Werewolf!: Hell High Book 3 Page 2

  “STOP,” he commanded the naga girl as she was about to pass the half of the rainbow geode behind her to the next student.

  The girl froze in her movements and blinked her reptilian eyes at the massive orc.

  “You must spend some time and feel the power of the Earth. That wasn’t nearly long enough,” his voice was just a whisper, and the whole class seemed to lean forward so that we could all hear him speak to the snake girl.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t apologize to me, little one. Apologize to the GODS OF LIFE AND DESTRUCTION. EVEN NOW THEY WONDER IF YOU FEEL THEIR POWER THROUGH THEIR AVATAR. DO YOU FEEL IT?” he kind of screamed his question as he pointed at the poor girl. A dribble of blood emerged from his hairline, descended between his eyes, and began to drip from his wide nose.

  “Yes! I do!” She nodded quickly as she clutched the half egg to her chest.

  “YESSSSSSSSSSSS! YOU HAVE EVOLVED WITH THE GIFT OF LAVA, SMITE, AND POWER! FEEL ITTTTTTTTTTTTT!” The orc raised his hands up into the air and gestured the rest of us to follow his movement.

  Mr. Hellsig let out a long growl when the rest of the class didn’t follow his example, and the entire class growled in echo while we raised our arms to the ceiling.

  “This is the best class I’ve ever had,” Charlotte whispered to me over her shoulder. “And I hate school.”

  Chapter 2

  “Was he the werewolf?” Charlotte asked as soon as the class ended, and we had walked away from the doorway of the room.

  “No. I think he was an orc. Lots of muscles and greenish skin,” I replied.

  “Oh. Okay. Did you notice anything weird about him?” She looked around to make sure no one was listening to us, but the other students walking by were involved in their own conversations.

  “Besides him being a little crazy?”

  “He remembered your name,” she said with a frown.

  “Huh. Yeah. That happens sometimes. Satan knew my name,” I said with a shrug.

  “That is Satan. This is just some orc teacher.” Charlotte looked thoughtful.

  “One of the guidance counselors at our old school would call me by my correct name sometimes. It happens.”

  “Okay, but I get the feeling there is something weird going on at this school,” she said as she looked around again.

  “Something weird about this school? What do you mean?” I asked as I looked at the hundreds of monster students that flowed like water through the open space of the quad.

  “I can’t put my finger on it. Something is off. I dunno. This is my first mission with a partner. Could just be that.” She smiled at me a bit, and I felt my heart flutter in my chest. I had missed her smile so much.

  “What class do you have next?” she asked before I could speak again.

  “PE.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She glanced down at my body and smiled again. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. I don’t think we have another class together for the rest of the day,” she said as she pulled out the paper slip that had her schedule on it.

  “No, we don’t. Ummm, do you want to have lunch together?” I felt my pulse quicken as I asked her.

  “Of course, silly.” She smirked at me. “I don’t know anyone else here.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I scratched the back of my head.

  “Sorry, Sherman. That came out wrong. I want to have lunch with you. Not just because I don’t know anyone else, but because… well--” the school bell rang and the kids walking through the quad suddenly picked up their pace. Some even started running.

  “Shit, we need to get to class,” she said.

  “I’m actually on the other side of the school. It might take me a few minutes to get there.”

  “Keep your eyes out for the target, be safe, and I’ll see you at lunch. Okay?”

  “Got it. Thanks, Charlotte,” I said.

  The beautiful girl’s eyes were purple again, probably because we weren’t in Hell anymore, and she fluttered her long eyelashes at me for a second before she turned to walk away. As I watched her leave, I realized that I had forgotten to tell her that Satan expected us to have the mission completed tonight. The task sounded next to impossible since we didn’t even know who the target was, but maybe Charlotte would have some ideas at lunch.

  The PE classroom was on the side of the gym building, and that building was on the far north side of campus. I realized that I was probably going to be late to class if I didn’t run, so I pulled my pack into my back and did my best to sprint across the quad. I had to go across one of the service streets, up a flight of stairs, and then circumnavigate the building before I found the entrance to the classroom.

