Cloverwood School for Supernaturals (Book One) #Wattys2016

Chapter Sixteen Claire

I followed Maxton out of the room with no hesitation. He took a left down the hallway then ran down a flight of stairs, taking two stairs at a time.

At the base of the stairs was a long walkway, it's ceiling, walls, and floor was made out of cement. The hallway was dimly lit as a result of only half of the lights being functional.

My footsteps echoed along the hallway the closer we got to the exit. Minutes had already came and went when we reached the big steel door at the end of the hallway. Maxton pushed it open and we burst into the courtyard.

It was midday, the sun was at it's highest point, sending bright rays of sunshine that burned my skin. Taking advantage of the good lighting, I fully looked at Maxton for the first time. He wasn't a man at all, but a boy in his later teenage years. He looked a year or two older than me, and he had messy brown hair with a short cut.

Bottom line, he was kinda cute.

I know we were in the middle of an invasion, but this boy was hard to ignore. Under is white shirt muscles rippled just under his skin. The chiseled features hiding behind the tossled hair somehow made him even more cute.

I snapped myself out of the daze. Fight off evil hybrids now, look at cute boy later.

I scanned the wide courtyard in hopes of finding one of my friends. The first person my eyes stopped to look at wasn't one of my friends but the women who had shouted the warning that the hybrids were coming.

The women was talking to Marvale at rapid speed. Words were tumbling out of her mouth so fast she didn't finish one word before she said the next. The three others on watch duty stood there nodding, and piped in to give detail about the hybrids.

The strange thing was, looking closer at the faces I could have sworn I had seen the other women before. Her pale skin and bright freckles all looked familiar but seemed strange without one other detail. Then I noticed the black combat boots. There was only one person I know who wore black combat boots.

"Tessa!" I shouted. Tessa whipped her head and looked right at me. It was then I noticed the missing feature. Her dark red curls were tucked neatly into a baseball cap.

"Hey Claire! Glad to see you're awake from your ancient slumber." Tessa turned to the women speaking to Marvale and told her she would be right back. The women barely acknowledged Tessa and gave her the tiniest nod ever. You could certainly tell she cared about her fellow guard's safety (not).

Tessa jogged toward me and embraced me in a big hug. I looked in her eyes. Tessa seemed almost like her old self, with that old sparkle ignited in her eyes. I guess the distraction of guard duty helped her forget about Blaire. Blaire. Blaire, she was really gone. I almost expected to see her push her way through the crowd to hug me as well. To tell me her death was all just a vivid dream. I shook my head. Blaire was gone, and she wasn't coming back.

"Okay everybody here is how this is going to work." Marvale's deep voice rumbled as he addressed the crowd in the courtyard. "The hybrids will come here and try to use the death smoke on us. We are blessed to know this in advance thanks to Michael and his friends." Marvale's eyes met Tessa's then widened when they landed on mine.

"Glad to see your are up and ready, Ms. Claire." Marvale said to me.

"I am too." I replied.

"Anyways, this smoke will kill anyone who inhales it, so everyone get gas masks from the kids behind me. Don't put the gas masks on unless you see the green gas, because we don't have oxygen tanks for everyone. Now go." Six kids lined the outer edges of the courtyard and had boxes filled to the rim with gas masks.

The people started flooding in towards the kids. I ran to the closest one, a girl with dirty blonde hair and a lab coat. I reached down into one of the plastic boxes and grabbed a gas mask. Wait, I slowly looked up at the girl handing out the masks.

"Don't worry Claire," Blaire said "I'll be fine! I am just working behind the scenes, helping with the injured so they will be ready to fight if they need to. I'm even helping on Kathy's surgery. Nothing will happen to me, not like last time, because this time I will have friends who care about me enough not to let me die. Unlike yourself."

"You saw me leave Tessa's side but you did nothing to help me or shield me and you remember what happened next don't you?" Blaire took a step towards me. "You remember my scream of agony as much as you remember your own name. You remember my body go limp, the life leave my eyes. You remember-"

"Stop!" I interrupted Blaire. "You aren't real. You're dead. Blaire is dead." I looked back up at the girl. It wasn't Blaire, it was a girl with dirty blonde hair and small, blue rimmed glasses. She was wearing a baby blue dress and a very confused expression.

"What are you talking about? I'm not dead, I'm alive!" The girl said to me with a tone equally annoyed and confused. I reached into the bin and grabbed a gas mask. "Look, I am really sorry. I'll just be going." I slowly walked away from the girl and held my gas mask.

"Hey, are you okay?" Maxton walked over to me. "Yah, I'm fine. Just-"

My words were cut off by the sound of a window opening. I looked up at the building to see a man shouting for someone.

"Cal! Cal! Somebody! Anybody! CAL! The hybrids released the smoke through the air conditioning and it's killed half the people in the building. There are some survivors but not many. You have to evacuate. You-" The boys eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell to the ground as green smoke surrounded him and pooled out of the window.

"Kathy was getting her surgery today! We have to get her!" I told Maxton. He adjusted his gas mask and nodded. We pushed through the crowd of screaming kids and ran to the big double doors that opened to the school. Most people were running away from the school but a few others were joining Maxton and I, including Tessa, Mara, and Michael.

"We have to get Kathy!" I shouted to them. We all stopped running as green smoke tumbled down the the stairs leading to the upper levels of the school. We all took a breath of clean air then ran through the smoke and up the stairs and towards the room Kathy was in. I just hoped that Kathy wouldn't end up like the lifeless bodies that lined the hallway down to the surgery room.

"Please be alive, please be alive" I pleaded to no one.

"We will find out in a second" Tessa said as she opened the door to the operation room.