Insidious Winds by Rain Oxford Page B

to find
Professor Watson about snow in January? Go look.”
    “Watson should be wrapping up his last class now,”
Darwin said. Becky nodded and ran back out the door. “Are we really going out
there?”
    “Weren’t you the one that said the air is upset?”
    “The what ’s upset?” Marcus asked.
    “Maybe you should go wait upstairs. This place is not
safe for you.”
    He scoffed. “No way! What am I, twelve?”
    I sighed, but he had a point. Darwin sniffed him and
frowned, so I pushed him ahead of me. “I’ll explain in a minute.” We went
outside. It was supposed to be in the very low twenties, but the wild wind made
it feel twenty below. I zipped up my leather jacket, which was great at cutting
the wind, but not at protecting my face from frostbite.
    “What the hell?!” Darwin yelled, clutching his hood
around his face until only his mouth was visible.
    It wasn’t the wind that was so supernatural. Snow
blew quite violently… but not on us. Although the wind was strong, there was an
invisible barrier around the castle grounds that stopped the snow. It was past
sunset and the glow from the windows of the castle and dorms seemed to clash
against the snow and clouds.
    The noise drew students and professors out of the
castle and the dormitory until the majority of the university’s population
stood outside. Suddenly, the wind changed direction to surround the campus and
formed a massive tornado. Trees were uprooted and one crashed into the ground
before me, but the space inside the tornado, which included the castle,
dormitory, and the greenhouse, was relatively calm.
    “Devon, what the hell is going on here?” Marcus
asked.
     
    *          *          *
     
    Although the eye of the storm wasn’t that bad, we
were at risk of flying debris and the sound of the wind was deafening. “Devon,
this is unnatural,” Darwin yelled, barely audible.
    I knew it was, but whatever this was, it was
affecting Darwin. I turned back to the castle and saw Hunt, Vincent, and
Flagstone standing in the stone courtyard. When Remington approached her father
to speak to him, Flagstone wrapped his arms around her and pulled her away.
Vincent and Hunt made a motion with their hands, but other than a short burst
of light, nothing happened.
    Lightning struck in the dark matter of the tornado,
which was enough to convince many of the students to get back inside. I barely
heard the scream and had no idea where it came from, so I let out my power,
searching for fear instead of a particular mind.
    And I found it. The greenhouse was too close to the
dangerous winds, and there were people in it. I backed out of their minds and
connected with Darwin and Henry. “ Darwin, watch out for Marcus and get him
inside. Be gentle; he’s human. Henry, with me .” I didn’t have to look to
know they would do as I said and neither of them asked about Marcus being
human. They trusted me.
    I was halfway to the greenhouse when my instincts
fired up. Before I could get down, Henry crashed into me in his shifted form.
He growled when I tried to stand, then made a painful yelp as he was thrown off
me. I climbed to my feet and turned to check on him, but he was already
sprinting to the greenhouse. By the time I reached it, six students were
scrambling out the door. I moved aside for them to go through and then entered.
    The first thing I noticed was that the glass panels
of the ceiling were broken. The second was the three students in the far
right-hand corner; a first-circle male vampire, second-circle female vampire
named Misty, and a first-circle male shifter were all huddled under the long
metal counter against the entire back wall. Henry blocked me from getting
further into the building and growled at something I couldn’t see.
    “What is it?” The instant the words were out of my
mouth, a glass panel in the wall on the left blew out. Henry snarled and became
invisible. I reached out with my magic and sensed something extremely