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

by Casey Matthews

  “We are not… intimate.”

  “I’m just saying. For some women, it’s a natural part of the healing process. For others, it’s always been a part of them, and their abuse just leads them to discovering it.”

  “I’m not healing.”

  “Do you want to talk about the men who hurt you?”

  “Why?”

  “It might have—”

  “It’s done. They died; I lived.”

  “Sometimes the wounds go deep. They affect our ability to trust people. Were those the only people who ever hurt you?”

  Ryn batted the tower she’d built, sending a cardstock cloud fluttering to the carpet. By the time they settled, she’d crossed to the window, her back to Ms. Cross as she stared at trickling runoff from the roof. “I’ve fought worse.”

  “You couldn’t have beaten them, Ryn. There were too many. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “I was weak.”

  “You’re not weak.”

  “I was weak in that moment. The moon was dark.” She remembered the weariness, the girl screaming; how loud they’d made her scream. “It was empty, but for her voice and those monsters and the terrible things they did to her.”

  “You tried to save someone.”

  “She died.” Her body hadn’t yet cooled, though. “Her spirit was gone. It is… difficult to drag a spirit back through the gates. Your God doesn’t like us poaching her works, but I do as I please. It’s difficult; your souls are small but heavy as worlds. Pulling her back into ours nearly broke me.”

  “I’ve lost the thread of this metaphor.” Ms. Cross had that doubtful look Naomi had worn after Ryn showed off her speed.

  “I was weak. Made so by helping her, and also her brother. It was then, when my power was expended, that their knives came out.”

  Ms. Cross leaned forward. “They cut you?”

  “Cut me. Shot me. Burned me. One of them urinated on me. They taunted me.”

  “Did they do other things?”

  “What other things?”

  “Did they rape you, Ryn?”

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  “I said no.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Ryn smashed her fist through the window frame, strong enough to shatter the glass pane. Tinkling fragments dropped down the building side. The sounds of traffic and whistling air filled the small office. Turning, she found Ms. Cross had stood and stepped back. “I said no,” she hissed.

  “You don’t think I believe you?”

  “I don’t know what you think!” she roared. “I don’t know what any of you think!”

  Holding both hands up, Ms. Cross nodded slowly. “That must be frustrating.”

  Ryn bowed her head, containing her wrath in bunched-up fists. “I know you’re afraid of me now.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is. Your heart races. Fear comes off you like waves. I don’t know faces, when you are happy or sad, joking or serious, lying or confessing, or what half your strange habits do. But I smell your fear.” She stared Ms. Cross down. “So now I know you lie. Why should I trust you?”

  Ms. Cross expelled a breath and lowered her hands. “You’re right. I did just lie to you. So from this point forward, I won’t. Could we both sit?”

  Not knowing what else to do, she lowered herself to the sofa.

  Ms. Cross eased into her chair. “That’s the most you’ve ever said at one time.”

  “I know.”

  “You expressed yourself.”

  Ryn said nothing.

  “And that’s progress,” Ms. Cross urged.

  “Progress broke your window.”

  “Progress is always a little destructive, a little painful. Building new things always breaks down the old things. Tell me more about how you can’t understand faces. When did you realize that was a problem?”

  “With Naomi. Because I can understand her face.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because…” She struggled for the words. They came haltingly. “She has… a larger soul.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Her soul isn’t just heavy as worlds, it’s large too. It spills onto her face. It’s in her scent and eyes and face; it cannot be ignored.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Muse

  The March thaw had been a feint, all that water transformed into ice by a frigid cold front next afternoon. New Petersburg was a beautiful, crystal city, the guardrails, cars, and lampposts glistening. Stray snowflakes tumbled from the sky and melted on Naomi’s cheeks where Ryn met her after school to walk her home. She wore too few layers and shivers racked her vulnerable human body.

  Stripping her kanaf, Ryn folded her friend into it as they walked.

  Naomi smiled back at her in a shy way, that spicy-strange scent on her skin again. “How are you never cold?”

  “This isn’t cold.”

