The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 32

Quinn

The redhead set her hands on her hips as she looked down at the little boy in the thin dawn light. “You know, I never expected to be running a safe haven for sorcerer kids.”

I rested my hand on Jonah’s head where he was clinging to my leg. We’d met up with Sorsha, the shadowkind woman who’d given me and my men a hand when we’d been investigating the sorcerer killings in Florida a few weeks ago, on a desolate stretch of highway at the eastern edge of New Mexico. Apparently the RV parked behind her was able to travel a lot faster than Rollick’s car thanks to some supernatural enhancements.

“I didn’t know who else to ask,” I said with an apologetic grimace. It’d taken some convincing just to get my shadowkind allies to agree that I should contact her, since we weren’t totally sure of her or her companions’ loyalties. But she hadn’t betrayed us in any way so far, and she had offered her help if we needed it. And also… “You mentioned you’d taken in the daughter of the other sorcerers. He can’t stay with us—he’d be in too much danger. I’m not sure how safe he’d be even if we dropped him off at Child Services someplace.”

The sorcerer energy in me hadn’t woken up until I was twenty years old, but who knew if it might be different for a kid who’d been surrounded by sorcerer family members from birth? Who was a sorcerer through and through rather than just having borrowed a heart from one?

I wouldn’t have been surprised if Sorsha had washed her hands of the situation and told us to ship Jonah off someplace else anyway. But she cocked her head and then sank into a crouch so she was level with the little boy. She gave him a crooked smile that still managed to exude warmth.

“You must be having an awful time of it,” she said. “I know how horrible some of those monsters can be. But if you come with me, you can make new friends. Including a little girl who’s been through something a lot like what you’ve faced. She lost her family too, so we’re building a new one. When you’re ready, you might like being part of it with us.”

Jonah pressed his face against my leg, and I stroked my hand over his short hair. It wrenched at me to send him away after we’d just rescued him from our enemies’ clutches last night, but what I’d said was true. Those enemies would be searching for me even more vehemently now that I’d defied their attempt at replacing me. It was a fulltime job keeping ahead of them and working out ways to fight back without a little kid in the mix on top of that.

I wasn’t that much less of a stranger to him than Sorsha was anyway. He’d seen me for all of a minute outside his house.

“She’ll take good care of you,” I told him. “Make sure you’re safe. I know it’s hard, but the monsters that came to your home have been coming after me too. You don’t want to stick with me.”

“I want Mommy and Daddy,” he mumbled.

I swallowed hard. He knew they were dead, and I hadn’t wanted to remind him of that fact any more than I needed to. I had no idea what else to say.

Sorsha glanced up at me. “Have you gotten a better idea what these fiends are after or what they even are?”

I paused, my gaze darting toward the shadows where I knew my men were lurking. They’d stayed mostly out of sight since we’d gotten back to Rollick’s car and roared away from the mountain camp because Jonah panicked at any glimpse of their monstrous features. I’d told Sorsha that her more obviously shadowkind companions should stay in the RV for the same reason.

But Rollick, with his thorough disguise, had still driven us out here while I’d comforted Jonah as well as I could. He’d looked more pensive than usual. I had the feeling he’d seen something in the camp that’d gotten the wheels spinning in his head, but he hadn’t shared his suspicions with the rest of us yet. He didn’t appear to be inclined to with Sorsha either, since he didn’t emerge.

Knowing his preferences for discretion, he probably didn’t want her being able to identify him either.

“One of them has some kind of affinity to earth,” I said. “I think that’s the one that ordered the attack on Jonah’s home. All I could tell about him is that he felt very big and powerful, which I know isn’t super helpful. As far as what they’re planning on using their new sorcery skills for, we haven’t been able to figure that out either. But I’m guessing it’s not anything good.”

“Seems like a reasonable prediction,” Sorsha said dryly, and sighed. “You’d think one psychotic megalomaniac shadowkind per decade would be enough. Are you sure you don’t want to come back with us? There’s plenty of room at the house, and we keep pretty tight security.”

