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

by Casey Matthews

  Ryn stopped to scent. Something was wrong.

  Naomi bolted past her, laughing. The dream defied logic by simply placing the auburn-haired teenager beside Ryn again when she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re in danger.”

  “It’s a dream, weirdo. I think it’s safe.”

  “It’s not.”

  Ryn caught the knife and her eyes snapped open in the tent. Naomi startled awake beside her.

  The razor tip of Patrick’s steel pocket knife trembled an inch from Naomi’s throat, held back from her pulsing carotid by Ryn’s hand.

  The blond male threw all his weight into the knife, but Ryn dragged the point until it hovered above her instead. Glancing angrily at Naomi, she growled, “I only promised to spare him until he attacked.”

  There was fear in Naomi’s eyes, and Ryn couldn’t tell who for. “Please don’t kill him.”

  That left her some latitude.

  “What the hell,” Patrick snarled, but when he caught a look at Ryn’s eyes, his face drained of color.

  Snapping the steel blade off his knife, she flicked to her feet and planted her shoulder into his middle, tossing him flailing through a hole he’d slit in their tent. He fought for balance even as she strode after.

  “You think you can stop me?” he shouted.

  “Yes.” Ryn tossed him to the dirt, straddled his chest, and bludgeoned his face. Soon, other campers were unzipping tents and spilling out. Ryn took her time to disguise how fast she could be, which left her with an audience.

  “Ryn!” Jane screamed. “Ryn, stop it, what are you doing!”

  “Fixing his face.” It had started to look about right. “Almost done.” She gave it two more shots, releasing him so he flopped limp with drool and blood pooling from his shattered mouth.

  With her gaze down to hide her eyes, she sensed how Jane darted forward. Naomi called out, “Patrick tried to kill me. But Ryn, stop it—you’re going too far.” The quaver in her voice stopped Ryn and Jane alike, the crowd paralyzed at what was unfolding.

  “He’s not done yet.” Ryn seized Patrick’s arm, pushing him facedown and dragging the wrist into the air behind him. “Confession—” She twisted the bones into an alarming contortion. “—it’s good for your soul.”

  “Ryn!” Naomi shouted.

  “You work for Saxby.” Ryn leaned down to hiss it in his ear. “No, don’t look at them. They can’t help you anymore. You’re mine, little snake.” She applied torque until he whimpered. “Tell me where your master is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Naomi asked. “Are you crazy? Ryn, you’re hurting him.”

  “Shut up,” Patrick snarled. He lanced Naomi with a baleful glare. “Stop pretending. Stop pretending you care! Let your pet demon loose—you know it’s what you really want!”

  Naomi stared, mouth falling open at the change in Patrick’s voice, at the mask of hatred covering his face.

  “You’re exactly like your father,” he spat. “Pretend to care. Preen for the cameras. But I know your kind for what you are. Fucking vermin. You eat this country from the inside.”

  Naomi was porcelain, unmoving.

  “It started with your mother, didn’t it? Is she the one who thinks gangsters should go free? Who thinks we should just sprinkle more guns on top of the problem? When you anarchists bribe your way to victory, you fucking mug for the cameras and call them ‘gun rights’ and ‘rights of the accused,’ and never mind the bodies you never had to bury!”

  “You’re one of them,” Naomi whispered. “Those people. That website. You’re one of them.”

  He laughed, a deranged cackle that shook him. “You got my message?” he asked in a broken voice. “I wanted to see your face. Watch it go still when you die.” He looked up at her. “And I want to see your dad’s eyes when he hears how it happened. I want it to change him forever, the way he changed me!”

  “He’s been twisted by another.” Ryn dropped him to the ground, setting her heel to his spine to pin him. She no longer wanted to kill him. He’d been bent this way by Ghorm before she’d ended the asura.

  “Fuck you!” Red spittle flew from his gums. “You’re all anarchists! Move back to that broken slab of concrete you call a country and leave us alone!”

  “Why are the pretty ones always crazy?” Elli whispered.

  Patrick lurched toward Elli, and Ryn shoved him facedown again with her foot. Jane apparently had had enough, binding his wrists with clothesline. “Everyone form up. Todd, get on the radio. We need the police.”

