The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 28

Quinn

The light of the electric lantern wavered off the walls of the cave, which we’d ventured deep enough into that little of the glow should show in the valley. It felt weird to be sticking around the place where our greatest enemies had just carried out a massacre, but the fact was that they believed they’d gotten everything they could out of this place. They hadn’t noticed me while I was here, and no one outside the valley knew I’d come. This was the last place they’d return to.

I couldn’t imagine bedding down in one of the blood-splattered houses, though. I hadn’t wanted to face the carnage at all. I’d stayed up here while Crag and Rollick had gathered the lantern and a bunch of blankets to act as a makeshift bed.

We’d spend the night here, and then… Then we’d have to figure something else out. I assumed Rollick had ideas about that, but he’d stayed focused on our immediate situation so far.

My own mind was still a blur of shock and guilt, but I knew I couldn’t just go back to being his caged sorcerer.

I sat down against the cave wall, ignoring the gurgle of my stomach. Crag had flown back down to the houses to see what food he could scrounge up. He seemed intent on taking whatever tasks he could that would keep him away from me, which only made the guilt wound through my gut grip me harder.

I rested my hand on my messenger bag, the one certainty I’d clung on to since the first shadowkind attack. Although my phone couldn’t place calls and I had no desire to sketch, so its contents were becoming increasingly useless.

The phone alarm went off, and I reached for my pills automatically, chasing them with a gulp of water from my bottle. My heart thumped on in a heavy but steady rhythm. A ripple of energy passed through it.

Somehow it was getting hard to believe that the transplanted organ was my weakness and not the strongest thing in me—strong enough to transform me into a person I’d never have wanted to be.

The other shadowkind had all faded into the shadows, but Torrent wavered into view as I put away the pill case. He sank down next to me, keeping his ruined hand close by his side where it wasn’t as noticeable.

“Managing okay?” he asked, his eyes searching mine. As if I were the one who’d been permanently mutilated today.

My throat constricted. “I should be asking you that.”

Torrent’s eyes narrowed, but his even voice came out in the gentler tone I’d only heard him use with me. “I’ve never wanted your pity, and that hasn’t changed.” A wry note crept in. “I’ve still got five fully functional limbs, which is more than humans even start with.”

The fact that he could joke about it comforted me only a little. “I guess you can’t just swap out which is which.” Or he’d already have done that with his legs.

He shook his head, lifting one of his usual tentacles to slip around my shoulders. “There’s a certain synchronicity between our shadowkind and human-like forms. I couldn’t make this tentacle into an arm or a leg any more than Crag could convince his wings to sprout from the top of his head.”

He lifted his wounded arm, considering its mangled state with a contemplative air. The flesh had all melded back together with those special shadowkind healing powers, if into a form that no hand or wrist should look like. “I might chop it right off. Then I could conjure some kind of fixture to work in its place like I do with my foot.” He flexed the thumb and the two remaining fingers at their awkward angles. “I’ll have to see how well I can still work with this in its current state.”

His voice stayed calm, but I knew him well enough by now to catch the jump of a muscle in his jaw, the slight flattening of his lips after he stopped speaking. It hurt, moving that hand, just like standing on his battered legs did. The arm might hurt for the rest of his life even if he amputated the worst of it.

He’d only met me a few weeks ago, and our association had already amplified the pain he’d been enduring for decades in a way that might never leave him.

Torrent glanced at me, forcing his mouth into a crooked smile. “At least now you have confirmation of just how effectively Lance can defend you when he’s in his right mind.”

“I think I already had plenty of confirmation of that,” I muttered, and then Rollick blinked into being near the cave entrance.

“Unwilling sorcerer,” he said, brandishing what looked like a balled-up dish towel. “I brought something for you.”

I pushed myself to my feet, all my nerves immediately going on the alert. Rollick hadn’t accused us of anything other than taking off on an unexpected side-mission, but I had trouble believing that he hadn’t put the pieces together that I’d purposefully left evidence of my presence in his suite. He was smarter than that. But also smart enough not to bring it up if rubbing our faces in the betrayal didn’t suit his current purposes.

“What’s that?” I asked, eyeing his supposed gift with skepticism. “You want me to do some washing up?”

