“Yeah? So what? We got guns. Must be an old quarry or something around here,” Jetta said.
“You’ve got guns? What about the school rule?” I asked, my relief gone.
“It specifically says no guns in the school. Doesn’t say we can’t have a truckload in the parking lot. Which we do. What do you expect? We aren’t all super witches or super soldiers. You honestly think Mack and I would attend a school with werewolves and disarm ourselves?” she asked, frowning at me like I might be brain damaged.
“Okay, okay, I didn’t think it through,” I said. Caeco who hadn’t even flinched at Jetta’s pronouncement, instead looked up from wherever she’d gone mentally.
“Declan, do you know what reactive armor is?” she asked.
“Ah, no,” I answered.
“On tanks?” Mack asked, sitting down on my other side with a heaping plate of bacon and hash browns.
“Exactly,” Caeco said.
“Sure, but why are we talking about it, and where were you when I woke up?” he asked, directing the last part at me.
“He was training… with Tatiana Demidova, Stacia Reynolds, Chris Gordon, and that giant vampire dude, Arky or whatever,” Jetta said.
“What?” he almost yelled.
“And she was in your room this morning to wake him up,” Jetta added, stealing a piece of his cherished bacon.
“Tatiana or Stacia?” he asked.
“Tatiana,” I said, but before I could say any more, Ashley and a tired-looking Ariel arrived.
“What’s going on?” Ashley asked.
So I spent several minutes explaining my morning. Mack sat mouth agape and the two girls gave each other a meaning-filled look.
“That explains a lot,” Ariel said, poking at her cereal.
“Like?” Caeco prompted.
“Ariel had bad dreams last night,” Ashley said.
“And?” Jetta asked.
“Many of my precognitive visions occur while I sleep. Some happen in daytime, but the bulk of them are in dreams. Last night, I had awful dreams of people fighting outbreaks in Germany and Turkey. Chris and Tatiana were not there to help,” she said, looking wrung out.
“You see the actual demon outbreaks?” Caeco asked.
“I sometimes see them hours or days in advance, other times minutes. Last night was, I think, the minutes kind.”
“You’re saying people died last night because Chris and Tanya came here to train me?” I asked, horrified.
“Looks like,” Ashley said, giving me a serious look.
“I didn’t ask them to. I didn’t even know they were coming,” I protested.
“Of course not, Declan,” Caeco said, shooting Ashley a look of her own. “They can’t be everywhere and there are always outbreaks that they can’t cover. But do you understand what this means?” she asked me.
“I’m responsible for people dying?” I replied.
“No, you dope,” Caeco answered, giving me a sympathetic look. “It means that Chris and Tanya feel your training is so important that they have to handle it personally, even if it means missing some outbreaks.”
“If it helps, Oracle’s PortalSafe devices closed the gates very quickly… at least in my dreams. It’s just that no one can handle these things as fast and smoothly as Chris’s group,” Ariel said.
“So we need to up your game as fast as possible, Declan,” Caeco continued. “Back to my comment on reactive armor.”
“It’s explosives sandwiched between armor plates that go off when an antitank round hits. The explosive either disrupts the plasma jet of a shaped warhead or the penetrator rod, if it’s that kind,” Mack explained.
“Exactly. So here’s my idea. What if you built your shields to do something similar? Either with electricity or just kinetic power or what-have-you. A shaped charge sends a plasma jet at something like five miles per second, but the reaction is as fast or faster.”
“So no matter how fast a vampire or were is, if they attack me, my shields blast them back?” I asked.
“Exactly,” she said. “You should give it some thought while you’re at class, then later, before dinner, we’ll try it out.”
“And we can shoot you, too?” Jetta added, with more enthusiasm than I felt was appropriate.
Chapter 26
Website Design was a blur, as I was either doodling thoughts on my shielding or wondering if innocent people were dying while I was sitting here in class.
After class, I followed my normal routine to head to the Student Center for lunch. A familiar brogue assaulted me as I was ordering a sub sandwich.
“And are ye thinking of eating the whole bloody thing yerself, are ye?” came from behind me.
“Hi Ryanne. And yes I am. It’s only a sub,” I said.
“Only a sub, he says. Declan, if I ate like you lads, me ass would look like two bulldogs in