Monster Mine

by Meg Collett

  It also told me he was pulling his punches.

  Whether he was drawing this out or he was reluctant to end it, I couldn’t tell. If his kernel of reluctance matched mine, we’d be dancing all night.

  The second time I moved I managed to stand. My legs quivered for only a second beneath me before I steadied, blinking my vision clear. I snapped the whip back behind me, ready for another lash.

  “Second thoughts?”

  “No.” I spat out a glob of thick blood.

  “You really think you’re going to change this place?” As he spoke, he started moving again. I matched his steps, slinking to the side. He tracked the shadows with one eye while he watched me with the other.

  “I already am. Dean is my weapon now. Not the other way around.”

  Hex’s spine straightened by a fraction of an inch. A slight tell, but I spotted it nonetheless. How much time had I spent studying him these past few weeks? How long had I watched him move, cataloging his ticks so I could feel like I knew my father? All that time, wasted.

  “You really thought he had me under his thumb.”

  “Color me pleasantly surprised.”

  He spun back and grabbed a thinner slab of stone. With it, he blocked my whip at the perfect moment when I lashed out. The crack from the stingray blistered the air.

  He swung the stone down, hauling my whip’s length with it. My balance fell forward as I held tight. A splintering sound. He’d smacked the stone across my shoulder. The shards sailed by my face.

  In my head, I had a split second to think through which way my whip had wrapped. A blink later, I moved, sidestepping him and snapping back my wrist. My whip retreated perfectly, moving too quickly to tangle around the debris on the ground or Hex’s legs as he pressed harder toward me.

  I tried to pull back and give myself some space. With a darting jab, I hit his ribs with the knuckles, but before I could flick my fist and stab him, he cuffed my entire arm with his hand.

  The bone beneath his grip bent.

  I flashed hot, then cold. A second later, every ounce of warmth in my body went to my arm.

  A leg—his leg—kicked up and his boot landed squarely on my chest. I flew backward. When I hit the ground, I skidded a few feet before slamming into a rock. My chin snapped off the cold surface.

  I pushed up, my arm nearly buckling beneath me. Hex turned back and studied the darkening sky. Not much time left.

  Across the campus, more holes had been blown in the fence. Guards were running back and forth, filling in the gaps as best they could. Most of the civilians looked to be inside with the school’s doors locked up tight. Good, I thought. At least only some of us will die tonight.

  As I grappled to my feet, Hex fixed his attention back on me. “You never asked me why I kept the sanctuary running after Irena’s death.”

  Blood swirled in my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue. “Does it matter?”

  He ignored me. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it would do you any good to hear it. Because—” He bit off the word. I’d never seen him angry before. “I thought it would make you feel like a weapon, like you were being used again. So I kept it to myself—for you.”

  “Let me guess,” I said as I coiled my whip. “You’re gonna tell me now.”

  He glanced at the sky again. I took the chance and checked behind me—too many shadows. If he changed, he could appear right next to me, and I wouldn’t know until it was too late to stop him.

  He let me move away, watching me carefully as I shifted into the scant light that remained. The effort of staying in day-form played out across his face in the deeper wrinkles and the foreign worry in his eyes. Worry . . . for me, because he knew he might not be able to hold back his instincts or his punches as a night-form ’swang.

  I worked out the maneuvers in my mind, planning the quickest kill shot. Whip tip to the eye. Blade to the throat. Move fast. Faster than him. Don’t stop.

  But I couldn’t help shifting my eyes back to him. He knew I wanted to hear.

  “When I met her, she changed me. I wasn’t good back then. I killed—a lot. I fed on people and moved on to the next without pause. But when she showed me another way . . . I changed.” He shrugged, like anything could be that simple.

  Everything was that simple.

  “And then, when I found out she was pregnant . . .”

  I flinched at the words. My arms loosened at my sides. The change was itching in his voice, clawing its way from him. He nearly choked on it.

  “You changed everything. What the sanctuary became after your mother died, it was all for you.”

  “No,” I shook my head. Something sounded like it was clawing out of my throat too. “You’re lying.”

  But he didn’t hear me.

  “When I thought you died with her, I kept all this up because I thought if I could save even one halfling, it might feel like I’d been there to save you from that Aultstriver monster. I’ve been chasing that goddamn feeling for years, Ollie, just for you. Because I failed you. Then and now. I could save all the halflings in the world, but they’ll never be enough. They’ll never matter enough to me. Because they aren’t you.”

  * * *

  Sunny

  The alarms’ wails cut off right as the power did. I was halfway down the stairs to the lab when the winding stairwell went pitch black. The only sounds I heard were my heavy breathing and the empty clicking from the lights above me.

  The darkness scared me. Anything could be down here with me.

  I tightened my grip around the SIG and forced myself to keep moving, my hand on the curving wall for support as I went. I stumbled the last few steps and fell. My knee cracked against the stones, but I was up and moving before the pain registered.

  If I could get the bane to the hunters, if I could give them a fighting chance, we might be okay.

  Nyny and I might have been running low on rats, but we had enough bane left to kill an army.

