Crush

by Tracy Wolff

  Hudson is walking around the edge of the forest about twenty feet away, trying fruitlessly to peer into the darkness. I think about reminding him that if I can’t see in there, he certainly can’t, but I know he’s just trying to occupy himself doing something. He feels as antsy as I do.

  Xavier, Macy, and Eden join us a few seconds later, and under the dim light cast by Macy’s wand, we start to search the crater for the den of the Unkillable Beast. We may not have any plans for going in there at the moment, but it’s pretty hard to lure someone or something someplace if you don’t know where the starting point is.

  But the more we explore the interior of the crater, the more apparent it becomes that the place is enchanted. It’s March, which means the temperature on one of these islands should range anywhere from fifteen to forty-five degrees, depending on the day and the kind of winter/spring we’re in store for (thank you, Google). And while it definitely felt about thirty-five degrees at the opening, the area inside the crater is a near-tropical climate that has me sweating inside my many layers of clothes.

  So yeah, definitely magical is the consensus, and that’s before we discover a waterfall and hot springs that seem to appear out of nowhere and cast an eerie light within the crater. It’s like the water itself is enchanted, its soft blue depths glowing so brightly, the entire area is lit like early morning, revealing trees, tall and green, with big, strangely shaped leaves that look more like they belong on a tropical island than this close to the Arctic Circle. Hibiscus and bromeliads envelop the forest in their sweet scents, and giant boulders are scattered randomly around the nearby clearing.

  “This is where it lives,” Jaxon says as we walk closer to the water, even as he keeps his eyes peeled for the monster.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “Where would you choose to live?” Jaxon counters. “In the pitch-black forest on the other side or near this glowing hot bath and fresh water?” He motions with his head just past us and grins. “Also, there’s a cave on the other side of the waterfall.”

  “What do we do?” I ask, my gaze fixed on the waterfall now.

  “We back away slowly,” Xavier whispers. “And try to figure out what trap we could possibly set.”

  “Obviously, we need bait,” Eden tells him as we move back toward the dark forest, to hide in the shadows and plan. “Really good bait.”

  “What kind of bait?” I ask even as the voice inside me whispers over and over, Leave.

  “I’ll be the bait,” Xavier volunteers. “Once we decide the best place to set up the trap, I can go in and lure it out. No way is it going to put up with having some interloper in its cave.”

  “But we don’t even know what the beast looks like yet,” Macy complains. “What if it’s small and faster than a wolf? Or is twenty feet tall with eight long, octopus-like arms that you can’t avoid?”

  I know she was just offering some extreme examples, but I find myself nodding to each one. They all sound plausible to me right now.

  “We just have to lure it out of its cave and keep it trapped or distracted,” Xavier reminds us as we start looking around for a good place to set our trap. “The heartstone is probably kept right at the back of its cave where the Unkillable Beast can protect it.”

  Hudson catches my eye and mutters, “And this is your genius plan? To catch a beast when you have no idea what it looks like or what its powers are? And when you have no idea if your trap is the right size or strength of magical constraint? And you thought my idea was out there…”

  I roll my eyes at him but turn to the group and ask, “Do we have any idea what this beast is? How big it is? How strong it is? If it’s magical? I mean, how could we possibly know what kind of trap will keep it, well, caught?”

  “It’s obviously got to be magical,” Macy says. “There’s no other way to be prepared for whatever comes barreling out of those caves after us.”

  Everyone nods. Makes sense, I guess.

  “Yeah, but what are we talking about here?” Eden says. “A spell? And if so, which one?”

  “I could fry it,” Flint suggests with a grin. “Pretty sure it wouldn’t come back for more after that.”

  “Yeah, but what if it’s wearing the heartstone and you fry it, too? What are we going to do then?” Macy asks. “Whatever the trap is can’t be that violent.”

  “So you want to give the Unkillable Beast a chance to get a second wind?” Flint asks incredulously.

  “No. I think I should put it to sleep,” Macy suggests. “I have a spell for that, and I think it will work.”

  “You think it will work?” Eden asks, both brows raised.

  “Well, I can’t guarantee it, since I have no idea what the Unkillable Beast is, but yes. It should work. I looked it up on the way here, just to be sure.”

  “And if the sleep spell doesn’t work?” I ask tentatively, not wanting to set Macy off, but not wanting to be caught without a backup plan, either.

  “Then I say Flint freezes it. Xavier and I discussed it on the way here, and it seems like the best move,” Jaxon volunteers. “It won’t fry any stone the beast might have on it, but it will give us a couple of minutes to think things through once we know what the beast is and what it can do. Acting is always better than reacting, anyway.”

  Hudson snort-laughs at this. “The day my brother thinks first, then leaps second, I’ll eat my shorts.”

  You’re not wearing any shorts, I remind him.

  He turns and winks at me. “Why, Miss Foster, have you been peeking?”

  I know he’s trying to distract me; he must sense my nerves are about to snap like a piano wire, but I blush all the same. You’re obnoxious.

  He simply bows at me before turning back to the half-baked plan we’re currently cooking.

