Monster Mine

by Meg Collett

  Thad went to the medical cabinets that were always locked. He produced a key and opened a shelf. There, on the narrow shelves, were the unmarked, white pill bottles. He brought a bottle and some syringes over to Lauren, who was still searching for a pulse.

  “Get them upstairs,” he said, uncapping the bottle as he crouched next to Lauren. “Now.”

  His team converged around us. They pulled us toward the stairs. Ollie fought halfheartedly, her eyes locked on Ghost’s body. Coldness iced over her blue eyes, reminding me of the large lagoons up in Barrow, iced and packed over with crystal-like snow, but mostly, she looked furious.

  But I searched her eyes for something more. For a reaction from the Manananggal’s bite. It was almost impossible to work out if she was in pain, but her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale. She looked shaky and ready to throw up. I raked my eyes back to Thad. The Manananggal was a type of aswang; it made sense that they would try to treat Ghost’s reaction to her saliva, especially if there was something in the solution that could help a halfling recover faster.

  I was still watching as we clambered up the steps, and at the top of the stairs, I craned my neck to look around the goon leading us toward the hall to catch one final glimpse.

  Thad was prepping the syringe, which was pre-filled with a clear liquid. A solvent for the powder, which he tapped out from the pill bottle and mixed into the open syringe. He moved fast, but I saw the careful way he measured the dosage and the way he pinched out tiny amounts of the powder. The powder was the key then, the dangerous solute. My mind ticked over the options, through every clear liquid medicine I knew could be used in an emergency medical situation. But it was the powder that kept tickling at the back of my mind.

  Right as we turned down the hall, we heard Lauren say to Thad, “Don’t bother. He’s gone.”

  Ollie hissed and started threatening the guys leading us away, but as they shuffled me along, my thoughts clicked into place. I remembered where I’d seen that powder before.

  I knew what they were giving the wounded halflings.

  S I X T E E N

  Ollie

  I was dripping blood onto the floor.

  No one noticed.

  Where the Manananggal had bitten me, I was feeling pulses of pain. They were diluted from the sheer amount of adrenaline in my system, but they were there. If her jaw hadn’t been broken, I would probably be writhing on the floor.

  “These people are insane,” Luke was saying. “They let that boy die.”

  Hatter ignored him, his focus locked on Sunny. “Are you okay? It wasn’t your fault, Sunshine.” The last few words were quiet, whispered in her ear just for her, but I caught them and the way he spoke them to her.

  I wondered when that had happened and how I’d missed it.

  “What?” Sunny looked up at Hatter’s voice. She was clearly somewhere else, her thoughts tangled around something far bigger.

  Hatter frowned down at her. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and I heard the lie.

  I met her gaze. Something had happened downstairs that had her knotted up—something other than Ghost—but it would have to wait.

  “You hurting?” she asked, her gaze flicking to my neck and shoulder.

  “Just a little. She didn’t get me good,” I said to keep Sunny from worrying too badly.

  “I knew we should have left weeks ago,” Luke was still saying. I ignored him.

  “I’m going after her.” My words, quiet though they were, garnered everyone’s attention.

  “What? Who?” Luke snapped off the questions in staccato beats, his eyes flashing with rage.

  He almost looked like the old Luke, like the warrior from Barrow. Under Sunny’s care, he’d nearly recovered. His body and the hollows of his cheeks had started to fill out. Down at his side, his fingers began their erratic beat. He was itching for a fight.

  “The Manananggal. I’m going to kill her, and then I’m going to get the truth from Hex.” I didn’t call him my father or speak his name with fondness. That was gone now. “And then we’re leaving.”

  “That,” Hatter said, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, “sounds like the best idea I’ve heard in months.”

  “Sunny, you’re staying.” She didn’t object, which told me enough about her current state. “Hatter, you should stay with her. I don’t trust Thad and Lauren.”

  “Don’t trust any of them,” he said under his breath, but he nodded in agreement. “I’ll watch her.”

