by Meg Collett
Downstairs, the bay doors must have closed, because the chains rattled the floor. I quickly checked on Luke and Hatter. The room wasn’t completely tidy, but it would have to do for now, even if my mother had taught me to never leave a room in worse condition than I’d found it.
My chest ached with homesickness. Normally, I’d be with my family during winter break. We’d exchanged emails and phone calls back when I was on the road with Luke and Hatter, but not nearly enough. I missed Gran and her stories. I missed Mom and how she was always bustling around, cleaning. And Dad, though he’d never been the same since my brother Seth died.
I slipped out of the room and down the hallway. Already, I heard the voices of those gathered below, which, judging by all the empty rooms I passed, included everyone. My eyes flickered to the hall leading to Thad’s office. They might keep a spare key to the medical cabinet in there. My palms itched, but I kept walking to the front, where the bottom level opened up and metal stairs descended. I stayed on the gangway and peered down.
The injured were still laid out on the ground, though Ghost had brought in heaps of blankets and pillows to cocoon them. Even now, he hurried around, handing out dinner plates full of meat sandwiches—cut diagonally down the middle with the crusts pulled off—and glasses of water. At the front of the room, against the central bay door, stood Thad and a handful of men and women who all looked ragged and worn out. Thad was talking, addressing the injured and issuing orders to those who weren’t.
A side door opened, and I spotted a blot of red—Ollie. Next to her strode a tall man. He was slender, but not in a delicate way. He moved like a predator, like he doled out every breath with measured efficiency, and his eyes constantly took everything in. I didn’t like how close he was walking to Ollie or how he kept her slightly behind his shoulder. The protectiveness clued me in.
Hex.
As if he’d heard me think his name, his eyes swept upward and locked on me. I stared back into their shuttered darkness and waited. My fingertips started to shake, but he was the first to look away with a quirk to his lips that could’ve been a smile. He walked up to Thad, while Ollie hung back off to the side like she always did. Never part of the group. Always standing in the shadows.
Thad nodded at Hex to begin.
“Halflings!” His voice slinked through the warehouse, loud enough for everyone to hear, but still dark and soft. “You fought well last night. I speak for my entire pack when I say your coordinated movements and efficiency in battle was impressive.”
He offered the group a real smile, and I practically smelled the wave of pride blossoming out. They fawned under his approval like thirsty dogs lapping up puddles of muddy water.
I did not like Hex, not one little bit.
“Many of you are wondering what that thing was.” Hex paused to let the drawn-out silence rile up the halflings with renewed fear and apprehension. “Thad and I led a group of trackers out last night to search for it. We found it and got a good look at it. Squeak here”—Hex turned to a scrawny man standing off to the side—“even took a good chunk out of it.”
The young man spat on the ground, his hair falling into his eyes—dark eyes like Hex’s.
“Didn’t taste good, huh?” Hex laughed. “We tracked it last night into the park, where it likely keeps its nest. If we find the nest, we find it, and then we can kill it.”
“Does it have a name?” someone from the back called out.
“It does.” Hex let the moment stretch out again until the halflings were all leaning forward, even the injured ones, and soaking up his every exhale.
“We call it Manananggal.”
I couldn’t take any more of Hex’s narcissistic, warlord-type behavior. It made me sick. I crept away from the gangway, keeping my steps silent on the metal, and doubled back into the living quarters while he droned on about the specifics of the creature.
I didn’t need him to tell me about her. My grandmother had long ago told me the legend.
“A woman, once beautiful, but now rotting with stinking pits for her eyes and mouth, has haunted the Philippines since the dawn of man and aswang,” my grandmother would whisper to me in the middle of the night while I was huddled beneath my blankets. “She nested during the day in her wasted, barely human form, always alone because she couldn’t stand how her beauty had rotted away, and she was jealous of the ’swangs’ human forms. She’d lived forever, and time had not been kind. At night, she would come out, unfolding her wings and taking to the sky. But”—and here my grandmother would lean in close, my bedside dinosaur lamp illuminating her weathered, beautiful face—“the wasted woman had to leave part of herself behind in a safe place, a hidden place, for if she always had a part of herself tucked away, she could never die, no matter what happened to her flying night-form.
