Monster Mine (11 page)

“
She was finding
halflings? How?”

Hex’s shoulders straightened, and he
slid his hands into the back pockets of his pants. “Halflings have
happened naturally since the beginning. Pairings between humans and
aswangs happen more often than you might think. The resulting
halflings are just very rare, and those who live long enough become
slippery eels of survival in order to stay alive for one more
night.”

My heart was pounding again. Rules of
nature. Natural halflings. My mother. My mother.

“
Irena,” I said, my voice
cracking a tiny amount as I caught another whiff of her scent. Her
red jacket was quickly becoming my most valued possession. “How did
she do all this and still stay with the university?”

Hex turned his face into the breeze
again. The sky darkened as the sun dipped below the buildings.
Twilight was nearly over. Hex’s shadow stretched longer and longer
behind him.

“
That’s why I brought you
out here,” he said, still breathing deeply, his focus far away from
me. “We need to talk about your mother.”

“
I want to know her.” He
still wasn’t looking at me. “Hex.”

Slowly, he turned away from whatever
he’d caught in the wind and focused a dark stare my way. The
lingering light left deep hollows below his eyes. “I know you do.
You need to know her, Ollie. She was a magnificent woman. You can
learn a lot from her.”

His chin jerked again toward the other
direction, toward the south and deeper into the empty warehouses. I
imagined I heard his bones tightening inside him. He looked ready
to disappear right in front of me.

“
What is it? What are you
smelling?”

“
I want you to stay,” he
said like he hadn’t heard me. “I want you to hunt with me every
night and learn about what we’re trying to accomplish out here. I
want you to see how wrong Fear University is. I want you to
understand how that school makes unnatural killers. In exchange,
I’ll tell you about your mother.”

I stood from the crosstie and turned
toward the south, inching my way closer beside him. The hairs along
the back of my neck stood on end and my hand itched to hold a
stingray whip.

“
That’s it? That’s your
deal?” I asked. It was too easy. He wasn’t gaining
anything.

“
When you understand our
ways, when you know what your mother fought for, you will return to
the university on the night of Killian Aultstriver’s trial, when
all the hunter families have gathered”—he pulled his attention away
and looked down at me, and I looked up at him—“and you will help me
kill everyone in power there. Dean. Killian. The professors. The
hunters. And we will take that school and make it into our
own.”

My scalp prickled from his words and
from the southern breeze.

I kept my eyes wide and
unblinking.

“
I’m not that kind of
killer.”

* *
*
Sunny

“
They’re
close.”

Tick

“
What ya thinking,
brother?” Hatter had me behind him, his arm pressing me back as he
and Luke fanned out in a low crouch, hands spread wide. Their eyes
scanned every coming shadow. Overhead, the sun’s final rays of
light disappeared.

Tock

“
Alley.”

“
Make it?”

Tick tock

“
Only option.”

I glanced back. The alley we’d come
through was across the lot. We’d have to turn our backs on the
approaching aswangs, their ticking fading even as I turned back. My
hand found Hatter’s.

“
Get ready to run,” he
whispered.

My heart thudded up my throat, and my
spine pulsed with a crushing tightness that stole my
breath.

“
Keep her in the middle,”
Luke said, taking a step back.

I didn’t want to think about the fact
that I could see the points of Luke’s shoulder blades through his
jacket or hear the sound of his wet, rattling breaths. He was at
half strength, probably less without his daily dose of saliva. None
of us had weapons.

Tick

We all froze, waiting for
the
tock
. It
never came. The sound was gone. There was no more time.

The aswangs prowled out from the
southern buildings’ juncture. Shadows peeled off their black fur as
they advanced with their heads low, snouts snarling over glistening
white fangs. They were huge, bigger than I’d ever seen. I imagined
I felt the pavement vibrate with every touchdown of their paws. I
counted six, but more shapes were forming out of the
darkness.

“
Go,” Luke said under his
breath.

We pivoted and ran.

Hatter’s crushing grip on my hand
propelled me forward, launching me past him. I stumbled and nearly
went down on one knee, but I scrambled, arms pinwheeling for
balance, and took off.

Behind us, I heard the war cry of
growls and howls and the scratch of claws digging into the pavement
for traction. They were coming.

I fixed my eyes on the alley’s dark
maw and prayed they hadn’t flanked us.

Pumping my arms, I ran as fast as I
could, dodging jagged cracks and leaping over potholes, never once
taking my eyes off the alley. My breathing turned to panting and a
high-pitched whine escaped my mouth. Luke pounded behind
me.

The ’swangs gave off a series of
clipped bark-like sounds—communications within the pack.

We were halfway across the parking lot
when I heard a grunt and the sound of flesh hitting
road.

I faltered. Spinning halfway around,
my hair tangling across my face, I looked back.

Luke was on the ground, rolling with a
’swang. He had his thumb in one of its eyes, his other hand braced
against its neck as they skidded to a stop. Behind them, the pack
closed in.

Hatter spun back and sprang through
the air, aiming a flying kick straight for the ’swang’s face. His
spiked-toe boot connected, and the creature released Luke with a
cry of pain.

I started running sideways as Luke
clambered to his feet. Hatter wrapped his hand around Luke’s arm
and yanked him up. The pack was close enough to snap their teeth at
the guys’ pants as they picked up their pace and closed in on me
with every step.

Facing forward, I surged ahead, with
the metallic tang of the ’swangs’ breath like a cresting wave
behind me. Luke’s ragged breathing and Hatter’s hissed curse words
filled my ears with every stride.

One step. Two. Three. I reached
forward, collided into the alley’s sidewall, and pinballed down the
narrow straight. The guys impacted behind me, their boots ringing
through the space.