He chuckled and walked over until he was closer than I really preferred. Torrent got up too, standing to the side and watching the interaction warily. He’d intervene if he thought he needed to, but I wasn’t sure how much he could do against Rollick directly.

The demon simply raised the dishtowel to the level of my face, smiling one of his charming movie-star smiles. “The dragon shifter couldn’t do anything for the bruise. It occurred to me that a little ice is good for mortal injuries.”

“It’s okay,” I said, pulling back, but Rollick grasped my arm carefully but firmly and brought the chilly fabric to my cheek. From the texture of the lumps, I could tell the thin towel was full of ice cubes.

“It’s not okay,” he said, with a dark note under the silky quality in his voice that I didn’t think was aimed at me. “I’m meant to be seeing to your safety. And I don’t imagine any of your devotees likes seeing you looking battered either.”

He glanced at Torrent. “Speaking of safety, while Crag is being a perfectionist about what constitutes an appropriate meal, why don’t you keep watch over the road into the valley? I’ll send the gargoyle to relieve you when he’s back.”

Torrent’s shoulders tensed, and he caught my eye as if seeking my permission. He wanted to know if I actually felt safe with the demon looming over me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m sure if Rollick was planning on carving me up, he’d have gotten on with it already.”

The demon snorted, but he didn’t argue. Torrent nodded and vanished into the shadows.

I turned my focus back to Rollick, wishing his considerate gesture didn’t require him to be standing just inches away from me, his stunning face filling almost my entire vision. Wishing he wasn’t being so gentle about it. If he’d been raging at me, it’d have been easier for me to keep seeing him as the enemy.

I reached toward the balled towel with its icy filling. “I can hold it myself.”

Rollick tsked his tongue and ignored my hand. “For some strange reason, I feel the need to ensure this task is seen through to my specifications. You have a continuing habit of improvising.”

I couldn’t easily deny that. “You’re not obligated to protect me anymore,” I reminded him. “The deal was only for ten days.”

He shrugged. “I thought I made it pretty clear that I’m not keeping you alive and well simply because of a few words we exchanged. If anything, today’s events have only convinced me more how important it is that you stay out of the grasp of those fiends. They’re wreaking enough havoc as it is.”

I didn’t really want to know, because it’d make the guilt inside me swell even larger, but I couldn’t help asking, “What happened at the hotel?”

Rollick’s expression barely flickered. He did know how to keep up a poker face. “I was visited by many higher shadowkind, though all minions, as far as I could tell. They were convinced I knew of your whereabouts, and they attempted to force me to cough that information up. I made them regret trying. Unfortunately, I had to evacuate the hotel in the process. As far as anyone knows, there was a gas leak that’s being investigated. It may need to continue being investigated for quite a while, since I don’t think I can safely reopen until this other problem is dealt with.”

He shifted his weight on his feet, and I thought I caught the faintest hint of a wince. How many of those minions had he needed to fight off on his own?

“Are you okay?” I asked before I could think better of the question.

“I heal faster than you,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer. And then, “The scar you gave me is still the most impressive one of the bunch. None of them were wielding silver or iron.”

I bit my lip, restraining a wince of my own, but he didn’t sound accusing about it. Was it possible he really didn’t know we’d set him up? Maybe the other shadowkind had been so convinced by the message Torrent had passed on that they hadn’t even looked for evidence, just gone straight into shaking Rollick down.

“What do we do now?” I said. That was the more important question.

Rollick cocked his head. “Did you find out anything useful from that bunch down there before they became monster food?”

I thought back to my truncated conversation with the sorcerers. “Not really. There might be some kind of enclave of sorcerers in Norway that has a better understanding of how powers can develop at all. And I’d have an easier time controlling the ones we’re up against if I knew them better, which seems pretty unlikely to happen when they make their followers do most of the actual work.”

The demon hummed thoughtfully, but my mind had darted to my last memories of the battle. To the little boy that one minion had dragged off. Jonah.

My mouth went dry, but the vague conviction that’d been sitting like a lump in my stomach took on a clearer form.

“We need to get the kid back,” I said.

Rollick blinked at me. “What?”

