The Monsters We Keep (The Monsters Trilogy Book 1), page 15
I pull in a breath, clicking the revolver back into place, and tuck the pistol into my pocket—but keep my hand wrapped around it.
“Let’s go.”
It takes us a while, especially because I have to stop to wrap my still bleeding arm, but we find the train track we need to follow using my map. With what happened at the station, I’m guessing no trains will be leaving tonight, so we don’t have to worry about being run over. Tomorrow, though, we’ll travel through the bush, just in case the Butcher decides to hunt us through the Outlands.
But for tonight, all we have to worry about are the monsters.
I startle at every small noise, convinced it’s something hunting us in the darkness. It’s so eerily quiet out here, with barely even a breeze to rustle the leaves, that every sound is amplified. But after Addeon starts stepping on dead branches on purpose to scare me, I force myself to stop jumping, my jaw aching with how hard I’m clenching it.
Addeon seems tireless, pushing on with just as much speed and strength as he’s carried since we left the zoo, but every muscle in my body is aching now, my head throbbing with exhaustion. The cut on my arm has finally stopped bleeding, but it still stings when I move, the skin stretching around the wound. When I stumble over a dead branch and scrape my hand painfully against the bark of a squat tree, I finally admit defeat.
“I think we should stop,” I say, dropping my bag to the ground and wincing as I stretch my shoulders.
Addeon raises an eyebrow, then decidedly drops his own bag to the ground. He collapses next to it and stretches out on the dirt.
I stare at him. “What are you doing?”
“Going to sleep.”
“What? You can’t—”
“You said we should stop. So I’m stopping. I’m going to sleep, which is what usually happens when people stop at night when they travel.”
“But…” I look around. It’s still deathly silent out here—no wind, the long stretches of dirt flat and quiet beneath us. The clusters of squat trees and shrubs sit like watchful sentinels, leaves and bark silver in the moonlight.
It’s eerie. Like something’s waiting.
Waiting for us to fall asleep.
And as much as Addeon’s a monster, he hasn’t harmed me so far. Well, okay, yes he has, but he hasn’t killed me so far. I have far more to fear from what waits for us in the darkness than I do from the monster staring up at me from the ground.
“But what if something attacks us?” I ask, and before I can stop myself, I step closer to him. He narrows his eyes at me and I stop, hands tightening around the straps of my bag. “Shouldn’t one of us keep watch?”
One of us being him, of course.
“Go ahead.” He tugs a blanket from his bag. “If that’s what you want, you can keep watch.”
Then he rolls away from me, and goes to sleep.
“What—Addeon, that’s not—”
No response.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, glaring at his back. I brought him to be my protection, not the other way around. How much sleep does a monster need anyway? Not to mention I’m the one who performed the Binding spell, not him, so he can’t be nearly as exhausted as I am, my eyes burning like they’re coated in sand.
But we can’t both be asleep out here.
I shiver, glancing at the shadows. Fine. I’ll keep watch for a few hours, then wake him up so he can keep watch, regardless if he wants to or not. No problem. I pull my blanket out and wrap it around my shoulders, sitting against a tree. At least my back is to thick shrubs, so it’s unlikely something will be able to claw its way through silently to get to us. I just have to worry about everywhere else, where something could sneak up on us silently, claws already dripping with blood, eyes red or maybe white in the darkness, teeth—
Stop it. I wrap my trembling fingers tightly around my pistol. I’ll see something coming a mile away. And besides, Addeon has super strength hearing or…something. I’m sure he’ll be able to sense if there’s a monster nearby, or at least hear it.
I hope.
I just need to stay awake for a few hours. Not a problem.
In time, my racing heart slows as nothing lurches out of the shadows. It’s so quiet that I would be able to hear something, and I let my white-knuckled grip loosen on the pistol, allowing my thoughts drift.
