Monster Mine (8 page)

“
He tried to cut my heart
out.” I held out my arms and tilted them this way and that. “He cut
me hundreds of times, just deep enough to cause pain but not deep
enough to make me bleed out. He gave me saliva every day to keep
the pain fresh. Every morning, he hung me up in chains and put this
blade under my chin so I couldn’t rest or move or talk or
scream.”

I was talking too fast. Sunny was
crying, tears splashing onto the duvet between us. Luke looked
ready to crawl out the window and kill something. And Hatter just
stared at me, his scar sinking into a hollow ridge on his slack
face.

“
And at night, he put me
in bed and cleaned me and tended to my wounds. He would kiss
me—”

Luke’s fist cracked against the wall
in the corner.

“—
and tell me he loved me.
And then he would cut me all over again the next morning. It didn’t
feel like weeks, really. It felt like this long stretch of
. . . nothing. And at the end, I realized something. Max
really did care about me. He did,” I emphasized when Sunny looked
ready to fight. “And the pain just all blurred into this one big,
giant thing inside my head that almost felt like love. It did feel
like love.”

Another crack from Luke; he was going
to break his hand.

“
So I told him I loved him
back. I told him countless times, but he didn’t stop. He never
stopped, because I think what he felt for me started to feel like
hate, and in the end, all that pain and hate equaled to something
like love for both of us.”

Sunny swiped under her eyes and took a
deep, shaky breath. When she looked up, I turned my face away
because I couldn’t bear what I saw in her eyes.

“
That’s not love,” she
said, but I just shrugged.

That time with Max felt like
everything and nothing all at once, and I couldn’t find my footing
on the solid ground in between.

“
We don’t have to talk
about that if you don’t want to.” Sunny squared herself in front of
me like she was dredging up every ounce of willpower she had.
“You’re here and alive and that’s all that matters to
us.”

“
But it matters to me,” I
snapped. I couldn’t hold this thing back inside me. “It
changed
everything
for me.”

Sunny shrank back. I saw it on her
face: this was her biggest fear. She was right to be
afraid.

“
I’m not the same person.
I don’t know how to feel about what I am. I never got the time to
understand it, and now I feel like everyone just wants me to move
on, to be this new person and accept it. Well, I don’t fucking
accept it.”

I was panting, my stitches pulling
with each breath. Sunny was crying again, and Luke had turned away,
his fingers dancing against his jeans. Only Hatter truly looked at
me. He hadn’t even moved an inch.

“
My parents used to give
me saliva and lock me in a dark closet,” he murmured. “They knew my
mania made me see things. They told me they’d only let me out when
I wasn’t afraid of the things I saw in the dark. They promised me,
and I believed them. I remember sitting there, knowing what was
about to happen to me, but I told myself not to be afraid, to just
be still and quiet. My parents would let me out when they saw how
brave I was.”

Sunny had curled around herself as
Hatter spoke, her hand pressed to her mouth as she stared down at
the blankets. Part of me wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t tear my
eyes away from Hatter.

He continued. “It took me a long time
to realize they were never going to keep their promise, no matter
how still or quiet I was. And when the saliva had made its way
completely through me, I would beg them, claw at the door, and
plead, but they would only let me out after I’d passed out from the
fear hours later. Sometimes a day or two would pass.”

At his words, Luke crossed his arms,
his mouth a grim slash. He’d heard this all before and knew the
awful pain of it, though it was new for Sunny and me.

“
They loved to hear me
beg,” Hatter said. “Their promise meant nothing to them, but to me,
it was everything. It was my way out of the dark. When I realized
that promise was broken, I felt broken too. Parents shouldn’t enjoy
hurting their children that much. I know you experienced something
like that when you were in foster care. You know how it can fuck
you up. But you got through it. We both did. This matters now
because it happened to you and you deserve to feel what you feel
about it, but in time, it’ll become just another thing that gives
you strength.”

No one spoke. There just wasn’t
anything to say. In my head, I heard Hatter’s words, but they were
too bright and shiny to hold on to. They didn’t make me feel
better, but they calmed me down and soothed me with a hope that
things would get better—in time.

A long time passed. Sunny wiped her
face and cleared her throat. She was the first to speak, to pull
things back around. “What did you want to talk about? You have a
plan for all this?”

She gestured around the room, meaning
Thad and the halflings—and my father.

I skimmed over that thought and forced
myself to focus. “I need to tell you guys everything that happened
the night Max took me. Coldcrow and Killian told me a lot of things
about my mother and the university. You need to know
them.”

And so I told them everything. I held
nothing back, and my voice grew hoarse as the story unraveled, from
Coldcrow’s manipulation, to the lies Dean set up, to the fear
switch research, to Killian’s big reveal that my mother turned her
back on the university when she fell in love with Hex, to Dean’s
final experiments on her. I took a deep breath when I
finished.

The others were silent as I looked
from one face to another, though I only managed to catch Luke’s
profile.

“
Dean was trying to create
a fear switch in humans,” I added to emphasize the point. “To sell
to the government.”

“
Is that such a bad
thing?”

My mouth fell open at
Luke’s question. He should have been equally as horrified as I was.
“You used to tell me all the time that humans weren’t meant to live
without fear. You said people not experiencing fear would create
another kind of monster. You said Dean should never have an army of
soldiers like me. You
said
war should never be easy.”

I flung his words back at him, but he
barely reacted as he shifted from the shadows and looked at me. “I
said those things a long time ago. I’m not the same idealist I used
to be.”

