Monstrous Intent, page 27
“Lake, this shit isn’t funny. What do you want me to do with him?” I say as I nod at Sy.
Lake walks up to me, pressing into my space, and the feeling his aura exudes makes my hunter alarms go off. Instantly, I feel uneasy, but why? It’s just Lake.
“Knock it off,” I growl.
“You really think I’d actually care about a human?” he asks with a laugh, and his aura is crushing. It’s hard to breathe. I almost feel weak from it. This is a monster standing before me. A true monster.
Stepping back, I want to kick myself. I can’t just… back away. I need to figure out what the hell he’s doing.
“Lake,” I bark as I grab his wrist and just like that, he shifts. Not into the animalistic version, no… into a true, humanlike monster. He towers over me as he grabs onto me with a hand covered in black scales. When he opens his mouth, all I can see are the jagged teeth, and everything in me tells me to kill this thing. Kill this monster.
He grabs me around the throat and shoves me back. I have my gun, but I can’t shoot Lake… can I?
Fuck.
I dig my nails desperately into his arm, clawing at his fingers as he watches me with four cold eyes, emotionlessly staring as I realize how easy it’d be for him to crush my throat.
“Don’t talk to me, human,” he says before pushing me back. Without another word, he shifts into his bestial form and lopes off, leaving me sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath while facing Sy, also in his beast form.
Hunter instincts kicking in, I scramble up to my feet and grab the rifle I’d dropped before I start to run. Sy stalks toward me as I realize that I have to get away, but what the fuck is going on with Lake? No wonder he didn’t want to tell me about his brother in the cabin… he’s one of them. He’s a monster just like him. He has more than two forms… how can that be?
But Lake’s not a monster, right? What the fuck…
I can hear Sy rushing toward me, his bulk crashing through saplings and brush.
But if Lake wasn’t like them, would he leave me in this situation? Would he leave me struggling to get away from Sy?
Pulling up my gun, I twist and aim, taking a shot. It strikes him, but the issue is that running gives me little time to even stabilize my rifle. I should have brought my handgun. I should have done something more. Been more prepared… something.
Mittens is racing ahead of me, tails tucked, scooting rapidly forward before she dodges a quick left. Something in me makes me follow her, makes me turn even though I’d be risking even more by giving the monster an opportunity to catch up. As Sy slams down a sapling, he snaps it in half with his weight, never once slowing. The only thing I have going for me are the thick trees forcing him to calculate every step.
And when Mittens hesitates, I realize she’s led me to a damn drop-off. I’m about to boot her ass for leading me to my death a moment before she jumps.
She could be leaping into a tree, but at that moment, I have no choice and I jump.
Thankfully, there’s water at the end of my fall and I pray that it’s deep enough I don’t crash into the bottom. I twist my body and take another shot, hitting Sy in the shoulder, making him pull back before I hit the water. It swallows me up, engulfing me and carrying me under.
The water whips around me and while I want to fight for the surface, I just hold my breath and let it guide me away. The farther I am from where I landed, the better this outcome will be.
Without Lake, I can’t defeat Sy. Maybe with a high-power rifle or a sniper rifle that would put enough distance between us. Maybe with different ammunition. Maybe with a better plan… but not without Lake.
What the fuck, Lake?
Breaking through the surface, I twist my body as the current continues pulling me farther down the river.
I hear splashing to my right and turn to see Mittens trying her hardest to swim to me. Her ears are flat against her head and she’s paddling the water fast, looking almost panicked. Reaching out, I snag her tail and drag her back to me, which is immediately a painful experience as she latches on to my head to keep from going back under.
Sy doesn’t seem to be catching up. Did my last shot made him draw back? Knowing the only thing that could even remotely disrupt my smell is the river, I stay in it longer than I wish, letting it push me down as my mind reels.
What the hell was that? Did Lake seriously fucking sic Sy on me? I want to say he wouldn’t, I want to say that there’s something going on here, but he literally sent Sy after me.
