The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 20

Quinn

Ignawed on the lid of my pen and stared down at the piece of paper I’d only managed to add a couple of sentences to in the past hour. Writing my message to the enclave by hand had seemed like the best option. A printed note would come across as much more detached. But deciding on the actual words had been even more of a struggle than I’d anticipated.

I wanted to warn them. I didn’t want the leviathan to eat them for dinner. That said, there were a pretty large number of other uncomfortable fates I couldn’t say I’d have minded them meeting. What I’d seen during my time there had shown me those humans were more monstrous than most of the beings they called monsters. I was more concerned about stopping the leviathan from getting a power boost than saving the enclave from destruction.

It was kind of hard to figure out how to convey my concern in a way that’d sound like I meant it—and not grudgingly.

Rollick appeared at my bedroom doorway with a glass of lemonade in hand. He set it on the night table next to me and glanced down at the paper I had braced on the cover of my sketchpad on my knee. “Not going so well?”

I made a face. “I don’t think ‘Please don’t let a huge sea serpent eat you, but if you wouldn’t mind falling off a cliff during your escape, I’d appreciate it’ is going to go over the way we’d want.”

The demon chuckled. “That’s a sentiment I fully agree with, though. Do you want me to handle the letter? I’ve conducted an awful lot of negotiations in my time. I know how to keep my less helpful feelings under wraps.”

“No.” I scowled at the paper. “I should do this. I was the one who lived with them for a little while. Who knows if they have some way of telling that a shadowkind wrote it, and then they won’t pay attention at all. I’ll figure it out.”

“Have it your way, sweet sorcerer.” He rumpled my hair teasingly and left me to it.

I scowled at the lemonade too, but gulping some of the sweet-and-sour liquid did revive my spirits a little. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to keep going.

To the members of the sorcerer enclave,

I’m sure you’re aware of the murders of sorcerers that’ve been happening around the world, most recently across the United States. You might also have noticed the news about storms and tidal waves that’ve been battering the coasts here.

All of that destruction has been caused mainly by one vicious, ancient monster who’s set on further ruining our world. I’ve heard from a source I trust that he’s discovered that there’s a group of powerful sorcerers living in Norway and he intends to hunt you down. I have no idea how likely it is that he’ll find you, but for everyone’s safety, I thought you should know so you can relocate before he even has the chance.

We’re doing whatever we can here to stop him and make sure he can’t hurt anyone else. If you hear that the storms have ended, you’ll know it’s safe.

“And then I’ll be heading over there to stop all the crap you’re doing too,” I muttered to myself. I hesitated, and then simply signed the letter as “A concerned ally,” as much as the “ally” part made me wince. Then I added my phone number for good measure with a note that they could call me if they wanted to ask questions to confirm my story. The more opportunity I could give them to believe what I was saying, the better.

And hopefully they’d never realize that their “ally” was the same woman who’d crashed their rites and called a demon straight into their midst a few weeks ago.

I folded the letter and tucked it into the small protective case Rollick had given me for that purpose. We were going to have to send the letter to the enclave in the hands of a shadowkind, because one of them could travel to Norway nearly instantly, way faster than me going by plane and car. And anyway, if I’d shown up at the enclave’s borders again, they’d probably shoot me on sight. They’d already tried to shoot me before, and that was before I’d called on Rollick for help and he’d killed at least two of the sorcerers while rescuing me.

But sending the letter with a shadowkind meant the messenger might face a similarly hostile greeting. It was a dangerous mission, and we didn’t want to risk the message being burned up or shredded in whatever defenses the enclave raised against a supposed intruder. A protective case had seemed like an important precaution.

When I’d decided to take this course of action, I’d asked the beings hanging out around the house for a particularly speedy volunteer. A few had offered their services, and when I stepped out into the yard, the hawk shifter I’d chosen shimmered into human-like physical form. He bobbed his head to me in a distinctly bird-like motion, his sharp eyes fixing on the case. “It’s ready to go?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know Rollick’s already gone over the directions to the enclave with you. Remember, don’t linger there. Just drop the message off at the edge of the boundary, set off the flare, and get away from that place as fast as you can.”

He gave another bob. “I’ll have no interest in sticking around. Shouldn’t take any more than an hour. Happy to be able to pitch in.”

He took the case from my hands and vanished back into the shadows faster than I could blink.

I dragged in a breath and resigned myself to a tense, uncertain wait.

* * *

It didn’t take even a fraction as long as I’d anticipated.

In less than an hour, as promised, the hawk shifter reappeared at the house. His hair was slightly singed, and a scrape marked his jaw, but he’d made it back in one piece.

