Rainer
Compassion isn’t a weakness. It’s what separates us from monsters. But do not let compassion cloud your judgment, or it can kill you.
My hand tightly grips Kaida’s feather-fur as we rush forward. Everything slows down for half a beat as we rush in, and I hear nothing but the loud bum bum of my pulse in my ears.
Since the day my parents were murdered by monsters, I’ve searched for them. I knew I’d die. There was no question about it. Still, I searched for the monsters that took my parents from me and left me behind.
Why was I still alive when everyone I knew and loved had been taken from me? Why didn’t you kill me too? I want answers. I want to scream at them until they tell me despite knowing they aren’t actually going to give me the answers I demand.
They’d kill me.
I’ve been walking toward death since that day. Ready. Terrified. Knowing it’s coming. My life would end as abruptly as theirs did—just because I’m not a monster too.
But as I near this group of monsters—the source of the painful screams—fear grips me tightly. I can’t inhale more than tiny, shallow breaths, so I grip Kaida tighter.
What was I thinking? I don’t want to die, and that possibility seems far more likely the closer we go. The clearer they become.
They aren't much bigger than me, but they aren’t human.
Some of them are stretched disproportionately, half-man, half-animal.
There is a wolf hybrid monster with salivating teeth.
One of them has monstrous talons, like an enormous bird of prey.
Red eyes. Glowing eyes. Black eyes. Long, sharp teeth. Scales. Gray skin.
There are eight or ten of them. There’s blood covering the cement floor of the garage, and the air smells like blood and death. Screams still vibrate through the room around me as if the walls are replaying what they’ve seen.
The slow minute drags right until the beam of sunlight tears across the ground in front of me, carving a burning black line into the concrete.
When I release Kaida, it feels like she grows three times her size.
Her growl mixes with a hiss as she leaps into the air and lands with claws extended, sinking into her target.
It screams angrily, trying to pull her off. She buries teeth much larger than I’ve ever seen into his neck and tears roughly.
Bile rises into my throat, and I nearly gag when she pulls away a massive hunk of his neck.
Blood sprays everywhere. I have only a second to react before one of them comes after me.
It’s bulky but oddly arranged. Its chest looks lopsided, one shoulder higher than the other.
It’s deformed, hunkered down, and charging me like a bull.
I question a lot of my life choices right now. What had I been thinking, hunting monsters that can turn into that? What chance did I have? I’m not a blood-thirsty human like those a hundred years ago who hunted and tortured monsters just because they could.
If nothing else, my stomach isn’t built for this kind of gore.
However, I’ve learned one thing very clearly in the last two minutes. I don’t want to die.
Smart or stupid, I run at him as well, but when I get within a couple feet, I drop to the ground. His legs slam into me. It hurts, like logs made of boulders are crushing into my bones. I gasp with the pain, but I don’t let it overtake me.
He does exactly what I hoped he would. He rolls over me, having had his legs taken out from under him. I scramble to my feet and drive my blade into his chest, over and over and over.
After perhaps the dozenth stabbing, I pull my blade back and get to my feet. My entire body is covered in chills as I stare down at this monster. This is exactly the kind of thing we’re told about growing up. This is a monster.
I take a step back. Once I’m convinced he’s dead and won’t suddenly lurch to his feet as soon as my back is turned, I look around. Right in time to see Drystan turn into a pincushion and impale the monster who tried to trap him in a bear hug. Dozens of steely blade-like spikes cover Drystan’s body.
If he weren’t already saturated in blood, he is now. The monster who’d tried to take him is instantly covered in his own life juice.
My eyes catch on a slab where there’s a body splayed out. My entire body becomes covered in goosebumps at the hint of what I’m seeing.
Please tell me that’s not a… sacrifice? Before I can convince myself otherwise, my feet are bringing me in that direction until I’m standing over the man stretched out on a stainless steel surface.
His chest has already been torn open, maybe skinned, and that skin has been replaced with flesh that doesn’t belong to a human.
There’s a scaly patch. A fuzzy patch. One that looks gray and dead, textured, like it’s decaying right there.
