It took him a while, because she wasn’t easy to find, which made him curious and even more interested. His hunting instincts engaged, he started to look in less obvious, more out-of-the-way places.
There were a surprising number of places that were less obvious and out-of-the-way, such as behind trees, or down a bare concrete stairwell. Rounding the corner of the building, he found the Dark Fae girl in the middle of a tense scene.
He took everything in at once. There were four boys, along with the girl. One boy knelt on the ground, sniffling.
The Dark Fae girl shoved one of the three boys. “Leave him alone!”
The boy shoved her back, hard, making her stumble, while the last two boys closed around her in a circle. “I’ve told you before to stay out of this,” the first boy hissed. “Stop sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Liam felt his eyebrows go up. He didn’t have a clue what all that was about, but the predator in him instinctively recognized how the three boys were acting. They were trying to act like the Dark Fae girl was prey, but clearly she wasn’t having any of it.
The fourth boy though, the one on the ground, was acting quite a bit like prey. He was smaller than the others, more delicately built, and fear poured off him in waves.
Liam looked at him for a long moment. While he might act like prey, he wasn’t a wild animal or a cow. He was a person. Liam thought he might be human, while the other three boys were some kind of Wyr.
The Dark Fae girl balled her hands into fists. Violence hovered in the air, an invisible and yet very real presence.
Hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, Liam touched the tip of his phone with one finger but left it alone.
He said, “Hi, guys. What’s up?”
The boy that the Dark Fae girl had shoved spun around, angrily. He said, “None of your business. Butt out.”
Liam gave the human boy another thoughtful glance. His cheek was reddened. It looked like somebody had hit him.
Liam’s attention went back to the boy who told him to butt out. Was he a ringleader? Liam always wondered what it might be like to meet a ringleader.
He said, “I don’t think so. I think you need to stop what you’re doing.”
Ringleader Boy stared. “Are you stupid?”
“No.” He darted a glance at the Dark Fae girl. “I don’t believe I am.”
The expression on her face, he had to admit, was a bit skeptical.
Ringleader Boy stepped forward, his posture aggressive and the expression in his eyes flat. The other two boys flanked him on either side. Liam recognized what they were doing. Dad had talked about it before. He called it pack behavior.
Ringleader Boy said, “Yeah, well, I think you’re pretty stupid.”
Interesting things were going on in Liam’s body. He felt flushed and twitchy, at once angry and very alert.
He felt like violence might be a good thing.
Pulling his hands out of his pockets, Liam walked up to Ringleader Boy. He didn’t stop until his chest bumped the other boy’s chest hard enough to knock him back. Astonishment took over Ringleader Boy’s face. His fist flashed up, shooting toward Liam’s face.
Liam realized he was a lot faster than the other boy, and he had plenty of time to do something. As he watched Ringleader Boy’s fist coming toward him, he tried to decide what he was supposed to do.
In the meantime, everything inside him seemed to be racing harder, faster. He felt his heart pounding as if he had been running, and he liked it. It felt good.
He brought up one arm and blocked the punch on his way to taking Ringleader Boy by the throat. The other boy’s expression turned shocked, and he coughed.
Around them, the Dark Fae girl and the two other boys shifted. One of them swore. The human boy crawled several feet, stood and ran away.
None of that mattered. Liam looked Ringleader Boy in the eye. You, he thought. You’re prey.
You’re my prey.
Ringleader Boy’s eyes widened, and fear crept in to join the ugliness.
Liam’s cell phone rang, splintering the moment.
For a moment, he didn’t move. It felt too good to have a grip on Ringleader Boy’s throat. Then his phone rang again, and only three people in the entire world had his number—Hugh, Mom or Dad—so he let go of Ringleader Boy to reach inside his pocket.
As he did, the other boy’s face twisted. Rubbing his throat, he snapped, “You’re not supposed to have a cell phone in school.”
As Liam watched, Ringleader Boy skipped backward to join his two friends, and they all raced away, disappearing around the corner of the school building.
Pulling out his phone, he answered it. “Hello?”
Hugh asked in a gentle, easygoing tone of voice, “Hi, Liam. What are you doing, buddy?”
Just the fact that he asked that question made Liam think Hugh knew what he was doing. Liam lifted his head and looked around. He couldn’t see Hugh, but that didn’t mean that Hugh couldn’t see him.
Rubbing the back of his head, he said, “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Everything all right?”
“Sure, I guess.” Turning on his heel, he looked around. Everyone was gone except for the Dark Fae girl, who watched him with large, wary eyes. He told Hugh, “I got really mad at somebody, and I almost lost my temper.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” But he could have. He had been awfully close. Did that make him bad? Honesty forced him to admit, “Not this time anyway.”
Hugh didn’t sound shocked or worried. In fact, he sounded as mild as ever. “Good job, sport. You okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Call if you need to.”
“I will.”
He hung up and said to the Dark Fae girl, “Hi, my name’s Liam.”
He kind of wanted to add the Double Oh Peanut and Rock Star stuff, but he didn’t think she would find it as funny as he had the first time.
