World builder, p.1
World Builder, page 1
WORLD BUILDER
SILVERWOOD ACADEMY
BOOK TWO
ID JOHNSON
Copyright © 2024 by ID Johnson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For Shanna
CONTENTS
1. Can I Come?
2. First Hunt
3. He’s a Vampire
4. Complications
5. Filling Them In
6. He Doesn’t Stop
7. Cemetery
8. Another Stop
9. Stuck in the Middle
10. Explaining to Graham
11. Are We Dating??
12. Something’s Strange
13. Looking for Sasha
14. This Isn’t Right
15. What’s That Sound?
16. Escaping Sasha
17. Angry Team
18. He’s Inside
19. Are We Still Friends?
20. We’re a Couple—Aren’t We?
21. Everyone Hates Me
22. A Date
23. All Alone
24. What Was That Noise?
25. Maybe Help Has Arrived
26. He Doesn’t Believe Me
27. Interrupted
28. Bloody Hell
29. This Has to Stop
30. Make Them Stop!
31. Another Hunt
32. Vampire Hell
33. Was That Real?
34. A Situation
35. Awkward
36. Together at Last
37. Did Everything Shift?
38. Where’s the Book?
39. A Tool
40. Who Was That Girl?
Also by ID Johnson
1
CAN I COME?
*Rachael*
The door to the staff lounge was closed. Rachael stood outside of it for several seconds, contemplating whether or not she should walk in. She could hear voices and knew that Graham, Jared, and Sammi were all in there. Tripp’s voice was distinguishable, too. Not every word was understandable, but they were definitely talking about what was going on in Baltimore, so she should probably just walk in and share what Ebony had just told her, but it seemed odd. Should she knock?
Raising her hand, she intended to let it fall on the door, but it opened the second her hand came up. For a moment, she thought she’d accidentally used her telepathy, but then she saw Graham standing on the other side. He raised his eyebrows above those beautiful lavender orbs. “Oh, I was just coming to look for you.”
“I was just about to knock.” She giggled nervously and let her hand fall.
“Come on in.” Graham pulled the door open and stepped aside, some sort of energy passing between them. It reminded Rachael of being on a first date with someone she really liked--only in this case, this was no date, and there were a ton of other people sitting around the table in the back of the room, papers and newspaper articles scattered about with various snacks and drinks interspersed.
“Have a seat, Rach,” Jared said, gesturing at a chair next to where he was sitting on one end of the table.
“Thanks.” She glanced around and took note of where everyone else was and saw that Marcy and Flint were also present. Sammi was only half glaring at her, which was an improvement. As Rachael sat down, Graham took the seat next to her, pulling his water bottle over from the other side of the table next to Marcy, so she assumed he’d been sitting there before.
“You need a drink or anything?” her trainer asked, a warm smile on her face.
“No, thank you.” She’d always liked Marcy, even before she met her in real life.
Tripp was sitting next to Sammi, directly across from Rachael. “Did you hear from one of your friends in Baltimore?”
“Yes. Ebony, my best friend, college roommate, co-worker at Merek and Merek… she just called. Her boss, my old boss, Frank Merek… he’s acting… weird.” She realized most of what she’d just said had come out a little less than perfectly coherent, but she assumed they’d be able to sort it out.
“Weird how?” Sammi asked. “I know plenty of weird people that don’t need paranormal intervention.”
“Well, she said he was pacing a lot, muttering to himself, rubbing his neck….” That sounded more like a person having a nervous breakdown than a victim of a vampire attack.
“So?” Sammi shrugged. “What does that have to do with us?”
Graham shifted next to her, and Rachael noticed he was giving Sammi a look that might’ve rivaled her own glower. Rachael appreciated him sticking up for her but pretended not to notice. “His house was broken into a few days ago. I don’t know all of the details, but Ebony said he was home at the time, that the perpetrators had just gotten their hands on him when the cops showed up, and they fled. I was just thinking… there have been so many attacks in Baltimore recently. Rex mentioned he saw something suspicious in one of the videos.” She looked at Tripp then, and he nodded. “What if… these guys were vampires, and he’s infected?”
“Did you say Frank Merek?” Flint asked, digging through a stack of what looked like police reports.
“Yeah.”
The trainer nodded and pulled out a few pieces of paper held together by a staple. “Yeah, it’s right here. Happened on the sixth around two in the morning. House was ransacked but nothing taken. The owner was found in a closet in the fetal position. He said the intruders had located him, one of them pulled him up by the shoulder, and then he blacked out.”
“Any wounds?” Marcy wanted to know.
“Trace amounts of blood on his shirt but no notable injuries.” Flint eyed the paper for a second longer before handing it over to Marcy, who was sitting next to him.
“Would there be puncture wounds?” Rachael asked.
