Chapter 35
“Despite their harmless outer appearance, Jackalopes are known to be hostile. However, the lack of proper behavioral documentation has made it difficult to gage just how much of a danger they pose to the general public.”
Jaws and Maws: A Study of Carnivorous Cryptids by Makenna Petera
After a few moments of blessed quiet, she heard a rustle near Nic’s side of the fire. Alexys didn’t bother to look up from where she’d tucked her head against her knees. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her miserable expression.
“You better be here to apologize,” she said into her soggy jeans. “Otherwise, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Of course not,” Nic replied. He sounded like he was a bit further away than his seat by the fire, and his voice had an odd lilt to it.
“Are you allergic to apologies? Because I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one from you.”
“Of course not,” he said again, in the same strange drawl.
Alexys looked up to see what his problem was but he wasn’t there. Instead, sitting near the edge of the shelter, half-shrouded by the forest’s oppressive darkness, was a rabbit.
Alexys stiffened. This wasn’t an ordinary rabbit. Why should it be? That would be too easy. This rabbit had light gray fur and was roughly the size of a dog. But strangest of all was the pair of delicate antlers perched behind its bright red eyes.
Alexys stared at bunny. Only, it wasn’t a bunny at all. It was a Jackalope.
While it was true that she knew very little about the monsters in the world, she did know what Jackalopes looked like because of a video Elliot had sent her two months prior.
Albeit extremely shaky thanks to some shoddy camerawork, the extremely excited narration Elliot gave her had documented the characteristics of the creature fairly well.
Gray fur, three or four times the size of a normal rabbit, and a pair of antlers on its head.
Alexys couldn’t remember anything else about them.
Rabbits were usually fairly docile animals and tended to avoid humans in the wild, so it stood to reason that Jackalopes were most likely the same.
The delicate antlers were reminiscent of a deer, which were also skittish and known herbivores.
Putting the two together, Alexys thought with confidence, a Jackalope would be the same.
A double dose of timid. Dyre could use some of that.
Grinning at her own joke, she admired the creature in front of her.
The Jackalope hopped a bit closer and stopped just inside the mouth of the cave. Its gray fur glowed in the dim firelight, raindrops shining as they dripped from delicate whiskers.
“Dyre is missing out,” she whispered. “You’re beautiful.”
“A compliment?” The words came from the Jackalope’s mouth, but they were said in Nic’s voice.
A chill brushed over her skin, and Alexys laughed nervously. “That’s a neat little trick you’ve got there.”
“Did you pack food?” it asked.
The Jackalope was, thankfully, staying on its side of the fire.
She tried not to think about how long it had been following them to be able to almost perfectly emulate Nic’s voice.
It was, admittedly, quite disturbing to see its mouth drop open and hear a distinctly human voice come out.
Nothing in her reports from her Wardens could have prepared her for that level of strange.
“Are you hungry?” Alexys retrieved her purse from beside her to dig through it. “I’m not sure if I have anything you can eat.” She looked up from the bag and froze.
The creature’s mouth unzipped before her eyes.
Flesh split along a jagged line of bleeding skin from one side of its skull to the other until it was nearly split in half.
Its jaw dropped open to reveal rows upon rows of gnarled, razorsharp teeth and a saliva-dripping tongue that was far too long for a normal rabbit.
Red eyes gleamed malicious and hungry in the firelight.
Alexys shrieked and threw herself backward as the demonic rabbit launched itself at her.
She scrambled back, screaming for Nic, trying to find anything she could use to defend herself.
She’d managed to move her hand just in time to see the Jackalope’s salivating jaws snap shut over her purse.
Its red eyes glimmered with such malice that Alexys couldn’t help the whimper that slipped past her lips.
It grinned at her, she swore the beast grinned, and then bounded away into the darkness, taking her purse with it.
Alexys tipped forward, a belated and half-hearted attempt to grab her bag, but the creature was too fast. She landed roughly on both palms, staring open-mouthed after the Jackalope.
Nic emerged from the depths of the cave, his eyes fixed where the creature vanished into the still falling rain.
“I take back what I said before,” Nic said, voice incredulous, arms crossed over his chest. “The Jackalope population increase might not be an anomaly.”
