The Monster Files Box Set, page 20
part #1 of Monster Files Series
I got him a big glass of cider, left over from Halloween. “Thanks,” he said.
“Can you give me a minute? I want to rinse my face.”
“Sure. Hey, Alex?” I paused in the doorway. “You’re going to be okay. Just remember you’re not alone.”
“Thanks.”
Once I was out of sight, I sagged against the wall, my throat so tight I had trouble taking a breath. I had started this school year alone, expecting to just make my way, like I did every year.
Instead, I discovered that my ordinary beach town was far from ordinary, made some friends I could really count on. And found the love of my life, only to lose him.
I didn’t hear Jake behind me—until he closed his hands over my shoulders.
With a strangled sob, I turned into the wall, mortified that he’d caught me crying.
“No hiding, sweet girl. I know you’re hurting. Now come here.” He pulled me into his arms, picked me up when my crying turned a little—hysterical. “That room behind the kitchen okay?”
I nodded against his shoulder, surprised he remembered. He carried me through the kitchen and settled me on the leather sofa in the office, going back to close the door. Meanwhile, I curled into a ball of pain and tears, trying to disappear.
“Nope—not dealing with this one alone.” Jake sat next to me, draped one arm across my shoulders, and slid me up against his chest. “Now go to town, Alex. I don’t have anywhere to be at the moment.”
I took his advice, shocked by how much I needed the release. In between bouts of crying, I basically spilled my guts, about everything. You know that saying—that sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger than your best friend? Completely true.
When I got to my suspicions about him being the monster’s human accomplice—until it attacked him—he laughed so hard he almost knocked us both off the sofa.
“Sorry.” He gasped for breath, still chuckling. “I haven’t laughed like that since—I can’t remember the last time. What makes you think it had an accomplice?”
I told him about the video, the fact that it had been emailed from a school computer. That the monster had been in the video, so there was someone else—or something else, working the camera. And about the new window glass, in the building where I found Katie and Matt.
He studied me, thoughtful. “Makes sense. It’s something we can add to the list.”
I thought about the book hidden in my dresser. Thought about telling Jake, and changed my mind. For now. “What list?”
“The list Candace and I started. Of freak accidents, reports—oh, and a possible cure for me and Sam.”
After my heart settled back in my chest, I grabbed the front of his shirt. “Tell me you’re not joking.”
He covered my hands, no trace of a smile. “I’m not joking.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah.”
I curled in to his side, and we stayed that way, talking every once in a while, until the room started getting dark.
He left before my parents got home, to avoid an uncomfortable scene, as he so delicately put it. I watched him walk down the driveway, and get into a sleek black MG parked behind mine, much more high-end, and obviously manufactured for driving in the UK. After the engine purred to life, he leaned out the window.
“Nice car.”
I smiled, for the first time since I knew Sam was really leaving, and waved at Jake as he backed into the street and roared off. Hugging myself, I stared up at the sky, watched the first stars wink into sight.
If there was a cure, Sam and Jake could be normal, be human again, with no fears.
Sam could come home.
I turned toward the door, and froze. A flat, yellow glow surrounded the knob. As I inched closer I discovered the reason.
My heart jumped into my throat, my fingers shaking as I touched the heavy pendant, its thick leather cord wrapped around the knob. The pendant I last saw glowing around the monster’s neck. In Hyattown.
Panic shot through me. I whirled, searching the sidewalk, the driveway, the street. No green eyes watching me. Not yet.
My fingers still shaking so badly I kept fumbling, I finally unwrapped the heavy cord, clutching it as I did one last sweep before I closed the door and double locked it, backing away. I could feel it out there, watching, waiting.
It was still alive. It was here.
And it knew where I lived.
~ ~ ~
I locked everything in the house, happy to deal with any questions from Mom about the sudden paranoia. Right now, I needed that security to even begin to touch the panic churning through me.
After limping upstairs, I closed and locked the door to my bedroom—something I never do—and moved to my dresser. The pendant got shoved into the back corner of my bottom drawer, under my too ratty to wear anymore leotards. I took out the small guide I’d stuck there. It had a new home now.
Red sat on my desk, open and waiting. With a sigh, I lowered myself to the chair, and booted her up. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.
After checking my email, hoping for a message from Sam, I closed it when I didn’t find anything, and opened the file I had started after crawling up from underground.
The Monster Files
Like the book sitting next to me, I planned to create my own guide—to the monsters I’d already encountered, and the monsters I expected to come across. Because, seriously, how could I bury my head now that I knew about them?
And how could I walk away now that I knew there was a chance for Sam, a chance to keep him from becoming one of them?
Time to make a plan.
I opened the guide, took a deep breath, and started typing.
My name is Alex Finch, and this is a record of my encounters—with monsters I didn’t know existed. Now that I do—now that I am in love with one of them—I need to know more. I need to know if what’s in the guide I included with this file is real. I need to know if the wounds on my back will be more than just wounds.
This is where I’ll write down everything I discover. Good or bad.
This is where I’ll tell my story.
