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

by Casey Matthews

  Camp fare disappointed her, as it came from cans. There was fresh game within a hundred yards, but somehow she doubted they’d let her kill anything. While Naomi made quick friends with Phoebe and Cara, Ryn gave terse answers and avoided talking.

  Rain caught them on their way to the cabins. A crack of far-off thunder broke the air and scattered the campers. They sprinted; Ryn strolled. She tilted her head back, drinking fat drops that rolled from the leaves.

  Naomi cut through the abandoned soccer field and stopped midway across. She held out her arms; she accepted it, the only other person who understood she could get no wetter, and so instead smiled. The downpour lit her in a white halo of scattered droplets, framing her sleek hair in soft light, painting her shirt to the skin of her torso.

  Ryn didn’t realize she’d been approaching until Naomi whirled, scattering water from her fingertips. She laughed, flashing her teeth and those bright, bright eyes, framed by dark lashes that held pearls of water. “You look different in the rain,” she said.

  Ryn had no answer for that.

  Naomi beamed at her. “You look… content.” She eased nearer. “Like you and the rain belong together.”

  A smile teased its way to Ryn’s lips, still unused to the way Naomi saw to the core of her.

  Denise and Elli returned through the downpour. “You coming?” Denise called.

  “Come on,” Naomi challenged. “You’ve got all week to be dry.”

  They found the soccer ball and at first Naomi and Denise played one-on-one, darting with practiced ease, two rivals who’d done this together enough to have each other’s measure. When Naomi fired the ball sideways to Ryn, she popped it into the air with her knee and head-butted it over Denise, further downfield.

  “She’s on my team!” Denise called.

  “Nope! Everyone against Ryn!” Naomi said.

  They played through the storm and mud, shouting and shrieking, every motion kicking sparks of water through the air. Ryn wove through the trio, letting them snap the ball from her a few times. It was relaxed until the boys joined, transforming into girls versus boys, and against them Ryn was less magnanimous. She still passed the ball more than she took shots, disliking the attention of scoring, but she loved to slip into the pack and steal the ball effortlessly, to rocket it unexpectedly to Elli’s feet even if Elli lost it every single time.

  Jane waited an hour to break them up and they retreated to their bunks, Naomi throwing an arm around Ryn, hollering, “MVP! If we had you at Madison, we’d go all state.”

  Ryn glowed with delight.

  In the cabin, the girls hung wet clothes and towels on crisscrossing wash lines between bunks. Ryn dripped water and Naomi dragged her into a corner where hanging towels cordoned them from everyone else. “You forgot towels, didn’t you,” she teased.

  She needed no towels—if she could get free, she’d flick her kanaf once and be bone dry again.

  “Here.” Naomi ruffled a towel through Ryn’s hair before she could protest.

  The friction felt good and the deva leaned into the contact, her friend releasing the towel so that it draped like a hood.

  Naomi snorted. “More kitten than tiger when you’re wet, I’m afraid.” She reached for the monster’s sunglasses, but Ryn darted back.

  Smiling apologetically, Naomi fetched her own towel and did something in the quiet corner that put Ryn’s spine flush to the bedpost: she peeled off her own shirt. It exposed dew along her abdomen, water beading at her chin and running teasingly across the ridge of her collar bone. Then she skinned off her pants and tossed them with a wet slap to the concrete floor.

  She never looked at Ryn and dried off mechanically, though her ears were pink and her scent changed again—it felt almost like she was pretending not to see Ryn, planting one foot on the bunk beside the deva. Her coltish leg went on and on, higher than Ryn had seen before, all the way to rain-soaked underwear, and the sight sent a delicious, terrifying curl of warmth through her belly. Tearing her gaze away while Naomi changed into dry panties, she folded herself protectively under the towel, heart galloping in her ribcage.

  Naomi scrounged in her bag, tossing a shirt to Ryn. “Here. I brought too many clothes and you probably forgot PJs too, knowing you. And…” She finally glanced back. “I know you don’t wear certain things regularly, but that’ll be long enough to cover you.”

