Chapter 9
We raced through the trees, following the screams for help. Only a few feet away, around the bend, we found the monster with Drew’s thigh in his mouth, slowly pulling him into the water. Drew clawed at the mud as he tried to hold on, but the mud slid with him.
The screams of his team echoed from deeper in the woods. They abandoned him to save their own skins. I couldn’t even see who he was with. They were long gone.
The monster’s eyes locked on me, shaking his head back and forth as if to say that’s what he wanted to do to me instead.
Shannon and I each grabbed a shoulder and Drew howled in agony, “It’s going to rip my leg off.”
We slid across the mud as the monster pulled all of our combined weights like we were nothing. I grabbed a bush as we passed it, but it only took one yank from the creature and the branch snapped in my hand.
“We can’t stop him!” Shannon yelled.
Fuck.
I reached back to my bag for my heavy-duty flashlight and licked my suddenly dry lips. Did I really have the gall to try my luck for a fourth time with this thing?
A squeal from Drew and the sickening rip of flesh made that decision for me.
I scrambled to my feet, almost slipping in the mud in my haste, and raised my weapon high above my head, ready to knock the creature out. As I swung the light downwards, something grabbed a hold of my nerves, and I stopped inches above his head.
Do it.
But instead of finishing the swing, my hands trembled as they stayed in place and my muscles locked as if I had a cramp.
You can do it, Talia.
Fear clenched my stomach, and the visual of the monster’s head bashed in threatened to make me vomit. My thoughts recoiled from the vision, as if I should care if this thing was hurt or not.
I inhaled as deep as I could. He’s a monster. I had to do what needed to be done. Survival, nothing personal.
I lifted the weapon high again and attempted to swing downwards a second time. Only for me to stop in the exact same spot as before.
My hands shook. Fuck.
You can’t hurt us.
Where did that thought even come from? That wasn’t me. The place in my chest that hadn’t felt right since I touched that nest clutched my heart painfully, threatening to squeeze me.
Why? Self betrayal bubbled in my chest and made me want to growl at him the way he did to me.
“Hit him!” Shannon screamed.
My mouth opened to answer, but my voice refused to come out. I can’t.
I can’t do it.
Still no matter how much I willed my bones and muscles to finish the job, they remained frozen. This piece of shit.
I’d never failed to survive before, and I wouldn’t start now. Not with so much to fight for. I wouldn’t die here, when I was on the edge of freedom.
Not at the hands of this freak.
The fucker’s eyes smirked at me like he knew I wasn’t a threat to him, even hovering over him wielding heavy duty metal.
Think, Talia.
How could he possibly be so confident? He should be doing something to keep me from interfering.
I’d punched the expression right off his face, if I thought it would accomplish something other than breaking my hand. It made a thought finally click. I’d shoved him. Granted it didn’t do anything, but I was able to do it.
And other than a little man-handling, he hadn’t taken any action against me. In fact, I hadn’t been his target at all earlier.
Why? He was clearly stronger and faster. I was a threat to his home. He should eliminate me.
All the times I’d pissed him off, and he’d basically walked away, suddenly made sense. I couldn’t hurt him any more than he could harm me.
That left a lot of questions on why and how, but that wasn’t important. Getting Drew out of this is what mattered.
I hadn’t failed. I needed to pivot.
Tossing the flashlight to the side, I straddled on top of the monster’s back. He bucked back, surprised I sat on him, and almost flung me off.
Drew screamed since the monster never let him go. Skin ripped off his thigh like it was nothing and hot, wet blood spurted over all my face and chest. All I could smell was the distinct tang of metal. Bone crushing reached my ears, and I had to forcefully hold my stomach down.
Not now. Survive now. Cry later.
I aimed for the monster’s nostrils, but each time he jerked his head back, redirecting all my focus on simply hanging on. It wasn’t until the third try that I jammed a finger in each nostril, all the way up to the third knuckle.
He attempted to blow air out and panicked when he couldn’t inhale. Immediately forcing him to release his hold on Drew’s leg, and threw his weight back with enough force to send me flying through the air.
I sank for a minute, before the force of a torpedo slammed past me. It felt like running into a wall, and all my air came out in a slew of bubbles. I could assume that was his way of telling me how much he appreciated my stunt.
I swam for the surface and back to land as Shannon pulled Drew further away from the edge. Something knocked into me, but I couldn’t see through the water.
It was him.
I waited for him to try again, let him get close, and wrapped my arms around his snout. He picked me up above the water.
“Fuck off,” I told him.
His response was to slam me into the water in a way that made every inch of my body scream in agony. He went still in the water beside me and grunted as if he was the injured one. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t question it.
I knew an escape chance when I saw one.
Once I was back on dry land, it took the edge off my nerves. I rushed to Shannon to help her. “It’s not enough.”
Because now he was pissed.
“I know.” She whimpered.
I ducked under Drew’s other shoulder, and we carted him away deeper in the trees. Even though I knew that wouldn’t really help. But if we continued this in the water, we were done for.
