Old Wounds - Shane Barrett, Sierra Aguirre-Stoker

Shay probably should have seen this coming. 
It was no secret that most of the instructors at the Chimera hunter academy weren’t on board with Lawson’s decision to allow a vampire to train there. He’d heard plenty said, behind his back and occasionally to his face, in the first few weeks. 
He’d been hoping Lawson’s reputation and personality would be enough to make people at least, if not agree with her decisions, respect them. But as soon as she’d announced her intent to train all the members of her newest strike team at the academy, it was like the office politics equivalent of a bomb had gone off. Never mind her reasoning that having an untrained member of a high-risk team was a disaster waiting to happen, or the blunt honesty that if he didn’t know protocols and procedures the others did, he could do more harm than good. The Academy staff, almost universally, had demanded she reconsider.
Even an offer to hold the training offsite, which all of them had hoped would placate an administration still jumpy from the understandably traumatic attack on the building during the Coven Wars, hadn’t changed anyone’s mind. Teaching a vampire anything about hunter tactics was seen as handing over their entire textbook to the enemy. 
Conveniently, no one brought up the issue of hunters who turned after their training, like Emma Cole. 
He’d offered to just back down, even step off the team, if it would settle things. Lawson had shut that down in no uncertain terms, and eventually, she’d gotten enough people on her side that an agreement was reached for Shay and the rest of Polaris to join an incoming round of cadets in their training cohort. 
Unfortunately, being on Chimera’s campus means he’s surrounded by a lot of people who don’t take kindly to vampires in general, and especially not ones that have been invited into their safe place. 
The only comfort he has is that if these people wanted him dead for good, he would be. Everyone here, even the cadets by this point, know exactly how to kill a vampire. 
Unfortunately, they also know a lot of ways to make a vampire miserable. 
He knows exactly what they’re trying to do. Intimidate him into dropping out and going home. It’s not the first time someone’s tried to scare him off or make him back down. It had seemed like hazing the new teammates was just an accepted part of his college wrestling team’s orientation, and that had been nothing compared to being the new guy on the cell block in prison.
This is somewhere between those two situations. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to get outright killed if he doesn’t manage to fight back and establish a spot in the pecking order, but it’s not (mostly) harmless fun at the expense of the freshmen either. 
This is the first time he’s been by himself on the campus. He probably should have waited for the others to finish up in the locker rooms, but honestly, he’d wanted the fresh air. Their sparring session today was intense, and he’d scared himself a little with the ease at which he’d taken Pete to the mat.
When the humans (and fae) had finished up and headed for the locker rooms, he’d taken the opportunity to get a moment to himself. Vampires don’t sweat, and he doesn’t necessarily need a shower after sparring like the others. And he hasn’t been much of a fan of group showers since he got locked up the first time.
Now, he’s thinking the cracked tiles and lukewarm water would have been a lot better than repeatedly catching a set of silver knuckles to the cheeks and ribs.
Most of the people surrounding him are probably cadets; he doesn’t really recognize them. But one is all too familiar. The vamp biology instructor who got really pissed off when Shay corrected him on the subject of vampire sensitivity to pain, after he told the class that nerve endings were one of the things that die off along with automatic functions like heartbeat and breathing.
Then again, maybe he’s just employing the scientific method. Testing Shay’s claim that turning doesn’t make a vampire body any less susceptible to pain than a human one. 
The thought almost makes him laugh. It at least makes him grin, spitting blood onto the ground as the guy takes another swing.
“What’s so funny, leech?” the man asks.
“Just thinking…” Shay mutters. “If I just lay here and take it, I prove you right. Start screaming and begging, you’re wrong.”
The man gives him a stare of even more confusion than Sierra usually has when Pete hands her a spreadsheet.
“Pain,” Shay continues. “You said we couldn’t feel it, or at least not like humans do. So right now, I’m trying to decide if I’d rather walk away from this with my dignity intact for being stoic, or for being right.” 
Okay, maybe pointing out the lose-lose situation for his tormentor wasn’t such a good idea.
