Monstrous Intent, page 14
“Sy, back down,” I growl.
He growls at me as he turns, blood dripping from his wounds. “My job is to kill you.”
Declan seems startled at the words, making me realize that this is likely the first time he’s heard a chimera speak fully. Some level fours are able to convey words, but full sentences and regular speech is unheard of.
“Even if it means dying?” I ask.
“I’ll do whatever she asks.” Sy’s words are clear in my mind even though his mouth never moves.
Declan must recover quickly because he takes another shot and Sy lunges for him, but I slide between them.
Sy comes up short, either his wariness of me or fondness for a bond we once had slowing him. “You dare protect a hunter?”
“Right now, this hunter is the only one willing to protect me,” I say.
He growls like a feral animal until I see Declan pull out a sword that makes Sy hesitate. “This is the infamous hunter you’ve chosen over us?”
“Leave, Sy. I don’t want to be forced to kill you.”
He snaps at me, but he seems a bit slow, making me realize that whatever Declan shot him with is bothering him.
“Sy, leave,” I growl.
He seems to realize the same thing as he takes a step back before turning and fleeing.
Declan remains standing there for a moment before looking over at me. “You’re not worth this much trouble.”
“You sure?” I ask as I head back to the car. I look back as I see Declan aim his rifle at me. A shot with one of his bullets would probably put me down if he hit me in the head.
“God, you’re making this a mess,” he says before putting the gun down and hurrying for the car. “How the hell can he speak so well?”
“He reads a lot,” I say, like that explains everything. When I head toward the car door, he puts a hand up.
“I’ll drive,” I offer.
“You sure won’t,” he snaps as he gets in and shoves his rifle at me to put away.
And while I’m pleased my little hunter doesn’t want to murder me, I can’t help but question why. Why go to this much trouble? And what the hell is my family doing?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DECLAN
When we reach the woods about three miles from the cabin, I pull over and get out of the car. I don’t even know what I’m doing, I just need to get out and move. I feel listless and need some fresh air before I go crazy from sitting in that confined vehicle.
Once I’m out, I rush off into the woods as Lake watches me like he’s not quite sure what I’m doing. Honestly, I don’t fully know either. I just know that if I remain in that car any longer, I might suffocate.
Lake trails after me, oddly silent, telling me he actually has a brain and can read the situation. It’s not until I reach a clearing that I stop walking.
“You’d be an idiot not to turn around and go back home,” Lake says.
I turn to face the man who looks oddly radiant in the sunlight, his hair looking lovely as the sun shimmers off it. He has his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels as he watches me closely.
“It’s too late now. They’ve seen my face,” I say.
“Sy won’t tell.”
“Why?” I ask as I watch his intensely blue-green eyes.
He shrugs. “He won’t want them to know he let us go. You can turn around right now and go back home and besides the occasional monster who might enjoy nibbling on you, you’ll likely be okay.”
“And then what will you do?” I ask.
Lake’s quiet for a moment before wandering. At first, I find myself irritated that he literally walked off mid-conversation, but I know this isn’t an easy question, and it’s sure as hell not an easy task.
He comes up on a small stream where he kicks his shoes and socks off before walking out into the water.
“We made up a pack… my family. A pack filled with strength you can’t even imagine,” he says. “But as the years wore on, they became less and less tolerant of humans. Blending in was no longer enough, we needed to thrive. To them, to thrive in the human world means to make a statement. And you know exactly how chimeras make a statement. I grew tired of our new lifestyle quite quickly and left, but one doesn’t simply leave the family.”
He sighs before continuing. “I was tired of that life. I was tired of dealing with them… I was just… tired. So I thought… where could I go that they can’t touch me? The DRD, of course. In exchange for information on the pack I once called family, they’d protect me, right? But I was wrong. I was very wrong. My family found me, but they also found an opportunity to grow. The DRD has so much power, so much control that they could use. I don’t know much, but it sounds like they sought out that control and plan to use it.”
“And if I walk away, what’s your plan?” I ask, honestly curious. It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around a monster doing this.
“Only an idiot would try to stop them,” Lake says.
“Are you an idiot?” I ask.
He grins at me as he slides his foot through the water. “I have been more than once.”
“They could make a difference. You’ve proven that not all chimeras are ruthless.”
“Let’s just say I’m the minority. I’ve met a group who truly are kind and forgiving, who would go out of their way to help a human even if that human has harmed them, but they’re nothing like my family. My family knows they are strong. They think that the humans are trying to control them, so in response they want to destroy them. This won’t be a matter of creating a balance between humans and chimeras. It’ll be direct control. They want a world where humans are merely used as food and toys.”
I think about that for a moment as I fold my arms over my chest and watch him lean down to look at something in the water.
“And you’re different?” I ask.
Lake glances up at me and raises an eyebrow. “If you even remotely think I’m like them, then I might as well eat you right now. It’s not going to be pleasant, my human teeth kind of suck, but I will get it done.”
