Breed of Havoc (The Breed Chronicles #3) (24 page)

Everyone laughed. Adam grinned. “Another day, maybe. Your turn.”

Peter walked out of the room and Adam repeated his process. This time, it was Matt who left a message. Peter heard it around four levels up, which was just above a whisper.

“Peter definitely has better hearing,” Adam said.

“What about you, Jade?”

I blinked again. “Me?”

“Will you stop sounding so surprised? Yes, you. You’re all super powered like these two, aren’t you? Let’s see what you can do.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Rachel smirked at me as I turned to walk away. I didn’t need to hear her “I’ll say the message” to know she had volunteered. I knew she would. As I went to the stairs, I frowned. The good news was she couldn’t say anything too bad without getting yelled at by Peter or Adam. But ‘too bad’ was open for debate. I closed my eyes, focused on the sounds around me. I could hear someone giggling—Leslie. Then I heard Rachel’s voice, whisper soft but just as annoying, saying, “Linc is hot.”

“Yes, he is,” I shouted.

“Jade.” I spun toward Peter’s voice, then realized he was still in the auditorium. “Come back in.”

There was a weird note in his tone. It had me hesitating before I finally took a deep breath, released it, and walked toward the doorway. My stomach twisted itself into knots and I stopped at the entrance in case I needed to make a quick escape.

I found everyone staring at me oddly. “Did a Euphoria demon get in here?” I joked with a tight laugh after twenty seconds of silence. The Euphoria demon sprayed its victims with a toxin that messed with their heads and made them feel euphoric. Well, it made them feel that way until it ripped their hearts out. One of the signs someone had been sprayed was a dazed and dumbfounded look on their face.

The same look everyone had on their face, including Peter and Adam.

“That—”

“Was—”

“Awesome!”

Rachel tried to roll her eyes, but it was like they were stuck, nearly coming out of their sockets because they were so wide. “Oh, please. So she…she guessed what I’d say.”

Kristina laughed. “Come off it, Rachel.”

Everyone else ran toward me, firing off questions and comments faster than I could keep up with. “How’d you hear her?” and “Holy cow!” and “Your hearing is better than Peter’s!”.

Over everyone’s heads, I spotted Peter and Adam leaning against the far wall, grinning at me like loons. Peter called everyone back to the table to talk and invited them to ask questions. This time, people asked
me
questions and all but ignored Peter and Adam.

“What other things can you do?”

“Can you really talk to demons?”

After ten minutes of answering questions and watching Rachel’s face get redder and redder, she finally slammed her hands down on the table. “What is the big deal? None of you liked her last month, or even last week. What the hell is so different now?”

Peter’s jaw tightened. “Rachel—”

“No,” Kristina said, “it’s a fair question. I think
we
,” she added, looking to everyone, “all owe Jade an explanation. We might not’ve been very rude to her outwardly, but neither have we been very nice.”

“You don’t owe me anything—” I said, trying to argue, but everyone else started talking and no one heard me. I didn’t want more reasons why people didn’t like me. To date, there wasn’t a single one I liked, though I understood them.

After a minute of bickering, everyone went quiet and stared at one another.

Kristina glanced at everyone. “No one has a good reason? Okay, I’ll go first then. My first problem was Felecia. She didn’t like you, so I followed suit.” As she spoke, she shot a glare at Rachel and Leslie. “There were rumors about you from day one, and between those and what I saw for myself, I didn’t like you. You’ve been here about two years now? If you’re not with your friends, you pretty much tend to stick to yourself.”

It was true, but I didn’t bother trying to defend myself or explain why. “True.”

“I never saw you around, and I know part of that is because everyone tends to stick with those in their own Phase. It made me think what they were saying was true. You were a loner, you weren’t friendly. That’s what I kept hearing about you, and because I didn’t see you often, it made sense. I’m not saying it’s true, because I can see now that it’s not. Hell, anyone with a decent pair of eyes can see you’re uncomfortable being here, and I don’t think it has anything to do with you being unfriendly. I think you’re as uncomfortable around us as we are around you. We didn’t give you a chance, so you didn’t give us one.”