“Find the hidden part of the Manananggal and burn it. Then the creature will truly die.”
Of course, when my grandmother had told me the story, it’d been just that—a story. No one had seen the Manananggal in years. Decades. Centuries even. She was a ghost. Eventually, people had chalked her up to lore.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Was every bad, gross monster living in Alaska now?
Walking back through the upstairs living area, I stopped at the juncture in the halls. I leaned back slightly and stared down toward the kitchen and dining area. No one, not even in the main gathering area. Behind me, Hex was busy spilling out his drivel. I trusted my grandmother’s story far more than his propaganda, but while he spoke, I highly doubted anyone would venture far enough away to catch me stealing a set of keys—hopefully.
With one last glance around, I angled off to the side and sidled along the hallway, my steps quiet over the concrete in case anyone was behind the closed office door.
I pressed my ear against the wood and listened. Nothing.
After waiting a beat longer to ensure I hadn’t missed anything and double-check no one was behind me—and possibly taking the extra moment to steel my shaking nerves—I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Unlocked, the fools. Or maybe Thad just trusted everyone here, which would be so different from the Barrow base and Fear University, where every room was locked behind you, every secret hoarded away.
The door swung open on silent hinges and I eased inside. My feet hit the edge of a thick rug as I closed the door behind me. Right as I went to lock it I decided to leave it. If anyone discovered me, I could always say I’d gotten lost and wondered into a dark room.
I didn’t dare turn on the light and wished I’d thought to bring a flashlight, but the window let in enough early morning light that I could make out the chairs in front of the wide, cluttered desk, the built-in brick shelves behind it, and the slept-in cot against the side wall. The room smelled like vanilla and wet dog.
I eased around the corner of the desk and began my search, deciding to leave the desktop and its messy papers for last. Though the papers looked disorganized to me, Thad might have a system, and I doubted he would just leave a set of spare keys lying on top of his desk. I started on the drawers. Each one pulled open easily, exposing files and typical office clutter. On the bottom left, Thad had a stash of protein bars, too-ripe bananas, and warm sports drinks.
On the bottom right, I opened the deep drawer. At first, I thought it was empty, but as I went to close it, the corner of something white caught my attention. I fished around with my fingertips until they brushed across the piece of paper in the very back corner. I pulled it out. It wasn’t paper, but a crumpled photograph.
It smelled smoky, and a smear of dried blood marred the image. Gently, I rubbed off the blood with my finger and took another look.
I almost dropped it in shock.
Swallowing the bile in my throat, I looked again. Young and pretty and devastatingly similar to Ollie, the woman had to be Irena. There was a deep fold line across her body and the corners of the picture were bent and marred, but I saw how her throat was slit. She stared up at the person who’d caught her i
mage just as the final ray of light left her eyes. It was brutal and disturbing, and why in the heck did Thad have it in his desk?
Because of Ollie’s earlier explanation, I knew Killian had killed Irena, which meant he was likely the grim photographer, but that didn’t explain how Thad had it. For a brief, sickening moment, I worried he’d been involved, or perhaps the other halflings, since he wouldn’t have been much older than Ollie at the time of Irena’s death. But he and all the other halflings worshiped Irena, just like they worshiped Hex. There was no way they’d had anything to do with her murder.
I wanted to stare at it longer, but I toed the drawer shut without replacing the picture. I’d wasted enough time staring at the picture, and I couldn’t know for sure how long the meeting with Hex would last given that everyone had been awake all night. Guilt clawed at my gut because I hadn’t found the keys to the medical cabinet that possibly contained something to help Hatter, but I had to go or risk someone catching me.
