My Monster’s Song (My Monsterverse #2)

Chapter 1

Mei

Past

The deadly silence around me is a warning scream telling me I’m screwed.

With desperation born from the desire to live, I force my lungs to move slowly, curling my body into a stillness that only comes from a lifetime of being hunted.

The wind stirs small bits of debris, shifting it in whorls before snatching it away.

Something died not far from here; the sweet smell of decay lingers, thick and heavy, a warning of what complacency or bad luck gets you.

I press my fingertips to the earth, feeling for telltale vibrations or echoes in the rock that can help me see through this endless dark I live in.

Every single part of me responds to the danger from years of conditioning. Days and nights of running and using every trick I know to fight and escape with my life has me exhausted. Maybe this is the time I don’t make it. Maybe this time, he will have me.

The song gets louder, coming from every corner of the world, filling it, consuming it.

This music! No one else can hear it; I’ve checked with the other monsters.

But it calls to me, distracts me, and that is dangerous for a monster that is barely surviving.

I don’t have the strength to fight off a lot of the more dangerous creatures that live in Nightmare. To them, I am weak, I am food.

I’m ripped down memory lane, picturing the one person I would give anything to see.

I remember my mother but just barely. She had hair with highlights that shone red like blood, and it hung down to her mid-back.

She would get me to brush it with my fingers, which were so much like hers.

She never could explain why we didn’t have talons like everyone else.

My mother was human, and that made us both weak in this world.

My sire was…something else. But my mother kept me with her as long as she could, teaching me as much as she knew.

She used to sing. I haven’t heard music since she walked out of our cave and didn’t come home. Until not long ago when this booming song burst into the world, travelling through water.

Inescapable.

Like a summons, it throbs in the air now.

“Healer,” a dark and gravelly voice says with a menacing and eerie warble. It’s so sudden and quiet that I almost second guess hearing it.

I tense and crouch down smaller, sniffing the air.

My whiskers help me feel the world that I can no longer see.

Just hearing his voice has my empty sockets aching.

The phantom pains return, his fingers digging into my skull and tearing my eyeballs from my head.

I can still hear the pop sound they made when he consumed them.

I reach up and grab the tattered veil twisted around my horns and bring it over my face to cover, to hide. It’s a mask and a defense.

Not much of one, but it helps me pretend.

“Rowanee,” he stretches out the word as he gets closer. A whisper of malevolence in the air. A sound so horrifying that even the bugs stop humming. The wind ceases to move. The world holds its breath.

Deux is a monster in a world of monsters.

A hunter with relentless obsession. His skill and strength are only surpassed by the Grim, the Nightmare King and the Prince of Sorrows.

And ever since the day I got away, he’s been on my tail, trying to recapture me so he can consume me like he does all the other poor souls who cross his path.

He might actually get to do that this time. I’m backed up between a proverbial rock and a larger rock with only sweeping heated plains in front of me. I can feel the wind telling me nothing but sand and warmth is there. The lack of moisture will kill someone like me.

I have nowhere to go.

The wind sears my body, but I feel cold inside.

I try to picture the space around me, feeding the tiny details into it.

The cool of the rocks behind me, the trickle of fetid water into a fairly deep but stagnant pool, the sun like a furnace beating down on me.

I can hear leaves, but not just any leaves, dry leaves that rustle against each other.

The Ireneaille Tree.

I snap my head in that direction. The tree spits out poison barbs at anyone who gets close and almost always has a thick network of roots that grow over and in water.

I run my fingers over my arm until the rune I need heats.

With one quick sniff of my surroundings, I sketch the rune in the air.

Heat and magic lift the hairs on my arms in a tingling wave that presses into me like the memory of my mother’s warm hugs.

The world throbs, and I know it’s worked.

I dart towards the tree, stepping carefully down into the water, trying to leave as little movement on the surface as possible.

I move quietly but surely and sink down until I’m completely submerged, then I pull myself under the roots and lie there.

Waiting to live.

Waiting to die.

