Forging Family Read online

  High school, here I come!

  Again!

  Or something.

  Chapter 2

  I’ve been by the high school any number of times since moving to Mom’s house. Mansion. Whatever it’s called. It’s ginormous, and my room is larger than most homes. I’m not even kidding.

  Back to the school.

  I’ve been by it at least every day, if not more than that, as I’ve been recovering, and we’ve gone out and about to do things. It’s a nice school, far bigger than I expected. Then again, my knowledge of schools is pretty limited. I was locked onto the family compound until I ran away. The first vehicle I was ever in was an ambulance that brought me to the hospital. That’s how restricted things were for me.

  Then again, the school here is huge. I guess it needs to be to house 6,000 students. It’s not quite there, but it’s close. It looks like each class has at least 1,000 kids in it, with the senior class being the smallest by a bit. The freshman class is something like 1,600.

  They all have to go somewhere.

  The place looks like an anthill when school is starting or ending. I’ve seen both of them several times, and the place vomits kids out like it’s a never-ending tide.

  The kids look pretty normal. The academy was filled with rich kids, so the quality of clothes was very high end. Here it runs the gamut. The area is crazy expensive, but there are plenty of normal kids around where their parents don’t fly the kids to Florida for a hamburger on a normal basis. We’re in Virginia, to give you perspective. At the academy, one of the kids in the class below ours had that happen a few times.

  That’s what you get when parents pony up a million bucks to send their kids to high school.

  There are numerous parking lots for the kids, and I lucked into a parking pass for the closest one. More than a few of the kids stared at me as I drove in. I’m sure some can’t see me through the windows, so they’re staring at the hundred-thousand-dollar SUV.

  Not that I had a say in it.

  Or, I did, but it was a gift.

  Frankly, I’m worth a ridiculous number of commas and zeroes myself, but Mom has me beat. I got to see some of her financials, and she puts every richest person that I’ve ever read about to shame.

  As do plenty of other rich supernaturals. When you can live for thousands of years, you can build quite a nest egg. Since Mom works directly for the king of the fey, he rewards her handsomely.

  Just like he did me. I found his stolen crown in a safe that the prior goddess of death had. The safe is invisible and floats with us, for lack of a better word. It’s like a small alternate universe or something, restricted to the size that you can create. It’s filled with more than a million random things. One of which happened to be his crown.

  He rewarded me with more than two hundred billion dollars’ worth of money and goods. At least here. Not quite that much in the between lands. That’s on top of the money Mom has made available to me and that she took from various people I’ve killed in challenges or fights.

  Yeah, just like the movies show you, we keep what we kill.

  I should have picked up a cheaper car for school. I want to fit in, and I’m not seeing many other expensive cars here so far. Most look pretty basic, which is what I should have gone for.

  Kids continue to stare at me as I get out, shouldering my new backpack and heading up to the school. No one spoke to me, although I didn’t expect them to. I’ve watched more than a few shows and movies about school to see if I could get an idea of what to expect. I don’t want to base it on what I experienced at the academy. That doesn’t seem like a great idea. I’m thinking my introduction won’t be getting attacked by a mage wolf shifter that wants to fuck the new girl against her wishes.

  My better-than-human senses let me pick up various things on my trek in. For starters, the kid I just passed has a huge hard-on and smells like pre-cum something fierce. He also stared at my boobs the entire way as I approached him. That’s all right, though, because the girl I’m coming up to is doing the same thing, and I can smell how wet she is, too.

  I wonder if these norm kids know about shifter senses or vampire senses? I was totally embarrassed when I found out many of my classmates could smell me. My vagina. It seemed so…gross. Personal. Now it doesn’t faze me at all and seems perfectly normal. Still somewhat private but considering one of the first things that Steph showed me the first night there was how to masturbate, you get an idea of how loose shifters and the others are with things like that.

  I sent another tendril of power inside at the gathered souls and then a shaft of light to my favorites and then crossed through the open doors to the cool interior of the school.

  The inside matches what I expected from the two times I roamed the campus looking through windows. That’s probably good. I’m not sure what I would have done otherwise.

  There are kids roaming every which way, and it looks like a dance of some sort. Just not choreographed well. More than a few of them stare at me, probably picking up that I’m not familiar to them.

  Their attention shifts as I pass into the office.

  I met with the administration with Mom last week, and everything is set for me. I even did some entrance testing to make sure I’m up to speed, and I was put into honors classes across the board.

  Yeah, my parents may be psycho murderers, but they allowed us to learn quite a bit.

  Thankfully, as a public school, this place doesn’t have magic-based classes, so I don’t have to show how much I suck there. The academy had a class on magical species, another on defense, and another on magic. Granted, I excelled at magic, but the other two? Not so much.

  Then again, I did manage to keep one of the magical items I created, which is an earring that allows me to learn quicker. It doesn’t give me knowledge, since magic can do that…but then you lose it without warning. The spell actively assists with my learning, so that I learn quicker.

  Magic is weird that way. You can grow hair on a bald person, but unless you cure the baldness, the hair will fall out again. Give them the power of flight, and it will cut off without warning. The only spells that stick with someone are those that are immediately in effect. A healing spell, if it works at all. A spell to cut off your hair. Kill you. Something that gives you the ability to see in the dark? Unless you change their eyes, the spell will die at some point.

