“That’s pretty thin. Maybe he didn’t feel like a drink.”
“And maybe he gave up and went home.”
Erin glared. “All right. Let’s go.” She did, however, pull out a business card, scrawled ‘call me’ on it and left it beside the rum.
As Erin walked out, I swiped the card and put it in my pocket. Then grabbed the rum as well and followed her.
Chapter 39
“I can’t believe you took the rum,” Erin snarked.
I looked at the unopened bottle rolling around on the back seat. “Why not? It was complimentary.”
She kept her steely eyes on the road ahead. At least she’d stopped carrying on about my attitude.
“Where are we going?” I asked, not really enjoying being at her disposal like this. We should have taken the Monster Mobile.
“I thought we’d start at Acacia Ridge and work our way back.”
“Fine.”
When her phone rang, synced to the car’s Bluetooth, she immediately hung it up.
“That might have been Dev,” I pointed out.
“He’ll call back, then. I don’t want to be distracted while driving.”
Like shit. More like she didn’t want me hearing whatever she was so desperate to say to the sorcerer. The quicker I could ditch her the better.
The house she pulled up outside of in Acacia Ridge was similar to where the Tool Brigade had holed up. An old stump house, probably post war, and unlike other such houses in nicer suburbs, this one had been mostly neglected over the years. If anyone still lived here, then they didn’t care for aesthetics or even bin collection days, if the piles of junk in the front yard were anything to go by.
Weeds grew up between the clutter, the paint was peeling off the weatherboard, a huge wasp nest hung off the awning over the front door and the tin roof was a patchwork of discolouration and dodgy repairs. There was a low brick fence along the front property line, easy enough to step over, even if the little wrought iron gate hadn’t been hanging at an angle.
“A hoarder, maybe,” Erin mused.
“Or a slob.”
She cut me a disgusted glance, then looked away quickly. “Let’s do this.”
We got out of the car and approached the front gate. The letter box sat on a listing wooden stake, rusted and numberless. Erin risked life and limb by reaching in and pulling out a handful of the overflowing mail.
“To the resident. To the owner. Resident. Nothing with a name. Just all junk.”
“What a shock,” I muttered and stepped over the fence.
Erin followed and we bypassed the front door and its buzzing population of small paper-wasps. The side of the house was even more choked up with weeds, the jungle hiding the randomised placement of junk. Erin seemed to find most of it, swearing and cursing her way along behind me. My toes crashed into a couple of things, old cinderblocks and what may have been a car door, but I didn’t yodel about it.
Coming to the back of the house, we stopped in surprise.
The backyard was as swamped with plants as the front, but here it looked more deliberate. There were plots of vegetables, fruit trees and flowers, all of them tangled together, but following more order than neglect would create. Also, all of the plants were huge. Gigantic. Massive.
Out of season apples the size of my head. Plums as big as my fist. Watermelons you could throw a saddle on and ride. Sunflowers that rivalled the sun for size, on stalks I just might get my arms around. Roses Erin nearly lost her face in when she breathed in their scent.
I took a step into the middle of the yard and stood on something that wobbled so much it threatened to tip me over. Picking it up, I discovered a peach pit I could barely get my fingers around.
“My God,” Erin breathed, looking like a Lilliputian amongst the giant garden. “What is this?”
“Madness,” I said. “Earth sorcerer style.”
Chirrup.
I spun, gun out, and found Marcel. He sat on the back step of the house, looking up at me with big eyes, tail swishing frantically.
Only it wasn’t Marcel. It was a squirrel monkey, but not mine. This one was bigger, about twice Marcel’s mass, and missing fur. Patches of black and tan had been replaced with rough grey skin. As it shifted and looked to where Erin was coming up beside me, I saw that the back of its head was completely grey. The skin looked thick and tough, barely malleable at all. When the monkey jumped up to the railing on the stair, it moved stiffly, the lack of agility making it almost miss the perch.
