The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1)

by Casey Matthews

  A good point. There was danger in getting close to Naomi. She was no anonymous mortal; hers was the kind of life gods and nations alike might notice. Ryn had no more time to think on it, though, because their connecting train arrived and she stepped inside to the sight of Harper Pruett and his pack. Did he follow me? No, she realized. They were discussing the Nine Lives—they had the same destination.

  Naomi sank into the first seat and turned to hide her face from the pack, and Ryn drew up her hood to hide her own, watching their reflections in the train window. Their talk was loud, speckled with boisterous shouts, lewd comments, grating laughs; completely interchangeable with every conversation she’d overheard at Parker-Freemont.

  Ryn knew the instant Pruett noticed Naomi. She felt a shiver of discontent ripple through her muscles as he strutted nearer, leaned off a pole, grinning down at her with that mass of purple bruising still decorating the bridge of his nose. “I know you. You’re Naomi Bradford—Tom Bradford’s kid. One who got jumped at the mall last week.”

  “Sorry,” Naomi murmured, “but I don’t know you.” She shifted away from him.

  “My mom can’t stand your dad. Hey, why so jumpy?” He tried easing closer; Ryn stopped him by turning her back, swaying her shoulder into his path. “I’m not some stalker,” he insisted. “I’m kind of surprised I never met you before. I’m on Parker-Freemont’s Model UN, and you’re what—a Madison girl? We visit your school all the time.”

  “I don’t do Model UN. I don’t do any of that.” Naomi didn’t look up at him.

  “Bet if we hung out, our parents would both have strokes. C’mon, you and your friend can link up with my crew. We’ll keep the sickos away.”

  “That is my job.” Ryn turned, lifted her jaw, and drew down her hood.

  Pruett flew backward, shouting, “Shit! It’s her. It’s the one I was talking about!” He stumbled and collapsed into one of his pack mates.

  “That’s the girl who broke your nose?” one asked. They all stared, but at the next stop, he and his friends got quickly off the train.

  “Friends of yours?” Naomi smiled shyly from her seat.

  It wasn’t exactly a bull elk, but it sufficed.

  CHAPTER NINE: The Body Electric

  They walked four blocks from the station to the Nine Lives. Naomi hugged her jacket tighter against the nipping cold, nose and ears tinged with rose. Her delicacy made Ryn steal occasional, anxious glances, until at last the deva opened her hoodie—an extension of her kanaf—and draped the protective part of herself around Naomi’s shoulders.

  “You’ll f-freeze.” Naomi tried to shrug out of it.

  “Unlikely.” Ryn turned Naomi to face her and sealed the jacket.

  “Wow. This thing is amazing.” She snugged into it. “Really amazing.”

  Ryn’s kanaf could take on a variety of material properties, but the heat radiated from her heart. Even on another being, the hoodie wasn’t truly separate from Ryn. However, just as Naomi could feel the deva’s warmth, Ryn could feel her friend’s soft shape as though pressed against her. It sent an alien tingle through her stomach, and on their trek, she clutched at the new sensation in her middle.

  “Turns out you really are sweet,” Naomi grinned.

  The tingle grew. “The cold doesn’t bother me.”

  “Nice and tough.”

  The warmth was joined by a smile that twitched the corner of Ryn’s mouth.

  There was a line at the Nine Lives. The bouncer argued quietly with men a few positions ahead of them about their identification, and Ryn didn’t care for their scent.

  “Get outta here,” the bouncer said. “It’s under-twenty-one night, not ‘skeevy, bearded perv’ night.”

  “Bullshit. I’m seventeen, check the ID.” The goateed man was lean with a knit cap, and his soul was almost entirely rot.

  “It’s not even laminated. Looks like you ran it off a printer.”

  “Our school’s got budget issues. Look. I’m just here to dance the night away in this great, free country of ours.”

  They exchanged money through a handshake. The bouncer glanced down at the crumpled wad in his palm and then growled. He opened the door and whispered, “Your shit better not land these teenyboppers in Mercy General, or I’m coming for you, Ben Franklin.”

  “Relax. We’re top shelf. All about the repeat business.” Franklin and his two hulking friends went inside.