  The old shirt had a cartoon tiger on it, though not a dangerous-looking one. Ryn would have preferred her kanaf, but felt trapped. She started to undress, slow and uncertain.

  Denise peeped through their blanket partition. “Oh, there you two are.”

  Naomi smiled, her back to them both as she shrugged out of her bra. “Just getting Ryn situated.”

  “I see.” From Denise’s tone, Ryn wondered what she saw.

  Naomi rolled her eyes, snaking into a nightshirt and pajama bottoms, slipping out of their partitioned compartment. Ryn changed into the tiger shirt, hanging her wet kanaf close to where she slept since the shirt’s length stopped slightly above her knees and left her feeling exposed. She scampered immediately into her bedroll.

  Nearby, the other girls chatted long into the night. Ryn avoided the conversation, but Naomi was in its midst, sitting up Indian-style on her bunk. Lying on her side, covered in a shirt imprinted with her friend’s scent, the deva savored the sight of Naomi speaking. She liked watching her do anything, but liked it even more when the other girl’s gaze slipped back to her, which it did every so often.

  Naomi slept a few feet away and that was best of all.

  ~*~

  The rain let up by morning and Ryn rose first, twisting the kanaf around her body. Naomi shivered in her bedroll from the morning chill, the deva fixated on her friend’s parted lips, where foggy breath spilled out.

  Her fragile, sleeping form returned the curious heat to Ryn’s belly, made her want to crawl into the bedroll and hold the auburn-haired girl close. She was in the midst of those thoughts when she sensed eyes on her and swiveled to face Denise, who grinned up at her.

  Ryn narrowed her eyes.

  Denise made kissing motions with her mouth that only made the deva’s eyes narrow more.

  They hiked to breakfast through wet mist that settled around the knees, blanketing the forest’s ferns in a way that put Ryn at ease—at least until the singing. Worse, when Patrick joined Naomi, they goofily slung their arms around each other. It was the same arm that had been around her after soccer and she wished for once in her life she could make song. Scenting Patrick for asura in case he needed to be decapitated, it unfortunately turned out he was just a boy.

  Ryn wanted to catch her friend’s eye during breakfast, except she was engrossed in conversation with Cara. After breakfast came something called trust falls, where Ryn panicked at the realization she had to drop backward into someone’s braced hands. She sought Naomi to save her, but Patrick had again intercepted Ryn’s favorite human.

  Fortunately, Denise fast proved her second favorite by partnering with her and convincing the counselors Ryn “totally just did like four” while they weren’t looking.

  It still rankled to see Naomi fidget and smile shyly when Patrick’s big paws caught her shoulders. She even laughed at something he said! Not only couldn’t the monster sing, but she wasn’t funny either.

  It wasn’t until Denise snorted that she realized she’d been growling at them. “You are so unsubtle,” her second favorite whispered.

  Then came other group activities: helping each other cross a wire line suspended eighteen inches above the ground, or climbing a wall together, or carrying a beach ball up a hill on a blanket. It was meant to be done as a team, an idiotic concept: Ryn could have done it all much easier alone. Or perhaps with just Naomi.

  And Patrick told them all what to do. Worst of all, they listened. When he ordered Ryn to let him boost her up the wall since she was lightest, she stared him down and then scaled the wall on her own.

  At lunch, Naomi sat with Patrick so R
yn cut out early, using her afternoon free time to brush up on archery. She loosed shaft after shaft into distant hay bales, ignoring their awful instructor. Every satisfying thump of arrow to target unspooled her violent urges, perhaps since the target’s size and shape wasn’t a total mismatch for Patrick’s face.

  “Who are you imagining in that bullseye?” Denise leaned against a nearby post. “Patrick?”

  Her concentration wavered and her arrow planted an inch too wide. Out of anger, she thumped three more into the red dot, one-two-three, so fast the instructor said an oath in front of campers. How does Denise always know my thoughts? “Are you an empath?” she demanded.

  “Uh. No?”

  Ryn sighed. “I’m confused.”

  “For what it’s worth, I know why Patrick flirts with her. I’m fuzzier on why she’s flirting back.”