“
Get down, Sunny,” Hatter
gasped, grabbing my shoulder and pushing.

I slid down, my knee buckling under
me. “We’re not running back?”

“
Never make it,” Luke
grunted.

“
I’ll take the front.
Watch her.”

“
Nothing’s happening to
her. I swear it.” Luke shouldered behind me to guard our backs. I
fell to my knees, the soggy garbage lining the ground soaking
through my jeans. My hand connected with something
cold—metal.

At the entrance, the ’swangs battled
to be the first one through. Their snapping growls were redirected
at each other as they fought to gain ground through the opening.
They piled up in one big blur of fur and teeth.

My fingers wrapped around the
cylinder, and I pulled it up from beneath a molded newspaper. A
lead pipe. “Hatter!”

He shot a glance back, eyes instantly
falling to the makeshift weapon. Without a word, he took it and
readied himself in front of me, close enough to touch.

Behind me, Luke kicked aside garbage
and detritus, having seen my discovery, and found a chunk of wood.
His hand went to my shoulder, keeping me down between them. If I
had my throwing knives, I could have helped, but without them, in
simple hand-to-hand combat, I would only get in their way. So I
stayed down, my breath tight in my chest.

A shadow slipped across the alley. We
all looked up at the same time as something flew by overhead. I
made out long, opaque wings and streaming hair against the
clouds.

Nothing normal.

Something wrong. Very
wrong.

It screamed down at us—part woman,
part monster. There was a moment of quiet in the alley. Everyone
stilled. I’d gone cold. Everything stopped as we scanned the slip
of sky we could see above us. It didn’t come back.

“
What the
hell—”

A ’swang managed to fight through,
cutting off Luke’s sentence, and the ’swangs resumed their
scramble.

“
Here we go,” Hatter said
through his teeth.

He took a step forward, meeting the
aswang almost halfway. He spun the pipe in the air and lashed out,
the end whizzing by the ’swang’s snout. The creature’s lips pulled
back in a snarling grin. It lowered its head and leaped, colliding
with Hatter midair.

Its teeth gouged into Hatter’s flesh,
spraying blood.

* * *

Ollie

Hex slowly cocked his head, examining
me.

“
You will be that kind of
killer,” he said, words thick with a rumbling from deep within his
chest, like a growl or a building howl. “If you choose not to
accept this task, I will be forced to do it, and I will not be so
discerning with who dies. Do you understand?”

My eyes were drying from the lack of
blinking. I went to step back, but his hand was suddenly on my
wrist, without hardly moving, holding me in place. His skin was
feverish, but still pale.

“
Luke,” he murmured.
“Hatter.” He released my hand. “Sunny.”

“
No
.”

“
It’s an easy task. You’ll
see. Once you understand what your mother fought for here, you’ll
be glad to do it, and those you love can live if they also accept
the rules of nature. Now,” he said and his edges seemed to flicker,
like a movie reel skipping a frame, “you need to go back to the
warehouse. You remember the way? Go. Hurry. Run.”

He flickered again, but I still didn’t
blink.

To the south came a scream—a gutted
animal or a woman howling with laughter, like ecstasy—that echoed
through the buildings.

“
What was that?” I asked
slowly, nearly breathlessly.

“
Something bad,” Hex said,
his voice sounding like it was coming from the far side of a cliff.
“Something close.”

I blinked and he was gone.

Swiveling around, I scanned the
nearest shadows. From between the buildings across the playground
came a long, ripping growl that sounded like a chainsaw tearing
through the air. A long black ink of fur and tilting ears vaulted
from the darkness toward the south, where another scream sounded
back in answer.

I knew that scream.

I turned and ran toward
Sunny.

N I N E

Sunny

L
uke snagged me around the waist and hauled me back behind
him. He clubbed at the black fur relentlessly. I caught flashes of
Hatter’s red hair in the fray, but he’d gone down beneath the
’swang. Blood shot up the alley wall. Another ’swang launched
itself behind them, trying to climb over the pile to get to
me.

Again, I screamed, “Help!” I took a
deep breath. “Someone help!”

Luke slammed back into me, and I went
sprawling onto my back. We were getting pushed back toward the
other end of the alley, toward a vast open area where nothing could
keep the ’swangs off us. I kicked at the ground and scuttled back,
my eyes raking across the alley for anything to use as a weapon. I
couldn’t see Hatter. Luke had his back to a wall with a ’swang
wrapped around him.

I couldn’t breathe. Tears streaked
down my dirty cheeks, and my glasses sat crookedly on my face.
Something cut my hand—a shard of glass. I closed my fingers around
it and fought to my feet.

With a cry, I shoved forward and
rammed the glass into the ’swang’s throat. Its blood splattered
across Luke’s face as he shoved it back and used the club to slam
the shard deeper into its flesh. I caught sight of Hatter’s boots
and a flash of red hair.

“
Hatter!” I screamed, my
voice breaking apart.

Something collided close to my head,
sending a spray of brick across my face. The new aswang Luke had
been fighting dropped like a stone. More yelps and cries filled the
alley.

Nearly twenty halflings stood on the
building’s roof, raining bullets down into the pack.

“
Careful!” I shouted as
another bullet hit the ground, inches from my foot.

Luke dove through the swarm of bodies
as ’swangs stopped fighting and tried to run. The alley turned into
a pileup of tractor-trailer-sized creatures skidding over the
pavement as if it were ice. Bodies and limbs went everywhere, and
blood coated the air in a fine mist. It clouded my glasses, and I
choked on it. Above us, halflings rappelled down into the mess,
landing on ’swangs and stabbing knives through the backs of their
necks. Barks sounded and some ’swangs managed to turn around and
race back the way they’d come. Others thrashed, half dead on the
ground, and more stayed to fight.