Monster Mine (31 page)

I hadn’t thought about the generator.
If the aswangs got inside, it would be a bloody free-for-all. There
was nothing protecting those who couldn’t defend themselves besides
the tall fences and a few hundred hunters.

As I had the thought, a series of
blasts went off by the western fence line. I looked back in time to
see part of the fence crumble and fall in on itself as a patch of
the foundation was blown to bits. A second later, the guard tower
next to it tilted. In it, the hunters scrambled, clinging to beams
and railings. In slow motion, the tower leaned too far and the
hunters started to fall out. The wooden beams holding it up cracked
apart. It toppled over as if a giant finger had softly pushed
it.

“
Over there!” I shouted to
the nearest rook’s nest. The guards heard me and looked down, and
then they turned to where I was pointing. “Fill in that gap! Don’t
let them through!”

The guards set off, some racing down
the ladder and others running across the wall’s gangway. There were
too few of us. We couldn’t hold the walls or keep the aswangs from
blowing them apart.

I stopped at the foot of the fence and
looked up as another part of it blew up.

The sun was almost set,
streaking the horizon a garish orange and red. We had minutes until
the aswangs waiting to stream inside went night-form. When that
happened, we wouldn’t stand a chance against them. As though they
were warning us, the ticking coming from beyond the walls was
almost louder than the explosions happening all over the school.
The occasional word slipped through the cacophony:
Kill. Eat. Tasty. Barracks. Towers.

I pushed it all away until I heard
what I was listening for, so quiet I almost didn’t catch
it:

Ollie
.

He was close. The word was too
quiet.

Ollie
. Again. I pivoted and ran toward the field beyond the
barracks.

Ollie. Ollie.
Ollie.

On my way,
Father
, I sent back through my
mind.

He laughed.

I found him, soon enough, at the base
of a destroyed part of the wall. Chunks of concrete and stone
dotted the ground around him. He was reclining on one, waiting, his
foot doing a little jig.

I slowed to a walk and stopped on the
other side of the rubble. Guards hadn’t made it to this hole yet.
No one was here to hold the line against the incoming aswangs,
besides me. I would have to do.

“
I’m disappointed in you,”
he said.

“
You’re early.”

Hex stood and started to circle me.
Without looking, he avoided the juts of stone that might have
caused him to stumble. Onyx eyes tracked me, flicking from my face
to the pulse in my throat. Beneath the quickly diminishing light,
he appeared every inch the aswang warrior my friends had warned me
about. I watched the strain on his face; he was barely clinging to
his human form. The shadows were reaching for him.

I wondered how in the hell I’d ever
considered him fatherly.

“
Why are you here, Ollie?”
he asked, and I heard it in his voice—the clicking, like his words
were half formed in his mouth.

I had to finish him before he changed.
“You know why.”

“
I want to hear you say
it.”

I eased around and away from him to
keep some distance between us—enough so he couldn’t lunge at me,
but not so much that he would think I was retreating. Dipping my
hand in my coat pocket, I adjusted my fingers in the silver
knuckles.

“
Say it, Ollie,” he
growled. “Say you chose them over me. Say you betrayed me. Say
you’re here to kill your father.”

I tightened my fist. In my other hand,
I dropped my whip’s coil. “I’m here to kill my father.”

“
Did he get to you? Turn
you against me yet again?”

“
Dean has nothing to do
with this. I made this decision, no one else. Just me.”

He stepped around the shadows slanting
across the rocky rubble and rolled out the tension in his
shoulders, making the rugged fabric of his coat crinkle. He’d just
fought off a change. “I guess this makes you feel less like a
weapon then, to do his dirty work without being told.”

“
I’m no one’s
weapon.”
The words ripped from me, from
deep inside the dark place where Max had carved out a gaping hole,
but with those words, I felt a little lighter. A little better for
it. And more like the old Ollie.

Hex had heard it too. I saw the
recognition on his face when he knew I’d changed and was no longer
someone’s little errand girl, much less his.

He dipped his chin in barely a
semblance of a nod. He tightened his fists and looked at me in a
new way, like I was his opponent, not his daughter. “This is it
then. You’re here to do what your mother couldn’t, I guess.
Something noble like that.”

“
Something like
that.”

“
You think you’re good
enough to take me?”

Enough talking.

I slashed forward. He backed into a
thick part of the shadows where the wall still stood and only a bit
of light from the vanishing sun made its way over the top. The
surprise would work to my advantage, but only for this first
strike. My whip cracked out, metal tip flashing, and lashed across
his face.

The muscles in his cheek tugged
against the length, and he howled. I jerked back with my weight
braced against the handle, just like he’d taught me. Ripping free,
the tip slunk back, slinging blood across the stones.

Hex released a sound from deep within
his chest that was purely instinctual, purely predatory.

He hadn’t come prepared to kill me,
but he was now.

The fight was on.

I registered his movement a fraction
of a second before it happened. He rocked his weight back, his feet
anchoring for balance, his line of sight focused slightly above my
head. He sprang forward. His momentum carried him across the space
of the whip’s length that I’d carefully kept between us.

The sheer heat of his body descended
on me faster than a blink, but I was already twisting away. As he
landed inches from where I stood, I was ducking and striking
upward. My thumb switched the blade free right as my arm passed his
side. I cut deep.

More warmth spilled from
him.

I slid free and danced backward to put
the space I needed between us.

Hex’s head snaked around as he
flinched away from the cut, right as the pain hit. His eyes
flickered with something deeper than pain, like the hurt wasn’t
just coming from his side but from his heart, as if I’d broken
it.

