Monster Mine (7 page)

“
I’m sorry,” Hatter said
before I could get anything else out. My ears were burning. “Look,
I’m just tired. These past few weeks have been hell on all of us.
Why don’t you get some rest and I’ll make sure no one goes inside
their room? I just need some space.”

“
Yeah.” I nodded. I needed
some space too. “Okay.”

He went back out into the hall and
closed the door. I heard him sit down out there, alone.

We were four long strings stretched
out in separate directions. Somehow, along the way, my grip had
faltered. I wasn’t holding us together anymore.

* * *

Sleep was impossible. When I gave up
and opened the bedroom door, I found Hatter asleep, his head
slumped forward and his back against the wall where he sat on the
floor. We’d barely slept during our mad dash to Anchorage from
Oregon, least of all Hatter. Not wanting to wake him, I crept
by.

On the way into the warehouse this
morning, I hadn’t paid much attention to my surroundings. We’d
entered through the first floor, which was nothing more than
hundreds of square feet of empty space. A set of metal stairs,
rickety and swaying, led upstairs to the renovated living space,
which, in my memory, was just one long hallway to Ollie’s
room.

There had to be more to this place,
and I couldn’t wait around and let Thad maneuver us into a corner.
He had all the power in this situation—we were on his turf, on his
terms—and I had to protect my friends by finding out any bit of
information I could.

I’d started to think like Ollie, in
terms of moves and countermoves: always protect your weak, exposed
sides. I had three weak sides, and I would do everything possible
to face threats head-on and save Ollie, Hatter, and
Luke.

I was right about the hall leading to
Ollie’s room, but I hadn’t remembered the number of doors on either
side, which likely led into other bedrooms. Nearly every door stood
slightly ajar, and as I passed by each one, I peeked inside, noting
the rumpled beds and lived-in spaces. The only sounds were my
footsteps thudding off the concrete floor.

Six doors later, I came to a split in
the hall. The left opened up into a large common area that served
as a dining area. Through a sweeping archway, I spotted a dark
kitchen, the counters clean of dishes and the light on the
refrigerator off. Heavy curtains were drawn across the large
windows, but that was the only sort of decoration I could see. The
same dark gray color covered all the walls, barely a hue darker
than the floors.

Not really my taste. The
place needed some light, fresh flowers, and actual
color
.

I backtracked and went down the other
split in the hall. Instantly, I noticed a change. Threadbare
runners muffled my footsteps, and black and white pictures of
Anchorage landscapes hung on the walls. A sprawling living room
opened up to my left, with numerous mismatched couches and pillows.
Shoes dotted the floor and blankets appeared casually tossed over
the backs of chairs. This place was lived in, breathed in, and it
felt like it had only been vacated moments before. I turned away
and kept exploring.

As I went, I started to make out the
low hum of voices toward the end of the hall. One doorway stood
ajar, light spilling out along with the murmurs.

I kept on the rug, creeping forward on
the tips of my toes, my shoulder brushing along the wall. As I came
within a few feet of the door, I recognized Thad’s voice but not
the girl’s.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears and
sticky sweat coated my palms, but there was excitement too, as if
Ollie would approve.

“—
doing, letting them in
here?”

“
Lauren,” Thad said, a
heavy sigh punctuating the name, “we’ve talked about this already.
You’ve experienced what she can do when she snaps. She won’t
cooperate otherwise.”

The girl scoffed. “We can make her.
Besides, you don’t know what the others are saying. By doing this,
you look weak, like you can’t control her.”

“
I can’t!” Something
crashed to the floor. I flinched but didn’t move away from the
door. Shadows flickered through the light coming out into the hall,
but I didn’t hear anyone coming my way. Then, in a calmer voice,
Thad added, “You don’t know her like I do. She’ll come around with
time.”

“
You’re willing to tell
Hex that when he gets back?”

Her words sounded like a taunt, but
Thad didn’t raise his voice again. “Yes, I am. And you should be
too if you have any sense.”

Someone shifted inside the room, and I
shot a glance back down the hallway. If they suddenly came out, I
was stuck. I had nowhere to hide quickly.

“
What about her friends?
We have a goddamn Aultstriver sleeping a few doors
down.”

“
Luke isn’t like his
father. He’s here for Ollie, nothing else.”

A low, mocking laugh came
through the door. “You got weak up there at that university,
Thaddeus
. I don’t think
you remember how we survive. You were gone a long time.”

“
Not that
long.”

I could tell by the defensive note in
Thad’s voice that the girl—Lauren—had hit a sensitive nerve. I
pictured his arms crossed and his eyebrows deeply furrowed. He was
likely fiddling with the bandage around his neck, but I remembered
he had nothing to hide here. He wouldn’t need to cover the white
scars that had outed his as a halfling in Barrow.

“
Long enough to change the
name your aswang father gave you.”

“
Christ, Lauren.” A chair
squeaked and I imagined Thad leaning back in it and raking his
hands over his face. He sounded like he hated Lauren, and I
couldn’t help but agree with him if she was this bent out of shape
over his name. “Just lay off, okay? It’s just a name.”

“
We both know it’s more
than that. You liked this Thaddeus Booker character you created up
there. You liked being the hero, didn’t you? When you realized the
power a name could give you in a place like Fear University, you
didn’t want to come home.”

Thad hit the desk, the cracking sound
causing me to jump and almost fall against the door. “Leave it,” he
growled, biting off the words with a menace I’d never heard from
him before. “I’m back, and you should remember your place here. Now
give me your report on last night’s patrols.”

