’t alone. For as many students who shuffled forward, almost zombielike, their faces slack with horror, still others had crumpled to the ground, groaning, their hands to their ears, whimpering beneath the howling wind. At the front of the crowd, the curled-horned demons from Zach’s demonstration holograms were dragging students forward, and then sort of jumping on top of them and going poof.

  “They’re disappearing,” I said, squinting hard against the wind as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. “The demons.”

  “Not disappearing,” Zach countered. “They’re infesting them. Trust me, you do not want to be infested this way.”

  I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be infested in any way. “But how do we stop them?”

  “We don’t. Merry does.”

  “Merry?” In the chaos, I was ashamed to realize I’d forgotten her, but now Zach pointed to the front of the line of demons. There she was, standing with one fist planted on her hip, her other holding the bullhorn to her mouth as she shouted at a demon not three feet in front of her. She was like every person speaking to someone who couldn’t understand her language, hoping that if she just spoke loud enough, she would get her point across.

  “We are your friends,” she insisted. “We want to work with you, to live in peace. We don’t have to be enemies.”

  “Um, how tight are you with Merry?” Zach asked as we pushed forward through the shuffling students, stepping over the ones who’d fallen and doing our best to appear hunched over and dazed, evading the watchful eyes of the demon lieutenants.

  “Not at all,” I had to admit. “I mean, I’ve spoken to her maybe three or four times in the past several days, and she wanted me to room with her, but it’s not like we’re friends, you know?”

  Zach made a face. “It’s gonna have to do. Give me Liam’s demon kits. Both of them.” I obligingly handed over the small logo’d sacks, and he unzipped the first one. “You know her enough to get her attention? Your link to her has to be stronger than mine—and I can see her through you.”

  I blinked at him. “Like you did Dean Robbins,” I recalled.

  “Exactly like that. I’m going to channel through you to reach the demon when it gets inside her.”

  I glanced from Merry shouting down the demon lieutenant, back to him. “I’m not sure it’s going to get inside her. She’s pretty deadly with that bullhorn.”

  “She is. And that’s why that guy isn’t the problem. Look.” Zach nodded to the side, and I turned to see a new creature rising from the thick roiling smoke. It was a demon similar to the one we’d met in Bellamy Chapel yesterday. Large, muscular, with giant horns curling over its ears, its arms and legs too long for its body, it loped across the landscape at a frightening speed.

  Merry turned as it reached her, her bullhorn at the ready. “I want to be your friend!” she screeched, and then the creature was on her.

  “Now,” Zach ordered. We raced forward, my eyes going wide to try to comprehend the horror playing out in front of us. The demon seemed to leap right through the bullhorn and into Merry’s mouth, sending her sprawling backward. Zach shoved me in her direction as he shifted to the other demon lieutenants, ripping open the second of Liam’s goody bags and shaking free two crosses.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he roared, and in this plane, the words took on a ferocity I’d never heard in his voice. But then I reached Merry, her eyes wide, her body convulsing on the burnt-grass field. I thought of the few conversations we had, and latched on to the only thing we’d ever discussed that had truly seemed to make her happy.

  “How are your animals, Merry?”
I demanded, drawing her shocked gaze toward me. Her green eyes, suffused with panic, cleared for a moment as she recognized me. She opened her mouth, closed it, and finally spoke.

  “What?”

  “The animals at the vet clinic. You’ve been spending so much time there, and they’re so lucky to have you. You’ve helped them a lot, haven’t you?”

  “I have helped them,” she agreed, brightening. “Animals are our friends!”

  I saw it then, the demon inside her, writhing in confusion at the absolutely manic energy of Merry’s mind. Who knew she had such a powerful built-in demon defense?

  “There are so many things we can do with them, you know?” she continued. “So many ways we can live in harmony, giving them their best lives and allowing them to inform and enrich our lives as well. They have so much to teach us!”

  “They do,” I agreed firmly. “And they need somebody like you. Somebody who can be their champion. Somebody who’s good.”

  “I am good,” Merry sighed, and her gaze met mine, full of hope and truth. “I’m—”

  The demon inside her roared in apoplectic fury, then Zach was there in my mind, speaking words I couldn’t understand and didn’t need to. He pushed his energy through me and into Merry, and that was all that mattered. I spoke rapidly and intensely, the Latin spilling from me like an avenging fire, making Merry jerk beneath me, her eyes going wide.

  “No!” She gasped. “No, you have to stop. Demons are our friends—our friends.”

  “Apage,” Zach ordered, and that one I was pretty sure was the Greek word for get out. I yanked Merry to her feet and turned her around as she lifted the bullhorn high.

  The voice that came out of her next was not solely her own, but mixed with the infuriated roar of the bound demon inside her, ordering the creatures around it to stop their attack on the students of Wellington Academy. At least that’s what I thought it was saying, because in a blink, half the students littering the barren field disappeared. In another three seconds, the line of students in the process of being possessed screeched and spun away, windmilling in terror, then they winked out too, leaving their demon possessors behind. As Merry kept shouting, those demons burst into pyres of flame and ash, until finally, she turned toward me, her bullhorn dropping to the ground, her eyes wide as tears ran down her face.