A few people muttered their agreement or nodded.

“She’s part demon.” Rachel bit the words out. “D-e-m-o-n. What part of that don’t you understand?”

Kristina nodded. “Okay. For the sake of arguing, fine, we’ll say she is part demon. Are you scared of her? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Now that’s funny.”

“How is that funny? Even
they
,” Rachel said, pointing to Adam and Peter, “call her Demon Whisperer.”

Adam lowered his gaze, seeing as he was the one to give me the Demon Whisperer nickname, but he didn’t comment. He started to, but Kristina laughed. “Because you say you’re scared of her, but you’ve never acted like it. Not once.”

“Yeah, Rachel.” Matt nodded. “If you’re so scared of her, why do you antagonize her every chance you get?”

A few other people frowned. “That’s what you told me,” someone said. “That if you pissed her off, she’d attack you.”

“So which is it?” Kristina crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you afraid of her, or are you just talking shit?”

Rachel, with her eyes narrowed, glared at everyone. “She’s—it’s—”

Everyone looked at her, awaiting her answer. “Well?”

Rachel made some weird growling sound (that probably would’ve impressed some demons), gathered her stuff, and stormed out of the room, all the while shooting me nasty glares like I’d done something to her.

Biting her lip, her friend Leslie watched her go. She looked toward the door, then back at us, then back to the doorway. She and Rachel were the only two who didn’t ask questions.

“We’re about done here,” Peter said, seeing her obvious struggle between wanting to leave and not wanting to go, “so you can follow her out if you want.”

She grabbed her stuff and stared at me. After a minute, she sighed, shook her head, and let her things drop back to the table.

Peter nodded. “Okay. Any last questions?”

“Yeah.” One of the guys—David—raised his hand tentatively. “Why is Jade different? Why are her…abilities…better?”

I frowned, wondering why people asked questions they had the answers to. Greene had told the Prospects in my Phase about the vampire bite, though I was sure it’d gotten around to everyone else, and Rachel had heard about my parents from Peter. I’d spent the last year figuring she’d told everyone who’d listen.

“That’s private,” Peter said, his tone harsh. “And has no bearing on your treatments.” He shot me a look. “If you want to answer, you can, Jade. It’s up to you. And if she does answer, it doesn’t leave this room. Trust me, I’ll find out if it does.”

What did I have to lose? Maybe they’d…understand things better. Maybe they’d hate me less. The real question was, did I want everyone at the CGE knowing the truth? Because despite Peter’s warning, someone would tell someone else and then everyone would know.

Did it matter if they found out? Things honestly couldn’t get much worse, could they? I mean, people hated me already. Could adding one more reason change things that much? “I’ll tell them,” I decided. What did I care if the whole school knew anyway?

“Your call.”

“I’m not really sure where to begin,” I said, “but my parents were CGE agents. They had the treatments and those were…passed down to me, I guess.”

“You’ve always been like this? Like, being able to hear really well?”

I started to shake my head but stopped. “I’m not sure. I didn’t really notice until after I was bitten by the vampire.”

David nodded. “So that rumor
was
true. You were bitten.”

Leslie glowered. “Rachel told you she was.”

“Rachel,” Peter said slowly, “shouldn’t have spread it around.”

I wasn’t surprised she’d found out and I wasn’t surprised
she’d
told other people in return.

“Well, no one believed her. Everything else, yeah, but not dying after being bitten by a vampire?” Tommy shook his head. “Nope. We didn’t buy that one.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I was bitten.”

Tommy looked at me with awe. “And you survived.”

A few people laughed.

“She’s sitting right here, so yeah, I think she did,” Kristina said.

Tommy smirked. “Smartasses. You know what I meant.” He looked at Peter and Adam. “She’s the first person to survive a bite then, isn’t she?”

