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

  The card, strangely enough, seemed to please Robbins.

  “Thank you, Mr. Graham,” he said, taking the card after Liam walked it over to him. “Very well. Reports, all of you, except Ms. Cross.”

  He slid his gaze toward me, his expression cold and distant. “Your status here as an adjunct student does not require paperwork. In fact, I believe you have an Introduction to Arcane Languages course right now. I suggest you get to it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Robbins continued. “You should be aware that you are here under the graces of Wellington Academy. However, your admission on this campus is highly irregular. We wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize your continued enrollment. I understand from Mr. Perkins that it is for your own safety that you gain some rudimentary training, but we can only stretch the goodwill of the academy so far.”

  I plastered a bright smile on my face and avoided looking at Tyler, though I could feel a renewed fury radiating off him.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  Frost stirred as I stood up. “I’ll walk Ms. Cross to her classroom,” he announced. “She probably doesn’t have the lay of the academy yet, and I don’t want her to get lost.”

  “Good,” Robbins said, practically rubbing his hands with glee while the guys shot Frost sideways glances and Grim huffed a short, disgusted breath. Apparently, escaping Robbins was tops on everyone’s mind, but the guys were stuck. Frost and I moved out of the chamber without further delay as Robbins started in again.

  “Dickhead,” Frost muttered, and I pressed my lips tight until we exited the library.

  “What was that all about?” I asked. I glanced around, realizing something else. “It’s gone.”

  He glanced at me. “What’s gone?”

  “When we first came back to campus, there was this messed-up feeling, sort of like an energy where everybody was watching us, but not for good reasons. It was the same way at the Reid house. The neighbors walking by stopped cold as the van pulled up to secure what was left of the Boston Brahmin. They didn’t talk, they just stared. It was completely creepy.”

  “Interesting,” Frost said. “The Reids are a family we will be looking at more closely. I’ll be forcing at least one of the others to give a full report regardless of whatever bullshit they manage to compile for Robbins. Tyler is going to get himself into trouble with that quick mind of his. He can talk himself into a situation that might not be so easy to talk himself out of.”

  I snorted, a little wearily. “It’s a gift,” I agreed. “Did you ever find out the truth about William Perkins?”

  “Enough of it.” Frost shrugged. “It would appear that the necromancer behind the Boston Brahmin played a twisted game. William Perkins was a harmless enough old man, a widower who’d never had children. But he was a miser, and fiercely proud of his family. When a distant niece married into a rival family, they started some talk, it would seem. A whiff of impropriety about letters apparently written by the old man to some lady love. The Perkins family put a stop to it, but the old man complained loud and long about his innocence and his outrage, maintaining he’d been burglarized. And then—he killed himself.”

  “He knifed himself in the chest?” I asked, shooting Frost a hard look. “You believe that?”

  “I…believe there are some inconsistencies in the tale, yes. Because after his death he was, in fact, missing some items of personal importance, according to familial accounts.”

  “The signet ring and watch,” I said. “Who…ah…whose finger had it been attached to?”

  “From what we’ve been able to learn, an unfortunate who’d purchased it in a pawnshop, not a blue-blooded first family member at all,” Frost said. “The academy will follow up once we fully analyze the digit in question, but other than within our very select group, there’s no way that anyone can connect this series of events to Tyler. In fact, it’s rather neatly turned into a win for the monster hunting minor, not a loss.”

  “But the necromancer is still out there.”

  “He is. Almost certainly, he isn’t done. In the meantime, there are other concerns. It would not be wise for you to get on Dean Robbins’s bad side, Nina. Be careful.”

  “Why is he so against me, exactly?” I asked. Run, my mind whispered. Too late for that now, but…

  Frost shrugged. “Dean Robbins is determined to dismantle the program after Tyler, Liam, Zach, and Grim graduate. If he could find a way to do it before, I suspect there’s a hefty incentive that would be paid out to him. He’s not interested in today’s heroics. He’s definitely not interested in a monster outbreak. Which makes the timing of your arrival an inconvenience for him.”

