Read Online Soul Seekers by Dean Crawford - Free Book Online

his life, Cas felt rage.
    His bag dropped from his shoulder almost of its own accord and he stepped forward as with a cry of fury that seemed to come from some unknown place deep inside he swung his fist as hard as he could into Mack’s face.
    Mack’s sneering expression registered the briefest glimmer of panic just before Cas’s knuckles smashed across his nose like a baseball bat through an eggshell. Mack’s head flicked sideways as he staggered back half a dozen paces and crashed onto the ground.
    The entire school yard fell silent.
    Cas’s hearing returned. The hot flush of anger searing through his body faded away as he looked down at Mack, who lay on his back staring at the sky with blood trickling across his face.
    ‘Holy crap,’ said one of Mack’s friends, ‘the squirt just decked MacKenzie!’
    Mack sat up. Tears streamed from his face as he bleated at his friends and pointed a stubby finger at Cas.
    ‘Do him, now!’
    The group of seniors turned toward Cas, who was about to flee when a heavy schoolbag flew through the air in front of him and crashed into the seniors like a bowling ball through skittles. The seniors scattered in shock as Siren smashed through them, her fists whirling like an out-of-control windmill.
    Mack scrambled to his feet, doubly shocked to see Siren rushing to Cas’s aid, and found himself on the end of one of her boots. He yelped as he ran, grasping his own backside with his hands as Siren chased him across the yard to the cheers of the rest of the school.
    Jude and Emily joined Cas from where they had been watching. Jude looked at Cas and then at the bleating form of Mack fleeing across the yard.
    ‘And I thought what we saw
yesterday
was unlikely,’ he said.
    Emily picked up Cas’s bag and handed it to him. He slung it over his shoulder, completely oblivious to the looks of admiration he was getting from dozens of pupils as they passed by. For some reason he felt neither fear nor pride. He felt empty.
    ‘Things have changed,’ was all he could think of to say.
    Before Jude or Emily could reply, the school bell rang out.
    *
    The rest of the day was no less bizarre than the one that Cas had already endured in 1776. Everything had indeed changed.
    For a start, wherever he walked other kids gave him a wide berth, as though in the blink of an eye Cas had gone from being the kid that everybody shoved past to becoming a brooding juvenile psychopath whose merest glance was enough to send younger children screaming for the principal. Mack in particular found himself in enforced isolation after taking a beating from both the newest pupil in the school
and
the most feared. To be friends with him was now social suicide and he spent the entire lunch break sitting alone on a bench nursing his bloodied nose. Strange, thought Cas’, how quickly the tables had turned.
    But it was in gym class that afternoon that everything really changed.
    Cas sat with Jude, Siren and Emily as the physical education tutor taught the class about the importance of having at least thirty minutes of exercise per day.
    ‘Just a run about,’ she said, ‘ball games, anything you like. Your body is like an engine, and if you don’t use an engine what happens to it?’
    ‘It seizes up,’ Emily said as her hand shot in the air.
    ‘That’s right, Emily,’ the teacher said. ‘Exercise helps make our hearts and lungs stronger. But there are things that are bad for our hearts and lungs too. Can anybody tell me something that’s bad for them?’
    Smoking
. Cas raised his hand to speak and the teacher looked at him.
    ‘Yes, Cas’?’
    Cas opened his mouth just as a tremendous clattering noise echoed through the gym as though a thousand bricks had fallen all at once onto the sprung wooden floor.
    Cas whirled as an enormous white horse thundered through the gym as though fleeing the gates of Hell itself. Its head was bowed as it charged, its front legs clawed the air and its mane rippled in the wind. Atop the