Chapter 5: No Visitors Allowed in Werewolf Class
In the Moonlit Courtyard, a dozen werewolf students sat cross-legged on the grass in a loose circle.
Vic had wedged himself in next to Enid with the confidence of someone who had been personally invited. Venom writhed with anticipation on his shoulder. "Finally. An actual werewolf transformation. I've been looking forward to this since Hotel Transylvania and Drac's wolves were deeply disappointing."
Professor Grayson — a weathered man with silver-streaked hair, reading glasses, and the general energy of someone who had been doing this job for thirty years and was tired in a very specific way — opened a heavy leather-bound textbook and cleared his throat.
"Today's topic: The History of Werewolf Social Structure and the Development of Territorial Awareness."
Vic and Venom tilted their heads at exactly the same angle.
Five minutes later.
"...During the Third Full Moon Conflict of 1887, the scent-marking protocols of Alpha-class wolves underwent what historians consider a foundational paradigm shift in pack boundary negotiation..."
Professor Grayson's voice had the texture of unseasoned oatmeal — thick, unavoidable, clinging to the air. Vic's eyelids began their slow, gravitational descent. His head grew heavy. His neck made a series of quiet compromises.
Thump.
His forehead came to rest against Enid's shoulder.
"Hey—" Enid's hand moved automatically to push him away. Her fingers stopped the moment they touched his hair.
He was completely, deeply, unapologetically asleep.
Afternoon light filtered through the oak trees above, laying broken patterns across his face. Without the constant motion and noise, without the grinning and the gesturing and the general chaos of being Vic Black, his sleeping face was —
Enid's thought stalled out.
Okay. That was unexpected.
The line of his jaw. The way his lashes caught the light. His breath against her collarbone, slow and warm, carrying the faint ghost of dark chocolate.
Her face went red from the ears down.
"Sinclair."
Professor Grayson's voice snapped across the courtyard like a ruler on a desk.
"Yes!" Enid sat up straight. Vic slid downward with the movement and landed, somehow, with his head in her lap. He made a small contented sound and did not wake up.
Every werewolf student in the circle was looking at her.
"Recite the scent etiquette protocol in inter-pack diplomacy," Grayson said, with the tone of a man who had already decided how this was going to go.
"Right, the — um —" Enid's free hand had somehow, without her full authorization, started absently turning a strand of Vic's hair between her fingers. "The outer paw — the left front, third — with a light application of—"
"Wrong. Right paw." Grayson's hand came down on the lectern. The sound made three students flinch. Vic shifted against Enid's knee and kept sleeping.
Venom slipped out from Vic's sleeve, rose to approximately ear level with Enid, and whispered: "Want to know that he slept with a night light until he was nine?"
"Yes," Enid whispered back immediately, face still scarlet, her other hand having apparently decided to hold Vic's of its own accord.
Thirty minutes later, theory concluded.
"Practical demonstration." Professor Grayson removed his jacket, revealing a torso that told a long and complicated story through its scar tissue. "Observe the transformation sequence."
Vic's eyes opened. Fully. Immediately. Like a light switch.
"Finally, something worth waking up for," he breathed.
Grayson's shoulders began to shift — bones reorganizing, spine lengthening, fur pushing through in a tide. The courtyard went quiet with the particular hush of students who had seen this before but still found it compelling.
Vic's hand shot up.
"Quick question, Professor."
Grayson paused mid-transformation, half-human, half-wolf, head turned toward the source of the interruption with one yellow eye.
"When you transform," Vic said, with the focused sincerity of someone asking a question they genuinely considered important, "you're technically in your birthday suit in front of the entire school. Does Nevermore have a policy on that? Is there a waiver? I feel like there should be a waiver."
The courtyard achieved a new category of silence.
Grayson's half-wolf face had gone, underneath the fur, a remarkable shade of red.
"And also—" Vic was already continuing, apparently unaware of the reading in the room — "do the pants just go? Like, does the fabric give way, or do you have to pre-plan the outfit situation? Because if you wore something with enough stretch—"
"GET. OUT."
The lectern did not survive what came next.
Vic was seized mid-sentence, conveyed through the air in a clean arc that would have impressed the Nevermore fencing instructor, and deposited firmly on the other side of the courtyard gate.
"—I still have follow-up questions—"
CLANG.
The gate shut. Vic's face met the iron bars at moderate speed and then slid, slowly, to the ground. He sat there for a moment, blinking.
Venom surfaced from his collar. "Congratulations. Fastest removal from an elective in recorded Nevermore history. I'm genuinely proud."
From inside the gate: "Vic, are you okay?!" — Enid.
And underneath it: "SINCLAIR. SIT DOWN. Effective immediately, students are prohibited from bringing guests to werewolf practicum." — Grayson, in a register that rattled the hinges.
Expelled from the courtyard and with the rest of the morning suddenly unscheduled, Vic drifted through the academy's stone corridors with Venom draped across his shoulders like a very opinionated scarf.
"Options," Venom said. "The Siren class meets at the lake."
"Too obvious." Vic waved a hand. "I've got a better—"
The infirmary door opened.