  Something disturbed the air above them and Ryn placed her palm square to Naomi’s chest, throwing her effortlessly across the campsite, collapsing her into a tent.

  Saxby’s terrible claws dropped from the heavens and thundered into Ryn, knocking her senseless.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Who Owns the Skies

  Saxby clutched Ryn in his draconic claws and pumped his wings. They sailed higher and Naomi shrank into a toy person, swallowed by the ocean of trees that spun below. A steel-fibered kanaf protected Ryn from the hundreds of stingers lining his grip, each one trying to drill an envenomed barb into her skin.

  Ryn thrashed.

  “Tut tut, little monster,” rumbled the wyrm above her, a grin peeling across his scaly lips. “Any moment, I’ll nick that smooth flesh and you’ll be gone. I daresay my latest venom would follow you into your next life.”

  She inhaled, expanding her chest to strain his claws, flexing her shoulders with all her strength—then exhaled sharply. In that instant, using the smallest gap, she snaked one arm loose. With a snap, her claws cracked through him and she dropped through the air alongside the spinning remnants of his toes. She sharpened into a needle-point dive.

  Wheeling, he screeched and bent his wings tight to his flanks, both of them plummeting for the same rapidly approaching, stony patch of earth. The wind sang through her ears as the stones swelled larger.

  They struck the ground a split second apart, she on hands and feet like a cat. She rolled, and his claws cratered the spot she’d left behind. They were beside the riverbank and he was the size of a house now. Before he’d settled, she twirled and chopped off his barbed tail, the stump spurting blood.

  “You smell like her,” he snarled. “I didn’t take you for a collector of pets. I wonder how long she’ll live when I swallow her alive.” He leapt for the air, wings flaring.

  “No,” Ryn roared. “These skies are not yours!” She reached out to the forest on both sides of her, eyes shut and spirit touching the air, feeling it tremble in anticipation—it was wind too long untapped by gods, too long abandoned to natural forces and allowed to twirl and rage inside a glass bottle. Ryn uncorked the bottle, lifted both hands, and poured it on Saxby.

  The trees swayed and groaned, and then bowed. In the maddening whirl, Saxby’s wings folded in an awkward direction and he sank to the other side of the river with a dull thud.

  Already, he’d regrown his severed tail. Glaring across the river, his reflection was distorted when the water rippled into streaky waves from the gales. “No matter. To save your girl, you still have to get past me. Ghorm twisted that mortal boy so tight he’s a killing spring. The boy told me he wanted to kill your pet with a machete. I told him: splendid. He’s doing it now. This very moment.”

  Fury tinged her vision red.

  “How many seconds does she have left?”

  He was goading her, trying to get her to behave rashly. She didn’t care. I’ll murder him as rashly as I please. But no sooner had she started forward than he blew oily fire across the river and lit its surface aflame.

  He laughed at her. “Tick tock, monster. Tick tock.”

  ~*~

  Naomi struggled out of the nylon canopy Ryn had tossed her into, standing and orienting herself, but seeing Ryn nowhere. She’d been thrown clear, everyone else spread across the ground, confused. A strange wind seemed to have blown through.

  Wait. Where’s Patrick?

  By sta
rlight, she saw his figure advancing with a duffel bag in hand, shucking off the last of the clothesline bindings. He tossed the bag off a length of metal that glinted in the moonlight. “You’re vermin, Naomi,” he called out with an unhinged lilt. “An invasive species. Brought here by your mother. Your kind infest the halls of our institutions and chew them up from the inside.”

  Mind swimming, she crept back a step to see if he noticed her—he did, and veered her way. Pivoting, she fled, feet carrying her swiftly even as she heard him barreling after. He’s faster than me. She knew from playing games with him all week. He was laughing and gaining. He knows it too.

  She sprinted into the edge of the wood, spun to face him—his black size swelled and he swung. But she’d danced between trees and the machete sunk into an elm. He struggled to pry it free.

  “Listen to me,” she insisted. “I’m your friend. You opened up to me, told me things. I know that was real.”

