Monster Mine (30 page)

I nodded even though she wasn’t
waiting for my agreement. She had her face scrunched up, her
fingers tapping against her chin.

“
The x-factor might be the
solution they were dissolving it in. That could be the catch to
making it safe enough. Okay.” She jumped down from the table. “I
have some ideas, but I’ll need a few things.”

My heart started to gallop, and I
jumped down in front of her. “Anything. I’ll go now.”

Nyny held up three fingers. “Coffee.
More rats. And strawberry yogurt, ’cause I’m hungry.”

* * *

Over the next few days, I kept my bane
research from Ollie. Not because I was hiding it from her, but
because it would distract her. There was no time for
distractions.

Killian’s trial loomed over us,
warping time until it whizzed by, hours feeling like minutes and
minutes feeling like seconds. Under Ollie’s instruction, Dean met
with all the guards and hunters on campus. He told them select
information, merely saying they were under threat and that they
should be ready for anything during the trial. With thousands of
people descending on Fear University, we couldn’t risk the all-out
panic that would happen if people knew an aswang horde was coming
to kill them all. Ollie discussed evacuation with the others, but
in the end, we decided everyone was safer here, where there were
more hunters to fight off the attack.

But behind the scenes, the
preparations became frenzied, almost panicked. Ollie, Luke, and
Hatter orchestrated the setup of electric fences beyond our
perimeter walls. They readied guard towers and rook’s nests with
ammunition and supplies to last a small siege. And that was what we
considered this to be: a siege. No matter what, we had to keep the
aswangs outside. If we could hold our walls, things would be fine.
At least that’s what Ollie kept saying.

The night before Killian’s trial,
everyone gathered in the cafeteria, which had emptied out after
dinner, with everyone going out to the courtyard or their rooms to
gather and talk about how tomorrow night’s proceedings would go.
For the rest of us, it would be an all-nighter. Ollie had Dean’s
property map spread over a table while she and the others pored
over it, making notes of last-minute preparations. She pointed out
freshly stocked guard towers with her burnt hand, which she’d
removed the bandage from, insisting it was getting in her way. The
skin was slightly rippled and pale, but nothing compared to the
rest of her scars.

While the others worked, Nyny and I
sat by ourselves, scarfing down our first meal of the day. Our
research felt endless, but earlier today, we’d had some luck with
mixing a liquid hypertension drug with the powdered bane. The rat
lived for almost five minutes after we’d injected it with saliva
and then the subsequent antidote. It was a new record, and we were
both anxious to get back to the lab.

The cafeteria doors banged open,
startling everyone.

“
We’re closed for the
evening,” Luke called over his shoulder.

Everyone turned to the
doors.

My mouth fell open.

Bloody Eve, Haze, and a slew of Barrow
base hunters streamed into the cafeteria. Eve’s boots thumped over
the tiles, the metal chains around her waist chiming against each
other. Her tattoos looked stark beneath the fluorescent lights, but
not as stark as the scarring around Haze’s mouth, where he’d been
bitten years ago. The bite had taken away his ability to speak.
They moved toward us like a swarm.

A smirk contorted Eve’s face. “That’s
not what I heard.”

Ollie straightened beside the map.
“Good to see you, Eve. Haze,” she said with a nod to the Hussar
brother.

“
What are you guys doing
here?” Luke asked.

“
Ask your girl.” Eve
lifted her chin toward Ollie.

Ollie lifted a shoulder. “I invited
them. Seemed like we could use the help.”

She must have been desperate to ask
for Eve’s help. Otherwise, I doubted she would have ever brought
the Barrow hunters within such close proximity of Tully, even
though he and the aswangs who’d followed us here remained outside
the walls. He would get word soon enough.

Behind the Barrow hunters, the door
opened again.

On a breeze of gauzy skirts and silver
hair, Luke’s mother glided in. Abigail Aultstriver in the flesh,
though she looked out of place without her gothic Barrow base
surroundings, where her presence had been in such contrast to the
constant darkness around her that she’d seemed more than human,
more than normal. But here at Fear University, her slight form and
pale skin didn’t quite meet the grandness around her, or the flesh
of amped-up fighters, or the pulse of a campus hyped for her
husband’s trial.

Luke went to her and wrapped her in a
tight hug. She leaned into him as if she’d only had the strength to
make it this far.

“
I told you not to come,”
he said into her ear, but the cafeteria was so hushed we all
heard.

She eased back and touched his face.
“I had to. You understand.”

He kissed her cheek. With that, he
pulled back and glanced at the others, meeting Ollie’s eye in
particular. “I’m going to take her to my room. I’ll be back in a
few minutes.”

“
Take your time,” Ollie
said. Then, to Abigail, she added, “Good to see you,
Abby.”

Abigail leaned her head against Luke’s
shoulder and smiled at Ollie. A familiar glazed quality covered her
eyes like a film. I recognized it from my stay at the base when
Ollie was missing and the hunters had been out searching for her.
It had been just me, Abigail, and Nyny at the base. I knew
Abigail’s penchant for pills. I wondered how many she’d taken today
to numb herself enough to handle what she was doing.

“
Why don’t we all take a
break?” Ollie said to the others after Luke and his mother had
left.

As the group of hunters Dean had
specifically chosen to be in on the inner details got up to leave,
Ollie motioned Eve and her band of hunters over. The group closed
in around her, and I lost sight of her.

I looked at Nyny, who was nursing
another coffee. “Ready to go back?”

“
I was thinking about the
hypertension drug. It makes sense to lower the blood pressure in a
situation where you don’t want the blood to circulate a poison
through the body faster . . .”

