Supernatural Academy: Year One (Supernatural Academy #1)(33)

Her words were heavy, and sadness pressed to my chest. I didn’t know Coco, but her pain was tangible. It made me want to really pay attention and learn the lessons she was about to teach.

We had seemed to only uncover the very basics of the origins of demons when the music chimed and class was over. After Demon Mythology, it was time for Sword and Sorcery. This was in the practical section of the school, and I followed the crowd because I figured some of them had to be in my class.

Sword and Sorcery ended up being in the same room as Basics of Magic. With bark underfoot, we all crossed to where a very tall, very handsome man stood waiting. He was the tallest person I’d ever seen. Like … ever. I tilted my head back to try to take him all in.

“Is he part giant?”

I swung my head to find Simon at my side and I shot him a broad smile. “He’s got to be seven feet tall,” I agreed.

Not only was he seven feet tall, but he had a fully shaved head, and since he was shirtless I could clearly see his multitude of tattoos, ranging from a panther along one arm to a dragon that spanned his entire back and side. The only thing he wore was black leather pants.

His feet were bare, and I wondered if the bark, despite its squishiness, still felt like walking on LEGO pieces.

“Hurry up,” he said brusquely, waving his hand toward the stragglers still making their way slowly into the class. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

His voice boomed, and the students started to run. No one spoke, all of us staring at the very intimidating and quite spectacularly Viking-hot teacher. “I’m Striker,” he said shortly. “I’ll be teaching you how to defend yourselves using weapons and magic. I’ve been in five wars and have killed hundreds. Or at least I stopped counting in the hundreds.”

He wasn’t bragging; he spoke factually, like he was reading from his fucked-up resume.

“Most of you are learning the basics of your magic, so for now we’ll be discovering our weapon of choice and training with it. It might take you some time to figure out which is the weapon that resonates with you, so try more than one.”

He waved his hand toward a wall that was somewhat hidden back in the shadows. I hadn’t noticed it until now, and as we moved closer I wondered how I’d missed it—it was huge and filled with shiny weapons. Countless different styles of swords, knives, chains, whips, maces, and a ton of shit I’d never seen before and had no name for. Most of them looked deadly, like the sort of object that I could easily kill myself with.

“Today just touch the weapons … lift them if you feel the urge,” Striker shouted. “No one is to use any of them in attack or you will find yourselves out of my class.”

Simon stayed close to me as we moved toward the wall. I was nervous about touching the sharp and shiny swords, but I didn’t want to piss off the scary teacher, so I reached for what looked like a pair of nunchucks, twin silver handles with a spiked chain between them. The handles had spikes too, surrounding a small open space that was just large enough for me to wrap my hand around.

I felt no spark or need to pick it up, so I moved on to the next one. This continued on and on, and by the end of class nothing had called to me, which was actually a relief.

Simon, on the other hand, had a pair of short blades that he was half in love with.

“I’m a warrior,” he said, eyes wide as he held his hands in front of him.

I laughed. “Yes, Simon. You’re a warrior. Now put them back before you cut your own arm off.”

I basically had to pry them from his hands so we wouldn’t be late for our next class. Race Morphology was back in the classroom side, and we had to run to make it before the music tolled again. Sliding into the last two free desks, I got fewer prying looks, but there were still some. At least the twins were not in this class. There were quite a few faces I hadn’t seen before though.

“My name is Sasha,” the teacher said, running her hands through her short brunette bob. It was bluntly cut, framing her cute heart-shaped face. “I’ll be your teacher for Race Morphology. This class is about learning the differences in the four main races. There will be a short section on the demi-fey also, but they are unique and diverse enough for their own entire class, so in this particular subject, they’ll only be briefly touched on. For now, we’re moving into part one, which is shifters.”

I understood then why there were so many new faces in this class—there were more than just magic users here; this was a class for any of the four races. I started to pick out the shifters and vamps and fey in the room. Identifying race was turning into a stupid, obsessive game for me.

Sasha wasted no time handing out a very thick textbook that had a variety of animals on the front of it. “Shifters are one of the strongest races in the supernatural world,” she started, jotting down notes on the board as she went. I followed suit, adding them in one of my notepads. “There are many different animals that shifters can change their form into, and the strongest is the wolf; the strongest and most prevalent.”

Someone interrupted her. “What about dragons?”

She paused and eyed the student who’d spoken out of turn. “Dragons are, of course, the absolute strongest, but they’re rare. So rare that we cannot count them.” She paused like she was waiting for another argument, but there was none.

“So, as I said, wolf is the strongest, and a lot of their pack mentality has been adopted by the other shifters, despite the fact that those animals wouldn’t normally have packs.”