Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
MAL
Burning down the airport had turned out to be a bad call.
What should have been a small expenditure of energy had become a rapidly spiraling shit show when the teen had chosen the very stupid option of not running when the fireworks started.
Instead, they’d screamed fire and hosed Mal down with the nearest fire extinguisher, which had startled him so badly that instead of creating something localized, he’d let out a gout of flame that took out the massive pane of glass looking out onto the airfield and tore off the wing of an idling jet.
While Mal was distracted, the nuns fled in the opposite direction so quickly that Mal didn’t have a chance to feed on their fear before they got out of range.
“Ohmygod. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” The teen shouted right in Mal’s fucking ear. “I’m so sorry, I thought you were on fire. We gotta go before security comes, okay? Follow me; I know a way out that they don’t know about.”
Mal touched a still burning hand to his ringing ear to rub it, and the teen hosed Mal down again with the extinguisher. “Are you insane? You’re going to set your head on fire.”
Mal scowled. “I’m fireproof.” He was almost everything proof. Unfortunately, Mal wasn’t idiot-proof. He was beginning to suspect he’d somehow become an idiot magnet.
“Funny, man. No one’s fireproof,” the teen scoffed as they pulled on Mal’s foam-covered arm. “Come on, it’s this way.”
Mal allowed himself to be pulled, partly from curiosity, but mostly because he was afraid he’d get hosed again if he didn’t.
“You aren’t even wearing fire-retardant clothes,” the teen continued as they dragged Mal into a bathroom and into a stall.
“Um…” Mal began. He was no longer curious. It was definitely time to ditch the weird kid and leave them to fend for themself.
“Unless you’re one of them,” the teen continued as they did something to the wall behind the toilet.
“I can see one of them being fireproof. They do all kinds of things that defy reality. Are you one of them?” Wide eyes peered up at him, innocent and full of wonder.
At least until they got a good look at Mal’s face, then the teen squeaked and huddled away from Mal as far as they could go in the small stall.
Yep. That was the reaction Mal had been waiting for. Honestly, it was surprising it had taken so long for the teen to clue in on the monster they’d been dragging behind him.
“You are one of them,” the teen whispered. Instead of running screaming out of the bathroom, they inched closer to Mal. “Which kind are you?” They showed next to no fear after their initial burst.
What the actual fuck?
Why was Mal’s life like this? Instead of hiding in a smelly airport bathroom with a danger-friendly teenager, Mal could be in Beijing dining on the nightmare that had been gorging itself on Benighted for the past month.
But no. He was back to half-starved because he’d lost his prey and accidentally released all of the fear essence he’d collected from them in that stupid blast.
And he was back to needing to find Clayton ASAP so he wouldn’t starve. After the show he’d just made, he couldn’t afford to do anything showy to gather a meal. Not before he got to Clayton to suck him dry.
This small incident probably wouldn’t flag him because the Guard wouldn’t be concerned with an incident in a norm airport.
They may be the governing force of the Other, but they were ridiculously ignorant when it came to norm matters.
It came from the overabundance of arrogance most organizations developed when they reached a certain level of power.
Mal had no problem with that. It made Mal’s life much easier. All he had to do was live more in the norm world than the magic world, and he was as safe as kittens.
Or at least he would be once he tanked up on Clayton and fucked off back to China.
He just needed to lose his unwanted plus one first.
“It took you until now to figure out I’m not human? As far as I know, norms don’t usually float nuns around and set them on fire with magic. You’re not very good at using your brain, are you?”
Instead of getting offended, the teen shook their head and shrugged. “Not really. It’s broken.”
“That was obvious from the start, but I didn’t expect you to admit it,” Mal grumbled. Things weren’t going his way at all. Was he going to have to hurt this stupid kid to get them to leave him alone?
There was shouting outside the bathroom, and the kid pushed a panel on the wall out of the way and shoved at Mal, hissing, “Get in!”
Mal was so surprised at being manhandled that he complied. Norms didn’t touch Mal. Not ever. He unnerved people too much for them to even consider it, and this kid kept doing it.
The kid joined Mal and closed the panel behind them. “Follow me,” they whispered, slowly navigating the narrow space between walls.
Norm buildings didn’t generally have spaces between walls of this nature. The only places Mal knew of with spaces like this belonged to old mansions and buildings with a resident brownie.
Wait.
Brownie.
Dryer sheets.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Mal should have realized as soon as he smelled the kid.
Why would he, though? It didn’t make any sense for the kid to be a brownie. They didn’t give off any sense of Other, not even the spark of flavor most norms with latent ability radiated. The nervous teen gave off nothing but a sticky-sweet flavor Mal wouldn’t eat if he was starving.
Which he was edging close to, so it wasn’t hyperbole.
“What are you, kid?” Mal asked, as he trailed after them. He lacked a better option to get out of the airport unless he wanted to kill his way out.
“A sociopath.”
Mal snorted. “No, you really aren’t.”
“Don’t judge me by my size. I might surprise you.”
“I highly doubt you’re a sociopath, kid.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I mean, I suppose you could be, but what are the odds of both of us turning out to be one?” Mal was just fucking with the kid now. Partly because it was fun, and partly because he wanted to see if his theory about them was true.
The kid froze and turned around slowly. “You—you’re—”
Mal smiled down at the kid who was working themself up to looking at him. When they finally met his gaze, all color leached from their skin.
