The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 8

Torrent

The swamp’s water was far from an ideal environment. It lacked the bracing tang of ocean salt and the rippling currents of deeper lakes. Most of it was too shallow or narrow for my full natural body to move through. Even in the deeper, more open stretches, I kept my shadowkind form partly contracted. But sinking into the sluggish, murky liquid still gave me a brief escape from the stresses beyond.

I drifted along the maze-like channels around the clumps of vegetation for several minutes, tasting and scenting the water at the same time for any sign of intruders. The only living beings I encountered were of the mortal variety: fish, turtles, frogs, snakes, and an alligator that sensed me from a distance and paddled in the opposite direction, some innate sense telling it I was one of the few creatures it might ever encounter that could mark it as prey rather than predator.

Not that I had any interest in harming mortal animals. They were no threat to me. There was a simplicity to them, an innocence shadowkind beasts with their extra abilities couldn’t possess, that had always appealed to me. So perfectly straightforward and predictable. I’d had a dog once—well, a stray that’d liked to hang around me—before…

There was no point in thinking about that.

Far beyond the boundaries of the protective posts, I came across a freshly fallen log with shattered branches drifting around it. A sense of possibility sparked in my mind. Stretching my tentacles, I allowed myself the small indulgence of assembling the branches into a sort of picture. Fit together in the right way, they created the impression of a spindly creature lounging on the log.

It wasn’t likely that any human would wander out this way and see my efforts, not before the weather wrecked the hasty sculpture, but I got a little satisfaction from it all the same. I might not be able to walk among mortals like one of them the way I used to, but I could still make a small mark on their world.

Any pleasure I’d gotten out of that act dwindled over the short trip back to the cabin. I slunk inside through the shadows in time to join my companions for breakfast—as much as you could say I was actually joining them.

I considered my options and settled into a patch of shadow cast across the kitchen counter by the fridge—an awkward angle but one that at least allowed me to see each of the beings’ faces. I needed to keep an eye both on the mortal woman and the members of my squad.

The vibe between the three of them as they sat down around the table felt amicable in a way that unsettled me. It was only our second morning here, but Quinn had gotten out the cereal she’d somehow already determined was Crag’s favorite. She simply laughed at Lance when he announced he was having rocky road ice cream for his breakfast.

And when he leaned over and skewered one of her grapes with a claw to pop it into her own mouth, she didn’t flinch at the demonstration of his monstrous features. Her eyes lingered instead on his mouth. An odd, heated prickling sensation coursed through me as if I’d swallowed some of the swamp water and it was stirring up a fever.

She was too at ease with us. Too accepting. How could she really look at Lance’s talons or Crag’s hardened face and smile like they were her friends? Was it some kind of trick?

She was making the best of a bad situation. She didn’t really want to be here, but we’d made it clear she had no choice. So she was sucking up to us in the hopes that we’d…

I didn’t really know what she’d want at this point. We were already keeping her alive, fighting off beasts on her behalf. She couldn’t know what else might be coming that we’d be offering her up to. She knew it was the threat of our fellow shadowkind forcing her to stay away from her home, not our own preferences.

Why couldn’t she have stayed cringing in her room like most mortals would? Then I wouldn’t have needed to speculate.

Mortals lived and died like flies compared to us. She was likely going to die soon anyway. Whatever there was about her that gave off the provoking vibe that’d incited the lesser beings, Rollick either needed it or needed to destroy it. He didn’t make decisions like that lightly. Every move he made was perfectly calculated.

I shouldn’t even have to be telling myself that.

I definitely shouldn’t have felt my hackles rise when Lance reached over to brush his knuckles against Quinn’s forearm—or when a hint of pink touched her cheeks in response. He made one of his teasing remarks under his breath, too low for me to hear from my vantage point, and she guffawed, her eyes locked on his face.

I supposed it was easier to ignore the claws when he came with a human guise so otherwise appealing by typical mortal standards.

Women had once responded to me more like that. I’d never had quite the magnetism the dragon shifter did, but I’d never had trouble scoring a hook-up when I wanted to either.

Every now and then, Quinn’s gaze left my comrades to skim across the room. That was interesting. What was she looking for? Was she plotting something?