Besides, if I died by drowning, I was going to personally haunt everyone.
Drew was in shock, muttering unintelligently to himself and didn’t help carry his weight at all.
“Talia!” a deep guttural voice echoed and bounced off the trees, shaking something deep within me.
The natural swamp sounds went silent as if not even the birds wanted to be heard.
I smothered the gasp under my hand, and Shannon froze in place.
If there had been anything on my bladder, I would have pissed myself. “You can’t hide from me, Witch.”
Somehow that was worse than his feral silence.
“I’ll let you keep the girl, but you can’t keep the boy.” How could his voice be so clear and succinct, yet so animalistic?
The sound of twigs breaking reached my ears, and we ducked behind a thick tree. This was useless; he had all our scents. We had to assume he was like most Alligatoridae and had a keen sense of smell. Take the world's oldest hunter and a human, put them together, and we were hopelessly outclassed.
Was there even a point in fighting?
Wait.
Scent.
Maybe he was more man than was comfortable for my mental health, but he was clearly also a decent amount of animal. I knew how to deal with animals.
I carefully unzipped my bag, cringing with every sound it made. I pulled out a device I made after a run-in Africa and hoped it would help here. I pulled the pin on the grenade-shaped canister and tossed it in his general direction.
Our eyes met for a moment, before I ducked back behind the tree.
Aerosolized peppermint oil reached my nose right as I heard him snarling and going back down the hill. A nice, strong scent that would feel like inhaling glass for someone like him. What now, bitch?
I gestured for Shannon to go, and we dragged Drew’s dead weight to create more distance. She needed a chance to at least get a tourniquet in place.
“We need to render first aid,” Shannon whispered, leaning him against the tree we used for cover. “Or he won’t make it.”
“Do it,” I told her, walking a few trees down the line, prepared to make a distraction if she needed it.
A deep, dark laugh yanked every single muscle of mine to attention, like he yanked all my puppet strings.
Something inside me folded, and each joint collapsed.
Starting with my ankles and knees, then the weight of my upper body.
Every motion was foreign, and I found myself disorientated.
Like the body taking action wasn’t mine.
When I finally made sense of things, I was on my hands and knees on the ground.
Tears pricked my eyes as I realized I wasn’t fully in control. He was.
The laughter came closer up the hill, followed by his slow footsteps, but I couldn’t move.
Do something!
He came from around a tree a few feet down.
His unamused eyes seared into me, but softened when he realized what position I was in.
He did that thing again, where he motioned for me to come, and to my dismay I found my hand and knees slowly crawling toward him.
The mechanical motion felt unnatural, but right all at the same time.
Humiliation burned my cheeks, but something primal and hungry filled his eyes, making his pupils widen dramatically. It pulled me forward, and I found my pride calming. Like this was normal.
Like this was where I was supposed to be.
I was supposed to go to him.
No, that wasn’t right. I wasn’t supposed to crawl to anyone. It was bad enough I tolerated people like Gale for profit. I didn’t do it because I wanted to.
Yet, the thought was mine. Born from a soft place that I buried long ago, so I could survive.
The realization struck me like a backhand.
It was another version of me doing this. The little girl that did everything she could to be good so that she wasn’t disposable. So someone would love her.
He wasn’t controlling me.
I froze in my tracks. The magnetic pull dragging me to him broke. This wasn’t mind control or anything else. It was my subconscious dragging the invisible tether between us. Not him.
An urge to satisfy him that disgusted me. I glared at him so he knew exactly how much I hated him for turning me into this.
That irritation filled his eyes again, as if I’d dangled a treat for him and took it away. He stalked toward me. The urge to continue crawling filled me so strongly that I had to lock every muscle to keep myself in place.
It didn’t matter. He stood less than a foot away from me. His shadow cast over me, reminding me exactly how big this monster was.
The biodegradable can I designed landed in front of my face. The trigger released a thick mist of peppermint oil directly into my eyes.
My eyes watered from the fumes, and I scrambled to my feet to get out of the direct mist. My foot hit a root, tripping me. I coughed as I stumbled back to my feet and out of the clouds of smoke.
“What are you doing?” Shannon hissed.
“I don’t know.” I took in deep, greedy breaths, but took the other side of Drew. I didn’t have time to break down and cry about some imaginary emotion drawing me closer to a monster.
We went nowhere fast, and we were lucky he retreated farther away this time. Probably because he took it directly to the face, like I did.
But he’d be back, I was sure of that. We could only hope this bought an hour max, and I wasn’t convinced we’d get that.
Reflexive tears poured down my face and blurred my vision, making it impossible to see. This time when I fell, I took all of us with me.
I tried to scan the area to see if he was getting closer, but it was impossible for me to tell. Somehow, I managed to get back on my feet, and Drew too.
“We should leave him behind,” I told her. Survival 101: don’t take on any unnecessary weight. That was how people died.
“You’re right,” she agreed.
But instead of putting him down and running for our lives, we both continued to drag Drew along with us.
Maybe I was the one that should have been left behind.
Something told me that I would drag everyone down.