Monster Mine (20 page)

I shot another glance over my shoulder
just to be sure. Nothing. Hex and the others had gone deeper into
the woods and weren’t expected back until noon tomorrow. They’d
sent me back, alone, as a test. I’d spent enough time around them
in the last couple weeks to practically smell Tully’s worry when
Hex doled out my little pass-or-fail tasks.

I knew Tully, Squeak, and A.J pretty
well by now, but not the rest of his pack, whose names I’d never
learned because they rarely talked to me, even though they helped
train me every day. I might not know their names, but I knew their
mannerisms and special quirks, and they almost felt like
friends.

I hadn’t expected that
part. I hadn’t been prepared for the aswangs to feel so real. It
would be easy to say they acted like real humans, but that wasn’t
right, and I knew, in my heart, to say it would be a disservice to
them. They weren’t human, not in the slightest. They were
other
and they
were
real
.

The line between my father and I had
also blurred. I no longer saw a black and white divide, with my
mother and me on one side and Hex on the other. I’d lost sight of
it somewhere between the daytime training and Tully’s worry for me
and Squeak’s comments and the nighttime prowls with a pack of
powerful, supernatural creatures at my side, protecting me and
teaching me and showing me the right way to hunt the
rogues.

I tried to tell myself that my mother
had left him and hidden for a reason, but those words became mere
whispers in an overlooked back corner of my mind.

The coldness I used to keep him at a
distance melted with each tiny nod of approval and glimpse of pride
I caught in his eyes. Sometimes I caught him looking stunned, like
he couldn’t believe I was actually here and alive.

The echoing feeling in my chest
terrified me.

I had a father—real and alive and in
front of me.

Maybe my mother had left him because
she’d wanted to keep Hex safe by not leading the university
straight to him. Protecting him explained many of her actions up
until her death. It made sense if I moved the pieces around just
so.

Just like it made sense he’d waited to
get me from Max if I moved the pieces around just so.

I scanned the buildings
absentmindedly. Since the Manananggal had moved into the area, we
hadn’t run across many rogue aswangs, similar to when a large shark
swims into an area of the ocean and all the smaller, lesser
predators scuttle away. On top of everything else, more snow was
expected within the week, which would make hunting at night
harder.

Fear University’s winter break was
almost over. In a week, the second semester would resume, kicking
off with Killian’s trial. I had no clue what that meant for me or
how I felt about it.

Instead of thinking through it, I
wiggled my fingers in my pocket to relieve the cool bite of the
silver knuckles against my skin. In my other hand, my whip was
neatly coiled, the handle pressed into my palm and the length
cradled in my fingers, just like Hex had taught me.

I wove through the buildings, closer
to the warehouse. I passed the rusted skeleton of the playground
where Hex and I had first talked, which felt like a lifetime ago. A
few streets over, Luke, Sunny, and Hatter had fought the rogue
pack, and somewhere up ahead was my mother’s house, my true
north.

I was so surprised at the
surge of emotions I felt toward her home—and
her
—that I almost didn’t hear
it.

But the sound came again, just as
quickly, and I caught it fully then: a scuffle of feet scraping
against concrete, followed by a whimpering cry, so soft it could
have been the breeze if not for the steady rhythm of it. Scuffle,
cry. Scuffle, cry. Then a hitched sob. And another
sound.

The beat of wings.

I stopped walking, an icy finger
brushing down my spine, sending electric shocks throughout my body.
I could hardly hear anything over the roar of wild adrenaline in my
blood.

The Manananggal was here.

I strained to pick the sound up again,
but the dense press of heavy snow clouds hanging low in the sky
caused all the noises to reverberate through the buildings. The
cold front sent sounds scattering in tight spirals away from their
true source. She could be anywhere.

I turned into the breeze and lifted my
face. On instinct, or maybe from watching Hex’s every move lately,
I inhaled deeply, pulling the air slowly through my nose and down
the back of my throat to taste it as it passed over my tongue. I
pulled in a few more breaths, and on each one I caught her scent:
rot and the sticky reek of sour meat. She was closer than I’d
thought and purposefully staying downwind from the
warehouse.

I had no clue why she was this close.
Why she’d taken the risk tonight and not on any other
night.

Moving as quietly as possible, I
followed the breeze, adjusting as the scent grew stronger. I crept
over a few blocks to the burnt-out husk of the building. There her
smell was so strong, I had to hold my breath against it.

I was so preoccupied with thinking
about where she might be hiding that I almost stepped on her
wing.

She was crouched right inside the
doorway, her back curled over something on the floor. Her wings
beat softly behind her, their lengths swishing across the floor,
stirring dust into the air.

I jumped back right as her head
swiveled around to look at me. This close, I noticed that a slick
tar-like substance filled her eye sockets and mouth. She had a
smear of fresh red blood across her face.

Another crying sound drew my attention
to what she’d been crouched over. Laid out underneath her, his
shirt cut open and blood spilling from the slice that went from the
bottom of his throat to the top of his bellybutton, tearing his
belly wide open, was Ghost.

He was crying, the heels of his boots
weakly scraping against the floor like he was trying to run away.
He blinked up at me, a sob hiccupping in his throat, and I nearly
didn’t move in time.

Her wings slashed out like blades
whipping toward me. I jumped back and dropped my whip’s coil. It
snapped, popping through the air at her wing right as she
stood.

Anticipate where you
opponent will be
, Hex’s voice echoed in my
head.
Aim there. Not where they
are.

The barbed tip dug in deep. She
screamed. I jerked on my end of the whip, setting the barb in even
deeper until it tore through the membrane of her wing. Her scream
choked off.

