The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 16

Crag

As I soared over the depths of the Atlantic, I couldn’t help thinking that this was really Torrent’s domain. I might have spent many hours coasting on wafts of wind over ocean waves, hunting for marine life and enjoying the scenery along various coastlines, but he was most at home in the actual water. I’d rarely dipped in other than a brief dive to snatch a particularly tasty looking fish.

But he had his own task to see through, and I couldn’t say I’d have done a good job of making a verbal appeal to the Highest. I’d probably have ended up offending them with whatever blunt comments slipped out. There was no reason I couldn’t travel through the darkness beneath the waves nearly as easily as he could. The currents barely tugged at our shadowy bodies.

It turned out, though, that I didn’t have to plunge in just yet. In the distance, I spotted a few sleek heads poking from the water. Their short gray fur gleamed wetly under the early morning sun. They looked every bit the seals they were pretending to be, but real seals wouldn’t have swum out this far. I could tell from that and my growing sense of their presence as I approached that these were shadowkind. Selkies.

I slowed as I came up on them, starkly aware of how my gargoyle bulk might unnerve them. “Hello,” I called out, wishing my voice wasn’t quite so rumbly. “I was hoping?—”

Two of the four dropped beneath the waves with barely a ripple, vanishing from view. The other two bobbed farther away from me at the surface, their faces transforming into human-like ones: a man and a woman.

The man flashed animalistic teeth. “What do you want?” he hollered.

The two of them were clearly tensed, ready to swim away at any second. I stopped where I was, still twenty feet distant, hovering with swift flaps of my wings. “I’m not with the one who’s been stirring up the seas,” I said quickly, figuring it was important to make that point first. “I assume you’ve seen some of his minions riling up the waves near the coasts.”

The frowns that crossed both the selkies’ faces confirmed it without either of them speaking. “This could be some trick,” the woman spat at me.

They seemed awfully hostile despite the leviathan’s watery schemes not reaching this far out. How had it even affected them?

“Why would I want to trick you?” I asked, honestly puzzled. “The leviathan is making the beings under him do what he wants with sorcery, but he’s the only shadowkind who’s grabbed that kind of power. Many of us are working out a way to stand up to him and end the destruction, but I don’t see how I could force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

The words might have come out a bit gruffer than I’d have preferred in my confusion, but to my relief, I thought the selkies relaxed a little rather than becoming even more defensive. The man pushed a little higher amid the lapping waves, raising his chin. “What are you doing here then? Why are you talking to us?”

I would have thought that was pretty self-explanatory after what I’d just said, but apparently not. And this was why it was a good thing Torrent was doing the talking with the Highest, not me.

I cleared my throat. “Those of us who want to stop the leviathan are trying to gather as large a group as possible. He’s so strong that it’ll take a lot of us to overpower him. Beings comfortable at sea like yourselves would be particularly useful to the cause, since you can work against him in his natural habitat.”

The woman let out a disgruntled-sounding huff. “Why should we? We don’t even know you or this group you’re gathering. You could be just as bad as him.”

I could picture Quinn rolling her eyes at the statement. I restrained myself to a brief grimace. “I think that would be awfully difficult, considering that he’s made himself the biggest menace I’ve ever seen in the centuries I’ve been in existence. You have seen what he’s forced his slaves to do, haven’t you? The way they’re churning up the ocean along the coast, the waves they’re hurling at the mortal cities. It’s even worse on the Pacific side. And what he plans to do next…”

I trailed off, abruptly uncertain of whether I should mention what Rollick had deduced about the leviathan’s ultimate plans. I didn’t know how much I could trust these beings. What if they ended up reporting back to the villain somehow? It was better if he didn’t know we’d figured out his end game.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”

“Nothing that would be good for any of us who enjoy the mortal realm,” I settled on as my answer. “He wants to turn this place as dark and dreary as our original home. I don’t want that, and I doubt you do either. But if not enough of us are willing to take a stand, that’s what we’ll get.”

The two selkies glanced at each other. The man’s expression tightened. He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “We’re not built to fight like you are. I doubt there’s much we can do. One of our own was already badly injured in the recent storms.”

My heart sank. So that was why they’d reacted so fiercely. “I’m sorry to hear that. If there’s anything I can do…”

Both of them gave me a skeptical look. Then the woman said brusquely, “There’s a particular kind of seaweed that’s helpful for sealing our sort of wounds—for holding in the essence. I don’t suppose you know anything about it?”

Her statement tugged out a memory from ages ago, when I’d chatted with an elderly merman while we shared the meat of a shark that I’d caught while it was in the middle of attacking him. He’d gathered some ocean plant to wrap around the wound on his arm.

“Reddish with broad leaves?” I asked, bringing up the faded image in my mind.

They couldn’t keep their surprise from their faces. The man nodded. “That’s the one. It’s usually closer to the shore, but with all the churning of the waters, we haven’t been able to get close. We’ve been searching for strands that were torn up and drifted farther out, but there hasn’t been much. If you want us to help you, maybe you should help us first.”

His caustic tone suggested that he expected me to disagree, but my spirits lifted at the opportunity to take concrete action. “I’ll see what I can do. Where will you be if I find some?”