“Is that…?” Erin trailed off. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“If you’re thinking this means your monkey caper is part of Dev’s rogue sorcerer caper, then I think it does.”
“Shit.”
The big monkey sat back and scratched one of the patches of grey. It made a gritching sound like nails on cement.
Something rustled through the overachieving plot of tomato vines. Moving so I could keep the monkey in the corner of my eye, I searched that area of the yard, gun up. Erin tracked the disturbance as well, our sights following the rippling passage of something big. Another monkey? Something else?
The monkey on the stairs launched itself into the air. Erin shouted in shock as it landed on her arm. She staggered, turning under the weight.
Before I could do anything, the beast in the bushes burst forth.
In the frantic rush and crash of it landing on me, I noted that it too had once been a squirrel monkey. Even more than the first one, this one was no longer as cute as Marcel.
When Marcel landed on me, I felt it like how a child might feel if it tugged on your hand. An insistent sensation but far from debilitating.
This thing landed on me like one of my brother’s German Shepherds coming in for the take down.
I went down under thirty odd kilos of mutated squirrel monkey. Its weight slammed into my guts, pushing the air out of my lungs. Freakily large and strong hands closed over my wrists, twisting my arms out of the way. I locked my fingers around the grip of the Glock, not willing to give up the weapon.
The fingers around my arms closed even tighter and it felt like clamps twisting down over the bones. Like steel clamps. As I wrestled with the overgrown simian, I caught glimpses of those fingers. The skin was flaking away in long, black, dried up curls. Underneath was the same grey, pebbly texture I’d seen on the other monkey. Where it touched my skin, it was hard and cold.
Snarling, the monkey’s death’s head lunged at my face. I jerked my head to the side, feeling it hit my shoulder. A hard, crashing impact against bone that jarred me right to my toes. As it pulled its head back, I strained up and head-butted it in its face.
The ringing crack of bone on rock.
That’s what it sounded like.
Screaming, the monkey blasted me with a hot gust of breath stinking of rot and… dust?
Then it was off me and scampering away, if something of that size could be said to scamper.
I flipped to my feet and looked for Erin. She had the first monkey attached to her back. It had wrapped its arms around her neck, legs scratching at her back. The long tail was curled around one thigh, squeezing tight, patches of grey along its length. By the way Erin listed, the tail was seriously hampering her movements. The creature snapped and snarled at the side of her face. Erin tried to get the gun around, but it kept dodging it. She had scratches up and down her arms and on her neck.
In two long strides, I was at her side. I caught her arm and hauled her around. Her already panicking eyes widened at my upraised fist. At the last moment, she ducked her head and twisted her neck. My fist slammed into the monkey’s face. Its head snapped back, a loud crack reverberating through the air. Twice more I punched it before it let Erin go.
I grabbed the monkey by the scruff of its neck as Erin dropped away. The creature writhed and squealed, long claws reaching for my stomach. Before it could get there, I heaved the monkey up into the air. It squeaked in surprise, arms, legs and tail flailing madl
y. When it began to fall again, I lifted one hand and as it came into range, blasted a wave of telekinesis at it.
The ensorcelled monkey was slammed into the wall of the house. Parts of it splattered. Parts of it… crumbled.
“What the hell?” Erin was on her knees, shaking. She cradled her bleeding arms close, her hand trembling as she held her gun.
“Yup, Dev’s definitely not telling us something.”
“It… it was made of stone?”
“Parts of it.”
She blinked. “Like the monkey that killed Sean.”
“Yeah.”
And things made a lot of sense all of a sudden.
“I’d say Dev’s rogue sorcerer had a new spell he wanted to try out and needed some test subjects.”
I went to the remains of the monkey. Part of one arm caught my attention. I showed it to Erin. The bone was stone, with thicker parts and protrusions, where the flesh had begun to change into stone. Bits of raw flesh clung to it, as it would to ordinary bone.
