Fated in Stone, page 13
That was how she’d originally started tracking Professor Arron, though. His wife had given Elle one of his favorite ties, not because Sherry knew it would help Elle find her husband, but because she wanted Elle to give it to him when she found him.
Elle thought of the news report, the neighborhood where the pets had gone missing, where the strange sightings had been. Location helped a lot. She was going to use location to pick up the professor’s trail again. Without something of the monster’s to use, and without a clear image of the creature itself to draw on, location might be her best option.
“The other thing that helps is going to the last location someone was seen. Let’s find the monster’s last known location, and I can track it from there.”
Without a word, he nodded and rounded the car to get in. Being able to talk about all this, without have to prevaricate or come up with a realistic explanation was incredibly freeing. But also felt very strange and maybe even a little too intimate.
They found a quiet street near the part of town where the monster has been sighted, a street next to a small playground and not too far from a river. It was a weekday, a school day, so there weren’t any kids in the playground, and they were far enough away the car didn’t look suspicious. Hopefully, with the river so close, people who didn’t recognize the car would assume it belonged to someone fishing or a tourist. It was a strange time of year for tourists, but still possible this early in the spring.
Ben carefully scanned the area, a frown making a crease between his brows. “Daylight is tricky,” he muttered. “Someone’s going to see me walking around with the sword.”
“And no handy scabbard to try and disguise it,” she said, also scanning their surroundings. There was no one here to see Ben pull out the sword, but they would be walking around where people might see them. Unless the trail for the monster led into the woods encircling the town and away from the populated areas.
“Let me see if I can find a direction to go,” she said. “Before we start trying to figure out a way to hide the sword.”
He nodded, continuing to scan the area in between glancing her direction.
She let her gaze soften and stepped a few feet away from the car, studying the houses she could see through patches of pine trees. The river that led deeper into the woods. The empty playground. There were a few houses beyond the playground visible through some more pines, along a curved street on the opposite side of the river. The closest house to their parking spot was one of the places that had a pet disappear.
It had turned into a truly beautiful day. Clear blue skies, chill in the air that wasn’t too cold, green pines all around, and flowers popping up in a handful of yards. The generous number of trees throughout the town, and patches of thick woods rolling up close to the edges of town, gave the monster a lot of good hiding places, though. Plus, there’d be deer in the woods to eat.
Unfortunately, there might also be fishermen.
She tried to picture the goo things she and Ben had escaped last night, all that creeping black gunk filled with weird and random body parts. The strange sightings reported in the news were just hints of shadows and something that looked like maybe tentacles, though most assumed that was a trick of the darkness, and an assumption of bear or wolf seemed to have been the closest natural explanation anyone could come up with. Which made Elle think of teeth and claws. Had anyone seen teeth and claws, or were they just scared and thought of teeth and claws?
Another slow circle, her eyes half-closed, as she swept the surroundings, thinking about finding the monster. And then, a tingling down her spine, an unexplainable push in a specific direction. When she took a single step that way, her body hummed, like a tuning fork, vibrating with the correctness of going that way. She could feel she was on the right trail.
And the right trail led, she was relieved to see, into the woods.
Without looking at Ben, without looking away from the direction her instincts pushed her, she said, “If you were doing this on your own, which way would you go?”
“Toward the woods, the area behind the house where the last pet disappeared. I’d look for evidence of the monster, broken branches, scraped ground, scat, evidence of blood. My senses are better than a human’s so I can see and smell things more like my wolf. I’d use smell and an awareness of small disturbances to attempt to track the creature. Once I get the scent, tracking is easier. I can follow that. But I’d have to hunt around for it first, until I picked up the monster’s trail.”
She nodded, smiling. He’d given her such a thorough answer, more than she thought he might. Like they were partners. Like she had a right to ask the question and a right to more than a cursory answer.
“If I was working with someone who didn’t know about my psychic skill,” she said quietly, “that’s how I’d pretend to find the monster’s path. Not that I have the sense of smell to work with, but the other things… I’d make it look like I’d picked a few directions based on a logical guess—location where the last animal was taken—and then I’d pretend to hunt around for signs of disturbance. Sometimes, I’d even see that disturbance and be able to point to it. But the entire time, I’d know which way to go.”
“You know where to go now.”
There was no question in his sentence. Her smile grew, turned crooked. And she wasn’t entirely sure why his assurance made her happy.
“This way,” she said, walking him toward the woods.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ben used his newly purchased flannel shirt and wrapped it around the sword, holding the entire thing against his thigh and hoping any casual observers would just see a man carrying a flannel shirt in a strange way.
He was feeling a little strange, but not because of the hunt or the possibility of being observed by nosy humans. Strange because he was hunting with his Nam-tar.
And she was good at it.