  Lowering her bow in resignation, Ryn sank to the bench seats behind the firing line. If Denise was confused, Ryn had no hope of understanding.

  “I do have a theory.” Denise shifted to face her, hands in pockets and weight rocked back against the post. “It was weird that she’d date Horatio right after you two met. She’s normally slow to let guys take her out. At first, I thought she wanted that first kiss, but the double date actually makes scoring a kiss slightly more challenging. Fast-forward to now, and the moment you two make up, boom: she’s hanging off Patrick.”

  Ryn stared ahead at the target bristling with her arrows. “I don’t understand at all.”

  Denise shrugged. “It’s just really damn convenient that every time she’s around you long enough to get her panties tickled, she tries her damnedest to fall in love with the closest guy.”

  “So I’m insufficient.” Ryn frowned, unwilling to admit surrender. “Denise. I must make jokes. Teach it to me now.”

  Her second-favorite human sighed. “Think what I’m saying is that you’re very sufficient. Overly sufficient, even. This time it’s not your fault. For once? It’s the princess who’s screwing it up.”

  For dinner they served a congealed meat tube inside bread. That was Ryn’s limit, so she crept out and found a raspberry bush in the forest to pick over. By the time darkness spread over the campground, the solitude had fortified her and she returned to the firepit, looking in on the popping coals—how often had she done this? Except this time she strode from the brush and her presence among the mortals was unremarkable.

  She froze. The humans were huddled close, and Naomi clung to Patrick as they whispered scary stories.

  Noticing her, Denise stood and approached, uncertain. “They’re a couple,” she whispered, more gently than she’d ever said a thing to the deva.

  Nodding, Ryn stumbled back into the dark, only returning to the cabin after everyone else had. She slumped into her bedroll fully clothed.

  “You need a nightshirt?” Naomi whispered from her bunk across the aisle.

  Ryn rolled over, her back to her friend.

  The next day, rain chased them off the ropes courses and trapped them in the cabin, where the others chatted and played cards. After lunch, some of the boys started a tackle game on the field with an oblong ball, and Ryn thought it would be a relief to do something away from Naomi. She asked to join and they fought over who would take her until one with a twangy accent rolled his eyes at the bickering and invited her to his side.

  Her toes curled when she spotted Patrick on the other team.

  Intuiting the rules from a few plays, she waited for the ball to snap and darted across the field, separating from the others in a burst of speed. The thrower who had invited her to his team fired from back in the rain, ball spiraling wide of her trajectory. She sensed Patrick coming up on her, caught the scent of his exertion—it tasted aggressive and wrong somehow.

  Pivoting in the mud, she cut hard and the ball thudded into her outstretched hand. Its spin squeaked in her wet grip and cheers shot abruptly from the sideline—the girls were watching. Naomi is watching.

  Patrick dove at her from behind. Ryn flicked low and nailed his middle with her shoulder. As he folded into her and went rolling over top, she used her strength to fling him higher so that he sailed end-over-end. When he hit earth, he skidded, flipped, skidded again, and splashed into an enormous mud puddle.

  She had no idea what was wrong with Patrick, but her gut told her something was. Untrustworthy. Glancing up at Naomi, though, she saw the auburn-haired teen’s mouth was an angry, straight line. Ryn tossed her wet hair over one shoulder, meeting her friend’s glare.

  The thrower who’d invited her to play jogged over, helping Patrick up. Patrick groaned, stumbling.

  “Let’s… let’s play two-hand touch,” the thrower said, with nervous looks at Ryn.

  “I’m done.” She stalked away, headed for the field’s other side, away from them all.

  Denise caught up to her first, though. “Jesus. Ryn! Hold on.”

  She halted, wheeling on the girl. Her throat clicked out a growl. “Why?”

  “Because… because I’m worried you’re about to murder someone.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You didn’t have to smile like that when you hit him.”

  “I smiled because I enjoyed myself.”

  At dinner Naomi wouldn’t even look her way, a frosty anger in the teenager’s demeanor. But Ryn was angry too. Her friend had coupled with a boy with a wrong scent. What if he was a monster? Perhaps I should eat him to be sure.

