Monster Mine (32 page)

“
You changed
everything
. What the
sanctuary became after your mother died, it was all for
you.”

“
No,” I shook my head.
Something sounded like it was clawing out of my throat too. “You’re
lying.”

But he didn’t hear me.

“
When I thought you died
with her, I kept all this up because I thought if I could save even
one halfling, it might feel like I’d been there to save you from
that Aultstriver monster. I’ve been chasing that goddamn feeling
for years, Ollie, just for you. Because I failed you. Then and now.
I could save all the halflings in the world, but they’ll never be
enough. They’ll never matter enough to me. Because they aren’t
you.”

* * *

Sunny

The alarms’ wails cut off right as the
power did. I was halfway down the stairs to the lab when the
winding stairwell went pitch black. The only sounds I heard were my
heavy breathing and the empty clicking from the lights above
me.

The darkness scared me. Anything could
be down here with me.

I tightened my grip around the SIG and
forced myself to keep moving, my hand on the curving wall for
support as I went. I stumbled the last few steps and fell. My knee
cracked against the stones, but I was up and moving before the pain
registered.

If I could get the bane to the
hunters, if I could give them a fighting chance, we might be
okay.

Nyny and I might have been running low
on rats, but we had enough bane left to kill an army.

I came to the lab level and slammed
through the door, the only lights coming from the battery-powered
generators that powered the equipment. The batteries served as a
backup to the backup generators, and they were all we had
now.

In that dim, cool-colored light, a
shadow moved about.

I wasn’t alone.

This far below ground, the ’swang had
already changed. From its smaller size, I guessed it was a female.
She’d been wrecking the place, sending samples and equipment
crashing to the floor, but when I came through the door, she’d spun
in my direction.

Her eyes glinted in the equipment’s
glow. I could just make out her ears swiveling back and
forth.

Panic made my head go fuzzy. I froze.
I almost forgot about the SIG. Almost. She snarled and leaped
forward, jumping over a lab table. I raised the gun and got off two
shots, one in her chest and another in her leg, right before she
collided into me.

As we fell, I managed to squeeze off
another round, straight into her belly. We slammed into the floor,
and the gun bounced out of my hand and clattered across the
lab.

I tried to scramble out from beneath
her weight, but it was useless. Her hot blood poured onto me, but
her eyes were still bright and alive. My shot to her gut would kill
her, and from the look in her eyes, she knew it too, but it would
take a minute.

And I knew what would happen in that
minute.

She tore into my shoulder faster than
I could gasp for air. Her teeth flayed my skin back, cracking bones
with each bite. I screamed, but there was no one around to hear
me.

T W E N T Y - T W
O

Sunny

I
awoke some time later. The power was still off and something
was crushing me.

Through the hazy fog that had
descended on my brain, I remembered the bane, the lab, shooting the
’swang, and the bite.

I remembered the ’swang’s teeth
tearing into me and being ripped apart and the feeling of tendons
peeling away from bone. Of bones crumbling into thousands of tiny
breaks.

I would probably lose my
arm.

But something funny happened at the
thought: nothing. I felt nothing. No fear. No worry.

My wounded arm was limp beside me. The
’swang’s weight was on the left side of my body, her torso across
my torn shoulder, blocking me from seeing the amount of damage she
did after I’d passed out.

With a grunt, I pushed against her
side, bucking my hips and trying to roll her off me. I felt nothing
in my arm, which worried me. The ’swang’s body slumped to the side,
rolling across my injured arm.

A mistake.

She must have clipped my brachial
artery when she bit me, because fresh blood was seeping through my
shirt at an alarming rate. Her body had been acting as a tourniquet
of sorts, and now I was slowly bleeding out from a tiny hole in a
major blood vessel. A cold dizziness washed over me as I pressed
the palm of my hand to the wound. With my other hand, I reached
down for the belt around my waist. The throwing knives clattered
out of their little pockets as I loosened the belt and brought it
up to my wounded arm. Using my teeth, I awkwardly tied up my arm as
tightly as I could, but it didn’t stop nearly as much of the
bleeding as I’d wanted.

I had to get to my feet or else I
would die on this floor and that wasn’t acceptable.

Getting to my knees with my hand
braced against the overturned lab table next to me went well
enough. I cradled my injured arm to my side. From there, I spotted
a rumpled lab coat caught under the edge of the table. I leaned
forward, fingers reaching, inches away from its sleeve.

Dizziness caused me to sway, and I
collapsed forward.

I was too weak to catch myself and my
cheek cracked off the floor. Blood filled my mouth and dribbled out
the corners of my lips.

I got the coat and wrapped it around
my arm, grimacing every time I had to lift it to tighten my
improvised tourniquet. The fabric would be soaked through in a few
minutes.

I set my eyes on the locked cooler
across the room. Technically, we’d been sharing the lab with the
other scientists during these last few days, but since it was still
winter break, no one had really been down here, which meant we’d
had the place to ourselves. Still, we’d locked the bane up to keep
it fresh in the industrial cooler. The lock was a simple keypad
with a numeric code, which, thanks to the backup batteries, glowed
softly in the darkness.

I reached up for the table and pulled
myself up to my knees. My feet felt long and unwieldy, but I
managed to get them under me. When I straightened, I swayed and
nearly went down again.

I made it to the cooler and typed in
the code: 6666, because Nyny had a sense of humor. I almost
laughed. The door chirped open and a rush of cool air blasted my
face, along with a blue light from the narrow strip of tiny,
interior bulbs.