  Dang. I really hated PE.

  I thought about all my past education classes and my lack of physical strength. I didn’t want to be weak, but I had no real idea how to get stronger. I guess one was supposed to work out, but I couldn’t even do a pull-up, I had to do push-ups on my knees, and running made my chest hurt really bad. Meanwhile, video games were super fun and didn’t cause me any pain. I wasn’t looking forward to this, but I’d probably be able to get a pass after the teacher saw just how terrible I was at everything.

  The classroom kind of surprised me. It actually had desks in it, and a chalkboard on one wall. One side of the room was one of those roller walls that could expand out to hide the main part of the gymnasium, and there was a bunch of athletic equipment stacked up in the room. But other than the dodge balls, and jump ropes, it looked like the Geology class I had just left.

  A quick count gave me twenty-four students, and they all turned to me when I walked in. They were a mishmash of races, but I actually saw two angels in the group. All the students were wearing their gym outfits, and I realized that I hadn’t been given any when I checked in.

  “Sit down!” a drow girl whispered urgently to me as she pointed at the empty desk next to her.

  I followed her orders and then put my book bag under my desk. Then I realized that all the other students had a notebook and pencil ready, so I pulled mine out as quickly as I could. I didn’t see the teacher yet, but I remembered that the office clerk had told us that it was a Dr. King.

  The bell rang across the campus and the kids around me sat up at attention. The atmosphere reminded me a bit of my geology class, and I remembered that the office clerk had said that both of these teachers were the school’s wrestling coaches.

  The side door by the piles of equipment opened, and Dr. King stepped into the classroom. I gasped and knew for certain that this was the powerful alpha wolf that Satan had told me about.

  I also gasped because it was the largest werewolf I had ever seen.

  Dr. King must have stood some seven feet tall. His muscles seemed to have muscles on top of the muscles, and his clawed hands were easily the size of my head. The werewolf wore a tie-dye shirt that looked four sizes too small for the man’s expansive chest, tight yellow lycra pants with black knee pads, sunglasses that looked like they might have been ski goggles, and a silver whistle around his giant neck.

  “Yeah,” he said as he swaggered in through the door. The wolfman’s shoulders were so wide; he had to turn sideways to fit out. “Welcome to class, Class. Today we are going to talk about building better bodies. Yeah. Then we are going to go build those better bodies. Yeah. Then we are going to come back in here and talk about how we built those better bodies. Ohhh yeah.” The giant werewolf had a strange way of talking. He was kind of elongating all of his vowel sounds.

  The werewolf strutted around the room as he talked. Sometimes I saw these creatures look more like men with wolf features, but Dr. King’s face looked almost entirely wolf-like, with a man-body covered with fur. The gym teacher seemed to notice I was sitting in the classroom, and he stopped his pacing.

  “You look lost. Like a baby duck without its mamma. But I sense that you are really a chicken hawk, hunting for a chicken. Do birdies go quack when they are pretending to be ducks?” The werewolf reached
up to his sunglasses with his right hand as if he was going to take them off, but he just left his fingers touching them.

  “Uhhhh,” I squeaked as my heart leapt into my chest. Was he hinting that he knew I was on a mission to kill him?

  “You see, ducks can’t fly like chickens and chickens can’t fly like ducks. But when the ducks are swimming the chickens are laying eggs and looking for corn. The hawks are out looking for a good time, though. What do you say to that?” He kind of spit out the question as if he was squeezing the sentence out of his abdominal muscles.

  “I uhhhhmmmm.”

  “He wants you to wear your gym uniform!” the drow girl sitting next to me whispered.

  “It is my first day. I’m new. I don’t have a gym uniform,” I said with a wince. My voice sounded very unmanly, and I half expected everyone in my new class to laugh at me. They would have at my old school.

  Surprisingly, no one laughed or said anything to embarrass me, and Dr. King just nodded.

  “That’s what I thought. Yeah. Now hold on just a minute,” he said as he went to his desk. There was a clipboard on top, and it looked comically small in his giant hands.