“
You said them last
semester,” I shot back. I looked between them all again. I was
losing them. I grasped at the information Ghost had told me
yesterday. “Irena started this place because she believed in a
balance—a coexistence between humans and ’swangs. What if that can
be achieved? What if there are some good ’swangs?”

“
You don’t need to justify
being part aswang,” Sunny said. “You’re not a monster,
Ollie.”

“
No,” I said slowly,
frowning. “I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about Irena
Volkova and why she started this place. Why she left the
university. Don’t you think it’s important to understand why she
turned her back on the school and Dean? What if she was right?
Maybe the university is wrong.”

“
Ollie,” Sunny started,
her eyes shifting to Hatter. Whatever she’d been about to say, I
saw her push it back and pull up something else. She smiled a
stilted, propped-up smile that never reached her eyes. “I think
discovering your mother’s history is a great idea.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No, it sounds
like you don’t.”

“
I think what Sunny is
saying,” Hatter said from across the room, “is that you’ve been
through a lot and you need time to heal and figure things out. You
have a mother now that you didn’t know you had before. It’s normal
to want to understand her.”

“
Exactly.” Sunny’s face
went slack with relief and I knew they were handling me, passing me
back and forth between them like I was a child. “All that matters
is that you’re okay and we’re all here together. We can figure out
the other stuff before the end of winter break.”

A knock sounded on the door, causing
Hatter to jump. He unlocked it and poked his head out. A second
later, he looked back at me. “Some skinny kid with
food.”

“
Hey, Ollie!” Ghost called
from the hall as he poked his silver head around Hatter.

“
He’s okay.”

Hatter stepped back and the kid
entered carrying a paper plate with a teetering mound of peanut
butter crackers and another glass of lemonade. “I thought you all
might be hungry.” He grinned around at us, even at Luke, who just
stared blankly at him.

“
For crackers?” Hatter
crossed his arms over his chest.

“
Oh.” The kid looked down
at the plate. “It’s all I could—”

“
It’s perfect. Thanks,
Ghost.” I stood from the bed and took the plate and glass from him,
glaring at Hatter. “I appreciate the food. Is anyone else
here?”

“
They’re all hunting,” he
pouted. “Oh! I’m supposed to tell you that Hex wants to talk to you
before the sun sets.”

“
Absolutely not,” Luke
said, the forcefulness of his words rocking Ghost back onto his
heels.

Ignoring Luke and the way my heart
bucked at the sound of my father’s name, I asked, “Do you know
why?”

“
Thad told me before he
went out. He’s the only one who talks to Hex.” Ghost snuck a
scuttling sideways look at Luke, who I could tell had hurt his
feelings. “You have to go soon before Hex starts his
hunt.”

“
Are they hunting for the
rogue ’swang that killed those other three?” Sunny
asked.

Ghost’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
“How did you know?”

“
A rogue?” Luke asked at
the same time as Hatter said, “The halflings hunt rogue
’swangs?”

“
Well
. . .
yeah
.”

I admired the subtle sarcasm overlaid
with a soft hint of disdain in Ghost’s voice. It had been a while
since I’d spoken “teenager,” which reminded me: my birthday had
passed during my time with Max. No one knew I was nineteen
now.

“
Won’t the sun be setting
soon?” Sunny asked, shooting me a worried glance. We all knew what
that meant: when the sun went down, I’d be talking with an aswang,
not a human.

“
She’ll hit the rim
quickly.” I almost smiled at Ghost’s choice of words for describing
a sunset. He was clearly proud of having the opportunity to use
them, even if they reeked of something Thad would say. “I’m
supposed to bring you down once you’ve finished eating.”

“
Ghost, is it?” Sunny came
forward, drawing the kid’s attention.

I watched him subtly check her out the
way only young boys could. He saw her sweet curves, her easy smile,
and her pretty eyes. I remembered when I first saw the beautiful
Filipino girl standing in the ward at the university; I’d envied
her casual elegance and charm.

“
Yes, miss.” Ghost shot
her a crooked smile full of slanted teeth that had a charm of their
own.

“
Do you mind if we talk to
Ollie for a minute? Not long. And we really appreciate the
crackers.”

Ghost stuck his hands in his pockets,
busy thinking, but the battle was lost when Sunny turned her smile
up a notch or two. “Okay. I’ll be just out in the hall, but
hurry.”

Hatter’s hard stare lingered on the
boy for a stretched-out breath before moving to Sunny and back
again. Only when he’d proved his point did he unlock the door and
let Ghost out. Hatter closed it behind him and leaned back against
the wood, propping his boot up.

“
The kid’s listening in on
the other side,” he said. He cracked his elbow against the door,
right where a little urchin might crouch with his ear pushed
against the wood.

From the other side came a muffled
curse.

“
How do you know about the
rogue ’swang?” Hatter asked Sunny, crossing his arms back over his
chest.

Sunny raised her brows, her eyes going
to the door. “I might have overheard it somewhere,” she said
carefully.

Hatter nodded, understanding that
she’d been sneaking around.

Impressive, but I didn’t dwell on it.
I was about to go talk with my father.

“
You shouldn’t go,” Luke
said, lowering his voice. “We can’t trust him.”

“
He’s right. What if
something happens out there? I mean, won’t he be in his
night-form?” Sunny picked up a cracker and nibbled around the
edges.

“
I’m going.”

Luke raised his hands to his face and
grunted into them at my words.

I lifted a shoulder. “How else am I
supposed to get answers? This is the fastest way to know what we’re
dealing with. He can tell me about Irena.”

I want to talk to my
father
, but I held those words back. It
didn’t seem like my friends would understand why. He was an aswang,
after all, and according to them, there was no such thing as a good
’swang.