Azure Dragons (Supernatural Shifter Academy #2) - G. Bailey Page 0,45

concerned expression on his face, while Ruby has already shifted into her dragon form: a deep scarlet red with vibrant green eyes. Shade and Landon have already gotten up, and are both halfway transformed already, while Silas, in spite of the look of concentration on his face, is still struggling to shift, still not having fully recovered from the Academy’s experiments.

“What the fuck is going on?” Shade yells to Josie, who’s already moving forward, rushing to herd the panicked students out the door.

“I have no idea,” she replies, not looking back. “We-”

But she’s cut off by the sound of screams coming from the other end of the hallway. I whip my head around to see what looks like a fight breaking out amidst the fire: students are still desperately trying to escape, but a group of armed humans has emerged from one of the back rooms. They’re dressed in combat gear, armed to the teeth, locked in battle with the amateur shifters as magic, fire, and smaller shock waves fly through the air, alongside bullets. I don’t recognise any of the humans as either politicians or security guards, and there’s something in their eyes that has a cold jolt of fear running through me: hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred. And whoever these people are, they’ve turned it on us.

“Get out of here!” Josie calls over her shoulder. She’s already deep in concentration, her hands up as she pushes a wave of psychic energy forward from her body; it slams into a couple of oncoming attackers, sending them flying back, but that doesn’t seem to deter them for long. They scramble to their feet and charge forward again, armed with knives and baseball bats. “Go! Get back to the Academy where it’s safe!”

“Like hell!” I yell back, digging for my shifter magic. It’s mostly students here, and their skill levels vary, but most of them are like us: amateurs. And these humans know it.

Frantically, I look around. I don’t see any other faculty fellows or professors; they must be on the upper floors. Reaching deep, I close my eyes for a moment, summoning the first form that comes to mind: my witch form. My body begins to buzz with magic, my skin taking on a red hue as my powers come to me and I move to stand between Silas and Hazel, who are now in their forms as well. “We need to help her hold them off!” I yell at them.

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Silas replies, flapping his reptilian wings and launching off the ground before unleashing a spray of fire down onto a couple of the humans. It seems to deter them for a moment, but I realise with a sinking feeling that the clothes they’re wearing seem to be fireproof; in an instant, the flames vanish, leaving them no worse for wear than they were before.

They planned this, I think, my eyes going wide.

“Move!” yells Shade, charging at one of the attackers in his wolf form. The man swings his baseball bat, but the wolf shifter knocks it out of the way, pinning him to the ground as he begins to rip at him with his teeth. I see Xander following suit out of the corner of my eye, tackling another human with his fangs bared. Ruby flies over to where Landon is standing, slamming a couple of the attackers with her wings; she must have seen that fire isn’t going to work on these guys.

Landon and Hunter rush forward, the siren shifter fixated on a couple of female humans as he lets out his grating scream while Hunter barrels into one of the others, knocking him off his feet. All around us, students and conference attendees are rushing for the doors, creating a bottleneck in their desperation to get away from the chaos.

“You need to go!” Josie screams at us, still weaving spells to hold off the next wave of attackers. I fall in beside her, raising my arms and letting loose a chaotic golden bolt of energy; I haven’t really gotten the hang of casting spells in witch form yet, and all I really know how to do is aim wildly and unleash, but whatever I do sends a couple of the humans flying. I grin with triumph only to feel something slam into me from my right, knocking me to the ground and breaking my concentration. Terrified, I snap back into human form as I grapple with a human woman in a kevlar