  “Siberia. You were there, weren’t you? The Russian you speak, the borscht, the cold—it had to be Siberia, right?”

  Ryn mentally compared her many homes to maps from school and nodded. “For a time.”

  “I hear it’s beautiful. Hundreds of miles untouched, unsettled.”

  “You could walk forever and never see or smell a person.” Once, nearly all places were like this.

  “Do you want to go back?” Naomi asked.

  “There is no ‘back’ for me. My home is gone.”

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “Changed. Time makes us all homeless—eventually.” She’d known this land before it had been paved. And yet, time unmade my home so that it could build yours. Ryn frowned, as this thought made her profoundly sad: a reminder of the distance between not just her and her friend, but between their two species.

  Naomi put fists deep into the pockets of Ryn’s hoodie, spinning to walk backward as she faced her. “I wish you could take me there.”

  “I could.” There are still places without the flavor of man.

  She laughed. “You’re supposed to tell me, ‘No, it’s too dangerous!’ ”

  “All places are. Except those next to me.”

  “God!” Naomi’s eyes twinkled. “Your arrogance—why do I like it so much?”

  “It isn’t arrogance.”

  Naomi clapped her mouth shut, dipping her face low with eyes lifting, though the smile remained. “Then what is it?”

  Something in that expression invited Ryn, propelled her forward not as mortals walked, but more fully what she was—her locomotion fluid, silent. “My strength. The truth of me.” You like my power because I show it; because you’ve been trained not to notice your own.

  And the way her scent had changed—it was delicious. The auburn-haired girl examined where her hands stretched the kanaf’s pockets taut, her pulse skipping and body warm, all felt through the conduit of that mystical fabric. “Take me to Siberia someday and prove it.” There was a challenge in her tone; the way she invited it while scrunching into the hoodie, backing away, and grinning all made Ryn want to… chase her.

  What would I do once I caught her? She didn’t even know.

  But Ryn would have swept her friend off to Siberia and away from asura, deva, and mankind itself if she’d thought there was the slightest possibility the teenager wouldn’t feel imprisoned. Naomi was wild in her own way.

  That night, while Naomi slept fitfully and her father’s soldier patrolled, Ryn hopped the train across the city to a Palisades museum just off the bay, sandwiched between the water and Commonwealth Plaza. She’d discovered it weeks ago while tracking Naomi during a day trip and had realized Dust haunted it on occasion.

  She broke in through the skylight and descended upside down on a single, bright gossamer cord from her kanaf. Dust roused awake in an exhibit of old instruments in a display case, the spirit occupying a recently donated violin of aged and sweet-smelling wood, the only sign of his presence a slight accumulation of his namesake on varnish that otherwise would have been pristine. W
hen he moved, she could hear him in the way a hiss shot through the instrument’s taut strings.

  “Come to hang out, Erynis?”

  “Where did you learn that name?” Ryn growled.

  Dust hesitated. “Heard it around. Had no idea my baby monster was quite so… discussed. Shame on you, though, big famous beastie wakin’ a humble spirit from his rest—disrespectful.”

  “I need to find Splat and his cabal. Now.”

  “I don’t keep tabs, and nobody wise does either. They don’t let on where they bed down their hollows.”

  “Then who. I want to know about his cabal.”

  “Hold on. There’s no love lost between Splat and me, but why would I wanna upset so many hungry spirits?”

  “If you know my name, you know I will not be denied.”

  “There’s nothing to say, goddamn it. They ain’t friends of mine.”

  Ryn approached, purring: “You know—or you know who does.”

  “Ah.” There was an apprehensive hitch in his voice. “Suppose that’s the question, ain’t it?”

  “You’re stalling.” She fanned her fingernails, let him see the glint of their sharpness.

  “Don’t rush me! Can’t give you nothing if you gut me, so just—back up! Not gonna be kicked around by no one, least of all some short beastie with sharp teeth.”

  Ryn stopped at the case holding the violin, dragging one nail along the glass enclosure until she’d carved a neat circle. Removing it, she reached through, stroking the instrument’s skin. “Tell me.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. It’s a Stradivarius, you bitch!”