~ ~ * ~ ~
Truth and Consequences
The Monster Files Book 2
Cate Dean
Copyright, 2018, 2nd Edition.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except for use in any review. This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, locales, and events are either pure invention or used fictitiously, and all incidents come from the author’s imagination alone.
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One
Life is funny.
No, wait—I already started with that one. Let’s do this again.
Life is strange.
As in monsters-do-exist-and-one-of-them-is-after-me strange. Which explains why I found myself on an archery range after school, struggling with a heavy crossbow.
Yeah—just like the crossbow left in my car after Sam’s mom was hurt. The one that was still missing. I try not to think about who might have taken it. Or what might have—okay, getting off that topic.
I found my crossbow online, after discovering the amazing world of reenactment sites. They are a fantastic resource for all sorts of medieval-looking pointy things, like weapons.
And speaking of Sam, he was still gone.
After more than a month, I haven’t gotten used to the gaping hole in my heart.
Well, that was dramatic. Actually, I missed him, more than I ever thought I could miss anyone. But the holidays helped, with Thanksgiving in just a couple of days. I knew this year it would be bittersweet for me.
That’s where the archery range comes in. Not only did I need a serious distraction, I also needed to know I could defend myself, and have a fairly easy weapon to get my hands on when I needed it. So far, the crossbow was not that weapon.
“It’s too big for you, Finch.”
I whirled at the familiar voice. Jake strutted across the range, wearing—I had to look twice for it to register—the uniform of an instructor. Fabulous.
“Hey, Jake.” He flashed a smile, and relieved me of the crossbow. My arms ached just from holding the bloody thing. I deliberately ignored the ache in my back, where the scabbed over wounds from the Devil sent out a twinge every hour or so to remind me they were there. “I figured I could—”
“Work your way into it? One shot would drop you on your—” He raised his eyebrows and glanced in the direction of my butt. When I glared at him, his smile widened. “Why this sudden need for heavy weaponry?”
Ever since Halloween, I tend to spill my guts whenever Jake asks a question. “The monster I thought I killed knows where I live.”
“Ah.” He’d had his own run-in, so I knew he’d understand. But for some reason he also looked—uncomfortable. Before I could ask, he started walking toward the building. “Come on—I have something that will work much better for your size.”
I had to hustle to keep up with him, and my still hinky ankle let me know it was unhappy about running across an uneven field.
Yeah, all the abuse finally caught up with me. I had to wear an ankle brace on it pretty much all the time, and Madame Chloe banned me from class until it was off.
I also had to give up my beloved motorcycle boots until my ankle healed. My collection of ballet flats had grown over the last month. Honestly, I felt naked without all that heavy leather covering the bottom half of my legs.
I caught up with Jake at the equipment room. He had already been inside, and held up a simple recurve bow. A green recurve bow.
“That’s for kids, isn’t it?”
“It’s for people who need something smaller,” he said. “Don’t frown at me like that. It’s more powerful than you think.” He handed it to me. I was surprised by how light it was, and how good it felt in my hands. So good, I wanted to give it back. Immediately. “Keep it, Finch,” he said. Obviously my internal struggle was more visible than I thought. “I’ll feel better knowing you can defend yourself with more than a pocket knife.”
“At least I can carry that around without looking like an extra from Robin Hood.” I tested the bowstring, tried to look like I knew what I was doing. And let out a yelp when it snapped against my left forearm.
Smiling, Jake held out a gorgeous green suede—something. “An arm guard,” he said. “It will protect your arm from what you just did. Here.” He slid what looked like a black leather fingerless glove on my hand and velcroed the whole thing so the long strip of heavy green suede covered my still stinging inner forearm, and my palm. “It will also keep the bow from slipping because of panic sweat.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t panic.”
No, I didn’t panic when I killed my first monster—or thought I killed it. I cried, feeling like my heart had been ripped out.
But maybe he did have a point. With the monster—known as the Devil in my handy guide to all the monsters, half-humans, and Others that really did exist—leaving a warning that it knew where I lived, panic may just happen. At the wrong moment.
Jake waited for me to figure that out. “So—we on the same page now?”
I let out a sigh. “Yeah.”
“Good. Since you now have plenty of time in the afternoon, I want you here, practicing with that bow until it’s second nature. And you can multitask—dance across the field when you go to pull your arrows out of the target.”
“Hilarious.” I could barely hear myself over his laughter. There it is—the reason I never wanted anyone to know about my dancing. “Are you finished?”
“Sorry.” He couldn’t seem to stop grinning, so I let it go. And he looked so much like a dark haired/dark eyed version of Sam, I found it easier to forgive. “Let’s get some arrows and see how much work I’m going to have ahead of me.”
~ ~ ~
I surprised both of us by being a natural.
By the time Jake let me go, my hands ached, my arms and shoulders ached more, and I had several bruises on my left forearm, in spite of the guard.
“Okay, my pretty little Robin Hood.” Jake pulled the bow out of my hands before I could nock another arrow. “That’s enough for today.”