Tears made Alexys’s vision swim. She’d just lost her purse, her wallet, her notebook, her house keys and the keys to the rental car, as well as all the receipts from the trip.
The Finance Department was going to own her ass for the next century.
She groaned and dropped her face into her hands.
Things just kept going from bad to worse.
“They’re much larger than anticipated, as well,” Nic carried on. He looked down at her and asked, “Do you have a spare notepad? I’d like to write down my observations for future reference.”
Lifting her face from her hands, Alexys stared up at him, unable to fully understand what he was saying. A dull ringing started up in her ears, and her chest tightened.
Misunderstanding her expression, he explained, “I’d like to add them to the R&C research file on Jackalopes.”
“I don’t give a singular damn about your research, Dyre.” She pointed in the direction the Jackalope had vanished, her voice becoming louder and shriller as she spoke. “That demonic creature just unhinged its jaws like a snake and ate my purse.”
Nic’s lips pressed into a thin line in what she hoped for his sake wasn’t an attempt to prevent laughter. “Well, that’s unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?!” Alexys screeched as she launched to her feet. “My whole life was in that bag! Thank God my phone was in my pocket, or it would’ve eaten that, too!”
Nic took a step back and tried to joke, “I’m not sure they could eat a cell phone, that’s silly.”
That did it. That threw a gallon of gasoline on the proverbial fire inside her. She let a scream of frustration leak through her clenched teeth. Alexys shoved her hands into her hair, gripping the roots tightly to keep from throttling him.
“Of all the stupid, asinine—”
“Those are synonyms,” he pointed out.
“I’m going to strangle you!” Alexys must have looked serious because Nic took several quick steps out of arm’s reach. “In fact, maybe I should! The office would thank me for it.”
He put his hands on his hips like a disappointed mother. “I think you need to take a deep breath, Keane. I don’t like your tone.”
“And I don’t like your face,” she retorted. It was a blatant lie given how much she had been staring at his face just a few hours before, but it was the best she could come up with given her distress.
He had the audacity to roll his eyes. “That’s a weak comeback, even from you.”
“You really do bring out the worst in me!”
“Somehow, I don’t think I’ve truly seen your worst yet.” She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult, so she settled on her default reaction to his every provocation: firing right back.
“You’re a heartless, egotistical bastard, Dyre,” she spat.
“On the contrary, I think you like my overwhelming confidence, Keane.” Nic started to walk around the fire toward her. Really, it was more of a prowl, but she didn’t want to look at him. “And I’ll tell you what else. I think you enjoy taking your anger out on me.”
“If you know what’s good for you, Dyre, you’ll stay on that side of the fire,” Alexys growled.
He smiled. “Or what? We both know you’re all bark and no bite.”
You’re insufferable!” She threw her hands up in exasperation.
“Wait, Keane, you’re bleeding,” Nic said, any hint of teasing vanishing. Alexys looked down at hands, which were, in fact, bleeding.
Just perfect.
She’d felt the pain, sharp and immediate, when she’d gone for the purse, but she’d managed to forget about it in the panic of the moment.
Nic sighed.
Pain sang through her fingers and made Alexys hiss and ball both fists against her chest.
“The purse,” she murmured, “I went for it.”
“Are you always this stupid?” Nic glared at her. “You can’t engage with a creature like that. It’s antagonistic.”
She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t intend to fight it. Don’t be so dramatic.”
He returned her glare with equal force. “You’ve already done more than enough to prove how erratic and unstable you are.”
She lunged for his shirt front and pulled Nic toward her before he could back away again.
Alexys stepped in close, one hand clutching his shirt, mentally cursing him for being so tall.
Unfortunately, she had not considered just how strong he was, and he made easy work of removing her hand and entrapping both of her wrists within his own.
“Worried I’ll maul that pretty face of yours, huh? I didn’t realize scholars could be so delicate.”
His eyes darted back and forth between hers, close enough to see the specks of gold.
“We’re fragile, basement-dwelling creatures.”
Whether it was the softness of his voice or the tension in her calves from standing on her toes, Alexys became suddenly aware of the position they were in: standing much too close, her hands in his.
She rocked back onto her heels at the same moment a peel of thunder ripped through the sky.
It echoed against the rock and pulled a yelp of alarm from her.