Monster Mine (6 page)

“
Because what happened
between us in Barrow can’t be replaced by hate or fear or disgust.
Whatever happened there was real. And you being part”—I didn’t
expect him to say the dirty word, but he did—“’swang makes no
difference.”

“
You’re an
idiot.”

He took a deep breath, and
when he did, I heard the rattle in his lungs. “When I was looking
for you, all I could think about was what . . .
Max
was doing to you. It
killed me to know you were with him. It literally”—he drew a fist
to his chest and pounded it against his sternum—“tore something out
of me. I didn’t care what you were then, and I don’t now. When you
disappeared, none of that mattered.”

“
It should.” It mattered.
It had changed my entire world.

The silence stretched between us,
punctuated only by the loose vibrations in his chest when he
breathed.

“
What happened to you out
there? When he . . . what did he do?”

My eyes snapped to his, and I turned
to face him, a cruel smile manipulating my lips. “What do you
think?”

I watched Luke battle between rage and
horror for me. “He—”

“
For
three
weeks, because Thad waited.
Because Hex,
my father
, told him to wait. They wanted me to be in pieces when they
found me so they could use me. Like Dean used me. Like your father
used me. Everyone wants a piece.” I was shouting now, but I flung
my arms wide and started laughing, a hysterical bubble ready to
burst in my chest. “Well, there’s nothing left. There’s nothing to
hold my bones together.”

I couldn’t stop the laughter. I was
losing it. Tears sprung in my eyes as I doubled over laughing and
clutched my middle to keep from dying.

Luke’s fingers brushed across my arm.
I hadn’t seen him come any closer. I lurched away, hitting the wall
next to the window.

“
Do
not
touch me! No one touches me ever
again!” I screamed.

He pulled his hand back and took a
step away from me. A small victory. A crushing loss.

I slid down the wall to the floor,
tears streaking cold trails down my cheeks. I coughed and choked on
my tears.

“
You came back for the
wrong girl, Luke,” I said, laughing and dying. “She’s not here. You
should have come to kill what’s left of me. You should have done
that.”

He backed toward the door, eyes locked
on mine, ready to run away from the monster in the corner. I’d
never be anything more than that, no matter how good my mother had
been. No matter all she’d done. I’d never be her.

“
I told him I loved him
too,” I called after him, wanting him to run away faster. “I
screamed it over and over again while he tore me open. I forgot all
about you. Forgot your name. Your face. When I close my eyes, it’s
him I see, not you.”

He ripped open the door and shouted
down the hallway, “Sunny!”

“
You know what’s really
fucked up?” My quieter question made his head snap back to me, and
I saw his hand was fisted over his heart, like maybe he had a hole
there too. “I think I really do love him.”

Luke’s face crumpled at my
destruction, at hearing me speak it out loud, but what had he hoped
to find when he came here?

“
I love him so much I wish
he were alive so I could kill him all over again. I dream of
killing him, but my nightmares are spent loving him.”

Sunny tore through the door, her
attention falling on Luke when she didn’t see me on the floor. He
pointed at me as Hatter came in next. Sunny finally spotted me and
a mewing sound escaped her mouth. She rushed over, and when she
dropped down beside me and pulled me against her, I went. I let her
touch me because I was already gone—gone somewhere far, far away in
my mind—and I didn’t want to ever come back.

“
What’s going on?” Thad
asked, trying to push himself into the room. “I agreed
to—”

“
Get the fuck out.” Luke’s
voice ripped through the room, sending a vibration through me. He
and Thad exchanged some heated words I didn’t bother to hear as I
sank against Sunny, her fingers winding through my hair. Hatter had
to pull Luke off Thad and get between them. From behind him, Luke
said, “You and I will settle this later.”

I didn’t listen to the rest of their
argument as Sunny pulled me in tighter, rocking me, soothing me.
She repeated my name over and over like I’d forgotten it, like I
needed to be called back down from the sky.

“
You can’t—” Thad started
again, louder this time.

“
You heard him,” Hatter
said, and I heard the smiling leer in his voice and knew his scar
was probably messing his face up. His mad face. His manic temper.
“
Get
.
Out
.”

The door slammed shut. I peeked over
Sunny’s shoulder. I expected Luke to be gone, but he stood beside
Hatter, their bodies guarding the door, their eyes watching over
Sunny and me.

“
We’re here,” Sunny
whispered, her hand stroking my hair. “We’ve got you.”

She went on in Filipino, her words or
prayers like an ancient hand reaching through time and easing me. I
melted against her, my eyes still on Luke, and I let myself fall
apart.

F I V E

Sunny

O
llie fell asleep in my arms. She went so quickly, so heavily
and completely, that I wondered if she’d slept here at all. Her
body prodded mine in a withered slightness I’d never felt before.
Back at Fear University and then at the Barrow base, she’d been
solid, like steel made of muscles and grit.

She felt like air now.

Luke lifted her from my arms and
cradled her against his chest—two broken things combined to barely
make a whole. Hadn’t I looked at them once before and marveled at
how such wild, hard things could fit together so well?

Luke laid her out on the bed so gently
I thought myself a fool for ever thinking he could hurt her. His
face went pale from the effort, and his hands shook when he settled
the blanket around her. When he took her hand, I knew he wasn’t
leaving anytime soon.

I hesitated at the end of the bed.
Underneath the thick blanket, Ollie appeared so small. The hollows
in her cheeks sank deep. The ugly mark on her chest, the hatching
of stitches, was stark black against her pale skin. Dark scars ran
across her cheek, down her jaw, and onto her neck. I had a matching
set on my back from fighting the ’swang during Fields. Our shared
marks had once made me feel like her sister, but I once again stood
on the outside because I would never understand her pain, what
she’d gone through, or what had happened to her.