“Not necessarily noticeable ones.” Jared had his hands folded in front of his face, deep in thought. “It depends on how long the vampire had their fangs in him.”
“And how deep,” Sammi added.
Rachael’s stomach felt queasy. The idea that Frank could be a vampire now, that he would have to be destroyed, made her light headed. “He has a family. Could they be in danger?”
“The incubation period is seventy-two hours,” Marcy reminded her. Of course, Rachel knew that. She’d determined that. “If it happened at two in the morning on the sixth….”
“Then we have about nine hours.” Graham folded his arms.
“I guess we’re going out tonight, then.” Tripp had a grin on his face that Rachael would’ve considered inappropriate if she didn’t know him well enough to understand he meant no disrespect. Tripp liked hunting almost as much as he liked breathing.
“Can I come?” The question was out of Rachael’s mouth before she even thought about what she was asking. Protocol would dictate that she wouldn’t be able to go on any hunts at all for at least another six months. She’d just started her training, after all. There were plenty of students who’d been here longer than her who hadn’t been yet, not a real hunt anyway. Possibly on a practice procedure.
“Are you serious?” Sammi asked, her eyebrows knit together.
“I won’t get in the way. I just want to see.”
“You want to see us destroy your boss?” Marcy clarified.
“Old boss. And no, I probably don’t want to see that part. But I do want to see… make sure his family is okay. Hopefully, this is a false alarm.” She shrugged her shoulders. Begging would do her no good.
Graham looked around the table while Sammi shook her head in a resounding vote against Rachael’s proposition. The fact that anyone was even considering it made Rachael think there was something wrong with them.
“What if she gets in trouble?” Flint asked. “We haven’t even introduced that class to weapons yet. And she has no powers.”
“I do!” Rachael blurted, drawing everyone’s eyes again. “I do have powers.”
“You do?” Jared asked, his head cocked to the side.
“Yep. Watch this.” Rachael concentrated on a pencil sitting in the middle of the table. She raised her hand, and with every fiber of her being, willed the pencil to come to her. After a few seconds of nothing happening, she started to get frustrated, but remembered what Dr. Mellow had said about controlling her breathing. A few more seconds passed, and Rachael was about to give up when something moved.
It wasn’t the pencil, though. It was Sammi’s coffee cup. It tipped over, sending coffee splashing all over her shirt and dripping into her lap. “You have got to be shitting me!” she shouted, shooting back from the table so fast she almost slammed into the wall ten feet behind her.
“Oh no!” Rachael covered her mouth with both hands. “That’s not what I meant to do at all!”
Several of the others began to laugh while Tripp gathered some paper towels for his on-again/off-again flame. Graham used his own powers to right the cup and magically put the coffee back in it, all except for what had doused Sammi.
Seeing him gather liquid droplets and drop them into the container was incredibly impressive to Rachael. She’d never seen anything like that before and wondered if she’d ever be that powerful. “I’m really sorry, Sammi.”
“Yeah, you might wanna stick to using your hands for the foreseeable future,” the hunter suggested, tossing the sopping paper towels into the trash. “
“I vote yes.” Flint was covering his mouth with his hand to hide the fact that he was still laughing. “As long as she doesn’t do that to anyone else.”
“I’m with Sammi,” Tripp said. “Sorry, Rach. I think you’re great, but it’s too early.”
“Marcy?” Graham asked.
“Gosh, this is hard. I am impressed that you were able to move anything at all. And I know you’ve been working so hard in class. But I’d hate to see anything happen to you, and even though this should be relatively easy for the rest of us in the room to handle…. I’m sorry, hon. I’m gonna have to say no for now.”
“Dr. McCall?” Graham looked at Jared, and Rachael felt any hope of getting to go melt away. Even if Graham said yes, there was no chance Jared would.
Her history professor looked at her as if he was trying to determine the age of a relic found at an archeological dig. She swallowed hard, his stare beginning to penetrate her to the core. “Yeah. She should go.”
Rachael’s eyes widened. She hadn’t been expecting that. At all.
“That means we’re tied, and in the case of a tie, the senior staff member makes the decision--” Graham explained.
“Which is you,” Sammi said, glaring at him.
“Which is me.” Graham smiled at Rachael, and she felt her eyes bulging out of her head.
“Wait--I get to go?”
He nodded. “Yes, but keep it on the low down. No need for the other newbies to know.”
“You got it. Thanks, guys.” She could hardly contain her excitement at the opportunity to actually see a real hunt in person after only writing about them for so long.
“Something tells me we are going to regret this.” Sammi folded her arms over the coffee spot, getting her sleeve wet. She groaned and skulked off toward the door.
“See you at midnight, Sam!” Graham called after her.
She flipped him the bird over her shoulder and kept walking.