  “Of course it was real,” he snapped. “I wanted you to know why I’m killing you.” He wrenched the blade free, stalking forward as she retreated pace for pace.

  The weather changed. Winds shifted and the cold prickled her skin.

  “I’ve always wondered.” He crept after her. “They wouldn’t execute my mother’s murderers. ‘Cruel and unusual!’ Courts all belong to vermin now. Do you think your father will ask them to give me the death penalty? I can’t tell what’d be sweeter: him groveling for the judge to give it to me; or watching him give another fucking speech about my rights while you’re cold in the grave.”

  ~*~

  Ryn brought the wind together, collapsed it from four horizons, and crushed it into the space around her. Storm clouds piled atop one another, circling overhead. She stroked the storm across treetops like a hand over velvet.

  “Howl for me, monster, but know that’s all you’ll do!” Saxby laughed in the glow of a fire he’d lit across the river. “I know your beginning and your end! I’ve tasted your power.”

  “And now I’ll make you drink it,” she promised. “To the dregs.” A fist of air struck the burning river and cut a gash down to the rocks below. The banks swelled, great waves rising on either side of the gash. Ryn crossed the barren divide made by her storm, glinting claws splayed at her sides.

  Saxby reeled, kicking up dirt as he positioned like a cat to pounce, launching into the air where he tried to fly clear of her approach. His wings beat, he climbed a spiral path—and she sunk her fist low, winding the maelstrom around behind him. She caught him by his own wings, and with bullet force cast him to the earth. Trees exploded, sheared by his mass, and he left a hundred-foot furrow of raised ground and splintered stumps.

  Pivoting, ignoring the dragon, she flew through the forest for Naomi—for the only important thing. Around her, the storm dropped the temperature of the woods to match her cold heart, her breath fogging as though it were a December midnight. Rain that streaked from the sky turned to snow and moisture in the forest froze to slick patches; tree trunks brittled with clinging frost.

  Saxby crashed through the forest, toppled icy trees, and came at her on all fours. He intercepted her at a clearing, spitting a barrage of spines from his throat. Ryn sank behind a fallen trunk, quills thudding into the log’s other side, thick as a porcupine’s hide.

  More quills sprouted from the ridge of his spine and his pointed elbows, each dripping venom. They furred his claws, bristled along the softness of his underbelly. “I’ll bet he’s got her blood on him by now.” He spat a volley, heaved another from his tail, reared to fire a thicket of them from underneath his coils. But Ryn danced between them; she flicked between trees, always seeming to find another thing to duck behind as he launched his next barrage.

  He’s stalling me. She cut to his flank and tried to outrun him, but he gave chase and his body lengthened, growing yet more serpentine, winding through the forest in her wake with only trees, ridges, and stones to cover her from his glistening barbs.

  ~*~

  Snow fell heavy through the air and settled into branches, whose cooling sap made them crackle when they swayed. It was snowing in June, during the time of raspberries and fireflies, and Naomi had never been so cold. The temperature stung her nostrils and lit her breath silver.

  She couldn’t run or he’d chase her down. Nor could she stand still, because then he’d cut her in half. Instead she stepped cautiously backward, and Patrick advanced at exactly the same rate. He was savoring it, the slow pace of her murder.

  “Listen.” She raised her hands. “I’m not your enemy. They’ve twisted you all around.”

  “What would you know?”

  “You aren’t the only one who lost someone. I understand what it does to you.”

  “Mine was murdered. With a gun your father thinks should be legal, by criminals he wants on our streets.”

  “Mine was killed by a drunk driver. She—”

  “It’s not the same!”

  “Your mother wouldn’t want this.”

  “She always told me to follow my heart.” His machete was painted in frost. “Guess what my heart’s saying?”

  She swallowed and tried not to imagine the bite of cold metal into her body. “Think of her face, Patrick. Think of her eyes before she went away, and tell me that doesn’t make a difference. Tell me she’s looking on you fondly right now, and I’ll let you do it.”

  “You can’t stop me either way.” He swatted the machete through branches in his path, never slowing.

  She backed into thick brush and the frigid branches snagged her. “Is there anything left in you except hate?” she asked, searching the shadows of his face.