  “You’re not going alone.”

  Luke’s words held no room for argument, though I had no intention of going alone. She was wounded, but so was I, and this hunt needed to be quick. Efficient. Lethal.

  “Let’s go then,” I said and headed for the room’s window.

  If I’d surprised him, he only showed it in his brief hesitation before collecting his crossbow.

  “Don’t forget a jacket,” Sunny said.

  I glanced down. In the panic, I’d forgotten about using my mother’s jacket on Ghost to stop his bleeding. They were both gone now.

  Sunny picked up my old black puffy jacket from the back of the chair and handed it to me. “Take this one. Be careful out there.”

  “We will,” Luke said, joining me by the window. He wrenched it open, the old paint causing it to stick.

  I guessed our earlier dispute had Thad and his team on edge, but I didn’t think he would go so far as to guard the outside of the warehouse. They thought our fight was with them, and they were right, but I had unfinished business with the Manananggal first.

  Getting out of the window was easy work. Getting down turned out to be harder. Up on the second floor, we only had a rusted drainpipe and a few crumbling edges of brick wall to use on our way down. My injured shoulder oozed liquid warmth down my back, and my hand, where the Manananggal’s blood had burned me, was swollen and nearly useless. I would only be able to use one weapon against the Manananggal tonight.

  We fell the last few feet to the ground, landing in a crouch atop the loose snow. A quick check around proved no one had thought to guard the windows. We moved off, setting out over the snow-packed earth with quick, light steps. Luke stayed at my back as the warehouse grew distant behind us. Only when we reached the burnt factory where I’d fought the Manananggal did we slow to catch our breaths.

  “That was easier than I’d expected,” Luke said. He never really looked at me, his eyes too busy searching every dark corner and catching on every tiny movement. We couldn’t drop our guard against rogue ’swangs.

  “Let’s try to find her trail before you jinx us.”

  It was almost a joke, and I caught Luke’s glance from the corner of my eye. I turned away, but before I did, I saw him lower his head, the tiniest fraction of a smile on his lips.

  I moved away, toward the last place I’d seen her above the open lot where she’d tossed me like a ragdoll. There, beneath the moonlight, a tiny glint of black blood. My hand sent out a flare of heat at the sight.

  “Over here,” I called out softly to Luke.

  As he jogged over, I checked my burn. The skin had puckered and turned a shade of white that worried me almost as much as the hard, brittle quality of my palm, like if I moved my hand too much the skin might crack apart and shatter.

  “You okay?” Luke asked, his words almost breathless in the cold.

  I put my hand back in my jacket pocket. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  The abandoned factories in the area had become like a second home. They’d seemed like a maze before, but now I moved through them effortlessly. As I went, I could almost imagine I heard the soft sounds of Hex’s pack around me. The huffs of air through their snouts. The click of their claws across the old flooring. The quick glimpses of their coats darting through the darkness.

  I missed them, which felt wrong after everything that had happened tonight, but I still couldn’t let myself think about Ghost, about such a young boy . . . I gritted my teeth and forced my
mind to shut down those thoughts. More than anything else, I wanted to hate Hex’s pack, but I didn’t. Tully and Squeak and the others who didn’t talk but were careful with me when we trained, even when Hex told them to rough me up, they felt like solidarity, like an army at my back. But they were with Hex, and after tonight, after Ghost, I didn’t think I could be.

  “Ollie, over here,” Luke said, interrupting my thoughts.

  We were almost at the edge of the district, where the state park edged up against the city. When I came up to Luke’s side, I spotted what had caught his attention: more blood.

  “She definitely came this way,” I said.

  “But we’ve known for weeks that she’s in the park. Why hasn’t anyone found her nest?”

  His words bothered me as we continued, heading beneath the trees’ limbs and farther away from civilization. Dawn wasn’t long off, and if we wanted to catch her at her weakest, we had to move fast. But Luke was right. Thad’s halflings and Hex’s pack had combed the woods for countless nights without one sign of her nest. If she was out here, and I would bet my burnt hand she was, then she was hiding really well—too well.