Wednesday Addams stepped out, the hair at her temple slightly displaced, the edge of a bandage just visible. Her fingers pressed briefly against the side of her head. She looked like someone who had found the last ten minutes personally irritating and was in the process of filing that irritation away.
Perfect, Vic thought, with the survival instincts of someone who has never once had adequate survival instincts.
He began tiptoeing closer, planning the approach—
His shoelace, which had been untied since breakfast and which Venom had mentioned twice, took the opportunity.
"Whoaaaa—"
He went forward. His hands went out. Wednesday was shoved two steps ahead, stumbling before her feet caught — and she spun around, eyes sharp—
BOOM.
A gargoyle dropped from the roof ledge above — stone, ornate, approximately two hundred pounds — and hit the exact patch of walkway where Wednesday had been standing four seconds ago.
The impact sent dust and gravel in every direction.
Silence settled over the corridor like a curtain dropping.
Wednesday stood completely still. Her fingers, at her sides, were trembling — very slightly, barely perceptibly, the kind of trembling that only registers if you're specifically looking for it.
He's probably paste, she thought, staring at the rubble pile.
Good.
Why is it difficult to breathe?
She was still staring at the pile when it moved.
"Ow! My—"
"Stop performing," Venom's voice came from under the stone. "Last year when those scientists divided you into four separate sections for experimentation, you didn't carry on like this."
The rubble shifted. Black fluid pushed through the gaps between stones, and Vic emerged from underneath — his body at an angle that should not have been survivable, his lower half describing a geometry that made Xavier, who had just sprinted around the corner ready to intervene, stop dead in his tracks and make a sound that wasn't quite a word.
Then, in the space of about eight seconds, Vic's body fixed itself.
The wrong angles corrected. The tissue knitted. The color returned. He stood up, rolled his shoulders, patted stone dust off his jacket, and twisted at the waist experimentally.
"Better response time than last month," he noted.
The corridor was absolutely silent.
Wednesday's expression had not changed. Her lips were pressed into a line pale enough to blend with her complexion.
Vic turned toward her, tilted his head, and grinned. "Were you worried?"
"Categorically not," Wednesday said. "I was calculating whether the gargoyle's fall conformed to the expected parabolic trajectory given its weight distribution and the angle of the roof."
"Uh-huh." Vic glanced at her hands. "Then why are you shaking?"
Wednesday put both hands behind her back.
Xavier finally located his voice somewhere in the wreckage of the last thirty seconds. "What — what are you?"
Vic spread his arms wide. Venom rose from his collar, its massive jaw spreading across the lower half of Vic's face, teeth like a shark's nightmare.
"We," Vic said, "are Venom."
Wednesday turned and walked away. Her dress moved like storm weather around her ankles.
"Wednesday!" Vic called after her. "You didn't answer the question!"
Her footsteps slowed — just for a half-beat — then continued.
"Ask me something that idiotic again," she said, without turning around, "and I'll personally determine the upper limit of your regeneration capacity."
But her ears, just visible beneath the black curtain of her hair, had gone the faintest shade of pink. And her fingers, tucked into her sleeves where no one could see, had curled against her palms — pressing down on something that felt unfamiliar and warm and slightly irritating, like a coal that had no business being there.
She filed it. She would deal with it later. Possibly never.
The parabolic trajectory, she told herself firmly, was what concerned her. Only that.
Vic fell into step behind her, bouncing slightly, hands in his pockets, apparently in excellent spirits for someone who had just been flattened by architectural stonework.
Back in the dorm, operating on Venom's instruction, he fished the chocolate supply out of the toilet tank — Enid's emergency reserve, technically, but the laws of war applied — and settled on the floor.
He fed pieces to Venom steadily, unwrapping each one with the practiced ease of long habit.
Venom, for its part, was becoming increasingly liquid.
"Dizzy..." it announced, pooling slightly across the floor, its voice taking on the particular texture of someone on their third glass of something strong. It burped a small chocolate-scented bubble. "Every time you regenerate... you burn through my reserves... leaving me starving..."
"Liqueur chocolates," Vic said, holding up a wrapper and reading it. "Nice. Enid has genuinely excellent taste."
"Vic is an idiot," Venom added, fondly, from somewhere near his left ankle.
Across the room, Wednesday's typewriter, which had been moving at its usual decisive clip, slowed.
Stopped.
So the regeneration draws on the symbiote's energy reserves, she thought. Which means if the impact had been more severe — if the resources weren't there—
Clack. Clack. Clack.
She resumed. Slower. Her eyes on the page but her attention somewhere else entirely.
In the art studio on the second floor, Xavier stood in front of a canvas, brush moving fast, the way it did when something needed to get out of his head and onto a surface.
The image taking shape was not something he'd planned.
A metal table. Restraints. A figure with Vic's face, eyes open, chest crossed with tubes and lines. A white coat in the background. Glass containers along the walls holding things that had been, at some point, inside a person.
Xavier stepped back.
He stared at what he'd painted.
Then he grabbed a cloth and covered it, and stood there for a moment with his hand still flat against the canvas.
Outside the window, a raven landed on the sill, considered the room briefly, and flew away — a candy wrapper caught in its beak, chocolate-dark and trailing in the wind.
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