“A monster?” Mal asked. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“Are you really a sociopath?” The teen cocked their head to the side and frowned.
“That’s not really a thing, you know. Just ask Doctor Google.”
“Well, no, obviously, but everyone knows what you mean when you say it. So are you?”
Mal snorted instead of answering.
“Are you?” The kid insisted. When Mal gave them his best dead-eyed expression, they said, “No, really. I need to know. Everyone says I am. My foster family, the school, the doctors they send me to… everyone. But I don’t know.
How do you know if you really are the monster everyone makes you out to be? ”
“Kid…”
Something in the kid seemed to snap, and they hissed, “Holly. My name is Holly. Fucking use it.” The kid’s face went cold and empty until they saw that Mal had no reaction to their rudeness. Then they softened a little and asked, “What’s yours?”
“None of your business.” Mal decided to let Holly see firsthand why he wasn’t bothered by rudeness. Manners? Who’s that? Mal didn’t know her.
“Fine! If even the monsters don’t want me, I guess I’ll just go fuck myself and let everyone else be happy without me around.” Holly looked exhausted, like they’d been scared and angry for far too long.
Oh, for the gods’ sake. Mal wasn’t even getting paid for this shit. What the fuck ever.
“It’s Mal,” he said gruffly.
Holly snorted. “Mal the monster? Nice.”
Mal rolled his eyes and made a shooing motion to Holly. “Keep moving, asshole. You can question me until we’re out of the airport. Then we part ways, and we pretend like this never happened.”
“Really?” The faint shimmer in Holly’s hopeful eyes all but confirmed Mal’s suspicions about Holly’s ancestry.
“Don’t make it weird,” Mal warned.
“I won’t! Zero weirdness. This is amazing, by the way.
None of the other folks like you will even talk to me.
I’m so happy I got harassed by those nuns.
This is the best day ever.” Holly bounced as they returned to making their way through the space Mal was at least fifty percent certain was a creation of Holly’s that they weren’t aware of.
“It’s certainly a day, all right,” Mal sighed.
“Okay. Questions… questions… Oh! I’ve got one. What does being a monster feel like?”
“I don’t know. What does the color blue feel like?” Mal reflected the question because it was inane as fuck.
He could keep it up all day. It would be good practice for when he finally met up with Clayton again. He was going to rile Clayton up as much as monsterly possible before he ate him. It could be dinner and a show.
Holly was unfazed and changed tactics. “My social worker told me that my inability to bond with any of my foster families or make friends is due to my antisocial personality disorder. My shrink says I have emotions, but I don’t have them about people. Do you have emotions about people?”
Mal’s mind immediately went to an incredibly vexing redhead. “Sometimes.”
“What kind of emotions?”
Hmmm… What kind indeed?
“Confusing ones.”
“How so?”
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. It wasn’t like Mal cared if he traumatized Holly with the truth. He was never going to see them again, so why not? “There’s a person I know who I want to eat…” Mal stopped, unsure of what he was trying to say. It was a complicated situation.
Holly nodded encouragingly. “Go on. I listen, and I don’t judge.”
Pfft. What was judgment? Could Mal eat it? No. Then why should he care about such petty concepts?
“I want to eat him, but I also want to piss him off.”
“That sounds like you don’t like him. I mean, that’s an emotion, I guess, but it doesn’t sound confusing.”
“…I want him to like it when I do it.” Mal stopped himself. He was getting too real for comfort, and he didn’t owe Holly anything real.
“Kinky,” Holly said with a smirk. “Now we’re talking. Have you felt that way before?”
Mal shrugged. No, he hadn’t, but it was none of Holly’s business.
“Suit yourself. I’ve never felt anything like that. I don’t feel anything for anyone at all. I don’t like or dislike people. I don’t find myself gravitating toward anyone in particular, but I do have people I avoid because they’re unpleasant to be around. People are just… people.”
“Do you want to hurt them if they upset you?” Mal certainly did.
“No.”
“Why not?” Mal already knew why, but he wanted to hear Holly say it anyway.
“Because they don’t matter. They aren’t a part of my life. It’s just better for people to stay away from each other if they don’t get along.”
“What if they are a part of your life?”
“I… I don’t know. No one has ever been a part of it. It’s always just been me dealing with everyone else.”
“You’ve never liked anyone?”
“No.”
“Has anyone ever given you a reason to?”
There was a long silence from Holly, and, for a while, Mal thought they were going to lead him the rest of the way out of the airport without any further conversation. Finally, Holly said, “You did.”
Mal’s brain made a noise like a record scratch. What was happening? Whatever it was, it had better not be.
“I did nothing for you, Holly. I harassed some nuns because I was hungry. You just happened to be there.”
“You could have picked any time to go after them. You could have waited until they had the cops come and drag me to their nun cave. But you didn’t. You stopped them, and you tried to get me to leave. That’s niceness, asshole. Deal with it.”
Mal didn’t respond, but the ground hissing as it corroded away under his feet spoke volumes. Some people’s cheeks flushed in anger. Mal caused involuntary property damage.
“You were nice to me, and you didn’t have to be,” Holly added softly.
“Well, don’t expect it to happen again,” Mal grumbled. To make sure he got his point across, he added, “And don’t be annoying or I’ll eat you.”
For some strange reason, a smile flickered across Holly’s face. “I’ll do my best.”