  A few minutes later, Luke abruptly said, “What if it isn’t on the ground?”

  I almost jumped at the sound of his voice. I’d nearly forgotten he was there. “What do you mean?”

  “They looked all through these woods for her nest, but why would she leave part of her body behind in such an easy place to find? If it’s her one tie to immortality, wouldn’t she hide it better?”

  I slowed so he could draw up even with me. “You think it’s in the trees?”

  I almost shivered at his words. They brought back memories of the kapres hiding in God’s Forgotten Woods, the thick forest in the Brooks Range. Every Killing Season, the hunters worked to clear them out, but they were deadly and vicious when it came to protecting their territory.

  “Or buried.”

  I stopped completely and looked around, like some clue might slap me in the face. It made sense that she would hide her nest better.

  “It has to be something she can get to quickly. Easily,” I said, thinking as I spoke. “If she’s flying, the trees make sense, but then it would be visible from the air.”

  “She’s the only one of her kind, and she’s been alive for millennia. Wherever she’s putting her lower half, it has to be a damn good hiding spot.”

  “Okay.” I turned to Luke and put my hands on my hips. “If you were a creepy old lady with bat wings and bones dangling from your torso, where would you hide your legs?”

  “I always hide the shit I don’t want people to see under my bed.”

  My thoughts fumbled. The ghost of a smile appeared on my face, and I nearly laughed. “What do you hide under there?”

  He grinned, the corner of his mouth dimpling into his cheek. A piece of his hair had fallen into his eyes, and he looked like the Luke I’d fallen for back at Fear University, the guy who would throw me to the mat and stand over me grinning.

  “Caramel candy wrappers,” he said. His smile stretched fully then, and I realized something I’d forgotten.

  I still loved Luke. He was still the man I’d fallen for.

  I might miss Hex’s pack, but I had my own pack. My own army at my back. My friends would do anything for me.

  Without thinking, I took his hand. He froze at my touch, his eyes widening. From the way his mouth kept opening and closing, I knew he wanted to say something, but I just squeezed his hand and let go before moving away. It was all I could stand, but it was a start.

  After a moment, he followed without saying anything else, and the silence between us almost felt normal.

  He was still my Luke, and I still had my pack.

  And maybe . . . just maybe . . . that meant I was still me too.

  I threaded through the trees, Luke’s footfalls crunching over the leaves and twigs behind me, with the faintest smile on my face.

  The peace lasted about twenty seconds, until my boot scrunched on something on the ground. I paused and glanced down at a glint of white with a sharp edge and a thick, wet darkness.

  “What is it?” Luke came up beside me.

  “Uh,” I started.

  “Is that . . .”

  “Her jaw,” I said. “I broke it when we fought. She must have pulled it off.”

  Her jagged rows of teeth smiled up at me in a maniacal grin. The lower part of her jaw—the bone—was crushed and dented on one side and torn on the other.

  Luke cursed.

  “Watch the blood,” I said before setting off again. “It burns.”

  We walked in what felt like one large circle for some time. As we went, we searched for more blood or any sign she was in the area, but the farther we spiraled, the less we found. My shoulder pulsed with a warning heat I knew I should listen to. I couldn’t move quickly or breathe deeply with my banged-up back, and the whiter my hand got, the more concerned I became. When I stumbled over a large fallen tree that could’ve been the same tree I’d fallen over twice before, I stopped.

  “This is ridiculous. If she were out here, we would’ve found her by now. Hex’s pack would’ve tracked her scent long ago.”

  Luke ran a hand down his face, which was rough with the first hint of a beard. He scanned overhead as if he might see her sitting in a tree staring down at us with her hollow, empty eyes. I shuddered at the thought. But even as I did, the sensation of being watched overtook me. I shot a quick look around.

  “She’s out here,” Luke said under his breath. He’d felt it too.

