The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 12

Quinn

“All right,” I said, staring down at the puppy-sized frog, which peered up at me with its round eyes. “I’m guessing that you prefer a watery home. Anything else you can show me?”

The lesser shadowkind simply croaked. I couldn’t tell whether it’d understood my question or not, but then, most of the lesser beings hadn’t. From what I could tell, they’d joined up with us more for their own protection than to help with ours.

I dipped my head to it in acknowledgment. “That’s fine. Glad to have you with us.”

As it bounded back into the shadows, I stood up and stretched. I hadn’t been doing much other than talking for the past few hours, but exhaustion rolled over me as if I’d barely slept last night.

That was another symptom of a failing heart—getting tired faster. I gritted my teeth against that knowledge and headed into the house, moving slowly but steadily.

Though I’d stayed in the shade outside, stepping into the air-conditioned cool was a welcome relief. As I let out a little sigh, watching my men emerge from the shadows around me, Lance slipped his arm around my waist and nuzzled the side of my head.

“What do you think of our army?” he asked.

I made a face. “Honestly? It’s not much of an army. If the sea nymph can convince some of her fellow nymphs and whatever other beings to help counteract the magic that’s driving the tidal waves, that’ll be great, but it won’t do anything to stop the leviathan himself. None of them seem to have much hope of deflecting his sorcery.”

Crag had headed into the kitchen, where he was now leaning into the fridge to grab one of the pre-made meals they’d stocked the place with for me. He was clearly determined to make sure I never went thirsty or hungry. “It’s unfortunate that they can’t all wear shirts like yours. Or some kind of hat to shield their minds? I don’t know how it would work.”

“It might not do any good even if they could tolerate the silver and iron,” Torrent pointed out, dropping into one of the chairs at the kitchen table with his tentacles arcing on either side. “Those metals can deflect the kinds of persuasive magic shadowkind use on humans. There’s no reason to assume they’d protect against human-based magic, even if it’s being wielded by a shadowkind.”

“That’s true.” I sat down across from him and rubbed my brow. “The only beings who’d be able to stand up to the leviathan without getting caught up in his sway are other humans like me. And the only humans like me who could do anything at all to affect him are other sorcerers. And apparently they’re all just as selfish as the average shadowkind, since pretty much none of them responded to our request for help.”

And the one sorcerer who had turned up had been promptly slaughtered. I had no illusions about the vulnerability of our human bodies, even those that weren’t harboring borrowed hearts.

Lance hissed through his teeth. “That bunch off in their enclave tormenting beasties to make new sorcerers—but they can’t be bothered to come when there’s a shadowkind who actually deserves to be messed with.”

“Well, to be fair, I haven’t asked them.”

Rollick propped himself against the kitchen island. “I think we’d better keep it that way,” he said dryly. “If they found out where you are after you disrupted their rites—and brought a demon into their midst who murdered a few of their people—I suspect we’d have two sets of enemies to contend with rather than new allies.”

“Yeah.” So it still came down to me. I dragged in a breath. “If I could just control him enough to make sure he didn’t enslave any other beings, maybe the rest of you could restrain him. Or if I could force him to admit what he’s really planning, we could focus our defenses better.” I paused. “There really isn’t any way to completely stop him other than killing him like we did with the behemoth, though, is there? I mean, after everything he’s done, there’s obviously no reasoning with him or convincing him to give up his plans.”

“I think that’s a fair assumption,” Rollick said. “So fair that I’ve already had my human contractors building another trap on the outskirts of L.A., since we had solid blueprints on hand for what that should look like. What we really need is a way to get our serpentine adversary in there, and then it’ll be game over.”

“I don’t think we’re going to trick him,” Torrent pointed out. “Even the behemoth only came all the way into the first trap when Quinn compelled him.”

I nodded, biting my lip. “But it took everything I had to manage that.”

“And it hurt your heart,” Lance said with a frown.

I didn’t think that really mattered in the long run. If I died stopping the leviathan, that’d be a hell of a lot better than living another few months while watching it wreak havoc across my world. But I knew the dragon shifter wouldn’t like hearing me say that out loud.

Crag set a ham and cheese wrap in front of me, and I picked it up gingerly. I was still wiped from the morning’s activities, and suddenly all I wanted was a few moments away from the horrible problem looming over us.

“Thank you,” I said to the gargoyle, and stood up. “I’m just going to check whether my parents have left me any messages and take a look at the latest news. Then we can talk some more, see if we can figure anything else out.”

As I walked to my bedroom, the men’s voices continued to murmur behind me. Their conversation fell away after the door shut in my wake.

I actually had my phone on me, so I knew I hadn’t gotten any alerts, but I double-checked for new texts or voicemail anyway. Then I found I couldn’t quite bear to look into what other disasters might be going on around the country that I couldn’t do anything about yet. I sank down on the edge of the bed, grappling with my uneasiness.

