Independent Study Read online

  Hunters’ Academy

  4: Independent Study

  Ivy Hearne

  Hunters’ Academy 4: Independent Study

  Copyright © 2019 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 4: Independent Study

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Hunters’ Academy 1: Entrance Exam

  Hunters’ Academy 3: Crash Course

  Hunters’ Academy 4: Independent Study

  Hunters’ Academy 5: Valentine’s Dance

  About the Author

  About Hunters’ Academy 4: Independent Study

  She’s on the Dean’s list. And not in a good way.

  When Kacie DeLuca broke through the psychic blocks the evil Lusus Naturae placed on her, she thought she was free to complete her studies at the Hunters’ Academy.

  She was wrong.

  Now that she’s able to use her powers, the monsters are more determined than ever to keep her from becoming a full-fledged hunter, sending agents to attack her at every turn.

  But Kacie still doesn’t know why they’re targeting her in particular, and the Academy’s new headmistress isn’t sharing what she knows.

  So Kacie and her hunting partner set out to track down the truth on their own—and run headlong into danger of the worst kind.

  Chapter 1

  Boys can be so obnoxious.

  Especially Hunter boys. I think maybe they get extra testosterone in the mix, somehow.

  “I know Souji is driving you crazy,” his brother Reo said. “But I think we can use it to our advantage in getting him to shift.”

  He leaned back against the wooden booth in the Rathskeller pub—the underground bar and grill where the older students and adult hunters liked to hang out. For the most part, underclassmen weren’t really welcome—unless they were invited to lunch by, say, one of the investigative hunters who had been assigned to the Academy to keep tabs on what was going on with the doppelgänger who had recently tried to wreak havoc on campus.

  More than tried to, actually. He managed it.

  That this particular Hunter happened to be my hunting partner’s older brother was no accident—someone higher up than either of us had decided that it would be a good idea to get Souji out of his funk and back into his human shape.

  And by funk, I mean his determination to stick it out in his panther form all the time.

  So Reo had come up with a plan to prod Souji into shifting. And that plan involved me.

  I crossed my arms and leaned back against my own wooden seat in the booth. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. I am not going to play damsel-in-distress or save-the-princess or any of the other ridiculous games you might have in mind to convince Souji that he needs to rescue me. Nope. Anyway, the best princesses save themselves.”

  Reo cracked up laughing. “No wonder he’s got a thing for you.” His eyes sparkled, and my heart did a little skip in my chest.

  Curses. If Souji grew up to be as hot as his brother, I might not have a chance against his charms.

  Or even if Souji spent more time in his human form.

  I shook the thought off.

  “What are you planning to do?” I asked.

  Reo grinned. “I’m thinking that you and I ought to spend an awful lot of time together. See if we can get some sibling rivalry going.”

  I tilted my head and stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Because clearly, it’s not enough rivalry to have Tony lurking around. I’ll be lucky if those two don’t shred each other into bloody ribbons before the end of the semester. What makes you think it’s a good idea to add yourself into the mix?”

  As he grinned at me again, I realized he had a dimple in one cheek. That, combined with his straight dark hair and his sparkling eyes that were so dark they were almost black, made him startlingly pretty. What I really wanted to ask was, How am I supposed to keep myself from crushing on you and getting my heart broken? But I was far too busy playing Badass Hunter Chick to let that vulnerability show.

  “It’s a brother thing,” Reo said. “No matter how competitive we get, we will never not be family. So there will come a point where shifting is a better move than trying to kill me.”

  I shook my head. “And what point would that be?”

  Reo shrugged. “Who knows? That’s part of the fun of it.”

  “Fun for you, maybe. What do I get out of this?”

  He leaned forward, dropping his hand onto the table next to mine, his fingertips playing with the air right next to my hand. Little blue sparks of magic flickered between us. “You mean other than the pleasure of my company?” he asked in a teasing tone.

  I pulled my hand back into my lap. “That’s not fair,” I said, but I couldn’t help but laugh at Reo’s expression, so pleased with himself.

  “How are you going to fit all that in with searching for the doppelgänger?” I asked.

  “Laxmi and I are focusing right now on figuring out how the Lusus Naturae found the location of this campus in the first place.” His voice had turned from teasing and flirtatious to completely businesslike in heartbeat. “We need to figure out if it’s general knowledge, or if only a small group know where we are. We need to determine how vulnerable the campus is.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Let me know if I can help with that.”

  “Oh, I will. After all, I plan for us to be spending a lot of time together.”

  “You did notice that I didn’t agree to that, right?” I stood up and gathered my backpack off the seat, slinging it over my shoulder. “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting with Mr. Meriwether this afternoon to work on getting rid of the rest of my psychic blocks.”