My throat still hurts. I throw a glare at Addeon’s sleeping form, moonlight combing through his dark hair, one hand curled around his shoulder. This bastard, sleeping there so peacefully while I’m stuck staying up so we don’t get eaten. I hate him. I hate him. But…
More than hate, I’m confused. There’s a piece I’m missing here. Addeon’s had so many opportunities to kill me. To free himself and run before I could even spit an order from my mouth. And yet, he’s still here. He tugged me along with him at the station, and even though he was angry I ordered him to run, he never fought the order. There wasn’t even a hint of that burning pain I felt back in the closet in Alec’s office, that tearing, ripping sensation that pulled at my very soul.
And even after what happened, those burning fingers I can still feel around my throat, I’m not scared of him. Because imprinted in my mind is that picture of him in the station, overwhelmed, frozen, inching closer to me. The look in his eyes when he saw me kill that man. I’m not scared of him, but it was almost like…
Like he was scared of me. For me. Because of what I’d done.
That, together with the memory of him clutching my hand ever harder, makes me feel something other than hate.
And even though he said I could’ve left him there, in that station…
I don’t know if I would’ve been able to. Because I wasn’t thinking of Alec at all when I went to find Addeon, as much as I can’t stand even the thought of it. When I grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the doors to the Outlands.
I sigh angrily and cross my arms over my chest, pressing harder into the tree until the bark digs into my back. I need to think of something else. I hate how Addeon occupies my thoughts, how he’s the source of the twisting in my stomach and my chest.
What else happened in that station?
Cambrin and his men. The Order of Erasmus and the Butcher.
My heart sinks. I never thought…sure, of course the Council would be mad I Bound myself to Addeon and took him from the zoo. I had no illusions about that. I even thought they’d try to find us eventually, because there’s no reason why they’d just let us go, especially with no knowledge of what I intended to do, or that I was going to return with him in the end. Even if Ambril told them it had been his intention to have me submit Addeon as my choice of monsters to Bind to, there’s a way of things, an order, and this goes far beyond that.
But I never thought they’d try to kill us.
My throat burns, sudden tears springing to life. Maybe I was delusional, to think I could return with Addeon Bound to me, triumphant, Alec saved from the clutches of whatever monsters had taken him, proving that he never stole that journal. To think the Blessed Council would welcome me back with open arms. Not only that, but put me on the fast track to becoming a Hunter.
A dream that’s crumbling to dust before my eyes.
I clasp my hand over my mouth before my stifled sob can slip free. The last thing I want is to wake Addeon with my crying. But now the future yawns wide in front of me, endless and purposeless. That goal has been the only thing keeping me going since Mom died. It’s what I clung to on those dark days after her death, when I wanted to drown in grief. The only thing I could control in a life that seemed to be spiralling out of control before Alec fixed it, a future I thought I’d have slipping through my fingers like water.
And now, I’m watching it do the same thing again.
But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. What I was supposed to do, when the Blessed Council had all but given up on Alec, replaced him, kicked me out of our apartment, left me floating along with nothing but worry curdling in my stomach. When they’d decided he’d stolen Mom’s journal, run away with it, even though I know—and Uncle Ambril should know—that Alec would never do such a thing. I couldn’t have made any other decision. I couldn’t. More than I want to become a Hunter, I want Alec safe. I want him with me again, no matter what I have to do.
The Blessed Council isn’t what I thought it was. What I was taught it was. It’s not some institution to be revered, a group of all-knowing, blessed Ministers who are guiding us in the ways of the Lord Protector in this fight against monsters. Who are always doing the right thing.
Because they aren’t.
The very thought of it is crushing, weighing on my chest like stone, but…I never believed they’d come after us and try to kill us. I hadn’t trusted Addeon when he said we should go straight through the Outlands because I believed he was the monster, and the Blessed Council was something I could trust, more than him.
How much has my hatred of Addeon—of all monsters—blinded me?
A sound cuts through the silent night. I jerk, whipping up my pistol, pointing it into the shadows. It comes again, but my eyes are caught by movement.
