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  Hunters’ Academy

  3: Crash Course

  Ivy Hearne

  Hunters’ Academy 3: Winter Break

  Copyright © 2018 by Ivy Hearne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  Published by Belgate Press

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author or authors.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Hunters' Academy 3: Crash Course

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Hunters’ Academy Books

  Hunters’ Academy 2: Winter Break

  About Hunters’ Academy 3: Crash Course

  IF THE COURSE LOAD doesn’t kill her, one of her teachers might.

  Having passed the Entrance Exam, sixteen-year-old Kacie is ready to buckle down and learn to be a true Hunter. But the Academy’s Headmistress has hired a new instructor—a former member of the Lusus Naturae, the self-described “freaks of nature” with dark plans to subjugate humanity.

  When a student’s mutilated body is discovered on campus, all signs point to the new teacher’s guilt, and Kacela might be the only one who believes in her innocence. Worse, Kacela’s magics instructor has been assigned to investigate the murder and seems determined to ignore crucial evidence.

  With no clear sense of where everyone’s loyalties lie, Kacela is about to get a crash course in what it really means to be a monster hunter.

  Fans of Vampire Academy, Mortal Instruments, Harry Potter, and Dragon School will love Hunters’ Academy!

  CRASH COURSE is episode three of Hunters’ Academy—expect a new episode every month beginning Fall 2018.

  Always FREE on Kindle Unlimited!

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Isabel and Mary, whose plot help is always welcome!

  And with special thanks to Chris, whose utter destruction of the plot of Raiders of the Lost forced me to share it with the world. If you don’t want the movie to be ruined for you, skip that conversation. There’s plenty of warning!

  Chapter 1

  My second semester at The Hunters’ Academy probably would have gone better if not for the dead guy I found.

  I mean, it started off okay.

  Mostly.

  The first week back to school, I couldn’t decide if I felt like a celebrity or a freak.

  Though come to think of it, these days I hated the term freak, too. It was the translation Lusus Naturae, the name of a society of monsters who wanted to subjugate humanity—the same monsters I was being trained to destroy as a student of the Hunters’ Academy.

  So. Not a freak.

  But anyway, whatever I was, virtually everybody was talking about me. Not quite as many people were talking to me, but a few of them were. And in both cases, the central topic of conversation was the demon I had sent back through a portal over the winter break when I had stayed at school and most of them had gone home—or gone somewhere besides here, anyway.

  Though the way most people were describing me, I was the baby hunter who had sent Santa Claus to hell.

  “No. I sent Santa back to hell,” I began saying about the third time I’d heard that rumor. I tried to actually explain what happened the first time I heard it—it had been a demon disguised as Santa Claus, and I had pushed him back through to his own dimension, where he belonged—but explaining was useless. I was better off making snarky comments than telling the truth.

  But now I was getting the reputation of being the chick who murdered Santa, like I was some awful joy-hating, hunter version of the Grinch. It didn’t help that just a few weeks before that, I had discovered my tutor was a member of the Lusus Naturae who had joined in a plot to kidnap the headmaster and take down the Academy.

  “Ignore them,” my roommate Erin said when I flopped down on my bed toward the end of the first week of classes and moaned about my lack of a social life. “They’re just jealous. You’ve already done more in your first three months here than most students manage in their entire underclassman studies.”

  “But you’re not jealous,” I pointed out.

  She snickered. “I know what you’re like when you’re not unmasking Lusus Naturae agents or sending Santa Claus to perdition.”

  I opened my mouth, took a breath, frowned, tilted my head, and closed my mouth again. Then I chewed on a fingernail for a second before I finally crossed my arms and said, “I’m not entirely sure how to take that.”

  This time, she gave a full-throated laugh. “Good. You need a roommate who will keep you on your toes.”

  I threw myself backward onto my mattress and pulled my pillow over my face. “You are evil.”

  “Oh, I hope not. Those types don’t do so well around you.”

  I peeked at her around the pillow as she began gathering a stack of books. “Are you going to the dining hall?”

  “Later. I’m meeting Malachi to practice sparring later.” Her cheeks turned a delicate pink as she said that. The recent flurry of studying and practicing dates with Malachi suggested there was definite interest there, but Erin rarely shared that kind of thing with me. We were friends, but she was a year older than I was and had her own social circle.

  Unlike me.

  Oh, quit it, Kacie. I chastised myself. No need for a pity party.

  It wasn’t even true. I spent my time with other first-years. Angelica and Hazel and I ate most of our meals today. And even Zanya, Hazel’s roommate, was warming up to me. As “warmed up” as a vampire ever got, anyway. She sat with us during lunch sometimes, practicing her eating-food-to-blend-in skills. Angelica didn’t have to practice—she was a centaur-shifter and ate, literally, like a horse. Or a very hungry vegetarian human.

  And Hazel had finally told me she was a hellhound.