  “That wasn’t cool,” Naomi hissed on their walk back from dinner. “You were trying to hurt Patrick.”

  “If I were trying, he’d be hurt,” Ryn growled.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because.” Ryn’s lip twitched. “There’s something wrong with him.”

  “I’d like more to go on than your gut feeling. It seems like you just don’t like me spending time with him.”

  “Why would I care who you spend time with?” she snapped.

  “Because I… because he…” For once, Naomi was speechless.

  Ryn bolted into the woods to escape the rising bitterness, the disillusioned sense that Naomi was playing some stupid, dangerous game. She lurked along the fringes of the forest, staring into the clearing and those licking, orange flames—relegated again to her proper place at the light’s periphery, looking in.

  Patrick’s skin glowed in that light and he seemed to drink it, as well the affections of the campers and Naomi, who all smiled at him.

  I’ll bet he doesn’t even taste good, she fumed.

  That night, Naomi slid from her bunk while everyone else slept. She padded across concrete, easing out the door. It didn’t fit her usual nighttime patterns, so Ryn sneaked after, ascending into the trees and trailing her along the winding paths.

  Naomi’s flashlight joined Patrick’s, and the two embraced. He stooped for a kiss and Ryn’s stomach tightened, but Naomi danced to the side, smiling instead. She dragged him off the path and into the shadowy wood.

  Ryn glided after, from trunk to trunk. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  They perched together a few hundred yards into the forest, on a jutting rock overlooking the steep drop-off of a ravine. Patrick had laid a blanket down and they nestled side by side, staring into the night while rain rattled the leaves. Their pulses were at ease, and Patrick’s scent seemed fine now. No. It was wrong. He’s wrong.

  They spoke in hushed tones. Patrick had lived with his father; his mother had been killed in crossfire at the hospital where she worked when two gangs had opened fire on each other. “The bullet came through her office window.”

  “Oh my God,” Naomi whispered.

  His hands clenched, unclenched. The aggression was back—now that Ryn knew why, it didn’t stink so bad. No! It’s bad enough; it’s not right for her.

  “It was fast,” he said. “At least there was that. Went through her neck. She sort of coughed, fell over. She shook really ha
rd and she was gone before I could get a doctor.”

  “You saw it?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.” Glancing off into the ravine, his fists squeezed and released again.

  “My mom didn’t die in the car,” Naomi murmured at last. “She was hit by a drunk driver, but she made it to the hospital alive. She lived about a day.” She sucked in a breath. “People hear about car crashes, picturing it like it’s sudden, clean. Broken metal and smashed glass, then you’re just gone. It wasn’t like that. It was… ugly. She was my mom, and she was so, so beautiful. But at the hospital, I could… I could barely recognize her. There were tubes everywhere.” Her voice was barely there. “She didn’t have any legs. It made her seem small. I remember not being able to find a good place to touch her—nowhere that still felt like her.” She wiped at her eyes. “I wish she’d been awake. I wanted so bad for her to hear me one more time.”

  Ryn realized it went deeper than songs and jokes. She could never relate to Naomi like another mortal could. The deva had no mother but the dark sky. Death was not her enemy; she had nothing it wanted, nothing it could touch except, perhaps, Naomi.

  The teenagers leaned into one another, and though their sizes were different, their bodies seemed almost made to rest together as they stared off—and then their fingers laced, their hearts sped, and they looked into one another’s eyes.

  This is how it’s meant to be, Ryn realized. I’m not a part of their world. It was all in front of them, precisely as Denise had once described at the Nine Lives: a first kiss; making love for the first time in six more months; married in a church where Ryn couldn’t enter, and then to live short lives, rear children, and die. Precisely the life Naomi had always dreamt of.

  Sorrow filled her and she wanted to see them kiss; wanted a clean end, as hard as she’d wanted it in the snowy forest next to the drive-in. Her nails sank into the bark.

  Their lips neared.

  Her heart flared—with anger, yes, but also hope made defiant. No!

  Lightning broke the sky and lit the forest in neon brightness. It seared the imprint of trees into her vision, thunder rumbling through the old trunk and into her bones.