The woman waved toward the east. “There’s a small island several miles that way. We’re using it as a temporary camp.”

Without another word, they both slipped under the water, transforming into their seal bodies as they did. I had the sense of a dismissal—that they assumed this was the last time we’d ever speak.

My jaw clenched. I could battle storms just as well as I could fight any creature.

I flew in the opposite direction, keeping low to the water, scanning as far into the depths as I could for a telltale hint of red. As I got closer to the coast, still well out of view of any mortals who might have dared to brave the storm on land, the waves grew choppier, forcing me to lift higher overhead. Rain first pattered against my hardened skin and then pelted me.

I swerved to the side and followed the angle of the shoreline, sweeping a little farther east again to avoid the worst of the storm. The leviathan must have enslaved a lot of seafaring beings to his cause for them to be stirring up this much turmoil on the opposite side of the country for him. My teeth gritted with frustration.

Just as I started to think I’d have to give up the search, that I’d wasted too much time on it already, my gaze snagged on a flash of a ruddy leaf tossed by one of the waves. I dove without hesitation, my hands shooting out to snatch at my target.

It was a lot more than just one leaf. A huge clump of the weed had been uprooted from its coastal grounds and floated out here. I bundled enough in my arms to have wrapped around an entire human body and, with a small smile of triumph I couldn’t suppress, soared out of the storm toward the selkie’s island.

Trickles of salty water streamed down from the mass of seaweed to patter against the ocean, and its pungent herbal scent filled my nose, but it wasn’t difficult to carry. I had lots of practice flying around with Quinn in my arms by now, and I had to worry a lot less about the seaweed’s well-being.

It was a matter of minutes before the little island came into view up ahead. The place was barely more than a cluster of boulders poking out of the water with some sparse bushes sprouting from the bits of dirt that’d managed to catch in the cervices between the rocks.

Several seals were gathered on the stones, most of them forming an attentive circle around one of their number, who was lying limply in the most sheltered area of the island. As I drew closer, I made out trickles of essence gusting from the prone body. However that one had been caught up in the storm’s violence, the wounds hadn’t fully healed yet. No wonder the others were worried.

One of the seals noticed me and barked an alarm. All the others’ heads swiveled my way. I couldn’t easily wave while holding the seaweed, but two shifted into human forms that I recognized. They leaned toward the others, their mouths moving hastily with words I couldn’t make out.

As I swooped down toward them, a few scooted to the edges of the island, their teeth bared. But a couple of the seals and the two I’d spoken to before stayed with their injured companion, braced protectively around the slumped body.

I landed on a bare rock. “This is the weed you wanted, isn’t it?”

The woman took in my cargo, and her eyes widened. “You found so much!” Her head whipped toward her partner. “We must wrap her up quickly. She’s lost so much essence already.”

They both darted forward, their stances still wary. I shoved the clump toward them so they didn’t have to get too close to me. Then I watched from my rocky perch, feeling more fully gargoyle-like than I had in decades, as they bandaged up the injured seal. I’d have offered to help, but my thick fingers wouldn’t be able to handle her wounds with as much care as their slimmer ones.

They layered the slick leaves over the wounds, and the trickling essence faded away. The unconscious seal let out a shuddery breath. The woman who’d bandaged her sat back on her heels and swiped her hand across her forehead, looking weary but relieved. I understood the kind of anguish she was going through better than I would have even a month ago.

“She means a lot to you,” I observed in as subdued a tone as I could manage.

Her gaze flicked to me. “All of my pod-mates do. We stick together—we look out for one another, both here and in the shadows.”

Her voice came out taut, as if she thought I’d been criticizing her. I did my best to form a sympathetic smile. “I’m glad I was able to help stabilize her then. It looks as if the seaweed helped. I hope she has an easy recovery from now on.”

“We’ll see,” the man said, frowning. “She hasn’t woken since she took those blows in the storm. There was so much wreckage floating in the waves.”

I glanced around. “I passed a rift a few leagues from here. If you wanted to bring her back to the shadow realm so she might recover faster, I’d be happy to carry her—and I could probably manage one or two others—to get her there right away.”

The woman blinked at me. “Why would you offer that?”

I knit my brow. “For the same reason I found the seaweed. I’d rather she isn’t suffering if she doesn’t need to be. And the same for all of you, worrying about her. It’s… it’s good to find some of our kind looking out for each other, supporting each other, after everything I’ve seen recently.”

I meant the statement totally honestly, without any ulterior motives. It seemed unlikely that they’d volunteer to dive back into any kind of battle regardless of what I did now. But maybe because of my honesty, something softened in the woman’s face.

“Yes,” she said. “It is good. And maybe we shouldn’t only think of our pod. Maybe for our pod, we should do more. How is it you think we can help stop the one causing these storms?”

A jolt of startled joy shot through me. I paused, grappling for the right words to show how much I appreciated her response, and it occurred to me that it hadn’t been my strength that’d convinced her. It hadn’t been my ability to take the storm either.

It’d been the kindness I’d offered, even though kindness wasn’t a trait I’d ever thought of as my own.

Possibly I was more than just a monster after all.