Page 42 of Keeper of Death (Ouroboros Academy #1)

T he bear gave us a huge hint. With most of the traps disabled, we just needed to remove the two we were working on and the crystal finally appeared. One down, three to go. And we now had at least two magical weapons. Unless the wink from the naked bear was just that he got turned on I faced him head on instead of running and not that I was right.

Boys were stupid when their dicks took over.

Khalid and Liam joined us. I expected ingredients from Khalid and information from Liam, but it was the exact opposite.

“Listen, I still don’t know who or what your familiar is and I’m not opposed to stealing in some cases. Your familiar pinching someone’s takeout is a beautiful thing. Also, your familiar might have a fucked up sense of right and wrong since they are stealing people’s takeout, but they are also fair because they picked someone who ordered enough for all of us. It’s a curry, so they have good taste,” Liam moaned.

“I’m not well versed in magical familiars, but if it’s escalated from fruit from a garden to full meals someone paid for and they got enough for all of us, then I’m pretty sure they liked the food you left for them,” Khalid said.

“I mean, why, when they can steal a bag of takeout that big?” I asked.

I didn’t really get any of this. Especially not Liam cackling like a madman.

“You’re an asshole,” Lucian said.

“No thumbs,” Liam gasped. “It wasn’t one of the bears because it’s not safe for them. Might have been a badger, but that would be out of place, too. Most animals aren’t going to steal food unless it’s out in the open to take or easy to get into. This was all for you but I doubt they’d be upset if you left a little of the meat out.”

“What happened after we separated?” Khalid asked.

Lucian and I filled them in on the bears and that we had two magical weapons for just in case. They all agreed with me that the other supernaturals here were trained enough to realize that the game had changed and they needed to adapt. Getting the crystals were going to have fewer obstacles from the seniors on the supernatural side, but a lot of unknown shit from reincarnated gods we wouldn’t know much about.

“What did the animals say?” I asked.

“Oh, lots, but they don’t communicate how you think. They have to see you to communicate and they can talk to me in my head through images, but they talk to each other through smells and noises. They can smell and sense someone is dangerous, but nature is honest and the animals don’t really understand deception and lies. They saw something they didn’t understand and they can’t really explain it.

“They show me their thoughts in pictures, but they can’t broadcast what they’ve seen and I can’t mind meld with them. There are two people here with us that we should avoid and they felt very badly they couldn’t show me exactly who they were. All they could tell me was that we should avoid everyone unless they are supernaturals.”

Which should have been easy, but three guys were crashing our meal and I was guessing they were reincarnations like us. If I had to describe them, they were just golden. All golden.

“How’d you get takeout here?” the biggest one moaned. “Those rations aren’t enough calories or protein and I’m not even doing HIIT training today.”

“Piss off,” Liam said.

The massive blond looked shocked Liam was so rude to him. Like, it had literally never happened to him before in his life.

“I wasn’t asking for your food. Just where you got it. We’re also looking for someone.”

“Magic. And we never saw them. Stop eyeing my curry. I can make a shiv out of a carrot and a sock,” Liam grumped, shoveling food in his mouth.

The food was good, but Liam, apparently, took his curry very seriously. If the big guy asked for a bite, I had a feeling we were going to find out if Liam was just talking out his ass about all the random objects he could make something to stab someone with.

“No, seriously, our teammate is missing and we’re worried. Have you seen a tiny girl with blonde hair?”

I drew in a breath. Were they seriously asking us to help find her so they could finish the job? And why wasn’t my new magic setting off a million warning bells.

“Hold my curry,” Liam said, shoving it at Lucian. “If there’s even a grain of rice missing, I can make a shiv out of a spork and a piece of Naan. I’ll stab you in the neck and regret nothing.”

Lucian just nodded and took the curry without comment. I wasn’t going to stop whatever happened next and it didn’t look like Khalid planned to, either. Liam just exploded. He was tall and muscular, but more like a swimmer.

The blond that asked about Lola was probably the biggest man I’d seen in my entire life. He had muscles on his muscles. Liam just started punching and as big as the blond was, it didn’t look like he’d been in a brawl before. He also looked completely shocked Liam was trying to kick his ass.

“What the fuck?”

Except something wasn’t adding up.

“Liam, wait!”

Liam stopped, but he punched the blond in the kidneys before he stopped for good.

“Did you want to hit him, too, lass?”

“No, I really don’t think he knows why you’re hitting him.”

“I don’t!”

“I’ve met psychos like him before. He doesn’t know why I’m beating him because he doesn’t think he did anything wrong.”

“Check their hands,” Khalid said. “They had to bare knuckle it out here. It would leave a mark.”

“I’ve got super healing and the rest of you heal fast. You saw what my blood did. They could have stolen blood from one of mine because I don’t see any marks on their hands.”

“Don’t jostle my curry. I’m serious about the spork to the neck.”

“Maybe you should be stabbing them instead of threatening me over your curry.”