I hurried across the office and had my hand on the doorknob, when I paused. My eyes returned to the desk, to the drawer I’d left empty. I knew Thad would know the picture was gone as soon as he looked. He’d know someone had stolen it and might even assume it had been Ollie.
Slowly, I turned back around, the picture heavy in my hand. Going back to the desk, I sat down in the chair and thought it over. I didn’t want Thad coming after Ollie for what I’d done, but I refused to put it back in the drawer. He didn’t deserve to have this picture. My eyes fell on a sticky pad and a pen right as an idea came to me.
Moving quickly, I peeled off a note and started writing. When I finished, I stuck the note to the bottom of the empty drawer and closed it.
I left the office and hurried back down the still-empty hall. Downstairs, people were talking, but I heard the sounds of movement. I’d cut it close, but only when I was back in my room with the door shut behind me did I think about Thad and what he would discover as soon as he went back to his office.
Dear Thad,
I took the picture because Ollie is not your plaything. I think you were going to use this picture against her somehow, or worse, show it to her. She needs her mother, but not like this. It’s up to you whether you want to tell everyone I stole from you, but I suggest you don’t. As for me, I won’t show this to Ollie. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.
- Sunny
Luke and Hatter were both truly asleep this time. I eased the curtains closed, bathing the room in heavy darkness, before I went to Hatter’s bedside and sat in the wobbly chair I’d taken from the dining room earlier. With the bedside lamp on and the picture in my hand, I watched Hatter’s breathing—labored, but better than before.
He looked so peaceful that I had to tear my eyes away from him. I wanted to soak up this easy quietness about him; he was typically so restless, so anxious. His manic smiles that pulled at his scars were veils he hid behind to make his mania so evident that people wouldn’t notice the subtle ticks, the true issues. But I did.
I saw them all.
My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten in a while, but I forced my attention to Irena’s image. I didn’t know what compelled me to keep staring at it or why I started to replace Irena’s dying stare with Ollie’s.
She could never, ever see this picture. It would destroy her to see her mother like this. She clearly needed Irena more than any of us had imagined.
Ollie was building up an image of Irena in her head. I’d seen the proof of it last night when she told us how her mother had believed in coexistence. She needed Irena. She needed to see someone she could rebuild herself as. Ollie needed a hero.
But this picture showed the death of that hero, the brutalization of her mother, in a very real sense. Even as I stared at it, I felt dirty. Just as much as Ollie shouldn’t see this, I shouldn’t have either. I needed to get rid of it, permanently, like it had never existed.
The picture proved one thing to me: if Ollie had come here for answers, I could search for them too.
Gripping the picture in my hands, I looked up at Hatter, whose muscles were twitching in his sleep, his lips murmuring silent words.
His salvation could be downstairs in those medical cabinets. If I could treat his manic symptoms every time an aswang bit him, I might just keep it from setting in permanently.
I could save him. That was my calling. And I would do anything to answer it.
T W E L V E
Ollie
I couldn’t sleep in my bedroom with Sunny, Hatter, and Luke all piled in, their breathing thickening the air between us. We felt too close together, even though each of us had our own bed or pallet on the floor, and the curtains were drawn tight against the daylight outside. It was too much, too near.
I kept thinking of Max lying beside me, breathing against the back of my neck, his arms tight around me.
My body hummed with the memory of the pain I’d felt during those weeks. The healing skin around my stitches started to itch with warmth. I felt his knife raking against my bones. Phantom pains, but I felt them nonetheless.
I had to move.
Quietly, I crept out of the room, glancing back to make sure I didn’t wake anyone as I picked up my boots and coat. I had my whip wrapped carefully in my pocket; it hadn’t been more than an inch away from my hand all morning. Given last night’s events, Thad had returned our cell phones and weapons after Hex’s briefing, and Luke and Hatter had an arsenal laid out around them. Guns and knives, all within reach, with more tucked away in a duffel bag. Even Sunny had a delicate little throwing knife tucked between her fingers and a nasty-looking SIG on the bedside table next to her.
