"Sup, ladies," Alice said after getting into our room, seeing me on top of Casey. "You better not be planning to do that cause I'm sleeping here from now on."
"Don't you have a room?" Casey said, a bit annoyed.
"There's no way I'll sleep with that crow."
"Then ask Sinna if you can share a room with her," I suggested, making her blush.
Now that's new.
Casey and I exchanged eye contact, and we were probably thinking the same thing.
"W-Why would I do that?" She stuttered a bit, trying to act cool, but we had already got into her.
"You already asked, didn't you?" Casey provoked.
"No, I did not." Alice looked down like she had more to say in the matter. "I kinda planned on doing so, but she went back to her dimension."
We went silent for a moment before I spoke up and said that it was okay if she slept with us.
"You have no idea how much I love you guys right now. I thought about staying in Mason's and Avery's room but you know how seriously Mason takes the whole good vibes thing and apparently I am not in a good mood right now," she said, jumping on our bed and hugging the both of us. "Though we all know that's just an excuse for them to be alone and f-"
"Okay, anyways," Casey cut her off and got Alice's grip out of us. "You're not sleeping on this bed."
"Figured as much." Alice hopped out and went back to the door. "I'll bring a mattress, don't worry."
She left and soon came back with a mattress, placing it on the floor.
We all said our goodnights and went to sleep. We were all tired from training and there was still a long way to go.
-- -- -- --
"Okay, what's in for today?" Mason asked while we all had breakfast.
"Training as usual," Saria answered. "We're also thinking about working on some ways of contacting other supernaturals and also hunters and try to spread the word of what we are doing."
"Yup," Troian said. "I'll try to record a message and send it first to some families who I think may be more receptive and then to the rest of the people."
"How are we going to know if they actually want to join and are not trying to trick us?" Avery asked.
"Truth spell, nothing to worry about," Saria said.
The witches really had it all, huh?
"Hey, if you don't mind me asking," Alice spoke up. "Why don't you turn Troian into a witch? Or why don't Marina turn Lucy into a werewolf?"
"Genetics don't allow us to do that. Hunter's can't be turned," Marina explained. "But after mating, they do stop aging. It's quite interesting."
"So hunters are humans but also not?"
"Precisely. That's why we can tell that they're hunters and how they can tell we're supernaturals. It's like there's something on them that grants this different vision of the world."
"And that's why we haven't been found out yet," Avery said. "Or else the supernatural world wouldn't be a secret anymore."
We all went silent after that. It's crazy when you think that such a dangerous secret is inches from being uncovered but also hidden so well for the same age as the humans have existed.
We finished eating before training. Troian was recording a message alongside Dana and Kyle since he had equipment in his dorm for being a media student and the rest of us kept dueling.
At some point, we decided to take a break and asked Saria about the Thumrenon's stone, since she and Sinna were trying to do something about it.
"Salem, Samantha, and Serena are dealing with other stuff, so they're trusting us with the stone," she explained. "We're trying to develop a spell so that we can use the stone as a, well, "drainer". We cast the spell, and it drains the magic from the people we want it to drain instead of affecting our own, so if the hunters try to do something, we'll be able to counter them."
"Sounds hard," I said as if it wasn't obvious.
"It is, but it'll be worth it if it works. We don't have much clue about what they have against us or how much magic they have stored."
We finished talking and went back to training, and after we were done, something passed the portal.
Other hunters.
There were five of them, so it wasn't a surprise when we pretty much annihilated them.
Saria tried interrogating like the other day and found nothing, but this time the hunters had some gadgets on them.
"This is the bomb they used back in the dorm," I said while lifting it.
"It reeks of magic, but more than that." Saria took it into her own hands. "It has a spell in it, but they'd need a witch to do it."
"So what you're saying is that..."
"They have a witch with them. They're either working together or forcing them to help."
"Well, we have to admit that we're a bit screwed."
"Hey, remember this?" Troian said while lifting a crossbow and showing it to Saria.
"How could I forget?" The witch scoffed. "That thing was almost the death of me."
After a moment I recognized the crossbow. It was an old object that belonged to the Soilés. They had plenty of ancient objects like that. A hit from that crossbow could knock out any witch, no matter how old or powerful.
The legends say that a hunter mated to a witch asked them for the object, and only God knows what it took to make that kind of enchantment. And after that? The hunter killed the witch with that same crossbow.
Silas always thought that it was an amazing story but, for me, it never made sense. Why in the world would a witch do something like that?
I cringed at the thought and helped the others check the other stuff out. They still had nothing that was extremely dangerous to vampires, which was great, but knowing that they had stuff that could make werewolves unable to heal and witches weaker was enough to make me feel small. Unfit.
The routine from the other night was the same we followed today, and soon we all went to bed.
We spent the rest of the week training and receiving attack attempts since Saria felt that it was better if we kept the portal open and took turns keeping an eye on it so we could try to gather more information.
Every day a new group of hunters would show up and their strength would be grander than the last group, but we still could take care of it, especially with Troian and I fighting them.
At some point of the week, we wrote a message, a challenge, to Jace. Troian had hacked into the Soilés system and also in the other hunter families she had mentioned to send the message she recorded and Casey's challenge to the gel boy.
It was Thursday night when we sent the challenge, saying that the pack wanted to avenge me for what the twins did. If he was good enough, he'd bring only three more hunters and they'd have a fair fight. We may also have mentioned how weak and pathetic he'd be if he couldn't manage to win a fair fight and hid behind his younger sisters.
Friday morning, we had an answer. They'd meet tonight in the woods for a fair encounter, a duel to the death.
Jace probably thought he had slipped in a pot of gold.
They were probably sending those hunters to check if they could do any damage, and fighting against only a pack of wolves was easier than fighting them alongside witches and Troian.
Little did he know he was about to see dead people walking.