  “So where are we setting up?” Xavier asks, looking around. “The beast’ll be coming out along this path, right?” He points to the broken stone path that leads around the water’s edge and then straight across the lake, with large, flat boulders, to meet the waterfall. “So how far out from them do we want to bring it before we spring the trap?”

  “Not too far,” Eden suggests. “We need cover, and there isn’t much except this forest once you get away from the clearing.”

  “I agree,” I tell them, thinking back to playing paintball with my dad as a kid and all the lessons he taught me about ambushes. Now that I think about it, I can’t help but wonder if he knew I would need the information someday. Maybe not to fight an Unkillable Beast but because he came from this paranormal world and he knew just how dangerous it was.

  “Flint should hide up there.” I point to a small ledge a quarter of the way up the inside of the crater wall. “You can still reach the beast if you shoot ice from there, can’t you?” I ask.

  He measures the distance with his eyes. “Yeah, I should still have reach.”

  “Good. And Macy needs to be closer—”

  “How much closer?” Xavier asks, and he doesn’t look happy.

  “As close as I need to be,” she answers him with a glare before glancing around. “If it’s coming down this path, I can get a really good shot at it if I’m sitting in that tree.” She points to a huge coniferous tree about thirty feet away from the waterfall.

  Xavier looks like a thundercloud at the very thought, and I have to admit, having her that close to the walkway doesn’t make me feel particularly good, either. I mean, if the beast can jump, it could be on her in seconds, and there’s nothing we could do to stop it.

  “I’ll be fine,” Macy says, as if reading my thoughts.

  “Maybe we should rethink—”

  “I’m doing it,” she tells me as she jogs toward the tree. “Besides, no guts, no glory, right?”

  “The saying could also go, no guts, no terrifying death,” I tell her.

  She turns back just so I can see her roll
her eyes. “I can do this, Grace. You need to trust me.”

  She’s right. I know she’s right, and still it’s hard for me to watch her swing herself up into the tree and then find the branch with the heaviest foliage to hide on.

  “I think we should have Eden as backup, too,” Jaxon says as Flint gives me a quick wink before flying up to the ledge we decided on.

  “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” she comments. “I only shoot lightning. If I aim at the beast, I will electrocute it.”

  “Which is why you’re going to be Flint’s backup,” Jaxon tells her. “Worst-case scenario only.”

  “I can do that.” She glances around. “Where do you want me?”

  “Probably as close to the mountain as you can get,” I tell her, “but on ground level. That way if Macy and Flint miss, you can come in behind him and do what you need to do.”

  “How about over there?” She points to a small alcove carved into the actual mountain that’s only a couple of feet from the entrance.

  “That’s really close.” I look around for someplace else. “How about something a little farther away?”

  She grins at me. “Don’t worry, Grace. I got this.”

  “I know you do, but—”

  “Don’t worry,” she repeats. “Just make sure you don’t get eaten, okay?”

  “Yeah.” I smile sickly. “That sounds like a plan.”

  When all three of them are in position, Jaxon looks at Xavier and me. “Ready?” he asks.

  Not even a little bit. I don’t say that, though. I can’t. So instead, I just nod before shifting into my gargoyle form. It’s past time to get this show on the road.

  100

  Carpe Slay-Em

  Xavier, Jaxon, and I walk through the craggy rock entrance to the beast’s oasis like we own the place—partly, I think, to shore up our own nerves when it comes to being bait and partly because it never hurts to look more confident than you feel.

  “What do you think it is?” Xavier asks as the path we’re on winds past the hot springs.

  “I’m less concerned about what it is right now than where it is,” Jaxon answers as he sweeps his head back and forth, checking out every single hiding spot we can find.

  Thank God the water is glowing so brightly, or we’d be fighting this monster in the pitch dark. And most likely all about to die.

  Stop! The voice inside me is growing more insistent with each step I take toward the Unkillable Beast.

  It’s creepy as fuck, and I can’t help wondering if my gargoyle knows something I don’t. If its senses are picking up on the danger I know is here but can’t quite pinpoint yet.

  Unlike my gargoyle, Hudson is oddly silent. He stopped asking me to reconsider right about the time we got everyone in position, and I thought at first that he went away to pout the way he sometimes does.

  But I can feel him inside my mind, senses on high alert as he looks out at the world through my eyes, trying to spot the beast, too. Trying—I know, even though he won’t admit it—to help Jaxon and me any way that he can.

  Which is the dichotomy of Hudson and always has been. He’s capable of doing such horrible things that his own brother wanted him dead—or human—but now he’s here, doing his best to defend Jaxon against a threat he doesn’t even think we should be facing.

  “You shouldn’t be facing it,” he tells me. But he doesn’t say it with his usual snark—for once, he’s not trying to pick a fight. Instead, he’s quiet. Sad, almost, like he knows what’s coming and has given up any chance of stopping it.

  A sudden noise cuts through the night air, a clanging of chains that has all three of us freezing in our tracks.

  “What the hell was that?” I ask, whirling toward a sound I think is coming from behind the waterfall.

  “Sounded like chains to me,” Xavier answers, his werewolf ears working overtime.