  Reo waved. “Sounds good. See you tomorrow?”

  “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “It’s the hallmark of a good hunter.” He pulled a few dollars out of his pocket and tossed them on the table to cover the coffee we’d had. “You’ve got my number, right? I’ll be around if you need me.”

  I didn’t mention that he’d be around if I didn’t need him, too—and that was what worried me most.

  Chapter 2

  “Try again.” Mr. Meriwether sat at his desk, perfectly serene despite having spent the last thirty minutes trying to explain to me exactly how to push a message out to one particular person.

  I, on the other hand, felt totally frazzled. My long blonde hair had been in a neat braid when we started. Now strands of it had come loose from me running my fingers through the top as I dropped my head into my hands.

  “I just don’t get it,” I wailed. “How is it that I can send a message to the whole school from town when I’m being attacked by a Santa Claus demon, but I can’t even send a message to you from five feet away?”

  “It’s not always a matter of distance,” Mr. Meriwether said. “Sometimes it has more to do with how urgent you feel the message is.”

  “Oh, I think it’s pretty urgent,” I said dryly.

  “But clearly your psyche does not entirely agree with yo
u.” His round, cherubic babyface remained completely calm beneath a shock of white hair, just as it always did. Briefly, I wondered what it would take to jolt him out of his serenity.

  “More than you can offer here, I’m afraid,” he answered my thought.

  “Oh! Did I do it? Did I manage to send a message?”

  “Mmm,” he nodded. “Though not, I suspect, the one you meant to send.”

  Well, there was that. “Still, it’s a start, right?”

  “Only if you build upon it, Miss Deluca.”

  I sighed, and went back to concentrating on sending him a line out of the parabiology textbook I was studying for an exam in the morning.

  Despite having spent weeks—coming up on months—trying to sort out how to send psychic messages, it had never occurred to me how many of those messages must be bouncing around campus all the time.

  Not everyone could send them, of course, and although more people could receive than could send, not everybody made that greater receiver, either. Some magical ability tended to increase that likelihood, though. So it made me wonder how often my classmates, sitting there quietly in class, were actually having entire conversations with other people in their heads.

  It was a wonder anyone ever learned anything at all.

  Also, it pretty much made written tests useless.

  I wonder how they deal with cheating?

  I shook my head and tried to focus back in on what Mr. Meriwether was saying.

  “I’m wondering if there is something entirely different that we might try,” he said in a musing tone.

  I glanced up from my textbook. “Like what?”

  Mr. Meriwether narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Close your eyes,” he said. “Search inside your mind. Go deep within and look for what is blocking you.”

  I followed his instructions, breathing deeply and relaxing, following what he called “the path to your deepest self.” After a few moments, my internal image of my mind glowed hot pink with white flashes leading me forward. I traced out those spots, searching for what might be keeping me from consistently being able to send out psychic messages.

  And I knew when I found the block, too. It was like a black cloud descending over parts of my mind. I described it to Mr. Meriwether.

  “Does it form a wall?” His voice came as if from far away.

  “No. It’s like a fog. Black fog that keeps me from seeing anything else.”

  Can you go around it?”

  In my mind, I shifted a little to the left. It moved with me. “No.”

  “Can you step into it?” Mr. Meriwether’s voice seemed to come from even farther away.

  I stepped forward, but immediately back again. “Yes, but it hurts.”

  “Okay. That’s enough for today. I want you to come back now.”

  I could barely hear him. Inside my own mind, I glanced down at my arm, only to find it coated with the same black fog blocking my way. I brushed at it with my other hand, but it stuck to me.

  “Kaci, come back to me.” I could barely hear him at all.

  And where I brushed at it, it stuck to my hand, too. I shook my arms, trying to get the black, cotton-candy substance off of me.

  “Kaci.” A tiny whisper tickled at my consciousness. “Kaci, come back.”

  But now, I was surrounded by the fog, and it wasn’t even fog anymore, it was tar settling across me, getting in my nose and my eyes, filling my mouth.

  I could barely breathe.

  A sharp sting on my cheek got my attention, made me blink. I found I could blink the substance out of my eyes. Another sting, this one connected to a clapping sound.

  At the third sting on my other cheek, I opened my eyes in the real world, to find Mr. Meriwether kneeling over me, his normally pink face drained white. I was stretched out on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and Mr. Meriwether had his hand raised up to slap my cheek again.

  I waved my arms. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”

  He sat back on his heels with an audible thump and a sigh of relief. “I don’t think we should try that again,” he said breathlessly.

  I shook my head, my own eyes wide. “Agreed. That was frightening. What was going on in there?”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” he instructed.