The skin sewn into his isn’t the worst part.
His gut has been neatly sliced open, as if by a scalpel, and part of his guts are arranged outside of his body.
He’s bleeding freely, though it oozes more than runs.
Based on the way his skin shows all his bones, I have a feeling that he’s very low on blood.
His eyes stare blankly at the ceiling, but his chest rises gently. Falls. I’m shocked to find him still alive. They must have kept him alive to torture him. What else can this be?
I nearly jump out of my skin when something tugs on my pant leg. I stumble backward as a small hand retreats under the table where the man is spread out. It’s not a solid base. It’s not a base of cabinets. It’s sitting on top of a fucking cage, and there are children inside it.
This one has long, snarled, dirty hair and big green eyes. There’s unmistakable terror in their eyes.
I’m shoved forward, nearly toppling onto the gutted man. It’s my own gut-twisted stomach that has me recoiling and shifting awkwardly so I don’t. My body curls, making my head slam into the edge of the table.
White-hot light flashes before my eyes. I’m not quite on the floor yet when something painful presses to my cheek. No. Maybe not presses but slides by. Cuts?
Yep, that must be it. I can now feel blood dripping down my cheek.
I’m pressed up against the cage, and little hands pull me closer. I’m disoriented, so I don’t have the reflexes to pull away. It isn’t until I feel a brush of something just missing my face that I realize they don’t mean me harm. They’re trying to get me out of the way.
My vision clears, though my head still throbs. Kaida is dragging the monster away from me by his leg, snarling and shaking her head. I hear the distinct sound of a bone snapping before the monster screams in pain and fury.
“Thanks,” I murmur, unsure whether it’s for Kaida or the children.
I need to be better at paying attention to my surroundings. Giving my back to a room filled with monsters set on killing us is just stupid.
Pulling myself up so I’m sitting on my ass, I lean my back against the bars of the cage. My head spins. A throbbing pain thrums through my temple. Fuck.
“Where does it hurt?” a quiet voice asks.
“His head,” another answered.
I don’t get a chance to answer either of them. Cold fingers touch the side of my head, and before I can so much as flinch, a soothing, cool river gently flows through my brain. The throbbing that’s making my vision bounce with each pulse eases until it’s entirely gone. The pain disappears.
These aren’t human kids. They’re monsters. They’re…
Shivering, I sit forward and twist to look at them. Now that I’m closer and on their level, I can see that they’re human shaped but very obviously not human.
There are half a dozen of them in the cage.
“Thank you.”
The one who touched me gives me a shy smile.
I look around me before sliding away to examine the cage. As if it would be as easy as opening the door, I stupidly tug on it. “Where’s the key?”
Three of them point. “That one has it.”
It’s a dismembered body that they’re pointing at. Great. I’m quickly realizing that I don’t have the stomach for this shit. Nodding, I carefully get to my feet, prepared to sway and lose my balance. I don’t. Magic hands healed me.
I’m reminded of Slade, the “glow stick” from Base 6, who my monsters brought me to so he could heal my ankle. What did they call him? Nephilim?
With the toe of my boot, I nudge the pieces of the monster that I think Kaida has disassembled based on the teeth marks.
Then again, as I glance up, I find Drystan with some wicked-looking teeth too.
Notto’s here now, and I watch as he pulls a monster’s head from his shoulders with his bare hands.
Part of the man’s fucking spine follows.
I look away. Nope. Not for me. I’m going to release the children. Maybe.
I’m still digging through body parts when a shadow falls over me. I roll away, grabbing my blade and holding it up. If they fall on me, they’re going to get a bloody knife through their chest.
Keary grins. “What’re you doing, precious?” He reaches down and hauls me to my feet like I’m little more than a rag doll.
“Looking for the key to the cage,” I tell him.
“Cage?” he asks warily, head tilting to the side.
I shift and point to the cage where the kids are lined up against the bars, watching me.
Drystan is standing over the man on top. I wince when he snaps the man’s neck, killing him.