  The clang of chains comes again, more enthusiastically, and this time it’s very obvious where it’s coming from.

  “Chains?” I murmur to Jaxon. “What’s that about?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  The voice inside me is screaming now. Go back, go back, go back!

  It’s beyond scary, has me pausing for several seconds to draw in a shuddering breath as panic takes root deep inside me. But it’s too late now. We’re here and the clock is ticking away. We need to get this done.

  So we exchange one long look among the three of us before squaring our shoulders and heading toward the cavern, where the clanging continues to grow louder and louder.

  Not going to lie, I’m terrified. Terrified of what awaits us in that cave—I mean, what kind of monster uses chains to fight?—and terrified of what we have to do. I’ve never deliberately killed anyone or anything in my life (I even relocate bugs outside when I see them), and the idea of coming all the way up here to kill this monster and take a heartstone it clearly doesn’t want us to take—when it has done nothing to me or any of my friends—doesn’t feel right.

  But what’s the alternative? Leave my friends to continue alone? There’s no right answer here, nothing to do but forge ahead and somehow hope that everything turns out okay, though I don’t know how that’s possible right now.

  Jaxon looks at me questioningly, but I just nod. And then the three of us walk toward the cave and the Unkillable Beast, whatever that might be, heart pounding in my chest. Palms sweaty. And a sick feeling growing in my stomach that something truly horrible is about to happen.

  The cave is dark as we approach, and we’re all on high alert, waiting for something to attack us. But the closer we get to the cave, the harder it is to ignore the clanging sound, to not focus on that to the exclusion of everything else.

  Add in the low, husky growls that have started coming from deep inside, and it takes every ounce of courage I have to keep going—and that’s before I look down at the ground and see the plethora of bones lying around. Some long and in perfect shape, others broken clean in half, but all recognizable as human bones.

  People, I can only imagine, who had come before us and failed to do what we have to do.

  When we get to the entrance, Jaxon holds a hand up to stop Xavier and me, then takes the first step into the cave himself. The chains go wild, but nothing else happens. Even the growls seem to have quieted.

  Jaxon takes another step into the cave. I follow right behind and Xavier follows me.

  I shine the flashlight on my phone around the darkened cave, but I don’t see anything—and neither does Xavier or Jaxon, apparently, because seconds later, their flashlight beams follow mine.

  We look around, though there’s not much to see. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this barren cavern. There’s nothing here, just rocky walls and bones scattered all around—skulls and leg bones and rib cages still intact.

  “Where is it?” I whisper, because there are no rocks in here, nothing at all for a monster to hide behind.

  At first, I’m afraid that there are more rooms, that the cavern extends the way the Bloodletter’s does. But more sweeps of our flashlights reveal that this is it. This one room, with rocky, bloodstained walls and a rough dirt floor.

  And huge, thick chains anchored into the ceiling and the back wall.

  “I don’t understand,” Xavier says. “I know the noise came from here. I know it did. So where the hell is this thing?”

  Finally, another low growl sounds, and we spin into a protective circle, our backs together as we sweep our flashlight beams all over the cavern.

  The voice inside my head warns. Leave, leave, leave.

  I can’t leave! I tell it. It’s too late.

  Way too late.

  Seconds later, another, louder growl sounds as the chains in front of us start to clank. And the wall itself begins to move.

  101


  Heaven on My Mind

  “What the fuck!” Xavier exclaims, stumbling back, as the wall seems to come alive.

  It growls once, long and low and loud, and the chains all but scream as it launches itself straight toward us.

  Jaxon grabs me and shoves me behind him as he blasts out with every ounce of telekinetic power he has. It stops the thing—whatever it is—in midair, for a moment or maybe two. And then it just keeps coming, landing on all fours in front of us.

  As I get my first good look at the beast, I can’t help thinking it’s like something out of a fantasy novel straight from hell. It’s huge—the hugest creature I’ve ever seen in my life—and made entirely of craggy rock that’s sharp and broken in a ton of different places, moss growing haphazardly all around.

  Its eyes glow red and its teeth are vicious in a mouth that looks like it could swallow all three of us whole in one gulp. And it’s advancing on us, one slow step at a time.

  Jaxon lashes out again, throwing everything he’s got straight at the monster. But all that does is make it angry, and it retaliates by striking with one massive hand (paw?) and sends him flying against a stone wall so hard that the cavern shakes.

  “Jaxon!” I scream, grabbing Xavier and taking to the air as the thing turns and takes a swing at us as well.

  I manage to dodge it, but the ceiling isn’t high enough for me to get out of its reach, so on its second swing, it catches Xavier and me, and we go flying toward the opposite wall.

  We hit hard, so hard that my teeth rattle and my brain feels like it’s going to explode right out of my stone skull. I’m a little dazed, a little out of it, but Hudson is in my head, screaming at me to get up. Screaming at me to move, move, move.

  I do, one second before a giant fist comes down, right where I had just been lying.

  “Xavier!” I scream, but he’s already up and in wolf form, jumping straight over the monster’s shoulder and landing next to Jaxon, who has also gotten back to his feet.