Peter nodded.

“So your DNA—your parents having the treatments—is that why you survived? Is that what changed your first Phase?”

I shrugged now. “Yeah, I guess. Just don’t ask me to explain why or how. No one really seems to know.” No one had asked me not to talk about the vampire-cure-finding thing, but still, I didn’t want to mention it without at least asking first. There was a reason Greene hadn’t told anyone, wasn’t there? I didn’t think it was just for my benefit.

Katey, a red haired girl, said, “Is that why you’re pulled aside at the demon facility? Is that why you’re with Doc longer than anyone else?”

I almost laughed. Of course they’d know about the appointments. I hadn’t exactly been sneaky about them, and it was hard to pretend to not know what they were talking about. The P3s had obviously seen Dr. Cherry leading me away from the others. Eric was the first one to notice that, and since he and Rachel were friends, of course he’d told her. “Yeah. They’re trying to figure out why I’m different.”

“And your parents were hunters?” David asked. “That must’ve been cool.”

I went cold all over. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You didn’t know they were hunting demons?”

“I didn’t. My dad died when I was young and my mom retired after that. She never told me about the CGE or hunting.” My fingers curled. “I didn’t—” I broke off and swallowed back a lump. “I didn’t find out about them being hunters until after I’d joined.”

Until Greene had told me. I tried squashing down the ball of bitter resentment that formed in my stomach but it was useless. It was always useless.

“What about—”

“Was your dad—”

“How do you—”

“What did your mom—”

“When did—”

The questions bounced back and forth. Before someone could finish their sentence, someone else shouted another question until all I heard was ‘who’ or ‘when’ or ‘what’. My head started to spin.

“Guys,” Peter said, “give her a chance—”

“Jade, what about—”

They had questions. I had questions. Everyone had questions but I didn’t have any answers. Not for them, not for me. The bitterness burst free like a dam. It flooded my system until I could taste it, until I could feel it pulsing through my veins.

I jumped up from my seat hard and fast. The chair flew back and hit the ground, making everyone at the table jump. “I have to go. I’m sorry,” I said, and then I ran out of the room. I didn’t go far, only out to the catwalk.

Voices buzzed in my head and I couldn’t block them out no matter how hard I tried.

Where’s she going?

What’s she doing?

Did we upset her?

Her family’s gone, you idiots. Of course she doesn’t want to talk about them…

Closing my eyes, I tried harder to block out the voices. The last one I heard was Kristina asking Peter if she should come find me and Peter telling her no. Adam and Peter knew where I was or could find me if they needed to. I wasn’t hiding. I just needed…away. From the questions, the stares.

My hands shook and my jaw ached from having it clenched so hard. I wanted to hit something. Or someone. I wanted to yell or scream or weep. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or
why
I wanted to do it, either.

Why did everything have to be so weird? I was hot one minute, cold the next. Furious over the stupidest things, blasé about the more complicated stuff. I could handle people talking shit to or about me, but I completely breakdown when they’re nice?

What the hell was with me lately?

I felt like a lit fuse on an infinite cycle, stuck between burning out and exploding. The anger was there, lurking below the surface, waiting. And the anger wasn’t even entirely toward the P4s. It was for Dr. Cherry, Greene, my mom, and even my dad a little. The people who kept secrets from me. The people who kept me in the dark.

Even Linc. Not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he kept telling me how normal things were, how normal I was. I didn’t feel normal, and not my usual I’m-not-normal feelings. This was something completely different. Something darker and dangerous.

Something that scared me.

C
HAPTER 12

No one said anything about what happened at the Mentor Meeting the following week. By the cautious looks everyone shot me, it was obvious they wanted to, though. I suspected Adam or Peter—or maybe even Kristina—had told them not to say anything. That meeting was one of the shortest, but by the next week, things were back to normal. People continued to ask me questions, but, thankfully, they avoided talking about my parents.