  “What was that all about?” Naomi asked. “I think my ears are frostbitten.”

  Ryn had no idea. Humans could speak their language with exacting nuance, their faces, hands, and tone all playing a role. Apparently, they could also communicate by exchanging scraps of money. It was all so sophisticated, mysterious, and dumb. “Something about boppers.”

  The bouncer scanned their IDs and nodded. Naomi gave him money. When Ryn just stood there, Naomi quickly gave him another money and dragged Ryn through the door. “Don’t be embarrassed, but are you broke?”

  Ryn bristled. “I function. Flawlessly.”

  “No. Money. Do you have money?”

  “I have a fare card.” She produced it. Ms. Cross had said there was money and it was “on” the card.

  “Right. Here’s twenty dollars in case you need it—just where are you from? I thought the concept of money was pretty well saturated.” There was something sophisticated to Naomi’s smile, and Ryn realized she was being teased. It made her ears burn.

  “I understand fine.” Moneys were very important pieces of paper, and when the numbers on things got higher, people needed more of them. It was as perfectly stupid as anything humans did.

  Stepping into the Nine Lives was like dipping into a pool of viscous sound. The scuffed walls, shadows, and ocean of bodies squeezed Ryn from every side, the music and voices gathered into a roar that vibrated through the floor. The bass pounded against her skin. The bottom floor had booths and tables, and there were only narrow avenues between all the people.

  “The dancing is upstairs!” Naomi hollered.

  Ryn choked on the odor of too many bodies, all too close. She tailed Naomi, but when someone brushed her bare arm, she jerked away. Another bumped into her from behind and she twirled, but collided with a third. Ryn spun around two times avoiding the flailing, awkward riot of humans. She realized the avenue from her entrance had closed and panic jolted through her. They were everywhere, pressing inward, crushing her, and she hated them all; she needed to claw her way out; she snapped her gaze to the ceiling in search of escape.

  Then her hoodie slipped over her shoulders. She felt Naomi’s hands on either side of her, steadying her. “You okay?” she whispered from behind. Ryn had backed straight into her.

  Ryn closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Just breathe with me a second.”

  She nodded, hearing Naomi’s breath and feeling the drum of her heart. It was steady and slow and soon Ryn’s matched its rhythm.

  “Stay close to me.”

  It was easier with the hoodie back on. Naomi had removed her own sweater, but the heat didn’t bother Ryn.

  They wound through the crowd, Ryn in her friend’s wake. Males tried to talk to Naomi, but she just yelled, “Sorry, we’re here with other people!” and pushed on.

  The upstairs music flowed through Ryn’s marrow with its tribal rhythm and synthetic flair. Smoke rolled across her ankles and sharp, unnatural colors bathed the swaying masses, shifting from green to blue to indigo. Even when the twisting dancers weren’t pressed together, their movements knotted them anyway, so that the crowd moved as a single writhing body.

  Ryn, too, felt the tidal pull of the music. It stuck to her hips, tingled up her spine and into her shoulders, and beat inside her brain with its loud demand that she lean into it. And then she realized something else. She didn’t itch. At all. No eyes were upon her. The crowd’s attention was pulled deeply inward, and Ryn’s core filled with the discreet thrill of anonymity, the same one she felt on the hunt.

  There in the
crowd, Ryn stood alone. She shivered.

  Denise shouted from the bar and Elli bounced up and down to be seen. Naomi shouldered through the crowd, Ryn chasing her.

  “You made it!” Elli shouted over the music. “Unbelievable!” Then she glanced at Ryn. “Oh. Both of you.”

  “This place is lame without you.” Denise hugged Naomi. “No amount of bribe money will get a shot of rum in my Coke.”

  “That’s why I like it,” Naomi grinned. “The last thing my dad needs is to turn on the news and see photos of his daughter and her drunk friends getting felt up by boys.”

  “So ‘no’ to the booze, but can we still have the boys?” Denise kissed Naomi’s cheek. “I love you, but take off the Good Little Girl mask for one night.”

  “For the thousandth time, it’s not a mask. And I’m just here to dance—so yes to boys, and no to fondling. Deal?”

  “Boring! Cut loose a little.”