She didn’t say hi back. She said, “I’m Marika.” She pointed to the phone. “First, that’s gonna get you into trouble. You’re in Mrs. Teaberry’s class, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She can be really mean if you get on her bad side. She’s made kids cry before.”
He pocketed it. “I’m supposed to carry my phone at all times, so it’s gonna have to be okay.”
Shaking her head, Marika said, “Second, those boys? They’re not going to forgive or forget what you just did. You’re pretty big for a first grader, and you’re really, really fast. In fact you might be faster than any kid I’ve ever seen, plus you look strong. But they’re third graders, and now you’re on their shit list, and that’s not a good place to be.” She scowled and muttered damn it under her breath. “Sorry. I know I’m not supposed to swear at school.”
Starting to feel entertained, Liam put his hands in his pockets again and rocked on the balls of his feet.
“It’s okay,” he told her, thinking of the sentinels, and of Hugh and Eva. And of Mom too, on occasion, but especially Dad. “I live with a bunch of people who swear a lot.”
Marika looked at him sidelong again, as if she wasn’t sure he had all his marbles. “Look, I’m trying to tell you something. You made some bad kids really mad at you just now.”
Actually, he wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He was running into a lot of new situations today. Rubbing the back of his head again, he thought about it. Cool didn’t seem like quite the right thing to say, so his mind wandered off on a different tangent. “Who were they, and why were they bullying that other boy?”
She paused as if he had surprised her. Then she said, “Andrew is the guy who tried to punch you. He’s the leader.”
Oh yes. Ringleader Boy. He nodded.
“Joel and Brad are tools. They just do everything Andrew says, but that doesn’t mean they do nothing. Perrin is the kid they were picking on. We’re all in the same class. Perrin did something really stupid last year—when he saw them b
reaking into the teacher’s lounge, he told on them. They got in major trouble and they weren’t allowed to go to the end of the year picnic, and now they won’t leave him alone.”
“What did they do?”
Her face tightened. “I told you, they’re really bad. They stole money and ruined his lunch several times. They tore up his homework, and beat him up a couple times. Once his mom had to take him to the hospital for stitches. I told Perrin he had started something he had to finish, and he needed to tell his mom and dad who had hurt him, but he got too scared and stopped talking. Summer break is a long time. I thought they would have moved on to something else by now.” Then her wide, gray gaze locked onto him, and her expression changed. “Since you’ve butted in, they probably have.”
“You mean they’ll start picking on me,” he said.
She looked exasperated. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Okay, thanks for the warning,” he told her. He still liked her, but he had to admit, she seemed pretty grumpy. “What about you? You stuck up for Perrin too.”
She looked angry and a bit lost. “I have to. He’s my neighbor, and we’ve sort of grown up together. We had to play together when we were little. And he doesn’t have a clue about how anything works.”
So she recognized Perrin as prey too. Liam blew out a breath. “So, they don’t leave you alone either?”
“Like I said, that’s probably changed, thanks to you crashing their party. It’s hard to believe you found so much trouble in your first recess.”
It didn’t seem like the best time to tell her he’d been looking for her.
Her head turned in the direction of the larger play area. “Look, I gotta go. Try not to be too stupid, will you?”
That sounded like some great advice. As she ran off, he called after her, “Thanks, I’ll try.”
The recess bell rang, and everybody ran to get in their line for class. For a few minutes, the playground swirled with confusion as kids pushed past each other, searching for the right place to get in line.
Something hit Liam between the shoulder blades, hard enough to send him down on one knee. Coughing in surprise at the sharp pain, he went forward, splaying his hands on the asphalt in front of him.
Then a blaze of energy shot through him. Breathing hard, he leaped to his feet and whirled, looking around. He couldn’t see Andrew or either of the tools, Joel and Brad. Other children surrounded him. The babble of their voices seemed too loud and shrill. Nobody was paying attention to him, or looked like they thought anything was odd, but he knew what happened.
That hadn’t been an ordinary shove. Someone had hit him, hard.
Nobody had ever hit him before.
He rotated his shoulders to ease the ache, while blood pounded through his body. It was another good lesson.
As strong and fast as he was, someone could still strike him in the back and hurt him bad, and if he didn’t keep his guard up, he might never see it coming.
The rest of the morning dragged on. Mrs. Teaberry didn’t smile at him or call on him, no matter how many times he raised his hand when she asked questions. She always picked somebody else to answer, until finally Liam stopped raising his hand altogether.
Perplexed, he studied her. She almost acted as if she were mad at him, or as if she didn’t like him. He didn’t know quite what to make of that. Usually, people liked him, but school had turned out to be much trickier than he had expected.
He was happy when lunchtime came. He would have gone to look for Marika, if he could have, but they were supposed to stay in line as they got their trays and went to sit at the long tables. Hungrily he ate all of his food, even though some of it was unappetizing.
After the meal, they went outside for another recess. The day had turned hot, and some of the other kids gathered in the shade of the large trees, but he liked the warm sunshine and basked in it.
