Hunters of Chaos (24 page)

When it was over, I lay down away from the carnage, my energy spent. The others lay down next to me and rested.

We did it,
I said wearily.

To think I used to like bats,
Shani said.

Doli ruffled the tiger's fur with her nose.
We couldn't have done it without you, Lin. Thanks for coming. How did you know where to find us?

I had this feeling you were in trouble and that you needed me. I couldn't let you fight alone. So I followed your scents. It must be one of our powers.
She chuffed contentedly.

Something about Lin's answer made me uneasy, but I didn't know why. She'd saved us tonight, and for now that would be enough.
Guys, I miss being human,
I broke in.
Are we ready to go home?

Yes.

Yes.

About time.

It wasn't hard to shift this time. I was too tired to overthink it. Within seconds we'd all changed back into our human selves. After we'd struggled to our feet, I groaned, feeling each injury the jaguar had suffered. I lifted my shirt and craned my neck, seeing the welts from my fall down the altar of skulls. I looked at Shani. “I should check you for wounds,” I said.

Shani sighed. “Can we do it later? I reek of evil bat blood and thousand-year-old dirt. I
need
to take a shower. Can we get out of here?”

“Not yet,” I answered. “One last thing . . .”

I walked into the adjoining room, climbed the altar one last time, and took the emerald gem in my hands, hugging it to my chest. When I rejoined the group, I held up the jewel in victory. They all cheered and surrounded me in a group hug.

As we passed through the hallway of suffering, I noticed it didn't have the same effect on me as it had on our way in. The gruesome scenes no longer seemed as scary or depressing. Maybe it was because tonight it had been the side of evil that had done the suffering, which meant the good guys might actually stand a chance. Or maybe it was because I felt grateful to be alive, to be with my friends. Either way, there was no question that we'd won this battle. We'd saved the school, and I had a feeling we'd played a small part in a much greater story that we didn't yet understand.

B
Y THE TIME WE EXITED
the temple, it was dawn and the night sky had given way to a soft heather-gray mist with traces of amber and magenta.

“Wait . . . so
you
followed a cat into the woods in the middle of the night too?” Shani was talking to Jason and sounded relieved. “Well, I guess that makes me feel a little better. Glad we're not the only ones.”

“Following a cat into the woods doesn't come close to cracking the top-ten weirdest moments of my night,” Jason said. He grasped my hand to help me out of the small temple door. “But, yeah, I was asleep but kept hearing this loud yowling sound. I tried to ignore it at first, but it got louder and louder until I finally went to my window to tell whatever it was to knock it off.”

“Don't tell me: It was a black cat with green eyes, right?” I guessed.

“Right! You've seen it?”

“We wouldn't have been here tonight if she hadn't,” said Doli, climbing out on her own. “It led us here too.”

“Weeeird,” Jason said. “I mean, not as weird as a giant demon bat and a chamber full of snakes, but . . . Well, you know what I mean.”

I laughed at how ridiculous it sounded, but I knew
exactly
what he meant.

He reached down again and helped Lin out of the temple. I saw her gaze linger on his hand for a moment then flicker away. “Anyway,” he continued, “I followed it straight to the temple, and when I saw the light coming from inside, I just had to check it out.”

“Aren't you glad you did?” Lin said sarcastically. But I detected a hint of sadness beneath her words. I wondered if she was embarrassed that Jason had seen her as a tiger. Any girl would want to hide the weirdest things about herself from her crush. Usually that meant a big red pimple or an overlong toe. But she'd turned into a real-life tiger in front of him and sprouted whiskers and claws. Talk about letting the cat out of the bag.

But Jason gifted her with a smile that made her blush. “Actually, I am,” he said enthusiastically. “If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have seen how amazing you guys are. You kicked major bad-guy butt back there.”

Shani nodded. “We sure did. And you didn't do so bad yourself—for a boy.” She winked.

Jason shrugged good-naturedly. “Thanks. But now that we're all out of that temple, somebody want to fill me in? What the heck is going on around here?”

