The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 25

Lance

Quinn needed to be here. She needed to know about the foreboding energy that’d gotten all twisted up inside her heart. I reminded myself of that as I twined through the shadows along the road.

Ineeded to keep watch. I was the first line of defense if anything ominous came this way. But my whole being itched with the uncertainty of what might be happening to Quinn off where she’d gone, down into the place where the sorcerers lived. What might those sinister mortals with their warped minds decide to do to her?

Was the real danger away from here or in the direction she’d gone?

The buried memories rattled at the inner cage I’d stuffed them into. Slivers of groans and agonized winces trickled out despite my best efforts. I flexed my shadowy sense of my claws, longing to dig them into the firmly packed soil, to gouge my presence, my survival, into this landscape.

No. I could already imagine what Torrent would say. We didn’t want anyone knowing we’d come here. We didn’t want to lead the monsters who’d claim Quinn to these other sorcerers even after we’d gone.

Even if these particular mortals would deserve whatever fate they met from the fiends.

The sun had dipped below the hills. Its glow still spilled over the sky and lit the clifftops, but gloom swathed the ground. I leapt and darted from one side of the road to the other, spinning this way and that, working the restlessness out of my being as much as I could without any real muscles to stretch.

So strange that I felt more at home in the physical body I pulled together out of the materials of this foreign realm than I did in the darkness now. The concreteness of it, the certainty of it, appealed to me in a way I couldn’t put into words.

I liked that I could put my claws into it—there was the thing. What was the point of having claws if you couldn’t slice and dice with them? And fighting was much more satisfying with bodies colliding than when tangling with another being while you were both wisps of essence that barely had a presence at all.

The car had vanished into the valley some time ago. Ten minutes? An hour? I didn’t have much of an internal clock at the best of times, and this was definitely not the best.

What would the sorcerers tell Quinn anyway? That she should order around all the beasties like Rollick had her doing? That she should try to command all of us?

Well, maybe I wouldn’t mind if she threw some of that power at the monsters who wanted to sink their claws and fangs into her. It would serve them right. Fighting back wasn’t the same as hunting down beings who’d never done a thing to you. Quinn would use the magic in her properly. Quinn understood how awful it was—the things the other sorcerers did.

But I couldn’t say the thought that they might know how she could toss the power away completely didn’t wake up a flicker of joy in my chest. She could be rid of it, not a sorcerer at all. Then none of that taint would remain, and none of the others would want to steal her away, and she could be only mine.

All right, Crag’s and Torrent’s too. They’d stood by her when she needed them like I had. I would just have to steal her away for my own self, only the two of us, as often as I had the chance. I shouldn’t have to share all the time.

A creeping sensation wavered over my body. I spun again, my focus sharpening. Was something—or someone—coming? From which direction? Maybe it was simply Quinn returning. I could hope for that.

The impression faded as quickly as it’d risen up, but I didn’t think it’d come from the sorcerers’ valley. I studied the more distant bulge of reddish rock that jutted from the ground and the bristly plants that dotted the flatter soil near me. I couldn’t see anything traveling in the gloom, but I wasn’t as sensitive to movement as the gargoyle was.

It could be just a tiny beastie. Maybe even one of the sorcerers’ dupes patrolling farther. If I stayed still, it wouldn’t think I was of any concern all the way out here.

Or it could be nothing at all. Just my nerves jumping because of the memories churning inside me.

I bared my teeth as if I could scare that possibility into submission, and snapped them a few times for good measure, but in the shadows they didn’t make the satisfying gnashing sound. No, physical form was much better. I couldn’t wait until we could leave here and I could stretch my limbs out properly.

A pebble rattled. I whipped in the direction of the sound, my ears pricked, my eyes narrowing. The tufts of coarse grass waved in the breeze. Somewhere off on the other side of the road, a rabbit hopped behind a bush.

Just a mortal beastie. Even less of a threat than a shadowkind one. Humph. Rollick would have chuckled at me. Maybe even Torrent would have laughed. Not Crag—most of the time he didn’t really get even actual jokes.

And not Quinn. Quinn would have told me it made sense that I was uneasy. She’d be hurrying out of the valley as quickly as she could. She knew those sorcerers were no?—

The surge of energy walloped me, so suddenly and with so much force that I tumbled right out of the shadows. I sprawled on the dry earth with my scales scraping the scattered stones and my thoughts whirling in my head. Panic flashed through them, jumbling them even more. That’d felt— It was too familiar— No, no, I couldn’t let?—

I reached to leap back into the shadows instinctively, and another wallop smacked into my body. I could practically hear my brains jostling inside my skull. The energy crackled through my mind, digging in like dozens of tiny claws. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could hardly piece together coherent thought. What— How?—

Another presence loomed, still far but large enough that I felt it even across that distance now. So powerful. So determined. And others—other shadowkind rippling into my awareness as they charged ahead of it.