“Why are we stabbing us?”

Lucian was right. The three golden men didn’t have a single mark on their fists like they’d beaten the shit out of a woman. Lucian healed instantly from the arrow in his leg, but we didn’t know enough about how we healed now to know if they’d done it and healed.

“Listen, I’m Ivar. I knew who I used to be as soon as I got the vision in the pool. I saw lightning hit a hammer. I was Thor in my first life. Thor was a hero and I’m not a bad guy, either. Did something happen to Lola? Because if it did, I’m mad about it, too.”

Someone beat the shit out of Lola and I didn’t see why she would lie about it. It wasn’t one of the supernatural students because we already knew they didn’t want to hurt us. We didn’t really have time to get to know anyone else long enough to piss them off like that.

I’d been stressed ever since I got kidnapped, so I didn’t really pay attention to most of the faces. I knew Khalid, Liam, and Lucian because I’d talked to them and now, we were a team. The others were because I’d talked to them during the trials.

It would be like that for all of us. No one had spent enough time around Lola to be mad enough to hurt her like that except these men. And you didn’t know she felt weird to be around unless she was close to you.

So, it didn’t make sense that anyone else would have beaten her. But they also didn’t feel like evil men.

“We don’t know enough,” I said. “We don’t know enough about any of this to go around hurting anyone. Someone beat the shit out of Lola and it makes sense it was them. She couldn’t have done that to herself and she’s with people she asked to go with. Everyone can get their revenge and punch each other when we’ve figured out who we are and why we got reincarnated.”

“If Thor got reincarnated as a villain, I’m going to cry. Give me the curry. I need to eat my feelings,” Liam said.

“I’m not a—You know what, I don’t know why Lola said we hurt her, but we didn’t. I know this because I wouldn’t and if someone on my team tried, I’d stop them. I realize it’s our word against hers and we have no proof. I’m going to get our crystals and find that proof.”

“Go do that then because that girl had the shite beaten out of her and I’m still feeling stabby with my spork,” Liam said.

Khalid and I shared a look after they left because out of all of us, we could get the best reads on people, but it was Lucian who spoke.

“Khalid had a good point. Whoever hit Lola would have left something on her—blood, skin, whatever. I couldn’t smell anyone on her.”

“Me, either,” Khalid said.

“Listen, I know where you’re going with this, but none of you can imagine how fucked up my family is. They started grooming me to do that to someone by the time I was six. Lola didn’t do that to herself. Someone much bigger than her who knew what they were doing did.”

I didn’t think he would stab me with a spork, and he was done eating anyway, so I grabbed Liam and hugged him. My childhood was shitty, but his was worse. He grabbed me and squeezed me so hard I could barely breathe.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

“It’s not that,” I said. “I don’t think Lola did that to herself, either. Lucian smells magic in blood. Khalid is Anubis. He used to protect souls on their way to the underworld, so I’m guessing what he’s sensing around people is their soul. I don’t even know what I’m feeling but it’s something. We get nothing around Lola.”

“She doesn’t give off any scent,” Lucian said. “Like, not even other peoples’. I should have been able to pick up who hurt her and been able to place it to a person when I met them.”

“Me, too, to an extent. I agree with Sage. It’s probably souls I’m picking up on, but I also have jackal senses. I can’t smell blood like Lucian does, but it has a scent. Lola was covered in blood and dirt and I couldn’t pick up any of it.”

“I think that’s why someone hurt her,” I said. “Ivar and his team were around her the longest, so it makes sense it was them. None of them feel like bad people, though, and when they joined us, I could tell they weren’t wanting to fight.”

“No, you’re right,” Khalid said. “Ivar just feels wholesome, but they were the only ones who could have done it.”

“What about the other two?” Liam asked. “I can sense everything about animals and nature, but people, not so much. Ivar did all the talking. It could have been them and he really didn’t know.”

“I didn’t help him because he might have beaten a tiny girl, but the massive one smells like the bears we met, so I’m guessing he’s their original,” Lucian said.

I blew out a raspberry.

“Since I don’t even know what pantheon I’m from, I can’t guess what anything means. They didn’t want to fight, and I don’t really sense violence from any of them. But that could just be because they aren’t feeling like that right now.”

“And I know what pantheon I’m from and who I am, but I don’t know what I’m doing. If it was Ivar and his team, I don’t think they will bother us now that they know Liam will fight back. If it’s not, they are going to want to prove it wasn’t, so you’ve got their team, our team, and Radames’s team who know someone got hurt and are on the lookout for bad guys.

“We’ve got one crystal, and we need to focus on the other three. We don’t know enough about our magic, so we really need to focus on getting back to the castle and handing this off to people who know who they are and how to use their magic. If we all got reincarnated because of someone out here with us, we aren’t the ones to figure that out. And if someone dangerous is out here, then we need to finish as soon as we can,” Khalid said.

Yeah, I agreed. It was starting to feel much too open out here.