There, on the top tray, sat our latest
batch of antidotes, the ones that had almost worked.

The ones with a solvent—a drug used on
patients with hypertension—that slowed your heart rate and blood
circulation. It was our last shot in the dark, but it had worked,
or, at least, it hadn’t killed the rats instantly.

The thought marched into
my mind like a soldier.
Take it. What do
you have to lose?

And really, what did I have to lose?
It would probably kill me, but then, I was going to bleed out
anyway.

Part of my mind told me I should be
worried about this. I should be afraid.

I wasn’t.

It was possible the antidote would
work, even though I had no clue what my effects from the saliva
were. I couldn’t feel if they were setting in. If the antidote
worked on me, even if I bled out, then it would save Hatter. I
would have done something good.

I couldn’t help it. My thoughts
drifted to Ollie.

She’d given so much. Lost so much to
gain so little. She wasn’t afraid to lose herself in the process.
After seeing her that first time in Anchorage, I thought I’d never
understand what she’d been through and how she’d suffered. I’d
considered myself on the outside of that kind of pain and separate
from it, as if it could never happen to me.

But I would know it now.

I wasn’t afraid to lose if it meant
something could be gained.

I could do this.

I grabbed the antidote, pulled the cap
off with my teeth, and plunged the full dose—enough to dose twenty
rats—into my hip without a second thought.

* * *

Ollie

“
It doesn’t change
anything.” But my voice cracked and the silver knuckles on my hand
felt heavier than they had before.

When I said I was ready to fight my
father, I’d been wrong. I wasn’t.

More explosions rocked the walls.
Night-form ’swangs materialized from every shadow by the hundreds.
Shots were fired from the walls and from the ground, the guards
fending off attacks through the holes. People were shouting to each
other, calling out breaches as they happened, which was almost one
after the other. Beneath the bright courtyard lights, I spotted
countless aswangs with their snarling, white fangs and glinting
eyes.

Hex battled the change with every
breath, his fists clenched, his body half turned away from me. It
would happen any moment.

“
It doesn’t change
anything,” I repeated, just to convince myself.

“
I figured it wouldn’t.”
His breathing turned shallow, like he was hollowing out and his
insides were deflating. “But then, even if it did, I would still
have to do this.”

He changed. The space where he’d stood
became empty air, too still, too quiet. The shadows beside me
warped and he surged out, fur glinting, teeth snapping. But then,
just as he reached me, he changed again, back into his day-form.
When he hit me with a piece of rock, he was holding it in a human
hand.

The rock crashed against the side of
my head and the world slanted sideways. I fell to the ground
amongst the larger stones from the wall. Hands scraping across the
ground, I tried to push myself up onto my elbows.

“
Don’t do this, Hex,” a
voice said from beyond the blown-out wall.

I was lying at just the right angle to
see.

Tully. His chest was bare, his mate’s
scarring pattern proudly displayed on his shoulder. His dreads were
pulled up in a ponytail, out of his face for the fight. He had no
weapons.

“
No,” I whispered, my
voice cracking. I barely heard myself. They certainly
didn’t.

“
Why not?” Hex asked,
straightening away from me.

“
She’s your daughter.
Isn’t that reason enough?”

No
, I wanted to scream.
Run away,
Tully. He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t. He can’t.

But Tully didn’t run.

He was going to fight—for me. I tried
to crawl forward but only managed to fall on my chin.

Hex knelt next to me.

“
Get away from her,” Tully
said, stepping around the stones on the ground.

Hex pulled my knuckles free and slid
them over his fingers. I tried to reach for him as he stood, but I
was too slow, too weak. My hand fell to the ground.

“
Stop,” I tried to
say.

It wasn’t enough.

“
You never deserved either
of them,” Tully said, voice low. “Irena was too good for you and
Ollie is too. They both ran from you because you’re a
monster.”

Hex rose, the knuckles glinting on his
hand. Tully didn’t pay attention to them, but he should
have.

“
Like you deserved your
family? Tell me, Tully, why couldn’t you protect your little girls?
Your pretty wife?”

Tully’s anger ripped through him, and
I saw the moment he couldn’t control the change a moment
longer.

Remember this, Ollie. In
that moment of change, when the darkness is solidifying us into
something else and we’re transported into the shadows, we are at
our weakest. If you wait long enough, away from the light, the
monster will come. You can kill it easily then by sliding a dagger
into its still-forming heart.

Hex deployed the blade on the knuckles
and pivoted toward the closest gathering of shadows.

Tully, his coat glinting and his snout
snarling, materialized. The shadows peeled away from him like he
was stepping through a doorway. But he didn’t make it far. Before
he could move forward, Hex plunged the knuckles’ blade into his
heart.

Tully’s momentum sent the blade deep
into his massive chest. His front legs buckled beneath him. A small
whimper escaped his mouth.

Hex pulled the blade out as Tully
sagged forward and slashed it across his throat. He stepped out of
the way right as Tully fell to the ground, landing on the shoulder
with the thick, gleaming scars.

I pulled myself forward, tears rolling
down my cheeks. Hex walked over to me, wiping the blade on his
pants. He pulled the knuckles off and replaced them on my
hand.

“
Stop,” I choked out.
“Just stop.”

“
Stay down, Ollie,” he
said. “Stay quiet. It’ll be over soon.”

In his other hand, he raised the stone
above my head and brought it down, cracking it across my
temple.