They’d come. The ones we thought were busy with Rollick—they’d found the sorcerers too. They’d come. And Quinn was still there. I had to?—

I was moving, but not because I’d decided to. My body morphed back into its shadowy state and lunged forward across the desert plain alongside the other racing creatures. An urge gripped me way down in the center of my being, with words I couldn’t remember hearing with my actual ears reverberating through me.

Find all the sorcerers. Slash their throats. Leave the rest to me.

No.I couldn’t do that. Especially not while Quinn was there.

I tried to fight the compulsion, but its claws had stretched into threads that wound all through my essence, gripping every particle of me.

Just like before—just like when the ones who’d kept me in that cage had given their orders.

A cry burst from my throat, silent to the outside world as the gloom swallowed it up. I strained at my limbs, but they kept hurtling forward, toward the place where I knew the sorcerers lived. The ones who were strangers to me… and one other besides. One lovely woman I’d sworn to protect, who, yes, was a sorcerer too, whether she wanted to be or not.

Icy panic washed over me, but it didn’t dislodge the hold the magic had on my will. It simply closed around my gut with a queasy lurch. I couldn’t give in, couldn’t let this fiend control me. I had to break the spell, somehow…

But I’d only broken it before by getting my captor to let down her guard. I didn’t even know where the being who’d compelled me was now. Somewhere behind, lurking while we ran ahead to carry out the most dangerous work. Driving us forward in front of him like a herd of deer ahead of a wolf.

Except we weren’t the real prey here. The mortals with their tender flesh were.

I wrenched and flailed at my body as it whipped toward the valley, but nothing I did made the slightest difference. The command laced all through my being urged me on and on with visions of human necks sliced open, blood splattered across the ground.

Some part of me reveled in the thought, and I couldn’t even tell how much that was the magic and how much my own fury at the humans who imprisoned our kind this way.

For a few fleeting moments, my anger seared through all my resistance and my horror. I would tear into them and let their lives leak out into the earth. They would never twist another being’s will to their own again. I?—

The image flashed before my eyes of a very specific pale neck I’d become familiar with, pale blond hair falling around it beneath a delicate chin, and another smack of cold nausea broke through the stirred-up rage.

Not her. She didn’t count. She wasn’t like them. I had to defend her.

Find all the sorcerers. Slash their throats.

The other beings around me didn’t know Quinn was in the valley. I was abruptly certain of that. The immense being who’d given the command would have instructed them to leave her alive if it’d realized.

But I knew. And the compulsion in me demanded that I end her life too, that I serve the master who’d caught me in his leash to the full extent of my ability.

I’d been able to fight the hold the sorcerers of the past put on me a little—to delay, to bend their instructions in tiny ways. I’d never felt an iron grip quite like this.

Because my enslaver now was shadowkind. The compulsion came with an understanding of my nature no human could have held, as if the being that’d given its orders saw me and knew me inside out. How had any human even come near that kind of recognition to command shadowkind to their will?

That brief question fled as I flung myself down into the valley and the buildings came into sight up ahead in the fading sunlight.

There was the jeep I knew Quinn had arrived in. Even realizing it was probably empty, my fangs jutted with the impulse to leap inside and shred whatever was within.

No, no, no.

My agonized protests made no difference to the movements of my body. I leapt over the jeep, a glance through the window confirming no one was inside and allowing me to race onward. Then I burst out of the shadows in full dragon form, snarling and flexing my claws.

Other creatures were leaping from the darkness all around me. A few had already stormed into one of the houses, a shriek and frantic yelling spilling past the bashed door. The horrible, unshakeable tug inside me drew me past the buildings, following a trace of scent I couldn’t stop myself from recognizing, from knowing that the woman attached to it was technically one of the sorcerers I’d been commanded to destroy.

There she was. The first glimpse of her bright hair and frightened face just about tore me in two, wanting to run to her and shield her, knowing my claws and fangs would rip into her of their own accord despite my wishes.

I cried out again, attempting a warning that snagged in my throat. Every bit of determination in my body rallied in resistance, straining against the magic propelling me onward—but it wasn’t enough.

Crag was sweeping her up in his arms. He was going to carry her away, and the orders driving me toward them refused to accept that, as much as the rest of me wanted to shout for joy at her potential escape. I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t do more than growl in a mix of rage and anguish as I threw myself at the two of them.

“Lance!” Crag roared in protest, whipping himself around so that my claws sank into his stony flesh instead of gouging Quinn’s. Small mercies. I recoiled inside at the smoky blood that gushed from my friend’s wounds, but my limbs and teeth slashed on.

No, no, please, no…

The protest turned into a silent wail inside my head. It didn’t help me. Nothing could drown out the commands ringing through me—to stop the gargoyle, to savage him until he fell and I could wrench the woman from his grasp to claim her for the being that’d made himself my master.