For some reason, when he’d thought about his Nam-tar more in his youth, it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be able to track monsters. That was his job. His Nam-tar could be anything, could have any sort of passion or job. The idea that she might have skills that made hunting and tracking monsters easier hadn’t crossed his mind. In hindsight, he wasn’t sure why. Except that most of the Nam-tar in his Family, and those he’d met from other Families, had stayed out of the monster hunting side of things. None of them had had Elle’s specific skill set.
After more than three centuries, he’d assumed he’d seen it all. He’d been wrong.
And watching Elle work was a revelation.
She walked into a section of pines and sugar maple behind a row of three houses set relatively close together. This section of trees bracketed the river that ran through town and led into the deeper woods beyond town. They followed along the river, keeping to one bank as Elle continually glanced between their side of the water and the opposite bank.
The river was high, the water moving rapidly, bubbling over rocks. The setting might have been idyllic with sunshine filtering through the trees, the noisy roll of the river, and the scent of fresh water and pine sap melded with rich soil. But the knowledge that a monster lurked in these woods somewhere robbed the scenery of its perfection.
The section of river they followed wasn’t particularly wide. Too wide for a human to jump across, though. There were some road bridges through town, but where he and Elle were walking, there weren’t any handy bridges or logs crossing from one bank to the other. The water was too high and moving too fast for Elle to ford it. But so far, her tracking instincts had kept them on this side of the river.
He studied her almost as much as he studied their surroundings. On a hunt, being distracted could get them both killed, but he couldn’t seem to look away from her for long. Every cell in his body was drawn to her. He was amazed by his own relief that she’d come on this hunt with him even though she was a distraction and she was in danger here. But at least if she stayed with him, he could protect her. He’d know what she was doing, where she was, and he’d be able to keep her safe. If she’d remained in town, he wouldn’t be able to ensure her safety. And ensuring she was safe was as important to him as his next breath. Maybe even more so.
She’d bought him clothes.
The thought kept springing up, out of the blue, the memory of her plucking things off the rack and handing them to him without looking at him. The way he’d just stood there holding everything she gave him, prepared to take it all if that made her happy. Only realizing when she asked what he wanted that he wasn’t paying for all this. At least not immediately. He had no idea what her finances were like, and he’d felt like an ass that it hadn’t occurred to him before that moment. He didn’t often think about money, unless he needed a large amount for a weapon he was making, but since that was for the Family, the money was readily made available. All his other needs were seen to by Family money—and the Logan’s had a lot of it—so he just didn’t pause to think about it much.
But most humans did. Most humans had to worry about where their money came from, how they’d pay for things, where their meals and housing came from… She’d been paying for everything so far because he didn’t have access to his money. If she hadn’t been, he’d have just managed. Returned to his gear, where he had food and clothes and cards and cash to handle anything he might need next on the hunt. But she’d been generously ensuring he had food and clothes. Taking care of him. Someone she viewed as mostly a stranger.
He was humbled by her kindness. And he desperately hoped she’d let him repay that care.
The moments by her car outside the bait shop, when he’d leaned close and she’d reacted to his nearness, when he’d scented her desire rising, had tested his patience. He was, in general, a very patient man. He had to be to create weapons that often took days, weeks, sometimes months of work. Stalking monsters could take time, too.
But when it came to Elle, when he really needed to be patient, to ensure he didn’t chase her away, his patience seemed to be in short supply. Because in those moments, with the heady scent of her desire between them, he’d been very close to sweeping her against him and tasting that lush mouth, tasting all those flavors of her scent on his tongue. He very much wanted to see if her skin felt as silky as it looked, to tunnel his fingers through her short hair, to devour her mouth until she moaned. Not doing those things pushed his patience to the breaking point.
Only the sound of his mother’s voice telling him he couldn’t rush or force his Nam-tar into staying ensured he kept his hands to himself.
Well, that and the fact that they had a monster to catch.
Within a mile of the nearest house, Ben started to see evidence of that monster. Subtle at first. Some broken branches, a smoothed path through a patch of detritus. A possible print in the wet soil along the river bank. Nothing too obvious, things easily missed if he hadn’t been watching for them. But the little signs confirmed they were on the right path.
Quickly, thanks to Elle.
A slight snuffling sound ahead, too faint for human ears, stopped him in his tracks. To his amazement, Elle stopped too, before he could warn her. She shouldn’t be able to hear that noise. He barely heard it. Was she that attuned to him? The idea thrilled him, but they hadn’t even known each other for twenty-four hours yet. That would be…fast.
The faint noise distracted him and he turned his full attention to the potential threat ahead. With a gentle hand around her bicep, he eased Elle behind him. She didn’t argue. Didn’t even comment when he handed her the flannel shirt that had been covering the sword.
The sword was a good one. Well balanced and weighted. He’d barely had time to notice that last night, but as he silently stalked closer to that very faint noise, passing the sword to his dominant left hand, he could appreciate the weapon better. He was still curious why a human guard with a gun felt the need for the sword, but given what the man had been guarding, what had been in those crates, he was inclined to think that guard knew what he was doing more than the others.