  In the past week, I’ve spent a lot of time reading the defense book from the academy. It’s pretty much all rolling around in my head, or it seems to be. I don’t want to put it to the test by trying to attack an orc, but I guess I have an idea of how to go about doing it now.

  I also have a ton of magical species information in my head. I didn’t get to finish that book, only concentrating on the species that I thought I’d run into. Like angels. There are only so many angels on Earth at any time that we know of, so the chance of meeting one is slim. There are more demons, and they tend to be more involved in human activities, so I may run across one or more.

  I guess we’ll see.

  The thought fills me with fear, but Mom was pretty clear that they tend not to be the fountain of evil that I was brought up to believe. This is definitely a situation where it’s better to fall short of expectations.

  I thought I would be delayed in the office, but it never came to be. The principal and the secretary were in an involved discussion and the registrar caught me entering, smiled, and handed me my paperwork without stopping her phone conversation. That had me leaving not even a minute later, stopping outside the door to read through everything.

  Except for my schedule and locker information, it’s all the same stuff that I received last week. Nothing looked different to me, so I shuffled it to the back of the little packet and prepared to chuck it into a trash can at the earliest opportunity.

  That pretty much left me with my schedule. It’s exactly what we talked about. Calculus, English, history, gym, lunch, physics, Spanish, and then study hall. More classes than I had at the a
cademy, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting naked in any of them.

  Yeah, that’s a thing with supernaturals. Defense class is always done naked. The idea being that if you can’t fight when you’re vulnerable or are unable to handle someone’s penis waggling in your face, then the first shifter will mess you up.

  That was more than a bit hard for me to do, but luckily my supernatural traits were coming on fast, so it was at least possible.

  Phone on vibrate, I hit my locker using the handy map that I’d memorized and the code on my class schedule. The school rules say that you can’t have a phone in class, so I guess I leave it here. Not that I trust folks. Then again, Mom hit it with a spell to keep it safe. If someone takes it, they’re going to be hunted down and hurt.

  No, I’m not kidding.

  Mom is old-school that way.

  “Hey guys,” I said softly, “I have to leave my phone in my locker. You may want to switch to the spell now.”

  Nothing happened on my phone, but my new shielding spell triggered, telling me that the FBI changed up to monitoring me through magic instead of my phone.

  Yeah, that’s a thing.

  They monitor me pretty much 24 hours a day. Mom too. Same with most people that are powerful enough. The idea is that they need to monitor in case we go off the deep end and need to be stopped. It’s crazy hard to stop the more powerful people out there, so you just never know what you’ll have to do. They want to make sure they’re on the right side of someone going postal so that they can stop it in time.

  I can’t say that I disagree with that.

  Then again, I do stop the monitoring from time to time. Mostly just to mess with them.

  They don’t track me through magic most of the time. I’m not entirely sure why, although I think it’s because they don’t want people to possibly pick up that it’s happening. Their spells are very good, but sometimes you can luck into finding them.

  Thank God Mom gave me another magical item that stops people from tracking me. If I want it to. My original ring was destroyed when everything went to hell. At Mom’s recommendation, I gave them permission to monitor me. Yeah, that means in the bathroom too. Not that they get visual. Just sound.

  I know, worse, right?

  Except, when you live with shifters and vampires? There’s no hiding farting from them. Sound and scent is right there for them. And for me, too. I’m beginning to understand that part about how it’s not a big deal.

  Except for me it is. Still. I never stepped foot in a public bathroom until going off to school, so the pooping angle is still hard on me.

  I probably shouldn’t talk about farting and pooping. Girls shouldn’t do that, right? Except I can now hear very well, and I can say with definite knowledge that it does happen. I mean beyond the fact that it happens with me. I’m not the only girl…

  Forget it. I’m distracting myself because I’m sort of freaked out here.

  I shouldn’t be. At all. This is just a high school. What’s going to happen to me here? Granted, I killed a ton of people at my last school, but that’s not quite what I’m expecting to have happen here.

  I’m just not ruling it out.

  Smells hit me hard and fast with every second that I’m here. Normal smells are everywhere, but it’s the supernaturals that I’m really interested in.

  The fact that I smell drugs nearby is bad, but not what I care about. I smell more cum in the hallway than I would have bet on. Alcohol is coming from at least five lockers nearby. Cigarettes too, which aren’t as bad, but are still illegal.

  It’s the others.

  I smell a variety of shifters, mostly wolves. I smell one vampire, although others have been in contact with different vampires. It’s a different sort of smell. I also smell what I think are orcs, with some other smells mixing in that I can’t identify. I know I smell like every type of being, but I don’t know what those are. Not yet.

  The shifter scents play across my tongue as I try to sniff them out without others knowing what I’m doing. It’d be a dead giveaway if I threw my head back and started sniffing, so that’s out. Definite wolves. A bunch of them. I also smell tiger, gorilla, elephant, rhino, and hyena. There’s something else in the mix that I don’t know, but those I do know. Leticia is a wolf, Sarah from our class was a tiger, Erica from the next class up was an elephant, and I ran into rhinos during a challenge and hyenas in an alley one day when I was out with Rachel.

