Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (37 page)

“Rather than aggressively interrogate
students like Mack and Jetta here, you should be learning from
them. Their parents were brutally killed by weres, yet here they
are living, eating, and studying with a whole pack. Jetta, who is
finishing high school, knows more about werewolf psychology than
any professional in this room, myself included. You should be
recruiting her, not bullying her. But when Krupp showed aggression,
what happened?”

“The rest of them deflected for her,” Mazar
said, a slight accent buried in her voice.

“They took deflection to a team sport. And
they told Krupp in a humorous way that she was pretty much helpless
against them. Give me your Taser,” Gina demanded, holding out her
hand.

“You already destroyed my cuffs. No way I’m
giving you my weapon,” Krupp said.

“You can use mine,” the big guy offered. He
stood up and pulled an M26 Taser from under one arm. I took the
opportunity to put the bracelets of the handcuffs together and
requested the broken link rejoin itself. Then I tossed them to
Krupp as Gina took the Taser from the other agent. Krupp looked at
her repaired cuffs, her poker face twitching a little.

I picked up my soda and started to drink it
down as Gina aimed the Taser at me and pulled the trigger. A slight
burst of magic to the glyphs in my left arm let me get it up in
time to catch the barbs in my palm.

I can pull electricity from any source: wall
outlet, power line, even a car battery, but the phased pulse of a
Taser, specifically engineered to disrupt the human nervous system,
is like a drug rush for me. I drank it down.

The straw slurped in the glass and the Taser
crackled for moment. They both went dry.

“That’s what happens when you tase the wrong
supe. Sorry Caeco, I know his aunt will be mad, but I needed to
prove a point,” Gina said.

“Not helping him, Gina,” Caeco said without
heat.

“You gonna dump that?” Gina asked me.

I stood up and walked across the room,
sliding between tables. Outstretched legs pulled out of my way as I
approached the far wall, where a steel beam was exposed in the red
brick. It was a foot too high for my hand to reach, but that was
close enough. A sharp arc of electricity snapped out of my fingers
and blackened the beam. When I turned back around, I felt the eyes
of the whole room press on me.

“Declan is another kind of
supernatural. He’s a witch. In this school, we have people with
telekinetic power, telepathic abilities, clairvoyance, remote
viewing capabilities, psychometric ability, and we have witches,
who can do even more. Consider them the generalists of the psychic
world. As you can see, he has an affinity for electricity and
steel. Think your locks and alarms can slow
him
down?”

“Witches? Like Blair witch and Hansel and
Gretel?” another fed asked.

“There is usually some fact buried in all
legend. Take the moon and werewolf thing. They need to Change
during the full moon, but can Change at will any other time.”

“So you’re saying we won’t be able to handle
a crazed werewolf who’s holed up in a house or office with
hostages?” another federal officer asked.

“Are they male or female?” Jetta asked.

“Does it matter?” he asked back.

“Would it matter in a regular hostage
situation?” she clarified.

“Of course,” Krupp answered.

“Well, same thing here. Males are mostly
obsessed with status, followed by being obsessed with females.
Female werewolves, in my experience, are also concerned with
status, but focus more on protecting the young and protecting the
pack. Then there are Alphas, which is a whole ‘nother matter,”
Jetta said.

“So what does all that mean?” the same guy
asked.

“It means you negotiate with different
werewolves differently,” Krupp said. Jetta nodded.

“What if they’re crazed and just killing
everyone?” another agent asked.

“You probably can’t get in there in time to
make a difference. Werewolves are very fast. Also, trying to take
on a Changed wolf inside a building structure is a death sentence.
They are super tough, require silver to kill, and are fast and so
strong, you can’t really understand it. I would probably set up a
perimeter of officers, armed with shotguns and heavy caliber
rifles, all loaded with silver, and wait. Chances are the wolf will
Change back and you can bind him or her with silver,” Jetta
said.

“You’re telling us we just sit there and
watch them kill off the hostages?” Krupp asked.

“If you have your own werewolves on your
team, you can have them scent the wolf and they’ll be able to tell
you all about them. Male, female, old or young or Alpha. They’ll
maybe get a feel for if they could Change and take them themselves.
What do you guys think?” Jetta asked the wolf pack at the table
next to ours.

“I think you’re mostly right. But if you’ve
got an Alpha in there, you might just want to burn the house down,”
Delwood said.

“You’re telling us there’s no way or no one
to send in after an Alpha?” Krupp asked.

“Didn’t say that. A powerful vampire or
certainly Chris Gordon. Personally, I’d love to see old Deeklan
here go in,” Delwood said, smirking in my direction. Since most of
the room had picked up on our mutual dislike for one another, there
were some chuckles. Krupp and Mazar didn’t laugh, instead looking
from Delwood to me as they realized at about the same time as I did
that he was serious.

“Okay, we’ve run over the lunch hour. Let’s
finish our food and gather for the next presentations at, say, five
after one. We can do some more demonstrations and discussions at
the afternoon break,” Gina said.

True to her word, she had some of the kids
demonstrate their avatars at one break and also trotted out one of
the telepaths and one of the psychometric kids to show their stuff
during Wednesday’s breaks. The cops and spooks seemed a little
freaked out after that Tuesday lunch, though. They interacted and
asked questions, but it wasn’t as in-depth as I would have thought.
Before, they had seemed pretty intense, while after, they seemed to
just go through the motions and were decidedly nervous around many
of us, the weres in particular.

My group got together on Wednesday night to
discuss our essays for Gina. The witch pack filed in a few minutes
later and asked to join us.

“Okay, is it just me or were some of these
people sticking their heads in the sand?” Ashley asked.

