He froze, and so did I. I always sat in the corner, and he had the seat beside me, so I couldn’t really get out without squeezing past him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Not without a plan anyway.
“Try and make me,” he growled at Bowman, curling his lips back.
He stood up and grabbed his things, tearing his bag with one long claw. He looked down at it in confusion for a second, like he couldn’t quite understand what was happening or where the long, sharp claw had come from. Hell, maybe he didn’t. His body was shifting all over the place in anxious little ripples. It was actually more terrifying to think that he had no control at all than to think that he was doing it on purpose to be intimidating.
“Wyatt!” Bowman’s large, round eyes got even bigger. “I will have to speak to the headmaster about this.”
“Fine. Who’s stopping you?” Wyatt shoved the door open and burst into the hallway, knocking someone over in the process. I ran after him, shooting a worried glance at the professor. She was already picking up the communication charm all professors kept in their classrooms—to call Toland and a bunch of big fourth-years, I hoped.
“Watch where you’re going!” Wyatt was screaming at a smallish, nervous-looking man when I caught up to him.
“You ran into me,” the nervous man stuttered. I gave him points for balls, but I wished he would’ve just taken the hit and walked away. He was poking a bear, whether he realized it or not.
“Then you shouldn’t have been standing there!” Wyatt shoved him, then shifted into a rough-skinned tangerine dragon. He looked more like an iguana than a classic dragon, but he spewed flames, so he was dragon enough.
The small guy squeaked, morphing into a little armored demon—kind of like an armadillo. As Wyatt drew his head back, preparing to unleash a ball of flame, all I could think was that the little guy was about to get boiled alive in his own plated skin.
“Hey, Wyatt!” I pushed between them, shoving the large iguana-dragon just a bit. I let the hypnotic hum of persuasion enter my voice, focusing on what I wanted him to do. “Leave him alone. He isn’t worth your time.”
He growled, and his eyes focused on me. Shit. Wrong move.
“You’re calm,” I told him, throwing every bit of persuasion I could muster into it, but he wasn’t listening anymore. The fire he’d built up to cook the armadillo man exploded through the air in my direction. I ducked in the nick of time, only losing a few hairs in the process. I rolled away, then scrambled to my feet and tried again.
“You’re calm,” I told him, holding my hands out. “You want a nap. You’re so tired.”
Or not.
He roared and charged at me, swiping me aside before I could react, his long claws slicing deep into my flesh. It hurt like a bitch, tearing a ragged cry from my lips as I stumbled back.
Goddamn it. Are you fucking kidding me?
My poor torso had been through so much shit just in the last year, up to and including having a piece of rebar shoved clean through my body. It pissed me off, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.
I was bleeding freely; the entire front of my raggedly torn shirt was soaked through in seconds. My body felt numb and cold at the same time, an
d I vaguely recognized that I was going into shock. I couldn’t reach the parts of my mind that knew how to persuade.
“Stop,” I gasped, holding up a hand again as if that would stop him.
Wyatt gave no sign that he’d even heard me. The orange dragon bore down on me, building another inferno in his chest. I crawled backward, trying to ignore the blinding pain in my chest and abdomen as the deep gashes pulled and shifted with the movement.
The corners of my vision were going dark. All I could see in front of me was that ugly, bumpy tangerine snout.
Then, out of nowhere, a flash of emerald darted between me and the charging dragon. Twin spouts of fire blasted, and iguana-Wyatt bellowed in anger and pain as the new dragon’s fireball left singe marks on the side of his body. The other dragon roared.
Kingston. Thank fuck.
“Enough!” The sonic boom of Toland’s voice radiated through the hallway.
Kingston stopped, crouching on the floor between me and Wyatt. But Wyatt was too far gone for even Toland’s authority to reach him. He reared his head, working on another fiery blast.
He never had the chance to unleash it.
Through hazy, wavering vision I watched as Toland and three other staff members disabled Wyatt with surgical precision and efficiency. Paralytic spells and transmogrification spells worked together, followed by a levitation spell. In less than a minute, Wyatt was back in his human form, frozen solid, hovering above the professors and the students cowering in the hallway.
Toland gave a sharp gesture, turning on his heel to stride away. The professors followed him, with Wyatt’s body floating docilely behind them. The little group passed me on their way to wherever they were taking him, and I strained my ears to pick up the low words they murmured to each other as they left.
“Is it the atmosphere? Is he turning evil?”