I hadn’t protected her like I
promised.

On wobbly legs, I teetered to the door
where Hatter stood. He took one look at my face and grabbed my
arm.

“
We’ll be close,” he
called over his shoulder to Luke as he opened the door.

Luke remained silent, his vigil
uninterrupted.

Quietly, Hatter shut the door and we
turned around. Without thinking, I took Hatter’s hand and faced
down Thaddeus Booker, who was standing outside Ollie’s room with
his arms crossed over his chest, his blond hair unkempt, his
long-lashed eyes bloodshot. When we’d arrived, they’d checked us
and the Jeep we’d driven from the airfield for tracking devices.
Hatter had to convince them not to move his plane to another city
for security reasons they wouldn’t explain to us. But they’d taken
our weapons, my knives and SIG, and all our phones, but now I
realized he’d taken a lot more from us.

“
You,” I whispered so I
wouldn’t wake Ollie. “You deplorable piece of utter,
freaking
shit
.”

“
I told you I wouldn’t be
back,” he said. There were other halflings around him, filling the
shadows of the hallway. I’d yet to see a light on and wondered if
the place even had electricity. “I warned you.”

“
You waited to get her.
You
waited
.” Luke
had told us, in quiet words, what Ollie had said. I think the only
thing keeping him from killing Thad was being with Ollie and not
wanting that to end. “You let us think she was dead.”

“
She never should have
been with you in the first place. She belongs here, with
us.”

“
That’s why you waited
then? Why you let her stay with that sick man for so
long?”

Hatter’s hand had tightened around
mine to stop me from inching forward, my fist clenched at my side
as Thad and I fired retorts back and forth. The halflings gathered
at the other end of the hall crowded closer together, like we might
all clash right there. Only when I saw the flash of guilt cross
Thad’s face did I step back next to Hatter.

“
It wasn’t my call to
make.”

“
Maybe,” Hatter said,
shrugging. “Maybe not. But you’re going to have to face Luke for
what you did to Ollie. Hell, you’re going to have to face Ollie.
And while Luke may be enraged enough to try to kill you, Ollie is
lying in there as we speak, and she’s resting, waiting. And if I
know that young woman half as well as I think I do, you better
watch out.” His eyes swept over the rest of the group. “You all
better watch out, because bad things happen when she goes this
quiet.”

“
Then it’s good you’re
here,” Thad said. “You can help us keep her under
control.”

“
What?” I sputtered.
“Don’t you dare—”

“
Hey.” Hatter stepped
forward, his arm going around my shoulders, but his eyes were
leveled on Thad. “We should talk about this with Ollie. It’s her
decision. We’re here to help her, not you. Now if you don’t mind,
we’re all exhausted. Is that room empty?” He lifted his chin toward
the door directly opposite Ollie’s room.

“
It can be,” Thad said
carefully.

“
Good. We’ll take it. I
suggest no one goes into Ollie’s room for a while. Luke is a bit
unhinged at the moment.”

“
This isn’t the
university, Hatter. Your kind doesn’t call the shots
here.”

The scarred edge of Hatter’s mouth
hooked. The others might have thought he was grinning, but I knew
better. “I’m just trying to keep someone’s face from getting ripped
off. That’s all.”

He kept the fact that Luke was living
off saliva between us. We were the only ones who needed to know
just how dangerous Luke actually was.

“
Fine.”

“
Fine.” Hatter’s face
stretched wider, until his gnarled lips revealed the shine of his
teeth.

We waited as the halflings slowly
cleared out with long, hard looks cast over their shoulders. They
didn’t trust us here. Hatter kept me behind him until every last
one of them was gone. Only then did we go into the room across the
hall.

He kept the door partway open so he
could keep an eye on Ollie’s room and guard Luke’s back.

Our new room had obviously been
occupied but kept tidy. The bed was made with crisp, tightly tucked
corners. No personal items lined the low-slung gray dresser.
Similar to the rest of the house, the floors were made of concrete,
the ceiling and brick walls exposed. It felt rough and cold, like a
chill even a warm sweater couldn’t shake.

“
What are you thinking
about?” I asked Hatter.

He glanced up from where he’d been
staring down at a rust-colored stain on the floor. Blood. “You
should get some sleep.”

“
Come on,” I pressed, not
buying his non-answer. “What’s wrong?”

His attention wavered between the door
and me. “Do you think,” he started slowly, “we were right to bring
him here?”

Something cold and wet slunk around in
my belly. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. The
black scars marring his face battled against the wide-open raw look
in his eyes—a hardened warrior mixed together with a worried best
friend.

“
They’re better together,
don’t you think?” I didn’t wait for him to respond, because even I
could argue that their relationship might not be the healthiest,
and hurried on. “And you heard her. Saw her. She’s a mess. She
needs all of us to help her.”

“
But what about Luke? Is
this what he needs?” He ran a hand over his face. “And you. Is this
best for you?”

“
Of course it’s best for
me. I need to be wherever she is.”

“
You think that because
you’re a good person, Sunny. You don’t see how this hurts
you.”

I frowned. I was fine. I
was more than fine. My best friend wasn’t dead. “She
needs
us.”

“
Ollie doesn’t need
anyone. And when she comes out of this, can you guarantee what kind
of person she’ll be? What if she’s changed and she’s no longer the
girl you knew?”

I flung myself to my feet, my face
flushing bright red. “Ollie’s been through the worst thing without
anyone there to help her. If I stepped away, I could never live
with myself.”