The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 12

Lance

Iknew Rollick had arrived from the shifting of the energies in the shadows. His tricksy presence always loomed large even when you couldn’t see it.

“What is it that you had to call me all the way out here about?” he drawled, but I could tell he wasn’t happy about the request despite his casual tone. I might not be the most sensitive being around, but even I could pick up on the tremor of tension that emanated off him.

“You didn’t want us consulting with anyone else,” I reminded him. “And you also didn’t want us stirring up trouble with shadowkind who aren’t any part of this. How could you decide whether I should pursue this without seeing what I’d found?”

The demon made a dismissive sound, but he came closer. “What exactly did you find that’s made you so nervous, dragon?”

I motioned to the mountain range we were positioned at the base of in the shadow of a spiky-leafed tree. Rollick had sent me roaming out to the area mortals called Utah because a few sorcerers had been slaughtered and devoured here a few days ago. I’d only been meant to check the murder scene for clues that might identify the beings involved. I’d ended up stumbling on what felt like a much more momentous trail.

“There are a few human paths farther along,” I said, “but they don’t really come out this way. Something’s been active around there, though. Lots of rocks looking bashed up with claw marks on them. Shuddery energy left behind. The whole place gives me the impression that I should want to be anywhere but here, which isn’t because of anything I’ve actually seen. It’s shadowkind power, isn’t it?”

Rollick let out a more thoughtful hum and motioned for me to take him closer. I leapt from shadow to shadow where they formed at the base of rocks and shrubs and dips in the earth across the uneven terrain. Where the slope really started to angle upward, I pointed to a mess of chunks that looked like a shattered boulder.

The sense that I should be going someplace else hit me stronger here. It made me want to dig my claws into the rocks and snarl at whoever was trying to boss me around with their magic. But whoever that was probably had pretty big claws too. Or some other sharp appendages. There were broad scratch marks here and there on the broken chunks of stone.

Rollick examined them, prowling around through the shadows, and then peered up the side of the mountain. “You haven’t followed the trail much farther?”

I shook my head, knowing he’d sense the movement through the gloom. “There’s another smashed rock like this a little ways up. After that I stopped. I can spy on whatever might be up there without being noticed, I think. But I don’t know for sure what other magic they might have. Or maybe you can tell what being it is and that we shouldn’t get involved.”

I kind of hoped the latter was true. I’d much rather head back to California—to the hotel, where I might get to drop in on Quinn again.

And I didn’t like the idea of a fiend with this kind of power being after her.

“I don’t recognize it,” Rollick said, and moved closer to one of the chunks of stone. “These aren’t claw marks, though. Those are horns, or curved spikes of some sort.” His frown came through in his voice. “How did you get here from the murder site?”

“There was a beastie hanging around the spot,” I said. “It ran off when it saw me. I was thinking maybe it was keeping watch to see who came around. I followed it quietly so it wouldn’t realize I’d seen it, but when we were close to here, there wasn’t as much cover. So I smashed it. But if it was going to report to someone about me, I figured they’d be around here, so I explored some more.”

Rollick nodded. “Or it could simply be that it was randomly passing by.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t say that wasn’t possible. You asked how I got here.”

“I did.” Rollick paused again, with a pensiveness I didn’t totally like. I was used to this solemn consideration from Torrent—it felt right from him. Rollick was all easygoing confidence except when he was really mad. If something about this situation outright worried him, there couldn’t be anything good about it at all.

“Go up the mountain,” he said finally. “See what you can see—but don’t let anything or anyone see you. That’s the most important part. If you don’t think you can stay hidden, retreat and report back whatever you were able to discover.”

I would have saluted him the way I’d seen humans do sometimes to people giving commands, but there wasn’t much point in the shadows. “I can do that. I’ll be sneaky. Twice as careful as with the beastie.”

“If anything urgent comes up that can’t wait until you can make it back in person, you know how to reach me by phone,” Rollick reminded me. “Although I’m sure you’re in a huge hurry to be back to that mortal woman.”

I bristled instinctively at his reference to Quinn. “I’m here to make sure no bigger beasties get their claws—or horns, or whatever—into her. I won’t let her down.”

Rollick clucked his tongue. “I suppose you’d better hope she doesn’t let you down then, hadn’t you? I know this is all new and exciting to you, Lance, but humans don’t settle down with dragons. And the more fiends try to stick their claws into her, the less thrilling she’s going to find yours.”

I thought of Quinn’s eager shivers when I traced the tips of my talons over her skin and had to smile. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Well, you know better than most what horrors humans are capable of. Just because she’s shown you her softer side doesn’t mean there isn’t a vicious edge to her too.”

I couldn’t help snorting, as disrespectful as that might be to the man who’d somehow become my boss again. “She can be vicious against the beasts that deserve it. I’ll cheer her on.” I didn’t have the slightest doubt that she’d never lash out at me. He hadn’t seen how worried she’d been over a light smack to my eye.

“Fine,” Rollick said. “Don’t listen to the demon who’s seen more human relationships begin and end than breaths you’ve taken. Go find out what we’re dealing with here.”

It didn’t matter how many other humans he’d known. He didn’t really know Quinn.

I set off up the slope, slinking from shadow to shadow, stopping in each one to test the energies around me and ahead of me. The vibe warning me off got stronger, but I didn’t pick up on any other supernatural forces. I simply ignored it. No one was bullying me into changing my course.

At least, that was what I intended. I reached a point in the rough path that wound up the increasingly steep mountainside where I simply couldn’t push myself onward. I looked at the shadow I wanted to leap to, I braced myself to jump—and my body refused to go on. A blaring No! echoed through my essence.