  “You like these man-schemed things.” This museum was thick with them—instruments, baseball cards, pictures of the city in its infancy. “Yet I lived when the Earth was rock and mineral, and I have seen every wild and beautiful thing shattered, remade for mortal souls. Do you think I care for your violins?” She let her nails graze it, close enough to scrape off a few atoms and no nearer.

  He hissed at the razor kiss. “You know how many masters have touched this wood? Any clue what it’s like to taste the passion of every fella who ever worked it?”

  “You have ten seconds.” Ryn tasted her fingertips—to her, just the flavor of old wood.

  Dust waited nine seconds. “Muse. Muse knows.” Then, his voice harder: “And here I thought we were getting chummy.”

  “I don’t play games.”

  “Then you’re gonna love Muse.”

  ~*~

  The email was priority flagged and held an audio file, curtailed to the interesting parts. Listening sent a shiver through Ghorm’s hollow. He hit an icon on his screen to dial his second-in-command and on the eighth ring, Mr. Saxby picked up.

  “I have you on speaker,” Mr. Saxby intoned. “Afraid I’m elbow deep in your peon at the moment.”

  “The electronic surveillance picked up our monster.”

  “Ah! She’s with Dust, then.” Mr. Saxby shushed a pleading voice. “Fortuitous. Send the other mortals to kill Naomi Bradford while she’s elsewhere. I’ll nudge my latest masterpiece along shortly—just need to put in a handful of stitches and sign my work.” There came a sob, cut off by the sound of Mr. Saxby tut-tutting.

  “No. We have to send them after Muse. Dust—the blasted idiot—he told the monster about Muse.”

  “Muse? That adorable little empath we almost recruited? I remember how she went all wide-eyed when she realized what we were about; so charming! Why should it matter? We met her in the Palisades. She has no idea where the nest is.”

  “It matters because she knows our names.”

  “And? It’s not as though she’s the only one.”

  “I heard the name of the monster. Erynis.”

  Mr. Saxby sucked in a breath. “My, what a complication,” he muttered. “I daresay, I’d love to pry her open to see how she ticks.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she opens you. But she cannot be killed for long, and she won’t rest until we’re destroyed. The Fates named her the Implacable One. When the oldest, most vengeful deva call you that, it’s a clue that maybe this monster holds a fucking grudge. She’ll remember our names. She’ll hunt us.”

  “What about Splat?”

  “What about him?” Ghorm tapped a few keys.

  “If Muse doesn’t surrender our names, he will.”

  “Splat has been a convenience for us. If he’s no longer convenient, I regard him as expendable. But let’s wait until after we leverage him against Miss Bradford.” Ghorm typed out a new message. “I’m sending our peons after Muse; the one named Wilkins has a mirror box to trap her with. Hopefully they bring her to us before Erynis finds her.”

  “And if not?”

  “If Erynis learns our names, then Bradford is no longer our sole target. We’ll have to kill Erynis, too, buy ourselves some time while she regenerates. There are rumors of magic in Europe that can alter an asura’s name, change our scent—maybe the Fates would help us if we brought them tribute. There will be no appeasing her, no stopping her. What about you? Did you finish work on Burns?”

  “Patience! He’s nearly perfect. Stitching in one more heart and I’ll clean up the hotel room.”

  Ghorm sighed. “By ‘clean up’ do you mean ‘incinerate’?”

  “Of course. He had three degenerate friends when I got here—plenty of extra parts to work with, but no amount of bleach is getting them off the walls.”

  ~*~

  Following Dust’s instructions, Ryn took the train to Whitechurch and walked toward Graystone University, sniffing around the bars for asura. She caught the scent outside one called Pandora.

  Inside, the tall ceilings made it less claustrophobic than Ryn had anticipated. One side room had a number of televisions anchored to the walls, patrons drinking and hollering at sports competitions—the rest featured a polished wooden bar, decorative lighting and shelves for brightly colored liquor bottles, and stairs leading to an upper floor where she detected the asura’s scent.