A patch of fern ahead, not far from the river bank, shimmied. Again, very faintly. The sort of movement someone not paying attention might think was just the breeze blowing through the undergrowth. Might walk past that patch of undergrowth without any idea what was waiting inside.
Even as close as he was, Ben couldn’t see anything directly. Either the monster was quite small, or it was able to make itself small. He picked up the stench now, but it wasn’t as strong as what had been in the crates. Not pleasant, but almost entirely hidden beneath the stronger smells of earth and pine and river. Another passing animal would give the ferns a wide berth, but might also not pick up the danger until too late. He had to get pretty close before the faint sewage and rot smell crept out to him.
He was expecting a sort of goo animal amalgam, like the things in the crates. Something that had gotten away from the house as it burned and escaped his notice. And what was in the ferns could still be that. But there had been other things in that house. There’d been freezers with things in them. Things that were still there before he and Elle had had to flee. The grinluk and humans hadn’t emptied the freezers. One of those experiments could have gotten out.
The patch of fern shivered again. Barely. A brush of breeze. Another faint scuffing sound. The creeping stench of rot. The sounds of the river as it raced over stones and rocks covered his own movements, but also made it harder to detect more than those faint sounds from the monster.
He was within a foot of the ferns, his sword stretched in front of him, ready to part the long leaves, when a sharp sound pierced the quiet and a tentacle snapped out.
Ben sliced through the limb and jumped back a few feet in an instant, instinctive reaction. The creature rolled out of cover moving as fast as Ben, it’s lost limb barely seeming to register and certainly not slowing it down.
Ben had a chance to take in the rounded gray body—not black goo—and brown feathers along its spine. Spikes circling a head that looked sort of pig-like, but also long and horsy. Tentacles as well as clawed bird legs pulled it across the damp ground. No wings. No tail. And only four large remaining tentacles. But each was as thick as his thigh, and the creature used them to move like a spider. It’s clawed bird legs were tucked up under the gray blob of its body.
That was as much as he could catalogue before the creature attacked, strange horse mouth opened under the pig-like snout to reveal a circular hole of teeth. Layers of teeth moving down its throat.
A tentacle snapped out at him again. He sliced through it, leaping away, closer to the river and away from Elle. The creature followed him, skittering around to face him. He got a second chance at the injured tentacle and severed it cleanly from the body this time. The creature didn’t screech or react to the limb’s removal at all beyond a slight stumble in its forward movement.
Over the creature, he spotted Elle, hanging back and using the cover of a pine tree to stay out of the way. The relief nearly distracted him. Washed through him so hard he had to blink back spots. But then the creature skittered close and he had to focus.
An incongruous mewing sound came from the creature’s mouth snout, a noise that didn’t seem to go with either a pig or a horse. The mewing noise crawled along his skin, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
This wasn’t a familiar monster, not something they had a name for and a biological history of, a catalogue of vulnerabilities and weapons. But unlike the goo monsters in the house last night, the “head” on this one was obvious.
Which meant he knew exactly what he had to remove to kill the beast.
The neck spikes, however, complicated matters.
One of the remaining three tentacles swatted at him as the creature lowered closer to the ground and stood on the clawed bird legs finally. This left all three tentacles free to swat at him, but also left the creature awkwardly balanced and it fell onto its face once without any help from his sword.
Ben drew the creature back farther, getting it safely away from Elle before he killed it. He had no idea what sort of fluids would flow from this thing when he cut its head off—the big problem with not knowing the monster’s basic biological makeup—and he didn’t want to risk her getting sprayed with something deadly to vulnerable human skin.
His skin… Well, it would heal in his statue form. He could jump to the wolf if he needed to. Elle didn’t have that luxury.
The monster lunged toward him again, a new, higher pitched sound leaving its teeth-lined mouth. It used two tentacles and its bird legs to move while it whipped the remaining tentacle at him. He made note of the tiny pin-sized spines sticking out of the end of the tentacles, something he’d have analyzed if he could get any of the monster to his sister.
He slashed through the flailing tentacle, severing it completely, then took another as the monster tried to get around him. With only one tentacle and two bird legs left to move around on, the monster’s attacks slowed.
Ben pressed his advantage, pushing the monster into the knot of roots beneath a maple. He swung for the creature’s head, cut through spikes instead, and cursed when the monster lunged for him.
Damned spikes around its neck. He swung a few more times, once again impressed with the weight and balance of his acquired sword, and pleased the guard had kept it in good shape, sharp and clean. He hated when people didn’t care properly for their weapons.
Two more hacks broke off enough spikes to expose the neck.
He took the head with a final swing.
The monster’s strange horsy-pig head rolled like a barrel toward the river, stopping in thick brush and mud on the bank. The body collapsed like a deflated balloon as goo like the black stuff from last night ran out of it and pooled on the dark soil. The faint stench he’d picked up from the monster earlier now filled the area with rot and sewage. Strong enough to make him wince and regret his excellent sense of smell.