  “So, he wants me gone,” I said.

  “It would be far better for him if you had never showed up in the first place. Now all the members of your team are very much on some highly sensitized radars. That’s not good.”

  “Are you sure?” I offered. “Maybe you have more fans out in the community than you think.”

  “Even if we do, that’s also not necessarily a good thing. The kind of fans who welcome the return of monster hunters might also wish to find a way to break more monsters out for the fighting.”

  I made a face. “Oh. Oh, that would be bad.”

  “Exactly,” Frost sighed. “As is generally the case, you should be careful what you wish for at Wellington Academy.”

  31

  Tyler was waiting for me when I exited my classroom an hour and fifteen minutes later, my head swimming with an entire dictionary of Akkadian. The teacher had insisted on giving me the full year’s worth of student materials, apparently delighted to share the wonder of the Akkadian language with a new, willing victim.

  “How in the world do you keep it all straight?” I moaned, tucking two workbooks and a folder full of papers into the crook of one arm.

  “You don’t. That’s why we keep Liam around.” Tyler laughed and I looked up at him, stopping still in the hallway, never mind the other students flowing around us.

  “Hey,” I began. “I owe you—”

  “Nothing,” Tyler said, leaning down to give me a quick kiss. The zing of energy between us remained, and a student squeaked in surprise as she passed, her backpack slipping off her shoulder and her long hair blowing straight back. “You owe me nothing but continuing to be the awesome hunter you are. For being simply, amazingly you.”

  “Yeah, but my timing…”

  “Was exactly what I needed. Seriously,” Tyler said, taking my free hand and turning to walk with me down the hallway. “Especially in the middle of a battle, I need to remember what I’m fighting for. What—and who.”

  He squeezed my fingers, and I squeezed right back, a giddy fizz of emotions buzzing inside me. My road with Tyler Perkins was only just beginning, but it was a road I found myself really wanting to travel. For the first time in…maybe ever, I had something to look forward to.

  As we made our way through Cabot Hall, however, something eventually penetrated my happy haze. I found myself sneaking peeks into the classrooms as we passed. Tyler noticed. “It’s the most interesting classroom building on campus, and one of the oldest,” he said. “I love it in here.”

  “It’s kind of…cold, don’t you think?”

  “Oh—well sure,” he grinned, then pointed to the ceiling. “That would be the demonology department, upstairs. They always blow cold up there. I don’t mind it so much. Then again, I ran all the way here after we got done with Robbins’s reports so I could catch up with you.”

  I blinked up, trying to wrap my head around demonology on a college campus, then focused on Tyler’s words. “Oh, right. How did that go?”

  “It was brain destroying,” Tyler laughed. “Seventeen pages of fill-in-the-blank responses, with the whole goal being that we were supposed to say the same thing. Fortunately, Liam performed some sleight of hand and we were able to get our communication game back on with the pins, so we managed to write down substantially equal
responses without looking like we were cheating. And since Robbins was there the whole time, he can attest that there was no cross talk going on. Thank God he didn’t figure out what we were doing, or we’d still be there.”

  “Did you tell him anything about William?”

  He snorted. “I didn’t. Frost gave us all the lowdown on that after Robbins took off, and I came straight to… Um—you okay?”

  He frowned down at me, and I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the corridor, my gaze fixed on the staircase that led to the next floor. I shivered, then forced myself to move. Why was I freaking out about the demonology department? A monster was a monster was a monster…right? “Are there actually demons up there, too?”

  “Well, only by special request,” Tyler said with a wink, as we finally passed the staircase, and the air around me warmed again. “The demon majors were transplanted from Swift Chapel, which they way preferred, but it’s all part of the academy’s plan to clean up our act for PR purposes.”

  We pushed through the main doors to Cabot Hall, and stepped out into the sunshine. I drew in a grateful breath, refocusing on Tyler. “They taught in a chapel?”