“You can’t do shit in that form. So how are you going to stop them?”
“Good question.”
“So?”
“So I figure out how to get this band off.”
“And then you suicide mission it for some humans who’d prefer to see you dead?” I ask.
“Trust me, Declan. My family doesn’t take betrayal well. They will see me not assisting as betraying them. They will hunt my ass down and do their best to kill me. My two options are to beg for forgiveness and join them or stop them.”
“You could hide,” I say.
He nods slowly. “Are you going to become a hermit with me?”
I watch him for a long moment as my options swirl around me. He’s probably right, I could likely go home and try to pretend like none of this is my concern. If I stay and fight, I’ll probably end up dead. I’m one single man, after all, and even if I have a secret weapon in the form of a bubbly smiling monster, he can’t even shift.
“What happens if you shift with that band?”
“I get shocked which reminds me not to, but going past that, it supposedly injects me with a lethal dose of something.”
I hold my hand out to him. “I will help you stop them, and that is it. Got it?”
He takes it and of course instead of shaking it, he kisses the back of my hand. “And I will protect you, my sweet hunter.”
“When this is over with, I want nothing to do with you ever again, got it?”
“You’re so cute acting like we’re both going to be alive at the end. How darling.”
I scowl at him so he’s aware that he’s not as charming and cute as he thinks he is. “Five seconds in and I already regret it,” I say as I try to pull my hand back. His grip is surprisingly strong as he refuses to release my hand. “Let go.”
“No, you finally gave me your hand! I never want to let go!” he says as he steps out of the water and up to me with a beaming expression on his face. “You’re so beautiful that my heart thunders just holding your hand. We should walk back to the car like this!”
I yank the front of his shirt down and pull the bandage up to look at his chest. There’s fresh blood, probably from having torn something during our adventure. “You better not die before we even make it to the fight.”
“Trust me, I will only throw my life down to save yours,” he says.
I finally manage to pry my hand away only to have him fall against me as soon as his shoes are back on.
“My wounds are so grave… I need you to carry me,” he says as he leaps onto my back.
“Get off,” I growl.
Lake tucks his head against my neck while gripping onto me like a vise.
“I will remove you from my back if you don’t remove yourself.”
“Thank you for carrying my wounded body back.”
I back up until he’s pressed up against a tree.
“You’re so kind to scratch that itch for me,” he says. I’d push harder if the asshole wasn’t wounded.
“Get off,” I demand.
He sighs merrily, refusing to budge.
“I regret everything. I regret meeting you. I regret talking to you. Every piece of it, I regret. I’m leaving you out in the woods. You can eat deer and rabbits.”
Lake ignores me, but it’s almost like I can feel his joy at this situation as I trek back to the car with a grown man on my back.
“You have a beautiful neck,” he says.
“Don’t talk.”
“You have exquisite hair.”
“Just… stop.”
“You make my heart race.”
“You don’t have a heart.”
He just sighs blissfully like he believes I’m having a fantastic time. I’ve never been so glad to see my car because I was extremely close to jabbing him with a knife until he gets off. I’d come out here in the hopes of taking a breath, getting my thoughts aligned, and now, I just feel irritated. He hops off when we reach the car and I hesitate, wondering if he really is that weak as he leans against the car. The moment he sees me looking, he just beams and pushes himself up straight before getting in.
I suppose he did get shot in the chest and abdomen without any real medical help. When I get in the car, he turns to me.
He holds his wrist out with the band on it. “I did manage to get the tracker off this. I’m not sure if they can turn it back on without the band, but hell, I tried. I have nothing else on me that can be tracked since I tossed my phone. You?”
“I ditched my phone as well. We’ll need to get new phones, which I can send Emma to do if she hasn’t already turned us in to the police. You need to heal up so when we get back into this shit, you’re not useless,” I say.
“I’m spectacularly useful, I promise. I’m a good hugger. I love snuggling. And I’m really good at patting people.” He reaches out to pat my head which I just narrowly avoid. “Declan, tell me I’m useful.”
I just grunt, not sure I feel like giving him any type of confirmation of that as I drive toward the cabin and find myself thoroughly shocked that Emma is still inside and hasn’t thrown us a surprise police party.
“Ooh, it smells so good,” Lake says.
“I made cookies!” Emma says cheerfully.
“She’s totally a spy,” Lake says. “No other explanation for her to be here.”
She hesitates as she looks between us. “I’m not a… spy…”
I stare at her for a long moment before nodding. “I fear you might be right, Lake.”
Emma looks a bit peeved we turned her making cookies for us into her being a spy, but really? She’s too damn suspicious.
“I would like to take a moment to look at you two,” Emma says. “Declan, you lie to me about needing space before you bring a bleeding man into my family home, oh and that’s right before I find out that you have another man in the trunk of your car. Lake, you continually call me ‘pet’ and have terrified the man downstairs enough that the moment I nicely asked for his password, he blurted it out. Yet… YET I’m the strange one?”