“They had a lot of beings lurking along the borders,” he reported when I hurried out to meet him. “I couldn’t even get all the way to the edge of their territory. But I flew the letter as close as I could, dropped it, and shifted for long enough to yell at them to bring it to their masters. Hopefully someone listened.”

“Thank you,” I said emphatically, meaning it. “That’s the most I’d have asked from you. If it doesn’t work, it’s their fault, not yours.”

But it’d be the whole world paying for it, not just the enclave.

I paced through the house, wanting to be focusing on figuring out battle strategies but too wound up and distracted to make much progress. I was just simmering down and getting my focus back when my phone rang.

My pulse stuttered. No one had that number who’d be calling in any situation that wasn’t important. I yanked it out of my pocket, took in the unknown number on the screen, and hit the answer button. “Hello?”

“Who is this?” said the caustic male voice on the other end without any preamble.

My throat closed up. I inhaled deeply, groping for my inner calm. The man who’d spoken didn’t need to introduce himself for me to be sure he was one of the enclave’s sorcerers.

“That’s doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is that I know about the enclave and about the monsters who come out of the shadows, and I know that everything I wrote in my letter to you is true. What you do about it is up to you, but I hope you protect yourselves.”

There was a rustling sound and the murmur of breaths, and I realized he wasn’t the only one following this call. “It sounds like her,” someone else muttered in a firm female voice I thought I recognized as belonging to Vera, the sorcerer who’d mentored me during my brief time at the enclave. I hadn’t known for sure that she was even still alive.

She’d been with the bunch who’d caught me at the rites and then tried to hunt me down before Rollick had rushed in to retrieve me.

“Quinn?” she demanded now. “That is you, isn’t it? I can’t think of who else would have known where to send a message like that—or be friendly enough with the fiends to have one deliver it for you.”

I wasn’t sure there was any point in denying it, but her tone didn’t make me particularly inclined to confirm her suspicions either. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter. If you need any more information about what’s happening here in the States or the monster that’s searching for you?—”

“As if we’d listen to anything you’d say after what you already put us through,” she interrupted. “This is probably some new conspiracy with those murderous beasts to get us away from our protections. We’re fine where we are. You can’t scare us into fleeing.”

My spirits sank. “You’ve never dealt with any being like this one before. It’s thousands of years ancient, and it’s already consumed the power of dozens of sorcerers, maybe hundreds.”

“It can’t turn that sorcery on us. We’ll fend the thing off if it makes it here. We aren’t leaving our home. And if we ever find out where you are, you’d better believe you’ll pay for the havoc you already caused.”

The line went dead with a swift thump as if she’d slammed the phone down. I lowered my own from my ear with a heavy heart, my stomach knotting.

Was there some other way I could have delivered the message that they’d have received better? Was the leviathan going to get his potentially world-ending meal because I’d betrayed the enclave already?

Of course, if I’d never gone out there to investigate them, I’d never have known where to send the message to begin with. And witnessing their sick practices had taught me how to increase my own powers to use them for good. So I couldn’t say it would have worked out better the other way.

I’d done the most I was capable of. Now I just had to hope that clearer heads would prevail over there. If they didn’t leave right away, hopefully they’d at least ramp up their security even more. Maybe if one of their enslaved shadowkind sensed the leviathan approaching soon enough, they’d be able to make a run for it and get away before he reached them after all.

Those hesitant hopes didn’t do much to dislodge the lump of uneasiness that’d expanded in my gut. I went back to my laptop, going over the chart I’d created of our main allies and their abilities. I’d been working out possible strategies for keeping the leviathan’s minions busy while Rollick’s human associates put the weapons that would make up his portable “trap” in place.

If we’d had the enclave’s sorcerers on our side for this one thing, between me and them, we probably could have compelled the leviathan straight into the trap and ended all of this. But they wouldn’t even leave the enclave to save their lives. There was obviously no way in hell they’d cross the ocean to purposefully face this creature beside me.

I was still ruminating on the problem when a shout went up outside. Panic jolted through my body. I was up and running to the door, snatching up my crossbow as I went, before I’d even had time to think about what the problem might be.

When I reached the yard, I still couldn’t tell at first. Several of the shadowkind had emerged into physical form, crouched in a ring around something I couldn’t see. Thin wafts of smoke rose up from their midst.

As I hurried over, a few glanced over their shoulders at me. The nearest eased to the side so I could join their circle.

“The injuries are already sealing,” one of them said. “We’ll do what we can to help him recover.”

Those last words reverberated through my head as I found myself gazing down at Torrent: his eyes squeezed shut, his body halfway between its human- and octopus-like forms, twisted in agony. The smoke I’d seen was the essence seeping from multiple breaks in his flesh, drifting away into the open air.