2
FIRST HUNT
*Rachael*
The ride to Baltimore didn’t take nearly as long in the middle of the night with Graham behind the wheel as it would have if Rachael had been driving herself. She was sitting in the very back of the SUV, next to Marcy, keeping her mouth closed. She hoped that they’d just forget she was there. The fact that Sammi was still obviously irritated as she sat in front of Rachael with her arms crossed told her that was a long shot.
Frank Merek lived in a nice house in the suburbs. The community wasn’t gated, but as they pulled in, there were plenty of signs that said they were being observed by the neighborhood watch and video monitoring. Neither of those precautions had helped identify who had broken into Frank’s home. While Rachael knew the hunters had methods of preventing anyone from recording them thanks to a device she’d invented that manipulated video cameras, there was always a chance someone might see them.
If the police showed up, there were ways to deal with that, too. All of the team members were licensed law enforcement officers. Their badges had been unquestionable in the world she’d invented, so she assumed they’d work here, too, even though this place looked an awful lot like the real neighborhood the real Frank Merek lived in. Being back out in the world she’d lived in for so long before she’d known about vampires was confusing.
Rachael just hoped they were able to get in, get out, and not have to answer to anyone. She usually wrote her plots that way. It was easier if the rest of the world never caught on to the hunters. But she hadn’t written this, so there was no way to know what was about to happen.
Graham stopped the SUV a couple of blocks from Frank’s house. Rachael had been there a few times for company parties. She recalled his bedroom was on the second story, in the far left corner of the house. His wife, Penny, was likely home, as well as their two kids. If Frank was in the bedroom, as he should be, it would be difficult to get him without waking Penny.
They didn’t intend to take him out, though, not necessarily. They’d have to see if he’d been infected or not. Hopefully, he was fine, and it was just stress causing him to act so unusual at work. Rachael had a feeling in her gut that wasn’t the case though. If Frank couldn’t pass the tests the team would put him through, they’d be forced to destroy him. There was no such thing as a good vampire.
The team double-checked their weapons and then silently stepped out of the van. Rachael followed. Graham had spoken to her briefly before they loaded up, saying he didn’t want to leave her alone in the vehicle, so she’d go along with them but stay outside. Normally, whenever an observer went on a hunt, the team left someone with them to keep them safe, but he hadn’t mentioned the plan for that yet.
She followed along with Marcy and Flint behind her. The hairs on her arms were standing on end as she contemplated exactly what she’d gotten into. This was a real vampire hunt! Rachael was actually walking along beside a team of vampire hunters on the way to potentially destroy a bloodsucker.
Having worked together for years, the team moved in on the house silently, not needing to speak to each other in order to get into position. They had ear pieces that allowed them to communicate when necessary, though. They also had body cams, and Graham had installed an app on Rachael’s phone that would allow her to watch.
Most of the team dispersed in different directions, leaving Rachael with Graham and Jared near the front driveway. Jared steered them over toward some high shrubs, and Rachael went along as chatter started on the earpiece. She had been instructed not to say a word unless she was in imminent danger, so she just listened as the other teammates scoped out the residence. Sammi and Tripp were already inside, having disabled the alarm and finding an unlocked window in the back of the house. Marcy was on the roof, and Flint was covering the back door.
“All right, Rach. You should be fine right here,” Graham said, surveying the area. If any of the neighbors were on watch, they were doing a piss poor job as no one had raised an alarm.
Her hands were shaking as she slid back into the shrubbery a bit. “Okay.” She wished she had a gun or something… just in case.
Sammi’s voice came through the earpiece. “Master is clear.” She took that to mean Frank wasn’t in his bedroom. Where was he?
“I’ve gotta go.” Graham was in a hurry to get in there. She could see him itching to rush off. He looked Rachael in the eyes and smiled. “See you in a few.”
She nodded, unable to find any words. Was he really leaving her here alone? She’d be fine--Frank wouldn’t hurt her, would he?
Graham patted her gently on the arm, nodded at Jared, and then headed off toward the house.
Rachael followed him with her eyes for a moment before she realized Jared wasn’t moving. “Are you…?”
“Staying? Yeah. We couldn’t leave you alone.”
“You drew the short straw?” she asked, only half kidding.
Dr. McCall smirked. “Nope. I volunteered.”
Rachael’s eyes bulged. In her ear, she heard Tripp’s voice. “Basement. Den. Second door on the left. Lock and load.”
“Lock and load?” Rachael whispered, not even having had a chance to respond to Jared’s confession yet. “Why would they…?”
“You know what that means, don’t you Rach?” He took a step closer to her, but not in an intimidating way. His eyes were wide with fascination. “You know a lot more about all of this than you’re letting on, right?”
She swallowed hard. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