I swim to the edge of the river and pull myself out. Mittens jumps off and shakes as much water as she can as I stand there, water dripping from every inch of me.
At that moment, I realize how absolutely pissed I am. No matter what this is, Lake lied to me. He didn’t tell me what was happening. He told me nothing. If he really wanted to go with them or do whatever the fuck he wanted, he could have left in the middle of the night. He could have run off without me. But instead, he dragged me out here and for what? So they could just… take me? What would they possibly want with me?
“Fuck,” I yell, then kick at a tree which does nothing but hurt my foot.
I’m at least fifteen miles from town. The car is probably a few miles upstream, but do I risk going back to it? They’ll probably expect me to go there, but everything I have with me is there. My rifle is soaked, and all of my dry guns are in that car.
Looking around, I don’t see any sign that I’m being followed. If Sy were still after me, wouldn’t he have been able to catch up by now?
He sure as hell will catch up if I start the fifteen-mile trek to town now…
While the car isn’t the best option, it feels like my only one. I’ll have to move slowly and keep an eye out for anyone who might be watching. Thankfully, Mittens seems to have ridiculously good hearing and should alert me long before I’d ever figure out where someone is.
I hold my gun steady, not sure how well it’ll work, but I have few other options besides the knife at my side. Anger drives me more than anything. Anger that I’d allow that fucking monster into my life. That I would trust him. That I would care about him.
When I reach the car, I still haven’t come across anyone even though I feel prepared to murder the next thing that looks at me wrong. Quickly, I get in with Mittens and try not to look at the passenger seat where Lake should sit.
Starting the car, I put it in drive and get the hell away from there.
About halfway back to town, I look into the back seat and see Mittens fiddling with the stupid fish’s container.
Why the hell would Lake leave this stupid thing behind? It’s the only thing he actually cares about besides himself.
My phone beeps and I pull it out, weirdly hoping it’s Lake so I can fucking destroy him or find some reason for all of this, but I see that it’s Emma.
Emma: I know you told me to stay away, but I followed the location on your phone because I might have added the “Find my phone” to our phones. I’m in your area if you want my help. If not, I understand.
I don’t need fucking help from anyone, but at least she’s human. I can trust humans… I thought I could trust Lake too.
* * *
LAKE
“You didn’t tell me just how good of a shot he was,” Sy says as he picks at the bleeding wound in his shoulder.
“I told you to stay back,” I say as I watch the car disappear. I knew he’d come back here… why did I come back to watch? I’m not sure.
“I did, the fucker still shot me,” Sy says. “You know Mona’s going to be pissed you let him go.”
“Yeah? She can shove her opinions up her ass,” I say.
“I thought you hated that form… I’m surprised you shifted into it.”
“I do. I hate it more than anything. But I also needed him to hate it. I needed him to hate me enough he’d leave. He wouldn’t have left without a reason. Thanks for chasing him.”
Sy looks at his bleeding shoulder again. “Uh… you’re welcome, I guess?” He sighs and leans against a tree. “You’re really going back to Mona?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” I ask. When I’d waited outside the store for Declan, it became quite apparent I had no choice when Indigo came up and told me what was happening. If I didn’t return to Mona, she was prepared to have the hunters do whatever it took to take down Declan because she knew that’s where it’d hit me the worst. She got the information from Indigo that the human was important to me. Simply putting his picture up on TV and placing a bounty on his head would have the hunters breathing down his neck and I’m not sure I could have kept him safe. What if someone hurt him or killed him?
The only reason she’s waited until now is some idea that I’d come back to her. She needs my help no matter how much I don’t want to give it.
“You ready?” Sy asks.
“Yeah,” I say as I turn away from the place the car once sat.
I’m going to give Mona my everything. What she doesn’t realize is that I’m prepared to die to make sure she can never lay a finger on what is mine. Declan can hate me until the day he dies if he wants, but at least for now he’ll be alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DECLAN
“You’re pissed,” Emma says the moment I see her.