Erin swallowed hard. “So he made contact with Sean and arranged the theft of Thistlethwaite’s monkeys.”
“And somehow, Sean is connected to Feeble and the Tool Brigade. How else would she have got Marcel?”
“Which means Feeble might know who our rogue sorcerer is. Damn this.”
“Still thinking it’s all coincidence?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think, except that—”
I pushed her out of the way and collected the charging giant monkey in the gut. We went flying over A over T. I got a boot against its chest as we hit and kicked it over even further. It crashed on its head and crumpled, stone fragments cracking off and showering my face. Fucker jumped right back up, though.
It had lost a lot of agility and speed with the size and stone additions, but it was still fast and I couldn’t get away quick enough. It caught me by one leg and part hauled me back, part clambered up me like Marcel did. Its impossibly long tail slashed over its shoulder, aiming for my face. I smacked it aside, feeling it like a blow from my nightstick, hard and solid and nothing biological about it at all.
Again, it grabbed my wrists and shoved my hands out of the way. The massive head reared back, big mouth opening to reveal teeth of jagged stone, with two jutting fangs that would put any vampire Primal to shame.
It was pretty clear what it intended to do.
Eat my head.
Not today.
All the finesse I’d learned in order to use my telekinesis like an aimed gun instead of an unwieldy battering ram wasn’t going to do me any good here. This was battering ram time.
“Matt smash,” I ground out and unleashed the full load of energy from my chest.
The monkey was ripped away from me, taking skin and material with it. It arched up impressively high, and then came crashing back down. Right on top of me.
I rolled. It hit inches from my shoulder, with a strange mix of wet smacks, snapping bones and crunching rock.
And still it was raring to go. It was my turn to scramble away, with the ugly creature clawing its way after me. Only one arm worked, the other dangling uselessly, bone and stone breaking through torn flesh. Half of its jaw had been smashed clean off, its tongue lolling down its neck, coloured grey and sickly yellow-pink. The skin had been peeled off its chest, revealing streaks of striated muscle and cracking rock. A gurgling growl was the only sound it could make now.
I kept backing up and it kept after me, legs stiffening even as I watched, the stone parts spreading. It grew with a frantic crackling, reaching with grey fingers across the shredded muscles of its thighs. Between one step and the next, it went from nimble-toed feet to rock-hard claws that dug great divots out of the ground.
For a wonder, I still had the Glock and I raised it. Where to fucking shoot it, though?
Chapter 40
With a resounding crack, Erin hit it in the back of its head with a sledgehammer.
The mutant creature rocked forward, eyes comically wide in its still mobile face. Erin hit it again and stone shards cracked off. The monkey hit the ground, face first, thrashing, but down. With a primal little scream, Erin smashed the hammer into its skull over and over. She broke through the stone and hit mushy brains, but even as she kept going, there came little clunks of impact with solidity in the grey matter.
She seemed to need the outlet, so I let her go and looked myself over for damage.
There were great rips in my shirt and jeans, scratches on my wrists and a cut in my side I hadn’t felt being inflicted. None of them bled too bad, so I didn’t worry.
Leaving Erin to her therapeutic venting, I went up to the house. The door was unlocked. Probably didn’t have to worry so much about keys when you had mutated stone monkeys acting as security.
It was dark inside, all the windows covered in paper and cardboard. Enough light came in the back door to illuminate the kitchen. If anyone actually lived here, they didn’t cook. Or keep anything cold. There was no running water and no electricity. Everything was coated in disturbed dust, the signs of people, or monkeys, moving around but not cleaning. There was dirt and leaves and rotting fruit everywhere. Not to mention the rank stink of shit and piss. I assumed that before they became more stone than flesh, the monkeys still needed food. Probably explained the giant vege patch.