And then a sharp jab of panic lanced straight through my chest.

I jumped up instinctively, my pulse racing before I recognized that it wasn’t a more potent effect of my failing heart. It was a flash of emotion, and not mine—it must have come from Rollick.

I’d been catching flickers of what felt like uneasiness and even fear from him over the past few days, but none quite as intense as this. With all my nerves jangling, I rushed back to the kitchen.

The men were still poised around the room, Torrent in mid-sentence, his voice fading when I came charging in. Rollick had kept his spot by the island, his stance typically languid, but as I came through the doorway, my gaze shot to his hand gripping the edge of the counter. His knuckles had turned pure white.

His eyes darted to me, and I caught a whirl of tumultuous emotion there in the instant before he managed to will it away.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. I knew he didn’t want me bringing it up, but he’d refused to say anything to me all the other times that rush of emotion had come over him, even though he must have realized I’d been picking up on what he was feeling. And something about the conversation with the other men must have provoked it, so if he wouldn’t give me answers, they would.

We were all in this together now. He shouldn’t be hiding something important enough to make him react like that.

Rollick offered me one of his movie-star smiles, as if that was going to distract me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We were simply having a conversation.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “You do so know what I’m talking about. Something upset you—a lot. Something’s been upsetting you ever since we faced off with the behemoth. If we’re going to fight his partner, I think we need to know what’s going on with all of us. If something’s come up that makes the situation worse, we have to deal with it together.”

Lance cocked his head. “What made you think something’s wrong with Rollick? He didn’t do anything.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Not only had Rollick and I never discussed the emotional connection that’d formed between us with the other men, we hadn’t told them about the incident that’d caused it. I’d been so relieved to have the three of them back, and I’d already been avoiding thinking about the way Rollick had forced his essence on me—and the way my body had responded to him in that moment. They’d been aware that my sorcerer powers had been developing in general. It hadn’t seemed important.

But maybe I shouldn’t have been hiding any of it.

Rollick stared me down for a moment, but it didn’t take him long to figure out that he wasn’t going to intimidate me into backing off. He sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Fine. The rest of you have heard about the rites we discovered at the enclave. It seemed obvious that a similar process could enhance our reluctant sorcerer’s abilities too. So I took it upon myself to insist that she consume a significant amount of my essence.”

Crag’s brow furrowed. “‘Insist’?”

The demon waved off his implied objection. “She wasn’t totally on board, but she was mainly hesitating out of fear of harming someone, and I didn’t mind making the offering. We’ve hashed it all out since then. In any case, along with heightening her magic, it also seems to have left her unusually sensitive to my emotional state. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to turn off that connection.” He grimaced.

“It’s a good thing, considering you like to hold everything that’s going on with you so close to the chest,” I muttered. “So, what is going on with you right now?”

He hesitated in a very un-Rollick-like way, another tendril of anxiety reaching me, although this one didn’t have the same urgent flavor. Whatever it was, he didn’t like the idea of how we might respond.

“She’s right,” Torrent said quietly. “We need to know exactly where we stand—with each other and with our enemies. It’s not as if the rest of us haven’t had plenty of problems of our own to work through.”

Rollick let out a disgruntled sound, but the reminder that his companions weren’t likely to get particularly judgmental appeared to spur on his confession.

“It wasn’t at all pleasant when the behemoth tried to wrap his magic around my mind,” he said in a voice that might have been breezy if not for the thread of tension woven through it. “I’ve spent thousands of years never bowing to anyone else’s will unless I chose to for my own reasons, and the sensation of nearly being taken over has left me… unsettled. And in random moments, I get flashes of memories from that time that unsettle me even more all over again. That’s all there is to it. No new villains to worry about or additional problems to heap on our plates.”

A pang ran through my heart. It sounded like a problem to me. My fingers curled into my palms against the urge to reach out to him, not knowing if he’d appreciate a comforting touch or find it embarrassing.

“That makes sense,” I said. “Is the effect getting worse? This time just now… it felt worse than before.”

He shrugged as if his answer didn’t really matter. “I’m keeping it under control. My emotional state doesn’t affect anyone but me. I assure you that if you need anything from me, this minor issue won’t get in the way.”

As if I only cared about his mental stability when it affected my plans. “I don’t like that it’s happening to you at all—because I don’t want you to be going through any kind of emotional pain. If it isn’t getting better over time?—”

“Then I’ll just have to keep coping,” Rollick cut in, sharper than before. He paused with a wince and continued in a gentler voice. “You don’t need to worry about me, Quinn. I’ve survived far too much already for this little setback to bring me all that low. And we definitely have much bigger problems to contend with.”

Lance let out a wordless grunt, glancing from me to Rollick and then to the other guys. “We do have lots of problems—but maybe this is also a way that we can solve them.”