  “Sacred ground, natch. Not that demons are super high on our list of evil bads. Most churches have people in place in the outer world to handle those. Still, pays to be prepared. And the entire demonology department glommed onto Zach when he arrived. Nothing like having some in-the-wild experience to talk about during class. He was their golden child.”

  “Was?” I asked. “He isn’t anymore?”

  “Oh no, he still is. He’s probably dished the least amount of grief of any monster hunting student. Demons, people can wrap their head around. They’re monsters, sure, but they’re also part of most major religions’ beliefs. They’re not fairy tales gone hideously wrong.”

  “So he’s what, your spokesperson?”

  Tyler snorted. “He would be if Robbins wanted anyone to advocate for us. But he doesn’t, and Zach’s fine with that. He keeps to himself, most of the time.”

  “Yeah…” I thought about Zach’s darkly angelic beauty, the jet-black hair and deep purple-hued eyes. What secrets did he hide behind those eyes? And why, of all the monsters that’d plagued me in my day, had I never encountered demons?

  Something to consider—but not today, with the sun shining bright over Boston. Demons could wait.

  Tyler and I walked for a few minutes more, deeper into the campus. Eventually, the streets gave way to cobblestoned pathways dotted with the occasional sculpture and fountain. Not for the first time, it struck me how much Wellington Academy looked far more like a museum than a college campus.

  “I can’t believe all this exists and nobody on the outside really knows about it,” I said, and Tyler glanced around.

  “Well, I’m glad you figured it out. Even if it was due to a pair of Tarken land worms. For that, they’ll always hold a lock on my heart.”

  “I can’t say I feel the same,” I laughed. “Strange, isn’t it, how quickly everything happened? One minute I was covered in monster vomit…the next, I’m here. With you.”

  “Strange is one way to describe it,” he said, turning me and giving me his full attention as I hugged my books and papers tight. “I can think of a few others. Like awesome. And amazing. And so, incredibly right.”

  I grinned, another round of bubbly joy frothing up inside me.

  Tyler sighed, tugging me closer. “You do belong here, you know. Despite what you said during the chase—you can’t really believe that. You belong here with me, with the team. You have to feel that.”

  “I do,” I said, as earnestly as I could. “I just don’t understand how it’s all supposed to work.” That was the understatement of the year. I thought of Frost’s apocrypha, the destroyed sections of text that held the secrets to my connection with the guys…secrets I needed to learn, pronto.

  Tyler, of course, wasn’t privy to any of that. “You don’t have to understand it,” he assured me. “At least not right at first. We’ll have time to work through it.”

  I grimaced. “What about the other guys—what Liam said? Like…what if something comes of my connection with them? Doesn’t that seriously bother you?”

  “What? No way.” Tyler tilted his head, his whiskey-colored eyes sparking with the faintest hint of blue as he held my gaze. “Did you think it would? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always thought the way the teams work for Twyst Academy to be the height of weird. But the guys…I mean, I’d lay down my life for any one of them. I stand with them when they’re hurting and laugh with them when they’re stoked. It was that way even before we even bonded as a collective. It feels right. Just like you feel right.”

  He lifted a hand to brush a fringe of hair out of my eyes, tucking it gently behind my left ear. “I found my best friends at this school, and then one day, you ran into my life with a monster on your heels, and I found you too. I’ve been waiting my whole life, I think, for you to come running into me. And I swear on everything I’ve ever wanted to be, I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting by your side.”

  “Oh.” I blinked fast, overwhelmed by his words and the emotions they inspired—then I shook my head. I’d run alone for so long. The idea of this beautiful, powerful spellcaster wanting to dedicate any portion of his life to me, to fight by my side, was too much. “No. I can’t ask you to do that.”

  He laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m begging you to let me. You helped make me what I am in a very real sense. You made me stronger just by being who you are. And you stood with me even when I wasn’t as strong as I should have been. I—hell, I think I may be falling in love with you.” He said this almost as a confession, his eyes practically glowing with intensity. “How crazy is that?”