I thought she knew there was no point in striking off on her own, that she’d be throwing her life away if she left our protection, but we’d seen how agile she was in her explorations of the city. No doubt she could have found a way out of the swamp without a boat or wings if she’d tried to.

If some roaming shadowkind wouldn’t have cut her down first.

Lance tossed back the rest of his ice cream straight from the bowl to his mouth and got up. He stroked the backs of his fingers across Quinn’s shoulder blades as he came around the table, and the flush returned to her cheeks. When he reached the sink to set his dishes down, I extended the tip of my tentacle from the shadow just enough to give him a light tug.

Lance answered my summons immediately, slipping into the shadows next to me. His presence there didn’t exactly have eyes, but his attention rested on me with a faint weight. “Ready for your orders, sir!” he said in a jaunty tone.

“You’re going to take the first patrol,” I told him. “But I wanted to talk to you first. You seem to be getting very wrapped up in the mortal.”

He shrugged without any sign of concern. “She likes me playing with her. It doesn’t hurt anything, does it? She has no power over us. I’ve been curious what it might be like, to try out the physical connection they enjoy so much.”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunities at the club,” I grumbled, tamping down another flare of inexplicable irritation.

“It’s not the same,” Lance said. “You never really know what you’re dealing with. They’re always coming and going.”

“Too much chaos even for you?”

He chuckled. “I have limits, as obscure as they may be.”

I hadn’t encountered many of them. What had held him back from experimenting if he’d been as curious as he said? It wasn’t as if the typical club-goers had any power over us either…

But maybe his caution made sense, after the whatever wounds he’d been dealt in the mortal world before. From the havoc he’d been wreaking through the shadow realm when I’d stumbled on him, those wounds had obviously run deep.

“Well, don’t get attached,” I said. “Playing is fine as long as that’s all it is, but appreciating her for anything more than that will only complicate the situation. She isn’t ours. She’s for Rollick.”

“Of course,” Lance said. “But we might as well have as much fun as we can in the meantime. He’s taking his time coming to collect.”

“I’m sure now that the first phone message didn’t go through. I’ll get another device and reach out that way.” A different, new phone with no connections to anyone seemed like my best bet for the discretion our boss had asked for. I just had to hope that message would go through and not be blocked because it was a number he wasn’t expecting.

If I didn’t get a response to that either, I’d have to reach out through other channels that got more precarious. Somehow I didn’t think he’d want us flying the woman right to his doorstep where anyone could notice.

“Go on,” I added, nudging Lance toward the door. One of his tumbling, whirling romps around the swamp might burn off some of his extra energy too.

When Quinn went off to the bathroom to wash up, I sent Crag on a trip of his own to the nearest town to pick up that phone and additional supplies. We’d only brought enough food for a few days, and the woman would definitely get restless if we couldn’t keep her fed. Then I sank into deep thought, contemplating what I knew of Rollick’s business ties and threads of influence, what I might best tug on if I wanted to send a message without anyone else realizing the significance.

I only vaguely noted Quinn’s return to the room until she drove one of the screwdrivers on her multitool into the wall near the dining table with a thump. The sound jolted through the shadows. I pushed myself into physical form just as she smacked the tool into the wall about a foot from the first spot, leaving a second small hole that went through both the paneling and the drywall behind it. Both holes stood at about the height of her shoulders.

“What are you doing now?” I demanded, bracing myself against my tentacles. I’d been in this body a lot more than usual lately, and both of my legs started to ache the moment any of my weight pressed on them—which didn’t exactly improve my mood.

The woman blinked those sky-blue eyes at me as if I shouldn’t be surprised that she was jabbing holes, however minor, in the walls of our current home. “I just thought… Let me show you. It’ll make more sense that way.”

“Usually guests ask before they start knocking down walls,” I pointed out, folding my arms over my chest.

“I’m not knocking it down,” she said with a laugh as she bent to pick something off the floor. “And it’s hard to ask you much of anything when you’re off being a shadow most of the time.”

“I can still hear you when you talk.”

“Well, I never know for sure you’re even around. Also, there’s this saying about asking for forgiveness rather than permission…”

She wielded a stick about a half an inch in diameter and as long as her forearm. She’d obviously trimmed it. It was smooth other than two smaller but solid twigs that protruded from its length: one that curved up from the base by a couple of inches to form what looked like a hook and another that jutted out at a shallower angle by the narrower tip.