That was cheating. More tricks to keep me from finding out their secrets. I’d just have to figure out another way.

I slipped along the edge of that boundary, the point where my nerves couldn’t withstand the push away. The energy woke up some sort of prey alarm in my brain that felt totally foreign.

I was a dragon. Nothing preyed on me. I was the one who slashed and slaughtered. But somehow I couldn’t convince myself of that when I challenged the supernatural barrier.

After a while, I roamed right around the side of the mountain. There was a sharp peak ahead of me, topped with a layer of snow even in the summer. The growing chill itched at me through the shadows, but this part of the mountain range didn’t appear to be quite as protected. I darted up it, moving faster but still pausing now and then to check my surroundings.

Whoever was lurking up here would be trusting their warning vibe to keep spies away. They wouldn’t need many other protections if they were strong enough to propel even a being like me in the opposite direction.

The chill might have affected me, but traveling through the patches of darkness without any physical form didn’t tire me particularly. Especially once evening fell and the whole landscape was dark. I raced to the edge of the peak and peered down over the terrain I’d circumnavigated.

Enough of a pale glow shone down from the mostly full moon that my already sharp eyes could make out many details even with the dwindling sunlight. In the distance, between this peak and a couple of others, a large lake shimmered. There were a few buildings near the edge of the lake, rough huts that I suspected only held one room each. The rocky terrain showed a few gouges large enough for me to make out even from the distance, as if some huge creature had dug right into the mountain.

I watched the water and the land around it. For a while, nothing moved. Then I made out a creature here and another there, one slipping into one of the huts, another heading down the mountain by the way I hadn’t been able to come up.

There were probably more in the shadows, too far away for me to make them out, let alone tell what sort of beings there were. There could be just a few or dozens, even hundreds. No way for me to know.

I gritted my teeth in frustration. But then I caught a sense of motion from much closer by. Another being, a higher shadowkind but not all that powerful, passing through the gloom no more than fifty feet away.

Because I’d been crouched motionless and she’d been in motion, she hadn’t picked up on my presence as far as I could tell. Nothing about her passage betrayed any nervousness.

I couldn’t think of any reason for a shadowkind to be up here who wasn’t connected to the bunch hanging out around the lake. That meant she might be able to tell me more, even if I couldn’t get down there myself.

I waited until she’d come a little closer, moving on a diagonal past me, and then I flung myself across the short distance to tackle her.

Her sinewy form jerked and flailed as it snapped into physical form beneath my emerged dragon body. I hauled the being—not a type I’d encountered before, but with a scent that reminded me of the dryads I’d once met—around the slope out of view of the apparent mountain den. Then I pinned her down firmly and let enough of me transform that I could speak.

“You’ve come from the lake,” I said with a growl in my voice.

The being just stared at me, her thin face bluish-gray, although maybe it was naturally that color and not just turned it out of horror. Her lips wobbled.

I leaned closer, showing my fangs. “You will tell me about it. Who’s there? What are you doing? Are you the ones who killed the sorcerers near here?”

When she stayed silent, I dug a claw into each of her wrists. She let out a little squeal. Then she said, “I can’t—I can’t talk about it. It isn’t allowed. There’s nothing I can say.”

I recognized the desperation in her words with a cold smack of revulsion. She’d been compelled—compelled like sorcerers did. Except there weren’t any mortals hiding out up here in the mountains.

This was an enclave of the beasts we were fighting against—the beasts who’d been gulping down sorcerers’ innards to take on their powers for themselves. And they’d used those powers on this being along with so many others.

A swell of regret washed through me. She might not want to be helping them. It might not be her fault at all. Not any more than it’d been the fault of any of the other shadowkind enslaved alongside me all those years ago.

“Can you come with me?” I asked. “The power will fade given enough time away from the ones who cast it. Or I might know someone who can help shatter it.” Surely a demon like Rollick could manage to clear her mind from that influence?

But the shadowkind woman shook her head with a miserable expression. “I have my tasks,” she said, her voice a croak now. “I must stick to my duties.”

It was sickening, hearing her. A snarl hissed through my fangs. Well, I just wouldn’t give her a choice then.

I shifted back into my full dragon form and clamped her to my scaled chest with one leg. My other limbs scrabbled down the mountainside as fast as they could carry me. Who knew what she might be able to tell us if Rollick could break through the magic on her? She could be the key?—

She twisted in my hold abruptly. I whirled around, ready to snatch a firmer hold of her if she tried to escape—but she hadn’t been trying to flee after all. At least, not that way.

She whipped her hand with its own much finer claws to her neck and tore it open all the way through to the spine.

Her filmy blood gushed up in a cloud. Her body went limp in my grasp. I growled in frustration, laying her down on the slope, but there was nothing I could do for her. She’d practically gouged her head right off her shoulders.

Had her masters ordered her to do that too? I grimaced with another surge of disgust.

I took only a moment to mourn the loss of my possible victory. I couldn’t afford to stick around here in physical form very long. There was only one thing left I could do.

I sucked in the cool mountain air and then breathed my dragon fire over the body, just hot enough to incinerate the rest of her in a final gust of smoke without charring the ground beneath her.

She blew away in a quickly fading haze. There was no trace of her left—no evidence that anyone had caught her, that she’d been forced to take that desperate step. I glanced back toward the higher reaches of the mountain again, but a tug in my chest brought me leaping into the darkness down toward the base again.

There were powers here I couldn’t challenge. But we’d discovered one of our enemies’ bases of operations. That was some kind of victory still, wasn’t it?

I just hoped I’d scrounged it up quickly enough for it to help Quinn survive these villains and their horrible intentions.