Chapter 11

Author Note:

Hey guys,

I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the over 20K reads that the book has gotten so far. I'm so grateful for all the support my loyal readers have shown me and I hope you continue to come back to read the tales of the gang at Haven High. Who would have thought just four short months ago that thousands of people would have read my pages. It makes me so glad I found the courage to share the story with you. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

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Cam walked down the empty corridors of the magic wing. He never heard it so quiet before; it was almost eerie. He could hear the ticking of a distant clock with his preternatural hearing, but nothing else. The usual sound of shuffling feet on the hard linoleum was not present. Was he too late? How was he going to find their trail if they had already left for another location? Had his agony been for nothing?

Then he heard it, the sound of a classroom door closing in a nearby corridor. He quickly, but silently headed in the direction of the only sound he'd heard, his heart starting to race in his chest when he heard voices down the corridor.

"Enitan we must do something," Knight said with his crisp British accent, "we can't just standby and let this happen."

Cam stopped dead in his tracks. They voices were just around the corner. He held his breath and inched closer to see if he could get a look at who was talking.

"I concur," Helsing interjected, "how can we be complicit; they are only children?"

"Tim, Abe I wish there was something we could do, but our hands are tied. If we openly defy the council they will remove us from our positions and replace us with mentors that don't have the children's best interest at heart and then where would our students be?"

"So what you are saying is that our actions, or lack thereof, are out of altruism rather than cowardice? I think not." Knight said indignantly.

"We must stop the council," Helsing uttered vehemently.

His principal spoke then and it sounded like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Gentleman you know I despise the council as much as you do, but our time would be better spent stopping the insurgents. They are the reason the children are in this predicament in the first place."

Cam couldn't believe what he was hearing, were the teachers working on bringing down Liam's crew too?

Tuma cleared his throat and said, "Gentleman we must table this discussion for another time you are late to join your training classes."

"I will train them, but I refuse to let them be lambs to the slaughter." Knight declared before they broke up and went their separate ways, which luckily did not include his direction.

Once they turned their individual corners Cam snuck over to the closed classroom door and listened intently from the other side.

There were no sounds of combat coming from inside the classroom, or perhaps training room would be a better guess, but that wasn't surprising. If magic could mask the sound of a heavy metal band in a tent it could silence a training session on the other side of a solid wood door.

Cam tested the knob to see if it was locked and when it made a full clockwise rotation he took a deep breath and inched it open slowly. The last thing he wanted to do was announce his presence to the council trainers on the other side.

He guessed from the brief conversation between the teachers that the strange kids were being trained for a secret mission. Perhaps the council was even preparing them to go deep undercover to infiltrate Liam's gang?

He inched the door open a crack and crouched down to take a peak, and what he saw there would haunt him for the rest of his life. There was absolutely nothing happening in the empty classroom. And when he meant empty, he truly meant empty.

Everything was empty including the students. There were no desks, no shelves, no teacher's big clunky desk at the front of the class, just the strange students standing in neat rows facing the front of the class.

He swung the door open and entered cautiously. Were they in a trance? What the holy hell was going on? What was the meaning of this? What purpose could there be to do this?

Cam cautiously stepped in front of his schoolmate -- the one that hadn't shied away from the snake-- and waved his arm in front of her blank face -- Nothing. He had to wake one of them from their trance if, for no other reason, but to ask them what was happening.

He started yelling then and he shouted for a long time, but he'd stopped every once and awhile to make sure no one was coming. He needn't have worried though no one heard him including the strange students. He just couldn't rap his head around why? Why put them in this deep a trance? What could be the purpose?

Then he remembered a class on breaking a suggestive state. Okay that had been a trance induced by a vampire or a siren, but it might work here. He just needed something sharp.

His eyes bounced around the room to find it utterly empty and devoid of absolutely any supplies, which was too bad, because he could really use a tack right now or at least something sharp enough to cut. Then he remembered it. The glass tincture bottle, he removed it from his pocket and smashed it unceremoniously against the metal ledge that held the chalk under the chalkboard.

He'd held it by the stopper on the top to protect his fingers and yet still he'd managed to cut himself pretty badly. Droplets of blood started to form on his finger tips. He cursed and caught them with his t-shirt before they managed to hit the floor. Any magic creature worth a grain of salt knew you didn't leave bodily fluids lying around.

He wadded up his shirt around the top of the broken glass bottle and advanced on his schoolmate.

He found himself saying, "Now this is only going to hurt a bit," before he poked her with a particularly sharp part of the bottle.

Nothing happened. She didn't budge. She hadn't felt it at all. What kind of trance is this he wondered?

He poked the guy standing next to her and he didn't move either; then, he went around methodically leaving tiny pinpricks on the backs of all the student's hands.

NOTHING . . .

Not one of them moved or even uttered a sound. He took a closer look at the last person he stabbed. She was a tiny little blonde haired first year witch. Now that he looked more closely at her he was convinced she was one of the witches that had helped retrieve the iron shards after the explosion at the Samhain Ball. A closer look confirmed something else as well. She wasn't bleeding. His eyes darted across the room to confirm that none of them were.

He uttered a sorry before he took her cold hand in his and raised it palm up and quick as an Adder, before he lost his nerve, he slashed the jagged glass across her flesh; and rocked back on his heels in shock.

He could not believe his eyes . . .

She wasn't bleeding!

No trance could do that!

The only things that don't bleed when you cut them are the dead and the undead . . . or the things that have never been alive in the first place.

Holy shit!

What doesn't bleed, yet acts and looks like a human most of the time?

His train of thought suddenly struck the proverbial station.

Oh sweet Jesus!

Either this is a case of the body snatchers or they have an infestation of changelings in their midst.

****************** THANKS FOR READING********************

I hope you all liked this chapter -- Wow the students who are behaving strangely are changelings?

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