She went on, talking about our latest
advancements as we headed out. While it was the closest we’d come
to not instantly murdering our rat subjects, the hypertension drug
was also our last option. If our current solution didn’t work, we
were out of ideas as to what the halflings were using so freely in
their mini-triage medical operations. If I could have grabbed a
syringe, or a pill bottle, we would have had this figured out by
now.

“
Hey,” Nyny said as we
passed the restrooms. “I’ll meet you down there. I’ve got to hit
the john.”

“
Okay?”

She headed off before I could ask what
a “john” was. I turned toward the stairs that wound down to the
labs. At the last second, I changed my mind. I wanted a quick
breath of fresh air to clear my head before we buried ourselves in
hours and hours of work and failed tests.

The defeat of it all weighed on me,
and I just needed a moment. It was probably a good thing Hatter had
been so busy setting up the electric fences that I hadn’t had much
time to see him. Also, I thought he was avoiding me. But right now,
I didn’t mind. If I had to see his face every day and see my
failures manifest in him, I would curl up in a ball and not move
for days.

I started back toward the front
entrance on autopilot. The lack of sleep had caught up with me,
making my body feel like weights were dragging at my ankles. I
could have lain down in the hallway and taken a nap.

The hall was dark with the overhead
lights switched to their power-saving mode. As I walked, they
flashed on above me with low, humming clicks. My flats whispered
across the stone floors. A chill swept down the hall, where someone
had opened the front door, and rustled through my hoodie. I
shivered.

Ahead of me, in the entry, the front
door banged closed. Footsteps rang off the floor. They turned down
my hall. Another student, possibly, or a family member unfamiliar
with the school’s layout. I’d given more directions in the past few
days than I had my entire life. Worst of all was the excitement the
families exuded for tomorrow. Today, I’d felt it vibrating off them
in waves, a tangible electricity that hurt my skin. I had reasons
to hate Killian Aultstriver as much as anyone, but I couldn’t stop
myself from feeling a touch bad for him. He didn’t stand a chance
against these people. Not that he deserved a chance, but
still.

For a second, I considered ducking
into a classroom just to avoid the thrill coming off whoever was
approaching me, but then I felt it: a warning. My steps slowed and
my spine jammed straight. My collarbone ached with fear.

The light between me and the other
person flicked on.

Her black hair gleamed beneath the
lighting, the bruises on her face only just fading. She wore
regular clothes, like she was a student, but when she recognized
me, her smile looked far too old and too wicked.

Lauren.

T W E N T Y - O N
E

Sunny

“
W
ell,” Lauren said, “this is fortunate. I’d hoped to run into
you before the sun set.”

My face went numb and my scalp
prickled with fear. “H-how did you get in here?”

Security had been Ollie’s biggest
emphasis. Day-forms sneaking inside the school could crumble us,
but how could we protect against halflings, who could slip through
at any time, tricking the guards into thinking they were part of
the hunter families around them? How could we tell the guards to
watch out for traitors who looked nothing like the monsters they
were trained to fear?

“
Easily enough. Caught a
ride with a nice little family.” She smiled. “They’re dead now, of
course.”

I wished I hadn’t just eaten. I wished
the rat smell would leave my nose. I wished I didn’t feel so close
to puking.

I reached my hand toward my hoodie’s
pocket.

“
What are you doing there,
Sunny?”

I didn’t see any weapons on her, none
that she could get to quick enough. She wouldn’t have gotten
through the gates armed without a hunter’s permit to carry on
school grounds.

It was a gamble.

I pulled my SIG out and raised it,
clicking the safety off. It was already cocked and
ready.

Lauren raised her hands. “You’re too
much of a pussy to pull the trigger.”

I’d only shot one person in my life:
Killian, in the knee. Though now I wished I’d aimed a little
higher. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.

Right then, an alarm blared through
the school. A breach. Lauren met my eyes and shrugged. “Looks like
you’re about to have a fight on your hands. Might want to save your
bullets.”

“
Go to hell.” I pulled the
trigger.

Her head snapped back with a hole in
her forehead, and she slumped to the ground.

I turned and ran.

* * *

Ollie

We didn’t know anything was wrong
until it came.

Tick tock

Not just one, but too many to count.
And they were loud.

Then the lights went out, and the
emergency generator didn’t fire up.

“
Go!” I shouted at the
hunters who’d remained in the cafeteria. “Go, go, go!”

Weapons came out, cocking
all at once with one great clang that I almost couldn’t hear over
the relentless ticking
.

I took off, my whip out, my knuckles
atop my clenched fist. My burnt hand still felt tight and awkward,
but it was manageable. If this alarm was real and not some
accident, then I could fight. But we weren’t ready. This wasn’t
supposed to happen tonight, but I should have known
better.

We raced down the main hall, back
toward the entrance and the dorms. The people inside were
panicking. With the power out and without the generator, the dorm
rooms wouldn’t lock properly. They were sitting ducks in
there.

“
Calm them down,” I
shouted over the mess, gesturing toward the dorms. “Gather them up
and keep them inside.”

The hunters who’d ran with me peeled
off and tore inside.

Someone had gotten in here. Someone
had messed with the generator.

I didn’t dwell on the how. I just ran
outside, across the courtyard, which was slammed with panicked
people running back toward the main building. They were yelling;
some were screaming. Shoving past them, I headed straight toward
the fence and the closest rook’s nest. Guards and hunters flocked
to the fence’s walls to hold them against the coming attack. We all
heard them out there, the aswangs, waiting in the woods beyond the
walls. They must have already breached the electric fence. We
hadn’t expected it to hold for long, but we had expected a
warning.