Wolf Dreams

Chapter 1-3

“DR. BLACKBURN, ARE you alright?”

The name being spoken wasn’t mine, but I didn’t swivel to correct the speaker behind me. Instead, it was the silent man attached to the fang that snagged my attention and refused to let it go.

Unlike the body I’d recently inhabited, this tooth bearer was male instead of female. His features were craggy, his gaze so piercing it made me shiver despite the room’s sub-tropical heat. And was that a thin but very obvious scar completely encircling his neck?

Vaguely, I noted another stranger roughly the same age—early thirties—moving forward as if to assist me. This was the speaker, the one who was even now attempting to create a pocket of breathing space with me at its center. I appreciated the gesture and might have settled back into it if the chatter of surrounding students hadn’t spurred me into action.

“Do you think she’s okay?”

“What happened? I wasn’t looking...”

“Somebody call 911.”

Hospital visits never led in good directions. My father had lost faith in my ability to amount to anything after one memorable hospital visit. It wasn’t such a long shot to think the university might come to the same conclusion if my boss realized I popped three-times-a-day, maximum-dose anxiety meds to silence the voices in my head.

So I found my way to my feet and stepped away from the man who hovered above me. Then I raised my voice and regained control of the class.

“Nobody call 911,” I countered, forcing out a laugh that sounded like a mix between a pack-a-day smoker and the last gasp of an ailing hyena. “That embarrassing display of brain freeze was simply the result of low blood sugar. If you learn nothing else from my class, please write this down—always eat a complete breakfast before going to work.”

I think I actually saw someone recording my words of wisdom at the edge of the mob of students, so I didn’t blame the craggy-faced stranger for his snort. This was the most amusing part about being a professor. At my best, these students thought I was some combination of their mother and an all-knowing soothsayer. It was only when I assigned homework that certain students lost the rose-tinted glasses they usually perched on the bridge of their nose.

Right now, unfortunately, I was far from my best, and rose-tinted glasses were in short supply in the classroom. Which meant it was time to truncate the final lecture and send these students away with the handout I’d offered to the class’s least pleasant member a few moments before.

“It’s been a pleasure teaching all of you,” I lied. “Have a wonderful holiday. Grab a paper from the stack on your way out.”

I tensed, fully expecting some reaction to the bombshell waiting for them on those handouts. But I wasn’t prepared for the volume of Patricia’s shriek.

Neither, apparently, were the strangers in my classroom. Because even as Patricia bellowed her disapproval of the final exam changing into a five-page paper, the more ordinary of the two men yanked aside his suit jacket, hand landing on a pistol that gleamed dully from a holster beneath his armpit.