  “I am cutting loose. This is me being loose.” Naomi wiggled.

  “Right. Hey, I see someone interesting. Be right back.” Denise waded toward the other side of the bar and talked to Franklin and his tall pack mates. Ryn tensed, careful to watch their exchange, not trusting Franklin and his rotten smell.

  Elli and Naomi shouted their conversation over the noise, watching the crowd. “We’ve been here a while,” Elli said into Naomi’s ear. “Place is full of high-school guys who get scared unless they outnumber you.”

  “Let’s just dance.” Naomi motioned to Ryn. “Come on.”

  Ryn shook her head. The floor was jammed with interlocking bodies and she wanted no part in that.

  They both shrugged and pushed into the motion on the floor while Ryn hovered at the bar. Not everyone danced the same. Some rolled with the music, in a trance, their hearts fast and blood spiked with stimulant chemicals. Others danced with form, coordination. A few women added more flare, accents with their hips and touches from their hands, teasing their males. A lot of the dancing looked more like a mating ritual, and some of them seemed sufficiently fused to have been actually mating.

  Then there was Naomi. She laughed at first, her eyes scrunched into joyful half-moons, and she and Elli danced playfully. Gradually, a tension in Naomi’s joints dissolved. Her body loosened, her frame became sinuous, and she slipped into a groove—like the groove Ryn fell into while traversing rooftops. She became a ribbon, caught the music’s pulse, and Ryn couldn’t look away.

  Naomi danced like an artist, a woman pressed skin-to-skin with the room’s naked sound. She did it naturally, without mortal clumsiness, and across the raucous expanse and through two dozen bodies and bass vibrations, Ryn could feel her heartbeat locked onto the music.

  “Like what you see?” Denise asked.

  Ryn startled and glanced at the bar, where Denise curled around a fizzing glass of soda, her expression somehow feline. There were no words to speak—she sensed Denise had seen something that gave her insight into the workings of Ryn’s mind; she didn’t like that feeling one bit.

  Denise sipped her drink and shifted her gaze to a mirror over the bar. Ryn could hear very well over the noise by now. “Don’t know what to make of Naomi?”

  “No.” Ryn had to raise her voice.

  “She’s not hard to get. Imagine a person without an evil bone in her body. Then make her stubborn, unyielding, and persuasive. An angel’s graces and the devil’s charisma.” Denise slipped a tiny, white pill between her lips and drank her soda. She swallowed. “I wish for once she’d let her hair down. How about you? Be bad with me. I could use a partner in crime.”

  “I am my own kind of bad. You wouldn’t like it.”

  Denise considered her and chuckled. “Probably wouldn’t. But I’ll try anything once.”

  Now Ryn felt like they were talking about different things. She glanced across the dance floor at Franklin, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Denise since they had spoken. “Stay away from him. He smells wrong.”

  “Oh, not you too. Christ. I don’t need to get it from two friends at once.”

  “Friend?” That surprised Ryn.

  Denise chuckled. “Can’t tell whether I like you or not, can you?”

  Ryn shook her head.

  “Yeah, me neither.” She exhaled and took a moment to study Ryn. “Can’t figure you out. At first, I thought drug dealer. Now I’m not sure. I mean, obviously you’re into girls—only surprise there is Naomi hasn’t caught on.”

  Ryn frowned. “I—”

  “Don’t deny it. Way you stare at the princess breaks my heart, because she’s saving herself for her future investment-banker husband. How do I know? She told me when she was ten what her life plan was, and she doesn’t deviate. Naomi Bradford knows what she wants, goes after it with single-minded determination, and watching you pine is like watching Wile E. Coyote salivate—just makes me pity you.”

  “Pity?” Ryn snarled.

  Denise slid off her chair to stare into Ryn’s sunglasses, speaking softer now that they were close. “Let me lay it out for you. First boyfriend, hand-holding only, age twelve. That was Davie Raines, check.” She made a check motion with her finger. “First dance at Homecoming, age fifteen, invited by a junior—that was Arjun, and he was a perfect gentleman. Check.” Again with her finger. “First kiss? That’s sometime this year. Bet she’s looking for a candidate tonight. First fuck? I’d always thought after marriage, but no, it’s going to be her college boyfriend. She’ll wait three months to let him under her skirt, then at six months she’ll give it up, sometime after he proposes and on a suitable anniversary.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” It felt wrong; it was an invasion of Naomi’s life.

