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psychic powers to push others around.
    As if on cue, Stone shoved his girlfriend, Casey, back when she moved to check on him, and growled ferociously at her.
    Casey screwed her face up as she twisted her arm out of his fierce grip. “Ugh! Hope you die from whatever rabies ails you, Stone.”
    Stone hissed at her, then grimaced at Nick. “What you looking at, trailer park?”
    Not much.
    But that made Nick curious about one thing.
    â€œHey, Bryn … if the Were-Hunters break into their alternate forms, how much human would be left in them?”
    She glanced over to Stone. “In theory, especially in the case of Stone, those who have human hearts would remain cognizant of their behavior and in control of themselves.” Her gaze went to Alex Peltier. “Those who are Katagaria…” They were the ones who held animal hearts and weren’t as human as their Arcadian cousins.
    â€œLet me guess. We’d be on their menu?”
    â€œLike Brian on Scott,” she said, using the name of the football player who’d taken a bite out of his best friend after he’d played Madaug’s demon-enchanted Zombie Hunter game. “But we do have enough Squires here that they should be able to quell them before that happens.”
    â€œThe should in that sentence doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in me.”
    She laughed before she turned toward LaShonda to discuss homework.
    The demon sense inside Nick picked up on something. He wasn’t sure what. But he’d learned from past encounters to pay heed to that prickly sensation. It was worse than Spidey sense.
    Especially with the weather outside so unnatural while he felt it. It was just such a state as this that had heralded the arrival of Zavid when the Aamon had been sent after him. And not to play Parcheesi and watch videos.
    Again, he felt that weird slowdown of time before everything sped up like some kind of computer game lag.
    What the heck?
    His vision darkened in that peculiar way that let him know he no longer saw the world around him as a human being. He was now viewing the world with his perspicacity.
    That wasn’t unusual.
    Nah. What freaked him was the sight of the odd creatures moving through his classmates and around them as if searching for something very specific. Huge and birdlike, they reminded him of mummified plague doctors that were armed with adamantine sickles and wearing black cavalier hats and saturated in blood.
    Invisible to the rest of his class and teachers, they paused and turned in his direction. Then, in the next heartbeat, they headed straight for him .

 
    CHAPTER 3
    Ready to battle, Nick stood up on the bleachers as two of Satan’s plague doctors came up to sniff at him while four more hung back, unseen and undetected, to float around his classmates like freaked-out Kabuki dancers. The one thing he’d learned over the last couple of years while dealing with preters was to be ready for anything.
    But don’t start nothing with them until you had to.
    Though to be honest, it was really hard to not shove them out of his personal space. Especially when they practically buried their wrapped, bloody beaks in his armpits.
    Not to mention the other no-zone of his body they were headed for.
    â€œNick, don’t move.”
    He saw Kody’s ethereal form on his right. What are these things? he projected his thoughts to her.
    â€œZeitj ä gers.”
    I just love it, cher, when you say things like I ought to know what they are.
    One of them rudely poked his shoulder.
    He barely caught himself before he taught the hideous thing some manners.
    â€œJust relax, Nick. I don’t think they’re here for you.”
    Don’t think or don’t know?
    Before Kody could answer, Ms. Pantall stood up to glare at him from the lowest bench. “Nick? Do you have a problem?”
    He slid his gaze to the huge sickle that was still coated with the blood of the last victim