  “Sherman Grandier?” he asked with a raised wolf eyebrow.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a strong name. Fit for a mighty warrior. Yeah. A champion even if I do say so. Yeah. Now class,” he said as he opened his thick arms to the rest of the students.

  “We are going to be doing some leg exercises today. Gonna get real strong. Yeah. Now, I’m gonna tell you right now that some of you aren’t going to be able to do all of them, but that’s okay. Molding our bodies into machines of great power isn’t something that is done all willy nilly. It takes time and dis-a-pline to make trans-for-mation possible. Yeah. Now when you step into the squared circle of life; there can be no showboating, or hot dogging, or grandstanding. Yeah. What it takes is positive life choices. The choice between making the try, even though you think you might fail, or staying out of the ring because you worry you might fail. Yeah. Everyone is going to have their own personal struggle with the fear and this asssss-pect of life, so when you make the right choice, you don’t need to be all hot dog about it. No, what you gotta do is help other people get to where you are, and then continue on the path of self-evolution and self-actualization by improving just a little every day. Ohhh yeah.”

  When the werewolf finished talking, he glanced at me again and then flexed his arm muscles. “I’m going to take Sherman to get his clothes, and you all are gonna get all warmed up with a mile run. Yeah. When we come back we will start the training.”

  The students stood from their desks with one motion and then filed out the door. The giant werewolf gestured to me with a massive clawed finger, and I followed him back into his office.

  “Chicken hawks can't be walking around dressed like ducks. Confuses everyone. You look like a size small. Am I right?” he asked as he opened a closet door and started rummaging through a wood cabinet.

  “Yes. That is fine,” I said as I looked around the office. Every available space seemed to have a glittering wrestling trophy on it, and every inch of the wall had either a picture of Dr. King in wrestling attire or award ribbons.

  “Since you’re new at the school, I’m going to have to test your app-taa-tude for sports. I already have a good guess, but why don’t you put this on, and then meet me outside of the gymnasium by the track. It’s gonna be fun. Ohhh yeah,” the wolf said as he handed me a set of gym clothes.

  “Thanks, ummm, but I’m not really good at sports. Never have been. I don’t think you’ll want me on any of your teams. At my last school the teacher just let me sit and read because--”

  “Nothing means nothing,” he interrupted me with a stare of his dark sunglasses.

  “Nothing means nothing?” I asked, and my voice squeaked a bit.

  “You gonna be a nothing? Or are you gonna be the cream?”

  “The cream?”

  “It’s going to rise to the top. Oh yeah. Let me tell you something right now. Nothing means nothing, and the cream always rises. Maybe you’ve just never had someone tell you that you are the cream. Has anyone ever told you that they want your cream?”

  “Uhhhh.”

  “It’s because no one has told you that you can do it. You can be the cream, Sherman. You can rise to the top. You’ve just got to realize that it’s gonna be hard work. The kind of work that makes you a man. I’m not talking about showboating, or grandstanding work. I’m talking about the kind of work that a man does alone, with nobody watching. To make sure that his cream rises to the top. Oh yeah.” The wolfman pushed a clawed finger into the clothes I carried in my arms and then nodded to the door. “Locker room is that way. Yours is number eight, eight, eight. I’ll see you in the squared circle of life in a few minutes. We’re gonna make sure that you stretch first. Oh yeah.”

  I nodded to the giant werewolf and then walked out of the doorway, across the classroom, and into the room marked for boys. The place smelled surprisingly good for a locker room, and I found my locker a few feet by the door. It took me a minute to figure out how to reset the combination on the lock, but I was soon changed into the gym outfit and walking out into the area by the track.

  The air was a bit chilly, and I shivered a bit in my thin gym attire. The early morning fog was still lingering over the running track, and I only got the faint outline of the rest of the class making a lap on the far side. If this had been my old school, I would have just walked back inside the gym to read one of my mangas. No one would have even cared.

  It seemed like Dr. King did care, and his interest was making me more than a little nervous.

  My heart dropped when I saw the giant wolf standing out by the track. His back was to me, but the werewolf seemed to have sensed that I had come out of the locker room, even from a hundred yards across stadium, and he turned to beckon.