  “Ahh…Pretty crazy,” I admitted, feeling my cheeks heat as Tyler stepped closer. He gently took the pile of books and papers out of my hands and set them on the bench, then lifted his hands to my face.

  “I’m so glad you found us, Nina. It’s like my life started over the day you showed up.”

  Then his mouth came down on mine, and I felt a flash of awareness of all four guys in the collective, a surge of energy that seemed to leap up and add itself to ours. It was gone as quickly, but by then, I was fully immersed in the emotion rolling from Tyler. Much like his magical abilities, his size and his strength, that emotion only seemed to increase. I’d never felt so wanted, not like this. I tightened my hands over his, almost clinging to him. He didn’t hesitate.

  The trees had grown extra thick along this stretch of the campus, and no one else seemed near. Maybe that was just what we were telling ourselves, or maybe we simply didn’t care. He pushed me back into the shadows until I felt the cool, smooth, flat surface of stone against me. I looked up, surprised to see that we had bumped up against a statue. “What are these?”

  “Monuments from when the academy was first built. They line the campus,” he said. “They let the trees grow up around them. I never knew why, but right now, I’m pretty happy they’re here.” With that, he lifted me, seating me on his hips, my back against the column. I could feel the effect I was having on him through his jeans, and I didn’t want anything else between us. Not right now. Not ever again.

  “I don’t suppose…” I whispered.

  His laugh was low, husky, and certain. And when he stepped away from me again, it was only to set me back on my feet and lift his hands to pull my shirt free of my jeans. The brush of his soft skin against mine set my heart pounding, and even the trees shivered with anticipation.

  “Anything,” he murmured with a smile. “Anytime you want me, Nina, I’ll be right here, waiting to answer you. Forever and always.”

  It was a very long time before we reemerged from the shadows, but only a slight breeze sighed through the branches. And not a single tree had lost a limb.

  Tyler glanced around, his lips moving soundlessly, and a gloom I hadn’t even noticed lifted around us. I shot him a curious look. “You put a spell on us?”


  “Not on us, but on the space. It was just something that came to me. Seemed like a good idea.” He grinned. “I need to preserve the school, you know. We tend to shake things up a bit too much.”

  “You know, I kind of like you as a repository for cool spells I never knew existed.”

  At that, Tyler laughed, the sound remarkably free and easy. “I can say without hesitation that I look forward to every new discovery you bring to me, Nina Cross.”

  He reached for me, and I took his hand. Together, we moved back into the sunshine. I gathered up my books and papers, and then we quietly, even casually rejoined the rest of the campus. Nobody looked at us oddly, everyone else distracted by their own problems. Their own relationships. Their own monsters in the shadows.

  “What do you think will happen to the monster hunting minor?” I asked. “Is it really in danger?”

  Tyler shook his head. “I’d love to say no. But I could tell Dean Robbins’s mind was churning, trying to figure out what would suit him better. Everything getting shut down, or a newly rejuvenated minor with all the attendant money that would go to the academy. The fact that he was having such a hard time deciding didn’t bode well. But we can’t really focus on that. We’ve got a job to do, getting you ready to do your job as a monster hunter, getting all of us closer to graduation—and maybe taking a necromancer out of commission, or whoever the hell put ol’ Willie through it.”

  I grimaced. “Poor Willie. He put it all out on the line to be a Perkins, didn’t he?”

  Tyler squeezed my hand. “He definitely did. But there’s not much you wouldn’t do for your family, in the end.”

  I smiled at his enthusiasm, but as we continued walking, something brushed against me. A cool, whispering touch along my skin, taunting me. Challenging me. Whispering of dangers in the shadows…and a threat I couldn’t quite understand.

  I’d come to Boston looking for my family. What would it be like if I found them? And how would they feel about me? I didn’t know why Mom had never sent her letter, but she’d never thrown it away, either. Having her family know her story had mattered. To her—and now, to me. I wanted to find the family of Janet Cross, get to know them. Maybe even stand with them, in the end. I wanted it more than I ever expected .