  I came to the lab level and slammed through the door, the only lights coming from the battery-powered generators that powered the equipment. The batteries served as a backup to the backup generators, and they were all we had now.

  In that dim, cool-colored light, a shadow moved about.

  I wasn’t alone.

  This far below ground, the ’swang had already changed. From its smaller size, I guessed it was a female. She’d been wrecking the place, sending samples and equipment crashing to the floor, but when I came through the door, she’d spun in my direction.

  Her eyes glinted in the equipment’s glow. I could just make out her ears swiveling back and forth.

  Panic made my head go fuzzy. I froze. I almost forgot about the SIG. Almost. She snarled and leaped forward, jumping over a lab table. I raised the gun and got off two shots, one in her chest and another in her leg, right before she collided into me.

  As we fell, I managed to squeeze off another round, straight into her belly. We slammed into the floor, and the gun bounced out of my hand and clattered across the lab.

  I tried to scramble out from beneath her weight, but it was useless. Her hot blood poured onto me, but her eyes were still bright and alive. My shot to her gut would kill her, and from the look in her eyes, she knew it too, but it would take a minute.

  And I knew what would happen in that minute.

  She tore into my shoulder faster than I could gasp for air. Her teeth flayed my skin back, cracking bones with each bite. I screamed, but there was no one around to hear me.

  T W E N T Y - T W O

  Sunny

  I awoke some time later. The power was still off and something was crushing me.

  Through the hazy fog that had descended on my brain, I remembered the bane, the lab, shooting the ’swang, and the bite.

  I remembered the ’swang’s teeth tearing into me and being ripped apart and the feeling of tendons peeling away from bone. Of bones crumbling into thousands of tiny breaks.

  I would probably lose my arm.

>   But something funny happened at the thought: nothing. I felt nothing. No fear. No worry.

  My wounded arm was limp beside me. The ’swang’s weight was on the left side of my body, her torso across my torn shoulder, blocking me from seeing the amount of damage she did after I’d passed out.

  With a grunt, I pushed against her side, bucking my hips and trying to roll her off me. I felt nothing in my arm, which worried me. The ’swang’s body slumped to the side, rolling across my injured arm.

  A mistake.

  She must have clipped my brachial artery when she bit me, because fresh blood was seeping through my shirt at an alarming rate. Her body had been acting as a tourniquet of sorts, and now I was slowly bleeding out from a tiny hole in a major blood vessel. A cold dizziness washed over me as I pressed the palm of my hand to the wound. With my other hand, I reached down for the belt around my waist. The throwing knives clattered out of their little pockets as I loosened the belt and brought it up to my wounded arm. Using my teeth, I awkwardly tied up my arm as tightly as I could, but it didn’t stop nearly as much of the bleeding as I’d wanted.

  I had to get to my feet or else I would die on this floor and that wasn’t acceptable.

  Getting to my knees with my hand braced against the overturned lab table next to me went well enough. I cradled my injured arm to my side. From there, I spotted a rumpled lab coat caught under the edge of the table. I leaned forward, fingers reaching, inches away from its sleeve.

  Dizziness caused me to sway, and I collapsed forward.

  I was too weak to catch myself and my cheek cracked off the floor. Blood filled my mouth and dribbled out the corners of my lips.

  I got the coat and wrapped it around my arm, grimacing every time I had to lift it to tighten my improvised tourniquet. The fabric would be soaked through in a few minutes.

  I set my eyes on the locked cooler across the room. Technically, we’d been sharing the lab with the other scientists during these last few days, but since it was still winter break, no one had really been down here, which meant we’d had the place to ourselves. Still, we’d locked the bane up to keep it fresh in the industrial cooler. The lock was a simple keypad with a numeric code, which, thanks to the backup batteries, glowed softly in the darkness.

  I reached up for the table and pulled myself up to my knees. My feet felt long and unwieldy, but I managed to get them under me. When I straightened, I swayed and nearly went down again.

  I made it to the cooler and typed in the code: 6666, because Nyny had a sense of humor. I almost laughed. The door chirped open and a rush of cool air blasted my face, along with a blue light from the narrow strip of tiny, interior bulbs.

  There, on the top tray, sat our latest batch of antidotes, the ones that had almost worked.

  The ones with a solvent—a drug used on patients with hypertension—that slowed your heart rate and blood circulation. It was our last shot in the dark, but it had worked, or, at least, it hadn’t killed the rats instantly.

  The thought marched into my mind like a soldier. Take it. What do you have to lose?

  And really, what did I have to lose? It would probably kill me, but then, I was going to bleed out anyway.

  Part of my mind told me I should be worried about this. I should be afraid.

  I wasn’t.

  It was possible the antidote would work, even though I had no clue what my effects from the saliva were. I couldn’t feel if they were setting in. If the antidote worked on me, even if I bled out, then it would save Hatter. I would have done something good.

  I couldn’t help it. My thoughts drifted to Ollie.

  She’d given so much. Lost so much to gain so little. She wasn’t afraid to lose herself in the process. After seeing her that first time in Anchorage, I thought I’d never understand what she’d been through and how she’d suffered. I’d considered myself on the outside of that kind of pain and separate from it, as if it could never happen to me.