I had to keep her on the ground and
inside the building. She wasn’t getting away this time. Moving away
from the wing I’d successfully tethered, I leaped over a charred
bit of debris and skidded across the ground as she sliced her free
wing at me. I got close enough to see the razor-like bits of bone
that stabbed out along the top, ready to tear through skin like a
chainsaw.

She missed me, and as she tried to
readjust herself in the air beneath the sagging, burnt ceiling, I
yanked the whip again. Her wing tugged across her body and knocked
her off balance, sending her dipping back toward the floor, her
free wing thrashing. Trusting that I’d set my barb well enough, I
moved in. Her side was open, her bony ribs and crumbling flesh
waiting. I hit the diamond on my knuckles and sent that beautifully
wicked blade hissing out. Coming in low, I slashed, moving just
fast enough to connect, and stabbed the blade straight up between
her ribs. I should’ve hit her lung, but black tar oozed out as if
she were empty inside.

She screeched as I slid behind her,
retracting my blade and slamming the knuckles straight into what
should have been a kidney. The silver and diamonds tore through her
skin and blackness coated my hand. Where her polluted blood
touched, my skin started to warm in a warning flare, but I didn’t
slow down long enough to examine it.

Though all of this had only lasted a
few seconds, my whip was around her chest, above her free wing, and
around her back. She spun around in the air and came for me as I
heaved myself back to tighten the whip’s length. Her wings beat out
and I used the whip’s handle to counteract my weight as I careened
around her.

I was tying her up and trapping her
wings.

I ducked under the wing attached to my
barb and lashed out with my blade. Cutting through the membrane of
her wing felt like ripping dried-up leather that was tough and
thick and ancient. I hacked a slit big enough to do some damage,
and then I was moving again.

I’d caught her off guard. Striking
first and fast had bought me a few seconds and a few more hits—like
Hex had said it would—but my grace period ended and I’d pissed her
the hell off by damaging her wing.

She came for me as hard and fast as
I’d come for her.

I was too close. Wrapping my whip
around her had messed up her balance and kept her grounded, but now
we were close enough that I could smell Ghost’s blood on her breath
and see row upon row of tiny piranha-like teeth in her gaping
mouth. I jumped sideways right as she snapped those teeth at my
neck, her long tongue lashing at the air between us.

My knuckles hit her jaw with all the
force I could muster into one swing. I had a mean right hook, but
she barely reacted, even though I’d clearly broken her jaw. It hung
sideways on the lower half of her face, skin torn along her cheek,
and when she turned to look at me, the entire lower half of her
face shifted to the side.

She screamed, and I saw a flash of
bone through the hole in her cheek.

The punch had cost me, and she rammed
me before I could recover. We hit the charred wall behind us and
went straight through it in a rain of ash and soot. There wasn’t a
floor on the other side to catch us.

Her hands clawed down my arms as we
fell, grabbing at me before I could get my knuckles up again. But I
did. And I slammed the blade straight into her throat.

We hit the next level down and my back
collided hard with the floor, my head cracking off it and sending
stars across my vision. The momentum slammed her straight into me,
and she sank her upper, unbroken jaw into the flesh of my neck,
right where it met my shoulder.

She probably would have torn through
my throat if her jaw hadn’t been broken and if she’d bitten just a
little farther up my neck.

The burnt boards folded beneath our
weight and we fell again.

My stomach tried to bang up through my
throat at the free fall, but I tightened my fist around the
knuckles and pressed the blade until it hit her spine. Behind her,
her wings snapped out, nearly ripping my whip from my other hand. I
managed to hold on as the leather tore through my skin and wet my
grip with blood. I yanked the blade free from the side of her
neck.

Her blood squirted across me just as
her wings caught us. Our momentum jerked to a stop, and I clung to
her as she struggled to stay aloft. I wrapped my arm around her and
stabbed the blade into her back, right between her
wings.

She was so thin, only rotted flesh and
bones, that she felt slight against me, but even with my weight
hanging off her, she spun upward, bursting through the floor we’d
just fallen through and sending splinters of wood flying. She bit
down on my shoulder and arm with her top row of teeth over and over
and screeched in my ear as she tried to get me to fall.

I had no account of the damage she was
inflicting on me beyond the warm slick dripping down my body and
the heat flaring through my insides. My warning system was on high
alert, but I couldn’t heed it. I focused on holding on, but as she
dove through another wall, slamming my back through the wood, I
began to slip.

We crashed through to the other side,
and she dipped and swerved, my weight affecting hers. She flew
higher through the building, trying to take us to the very top and
maybe burst outside, where she could drop me to the ground. I
couldn’t let that happen.

Below me, through the darkness of the
building, I could just make out the burnt-out, broken ledge of the
main floor. If I could just make it to the ledge, I would be on
solid ground and closer to Ghost.

I pulled my blade free and fell. My
bloodied hold on the whip’s handle was the only thing keeping me
from plummeting straight down into the subterranean levels. I hit
the end of the length with a jolt that nearly flung us straight
into the wall. She screeched above me, her normal screams turning
into a mixture of pain and rage.

The momentum swung me toward the
floor’s ledge, and I kicked to swing myself closer. Above me, she
dipped and swerved. My chest hit the floor’s edge, my body
crumpling into the charred wood that crumbled beneath my hands as I
grappled to hold on and haul myself up. I tasted soot as I dug my
fingernails into the wood and pulled.

Without my added weight, she rose
quickly. My whip’s barb was still lodged in her wing, and as she
flew back up, my whip went with her, snapping my arm up and back in
its socket. But it gave me just enough leverage to lift myself over
the edge, right as the wood broke apart. Across the floor, I could
just make out Ghost lying on the ground, not moving. His eyes were
open and staring at the ceiling, but he couldn’t be dead. Not
yet.