Monster Mine (16 page)

“
Find the hidden part of
the Manananggal and burn it. Then the creature will truly
die.”

Of course, when my grandmother had
told me the story, it’d been just that—a story. No one had seen the
Manananggal in years. Decades. Centuries even. She was a ghost.
Eventually, people had chalked her up to lore.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Was
every bad, gross monster living in Alaska now?

Walking back through the upstairs
living area, I stopped at the juncture in the halls. I leaned back
slightly and stared down toward the kitchen and dining area. No
one, not even in the main gathering area. Behind me, Hex was busy
spilling out his drivel. I trusted my grandmother’s story far more
than his propaganda, but while he spoke, I highly doubted anyone
would venture far enough away to catch me stealing a set of
keys—hopefully.

With one last glance around, I angled
off to the side and sidled along the hallway, my steps quiet over
the concrete in case anyone was behind the closed office
door.

I pressed my ear against the wood and
listened. Nothing.

After waiting a beat longer to ensure
I hadn’t missed anything and double-check no one was behind me—and
possibly taking the extra moment to steel my shaking nerves—I
grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Unlocked, the fools. Or maybe
Thad just trusted everyone here, which would be so different from
the Barrow base and Fear University, where every room was locked
behind you, every secret hoarded away.

The door swung open on silent hinges
and I eased inside. My feet hit the edge of a thick rug as I closed
the door behind me. Right as I went to lock it I decided to leave
it. If anyone discovered me, I could always say I’d gotten lost and
wondered into a dark room.

I didn’t dare turn on the light and
wished I’d thought to bring a flashlight, but the window let in
enough early morning light that I could make out the chairs in
front of the wide, cluttered desk, the built-in brick shelves
behind it, and the slept-in cot against the side wall. The room
smelled like vanilla and wet dog.

I eased around the corner of the desk
and began my search, deciding to leave the desktop and its messy
papers for last. Though the papers looked disorganized to me, Thad
might have a system, and I doubted he would just leave a set of
spare keys lying on top of his desk. I started on the drawers. Each
one pulled open easily, exposing files and typical office clutter.
On the bottom left, Thad had a stash of protein bars, too-ripe
bananas, and warm sports drinks.

On the bottom right, I opened the deep
drawer. At first, I thought it was empty, but as I went to close
it, the corner of something white caught my attention. I fished
around with my fingertips until they brushed across the piece of
paper in the very back corner. I pulled it out. It wasn’t paper,
but a crumpled photograph.

It smelled smoky, and a smear of dried
blood marred the image. Gently, I rubbed off the blood with my
finger and took another look.

I almost dropped it in
shock.

Swallowing the bile in my throat, I
looked again. Young and pretty and devastatingly similar to Ollie,
the woman had to be Irena. There was a deep fold line across her
body and the corners of the picture were bent and marred, but I saw
how her throat was slit. She stared up at the person who’d caught
her image just as the final ray of light left her eyes. It was
brutal and disturbing, and why in the heck did Thad have it in his
desk?

Because of Ollie’s earlier
explanation, I knew Killian had killed Irena, which meant he was
likely the grim photographer, but that didn’t explain how Thad had
it. For a brief, sickening moment, I worried he’d been involved, or
perhaps the other halflings, since he wouldn’t have been much older
than Ollie at the time of Irena’s death. But he and all the other
halflings worshiped Irena, just like they worshiped Hex. There was
no way they’d had anything to do with her murder.

I wanted to stare at it longer, but I
toed the drawer shut without replacing the picture. I’d wasted
enough time staring at the picture, and I couldn’t know for sure
how long the meeting with Hex would last given that everyone had
been awake all night. Guilt clawed at my gut because I hadn’t found
the keys to the medical cabinet that possibly contained something
to help Hatter, but I had to go or risk someone catching
me.

I hurried across the office and had my
hand on the doorknob, when I paused. My eyes returned to the desk,
to the drawer I’d left empty. I knew Thad would know the picture
was gone as soon as he looked. He’d know someone had stolen it and
might even assume it had been Ollie.

Slowly, I turned back around, the
picture heavy in my hand. Going back to the desk, I sat down in the
chair and thought it over. I didn’t want Thad coming after Ollie
for what I’d done, but I refused to put it back in the drawer. He
didn’t deserve to have this picture. My eyes fell on a sticky pad
and a pen right as an idea came to me.

Moving quickly, I peeled off a note
and started writing. When I finished, I stuck the note to the
bottom of the empty drawer and closed it.

I left the office and hurried back
down the still-empty hall. Downstairs, people were talking, but I
heard the sounds of movement. I’d cut it close, but only when I was
back in my room with the door shut behind me did I think about Thad
and what he would discover as soon as he went back to his
office.

Dear Thad,

I took the picture because
Ollie is not your plaything. I think you were going to use this
picture against her somehow, or worse, show it to her. She needs
her mother, but not like this. It’s up to you whether you want to
tell everyone I stole from you, but I suggest you don’t. As for me,
I won’t show this to Ollie. I’ll keep your secret if you keep
mine.

- Sunny

Luke and Hatter were both truly asleep
this time. I eased the curtains closed, bathing the room in heavy
darkness, before I went to Hatter’s bedside and sat in the wobbly
chair I’d taken from the dining room earlier. With the bedside lamp
on and the picture in my hand, I watched Hatter’s
breathing—labored, but better than before.

He looked so peaceful that I had to
tear my eyes away from him. I wanted to soak up this easy quietness
about him; he was typically so restless, so anxious. His manic
smiles that pulled at his scars were veils he hid behind to make
his mania so evident that people wouldn’t notice the subtle ticks,
the true issues. But I did.

