Monster Mine (23 page)

I was still watching as we clambered
up the steps, and at the top of the stairs, I craned my neck to
look around the goon leading us toward the hall to catch one final
glimpse.

Thad was prepping the syringe, which
was pre-filled with a clear liquid. A solvent for the powder, which
he tapped out from the pill bottle and mixed into the open syringe.
He moved fast, but I saw the careful way he measured the dosage and
the way he pinched out tiny amounts of the powder. The powder was
the key then, the dangerous solute. My mind ticked over the
options, through every clear liquid medicine I knew could be used
in an emergency medical situation. But it was the powder that kept
tickling at the back of my mind.

Right as we turned down the hall, we
heard Lauren say to Thad, “Don’t bother. He’s gone.”

Ollie hissed and started threatening
the guys leading us away, but as they shuffled me along, my
thoughts clicked into place. I remembered where I’d seen that
powder before.

I knew what they were giving the
wounded halflings.

S I X T E E N

Ollie

I
was dripping blood onto the floor.

No one noticed.

Where the Manananggal had bitten me, I
was feeling pulses of pain. They were diluted from the sheer amount
of adrenaline in my system, but they were there. If her jaw hadn’t
been broken, I would probably be writhing on the floor.

“
These people are insane,”
Luke was saying. “They let that boy die.”

Hatter ignored him, his focus locked
on Sunny. “Are you okay? It wasn’t your fault, Sunshine.” The last
few words were quiet, whispered in her ear just for her, but I
caught them and the way he spoke them to her.

I wondered when that had happened and
how I’d missed it.

“
What?” Sunny looked up at
Hatter’s voice. She was clearly somewhere else, her thoughts
tangled around something far bigger.

Hatter frowned down at her. “What’s
going on?”

“
Nothing,” she said, and I
heard the lie.

I met her gaze. Something had happened
downstairs that had her knotted up—something other than Ghost—but
it would have to wait.

“
You hurting?” she asked,
her gaze flicking to my neck and shoulder.

“
Just a little. She didn’t
get me good,” I said to keep Sunny from worrying too
badly.

“
I knew we should have
left weeks ago,” Luke was still saying. I ignored him.

“
I’m going after her.” My
words, quiet though they were, garnered everyone’s
attention.

“
What? Who?” Luke snapped
off the questions in staccato beats, his eyes flashing with
rage.

He almost looked like the old Luke,
like the warrior from Barrow. Under Sunny’s care, he’d nearly
recovered. His body and the hollows of his cheeks had started to
fill out. Down at his side, his fingers began their erratic beat.
He was itching for a fight.

“
The Manananggal. I’m
going to kill her, and then I’m going to get the truth from Hex.” I
didn’t call him my father or speak his name with fondness. That was
gone now. “And then we’re leaving.”

“
That,” Hatter said,
practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, “sounds like the
best idea I’ve heard in months.”

“
Sunny, you’re staying.”
She didn’t object, which told me enough about her current state.
“Hatter, you should stay with her. I don’t trust Thad and
Lauren.”

“
Don’t trust any of them,”
he said under his breath, but he nodded in agreement. “I’ll watch
her.”

“
You’re not going
alone.”

Luke’s words held no room for
argument, though I had no intention of going alone. She was
wounded, but so was I, and this hunt needed to be quick. Efficient.
Lethal.

“
Let’s go then,” I said
and headed for the room’s window.

If I’d surprised him, he only showed
it in his brief hesitation before collecting his
crossbow.

“
Don’t forget a jacket,”
Sunny said.

I glanced down. In the panic, I’d
forgotten about using my mother’s jacket on Ghost to stop his
bleeding. They were both gone now.

Sunny picked up my old black puffy
jacket from the back of the chair and handed it to me. “Take this
one. Be careful out there.”

“
We will,” Luke said,
joining me by the window. He wrenched it open, the old paint
causing it to stick.

I guessed our earlier dispute had Thad
and his team on edge, but I didn’t think he would go so far as to
guard the outside of the warehouse. They thought our fight was with
them, and they were right, but I had unfinished business with the
Manananggal first.

Getting out of the window was easy
work. Getting down turned out to be harder. Up on the second floor,
we only had a rusted drainpipe and a few crumbling edges of brick
wall to use on our way down. My injured shoulder oozed liquid
warmth down my back, and my hand, where the Manananggal’s blood had
burned me, was swollen and nearly useless. I would only be able to
use one weapon against the Manananggal tonight.

We fell the last few feet to the
ground, landing in a crouch atop the loose snow. A quick check
around proved no one had thought to guard the windows. We moved
off, setting out over the snow-packed earth with quick, light
steps. Luke stayed at my back as the warehouse grew distant behind
us. Only when we reached the burnt factory where I’d fought the
Manananggal did we slow to catch our breaths.

“
That was easier than I’d
expected,” Luke said. He never really looked at me, his eyes too
busy searching every dark corner and catching on every tiny
movement. We couldn’t drop our guard against rogue
’swangs.

“
Let’s try to find her
trail before you jinx us.”

It was almost a joke, and I caught
Luke’s glance from the corner of my eye. I turned away, but before
I did, I saw him lower his head, the tiniest fraction of a smile on
his lips.

I moved away, toward the last place
I’d seen her above the open lot where she’d tossed me like a
ragdoll. There, beneath the moonlight, a tiny glint of black blood.
My hand sent out a flare of heat at the sight.

“
Over here,” I called out
softly to Luke.

As he jogged over, I checked my burn.
The skin had puckered and turned a shade of white that worried me
almost as much as the hard, brittle quality of my palm, like if I
moved my hand too much the skin might crack apart and
shatter.