But I reminded myself that
Hex—
my father
—couldn’t have a heart after all the awful things he’d done
to my mother and me. I’d been willing to forgive him for waiting to
save me from Max. But I’d never forgive him for what he’d done to
my mother.

I bared my teeth as he rounded on me.
When he pulled his hand away from his side, it was covered in
dripping, thick blood, nearly black in the darkness.

“
Apparently, I taught you
too well.” He hissed a breath out between his teeth.

“
You underestimated me,” I
said, relishing the look on his face as he wiped his hand clean.
“You thought I would cower when you told me what had happened to my
mother. You thought I’d lick my wounds and come back to you to be
your
weapon
,” I
said, spitting out the word. “You were wrong.”

“
So it would
seem.”

He launched into a spinning kick. His
legs scissored through the air as his torso spun around, almost
horizontal with the ground. By the time my whip sang through the
space, I was too late. The tip met nothing but air, and Hex’s
combat boot demolished the side of my face.

White stars exploded in spasms across
my vision. I was free-falling for a short second, my thoughts
muddled behind the fog of blackness overcoming me. A burst of fire
spread out from my jaw and up into my temple.

I fell to my knees. The silver
knuckles nearly clacked loose from my fist. I tried to stand too
quickly and fell right back down. Hex danced back as I recovered,
even though he could’ve landed another blow. The fact I hadn’t
heard a thick crack in my head told me my jaw wasn’t
broken.

It also told me he was pulling his
punches.

Whether he was drawing this out or he
was reluctant to end it, I couldn’t tell. If his kernel of
reluctance matched mine, we’d be dancing all night.

The second time I moved I managed to
stand. My legs quivered for only a second beneath me before I
steadied, blinking my vision clear. I snapped the whip back behind
me, ready for another lash.

“
Second
thoughts?”

“
No.” I spat out a glob of
thick blood.

“
You really think you’re
going to change this place?” As he spoke, he started moving again.
I matched his steps, slinking to the side. He tracked the shadows
with one eye while he watched me with the other.

“
I already am. Dean is my
weapon now. Not the other way around.”

Hex’s spine straightened by a fraction
of an inch. A slight tell, but I spotted it nonetheless. How much
time had I spent studying him these past few weeks? How long had I
watched him move, cataloging his ticks so I could feel like I knew
my father? All that time, wasted.

“
You really thought he had
me under his thumb.”

“
Color me pleasantly
surprised.”

He spun back and grabbed a thinner
slab of stone. With it, he blocked my whip at the perfect moment
when I lashed out. The crack from the stingray blistered the
air.

He swung the stone down, hauling my
whip’s length with it. My balance fell forward as I held tight. A
splintering sound. He’d smacked the stone across my shoulder. The
shards sailed by my face.

In my head, I had a split second to
think through which way my whip had wrapped. A blink later, I
moved, sidestepping him and snapping back my wrist. My whip
retreated perfectly, moving too quickly to tangle around the debris
on the ground or Hex’s legs as he pressed harder toward
me.

I tried to pull back and give myself
some space. With a darting jab, I hit his ribs with the knuckles,
but before I could flick my fist and stab him, he cuffed my entire
arm with his hand.

The bone beneath his grip
bent.

I flashed hot, then cold. A second
later, every ounce of warmth in my body went to my arm.

A leg—his leg—kicked up and his boot
landed squarely on my chest. I flew backward. When I hit the
ground, I skidded a few feet before slamming into a rock. My chin
snapped off the cold surface.

I pushed up, my arm nearly buckling
beneath me. Hex turned back and studied the darkening sky. Not much
time left.

Across the campus, more
holes had been blown in the fence. Guards were running back and
forth, filling in the gaps as best they could. Most of the
civilians looked to be inside with the school’s doors locked up
tight.
Good
, I
thought.
At least only some of us will die
tonight.

As I grappled to my feet, Hex fixed
his attention back on me. “You never asked me why I kept the
sanctuary running after Irena’s death.”

Blood swirled in my mouth. I’d bitten
my tongue. “Does it matter?”

He ignored me. “I didn’t tell you
because I didn’t think it would do you any good to hear it.
Because—” He bit off the word. I’d never seen him angry before. “I
thought it would make you feel like a weapon, like you were being
used again. So I kept it to myself—for you.”

“
Let me guess,” I said as
I coiled my whip. “You’re gonna tell me now.”

He glanced at the sky again. I took
the chance and checked behind me—too many shadows. If he changed,
he could appear right next to me, and I wouldn’t know until it was
too late to stop him.

He let me move away, watching me
carefully as I shifted into the scant light that remained. The
effort of staying in day-form played out across his face in the
deeper wrinkles and the foreign worry in his eyes. Worry
. . . for me, because he knew he might not be able to
hold back his instincts or his punches as a night-form
’swang.

I worked out the maneuvers in my mind,
planning the quickest kill shot. Whip tip to the eye. Blade to the
throat. Move fast. Faster than him. Don’t stop.

But I couldn’t help shifting my eyes
back to him. He knew I wanted to hear.

“
When I met her, she
changed me. I wasn’t good back then. I killed—a lot. I fed on
people and moved on to the next without pause. But when she showed
me another way . . . I changed.” He shrugged, like
anything could be that simple.

Everything was that simple.

“
And then, when I found
out she was pregnant . . .”

I flinched at the words. My arms
loosened at my sides. The change was itching in his voice, clawing
its way from him. He nearly choked on it.