The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 9

Crag

Apeculiar scent lingered along the shoreline in this part of the country the mortals called China. The notes of it had stuck in my memory after we’d barged into the mountain camp where our shadowkind enemies maintained a base of operations. It hadn’t seemed like a smell that should be there, and it’d tugged at something deep in my memory.

I’d almost forgotten it in the chaos of the moment, but afterward—after Quinn had sent me away, when there wasn’t much to think about other than mulling over the past couple of days and where I’d gone wrong—it’d risen back to the surface of my mind.

Quinn had ordered me to stay away. I couldn’t have ignored that command if I’d tried—which I had. So I would help her whatever way I could. And the only way I could think of was by continuing to find out everything possible about the powerful beings that threatened her.

It’d taken me a long time to narrow down the smell. I hadn’t been able to go back to the southwestern United States, at least not immediately after the mortal woman I cared for so much had cast me into the nearest rift. She must have still been nearby then. So I’d followed my instincts and shreds of memory across day after day until I’d ended up here.

No humans gathered on this lonely stretch of shoreline. It was a jumble of rocks and slimy seaweed that caught the froth of the hissing waves. Salt and all kinds of other ocean scents laced the air, but I could pick out that one specific odor clearly now.

What exactly was it? I allowed myself to emerge from the shadows, since there was no one around to see me here, and crouched down on the rocks. The smell wasn’t coming from any of the bits of seaweed I raised to my nose, and it didn’t seem specifically attached to the rocks, although I caught a slightly stronger whiff here and there. Hmm.

There was a flicker of bright green at the corner of my vision, and the next thing I knew, I was being bumped off my slightly precarious perch into the water. I spun as I fell, whipping out my wings, but I wasn’t fast enough to stop myself from crashing into the shallows next to the shore.

I sprang back onto my feet in the waist-deep water, braced for a fight, and found myself staring back at Lance’s grinning dragon face.

He shifted back into human-like form an instant later, nimbly leaping from one larger boulder to another with a rustle of his wild black curls. “Here you are. You wandered off far enough. It took us days to track you down.”

Torrent wavered into being sitting on a rock beside him, his ever-present tentacles steadying his lean frame. He tipped his head to me, his rumpled dark red hair slanting across his pale forehead. “Sorry to take you by surprise. You know how the dragon is.”

I did. But I found I didn’t know what to say to either of them as I climbed out of the water, shaking it from my rocky limbs. I stayed in gargoyle form, both because it was more comfortable when I had the option and because I’d actually stand out less against the shoreline if anyone sailed at all within view of us. I’d look like one part of the scattered rocks.

“How did you find me?” I muttered. I wasn’t sure I appreciated this interruption. I’d been in the middle of concentrating, and now my thoughts had scattered.

“I figured you’d be on the move,” Torrent said in his typical coolly collected way. “You’re trying to find something that’ll help Quinn, aren’t you? There aren’t a whole lot of gargoyles roaming widely across the mortal realm. All we had to do was find one being who’d noticed you passing by and follow the trail from there.”

I couldn’t help scowling at him. We weren’t exactly a squad anymore. He didn’t have any official authority over me. “I was following a trail of my own. I don’t know how useful it’ll be.”

“Oooh, the gargoyle is grouchy now,” Lance declared, shooting a more human grin at me, his white teeth bright against his brown skin.

“I was in the middle of something,” I informed him.

“What? We want to beat down the beasts who are after her too. We’ll all tackle them together. And then we’ll go back to Quinn and show her she doesn’t need to worry about us. She doesn’t get to tell us what to do. We protect her.”

He said the last bit so firmly with a defiant jut of his chin that I might have chuckled if the sentiment hadn’t jabbed right through my heart. The purposeful energy that’d buoyed me through the past several days deflated. My shoulders slumped despite my best efforts at keeping my inner turmoil in check.

Torrent, as usual, noticed everything. He leaned forward on his perch. “What’s the matter? Have you come across anything that’s made you more worried than we already were before?”

As if we hadn’t been worried enough already. But that wasn’t the reason for my reaction.

I debated telling him it was nothing, but I didn’t think he’d believe it. And given that these two had hunted me down all across the mortal realm, I doubted he’d let the matter drop just because I tried to put him off.

“It was my fault,” I said, low but even despite the pain that shuddered through my chest with the admission. “I pushed her away first. I made her feel like it was a problem for her to be around me. So she sent me even farther away—she sent all of us away. She thought she was the problem.”

