Chapter 27

What had I just done? I’d made two people happy and one person not so happy - all by nodding. Agreeing is a deadly weapon sometimes. I found Jake and then left the two alone for a while so that they could sort things out. When I went to Chase’s table, everyone was themselves again. Ash was bright and bubbly and so were Chase and Tikaye. My friends kick a*s.

"So, I hear Anton’s keeping the Ekaterina vampire captive," Ash began, "if she wasn’t a vampire, she would actually be pretty hot." Chase glared at him. Chase, Tikaye and I all had to go back to ‘detention’ after lunch, which kind of sucked because there was nothing to do. "Avril, Chase. We didn’t see you at the fail-dance until the vampires came to attack," Ash noted and I just frowned and told him,

"Yeah, we weren’t gonna go and then Alex got all RWN on us and made us go." Suddenly, Ash’s eyes turned evocative,

"Was it going to just be a cosy night in for you two?" He asked facetiously. Chase and I looked at each other and nodded and I punched Ash in the arm lightly so he wouldn’t scream like a little girl. We ate our burgers and Tikaye spoke to Ash about my powers.

"How do you reckon we can get Avril’s power active?" She asked out of nowhere; Ash stared at me for a second - it kind of seemed like a diagnosis from a doctor or a scientist. He frowned and then said,

"Have you tried Anton?"

"We’re going to try that tonight. Maybe she could get put in the cage with Ekaterina?" I felt all of the colour drain from my face even though I knew they were joking. I had seen that vampire at work and she was vicious. By the time the lunch bell went, Jake was happy and so was Charlie and at the same time they both mouthed to me thank you. I just nodded in acknowledgement and Tikaye, Chase and I trudged back off to detention.

When we got back into the room, Tikaye brought up something that made Chase and I rather uncomfortable.

"So, why didn’t you come? Were you busy kissing each other in the dormitory or something?" I didn’t show it made me uncomfortable though because I just replied,

"Guilty is charged. We were caught by Mr. Russia and then it was all over." I’d called him Mr. Russia instinctively. I always called him that but Tikaye didn’t know that.

"Uh, Mr. Russia?" She asked,

"She means Alex," Chase interjected. She nodded slowly. We were relaxing on the couch when we heard footsteps on the stairs. "Hide the laptop, pronto, Tee." Tikaye was already on top of it. Literally, she actually put a cushion over it and sat on it.

Rakai and Blaze had come to join the party.

"Hey, guys!" Tikaye exclaimed excitedly when they walked in the room. Blaze looked around, impressed by Tikaye’s immaculate interior design skills. Blaze and Chase did a secret handshake which involved a double sided hi-five and a fist pump. I had no idea they even knew each other, but then, they’d been here longer than I had.

"What are you guys in for?" I asked making it sound like that we were thug-life prisoners.

"Graffiti on the mirrors in the bathroom," Rakai murmured and then his eyes lit up when he focused on Tikaye. I looked to Blaze and she smiled,

"Gave Angel Gabrielle a run for his money," she laughed evilly. I looked at her quizzically and she clarified for me, "He should never say that the Mason line is weak, ever again. That was the lesson he took away from our rather intriguing Lycanthrope Culture lesson today." I fist-pumped her. I always wanted to do that, ever since I got here, but I wasn’t game enough. Blaze was a true badass. We all sat on the couch and chilled out. Blaze had brought some paper and a pen and she was drawing what looked to be like gothic robots. She is a very talented artist, I noticed, as I watched her glide her pencil across the page. Eventually, I got bored with that and so I asked Tikaye to borrow her computer. She was talking to Rakai, so she just nodded and continued to talk about some of the most random things in the world with Rakai and most of the time, I couldn’t even follow it. It was good to finally have something to do, rather than be depressing and write in my journal the whole time. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing - but sometimes I get a little sick of myself and how I’m always writing down my exact thoughts and actions. I was a self-acclaimed genius at computers because I use them whenever I have the chance - it’s tough being a teenage lycan and keeping up with the latest in technologies.

I surfed the web for mostly some new music and I found heaps, but of course, I couldn’t get it because the school would probably catch on and they’d confiscate the laptop again. Luckily no teachers came down to room one... Wait a second, nobody did and we could hardly hear the bells. Maybe Mr. Russia was trying to kill us or something because we were putting shame to his ultimate school for lycanthropes. Footsteps were coming down the stairs again, but we had assumed it was someone else being put on detention. It wasn’t.

It was a teacher.