Lake glances at me. “I think our pet has a point.”
“Neither of you are getting cookies,” she decides before taking it to a whole new level and eating one while we watch. This is such a bizarre form of torture yet oddly effective.
“No, pet, please? I love cookies,” Lake says, and because he’s a master manipulator, the look he gives her immediately makes her cave and hand him one. He’s pleased as he nibbles it while wandering off.
“Emma, we need to talk. Things have gone from bad to worse, and I really think you need to head for home.”
“Hit me,” she says, sounding determined.
“The DRD has been taken over by chimeras who plan to turn humans into livestock or something. I’m a bit iffy on that part. And now they want to kill us. They are likely hunting us down now. I need one more favor, and then I need you to go home and be quiet.”
She stares at me, eyebrow arched. “I want to help.”
I stare back at her. “Did you listen to me?”
“I don’t think she did,” Lake says as he walks back into the room with a hand stretched out, back for more.
Emma puts another cookie into it even though I haven’t even gotten a single one yet. “I said that I want to help, and I won’t take no for an answer,” she says stubbornly.
“Why?” I ask.
She bites her lip. “My sister was killed by a chimera… I’ve… she was my whole world growing up and then one day we were attacked. My sister managed to hide me, but she… she didn’t get away and it slaughtered her in our own home. This thing came into our home just for some sick fucking game. And I’ve never been able to do anything. I’ve never been able to help or find justice for her or… I don’t know. I just… I just wished I could do something. And suddenly you guys have given me an opportunity to do something. And I know doing these little errands aren’t much, but I’m helping people who can make a difference.”
I look over at Lake who is staring at the ground. Does he feel guilty for his own kind? What makes him so different from the rest? Is it merely intelligence? Or does he have more morals than most chimeras I come across?
He shifts uneasily before catching my eyes, having noted I was watching him.
“Well, you’ve seen the brutality of chimeras, so are you prepared to die if we make a mistake?” Lake asks.
She looks uncertain. “I-I don’t know but I want to help.”
“Then you need to think it over more,” he says before disappearing.
Emma glances over at me. “Did I… say something wrong?”
“No, don’t mind him,” I say. “But I do agree. If you’re not prepared for what the outcome might be then you’re not prepared. So think it over. I’ve done this for years, but I’ve never been up against monsters like these.”
She nods, looking more determined than discouraged. “Okay. Then give me what you need from the store, I’ll go immediately.”
“Thank you.”
As she heads out with the task, I wander through the cabin with a cookie before I find Lake sitting on his bed examining the band on his wrist.
Eating the cookie, I stare at him for a long moment before he even bothers to look up at me, and I tell him, “I don’t know about your past, and you don’t know about mine. But pasts don’t matter when you’re faced with the present.”
“I wasn’t a deranged killer if that’s what you think I was,” Lake says as his eyes meet mine. “But I also wasn’t the best person either.”
“I feel like that could describe me as well. If you can’t fight as a monster, you need to learn to fight as a human.”
“Sounds dreadful,” he decides as he collapses on his bed. “I’ll just play a YouTube tutorial when I need it.”
“We’re both going to die, aren’t we?”
“Probably. But man, we’re going to go down majestically.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DECLAN
“Welcome to the living,” I say to Lake who has slept the past twelve hours away.
“Ah, I was having a beautiful dream where you were giving me a piggyback ride while naked. You were skipping, so your business was flip-flopping all around.”
Emma looks concerned about this as I push the empty chairs at the table far away in the hopes he gets that I don’t want him anywhere near me.
“Do you want me to sit on your lap?” Lake asks, looking thrilled.
“No. I want you to sit outside until you realize what you’ve done.”
“Huh. I did nothing wrong. Is it wrong to be truthful and share your dreams with your best friend and your pet?” he asks.
“Not a pet,” Emma grumbles.
“We’ve been busy trying to plan this out while you napped,” I say as I look down at the mess we’ve made on the table. We haven’t really gotten far.
Lake leans over the table and glances at it, like briefly bothers to look at it. “Mona, the head of the pack, will not be easy to find. I doubt they’re stationed anywhere in this city. They’ll be working from different points creating more stability in case one goes down. Mona calls the shots so I can guarantee you that she’s protected. Hitting the DRD here in town will do nothing but tell them that we’re coming. Our first strike needs to hit them where it hurts, which is likely over in Hillford.”
“Why Hillford?” I ask.
“Because that’s where Jameson often went on trips. There has to be a reason why.”
I nod as I lean back in my seat. “That’s a good possibility. I’ve only been there once, but I did get inside the building. It’s larger than the one here.”
“Alright. I guess we’re going on a road trip, but I have to warn you that I could be totally wrong,” Lake says.
And while I’d love to tell him that he probably is, Lake is annoyingly smart. “Why didn’t you tell us all of this shit before you went and died for twelve hours? I’ve just wasted hours of my life.”
“It’s never wasted when you’re busy looking this handsome,” he says.