  “Where does she go when she’s hurt and bleeding? She could barely fly on that wing, so it can’t be far, and if her nest were somewhere on the ground, her blood would’ve brought the ’swangs straight to her. But the treetops don’t seem secure enough with the wind and snow. What does that leave?”

  “Underground.”

  “Or,” I said, thinking back to what I knew about the park and the Chugach Mountains, “at the bottom of a lake.”

  “Son of a—”

  Before he could finish, a sharp smack echoed through the woods. The sound bounced through the trees and reverberated around us. We spun around, thinking something was about to attack us. I had my whip in hand and ready to go when the sound came again, sharper this time.

  “What is that?”

  It continued in a sort of offbeat rhythm that was too repetitive and too off-putting to be anything normal or natural. Toward the east, slightly off the path we’d been heading in, it came again and again. Two sharp, hard things striking together, on purpose and with intention.

  “It’s her,” I whispered. “She’s calling us to her.”

  The sound ended, and the silence in the woods struck almost as sharply as whatever she’d been hitting against each other. Neither of us moved east, toward her, even though we knew she was out there waiting. We strained our eyes to see through the forest, but the trees felt denser that way, the shadows deeper. Everything in my body screamed for me to not go in that direction.

  “Is this what God’s Forgotten feels like?” I whispered to Luke. My voice didn’t shake like I thought it would.

  “Honestly, I would take God’s Forgotten any day over this shit.”

  I cringed. “Let’s go then.”

  When he tucked in a little closer behind me, I didn’t know if it was for his benefit or mine, but I relished the solid feel of him at my shoulder.

  We walked for a while, following the sounds. Every so often they would stop, and just when we believed she was finished with her game, it would start up again. We tossed theories back and forth about why she was doing this and what kind of trap we were walking into. We weren’t stupid; we knew it was a trap, but we were ready.

  We came to a clearing, one I’d walked by countless times on different hunts. It had never looked remotely interesting with its small, spring-fed lake, frozen over and unassuming, until tonight.

  The Manananggal sat in the middle of the lake, her wings draped
behind her. She had a tiny fire suspended over the ice, melting a small section below it. Through those flickering shadows, I saw her.

  She’d destroyed her face by ripping off her jaw. Nothing but bone and cartilage hung in the gaping space. With those black pits, she watched us step closer to the lake’s edge and stop. She clacked a pair of bones together, the eerie sound echoing through the forest, but she didn’t try to attack. A second later, I realized the bones were her legs.

  One of her wings was ruined, damaged beyond what I’d done. It was shredded, the membrane just flapping ribbons.

  She had a rope in her hands that went down into the melted hole. She dragged at the length, hauling something up from the depths. I thought I knew what it was, but I waited, holding my breath, not knowing what she was doing.

  I didn’t dare turn away from her, but I shifted my stare to Luke. He was just as frozen, eyes wide and his crossbow strapped across his back.

  This wasn’t what we’d been expecting.

  From the hole, she pulled out a leather-wrapped bundle. Although wet and glistening, it looked ancient. Bright red designs, like sharp slashes and curving figures, graced the outside edges. Even from where I stood they made me shiver. They felt evil.

  She set the pack in her lap and laid the rope down beside her. A few breaths later, she slowly met our gazes. She simply sat there, staring.

  I felt it again, the connection between us. She stared into me, deep within, and knew the bad parts of me. I felt her rotted, talon-like finger stroking each part. Two monsters, the both of us.

  “Should we be doing something here?” Luke muttered.

  “Just wait,” I breathed, eyes locked on her.

  No one moved.

  Then she let out a long, low-pitched keen.

  The forest went quiet—deadly silent.

  She repeated the sound and started rocking back and forth on the ice, her body almost nothing. She looked too frail to exist and too meaningless to be such a monstrous creature.

  She’d had countless halflings and aswangs hunting her for weeks. Grown men had cowered when a branch would cast a moving shadow over them that looked like a flapping wing. She’d caused panic and death and fear. Yet here she sat crying.