The Huntress

Chapter 24

The next morning came sooner than I would have liked. An alarm sounded in the room followed by an electronic voice.

This is your wake up call. Classes begin in one hour. The dreaded alarm sounded again followed by the voice one more time before shutting off.

I wished they would just let us have our own alarms. Not everyone needed a full hour to get ready for class, especially when class was only a two-minute walk.

With a groan I rolled out of bed, pulled out the drawers containing my clothes and got dressed.

I grabbed the textbooks I needed and some notebooks, and stuffed them into a bag before making my way down the hall and into the first class. The reading had been over the five founding families and how they had built The Torch.

From what I had gathered, it had been out of fear of the unknown. They hadn't known what they were doing, they just knew the creatures existed; they knew that they killed, and they wanted to do something about it. One thing I had learned from my father was to never go in blind. I guess those men learned their lesson the hard way.

I sat down in one of the chairs. The majority of the class was already waiting for Baudin to show up.

"I'm Johnson," the boy sitting next to me said.

I turned to look at him and his outstretched hand. I couldn't just sit there and not take it I supposed. I shook his hand and looked him in the eyes. "Jaeger."

He had the slight eyes-wide just as my roommate had. Apparently the name was more widely known than I had originally thought. He kept quiet after that.

I just shrugged and looked back up to the front as Baudin strolled in, and started class.

"I hope your memories are good and that you did your reading," his French accent carried through the room.

"Who were the five founders?"

A hand shot up in the first row before a girl answered the question."

"Klarke, Mauer, Ort, Durin, and Harken, Sir."

"And when was the organization formed and what was it first called?"

The same girl's hand went up.

"1840, Sir, and it was called The Torch."

"Good, and what was the reason for the formation, what led to The Torch's existence?"

"Durin had been married for eight years. He had been away to town and when he returned, his wife was lying pale in the arms of a man. He soon learned that it actually wasn't a man at all. It had his wife's blood all over its face; the flesh of her neck had been torn with the creature's teeth, her blood soaking into her own clothes.

"When Durin had walked in the creature's eyes had turned to him, dark black holes bored into him before it fled. The flame from the torch had scared it off, but it was too late. By the time he reached his wife's side, she was fading. She looked into his eyes one last time and whispered her last words to her husband, 'I love you.'" That same voice said, answering the third question in a row.

I rolled my eyes. This girl had actually recited word for word what had been in the book, even the handwritten words photocopied into the book from Durin himself that he'd written in a journal after the incident. She hadn't missed a single thing from it. She was obviously the super smart suck-up kid. Well that was going to get annoying very quickly.

Baudin didn't bat an eye though. He hadn't been impressed with the way she had been the one to answer all three questions; he hadn't even been impressed with the fact that she had recited all of that.