As we walked away from the temple entrance and made our way through the excavation site, we gave Jason the lowdown on the Brotherhood of Chaos and Dr. Logan's real identity.

After a long pause, Jason shook his head. “My poor mom,” he said. “She's going to be so disappointed. She thought she'd finally found a nice guy. Turns out he's the god of the underworld.”

“Yeah, that's some bad dating karma on an epic scale,” said Shani as she ducked under the yellow caution tape. “Dr. Logan did have pretty nice teeth as a human, though. I'll give him that.”

“You mean, he
does
,” I corrected her. “He's still out there somewhere.”

“Don't remind me,” Lin said. “I can't believe we have to do this three more times. Don't these evil Chaos whatevers even know who I am?”

“They do now,” Doli said. “You're a Wildcat. And that beats pampered princess any day.”

The old Lin would have bristled at that comment, but instead I saw pride on her face. It must have felt pretty great to be respected for something she
was
instead of something she had.

I had just crouched under the yellow tape, stepping on a plank of wood set up by the archaeologists—Did
they
know they were working for a demon god?—when I caught a flash of movement. A figure, silhouetted against the lightening sky, stumbled away from the site, running to hide behind a tree before we noticed her. But I'd know that golden-blond hair anywhere. “Nicole!” I shouted.

Catching my gaze, Doli took off running and caught up to Nicole easily, trapping her against the cliff wall. The three other Wildcats ran to catch up, Jason trailing behind. Soon we all surrounded her.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

Nicole sneered at me, narrowing her eyes. “What? A girl can't go for a run in the morning? You get three friends—”

“Four,” Jason interrupted.

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You get a few friends and suddenly you think you own the place.”

Doli scoffed. “You can't seriously expect us to believe you went running in your jeans and those shoes.”

We all looked down to take in her expensive Jimmy Choo ballet flats.

Nicole's eyes shifted nervously. She cleared her throat. “I don't give a flying fig what you believe,” she said. “Besides, you're the ones who have been trespassing here, taking coins that don't even belong to you.”

“Coins?” I said. “How could you possibly know about . . .” I trailed off, slowly putting the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. I looked at the other Wildcats. “The last time I talked about the coin Jason found at the excavation site was when we were in the library—the day we thought we heard someone outside, eavesdropping on us. Remember? The only people who knew about it were the five of us and . . . Dr. Logan.”

Understanding dawned on everyone's faces.

“It was you, wasn't it?” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “You're the one who's been spying on us for Anubis!” So many things made sense now. I'd thought Jason had led the demon bat to the temple, but I realized that Jason would never have done that. Nicole, on the other hand, had told me to stay away from Doli; she'd egged on fights between Lin and me; she'd tried to tease me out of meeting with Ms. Benitez. Maybe being assigned as her roommate had been no accident. She'd been a horrible roommate to Shani, too, I remembered, possibly hoping that Shani would give up and transfer to another school. It hadn't worked, but she tried the same tactic on me, beginning with spilling the mocha latte on my laptop. Anubis and his minions hadn't been able to stop us from coming to Temple, so they did what they could to keep us apart once we all got here. “How long have you known about us?” I demanded.

Nicole brushed her hair away from her face. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Oh, sure you do,” Shani offered. “And I'm betting we have you to thank for locking the school gate the night Anubis got away!”

Nicole's eyes widened. “You can't prove anything!”

“Can't I?” Shani asked with a slow grin. “You know there are security cameras all over this school, right? You roomed with me—do you doubt my ability to hack into that system?”

Nicole opened her mouth to answer, but no words seemed to come. They weren't needed, anyway. Her guilty expression was enough.

Lin gasped. “How could you, Nicole?”

“Oh, who are you to judge me?” Nicole spit out. She skewered Lin with a look, as if she were searching for a target to hit. “You used to be important around here, but now you're just a thief who hangs out with rejects.”

Bull's-eye.