  “Only thing that’s gone off the rails is when she lost her mom. Klara’s job was to take pictures before the first dance and grill her future husband in advance of their wedding. I took the dance pictures, for the record. Also: I’m her maid of honor at the wedding. What I’m saying is, that girl is the daughter of a genius and a senator; she’s nobility. You understand that, right? She’s not going to make a mistake with you, if that’s what you’re sniffing around for.”

  “I am no mistake.” The words purred from Ryn’s throat and for the first time Denise faltered. “I am no hanger-on, no sycophant. And I have no interest in Naomi Bradford.” I am her protector and she is my bait; that is where it ends.

  Yet her final statement made Denise shake off her fear and smirk. “The red on your cheeks tells a different story.”

  Ryn could have cut her down, but Franklin appeared and sidled into Denise’s personal space, his hips close to hers, hands in pockets. “Want to dance?” he asked, grinning down at her. “My boys can run the sales floor for a few songs.”

  Denise’s stare seemed hard, but softened so quickly that Ryn wondered whether anything in her was authentic. Turning her smile on Franklin, she said, “First you take my money and now you want to dance? Ballsy, old man.”

  “I could give your money back.”

  “Keep it,” Denise said. “I don’t dance for money. Only fun.”

  Ryn seized her elbow. “Don’t go. He smells wrong.”

  Denise lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t ever tell me what to do.” She shook free and took Franklin’s arm, heading to the floor with him. “Let’s show my friends what a good time looks like.”

  Ryn stalked the edges and corners of the room, away from the gyrating humans and their unwelcome touches. She prowled in the places that fell between mortal gazes, scented the air now and then for asura, watching Franklin to ensure he never got too close to Naomi.

  At first, the three females danced with one another, alongside Franklin and males whom Naomi and Elli had secured. Denise pressed into and grinded on Franklin, seeming to cast Naomi various looks throughout—but the senator’s daughter kept some distance from her own partner, playful yet not intimate. Just her smile seemed to keep his interest.

  After two songs, Franklin departed for a corner his pack mates had staked out. Denise and Nao
mi argued, the distance drowning out the details. Naomi inspected Denise’s eyes and put the back of her hand on her friend’s forehead. Denise batted the hand aside, yelled, and stormed off toward Franklin.

  Elli’s hand fell on Naomi’s shoulder, stopping her from pursuing, and those two reluctantly folded back into their circle of males.

  Ryn glided along the periphery of the room, now keeping track of two different parts of it. In one, Naomi’s heart pounded a steady tempo, her skin glistened, and her auburn hair burnished into darker, messier tangles. Her scent changed into something spicy-strange.

  Denise orbited Franklin, along with his two pack mates and a female they’d found. Denise danced with other men, but mostly Franklin whenever he wasn’t exchanging money and white pills with strangers. The pills were stimulants—whoever took them ended up with a racing heart and a different chemical odor in their sweat. Oddly, Denise’s heart slowed instead, her eyes glassed, and her movements seemed entranced. Franklin danced nearer and nearer. Though she slapped at his hand once or twice, she became more languid the longer they went. Finally, she stopped protesting altogether and he found a seat on a nearby dais, pulling her into his lap, and though his rot was so thick Ryn could taste it even now, Denise fused her mouth to his. The deva’s stomach turned.

  During a song transition, Naomi scanned the bar area, frowning in disappointment. She swiveled, as if to look for something, striding off the dance floor as her search turned frantic. Ryn glided through the room’s dark places. Naomi, in a bout of panic, nearly backed into her.

  “I’m here,” Ryn whispered close to her ear.

  Naomi’s shoulders tensed and she spun. Her eyes had a slight sheen and the spicy-strange scent mixed with fear. She ran quaking fingers through tangles of her loosened hair. “God. Ryn. I thought you left. It freaked me out.”

  “I promised to protect you and I will.”

  Naomi managed a grin. “You really are a cocky little thing. And I don’t know why I believe you. But I do.”