Addeon.
He’s lying on his back now, dark hair swept like shadows across his pale forehead, brow furrowed in sleep. He jerks once, twice, his mouth opening to form words in a tone I’ve never heard before.
A plea.
“Please,” he says, and there’s no cocky, confident Addeon in that voice. He’s begging, a whisper of a sob in that single word he repeats over and over. Louder and louder, until his voice is clear as day and—
Shit.
I lurch across the clearing as another “please” echoes across the scrub and dirt, out into the moon-bathed night. Out where monsters lie in wait. My fingers close around his shoulders and I shake him, desperate.
“Addeon,” I say, my voice thin as I glance into the shadows. “Addeon, you need to wake up, you need to—”
His eyes fly open—red, bleeding crimson, and suddenly I’m airborne, slammed back to the ground, our positions reversed. He bends over me, knees on either side of my hips, a hand to my throat once more.
But he doesn’t squeeze.
His gaze is wide, almost frightened; his chest heaves as he drags in air, like he’s been running for miles, his fingers trembling around my neck. We don’t move, either of us, for what seems like eternity, my mind blank, his eyes burning into my own like he wants to tear out my soul.
What the fuck. That was fear.
What would a monster like Addeon be afraid of?
I see the moment he recognizes me and remembers where he is. The moment the monster slips back behind that human façade. His brow goes down over his eyes as they slide back to green again, close enough I can make out the colour even with just the moonlight pooling around us.
“Addeon,” I whisper, my heart pounding in my head as his own breath brushes over my lips, so close I can taste it—that same scent that drifts from his skin, of deep shadows and moonlit sands. “You were having a nightmare. I had to wake you up or—”
He releases me with a curse and rolls away, running a hand through his hair. I lie still for a moment, struggling to make my heart slow, adrenaline crashing through my veins. He’s stalking away from me, then turns back, over and over again like a caged animal, striding from one edge of the bars to the other.
And I wonder how often he did that in the cage we put him in.
I shake away the unwelcome thought and push myself to my feet, shoving my trembling hands into my pockets. “I was worried something would hear you and hunt us down. You kept on—”
“Go to sleep,” Addeon says sharply. “I’ll keep watch.”
I blink. “But you—”
“Go. To. Sleep.”
My frown deepens. The ground looks as inviting as a feather bed, my eyes burning with tiredness, but…
I take a step toward him. “Addeon.”
He watches me out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t move.
Another step. “Do you have that nightmare often?”
I don’t know why I ask. Why do I even care? But in that plea, that please, over and over again, I heard myself. I heard my own nightmares, ones where Mom dies over and over again, and I heard a reflection of that horror, that desperation, in his voice.
I take a final step and stop, only a few feet from where Addeon stands, frozen, like he’s moments from running away. The silent night falls between us, my heartbeat in my ears and my breath on the air. But before I give up and turn away and go to sleep like I desperately want to, he answers.
“Yes,” he says, a rasp of that plea in the depths of his voice. “Yes, I have that nightmare often.”
He tilts his head up to the moon, nothing but a dark silhouette that casts a deeper shadow.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, then roll my eyes at myself. He’s a Reaper, for fuck’s sake. Of course he doesn’t want to talk about his nightmare with me, the person who—
“I see them,” he says, and I freeze. “My family. All lined up in a row, the woman who killed them holding a gun to my mother’s head. I can’t move, only beg, and she goes down the line and kills them one by one, her partner watching from the shadows.”
He says it plainly, with no emotion. Every syllable flat until that very last word, when his voice breaks, just the tiniest bit.
And something cracks, just the tiniest bit, inside me, too.
I don’t offer an apology. No “I’m sorry”, because I’ve always hated when people said that to me about Mom. Why are they sorry, when they weren’t the ones who killed her? Like an apology can stitch up the holes in my heart, those shadows in my past, until they’re gone and Mom is alive once more.