“The little kid they took. We told you about that. They probably think they can use him the way they wanted to use me. Or they’ll realize he won’t be powerful enough in time and eat him too. But they kept him alive. We can save him.”

“We’re having a hard enough time saving you,” Rollick said dryly. “One sorcerer kid won’t make that much difference—in the near future, anyway. The only thing I agree with these pricks about is that the fewer sorcerers are in existence, the better. Present company excluded, of course.”

His casual dismissal rankled me. I pushed aside his hand with the icy towel, my cheek already numb, and stepped farther away, folding my arms over my chest. “No. He’s just a little kid. He’s never done anything to shadowkind, and he doesn’t have any family left to teach him to anyway. And he wouldn’t?—”

My throat choked up abruptly. I was not going to cry in front of Rollick again. I dragged in a breath, willing down my emotions, while he studied me.

“He wouldn’t what?” he asked.

“He wouldn’t have been taken if they hadn’t gotten the idea of having their own sorcerer because of me,” I said quietly. “Or if they’d managed to catch me. They took him because they haven’t been able to capture me.” Whatever ways they were tormenting him already, it was in my place. I hadn’t wanted to make that kind of trade.

The demon studied me. He lowered his voice to match mine. “And now you want to stage some kind of rescue attempt? Don’t you think your devotees have gone through enough just looking after you?”

He said it almost sympathetically, but the words hit on the main source of my guilt so dead on that I felt as if he’d punched me in the gut. I squeezed my arms tighter around myself. “I didn’t want any of that to happen.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Rollick said. “It’s only a natural consequence of your precarious situation. Which is why you really shouldn’t go running off on unplanned missions like this one. They’re clearly going to follow you to the ends of the earth as long as you’ll still have them.”

Was this his way of trying to talk me out of wanting to rescue the kid? No matter where we went, I didn’t know how to protect the men who were so determined to protect me. Torrent maybe would have stepped back if I could have convinced him that I really didn’t want him around, but I had the feeling Crag and Lance would stalk me from a distance as long as I was still breathing, determined to make up for the fact that they’d been partly responsible for dragging me into the danger to begin with.

I wouldn’t let the demon distract me. “Lance found a place in this part of the country where these shadowkind seem to be operating from, didn’t he?” I said. “In Utah, I think he said? That’s probably where they’ll have taken the kid, unless you think they’ve got a hideout in every state.”

Rollick let out an amused huff. “I agree that would be the most likely place, but that doesn’t mean we should pay a visit.”

I frowned at him. “It could be for more than just rescuing him. We need to know more about what kind of shadowkind we’re up against anyway if I’m going to stop them, and that seems like the best place to look for evidence. You’re a super powerful demon. Are you telling me you can’t pull this off?”

“I’m telling you I don’t see the point, and that I doubt it’ll go well.”

“Only if you don’t pull your weight,” I shot back, my annoyance at his callous refusal overwhelming all my other emotions. I paused, remembering the sense of foreboding that’d risen up in me right after the slaughter in the valley below. “I know I have to tap into my powers now. I know I can’t just stand by and let these fiends do whatever they’re hoping to do. I’ll train or work with you however you want—but you have to help me with this.”

I needed to start standing up to the monsters right away, or what was the point in taking a stand at all? Jonah needed me now, even if I couldn’t do much more than snatch him from their grasp. If I’d been more willing to join the battle and work toward stopping these fiends before instead of putting all my energy into running away, maybe the villains never would have made it to the settlement to begin with.

I could fix this one thing. I wasn’t backing down until I did. How could I live with myself if I gave up a literal child to be enslaved by fiends in my place?

Rollick arched an eyebrow. “Or what?”

I gazed steadily back at him. “Or I’ll go off on my own again and probably get myself killed, and we’ll see how well your plans work without me.”

I didn’t know if I’d have actually taken that risk, not with so much at stake, but the demon clearly didn’t know either. He eyed me warily and then let out a huff of breath. “You do drive a hard bargain. We will see what we can find out and whether the attempt has any chance of success?—”

“Figure out how to give it a chance,” I broke in, picturing little Jonah again. “I’m not doing anything with you, not making any deals or helping with any of your plans, if you’re going to let a preschooler die just because of what his parents did.”