She paused for a long moment to show
him she didn’t have to listen to him, but in the end, she said, “We
found a few bodies. Half-eaten. All their guts gone. Blood drained
dry.”

Thad swore enough to make me blush.
“Why am I just hearing about this now? How many? Any
children?”

“
Not humans,” Lauren said,
her taunting tone back, like she was judging Thad for thinking of
human causalities first. “Aswangs. Three full-grown males at that.
They fought back, but the defensive wounds were minimal. They
didn’t stand a chance.”

I leaned forward and strained my ear
to hear Thad’s response. When he spoke again, I sensed how he was
carefully controlling his voice to make it come out even and calm.
“They were eaten?”

“
Just the juicy bits.
Pulled most of their blood out through the wounds in their
abdomens.”

“
You think some rogue did
that?”

“
Maybe.” Lauren sniffed.
She tapped the toe of her shoe against the floor in an impatient
beat. “Pretty fucked up for a ’swang to do that to another ’swang.
I’ve got the teams on alert for a powerful, unstable, and lethal
male rogue. They know to use lethal force.”

Thad’s chair squeaked again. “That was
my order to give, Lauren. You’re not in charge now.”

“
Would you have given a
different one?”

Another long pause. Thad had walked
right into that one, and now he looked even weaker.

“
Fine,” he said,
relenting. “I want double patrols tonight, though. We need to find
this rogue as soon as possible.”

More rustling came from inside the
office, followed by a shadow blocking the light. Boots sounded
across the concrete.

I started backing up as Lauren said,
“Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

The finality in her voice had me
turning and carefully hurrying down the hall. Passing no one else,
I turned at the split, picking up my pace on my way back to my
room. If some killer rogue aswang was on the loose outside, I
needed to keep my people inside. It wasn’t our fight, but it meant
Thad and the others would be distracted. We might have more freedom
to assess our options here, especially if the halflings were
fighting within their own ranks.

The information wasn’t much, but I was
proud I’d uncovered it. It was something, at least.

Hatter wasn’t in the hallway, but
Ollie’s door was open. When I paused at the door, Hatter, who was
standing just inside with Luke, looked up and frowned. His eyes
went to our bedroom across the way and then slowly back to me,
narrowing.

I tried for a smile. “What’s up,
guys?”

Before Hatter could ask where I’d
gone, Luke said, “Ollie’s awake. She wants to talk.”

He stepped aside and I looked into the
room to see my best friend sitting on the edge of her bed, her ice
blue eyes staring up at me.

She looked like a ghost—like she
wasn’t even alive.

S I X

Ollie

S
unny and Hatter filed into my room, closing and locking the
door behind them. Hatter stayed beside it to stand guard. Luke
crossed the room to the window and propped a shoulder against the
wall. He was staring out at the city, looking anything but
casual.

“
Is everything okay?”
Sunny sat beside me on the bed, and I had to fight the urge to
scoot away. She must have seen something in my face, because she
didn’t put her arm around my shoulders the way she once would
have.

“
Not really,” I said. My
eyes flicked to Luke; he stiffened at the sound of my
voice.

“
Ollie . . .”
Sunny shook her head, and I saw her struggle to choke the words
back.

“
You can ask.” My heart
thudded once, hard, then went back to normal. No more secrets. No
more lies. Only the truth from now on.

I couldn’t stop myself. I glanced back
at Luke again. He hadn’t left my room once, and he hadn’t tried to
kill me, but he looked so deflated and defeated that I didn’t even
know if he had the energy to lift his hand against me. I had no
clue how he truly felt.

“
How are you alive? What
happened? Were you in that cabin the entire time?” The questions
rolled out of Sunny’s mouth one after the other. She clamped her
teeth together and looked so pained it was almost cute. I wanted to
smile, but my mouth couldn’t make the motion.

“
We stayed in that
unmarked safe house near the lakes the entire time,” I said,
tackling the easiest question first.

Ever so slightly, Luke shifted toward
me, listening intently.

“
Killian kept it hidden
from everyone. He thought we would be close enough to avoid the
major search grids.”

“
We searched for weeks,”
Hatter said. His words—the fierceness of them—surprised me. He
cared for me because of Sunny, because he cared so much for her.
And, in our own way, we were friends, which counted for something.
“But with the storm, we couldn’t move far enough or fast enough.
And when it cleared out, we looked farther because we thought you’d
been on the move in the snowcat.”

A beat of silence passed as I
struggled to come up with a way to say I understood how hard they’d
tried without revealing this horrible sense of resentment I felt in
my heart because they’d failed. I hated myself for it, but it was
such a small thing buried under such weightier things that I ended
up just keeping my mouth shut.

“
I’m sorry,” Sunny
whispered. Her fingers twitched. I wanted to save her the pain and
just take her hand, but I couldn’t. The thought of my skin on
someone else, of touching, made my throat close up.

“
I know.”

“
Whose body was in the
cabin?” Hatter asked. “It was burned so badly we thought it was
you.”

The halflings must have burned the
cabin down after they’d found me, which meant the body could only
be one person. “Max,” I said.

I didn’t remember much from that time
with him, but I clearly recalled picking up the little blade and
stabbing his face. The blood had splattered on me. I remembered the
warmth of it and the way his eyes had faded as he died. I’d
expected to feel this overwhelming sense of righteousness and
relief, but even now, I only felt cold. Killing Max hadn’t helped,
and I didn’t know what would.

“
He deserved it,” I
added.

I sensed my friends purposely not
looking at my stitched-up chest or the way the countless, tiny cuts
caught the fading light and looked like they were dripping blood.
Their avoidance inched under my skin and poked at that resentment
hiding away inside me.