This time, she flashed us a grin. “I have two mates, both Dragons. Tyrez and Ash. I was first infected with the Dire virus, but have since been exposed to the Dragon virus, too. My Dragon is, therefore, rather fuzzy.”
My jaw had dropped open, so now I forced my lips to form words. “You were already a wolf, and they turned you into a Dragon?”
Right away, I was embarrassed at my temerity. And her grin did slip, just a bit, but she answered. “Yes. I’m both. A shifter’s bite transfers the virus. Humans and their hybrids are susceptible to infection, and once infected, it alters them.”
I stared. Somehow, this small detail had been omitted from the general shifter discussions. I was going to be training with these guys. Possibly bleeding on each other...
“No one told you that?” Zeke stared at me, his bushy eyebrows raised.
“It’s part of what you’ll learn in the Cryptid lore class,” Dani said. “But yes, that is true. And the virus has to be injected into your bloodstream, so it usually takes a bite to do it.”
My heart pounded. “So it can’t happen by accident?”
She shook her head. “Very unlikely.”
Zeke frowned. “But—you’re a shifter? Are you talented as well?”
Dani snorted. “I seem to be a triple whammy. Dire, Dragon, and also what they call a Mover.” She gestured lazily with one hand.
To our right, a planter that must have weighed three hundred pounds lifted into the air and spun in slow circles before she set it down again.
“You think I can do that?” I gasped, all worries about vicariously sprouting teeth and claws vanishing.
She tilted her head as she regarded me. “We’re not sure, yet, just what you can do. But we’ll start with this and see if you catch on.”
I shot Zeke a look. “Can you lift things with your mind?”
He grimaced. “I’ve thrown a few things around when I got mad. No way I could lift that planter, though.”
“Once you get some practice, you’ll be able to lift bigger things,” Dani assured him. “Telekinesis is really about visualization. You visualize where something sits and then imagine moving it. And it does.” Her gaze moved to me. “It can be used on large things or things at the cellular level. By envisioning the components that make up something, you can push those components apart.”
She was talking about using telekinesis to rip apart that shifter’s heart. My stomach churned as I thought about the feral Dire I’d killed. Was that what Cara thought I’d done?
“Okay,” Dani said. She pulled a series of golf balls out of her bag and arranged them in a row. “You are going to be sick of these effing balls by the time we are done,” she promised. “But everyone has to start somewhere.”
She turned to Zeke. “Visualize the golf ball. Try to imagine what it might feel like in your hand. The weight of it, and the shape...”
As she talked Zeke through his first official lesson, my heart refused to settle into a rhythm. This just didn’t feel right to me. But I had to trust that Cara knew what she was talking about.
Maybe it was just insecurity. Over the last two years, I’d reacquainted myself with what my body could do. How it moved, what its physical limits were. This academy was going to test those physical boundaries. But I really had no idea what my mind was capable of.
I guessed I was going to find out.
* * *
When the first shifters started appearing on the front steps, Dani called our efforts to a halt.
I couldn’t ever remember being so relieved. Despite intense coaching, and even attempting to get me to tap into emotions to unleash my inner kinetic self, I hadn’t managed to move a single golf ball. Not even a fraction of an inch.
Zeke, however, had displaced not just one, but three at a time. I tried to tell myself I was happy for him. But really, by the time we quit, I was feeling the first stirrings of true panic.
As I stood and rubbed the numbness out of my butt, Matt loomed up beside me and Dani excused herself. Zeke stood so close to me that I backed up a step until Matt fixed his stare upon him.
“I-I’ll see y-you later,” the young man stammered, before disappearing into the gathering group.
“You have to stop scaring off the locals,” I told Matt with some degree of exasperation. “Zeke is harmless.”
His hazel gaze assessed me, but he ignored both the comment and its implications. Instead, he went right for the ultimate never-go-there line. “You look right buggered.”
