Monster Mine (4 page)

“
Does Luke want to kill
me?”

My answer choked off in my throat. Her
question wasn’t surprising, given that Luke was an Aultstriver and
Aultstrivers were the huntiest of hunters. I stared hard at the
emblem in the center of the steering wheel, my thoughts churning. I
felt the brush of the SIG at my feet.

“
I don’t know,” I said
honestly.

Ollie seemed to process that for a
long moment before asking, “Is he still my Luke?”

Just then, I looked toward the woods.
Like magic, he and Hatter appeared, trekking through the overgrowth
with their weapons slung across their backs. They weren’t talking.
They moved like two trees that had grown too closely together, each
peeling off in separate directions to get their own bit of sun.
“Um, well . . .”

“
Never mind. I don’t care.
It doesn’t matter.”

“
Okay?”

“
But you’ll come, right?
You promise?”

“
Yeah, Ollie. I promise.
We’ll be there.”

“
Okay.” She let out a long
breath. “We’re in some renovated warehouse with all these old
factories outside.” Something rustled in the background. “It’s
close to the mountains. I see an old sign for Chugach State
Park.”

“
Are you in
danger?”

Another long pause. I couldn’t guess
her silence’s meaning. “I’ll be fine when you get here.”

The SUV’s back hatch opened and the
guys started depositing their weapons.

“
Hey, it’s—” I
started.

“
Is that them?” she
asked.

Luke and Hatter didn’t look up from
their task, assuming I was on the phone with someone of a lesser
dead-and-disappeared status, or worse, reporting to
Dean.

I turned back to the emblem on the
wheel. “Yeah. They’re back. We’ll be on our way. Do you want to
talk to—”

“
See you.”

Click
.

“
Were you talking on the
phone?”

I spun around in my seat. Hatter was
watching me from the back while Luke zipped up the duffel.
“Yeah.”

“
Dean?”

“
No.”

“
Bloody Eve?”

She’d called a few times, mostly to
check on Luke. I’d acted like I didn’t mind since she was basically
the Barrow base’s leader now and we needed her help in our search
for Ollie, but it still felt like she was trying to move in on my
best friend’s guy. “No, not her . . .”

My mind was still turning over Ollie’s
strange tone as I scrambled into the backseat, forgetting the SIG
on the floor. Hatter picked it up when he got in. As Luke climbed
into the passenger seat, Hatter turned the engine over. “Who
then?”

“
I think we should head
back up to Washington,” Luke said. “It feels like Washington
. . .”

“
Washington? Really?” I
snapped. It was all too much. “What about Anchorage? Does it feel
like Anchorage, you freaking idiot?”

Luke slowly turned around to look at
me. Hatter too.

“
Uh,” Hatter said, eyes
roving between Luke and me. “You okay there, Sunshine?”

“
Ollie’s in Anchorage.” I
glared at Luke. Divining rod my backside. “With Thad and the
halflings.”

The guys stared back at me like I’d
grown a snout and two pointy, curved ears.

“
How do you know?” Luke
asked, sounding more alive than he had since Ollie disappeared.
Like a flip had been switched, he hummed back to life. “How do you
know?” he repeated, seeming to vibrate in his seat.

“
Because she just called
and gave me directions.”

T H R E E

Ollie

T
hey left me alone after I’d busted up Lauren’s nose. I guess
they thought I was crazy. Not that I really cared.

They
waited
.

All that stuff with Max could’ve been
avoided. Could’ve ended so much sooner if they hadn’t
waited.

I laughed, the sound bubbling up from
deep in my chest—my battered, screwed-up chest. Lying on my back
atop my mother’s bed, I stared up at the ceiling and laughed. Tears
trickled down my cheeks.

Yeah, I was pretty crazy.

Hearing Sunny’s voice after weeks had
almost sent me teetering back over the edge—the edge Max had carved
inside me. I shut down and walled myself in to keep her obvious
relief and love for me on the outside. I couldn’t feel those things
yet, not around people I didn’t trust, like Thad and Lauren, who
could use that love against me.

I hated myself for pulling Sunny back
into a dangerous situation, but I had no one else. I needed help.
Before Max, I probably never would have admitted that. I knew
better now. I needed Sunny to hand me back the pieces of myself.
Thad and Lauren and Hex had waited to save me from Max so they
would have a broken shell of a monster to rebuild in whatever image
they deemed best. I couldn’t allow that to happen. With Sunny’s
help—and maybe even Luke’s, although I didn’t allow myself to hope
for that much—I had to rebuild myself first.

Coldcrow had been right about this
life bending people and warping them.

A while later, a knock on my room’s
door woke me, sending me into a temporary mind fall. I’d fallen
asleep without realizing, and I couldn’t remember where I was. A
panic so tangible I could’ve pulled it up from my throat gripped me
tightly. My breathing came in shallow pants as I swiveled my head
around, waiting for Max to materialize through the
shadows.

But the only shadows were the ones
seeping in from behind the curtains. Nighttime had fallen, which
meant I’d slept longer than I thought.

“
Uh, Ollie?” a voice
called from the other side of the door. “I have your dinner if you
want it?”

I didn’t recognize the voice, but
then, I didn’t really know anyone here.

I sat back on the bed and crossed my
arms. “Come in.”

A boy, perhaps thirteen, came into my
room. He moved like vapor sliding about, shoulders hunched, feet
silent. In one hand, he carried a paper plate with a lumpy peanut
butter and jelly sandwich, the crust crookedly cut off, and in the
other, a glass of lemonade. He was barely more than dark skin and
bones, knobby elbows, and tufts of feathery hair so silver it
looked white. His eyes landed on my chest, where the top part of
the stitches peeked out from under my stiff cotton
shirt.