Torrent’s sea-green eyes darkened with sympathy. “I think Quinn’s concerns about us had to do with the way we all behaved after the battle in the sorcerers’ valley.” He looked down at his right hand, mangled to the point of barely being recognizable. Lance paused, following his gaze, and stiffened.

The dragon shifter had been the one who’d mangled that hand. He’d been in the grips of our enemies’ stolen sorcery, so he hadn’t wanted to attack us. But he had, and I’d seen before how guilty he felt about it.

And it was in trying to protect Quinn from him in his enraged state that I’d ended up hurting her. I’d smacked her across the face hard enough to make her cheek bleed. That had been an accident, no more purposeful than Lance’s actions, but the thought of her bruised face still made me cringe inwardly.

“I was the one who made her feel unwelcome,” I said, refusing to accept the out Torrent had offered me. I was the only one responsible for my own behavior. “Maybe she shouldn’t want me back after the way I treated her. I damaged her body, and then I hurt her heart when I should have been there for her in every possible way.”

Torrent’s mouth twisted. “I don’t think she would see it that way. But we don’t need to harp on it right now. She can tell you herself when we’re able to get back to her. Why don’t you fill us in on why you’ve come out to the sea? This is more my domain than yours.”

“I enjoy coastal terrain as well as higher elevations,” I informed him, but I welcomed the chance to get back to actual work. Work that didn’t require thinking about my past mistakes.

I turned back toward the water, giving myself a brief shake to remove the lingering droplets from my fall. “There’s something here that was also in the mountain camp. Something that shouldn’t have been there. I’m trying to figure out what it is.”

Lance cocked his head. “What kind of thing?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. All I have is the scent…”

I prowled farther along the coastline, inhaling deeply. Lance and Torrent followed at a respectful distance, Torrent slipping into the shadows to travel more easily where his ruined legs wouldn’t hold him back. My companions let me slip back into my zone of concentration.

That was better. I couldn’t have explained the smell I was tracking anyway.

After several minutes of walking and pausing to lean closer to various spots on the ground, a sharper tendril of the odor reached my nose. I jerked around and spotted a scattering of bones in a notch between two of the rocks. As I bent to examine them, the scent grew even thicker, solidifying my certainty.

A jolt of memory passed through me—snatching a silvery body out of the water, digging my gargoyle teeth into its juicy flesh. A fish. It was a particular type of fish I’d found especially delicious and also enjoyable to catch.

Spinning, I caught a brief glimpse of a silvery body flashing amid the strands of seaweed farther from the shore. I’d only discovered them because I needed to do my hunting so far from human sight. They seemed to be particularly shy of people—I’d never noticed them when I’d lurked in mortal-made harbors.

But they were definitely an ocean fish. Why had I smelled them up in the mountains of Utah?

One of the shadowkind staying there must have brought them—for a snack or some other purpose? It would have had to be for one of the leaders, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t imagine them giving leave for their underlings—the ones supporting them of their free will and the ones they’d ensorcelled into helping them—to wander off to the ocean just to hunt down a particular delicacy to consume on their own.

Why hadn’t the boss gone down to the ocean himself and simply had his meals there? Had it been difficult for him to make the trip? Had he enjoyed ordering his minions to do his bidding?

None of this made any particular sense to me. But I knew that this ocean was the same ocean as on the western side of the United States, the one by the beach of Rollick’s hotel. It wouldn’t have been too long an expedition from the mountain camp to reach the right waters if this sort of fish lived on both sides of the sea.

“One of the fiends from the camp was bringing fish from the ocean up to the lake,” I said to my companions. “They couldn’t have stayed alive there. I assume they were to eat. I don’t know if the being that requested them needs them or not… but maybe we can assume it wouldn’t go too far inland, if it prefers that meal so much?”

Torrent reappeared, picking up one of the bones I’d seen. “We have another piece of data to work with, anyway,” he said. “Can you catch one of those fish for me now? Without killing it, if you can, since there’s no need. I’d like to see exactly what it is so I’ll recognize it in the future in living form as well as post-meal.”

My renewed sense of purpose wrapped around me, lifting my spirits. Just for that moment, I could believe that I might deserve the chance to earn back Quinn’s trust after all. I was defending her in my own way, with every possible effort I could put toward keeping her safe, no matter how far from her I was.

“Give me a minute,” I told Torrent, and launched myself over the ocean with a flap of my wings.