“I’ve seen some of it before,” Ariel said.
“They thrive on control and authority and when they’re way out of
their elements, they either go nuts to find out more or they close
down their mindsets and ignore what they don’t want to hear.”

“And distract themselves by being really
creepy old leches,” Britta said. All the girls had experienced the
creeper factor, but the twins, Ryanne, and Ashley had drawn more
than their share of attention. Except Caeco, which Ashley noted a
moment later.

“How did you avoid them?” she asked.

“I stayed close to Declan for the most part,
but when he wasn’t around, I practiced my bitch face. I grew up
around high testosterone types. You pretty much had to learn to
shut them down. Dressing the part helps,” she said, glancing at
Erika’s V-neck sweater with a raised eyebrow.

“What? I like clothes and fashion. I
shouldn’t have to be accosted because I look good,” Erika said.

“We’ve talked about this, Erika. There’s a
difference between looking good and looking available. Like, say,
the difference between a businesswoman and a football cheerleader.
One outfit says class and power, the other says drag me behind the
bleachers,” Britta said.

Overall, the group had similar takeaways from
the three days. First, the government was devoting significant
resources to the supernatural world. Second, those resources felt
the paranormal revelation was dramatically changing society across
the globe in ways that no one yet understood. And third, those same
resources were grossly ill prepared for the resulting problems that
would inevitably arise.

“The analytical types are great at standing
back and looking at this from a distance, but when they found
themselves in the middle of us, they couldn’t handle it,” Tami
noted.

“Yeah, the shit got too real for them,” Jael
agreed.

“Tis not an easy thing to change yer
worldview on a feckin’ dime, now is it?” Ryanne asked. “We all live
it day in and out, yet I’m remembering more than a few banjanxed
faces when we all started here just a wee few months ago.”

“Good point. Watching your roommate walk
eighty-thousand pounds of dirt into a basement sure makes you think
about honoring the roommate contract,” Mack said dryly.

“Talking of the dirt walking reminds me that
we’ve got teams to form for the tourney, now don’t we? Gina’ll be
wanting our rosters by noon,” Ryanne reminded us. “So, if ye’ve
covered the finer points, I’ll be taking me team away for a
meeting.”

The tournament rules allowed us to pick our
own teams and apparently the witch pack was staying together. They
would be a tough group. My own friend group was teaming up with the
exception of T.J., who had been aggressively recruited by the
werewoves. Following the witch pack lead, we adjorned to Caeco and
Jetta’s room for a strategy session before heading off to sleep.
Parents and guests would begin arriving Thursday morning, with the
bulk of them here on Friday and Saturday. Things were about to get
hectic.

Chapter 32

Thursday was the first morning of the week
that I could actually sleep in. The first three days were all nine
a.m. presentations. But Thursday was parent and guest arrival day,
with nothing much until about noon. I made it to nine- thirty.

Any college kid worth their salt can easily
lay comatose till at least noon, often one or two p.m. Myself, not
to brag or anything, but my personal best was three in the
afternoon one Saturday in February. What can I say; we’re up till
all hours either studying, writing never-ending papers or, if it’s
a weekend, blowing off steam. So I should have made eleven at the
least.

Instead, I tossed and turned from
seven-thirty on. Even my stomach rumbled, turning traitor against
our solemn sleep pact. So after lying in bed for two hours, unable
to return to blissful sleep, I got up, pulling on yesterday’s jeans
and long-sleeved t-shirt. Then I stumbled downstairs to feed my
traitorous belly.

To add insult to injury, I was like the only
student in the dining room. Oh, there were a couple of kids who
nodded to me, but they were the super serious studyholics who lived
and breathed the academic life. They wouldn’t know a good party if
it snuck up, chomped onto a leg, and death rolled them.

I ordered a cheddar, ham, spinach, and
mushroom omelet from the breakfast chef and drank chocolate milk.
As I dipped into the fluffy mix of cheesy heaven, my determination
reared up and demanded I go back to bed after my fast was
broken.

Plate clean, belly full, I dropped off my
dishes and headed out the door only to collide with a green-eyed
armful of Irish witch.

“Oh Declan, jest run me down, why don’t ya!”
she said, although her smirk was warm enough to tell me she wasn’t
unduly ruffled.

“Sorry, Ry. Got a date with my bed and some
righteous shut-eye,” I said after we untangled a bit.

“Listen, before ye head off to count yer
sheep or molest them or whatever pervy thing you lads do in yer
dreams, I need to talk to ye for jest a bit,” she said.

“But Ryanne, I should be sleeping,” I
protested mildly. She just looked at me with those Galway eyes and
my will crumbled. “Alright, but can we be quick? You’re cutting
into my Z time.”

“Come on, ye lump,” she said, grabbing my
hand and pulling me out the front doors, past the guards, and into
the sunny parking lot. “This way, if ye pitch a fit, yer less
likely to break the building or anything.”

It was already warm, at least for a day in
early March in northern Vermont. Maybe almost thirty, and the sun
was a bright prelude to the forthcoming Spring.

The parking lot was empty of people; just a
handful of cars were scattered about. She stopped and turned around
to face me, taking a deep breath like whatever she had to say was
really serious.

“Why would I pitch a fit? Are you breaking up
with me? Go ahead then, I can take it,” I joked.

“Ye fecking moron. Have ye got yer girls
confused, then? Do I look like the test tube terror who yer going
out with? This is serious and when I’m done, yer like to be put out
with me,” she said, grabbing my shoulder and shaking it.

“Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

“Ears, long hair, and skinny legs,” she
said.

“Hey, my legs aren’t skinny… just lean,” I
protested.

“Listen mate, here’s the thing,” she said,
somehow brushing aside my witty banter. “My family is arriving
today from Ireland. Me mum and da and all me terrible sisters.”