I watched Lin's face harden her into the take-no-prisoners mean girl I'd first met just more than two weeks ago. I thought she was about to give Nicole a verbal body slam, and I had to admit, that was something I desperately wanted to see. But Lin just leaned in, narrowed her eyes, and let out a deep, menacing growl from deep within her tiger self. Any self-respecting human would have peed her pants.

Any
human
.

But as it turned out, Nicole wasn't strictly human.

When Lin stepped closer to her, the acrid smell of fear filled the air around Nicole. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. But as I watched, Nicole's sky-blue eyes receded into their sockets until they were hard little onyx marbles. Muddy brown fur grew like weeds until her peaches-and-cream skin was covered with it. Gone were the perfect cheekbones, the expertly tweezed eyebrows, and pert button nose. It their place was a wide, bulbous black nose, a high, sloping forehead, and sunken jowls. Before our eyes, Nicole's face, which I had thought was so beautiful, transformed into that of a beady-eyed scavenger—framed with gorgeous blond hair.

Marilyn Monroe was a hyena.

Just when I thought nothing else could surprise me. Were there
any
humans at this school? Temple Academy was turning out to be a much crazier place than I'd thought. I stumbled backward, unable to form a coherent sentence. “What? Huh? How did . . . ?”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” said Shani, gaping at Nicole in utter disbelief.

Lin, if possible, looked even more unnerved, her hand flying to her mouth. “Did I make that happen?” she asked guiltily.

Doli, the first to recover from her shock, approached Nicole calmly. “In a way,” she said. “Nicole, you'll tell me if I'm wrong, but you're not a human who can turn into an animal, like us. You're an animal that can turn into a human, right?” At Nicole's silence, Doli nodded as if that had been all the confirmation she needed. “I'm guessing Anubis granted you that power, but it takes a little effort to maintain the illusion.” Doli cast an appreciative glance at Lin. “You just scared some of the human right out of her,” she said.

Lin let her hand fall to her side and gave Doli a slow smile. “Cool.”

Nicole whimpered, emitting a noise that sounded like goofy laughter but was probably a cry for help.

“Relax, Nicole,” Doli said. “We're not going to kill you when it's four against one—”

“Five,” Jason chimed in.

Doli smiled. “Right. Make that five against one. That's just bad sportsmanship. We're going to set you free. But there is a saying among my people. It goes . . .” Then she said some beautiful-sounding words in her native Navajo language.

“Pretty,” I said. “What's it mean?”

“ ‘When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, strike first.' In other words, you'd better not cause us any more trouble, because we
will
strike, and a scrawny hyena is no match for the Wildcats. Got it?”

With a voice that sounded like boots crunching on gravel, Nicole looked right at me and said, “You are fools.”

I stepped closer until our faces were only inches apart. “What was that?”

“Did you think you're any match for a god?” she said. “You're so proud because you defeated the bat, but Anubis's plans are so far beyond you. The battle means nothing when Anubis has already won the war.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

Nicole gave me the same infuriating smirk she often had as a human. “You don't really think I'm the only hyena at this school, do you? That I am the only one in his service?”

I took a small step back and shuddered. “There are others?”

“Aww . . . ,” Nicole said, reaching out with her still-human hand and stroking my cheek. “You're so cute. You don't know anything!”

In a flash, Jason stepped forward and batted Nicole's hand away from my face. Nicole emitted another whooping laugh, this time full of satisfaction. But we quickly closed in around her and joined in a chorus of warning growls.

Immediately, teacup-size hyena ears sprang up through Nicole's blond hair like the Mickey Mouse hats they sell at Disney World. The effect was so funny that despite the tension in the air, we collapsed into helpless giggles.

Nicole eyed us nervously, seeming to sense the shift of power. As my laughter died down, I felt my confidence return. “We may not know who the others are,” I began, “
if
there are others. But we know you. And you won't be bothering us anymore. In fact, you're going to talk to Mrs. O'Grady tomorrow and tell her you lied about me attacking you and that you're
very
sorry, am I right?”