Erin appeared in the doorway, carrying the hammer. There was dirt and green matter mixed in with a few smears of blood, probably evidence of where she’d dug it up from the overgrown weeds. Hammer in hand, she looked rough and bloody and ready for anything. There was a wild, reckless cast to the way she stood there that was more natural on her than the professional in a business suit she was in the office. She was an undeniable force, a strong, immediate presence in the small space that called to me.
I wanted her.
So suddenly and so completely it shocked me immobile.
Fishing in a pocket, she retrieved a torch. “Right, let’s see what other surprises there might be.”
I watched her venture further into the house, appreciating the fit of her jeans as she went.
“Hawkins!” she snapped. “Keep up.”
Eyebrow cocked, I murmured, “Yes, ma’am,” and followed.
The zoo cage theme continued through every room. There was no furniture, so the place had probably been abandoned and can’t have been where our rogue was living. We found more monkeys. Three of them, dead. Well, mostly dead.
Two were completely stone, like the one that had dived into Sean’s head. The last one, not overgrown or bloated, lay in a corner, moaning softly. It was stone from just under its arms downward. Some of its internal organs had to still be working, because it breathed and made sad, pathetic little sounds. Big black eyes found us and it chirped, lifting a little hand, looking for help.
From the shoulders up it might as well have been Marcel.
Erin made a strangled sob of a sound and turned away. The warrior aspect vanished with that one gesture, washed away by the sudden trickle of tears down her face.
Something in her or the poor bundle of tortured misery in the corner sliced into me. It touched with warm fingers the cold sitting in my chest and, if not banished it, at least brought it to my attention.
Erin was, again, right.
I hadn’t been acting like myself.
Standing there, looking at the poor little animal, in such pain and confusion, I began to feel it. Or rather, not feel it.
I’d just been clobbered by a stone monkey the size of a large dog and there was no pain. It had slammed its rock-hard head into my shoulder with enough force my arm should be numb. I pushed back the neck of my shirt. There was a big, ugly bruise there, but I didn’t feel it. I pushed on the cut in my side. Dampness from the smearing blood but nothing else.
Shoot.
“Matt?”
At first I thought the pain in her voice was for me, as if she already knew what was just dawning on me, but when I looked at her, she was staring fixedly at the mo
aning monkey.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Go out. I’ll take care of it.”
She hesitated, then nodded. I felt her hand on my arm as she went past, but didn’t really register the squeeze of her fingers.
When I was alone, I crouched by the pathetic little creature. It was shocking to realise just how small it was. Marcel was such a bright spark, always bouncing and happy and dashing from here to there, he seemed bigger, more present. But this thing was tiny and terrified and in pain.
My hand covered its whole head. Its shoulders shivered in my other hand. It mewled, small and so scared.
I was crying, the monkey blurring in my vision. It was Sean all over again. He had trusted me, was about to tell me his dark little secret and I had lied and put him in the place where he’d died. Alive. Then not. An instant for him, over before he knew it had begun. I doubted it would be over that quickly for me.
With a little crunch, the monkey’s neck broke and its misery was ended.
Mine was just beginning, but if it progressed as it had for these poor animals, then maybe I wouldn’t feel anything at all soon.
Erin had retreated all the way out of the house. She stood on the edge of the ensorcelled garden, arms wrapped around herself, head titled back in the sunlight, tears on her pale cheeks.
She gave a little gasp when I caught her arms. Eyes flying open, she tried to protest but it died when I put my forehead to hers and stared into her eyes.
Erin stilled against me, shocked and uncertain.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just need this… before I can’t… Please.”
She made a soft, pained sound and relaxed in my hold.
In the past, this was all it had ever taken. A touch, a kiss, a direct gaze, and her aura would leap out and wrap around me. Erin’s had been the first human aura I ever touched. Sweet and bitter, dark and rich. It had haunted me all the months I’d known her, teasing me with what I would never have. She was everything I could ever want—strong and smart and loyal. She stood with me, stood for me, stood against me. Partner, friend, enemy, all in one.
Rock Paper Sorcery Page 29