  The patrons seemed a blend of young and middle-aged, and Ryn picked up on the way men would chat more closely or kiss; the women, too, she realized were engaged in mating rituals with one another. Upstairs was a dance floor presently empty, duos and trios drinking at a second bar, and a billiard table in back. An older pair of women at the bar leaned into one another, whispering comfortably, so perfectly at ease it pinched Ryn somewhere deep.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” purred a feminine voice behind her.

  Ryn turned, facing a woman with an asura flesh-riding her. She wore a black suit with a thin tie of the same color, contrasted with her cream dress shirt; her spiked black hair matched exactly the tie and jacket. The caustic odor or her cigarette seared the insides of the deva’s nostrils, and when she drew on it, Ryn saw the tattoos that gloved her wrist, hand, and the two innermost fingers. She strode past Ryn to the billiard table. She was tall and androgynous, casting an over-the-shoulder grin that showed some teeth.

  “Muse,” Ryn said.

  “The one and only.” She leaned on the billiard table and blew smoke from her nostrils like a dragon. “Play me?”

  “I don’t play games.”

  “I’d be happy to pop your cherry. Come on over, half-pint. I’ll show you what you’re missing.”

  Ryn scowled and approached the table, a foot shorter than Muse.

  “Looking for trouble?” Muse held out a pool cue.

  She snatched it. “Usually.” Glancing the stick over, sensing its purpose, she added, “Not with you.”

  Muse gathered bright pool balls into a wooden triangle. Ryn examined a game played on one of the video screens nearby.

  “You’re here for information. And you’re old. A new player in New Petersburg? Admission to the great bazaar of secrets and lies will cost you a name.”

  “Ryn.”

  “That’s not your name. Or at least not your only name. But that’s fine. I didn’t specify.”

  “How did you know—”

  “
Empath.” She tapped her temple twice and lined up her cue to strike the white ball. “Not good at faces?”

  “No.”

  “Faces are my thing.” The cigarette jounced on her lower lip when she spoke, a pinprick of fire smoldering in front of her face. “Can do downright beautiful things with bodies, too. I get a look at you, I look straight through. I see your heartsick glances at those two women holding each other; I see the rage bunch your shoulders when I come too close.”

  Muse paused to explain the rules of the game to Ryn—having apparently noticed her glances at the video screen—and then continued. “Can’t see everything, of course.” She cracked the cue ball into the racked balls and knocked a solid into a pocket. She proceeded to the other side of the table and brushed her finger across Ryn’s waist as she glided past.

  Ryn straightened. “Don’t.”

  “So you’re heartsick, but for someone in particular.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Touch you? Or ferret out your secrets?” she teased.

  “Either.”

  “Someone hates flesh riders.”

  What was there to like? “You push yourselves on them.”

  “Got that one wrong.” Muse ashed her cigarette. “This girl’s name is Mel. We’re long friends. I take the weekend, she takes the weekdays. We split the memories down the middle.”

  “She… lets you?” Ryn had to shake off a wave of psychic claustrophobia.

  “Hell of a deal. Smoke a pack a day, drink every night, fuck like a tigress—and Mel never gets tired, old, or sick. She’s thirty-six, still gets carded. Then there’s my empathy. Has its… uses.” She winked, then leaned in deep for her third shot. Ryn noticed the curve it produced along her body and how well the suit was tailored to her. Does she do that on purpose? Muse snapped her cue and the ball missed its target by a hair. “Shit. Your turn.”

  Ryn chalked her cue. She went perfectly still, studying the table. “Tell me about Splat.”

  “Fuck. That why you’re here? Not happening.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’d eat me, sweetheart. And I have to look out for Mel—what he’d do to a mortal woman is worse by a mile. All asura come from great moments. We’re born from passion, obsession, sin. Splat burst into existence decades ago from a snuff-porn ring—spawned from the sadistic boner-rage of a hundred of the sickest humans to own a VCR. I steer clear.”