  I hadn’t seen her hellhound form yet—but I’d done a little research, and I couldn’t wait. Apparently, she was a giant black ghost dog and had some sort of electrical powers. I hadn’t been there to see it, but she’d fried out the entire west end of our dorm during her entrance exam.

  But I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable around them. They all had names for what they were. Even Roberto, the deeply quiet psychic who spent all his time with Matthew, knew he was a psychic messenger.

  I didn’t know what I was. I think when the school picked me up, they expected me to be a psychic messenger like Roberto. But in my fight with Shane, the Lusus Naturae spy pretending to be my tutor, I’d used some kind of power to call a sword to me, to give me an extra boost of something as we fought, and to heal myself after Shane had stabbed me.

  I hadn’t mentioned any of that to Ms. Gayle when she’d talked to me afterward.

  And I couldn’t have explained why I’d kept it to myself if anyone had asked.

  I shook off my dark thoughts and focused back in on my conversation with Erin. “What does Raven think of all this practicing you and Malachi are doing?” I asked.

  Erin’s blush deepened. “He’s fine with it.”

  Right. Raven was Erin’s hunting partner. He’d been assigned to her by the school and this would be their second year working together. Officially, the school discouraged hunting partners from dating
one another. Unofficially, though, everyone knew it happened. And Raven had a thing for Erin. I was sure of it.

  Erin pulled her hair into a low ponytail on one side and began changing into her gym clothes. “Anyway, Raven asked Colette out.”

  I dropped the pillow back over my face to keep Erin from seeing my reaction.

  I really didn’t like Colette. Which was only fair—she didn’t really like me much, either. And I suspected she was behind the “Kacie killed Santa” rumors, since she’d been on campus over the break.

  Then again, she had helped me take the demon down. Along with everyone else who’d been on campus at the time.

  But somehow, I was the only one catching the blame for it.

  I could feel Erin’s gaze on me, even through the barrier of the pillow.

  “What?” My voice came out muffled.

  “You should give Tony Eckles a call. Have you even seen him since classes started?”

  My shoulders rounded, and I clutched the pillow even tighter to my face. “No.”

  “You need to. I know you’re still figuring out your place here, and that coming in at mid-term last semester was rough for you, but it won’t get any easier unless you make an effort to fit in, you know.”

  The thought of calling Tony made my stomach clench, even though I’d gone out on one almost-date with him over the winter break. I groaned. “Can’t I just go spar with Souji instead?”

  “Well, guys who can’t talk are easier, I guess,” she mused.

  I sat up and threw my pillow at her, but we were both laughing. She deflected the missile without even touching it, sending a flicker of magic toward it with a dismissive wave of two fingers. It landed on my bed and blew out a breath.

  “He is able to shift out of his panther form, you know,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. But there was no denying my own hunting partner was odd, a shapeshifter who was either incapable or unwilling to shift to his human form at will.

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t—not unless you’re in grave danger from a sexy Lusus Naturae spy.” My roommate gathered up her bookbag and slung it across her chest. “Anyway, haven’t the two of you been working on training every night this week?”

  “Okay, okay. What if I ask Tony to go to the movie showing in the library tomorrow night?”

  “That should work.”

  “Fine. I’ll give him a call. Or a text, anyway.”

  Erin crossed her arms. “I’ll wait for a while and see what he has to say.”

  With a sigh, I tapped out an invitation for him to join me at the newly established First-Years’ Friday Night Film Club’s showing in the library the next night. I didn’t even know what was supposed to be—that’s how little I had planned to go, even though I was one of the first-years who had created the club in the first place.

  A reply popped up almost instantly. “He says he’ll meet me at the dining hall to walk over there after dinner tomorrow.” I turned the screen around for Erin to take a look at it. “There. Are you happy? Mom?”

  Erin tapped her cheek thoughtfully for a few seconds and said, “Hmm. I guess so.” Then she grinned. “I think you’ll have more fun than you expect to. In the meantime, go spar with your hunting partner again if it’ll make you feel better. I’ll see you tonight.”

  I certainly hoped so.

  For all that I was focusing on being snarky about it, getting caught up by first the Lusus Naturae spy and then the Santa demon had shaken me more than I was willing to admit to anyone. I’d made Erin promise not to tell anyone about the nightmares I was having.

  And my constant sparring with Souji was more about getting my fighting skills up to snuff than it was about anything romantic.

  Though, come to think of it, I’d kind of been avoiding Tony since the day Souji had come in and hissed at the poor guy for sitting too close to me.

  I had fussed at my partner over that one, but he’d simply given me an inscrutable cat-stare, then turned away and begun grooming his paw.

  I was fairly certain he wasn’t taking my irritation all that seriously.

  But Erin was right—I needed a little down time. She was just wrong about a date with Tony providing it.