Then again, he did just win his argument in front of at least a dozen cadets who, with any luck, will no longer believe a thing this crackpot says in his seminars.
So maybe it was worth it.
He keeps telling himself that as he limps back to the campus housing the team is currently sharing, downs one of the pints of real blood from the fridge in three swallows, and starts working on cleaning up the worst of the blood without the benefit of a mirror he can actually see himself in. 
There must be some sort of hunter building code that demands silver backing on every mirror in one of their locations. 
Too bad they’re not as meticulous about shower head height or water pressure. He’s going to be better off washing up in the sink.
He’s just splashed a handful of water onto his face when the door opens behind him. He jerks abruptly, smacking his head on the faucet. So much for avoiding near-concussion-via-water-fixture.
“What happened?”
Of course it’s Sierra. He remembers her getting a sprained ankle during the sparring, and she’s too stubborn to go to the campus clinic for anything less than an open fracture or an arterial bleed, so she’s probably looking for a wrap or a brace. He should have expected her to walk in on him.
“I tripped.” At least everything should have closed up. He has no idea how bad he looked walking in here, and he’s glad she didn’t catch him before he got some blood in him.
“No you didn’t. There’s blood matted all up one side of your head and unless the new fad is dyeing one eyebrow magenta, there too.” She takes a step, grimaces, and leans on the sink. “And last I checked, the driveway was crushed stone, not silver shrapnel.”
Right. He forgot the silver would leave scars. Just faint, pale lines, nowhere near as deep or as lasting as the round spike marks in his wrists, but visible all the same. And of course, he couldn’t see them.
“Who did this to you?”
“I’m not going to tell you, because you’d kill them and we’d all get kicked out.” He’s only half joking. He can appreciate Sierra’s scorched-earth defense of the people she considers ‘hers’ in the field, but it’s less helpful when dealing with problematic allies. She’s not trying to kill him anymore, but that’s less because she’s mellowed out since Route 66 and more that he’s now inside the circle of people she’s willing to kill for. 
“No. I’ll tell Lawson and get them fired. Or expelled.” She shrugs. “I’m not sleep-deprived enough to do something that stupid.” She picks up a washcloth from the towel rack next to the sink. “And clearly, you cannot see what you’re doing, so let me take care of this.” She gestures to the general area of his face and head.
“Fine. If you let me wrap your ankle.”
“Deal.” She turns on the tap and lets the water run until a little steam rises, then soaks the cloth and holds it to his head. “And you are going to tell me who did this. All of them.”
“Well, I don’t actually know who most of them were.” Shay says, grimacing when he sees how much blood is on the cloth when Sierra pulls it away. “A bunch of cadets. And Doctor Wilcox.”
“Oh, now I really want to punch him.” Sierra says. Shay figured she would. He watched her snap a pencil in half in the same class he just got punished for interrupting. “This might be my fault,” Sierra continues. 
“How?” She hadn’t even interrupted the class. Shay was surprised, honestly, given she’s usually the one yelling at people over the slightest insult to vampires as a general species, but he’d also thought maybe she’d gotten the hint Emma keeps pushing about letting vampires speak up for themselves sometimes. 
“I called Lawson after the class let out and told her he was incompetent and pushing outdated, mistaken theories on his students. He probably just got the notice he’s been fired, and figured you were responsible. He ought to have taken it out on me.” She wrings out the washcloth and scrubs gently at his hair again. 
“No, better it was me anyway.” he shrugs.
“What, now are you going to lie to me about vampire pain receptors too?” Sierra asks, cuffing him gently on the shoulder.
“No. Just heal faster. You’re already going to have to rest that ankle for a week. I need five minutes and some blood and I’m good for round…” He frowns and tilts his head. “Actually, I kind of lost count.” 
She grimaces. 
“Proved him wrong, though.”
“Huh?”
“He got a couple decent screams out of me before it was over. And a few tears.” Shay shrugs, watching more blood swirl down the sink drain. “He’s going to have to revise his theory based on new evidence.” 
Sierra sighs. “You, Shane Barrett, are something else.”