  “We are going to see what you’re made of, Sherman. Oh yeah. I’m thinking that you are going to go all the way to the tippy top! Just. Like. The. Cream.”

  “I don’t think you understand how--”

  “I’m gonna ask you a simple question.” Dr. King’s wolf face looked suddenly serious, and I wondered if he knew that Charlotte and I had been sent here to kill him.

  “Uhhhh. Yes?”

  “Do you wanna be a champion?”

  “Champion?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m thinking that you’ve got it. You’re fast. In here.” he tapped his skull with a clawed finger. “And in your bones. I also think you’ve got the juice in here.” He tapped on his chest where his heart was. “You just haven’t had anyone tell you that they believe in you. Oh yeah. Are you picking up what I am putting down?”

  “I have been a champion in video games. For the last three years, I’ve-”

  “But I’m talking about real life here, Sherman. I’m talking about wrestling.”

  “Wrestling?”

  “Oh yeah, kid-ohhhh. You’ve got the stuff. Now I wanna see your push up form. Can you give me ten of ‘em real quick like?”

  “I don’t think I can actually--”

  “Do it now!” He growled, and I felt my stomach spin with terror.

  I dropped to the black asphalt and tried to make a plank with my body. My back and stomach muscles started quivering almost instantly, and I did my best to lower myself to the ground without smashing my face.

  My nose came within a few inches of the asphalt, and then I pushed as hard as I possibly could through my shaking arms. I kind of leaned to the left for a second, and then I pushed harder with that arm and felt my heart start to gallop. A gasp of air left my lungs as soon as my elbows locked, and it felt like a torrent of lava was flowing through my entire body.

  One.

  I lowered myself again, and it felt like my triceps were going to catapult free of my elbows. My breath escaped from my mouth with an un-manly whine, and I pushed as hard as I could with my quivering noodle arms. Nothing happened for what felt
like an eternity, but then I slowly started to move away from the black pavement.

  Two.

  “Yeah. That’s the stuff. Can you squeeze that earth with your fingers? You gotta push through the pain if you want to be the duck that finds the cream and soars like an eagle into the tornado of darkness. Give me one more, but this time crush the land beneath your fingers. Oh yeah.” Dr. King’s voice was a low growl, and the tone made me think that I wouldn’t be able to tell him “no," without having to pay a hefty price.

  I lowered myself again, and my arms were trembling in a way that made me think they had become a superhuman blur of motion. Or maybe it was just that my vision was starting to lose focus, and I was having trouble seeing. His advice about squeezing the ground actually helped a bunch, but as soon as I hit the bottom of my movement, my arms locked up, and they just refused to move.

  “Push up! Be the chicken hawk that confuses the ducks with its greatness. Oh yeah!” The giant werewolf smacked the ground next to me, and it sounded like a clap of thunder. The suddenness of the smack startled me, and I pushed out my arms with terror. Every single cell in my body was screaming in agony, and I felt as if my stomach was about to cave in on itself.

  Three.

  “Get up. Now shake it out. Ohhh yeah. You did good Sherman,” the werewolf gym coach said as he reached up to adjust his ski goggle sunglasses with his fingertips.

  “I only did three,” I gasped after I stood on trembling legs. I kind of felt like I wanted to puke, but I forced the feeling down with a hard swallow. I still wasn’t used to people remembering my name, but I was even less used to doing pushups.

  “You did. It was a sure sign of your athletic prowess. You’ve got the juice to make the cream. I am sure of it.”

  “But, it was just three,” I said as my stomach spun. From the way he was talking; it sounded like the wolf-man was impressed.

  “It was the way you did them. It isn’t all about grandstanding or showboating, Sherman. You’ve got to be doing the things that need to be done when they need to be done, even when doing the doing isn’t easy because it hurts when you do it. Oh yeah. The squared circle isn’t always fair, but it blesses those that try with all of their might.” The man tapped on his wolf-skull when he pointed, and then gave me what I prayed was a smile and not an “I’m gonna eat you," expression. It was hard to tell with this guy.