  The next day, I woke up worried about my date that night. But all my concerns about it were completely wiped out when I got to my first class of the day and discovered that several of our instructors had been swapped around because, even though it was already almost a full week into the semester, Headmistress Gayle had hired two new teachers.

  And one of them was a former member of the Lusus Naturae.

  Chapter 2

  I walked into that first class just as the bell was ringing and barely managed to make it to my desk before the moment the instructor would have had the right to count me late.

  I’d been so busy skidding into my seat that I hadn’t really noticed was going on—except to see that Ms. Gayle was standing at the front of our room.

  That didn’t surprise me. This class was one of several that had been disrupted by last semester’s kidnapping of the former headmaster and his replacement by Ms. Gayle, who had been teaching the magics course until then.

  So we had a series of substitutes rotating through campus. Apparently, the biggest problem in finding instructors was that most able-bodied hunters spent their time out in the field, actually hunting. It apparently wasn’t all that easy to get them to teach for more than a few days in a row.

  So even Ms. Gayle, as headmistress, had been taking over occasional classes to cover for the shortage of instructors.

  It wasn’t until I pulled my notebook and pen out of my bag and turned to face the front that I realized Ms. Gayle was not alone.

  I probably I should have noticed the other woman immediately, but there was something about her that made her eminently forgettable. She was tall and thin, with long dark hair and pale skin.

  But strangest of all was the fact that whenever I tried to focus in on her features, to get a sense of her beyond those surface descriptors, it was like my gaze slid off of her.

  The sight of her couldn’t have been any more slippery if my vision had been actually oiled.

  I blinked several times, rubbed my eyes, and tried again.

  Nope. Tall, thin, dark hair, pale skin. That was still all I knew about her.

  I blinked again and glanced at Angelica, the first-year centaur shifter who sat next to me in class.

  What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “She’s a wraith,” Angelica whispered as if that explained it all.

  I opened my notebook and wrote down the word wraith.

  But as soon as I looked up at the front of the room again, the word slipped away from me. Angelica had told me something important about this instructor. Why couldn’t I remember it?

  I glanced back down at my paper.

  Right. She’s a wraith.

  Everyone in the class was whispering, and Ms. Gayle rapped on the desk in front of her to gain our attention. I glanced up at her attentively—right up until she made eye contact with me, and then I glanced away.

  I still didn’t know why the headmistress disliked me. She had apologized to me for not believing me when I had told her about the Santa demon and its Christmas-elf imp.

  But she still didn’t approve of me.

  Part of it was probably because she specialized in magic, and whatever power I had, it didn’t fit into her neatly organized and categorized magical boxes. I had never been able to use magic according to her rules.

  I could barely use magic at all.

  I didn’t know that I ever would be able to.

  And for some reason, that irritated her deeply.

  “Attention, class,” Ms. Gayle said. “I will be introducing you today to a couple of new instructors. I appreciate how patient you’ve all been as we’ve worked on reorganizing our staff. This morning, I would like to introduce you to your new parabiology instructor.” She held one hand out toward the young woman next to her. “This is Ms. Shhh.” />
  I shook my head. It had looked like Ms. Gayle was saying a word. Her lips had moved. But the sound that came through was like the fuzz of static.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Gayle, but could you repeat that?” Matthew Gibbs, one of the better first-year psychics, asked.

  I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who had not gotten the name.

  Not that Matthew would’ve been thrilled to know he was in the same boat as me. He liked me more than Ms. Gayle did, but only marginally. I had spent a big chunk of my time last semester suspecting that he was in league with the Lusus Naturae. Not that I told Matthew that. Especially not once he had helped save me and my hunting partner Souji when my tutor attacked us.

  Anyway, Matthew was one of Ms. Gayle’s favorite students, so I knew it wasn’t anything she was doing on purpose. And I didn’t have to worry about having to chalk up my inability to hear the new teacher’s name to sheer stupidity. Matthew was an excellent hunter student.

  “Oh, yes,” Ms. Gayle said as if just remembering. “Ms. Shhh is a wraith. That means that many of you will have difficulty maintaining a grasp on any information you may gather about her.”

  So she was a wraith. I picked up my pen and glanced down to make note of that information, only to discover that I had already written it down. I glanced around the room. Had Ms. Gayle already told us that?

  When I had picked up my pen?

  For that matter, when did I put it down again?

  I needed to ask a question, but I hated to draw attention to myself. Still, when no one else raised their hand, I finally took a deep breath and did it myself.

  “Yes, Ms. Deluca?” Ms. Gayle’s tone was cool, but at least it wasn’t outright dismissive, as it had been the semester before. Proving her wrong about the demon over winter break had at least made Ms. Gayle less likely to ignore me.

  “If we can’t remember basic facts about our instructor, how are we supposed to learn from her?”

  Ms. Gayle turned her hands out in a kind of all-encompassing shrug. “You need not recollect the instructor in order to retain the instruction.”