Chương 39: Panic Attack

Crimson trails the other students as they file into the exam room. Yet the instant he enters, he notices Willow already sitting there. She casts him a quick look, then drops her gaze, plainly making a great effort not to look his way. Crimson makes his way between the rows, moving toward her. Advancing with resolve, until Mr Smosh calls out.

"Mr. Croft, please take a seat." He nods, turns away, and sits down near Churro as Mr. Smosh sets a stack of Blue Exam Books on the first desk of every row. The students start passing them along.

"You have forty-five minutes to complete the test. Twenty-five percent of your grade can be earned right now by simply putting your full name on the cover. However, as happens every year, one of you will inexplicably fail to put your name on the cover and I'll be left yet again questioning my decision to ever become a teacher. So, let's get the disappointment over with. Begin." The students open their test books and begin the exam.

Crimson zeroes in on the first question: An increase in imports of consumer goods is most likely to have been caused by a... He is about to jot down an answer when he hears a noise so loud and grating that it makes him flinch a pencil eraser dragging across a sheet of paper with an irritating scrape. Crimson turns his attention back to his test. But then he hears another student coughing, a tight hack from the back of her throat.

With his senses sharpened, Crimson can't help but tune in to the nervousness surrounding him. He looks back down at the test. Now the next question: Why would such a pretty girl date a loser like you? Crimson stares at the question, blinking his eyes. Then he glances at Willow, who is busy filling in her own test. When he flips back, the question on his sheet has turned into: Which of the following statements about price mechanism is correct? Rubbing his eyes with his fingers, he jots down the answer with his pen.

Then he looks at the following question: When the moon is full tonight, will you kill: A: All of your friends? B: Some of your friends? C: Most of your friends? Crimson slams his pencil back onto the desk, squeezing his eyes shut. But with his eyelids closed, his sharpened hearing starts to pick up the heartbeats around him. As the thumping grows louder and louder, a cell phone buzzes on a desk. Someone drags their chair forward, metal scraping across the floor, and Crimson bolts up from his seat, seizing his bag.

"Mr. Croft?" Churro watches him burst through the door. Then he stands up to chase after him. Willow and the rest of the students look up, following Smosh's curious gaze. He hurries into the empty corridor. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Crimson? He spins around the other way. There's no trace of Crimson, yet his backpack is sitting right in the middle of the hallway. Churro walks over and picks it up.

"Crimson?" He continues on, scanning the oddly silent hallway, until at last he takes out his cell phone and makes a call. He holds it to his ear and listens to it ring. Then he lowers it again once he realizes... He can hear it ringing from far down the hall as well. Churro walks into the locker room, where the ringing is now louder. Once it stops, he strains to listen. One of the showers is running. Crimson's jacket and shirt are lying on the floor.

Churro moves slowly past them, deeper into the locker room, and finds him kneeling beneath one of the showers, water pouring over his torso. His back lifts with every uneasy breath. Slowly, he raises his eyes to him." Churro, I can't..."

"What's going on? Are you turning?"

"No... I can't... I can't breathe." Seeing him fight for every gasp, Churro hastily drops Crimson's bag on the floor, opens the zipper, and starts digging through it. Locating what he needs, he turns back toward Crimson, who has crawled away from the spray of water and is now leaning against the tiled wall.

"Take this." He passes Crimson's inhaler over to him. Crimson, still gasping for air, glances down at it in confusion.

"Do it." Crimson shakes the inhaler, takes a puff, and holds his breath. At last, he exhales.

"I... was I having an asthma attack?"

"No, what you had was a panic attack. But believing it was an asthma attack is what put a stop to the panic attack. I went through them myself after my mom passed away. Not a good time, right?"

Ash spreads out a topographical map of Lantern City across the garage floor. Lily, Ulrich, and a third hunter close in around it.

"Another evening spent tramping through the woods. I'd rather see it as one more night of trying to stop innocent people from getting killed. A list that now includes my daughter."

"How can we be sure it won't come after her again?" They look toward the other hunter, Tyhurst, the State Detective Valentine had brought in.

"It won't come after Willow." She says it almost to herself, with a strange certainty in her tone.

"It won't have a target at all. Not during a full moon. Because my young protégé, on a full moon an Alpha is just like any other werewolf. It still fights against its pull. Which means tonight is our best shot at catching it. When it's unfocused." All at once, silence, then it shatters with heavy breathing.

"What if it had a reason to stay focused? I simply don't care for surprises. You're the expert. You tell me." There's a brief moment of tension. Ulrich shatters it.

"What about Autzee?"

"He's too intelligent for that. He won't be out tonight. Particularly with police all over the place." A noise brings him to a halt. The kitchen door slowly swings open. Mrs. Ash is standing there, a plate in her hands.

"If you do... locate him, you kill him, you slice him in two." She raises the plate.

"Does anyone want a cookie?"

The next day, when lunch rolls around, Willow pulls a chocolate chip cookie wrapped in plastic from a brown paper bag. Her eyes settle on the sticky note attached to it, bearing a smiley face and the message: Love Mom. Just as she takes a bite, Larch settles into the seat next to her.

"There's something on your..." She looks up, a smear of chocolate across her lip.

"Here, let me." He leans closer and gently brushes the chocolate off her lip with his thumb.

"Thanks." He glances up. But she just holds the cookie out toward him.

"Want a bite?"

"Oh. Um, no. Thanks." His hand wanders up to the back of his neck without him noticing. She glances at Larch, whose face remains unchanged, as if he's suppressing something.

"You don't think I made a mistake, do you?"

"No. I don't..." Larch 's voice begins to trail off... Past the cafeteria. Down the long corridor. The whole stretch to the place where Crimson leans on the wall, his lunch laid out in front of him, listening with senses honed razor-sharp.

"In fact,..." Crimson taps the back of his head lightly against the wall.

"I think he got..." Crimson drives the wall a little harder. Then far harder.

"Exactly..." Teeth gritted, Crimson snaps his head backward...

"What he deserves." The plaster bursts apart behind Crimson, his rage-filled eyes never so much as blinking while cracks creep up into the wall around him...