Standing at the door with my hand on the knob, I just stared at her. She was a warrior, beautiful and strong, with her glasses cocked crookedly on her delicate nose. She’d fallen asleep with them on again, no doubt exhausted from caring for us and helping the injured halflings.
She was the stitch holding us all together.
The guilt of having brought them here gnawed at me. I couldn’t bear their worry for me, or for each other. They were too good for me. I’d made a big mistake in bringing them here, especially now with Hex’s deal looming over my head. I’d shown Hex my hand, revealing to him what was truly important to me. I hadn’t told them what his plans were for me, and I wouldn’t. They would try to tell me he was using me, controlling me. Maybe he was, but I needed to know about my mother.
I closed the door quietly and slipped down the hall. Most of the others were probably still asleep, their bodies in the exact spot where they’d dropped early this morning.
Tonight, everyone would prepare for another hunt. Hex had said the Manananggal was most vulnerable at night, when she left her nest and part of her body behind. If we could find it and burn it before she returned, we’d kill her once and for all. He thought we were on to something by searching through the woods, so back to the woods we would go.
I found it kind of sad that she was forced to live forever with her body rotting off around her. One day she might be nothing more than a pile of bones. It seemed like an awful existence, and I couldn’t fault her for flying around, pissed off, and trying to kill anything that moved.
I’d probably do the same.
Along the hallway, the doors were closed tight. Soft sounds of people sleeping seeped through the wooden walls as I walked. I carried my boots all the way to the gangway to keep my steps silent.
I was surprised to hear voices coming from the bottom floor. My steps had already echoed off the metal walkway, announcing my presence, so I walked straight up to the railing and peered down.
Six sets of eyes gazed up at me. Dark, too-large irises. Long hair and sharp, angular faces. Some other type of force stuffed into human bodies for the day. Very faintly, deep inside my head, I heard it:
Tick tock
“Isn’t it rude,” I said, needing to be the first one to speak, like it might give me an edge, “to not turn that thing off?”
The sound vanished,
only for laughter to replace it. Tully, from last night, didn’t join in. The others were gathered loosely around Hex, who stood in the middle of their semicircle downstairs, looking up at me like he’d been waiting on me all morning.
“Sometimes we forget,” he said.
At the bottom of the stairs, I sat down and laced up my boots. Hex’s attention lingered on Irena’s red jacket as I laid it over the railing’s end to keep it safe. I smoothed out a wrinkle before I stepped toward the aswangs.
“Do you not sleep?” I asked.
“Not when there are more important things to do,” Hex answered.
“Like what?”
“I thought you might like to train,” he said. He inclined his head toward the others. “After last night, they volunteered to help.”
I took in Hex’s band of monsters. Last night, I hadn’t been able to tell them apart, but looking at them now, I saw little bits of them that helped me make connections. Tully, obviously, with his scarred shoulder poking out from beneath his sleeveless shirt. A skinny guy with looping red hair and freckles—too sweet for his cold stare—had been the one holding on to the Manananggal’s tattered skin. I recognized him by the emerald flecks in his eyes and the wiriness of his frame.
I knew none of the others, but they all wanted to work with me and teach me. Maybe I’d proved myself last night. Maybe they were just following Hex’s orders. Either way, I wasn’t passing up the opportunity.
“Good,” Hex said, seeing the decision in my eyes before I could say anything. “First off, your whip is a medium-range weapon. It’s effective, but if you can’t keep your opponent back far enough, you’ll be left exposed. You need something for close-range combat.”
“Okay. Like a gun?”
Tully shook his head and said, “No. A gun is a long-range tool. You need something you can use in a fight without needing to aim or reload.”
“Tully’s right,” Hex said. “That’s why I brought you this.”