Luckily, it was only Anton and he was cool - he wouldn’t rat us out. Looking dumbfounded, he entered the room and Tikaye was laughing with Rakai at how astonished he looked by the change.

"Blaze, Avril," he began, still looking around the room further, "I need to speak with you regarding your detention and your extracurricular commitments." Blaze rolled her eyes and reluctantly put her fantastic drawings aside.

We followed Anton to the secret ninja training headquarters, where Jake had met us. He explained to us all the reason for why this class was earlier than our usual ones, "I’m sorry if this is so sudden and so early in the day, but we’re keeping a vampire captive to get information about the vampires’ plan of attack on the night of the moon." We all nodded in full knowing of what he was talking about. "Today, you get a very special lesson." Blaze and I smiled but Jake looked apprehensive. We went into the simulation room and Anton had disappeared. We heard his voice, but couldn’t see him and once again he was like God.

"Alright, guys. Today, you three have to work together to face a mob of vampires in the middle of town. They are after something you have. It should appear in each of your pockets shortly." In a few seconds, a chrome coloured locket, much like the one Chase had described in his journal, appeared inside my pocket. It looked silver, but it wasn’t and that was the beauty of it. Neither vampire nor lycan could touch silver. It was the ultimate killing instrument. "You have to guard these instruments and kill the vampires. Find a way to a) lead them out of the city so that you can kill them without being noticed. b) Kill them and c) find the rightful place of your instrument. You’re time starts when you hear the bus. Good luck." Suddenly, the metal walls transformed into the town just outside of Saint Rurik’s Academy. So many people crowded the streets and they all seemed so real. Blaze, Jake and I were walking down the street, not really paying any attention to hear the bus and then we heard it.

Boom! We were off!

The vampires were a little harder to spot in a crowd full of people but one vampire was particularly stupid and barred his fangs. They were all spread out and eventually, we drew about five of them to us and it was on like Donkey Kong. They came from all directions and so, we all stood back to back because well, turning your back on a vampire is just plain stupidity. They plunged forward and I felt the locket grow heavy in my pocket. Jake distracted them all by making them get a sore head or something and then we gapped it. Running as fast as our legs would carry us, we got to an abandoned warehouse that looked like it could be used in a horror movie or something. We went inside that house and the vampires seemed to have beaten us to it. They were ready to attack us from above when we got in the warehouse, which is why we always look up and behind first, rather than looking left and right. They jumped and we dodged them quickly and now we just had to find a way to kill them and fast because Anton was timing us and we had to learn to work together as a team. Three vampires had tried to take us down and as we were fending them off, three vampires took us down from behind and that was just not fair. I tried to squirm my way out of the tight grasp the vampire had me in, but it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The vampire reached into my pocket and nearly had my locket but then, I used my legs and knocked them to the floor before they had a chance to even clasp my locket in their hands. They didn’t stay on the ground for long though and they regained their composure quickly. As the other tried to grab me again, I took off my shoe and attempted to use it as a lasso. It failed, but at least the shoe hit one of them in the face, so it wasn’t a complete lost cause. Jake had made all of the vampires in the room shriek in pain and it hurt my ears because the ones Blaze was taking down had very hysterical, high-pitched voices. They were quite frustrating. They were all bent double and distracted and then I saw one of the most epic things on the planet. Blaze’s orange dreadlocks caught on fire and then she clenched her fist and threw a huge fireball at all of the vampires, while Jake distracted them with a headache or a vampire equivalent to a migraine. Once Blaze knew the vampires had completely disintegrated, her hair cooled down and her fists were unclenched and not on fire.

I knew this town as well as the back of my hand and I kind of knew where we had to put our instruments. I got the others to show me what theirs were and they were all jewellery and so, it would only be fitting to take them to the jewellers. I lead them to the jewellers but then, at the jewellers, we saw a vampire who looked strangely like Rayne Valeska. Anton was almost too good at making up these simulations. She smiled and said,

"I believe you have something that I desire greatly," her voice was almost exactly the same too - except the real one sounded bitterer, colder and more intimidating; not to mention, her voice was in a much lower pitch. Blaze and Jake tried to do the same thing to this vampire but it failed for some reason. Jake figured that I had to help too but there was really nothing I could do to help. They were the ones with the super badass powers and I had none that I could use to help. But I could fight and bribe. I was good at those two things. I held out the locket and tried to blackmail and while she was distracted, Blaze and Jake took her down. We put our instruments down. The simulation was over.