The area between his shoulder blades, where somebody had hit him, still ached, and he rotated his shoulders. Sally, the girl he had sat by at lunch, asked, “Wanna play hopscotch?”
Just then, he caught sight of Andrew, Brad and Joel. They hung on the metal railing that bordered the concrete stairwell. As they talked, all three looked at him.
Andrew met his gaze. The other boy’s eyes were narrowed and cold, and the sore spot between Liam’s shoulders throbbed.
He said to Sally, “Thanks, but not right now. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She walked away.
He watched as Sally joined a couple of other girls, and they started a new game of hopscotch. Then he looked back at Andrew and the tools.
While he had been looking away, one of the tools, Brad, had disappeared. Andrew and Joel leaned their elbows on the railing, still watching him.
Liam’s heart kicked. On reflex, he spun in a circle, but Brad was nowhere in sight. Andrew smiled at him, and it wasn’t a nice expression.
It was obvious they were planning something, but what? Liam didn’t know. He was starting to feel twitchy again, and after giving that first big kick of surprise, his heart kept pounding, only this time it didn’t feel good. This time, he didn’t have any idea what he should do or where he should go.
Was this how Perrin had felt, when the three other boys had bullied him?
As Liam stared at Andrew, a slow, wild anger started to burn through his uncertainty.
I’m not prey. I will never be prey.
But he could still be hurt.
They could still hurt him. They could still hurt other kids.
When Andrew crooked a finger at him in unmistakable invitation, he started forward. He glanced around at the buildings and the open land on the other side of the school fence. He still couldn’t see Hugh or any of the other guards.
Moving toward the other boy, he slipped one hand into his pocket.
And turned off his phone.
Chapter Four
* * *
The sun felt hot on his head and shoulders as he crossed the asphalt expanse toward the other two boys, and he burned with energy.
He also had plenty of time to think things over, just as he had when Andrew had tried to punch him at morning recess.
What am I going to do? What should I do?
Maybe those were two separate things.
Other questions occurred to him. What would Dad do? Or Uncle Graydon, or Hugh? Or Mom?
Trying to figure that out was much trickier than trying to hold on to a cloaking spell. They were all very different people, which meant they might make very different choices from each other.
Maybe that meant there was more than one right way to deal with something, and maybe . . . more than one wrong way to deal with something too.
To be sure he dealt with this in the right way, he might have to grow up some more. His dragon side liked that idea and tried to push to get bigger, but he managed to stay in control of that for now. Eventually his dragon side would win and he would go through another growth spurt, but he could postpone it for a while.
The only thing he knew for sure was that dealing with cows was easy compared to dealing with Andrew and the tools. As Hugh had said about the cows (or hunting any other kind of prey), take only what you need, kill them quick and don’t let them suffer.
When he reached the stairwell the other boys straightened from the railing and started over to him, both walking with a bit of a swagger and darting glances at each other.
Were they egging each other on? Where had Brad gone?
Giving the area outside the playground one last glance, Liam jogged lightly down the bare, concrete steps in the stairwell. There was nothing at the bottom of the stairs except for a few dried leaves, and a metal, locked door that led into the school building.
Nobody would be able to see what happened down here, unless Hugh or one of the other guards flew directly overhead, which they might choose to do, but he hoped not. He wanted to figure this out on his own.
Turning, he put the concrete wall at his back
and looked up at the other two boys who stood at the top of the stairs. Then the predator in him went quiet and waited.
Come on, he thought. I was fast earlier, and that surprised you, but I’m just a first grader and you guys are third graders. There’s only one of me, while there’s two of you.
Andrew and Joel must have arrived at the same conclusion, because after exchanging a grin, they bounded down the stairs after him.
Okay, then. He got ready.
Andrew said, “How’s your back? I heard you fell down earlier and got a boo-boo.”
Joel snickered.
“Maybe you’ll fall down again someday soon,” said Andrew. The expression in his eyes had turned hectic, and he looked excited. “Maybe you’ll get more than just a boo-boo. Maybe you’ll lose some real blood.”
Anger flared, bright and hot like the summer sun. Liam leaped at the other two boys, and before they could do anything, he shoved them against the wall, one hand around each of their throats. Shock bolted over their faces, as they slapped and kicked him.
He was too mad to really feel the blows. Leaning his weight on his arms, he held them pinned in place, and he felt the flutter of their pulses in his hands.
“I don’t know why you need to bully other kids,” he said. He thought of the teacher’s books he had read that morning and some of the potential causes for disruptive behavior. “Maybe you’re going through a rough time, or maybe you’re just plain nasty. I don’t like any of you, so I don’t really care.”
Andrew hit at Liam again. “You’re making a serious mistake,” he growled. “There are three of us and only one of you, and I will hurt you bad for this.”
Liam’s anger burst into outright rage. Leaning harder on his hands, he stuck his face into Andrew’s and hissed.
Heat boiled out of his mouth, along with a lick of flame. It startled him so badly he stopped doing it.
Did I just breathe fire in my human form?