“It’s a much kinder death than what he’s lived through already,” Keary says gently. “Trust me when I tell you there isn’t a chance that we’d get him to a point where he’d live in peace again.”
Notto crouches beside the cage, frowning at the kids. “How did you get here?”
I’m surprised when one rolls their eyes. “The same way the humans did. We were stolen.”
Notto looks at Keary, and something passes between them.
Drystan shoves Notto until he gets to his feet. “Pull the cover off, big boy.”
Notto inclines his head, and Drystan takes a step back. “Move away from the bars,” Notto tells the children. They scramble back, but the cage isn’t very deep. There’s only a short distance they can go.
I gape as he heaves the tabletop—cooling corpse still on top—and it comes away. A pinging snap sounds, one after another, as the bars give way, either remaining embedded in the floor or clinging to the top of the table. The corpse rolls off, making me wince.
My stomach churns when the tabletop lands on the dead body of the tortured human.
“The dead deserve more care than that,” I say, pulling away from Keary to get the man out from under the top of the heavy table. “He’s a victim. Not one of the monsters.”
“Sorry,” Notto says, meeting me around the back of the cage and pulling the tabletop off him. “We’ll dig him a grave.”
I don’t answer as I hover over the body, unable to bring myself to touch him. A small hand rests on my shoulder, and I look up into the face of one of the kids. There’s no way they’re more than five or six.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
They give me a small smile. “You can’t save his life,” they say in a tone that’s wise beyond their years. “Mourn for him, but don’t let the sorrow make you blind to life.”
I huff. “You sound like you’re eighty,” I mutter, looking back at the corpse. This was someone’s son. Someone’s friend. Maybe someone’s lover and father. It’s a very unfair loss of life.
“I’m not,” the kid says, “but I’ve seen enough to know some things.” They tug on my arm until I get up. “Thanks for saving us.”
“What were they doing here?” Drystan asks as he watches the other kids walk through the gaps in the bars that came away with the top.
“Their end goal?” the oldest of the kids asks, shaking their head. “Dunno. This might be surprising, but they weren’t interested in telling us what they were doing.”
“Smart ass,” Keary notes, grinning.
The kid shrugs. “We were taken specifically for what we can do.” They nod toward one crouched on the ground. “Missa heals.” They both look at me, and I realize that Missa is the one who fixed my head. I smile, grateful.
“The humans?” the oldest asks and shrugs again. “I’ve spent my time here trying to piece it together as a means to make the days go by and drown out the screams, but I don’t have an answer.”
“They’re trying to successfully combine a human and a monster,” Missa says. “It’s the why we don’t know.”
“Are there others here? Other humans? Other monsters?” Notto asks.
All six children nod.
“There are,” the oldest says. “I don’t know where, but when they kill one, they immediately have another to replace them with.”
My body feels cold. Is this what it felt like to live in this world a century ago? Hunted by monsters. Torn apart so they could reconstruct you. Forced to live through it, even when you prayed for death.
It’s too horrible to fathom. Too awful to imagine. Is there really any wonder why humans are afraid of monsters? That old resentment begins to build in my chest again, but then the image of Leema—the water monster who’d been tortured by humans for ages—flashes before my eyes.
The truth is obvious. There’s no difference between humans and monsters. Both are capable of true evil, and everyone is their victim. Members of their own kind right alongside members of other species.
Your genetics don’t make you superior. It’s how you treat another living being.
“How about you and Kaida hang out with the kids?” Keary offers, his thumb gently brushing against my cheek. “See what you can learn from them, okay? Maybe grab a shovel and we’ll dig a grave for this innocent man.”
I’m torn between wanting to help them and knowing that I don’t have the stomach for it. In the end, I nod. “Yeah. Okay. Be careful.”
He smirks. “I think I’m growing on you, precious.
” His lips press against mine, and I’m guessing he feels how shaken I am when my hands dig into his shirt, not wanting to let him go.
Keary’s arms wrap around me, holding me to him for a minute.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, lips against my ear. “We’ll keep you safe. Promise.”