“But I can—”
“You’re going to be cursing me tomorrow already.” He packed the bow and practice arrows in a bag, and slid it over my shoulder. I managed not to cringe at the weight. “Now go home, take a long, hot bath, and stretch. I know, you’re a dancer, with all that compact muscle. But you’ve been using different muscles today. Trust me—you’re going to feel it tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? I already felt like someone beat me with a stick. But I wasn’t going to say a word, and would do my best not to limp to my car. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you here tomorrow?”
Jake swallowed, looked away from me. “I have—another appointment. But I’ll have one of the other instructors work with you. Go home, Finch, get some rest.”
He walked across the field—and startled me by picking up my crossbow, and taking it with him. Since I couldn’t use it without major injury to myself, I had planned to donate it to the archery school. But why did Jake need it?
I really wanted to follow him—but now every muscle was begging for some R and R. Careful of my ankle, I limped across the field, headed for my car. All I wanted right now was a bath, a big bowl of Dad’s spicy homemade chili, and my bed.
Crazy me—I was still looking for normal.
Two
I got everything I wanted—plus a shoulder massage from Mom, who has magic fingers. After that I had to practically crawl up the stairs. I was just grateful I didn’t have school this week.
I made it to my room, pushed off the pile of decorative pillows and flopped on the bed, groaning when I saw the latest self-defense articles on my other pillow, mocking me.
I promised I’d read or watch something every day. I planned to enroll in some sort of instruction, on the sly, and the articles/videos helped narrow down the plethora of choices.
Sitting up, I grabbed the pile of paper, started reading the top article, one I’d found on knife fighting. It was—let’s just say a little bloody, so I set it aside, queasy from the really visual descriptions.
And the pendant caught my eye.
I’d started leaving it on my bedside table, as a reminder of what was out there, possibly waiting for me every time I stepped outside my house. It looked like a piece of costume jewelry, so Mom ignored it.
And Dad already knew I had it—I couldn’t keep double locking everything in the house without some sort of explanation.
I reached out and snagged the leather cord. The pendant, shaped like the Anglo-Saxon Algiz rune, was made of some kind of dense, unbreakable opaque glass that glowed yellow when it was turned on—somehow. I hadn’t figured that out yet. The Devil just touched it. Maybe if I was wearing it...
Swallowing, I lifted the cord over my head, and eased it down, until the pendant tapped against my ribs. When nothing happened, I unclenched my muscles, and cradled it in my right hand.
“Why won’t you light up? I wonder if it’s set for a particular—” I blinked as it started glowing, the rune pulsing with a brighter, richer yellow than I remembered. Mesmerized by the light, I didn’t hear Mom until it was too late.
“Sweetheart.” She swung open my door, and I froze, waiting for the inevitable questions. Instead, she looked past me—no, through me, like I wasn’t there. “Raleigh, I thought you said she was in her room.”
Dad appeared behind her, and looked right at me. His gaze dropped to the pendant in my hand, and both eyebrows lifted. I recognized that gleam in his eyes—it almost got him killed the last time I saw it.
“She did mention going over to Misty’s, to work on their school project. We’ll leave her a note, Beth.”
“All right.” She turned, and wrapped both arms around Dad, her face pressed against his shoulder. “After you both came home injured last month, I don’t really want either of you out of my sight.”
I could tell by the sound of her voice she was crying. Dad had tried to lie his way out that night—and Mom shut him down, just asking for the truth when we could tell her.
She had been so calm, celebrating Halloween like she always did, at an all-night dinner dance with Dad. Now I saw how much she held back around me. She must have been terrified, seeing both of us limping into the house, looking like we had come back from war. At the best of times a paper cut could freak her out.
Knowing she kept up a brave front for me tightened my throat. Dad nodded to me, and I knew we’d be having a talk later. He held on to Mom with one arm, and gently closed my door, his voice quiet as he led her down the hall.
I stared down at the pendant, understanding now why not one of our gossip hound neighbors so much as peeked out while I was being attacked by the Devil. This glowing piece of glass had something to do with it.
And I got a crazy idea.
I was going to take the pendant on a test run.
Three
The next morning, after a family breakfast, I rushed my parents without looking like I was rushing them. Once they left I dashed up the stairs, apologized to my ankle, and grabbed the pendant out of its hiding place in my dresser. After last night, I wanted to make sure Dad didn’t confiscate it.
I held my breath as I settled the leather cord around my neck. It lit up the second the leather touched my skin. I tucked the pendant inside my sweater, slipped on a pair of flats, and headed down to the front door.
I grabbed a hoodie off the coat rack, wrapped a long, bright red scarf around my neck. The damp coming off the ocean could be cold, especially with the morning gloom hanging around.
After locking the door behind me, I took a deep breath, and walked to the sidewalk. My first test was right next door—Mr. Gregory, a retired Marine drill sergeant, who never quite got over being retired. He always watered his lawn first thing every morning, no matter how damp it got overnight. And he never failed to make some comment about my less than feminine fashion choices.