Quinn wiggled the hook-like twig into one of the holes until she could pop the base of the stick right in. She wiggled it around until she seemed to judge it stable, leaving it with the smaller twig angled upward. Then she did the same with another stick that was almost identical. She must have gathered those this morning while I’d been out and whittled them down with her little knife.

The two sticks now protruded several inches out of the wall. Quinn picked up a broad but thin chunk of bark and balanced it on the two sticks. It fit just about perfectly, the twigs ensuring it wouldn’t slide off even if jostled.

She stepped back and motioned to her creation. “There. Now you can join us properly even if you don’t want to come out of the dark.”

It took me a second to register that she was gesturing more to the shadow that now slanted across the wall beneath the thing she’d built rather than to the thing itself.

With the position of the overhead light, the patch of darkness fell along the wall directly across from the end of the table that the others had been leaving empty. Where I would have joined them physically if I hadn’t been conserving my bodily endurance for possible threats to come.

Quinn glanced at me, abruptly cautious. “I realized there wasn’t any good shadowy spot for you to… hang out with us, or whatever, when we’re sitting there. This way you can almost be at the table with us, even if you don’t want to come out. But of course you can always sit in the chair if you want to be completely there.”

“Of course,” I said. My other words seemed to have fled me. I opened my mouth and closed it again, my throat abruptly tight.

She wasn’t just accepting our strangeness. She’d observed my habits and found a way to cater to them as if she understood.

How much else had she picked up on? She hadn’t mentioned why she assumed I might be avoiding lingering in physical form for very long, but she hadn’t questioned me about it either. Maybe she’d noticed my discomfort and was simply being polite not bringing it up.

When had anyone ever catered to my infirmities this way? Rollick overlooked them, and that had been a gift in itself. Those who respected me ignored them; those who didn’t sneered at them. What reason could this mortal have for trying to make things easier for me? Was this pity?

The remark that finally spilled from my mouth was harsher than I’d intended. “Are you sure it’s not going to fall right back out of the wall in a few hours?”

“I don’t think so.” She cocked her head. “It’s my swamp version of those wall hooks—well, maybe you don’t know about them. But the twig on the inside of the wall should keep it all balanced.”

Something about her easy confidence in her abilities rankled me. “You really do love going around playing Ms. Fix-It, don’t you?”

She flinched at little at my tone in a way she hadn’t even at Lance’s claws, and my throat constricted more. Then she raised her chin. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be in this world, so I’d like to at least leave it better than I found it. If you don’t like the new shadow, you don’t have to use it.”

My gaze slid past her to the chair she’d already doctored—that I’d lowered myself into last night long after she’d gone to sleep and confirmed it was far more relaxing when my tentacles could sprawl out through the sides.

There’d been a time when I hadn’t needed any accommodations like that. Fucking ridiculous that something as basic as a chair caused me problems now.

But I did already know that was how Quinn operated. In the three months we’d watched her from the shadows, we’d seen her tinker with one fixture or furnishing or another several times. I’d just assumed it was for her own benefit. Making a new patch of darkness on the wall didn’t help her at all. It made it easier for me to avoid her.

And the soft tremor that’d run through her voice with her declaration resonated with the same impulse in me that’d driven me to construct my silly sculpture in the swamp. Leave a mark. Show we’d been here. Make a difference. That didn’t come out of pity. It was a declaration of purpose. Of passion.

And she’d dedicated this one to me.

I didn’t like the churning sensation that’d filled my chest like a gathering storm. I swallowed thickly and willed both it and my irritation down.

It wasn’t her I was frustrated with, after all.

“I do like it,” I said. “And the chair. I just wasn’t expecting it. I suppose now you’ll have a better idea where to find me if you need to ask about something else.”

Then I stepped back into the shadows before I found myself saying anything else. Before I had to look too closely at the warmth that had flickered up inside me at the thought of her turning to me for anything at all. Trusting me to be there for her as she’d tried to be here for me.

She was just a mortal. She didn’t really understand anything. After all my centuries in the realms, I knew better.

If her gesture looked like kindness, it was only because she appreciated that in some way I might be as weak as she was.