  I scrambled up into a chair and as I described what I had seen, the frown on his face got deeper. “I need to do a little research,” he said. “It’s similar to other blocks I’ve heard of, but much more aggressive. Usually, just examining them doesn’t provoke them into attacking.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  He shook his head. “It has to be the Lusus Naturae, though I don’t know exactly why they’re so intent on blocking you.” He reached over and patted one of my hands. “Stay away from it until I’ve done a little more research. You’ll be okay as long as you leave it alone. Let’s plan on meeting again on Monday after your classes. That should give me enough time to get some more information.”

  Now I was the one frowning, but I nodded. “Okay.”

  As I gathered up my bookbag and got ready to leave, Mr. Meriwether stopped me.

  “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this is a breakthrough,” he said. “Now that I have some idea of what I’m looking at, I should be able to help you get rid of it. By the end of the semester, you’ll be able to use the full range of your psychic abilities. I’m sure of it.”

  I smiled and nodded and thanked him, but as I left, I was much less certain than he was. Whatever was in my head had been there for years. Everyone at the Academy seemed to agree that this psychic block was the source of the migraines that had plagued me from the time I was twelve until I’d enrolled here.

  Now I wasn’t sure that whatever had caused the migraines wasn’t simply going to poison me in order to keep me from becoming a full-fledged hunter.

  But one thing was sure—I wasn’t going to wait for Mr. Meriwether.

  That didn’t mean I was going to go poking at the malevolent thing in my brain, of course. But I could do research, too.

  I was supposed to meet Angelica for Friday night movie night. But I knew she’d understand. I pulled out my phone to send her a text as I headed toward the library.

  Something has come up. Going to library. Probably won’t make it to movie night.

  I was still texting when something heavy hit me from behind. I went down in a flash of agony, but it didn’t quite knock me out.

  I couldn’t move, but I was still aware when someone—or something—took hold of my arms and began dragging me across the grass toward the side of the classroom building.

  I tried to scream, but all that came out was a low moan.

  Chapter 3

  I tried to crane my head around to see who or what was dragging me, but as soon as I moved my head, I was hit with a wave of nausea and dizziness so powerful that I closed my eyes and moaned again.

  For a long moment, I wasn’t certain if the crunching noise I heard was real or a side effect of the way the world was tilting and whirling around me.

  But when whatever was dragging me suddenly let go and my arms fell to the ground over my head, I rolled to my stomach, pushed up on my hands and knees, and began crawling away. I didn’t even look behind me. The dragger had managed to get me around the corner, and I was determined to make my way back to the center of campus, where I was more likely to be seen by someone who could help.

  I had to hold on to the gray stone of the building, though, to keep my balance. By the time I made it to the corner, I was reeling. I dropped down to my knees, retching, then crawled a little farther.

  Dizzy and vomiting. I was pretty sure that meant I had a concussion. The main thing I needed to do was stay awake.

  So of course, the moment I figured that out was when I passed out.

  I CAME TO IN THE MIDDLE of Ms. Hush’s office, staring into her strange silver eyes.

  Ms. Hush was an anomaly among instructors teaching for the Hunters’ Academy. For one thing, she a was a fo
rmer member of the Lusus Naturae. She had grown up among their members, spent years learning about them before deciding to come over to the side of the hunters.

  More than, she was a wraith.

  That meant she simply slipped away from the memory of most people, human or supernatural.

  More often than not, the wraith are the creatures responsible for that feeling of someone watching you when no one’s there, the flash of movement you catch out of the corner of your eye when you know you’re the only one in the house, the voices that seem to call your name occasionally when everything is quiet. And if you ever lose track of what you’re reading or thinking and find yourself shaking your head as you come to yourself, only to realize that more time has passed than you anticipated, you just might have had a talk with a wraith.

  I still didn’t really understand why Ms. Gayle, our headmistress (at least temporarily, until the Hunters’ Council found another to take her place) had hired her.

  I only knew that much because I was in her class and had spent hours focusing on her. The more time you spend around a wraith, the more information about it you’re likely to retain.

  And yet, most of my classmates still couldn’t remember Ms. Hush. I had become used to heading to parabiology class and having Hazel or Angelica ask, “Do you think they’ve gotten a professor for us yet?”

  In fact, no one in our class ever remembered her name—not even me. She wrote it on the board behind her at the beginning of every class period. But no one could remember her actual name. I had begun calling her Ms. Hush in my head, then adopted it as a kind of nickname for her whenever I spoke to or about her. Her pale skin almost seemed to flush with pleasure when I used it—as if it were a term of endearment. I guess when no one remembers to call you anything, even a silly nickname is nice.

  Her face showed no evidence of any pleasure now, the skin so pale it almost matched her eyes. She patted my face with a damp cloth, whispering to me the whole time.

  Great. The second time today I’d woken up with a teacher looming over me, patting my face.