  But I would know it now.

  I wasn’t afraid to lose if it meant something could be gained.

  I could do this.

  I grabbed the antidote, pulled the cap off with my teeth, and plunged the full dose—enough to dose twenty rats—into my hip without a second thought.

  * * *

  Ollie

  “It doesn’t change anything.” But my voice cracked and the silver knuckles on my hand felt heavier than they had before.

  When I said I was ready to fight my father, I’d been wrong. I wasn’t.

  More explosions rocked the walls. Night-form ’swangs materialized from every shadow by the hundreds. Shots were fired from the walls and from the ground, the guards fending off attacks through the holes. People were shouting to each other, calling out breaches as they happened, which was almost one after the other. Beneath the bright courtyard lights, I spotted countless aswangs with their snarling, white fangs and glinting eyes.

  Hex battled the change with every breath, his fists clenched, his body half turned away from me. It would happen any moment.

  “It doesn’t change anything,” I repeated, just to convince myself.

  “I figured it wouldn’t.” His breathing turned shallow, like he was hollowing out and his insides were deflating. “But then, even if it did, I would still have to do this.”

  He changed. The space where he’d stood became empty air, too still, too quiet. The shadows beside me warped and he surged out, fur glinting, teeth snapping. But then, just as he reached me, he changed again, back into his day-form. When he hit me with a piece of rock, he was holding it in a human hand.

  The rock crashed against the side of my head and the world slanted sideways. I fell to the ground amongst the larger stones from the wall. Hands scraping across the ground, I tried to push myself up onto my elbows.

  “Don’t do this, Hex,” a voice said from beyond the blown-out wall.

  I was lying at just the right angle to see.

  Tully. His chest was bare, his mate’s scarring pattern proudly displayed on his shoulder. His dreads were pulled up in a ponytail, out of his face for the fight. He had no weapons.

  “No,” I whispered, my voice cracking. I barely heard myself. They certainly didn’t.

  “Why not?” Hex asked, straightening away from me.

  “She’s your daughter. Isn’t that reason enough?”

  No, I wanted to scream. Run away, Tully. He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t. He can’t.

  But Tully didn’t run.

  He was going to fight—for me. I tried to crawl forward but only managed to fall on my chin.

  Hex knelt next to me.

  “Get away from her,” Tully said, stepping around the stones on the ground.

  Hex pulled my knuckles free and slid them over his fingers. I tried to reach for him as he stood, but I was too slow, too weak. My hand fell to the ground.

  “Stop,” I tried to say.

  It wasn’t enough.

  “You never deserved either of them,” Tully said, voice low. “Irena was too good for you and Ollie is too. They both ran from you because you’re a monster.”

  Hex rose, the knuckles glinting on his hand. Tully didn’t pay attention to them, but he should have.

  “Like you deserved your family? Tell me, Tully, why couldn’t you protect your little girls? Your pretty wife?”

  Tully’s anger ripped through him, and I saw the moment he couldn’t control the change a moment longer.

  Remember this, Ollie. In that moment of change, when the darkness is solidifying us into something else and we’re transported into the shadows, we are at our weakest. If you wait long enough, away from the light, the monster will come. You can kill it easily then by sliding a dagger into its still-forming heart.

  Hex deployed the blade on the knuckles and pivoted toward the closest gathering of shadows.

  Tully, his coat glinting and his snout snarling, materialized. The shadows peeled away from him like he was stepping through a doorway. But he didn’t make it far.
Before he could move forward, Hex plunged the knuckles’ blade into his heart.

  Tully’s momentum sent the blade deep into his massive chest. His front legs buckled beneath him. A small whimper escaped his mouth.

  Hex pulled the blade out as Tully sagged forward and slashed it across his throat. He stepped out of the way right as Tully fell to the ground, landing on the shoulder with the thick, gleaming scars.

  I pulled myself forward, tears rolling down my cheeks. Hex walked over to me, wiping the blade on his pants. He pulled the knuckles off and replaced them on my hand.

  “Stop,” I choked out. “Just stop.”

  “Stay down, Ollie,” he said. “Stay quiet. It’ll be over soon.”

  In his other hand, he raised the stone above my head and brought it down, cracking it across my temple.

  * * *

  Sunny

  I carried all the bane I could in one arm. The glass vials rattled in their little carriers. The delicate clinking sound, like a wind chime, followed me as I made my way up the stairs and into the main hallway. It was slow going. My legs felt too cold to move sometimes. Everything was so cold I thought I might see my breath in front of my face.

  At least the chilly air helped slow my bleeding down even more, which was good, considering I couldn’t die just yet.

  There were bodies in the hall leading to the entry. One of them was Lauren, but I didn’t look down. I couldn’t see their faces. One of them might be someone I knew. Someone who had sat beside me in a class. Or worse, Luke, Ollie, or Hatter.

  Focus on the bane, Sunny. Get it outside.

  The thought refocused me, and I snapped to attention. I had a job to do, and I would do it, no matter what.

  The school’s walls shook from the explosions. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Gunshots went off outside so often they sounded continuous. I never flinched.