The offer tugged at my heart. Yes, I wanted to hole up somewhere safe and pretend none of this was happening. But the events of the past few days had made it amply clear that I couldn’t run forever. And running to Sorsha and her companions would probably just bring my enemies down on them too.

I wasn’t going to see anyone else hurt just so I didn’t have to deal with this fate I’d never asked for but couldn’t shake.

I shook my head. “I think I need to get ready to stand up to these monsters. We have a vague lead about a possible place in Norway where I could get a grip on my powers.”

“I hope that works out for you. We’ll keep our ears peeled as much as we can while we’re settling this little guy in and let you know if we find anything else out on our end. And don’t hesitate to call me if you need back-up.” She gave me a firm look. “I mean that. I can be a lot more than a foster mom.”

My cheeks flushed. “I’m sure you can. I just—we’ve had people we thought we could trust turn against us already—it was hard to know for sure who we could count on.”

“Fair. I’ve seen that the shadowkind tend to be hesitant about joining forces in general.” Sorsha scooted closer to Jonah and held out her hand to him. “You really should see the inside of the Everymobile. It’s pretty amazing. And we picked up McDonalds drive-through on the way over. Do you like chicken nuggets?”

“It’s okay,” I told him, squeezing his shoulder. “See how nice she is?”

Cautiously, the boy detached his hands from my leg and took a step toward Sorsha. She scooped him up gently and pointed to the streamers waving along the side of the RV. “Check those out. Pretty cool, right? We’ve taken this thing through rifts a few times, and it always comes out a little more fun.”

She tipped her head to me in farewell and carried Jonah into the RV, hugging him tighter when he started sniffling again. My hands clenched at my sides, but there wasn’t anything more I could do.

I went back to Rollick’s sedan to lean against the hood while the RV drove away. As it disappeared into the distance, there was a moment when it felt as if I were all alone amid the scruffy desert vegetation. There was no sound but a faint whisper of a breeze, nothing real but the hard-packed dirt beneath my feet.

Then the shadowkind men wavered back into view—all four of them, Rollick in front of me and the other three off to the side. Rollick folded his arms over his chest. “So you’re wanting to jet over to Norway now?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. The ache that’d formed in my chest as I forced Jonah to leave expanded, nearly smothering me.

I knew what I had to do. I’d known it since that moment during our raid on the mountain camp… maybe even before it, without admitting it to myself. The sorcerers had even given me all the information I needed to be sure I could do it.

But I didn’t want to.

I closed my eyes. Was I going to be selfish, or was I going to show my love for the three men who’d offered theirs to me in every way they deserved, no matter how painful it was to me?

It wasn’t even really a question. I knew the right answer. I hadn’t been able to fix much in the past few weeks or to design anything worth admiring. Now that I had the chance to do something meaningful, something that showed what was important to me, I couldn’t pass it up for my own comfort.

“I think looking for the sorcerer enclave in Norway is our best chance of figuring out how we can stand up to those fiends effectively,” I said. “Unless you learned something in the camp that’s given you some ideas?”

Rollick’s mouth twitched with a hint of tension. “I have a few thoughts based on my observations, but nothing that comes with any obvious solutions beyond seeing you get a better handle on your powers. And it seems unlikely they’ll be looking for us in Norway, which is a plus.”

“Yeah.” I sucked in a breath of the warm morning air. “But there’s something I have to do first. It—it won’t take long.”

When I turned toward the other three men, Torrent gave me a quizzical look. Crag held himself with his usual stoic air, like he expected me to send him off on some new dangerous mission for my benefit. Lance beamed at me, equally ready to jump at my request. My resolve hardened.

I stepped closer to Torrent first, reaching up to caress the side of his neck with my hand. He wrapped his good arm around my waist, gazing down at me.

“I love you,” I said. “I want to see all the other things you could make—I want you to get to make your mark on the world and enjoy every part of it that you can.”