“I have nightmares too,” I offer instead, the words falling free like they’ve been teetering on the tip of my tongue. A piece of myself he’s maybe already seen with the last order I forced upon him, but it feels different, to give this freely. A vulnerability, a wound that’s been broken open again by his own nightmares, a reminder that’s scraped at the scar tissue until it tore. “About my mom. That I’m stuck, glued to the ground, and I can only watch as someone tears her apart until I drown in her blood.”
Neither of us speak. The silence is thicker than ever, weighing on my shoulders as I stare past Addeon to the endless wastes of the Outlands, the shadows so similar to the night Mom was killed. There’s nothing else to say, no useless apologies for a shared past that sits just beneath our skin. But something trickles through me, a heavy grief and anger that doesn’t feel completely my own.
The Bond.
It shifts in my head, that braid of light and shadow, tightening ever so slightly. Addeon flinches, then turns, frowning, and the feeling fades just as quickly as it appeared. He steps toward me, features once more in darkness, the moon at his back.
“Go to sleep, Liliya,” he says, raising his hand. I flinch, but all he does is trail his fingers over my throat, right where I’m sure bruises sit speckled across my skin. He pauses for the briefest of moments, a single heartbeat of time, then whispers, so quietly I almost don’t hear him, “I’m sorry for this.”
I pull in a sharp breath, but he’s already gone, nothing left behind but the burning trail of his fingers on my skin. And when I turn, it’s to find him stepping into the scrub, fading into shadow. Slipping into the darkness like the monster he is, keeping watch for others like him.
It takes me a long while to fall asleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Walking. So much walking, and maybe if the scenery changed I wouldn’t mind so much, but it’s all the same. The same trees, the same burning sun, the same red dirt puffing up in swirls of dust around us. The same thoughts of how Alec could be dying right now and all we’re doing is walking. If it weren’t for the glint of tracks and the occasional train that speeds by, steam-engine roaring loudly, I’d be convinced we were moving in circles.
The first day is uneventful, full of sniping comments and attempts to make each other snap, although that moment from the night before is always in the back of my mind. The second day, we’re both too tired to bother, so we walk in silence, Addeon forcing us to travel down whatever tiny creeks we find to hide our tracks, supposedly. I’m pretty sure he’s just doing it to piss me off. It’s also the first time we actually see any sign of monsters in the Outlands—an old arachne nest, full of clinging webs that have clearly been abandoned for some time.
The third day, we find a stream.
“Lord Protector,” I breathe when we crest a tiny hill and find it flowing in front of us, much bigger than the pitiful, murky creeks and brooks we’ve been filling our canteens in. Big enough to bathe in. I can’t smell myself—not anymore—but I’m positive I’m disgusting, my skin caked in dust, sweat dried in salty rivulets down the back of my neck.
Addeon stops next to me and we both stare at the water. The beautiful, abnormally clear water, the rocky bottom visible a few feet down. The high afternoon sun glimmers off the surface and I think I spot a few tiny fish before they’re swept up in the current.
“It’s a fucking miracle,” I mutter.
Addeon throws me a disdainful look, but I don’t pay him any attention as I practically trip over my own feet in my desperation to reach the water. Maybe he doesn’t understand because he’s a monster, and I’ve never actually seen him sweat once on this trip.
Must be nice.
I sit at the water’s edge with a gleeful cackle, fighting to get my boots off. The socks are next and I moan as I stick my feet in, the water cold and so refreshing that I want to cry.
“Do you need a moment to yourself?” Addeon asks, and I startle. I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone for one blissful moment. I glance behind me to find him smirking, hands tucked into his pockets. “I would hate to disturb your moment of…pleasure.”
His voice curls around the word. I glare at him, heat crawling up my cheeks.
“Yes, actually, I would like a moment alone.” I draw my shoulders back. “Go keep watch or something so I can bathe properly.”