Everything is still. Long, terrible moments pass; every second could be my last. My lungs are burning, ready to burst, but I hold on, trying desperately not to let the air out and give away my location.

I think he’s gone; I'm almost certain of it.

My grip on the roots loosens, and I slide out towards the surface.

A hand slices through the water, dispersing it, bringing a sick taste of decay in the water. I shift to the side, only just missing the grasping claws as the tip runs along the side of my throat.

I thrash, trying to get away, but to where? There’s nowhere to go. After all this time and all these years, he’s finally got me. Well, I won’t go down without a fight.

The song screams in my ears louder than ever, the water sloshes, his claws stab down, and I can’t hear anything but that sound.

I let out a loud scream underwater, bubbles escaping from my lungs.

The pool gets deeper and colder. I’m grabbed and pulled backwards, away from the horrible taint of Deux.

The force of that pull is so strong that I couldn’t stop it if I tried.

The world rushes, roaring, and then I’m thrown up into a brine-filled sky, and when I land, it’s on cold, wet sand that smells of salt and nothing like the world I know.

“Ow,” I moan and sit up. Where am I?

The roar of something louder than anything I’ve ever heard has me scrambling backwards. I let out a scream as it gets closer and closer, then it slams against the ground in front of me. Salty water sprays my face.

I try to imagine how big that would have had to have been to make that sound, but it’s impossible.

Another one comes roaring towards me, and I stumble back, tripping over something laying in my path. As soon as I put my hand out, I collide with soft skin over hard muscles. Warmth, movement, life.

It's alive, though not for long, but it is alive. I snatch my hand back and inhale, trying to catch a scent.

Clear water, salt, brine, rot, decay, and this creature that smells like something fresh, mysterious. Something that makes my mouth water and my heart move faster. Dragon fruit. I haven’t smelled it in ten cycles or more. I lean down, inhaling deeply. Is this creature food?

I don’t want to eat it.

How strange.

It stirs and grabs at my arm. Fingers like mine wrapping around my wrist, his grip impossibly hard. No talons. I wait for spikes, spines, poison, but he just holds me.

He? Yes, this is him. I reach out and run my fingers over that hand, feeling the veins and tendons, the strength he still has despite how close to death he lingers.

“Kill me, then,” he spits out, and my head snaps up as if I’ve been struck.

His voice.

His voice, even weak, births this tendril of warmth unfurling inside me. I want to lean down and sniff him, to lick his skin and see if that scent is there. I want to hear him talk a million words for a million years.

Kill him?

It’s not something I could do, even if I wanted to now.

His voice is one of the singers in the song. I know this creature. I have been listening to him, learning him. How could I kill him?

He’s dying.

The sudden realisation that his song is ending leaves me bereft.

No, it can’t end. It wouldn’t be the same without him.

I have to save him.

“They call me The Healer,” I say to him in a language that is common in Nightmare. “I can save you.”

I sit back, getting into a comfortable position, and then I reach out, hesitating before I put a hand on his clammy skin. Poison is working its way towards his heart. I can’t see the world, but my runes allow me to see what others can’t. The rot, his heart, the infection.

I can fix this. The poison is well known in Nightmare and an easy cure, just long and laborious.

“What is your name?” I ask him hesitantly. I haven’t spoken my mother’s tongue in many years. The words come out stilted and with an accent my mother never had.

He hesitates, and I can feel his surprise in the air. “Lirin. In my language, it means fierce song,” there’s a pause, and then he snarls. “I will never give in to the likes of you.”

I hum, thinking that over. Truthfully, I don’t want to see him die, even though he might hate me. I am all about trusting my instincts, and they are insisting on me saving this one. I have to trust them; that’s how I survived where I come from. If you don’t, you end up dead or missing eyes.

I shift my weight until I’m in a crouch over him, straddling his chest.

“This is going to hurt, Lirin, that means fierce song,” I whisper, stumbling over the strange words.

“Do it, then. I am prepared to die with honour.”

Strange. I’m not sure what he means, but he sounds strong, like a fighter. This is good. I am pleased.