  She killed them all.

  Mainly because they were threatening us.

  I used it to help her accept parts of her that she’s still struggling with. She fought so hard not killing…but it’s what she is, so she needs to accept it.

  No one nearby had the shifter scents on them, but others had other scents. Mainly like they might be mages. That’s a hard one to smell and is really subjective. I don’t see or feel anyone using power right now, but there’s something about how someone carries themselves when they have magic at their fingertips.

  For instance, the four approaching on the other side of the hallway that keep bumping into the thin guy, smacking him into the lockers? They look and smell like mages to me. The odd mix of how they’re walking and their smell…they have to be mages.

  I can’t tell if the kid they just faceplanted into the lockers is anything. He smells different, but that could be nearly anything. It’s not familiar, that’s for sure.

  He’s about five inches taller than my 5’2”, and he’s thin. Oh so thin. He’s also fumbling with his dropped books and stammering at the backs of the huge guys that hit him.

  They keep walking, snickering to themselves about how funny they are. They’re all over six feet tall and built. They look like jocks, but again, there’s something about how they’re carrying themselves that makes me think they’re more than that. Oh, they might be jocks, but I’d bet that there’s magic behind them, too.

  The one in front, a nice looking black guy, sort of smirks at me as he looks me over, elbowing the next guy in line. That turns into a little line of elbowing, with all four watching me as they walk by.

  They didn’t say anything until they were nearly 10 feet beyond me, although I still heard it. I’m not sure who said, “Oh my God I’d love to fuck her. I bet she’s tight as hell!”

  Flattering? Umm, a little. It never would have been before the weirdness started in my life, but now? If they didn’t just hit that guy into the lockers, I might have taken them up on it. Possibly all four at the same time.

  What can I say, my month in the academy broadened my horizons quite a bit. It helps that I can’t catch diseases and can’t get pregnant.

  A few of the other kids in the hallway snickered or laughed at the kid struggling with his books. None of them offered to help him, so I moved through the wandering students and grabbed one of the books that was being kicked away, and carried it back to him.

  “Hey, here’s one that was getting away.”

  He stared up at me in shock, “Uhh…you’re talking to me?”

  “Yup?” How messed up is this kid’s life that me talking to him is a shock? Except for being a bit thin, he’s pretty good looking. It’s his hesitation and nervousness that throws him over the edge. “Here you go?” I waggled the book at him until he took it.

  “Um…thank you?”

  “You’re welcome.” Good deed done, I moved on through the other students, hunting for my class. I know it’s down this way and around the corner, so it doesn’t make much sense to dawdle.

  The kids around me pretty much stare at me as I move. Well, those that realize I’m there at all. I’m sure most of it is my hair. The school doesn’t allow dyed hair in odd colors, and my hair is blood red. Literally blood red. Like a Ferrari or something like that. Apparently, I look exactly like the prior goddess of death. We’re spitting images, and I can actually fit in some of her clothes. Yeah, she died 2,500 years ago, but she has so much stored in her safe that I have access to now. Granted, I’m pretty sure a bunch of it is stolen,
but still. Plus, Mom has a bunch of her clothes in storage, and I’ve been able to fit in every piece without an issue.

  The rest are seeing the black eyes and getting stuck there.

  I don’t blame them. I rather had a freak-out when I saw the changes after I tried to kill myself. I didn’t look like this before. My hair did, but the eyes? The flawless skin? Nope and nope. They can’t see the strength, so that’s a plus.

  I’d love to be able to hide that I’m a supernatural, and that’s my plan, but the hair and eyes? Yeah…you can’t wear colored contacts here that change your eye color. Want to be a brighter blue than normal? Go for it. You can’t change from blue to brown, though. Kids will wonder why I’m getting away with breaking the rules for my eyes and hair, then they’ll start to realize that I’m not…and then what I am will be apparent.

  Or, that I’m just not a normal human. I highly doubt any of them will understand what I really am based on my physical differences.

  My home room only has six kids in it, with a heavyset teacher at the desk reviewing something in a thick book. He barely glances at me as I walk in, then does a double take. Then a triple take. His eyes drift between my eyes and hair as I stop at his desk.

  “Can I help you?” He has a nice deep voice. Commanding. I bet that goes over well in school.

  “Hi? My name is Ceri. I’m a new student.” I handed him the page I was told to show to my teachers, then the second page that I had in reserve to show teachers that are going to question my hair or eyes.

  He grunts as he takes it, looking it over, then at the second form. That one he reads at least twice, assuming I can trust his eye movement. When he’s done, he sort of freezes for a minute before writing something in the book he’s looking through. Oh, it’s a class planner of some sort, and I’m now officially a member of the class.

  The pages go back in my little pile as he looks me up and down, “Ceri? I’m Mr. Crosland. I’m your home room teacher as well as your physics teacher.” He glances beyond me to some of the students, “I’ll ask you to stand and introduce yourself once everyone gets here. I know most students hate that, but I find it’s very helpful.”