  “I thought about shooting you,” he said, and it was clear he no longer even heard her. “Wanted to use the same kind of gun that killed my mom. More poetic that way. But I get nauseous at the idea of touching one.” He lifted the machete. “At least this way, I get to make a mess.”

  Naomi tensed, wondering if she could tackle him—a near-hopeless prospect, but it had come to that.

  It was Denise who came from behind him, shouting, “Eat it!” Her voice drew Patrick around just in time to catch a frozen branch to his face. His jaw snapped violently up, blood spraying from his mouth. The machete whirled into snowy litterfall.

  The blow spun him almost a hundred eighty degrees, and Denise launched onto his back from behind. She pulled his hemp necklace taut, choking him with it. “You’re mine, shit-bag!”

  Gagging, he slammed an elbow into Denise.

  A white nova of fury lit in Naomi’s core and she burst forward, aiming her best kick between his legs. It thumped home with satisfying force. Somewhere in the chaos, Denise got the crook of her elbow around his throat.

  Out of the trees came a screaming Elli, who sprayed Patrick in the face with something. He shrieked.

  Together, they dropped him to the snow and kicked him until they were out of breath while Denise choked him out. She held on until he started to shake and, gasping, tore off his jacket, belt, and shoelaces, hogtying him. They were all Girl Scouts, but Denise knew the best knots for some reason.

  “What— What was that you sprayed him with?” Denise gasped, rubbing her eyes as Elli stood back with a spritz bottle still leveled on an unconscious Patrick. “You can’t bring mace to camp, you maniac.”

  She checked the label. “It’s Binaca. Peppermint.” Glancing down at Patrick, she added, “I think I contributed.”

  Denise folded her arms skeptically, but then looked around the forest with concern. “What the hell is going on? Someone broke summer.”

  Naomi stood, gaze drawn to the sky. “Oh my God.” Goddess?

  A ring of clouds the size of a mountain spun in the sky, a roiling black halo lit with flashes of lightning.

  ~*~

  Ryn sprinted between two rows of trees glazed in crystalline encasements from roots to highest boughs. The forest groaned at the sudden drop in temperature, trunks threatening to burst from the pressure of expanding water within.
>
  Sliding to a stop on one knee, Ryn stretched her hands to the ring of storm clouds overhead. The dragon was a scaly ribbon twisting through the trees, angling for her with jaws opened wide to disgorge more poisoned barbs. She stretched her power to the nimbus crown in the sky and drew down lightning.

  Ragged bolts rained from the heavens, white-hot tongues of celestial fire dancing among the trees. Clean and pure as her wrath, she enveloped every tree Saxby neared. The power transformed the water inside to steam, a violent expansion that exploded trunk after trunk like bombs. Wood shrapnel peppered his hide, the impact clobbering him and spoiling his forward momentum. The dragon crashed headfirst into the snow, his slithering mass buckled like a train that had derailed. Fresh powder filled the air as he rolled to a stop.

  Her claws flexed and she took them to Saxby’s body; she carved him with method and malice—not to incapacitate, no, he’d only heal. There was no punishment there. She peeled him. She flayed until his body opened into bloody gills anywhere she could reach; she scraped off half his face in one swipe.

  Her own eyes were flash-imprinted, ears half deaf from landing thunder at her own feet; but Saxby was rendered senseless, except of course for his sense of touch. He lived now in darkness, alone except for her cruel hands, and she worked him until he keened.

  “Sing!” she snarled. “Sing for me.”

  And he did. There was nothing asura hated more than pain. It was enough to force a miscalculation—the last one he’d ever make. With a cry for release, Saxby split his essence again. His flesh rippled, spirit pushing through every drop of his erupting blood. The flesh foamed like the sea, burst, and transformed into insects, scorpions, and serpents. To her immortal eye, it happened slowly—and she leapt through the wriggling epicenter.

  With her kanaf as armor to shield herself from stings, she snapped a single snake from the swarm, tucking it close.

  Landing on the other side of the buzzing cloud, she reached again to the clouds above and pulled the sky down upon both their heads. The snowy earth lit with not just a few bolts—she brought them all down.