“
You okay?” Luke asked,
his words almost breathless in the cold.

I put my hand back in my jacket
pocket. “Fine. Let’s go.”

The abandoned factories in the area
had become like a second home. They’d seemed like a maze before,
but now I moved through them effortlessly. As I went, I could
almost imagine I heard the soft sounds of Hex’s pack around me. The
huffs of air through their snouts. The click of their claws across
the old flooring. The quick glimpses of their coats darting through
the darkness.

I missed them, which felt wrong after
everything that had happened tonight, but I still couldn’t let
myself think about Ghost, about such a young boy . . . I
gritted my teeth and forced my mind to shut down those thoughts.
More than anything else, I wanted to hate Hex’s pack, but I didn’t.
Tully and Squeak and the others who didn’t talk but were careful
with me when we trained, even when Hex told them to rough me up,
they felt like solidarity, like an army at my back. But they were
with Hex, and after tonight, after Ghost, I didn’t think I could
be.

“
Ollie, over here,” Luke
said, interrupting my thoughts.

We were almost at the edge of the
district, where the state park edged up against the city. When I
came up to Luke’s side, I spotted what had caught his attention:
more blood.

“
She definitely came this
way,” I said.

“
But we’ve known for weeks
that she’s in the park. Why hasn’t anyone found her
nest?”

His words bothered me as we continued,
heading beneath the trees’ limbs and farther away from
civilization. Dawn wasn’t long off, and if we wanted to catch her
at her weakest, we had to move fast. But Luke was right. Thad’s
halflings and Hex’s pack had combed the woods for countless nights
without one sign of her nest. If she was out here, and I would bet
my burnt hand she was, then she was hiding really well—too
well.

A few minutes later, Luke abruptly
said, “What if it isn’t on the ground?”

I almost jumped at the sound of his
voice. I’d nearly forgotten he was there. “What do you
mean?”

“
They looked all through
these woods for her nest, but why would she leave part of her body
behind in such an easy place to find? If it’s her one tie to
immortality, wouldn’t she hide it better?”

I slowed so he could draw up even with
me. “You think it’s in the trees?”

I almost shivered at his words. They
brought back memories of the kapres hiding in God’s Forgotten
Woods, the thick forest in the Brooks Range. Every Killing Season,
the hunters worked to clear them out, but they were deadly and
vicious when it came to protecting their territory.

“
Or buried.”

I stopped completely and looked
around, like some clue might slap me in the face. It made sense
that she would hide her nest better.

“
It has to be something
she can get to quickly. Easily,” I said, thinking as I spoke. “If
she’s flying, the trees make sense, but then it would be visible
from the air.”

“
She’s the only one of her
kind, and she’s been alive for millennia. Wherever she’s putting
her lower half, it has to be a damn good hiding spot.”

“
Okay.” I turned to Luke
and put my hands on my hips. “If you were a creepy old lady with
bat wings and bones dangling from your torso, where would you hide
your legs?”

“
I always hide the shit I
don’t want people to see under my bed.”

My thoughts fumbled. The ghost of a
smile appeared on my face, and I nearly laughed. “What do you hide
under there?”

He grinned, the corner of his mouth
dimpling into his cheek. A piece of his hair had fallen into his
eyes, and he looked like the Luke I’d fallen for back at Fear
University, the guy who would throw me to the mat and stand over me
grinning.

“
Caramel candy wrappers,”
he said. His smile stretched fully then, and I realized something
I’d forgotten.

I still loved Luke. He was still the
man I’d fallen for.

I might miss Hex’s pack, but I had my
own pack. My own army at my back. My friends would do anything for
me.

Without thinking, I took his hand. He
froze at my touch, his eyes widening. From the way his mouth kept
opening and closing, I knew he wanted to say something, but I just
squeezed his hand and let go before moving away. It was all I could
stand, but it was a start.

After a moment, he followed without
saying anything else, and the silence between us almost felt
normal.

He was still my Luke, and I still had
my pack.

And maybe . . . just maybe
. . . that meant I was still me too.

I threaded through the trees, Luke’s
footfalls crunching over the leaves and twigs behind me, with the
faintest smile on my face.

The peace lasted about twenty seconds,
until my boot scrunched on something on the ground. I paused and
glanced down at a glint of white with a sharp edge and a thick, wet
darkness.

“
What is it?” Luke came up
beside me.

“
Uh,” I
started.

“
Is that
. . .”

“
Her jaw,” I said. “I
broke it when we fought. She must have pulled it off.”

Her jagged rows of teeth smiled up at
me in a maniacal grin. The lower part of her jaw—the bone—was
crushed and dented on one side and torn on the other.

Luke cursed.

“
Watch the blood,” I said
before setting off again. “It burns.”

We walked in what felt like one large
circle for some time. As we went, we searched for more blood or any
sign she was in the area, but the farther we spiraled, the less we
found. My shoulder pulsed with a warning heat I knew I should
listen to. I couldn’t move quickly or breathe deeply with my
banged-up back, and the whiter my hand got, the more concerned I
became. When I stumbled over a large fallen tree that could’ve been
the same tree I’d fallen over twice before, I stopped.

“
This is ridiculous. If
she were out here, we would’ve found her by now. Hex’s pack
would’ve tracked her scent long ago.”

Luke ran a hand down his face, which
was rough with the first hint of a beard. He scanned overhead as if
he might see her sitting in a tree staring down at us with her
hollow, empty eyes. I shuddered at the thought. But even as I did,
the sensation of being watched overtook me. I shot a quick look
around.