I saw them all.

My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten in
a while, but I forced my attention to Irena’s image. I didn’t know
what compelled me to keep staring at it or why I started to replace
Irena’s dying stare with Ollie’s.

She could never, ever see this
picture. It would destroy her to see her mother like this. She
clearly needed Irena more than any of us had imagined.

Ollie was building up an image of
Irena in her head. I’d seen the proof of it last night when she
told us how her mother had believed in coexistence. She needed
Irena. She needed to see someone she could rebuild herself as.
Ollie needed a hero.

But this picture showed the death of
that hero, the brutalization of her mother, in a very real sense.
Even as I stared at it, I felt dirty. Just as much as Ollie
shouldn’t see this, I shouldn’t have either. I needed to get rid of
it, permanently, like it had never existed.

The picture proved one thing to me: if
Ollie had come here for answers, I could search for them
too.

Gripping the picture in my hands, I
looked up at Hatter, whose muscles were twitching in his sleep, his
lips murmuring silent words.

His salvation could be downstairs in
those medical cabinets. If I could treat his manic symptoms every
time an aswang bit him, I might just keep it from setting in
permanently.

I could save him. That was my calling.
And I would do anything to answer it.

T W E L V E

Ollie

I
couldn’t sleep in my bedroom with Sunny, Hatter, and Luke all
piled in, their breathing thickening the air between us. We felt
too close together, even though each of us had our own bed or
pallet on the floor, and the curtains were drawn tight against the
daylight outside. It was too much, too near.

I kept thinking of Max lying beside
me, breathing against the back of my neck, his arms tight around
me.

My body hummed with the memory of the
pain I’d felt during those weeks. The healing skin around my
stitches started to itch with warmth. I felt his knife raking
against my bones. Phantom pains, but I felt them
nonetheless.

I had to move.

Quietly, I crept out of the room,
glancing back to make sure I didn’t wake anyone as I picked up my
boots and coat. I had my whip wrapped carefully in my pocket; it
hadn’t been more than an inch away from my hand all morning. Given
last night’s events, Thad had returned our cell phones and weapons
after Hex’s briefing, and Luke and Hatter had an arsenal laid out
around them. Guns and knives, all within reach, with more tucked
away in a duffel bag. Even Sunny had a delicate little throwing
knife tucked between her fingers and a nasty-looking SIG on the
bedside table next to her.

Standing at the door with my hand on
the knob, I just stared at her. She was a warrior, beautiful and
strong, with her glasses cocked crookedly on her delicate nose.
She’d fallen asleep with them on again, no doubt exhausted from
caring for us and helping the injured halflings.

She was the stitch holding us all
together.

The guilt of having brought them here
gnawed at me. I couldn’t bear their worry for me, or for each
other. They were too good for me. I’d made a big mistake in
bringing them here, especially now with Hex’s deal looming over my
head. I’d shown Hex my hand, revealing to him what was truly
important to me. I hadn’t told them what his plans were for me, and
I wouldn’t. They would try to tell me he was using me, controlling
me. Maybe he was, but I needed to know about my mother.

I closed the door quietly and slipped
down the hall. Most of the others were probably still asleep, their
bodies in the exact spot where they’d dropped early this
morning.

Tonight, everyone would prepare for
another hunt. Hex had said the Manananggal was most vulnerable at
night, when she left her nest and part of her body behind. If we
could find it and burn it before she returned, we’d kill her once
and for all. He thought we were on to something by searching
through the woods, so back to the woods we would go.

I found it kind of sad that she was
forced to live forever with her body rotting off around her. One
day she might be nothing more than a pile of bones. It seemed like
an awful existence, and I couldn’t fault her for flying around,
pissed off, and trying to kill anything that moved.

I’d probably do the same.

Along the hallway, the doors were
closed tight. Soft sounds of people sleeping seeped through the
wooden walls as I walked. I carried my boots all the way to the
gangway to keep my steps silent.

I was surprised to hear voices coming
from the bottom floor. My steps had already echoed off the metal
walkway, announcing my presence, so I walked straight up to the
railing and peered down.

Six sets of eyes gazed up at me. Dark,
too-large irises. Long hair and sharp, angular faces. Some other
type of force stuffed into human bodies for the day. Very faintly,
deep inside my head, I heard it:

Tick tock

“
Isn’t it rude,” I said,
needing to be the first one to speak, like it might give me an
edge, “to not turn that thing off?”

The sound vanished, only for laughter
to replace it. Tully, from last night, didn’t join in. The others
were gathered loosely around Hex, who stood in the middle of their
semicircle downstairs, looking up at me like he’d been waiting on
me all morning.

“
Sometimes we forget,” he
said.

At the bottom of the stairs, I sat
down and laced up my boots. Hex’s attention lingered on Irena’s red
jacket as I laid it over the railing’s end to keep it safe. I
smoothed out a wrinkle before I stepped toward the
aswangs.

“
Do you not sleep?” I
asked.

“
Not when there are more
important things to do,” Hex answered.

“
Like what?”

“
I thought you might like
to train,” he said. He inclined his head toward the others. “After
last night, they volunteered to help.”

I took in Hex’s band of monsters. Last
night, I hadn’t been able to tell them apart, but looking at them
now, I saw little bits of them that helped me make connections.
Tully, obviously, with his scarred shoulder poking out from beneath
his sleeveless shirt. A skinny guy with looping red hair and
freckles—too sweet for his cold stare—had been the one holding on
to the Manananggal’s tattered skin. I recognized him by the emerald
flecks in his eyes and the wiriness of his frame.