More confusion flickered through his expression, but it didn’t diminish the fondness in his eyes. “Quinn…” He bowed his head next to mine, hugging me even closer despite my vest. “Love isn’t a concept I’ve given much thought to. But I’d do anything for you—I can say that much.”

I smiled through the pain radiating through my abdomen. “Then you’ll understand.”

Before he could ask what he was going to understand, I eased out of his embrace and moved to Crag. The gargoyle tensed as if worried that I was going to try to touch him too. I longed to give him one last hug, but I could tell he wasn’t going to accept it.

“I love you too,” I said, choking up. “You’re so much more than a monster, and all the ways you’ve been here for me matter so much more than one little accident. I hope you can believe that.”

Crag blinked, his forehead furrowing. “Softness,” he said, his gruff voice unusually tender, but then didn’t seem to know how to go on.

Lance’s smile had faded as he watched, his mouth twisting with his own confusion. Maybe given what he’d been through he could sense where this was going even if he wasn’t totally conscious of it.

“You know how I feel about you,” he said when I moved to him.

“I do. And you know I love you too.” And I’m going to prove it, I thought as I stepped in quickly to give him a tight hug. Oh, God, please let him understand.

I let him squeeze me back for just a few seconds before pulling away. I had to do this before my conviction faltered.

I gazed back at all of them, thinking of all the ways I knew them. Not just the way they moved or spoke, their everyday habits. I knew what they cared about, what made them smile and what made them hurt, how they reacted to a threat and how they celebrated a victory. I knew them in ways far beyond any connection the sorcerers I’d spoken to could have known the shadowkind they “harnessed.”

So please, because I loved them, let this work.

I gathered all my agonized determination, all my fears, and all my love, and channeled it into my mouth alongside the energy that thrummed through my heart. The sorcerous magic sizzled through every inch of my body as a jolt of it shot into my voice, searing my tongue with its force.

“The three of you will go straight to the nearest rift and back to the shadow realm. You can go wherever you want from there, other than you’ll stay far away from me, hundreds of miles, until the shadowkind who’ve been hunting me are no longer a threat. Go.”

The words wrenched out of me as if tearing me into pieces bit by bit. The last emphatic syllable nearly cracked me right down the middle. I swallowed a sob at the expressions that crossed the men’s faces: Torrent all shocked recognition, Crag’s horrified consternation, and Lance’s frozen in panicked anguish. I only got that brief glimpse of them before they were all swiveling around, leaping simultaneously into the shadows away from me.

It was only when they were gone that the sob burst out. I clapped my hand to my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut. Every part of me ached from my throat down to my gut. My legs wobbled, and I stumbled backward to catch myself against the side of the car.

Rollick stayed silent as the impact of what I’d done sank in. Some desperate part of me pleaded for it not to have worked, for any of the three to leap back out and declare that they weren’t going anywhere, but when I forced my eyes open again, the desert landscape remained still and quiet.

It was done. I’d made sure they wouldn’t be hurt any more in any way while they tried to do the same for me.

Maybe they would hate me for it. Maybe it made me as monstrous as the sorcerers they hated. But I’d have been even more of a monster if I’d let them keep hurling themselves into harm’s way on my behalf, when this was my battle.

The fiends only really wanted me. And when they got me, I’d be ready to take them on… or I didn’t deserve to live at all.

I expected Rollick to toss out some dry remark, but when he finally spoke, he simply held up his phone, his expression opaque, his voice carefully even. “Should I book us a flight to Oslo, then?”

If he was at all offended that I’d cared more about his underlings’ safety than his own, he didn’t show it. We both knew I wasn’t tackling the monsters who wanted me completely on my own. But Rollick never had any problem looking out for his interests over mine. He’d intended to use me as a tool, and now in some ways, I’d be using him right back.

I lifted my head and clamped down on the agony inside with all the determination I had left in me. “Yes, I think you’d better.”