He was checking—probably on Thad’s
orders—that I hadn’t chewed them out like a dog.

“
Here.” He came close
enough to hand me the plate and lemonade. Surprising me, he
lingered as I took my first nibbling bite, and his glances started
sticking on me longer and longer.

“
Why did they send you?” I
asked when I couldn’t take his stares anymore.

Did they really think I’d hit a child?
Or maybe they’d sent a child in so I wouldn’t hurt anyone
else?

“
I volunteered,” he said
with a sharp-boned shrug. “No one else wanted to do it. They don’t
like you much.”

Good
.
I don’t much care for them
either
. Except for maybe this kid. I liked
how he stared without blinking, refusing to miss a single
thing.

“
Did you make this
sandwich?” I held up the PB&J. The white bread had soft
impressions of tiny fingerprints.

He nodded. “My mom used to make them
for me when I was little.”

The hollow-toned way he spoke of her
told me she was dead.

“
Thank you,” I
said.

He scuffed one of his mismatched
Converse sneakers against the floor. His jeans, thin from too many
washes, hung loosely on his slight frame. A leather string served
as a belt. He wore a buttoned-up short-sleeved shirt with pink and
white vertical stripes.

“
Does it really not hurt?”
he asked. “You can’t feel anything? Like, at all?”

“
Nope.”
I can’t feel a thing. Nothing hurts
me.

“
Wow.” His mouth formed a
perfect round
O
,
his chocolaty brown eyes big as saucers.

“
What’s your
name?”

“
Ghost. Not like the
movie.” He pulled a face. “That movie was awful. Reece made me
watch it. It’s ’cause of my hair. They say I must’ve seen a ghost
and it scared me so bad my hair turned gray, but I’m not
scared.”

I almost—almost—smiled, but it was
only a thought, not a physical thing. Not even a real desire. “So
you’re a halfling then?”

“
Are you really Irena’s
daughter?” he fired back.

The question felt like jumping into an
icy lake, where the water was so cold it stole your breath and
stopped your heart. “I’m a lot of things.”

Irena’s daughter. Hex’s daughter. A
halfling. A killer. A monster. I hadn’t had enough time in Barrow
to figure out whether I hated myself. I had the time now, but not
the strength.

Ghost nodded at my answer like he
understood. “Everyone is out hunting. They leave me to watch the
place.” He squared his shoulders a bit at that, his chin lifting.
“I can show you around some if you feel like it.”

“
Are you supposed to let
me leave this room?”

“
Thad says you’re not a
prisoner.” He smirked. “But I bet Lauren would shoot you in the leg
if you tried to leave. Probably best if you avoid her for a while.”
He tapped his nose, his smile deepening into one of great pleasure.
“She’s really pissed about her face.”

My mouth twitched. “I like you, Ghost.
I can tell we’re going to get along just fine.”

I scooped up my sandwich and followed
him to the door. My body moved like a rusted hinge. I practically
heard my bones squeaking in complaint, but I pushed myself forward,
following Ghost into the hall outside my room. The scrubs I wore
barely offset the chill in the air. The concrete picked at my
socked feet with every step. There wasn’t much in the way of
decorations. Like my room, this place seemed to adhere to the rule
that if it wasn’t purposeful, it wasn’t needed.

A thought weaseled into my mind: Was
my mother a practical woman? Did I not know her at all?

“
How many halflings are
here?” I asked as we passed door after door. Most were closed, but
through some cracked openings, I spotted more bedrooms. They were
smaller than mine, but littered with clothes and rumpled sheets and
the smell of skin and shampoo.

“
About forty.” The number
floored me, but Ghost went on, unfazed. “The members of Hex’s pack
mostly stay in the other buildings. A lot of these factories were
too damaged after the earthquake in sixty-four and were just
abandoned. Reece says some of them are haunted, but I think he’s
just messing with me.”

I’d seen Hex’s pack once before while
on a hunt with Luke and Hatter. I’d stood between them, ready to
fight, with one small knife in my hand. It was the first time I’d
seen my father, though I didn’t know he was my father at the time,
in his ’swang form. After Barrow, I knew why his hide had been
unscarred, smooth, and shining, while nearly every other ’swang was
marked by their female mates.

Hex’s mate had been my mother, a human
hunter from the university. She hadn’t followed the female aswang’s
ritual of uniquely scarring their mates.

The hall separated in front of us and
Ghost steered us left, toward what looked like a common gathering
area and kitchen, which appeared barely used. I wondered about the
chilly air and the meager sandwich Ghost had brought me. Were they
trying to keep this place off the grid?

“
Why are the halflings
here if this really is Irena’s place?”

Ghost’s attention fell to the
forgotten sandwich in my hand. “Are you going to eat
that?”

Without a word, I handed it to
him.

He took a big, chomping bite and spoke
around the peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Your
mom started gathering the first halflings in secret back in the
eighties, before she left the university.” He said the word
“university” the way hunters said “aswang.” “Hex took over when she
died. Oh . . .” He darted a gaze toward me. “Uh, sorry,
for your . . . loss.”

“
In the eighties?” I
asked, forgetting about the tour and focusing solely on Ghost. “You
mean before she disappeared?”

The file with the pictures I’d found
in Killian’s office had been labeled “1986,” but Killian had
planted it to make me think the aswangs had performed breeding
experiments on my mother. I couldn’t trust the date, but my mind
stumbled over the thought that she’d done all this before she
disappeared and had me.

Ghost scuffed his feet against the
floor and took us back toward the front of the warehouse, though I
paid little attention to our surroundings, aside from the fact that
we were back in the main hallway. “Thad said she was working as a
double agent between the university and here when she fell in love
with Hex.” He blushed at this. “She brought us together and created
a safe place for us. No one tries to kill us here.”