“You don’t say?” I growl as I face her. I’m prepared to go home. To jump in her car and head straight home and leave Lake to do whatever the hell he wants. He can go fuck off. He can go fucking shove it. “He could have told me. Instead, he led me off to get chased by that fucking monster.”
Emma looks shocked. “Did you get hurt?”
“No…” Which is weird because there’s no damn way one shot to the shoulder was enough to push Sy away for good. Yeah, I floated down the river, but my scent would still be near it. Which means he chased me off just to do that… chase me off.
Fucking hell, Lake had him chase me off.
“He was trying to drive me away,” I say, not really wanting to give in to this stupid idea that he was trying to protect me. I don’t need to be protected. We were supposed to work together, figure this out together. But because of some hero complex Lake has, he thinks he can run off and tackle it himself. He knew the only reason I’d turn around is if he really pissed me off, which he tried by saying the shit he did. I bet it was all lies. No, I know it was all lies. He cares too much about me and he’s not that good of an actor to have lied the whole way. And I was dumb enough to go along with the lies because I’m too quick to anger.
“You… have a lot going on right now with your face,” Emma says. “You’ve gone through anger, rage, realization, then there’s something going on now that’s… hmm… I’m not quite sure what that is.”
“I’m going to make Lake regret leaving me,” I decide. “I need to go home first, though. Can you drive me?”
“Yeah… of course. But what if they’re watching your home?”
“That’s okay. If I’m going to do this, I need more guns,” I say, more determined now than ever. Lake is not going to get away with this, but the past few days have proven to me I’m not set up to tackle this alone. I need his help and he knows that he needs mine, so why would he be so damn reckless?
I go back to my “borrowed” car and retrieve Fish Stick and Mittens. The moment Emma sees Mittens, her eyes get wide.
“You… that… thing…”
“This is Mittens. It’s a threat, not a name,” I say as I toss my junk into the back seat and get in the front with Fish Stick on the floor between my feet while Mittens scouts out Emma’s car.
I’m going to make Lake regret leaving me behind. He thinks he can save the day by running me off? Fuck his chivalry. He’s not doing this alone. We work better together, whether he likes it or not.
* * *
We reach my house in the dead of night. I have Emma drive around the block first, but I don’t see anyone waiting that seems out of place. Most of the cars in my neighbor’s driveway are where they’re supposed to be. Even so, I leave Emma behind with my crew and make my way toward the house. I have a key hidden in a locked box in the shed that I retrieve before heading back up to my house.
It feels like years since I’ve seen it, but I oddly don’t even feel homesick. Maybe it’s because I grew up never really having a solid place to call home. Or maybe because I truly never felt at home in my stock image house. Has anything ever made me feel like Lake has? Like I had a place to belong, someone who genuinely cared for me. Even working at the DRD wasn’t enough. None of that was enough.
Unlocking the back door, I step inside and move through the dark house, refusing to turn lights on as I go. When I reach the spare bedroom, I open the closet and face the large gun safe. With the right numbers input, the door swings open and I look in at my more specialty guns.
I pull them out and put them into their cases, but the ones I need more than anything are my long-range weapons. It’s obvious that fighting these things up close won’t get me too far, but from a distance, I have enough time to fill them with bullets before they reach me… if my shots are good enough, that is.
I grab enough ammo to take down a damn army before stilling.
Someone’s near the house. Chimera? Or human?
Leaving the cases where they are, I move to the side, pushing myself into the darkness which would give me a perfect vantage point to shoot whoever comes down that hall. Holding my gun steady, I listen carefully before realizing I can hear someone walking. Only one person? If it’s a chimera, that’s bad enough, but if it’s a hunter, I should be able to hold my ground.
“Declan?” a whispered voice says, making me freeze.
Now more than ever, I’m not sure who to trust.
“Declan, I know you’re in here. They have a camera on the front door. Just be glad I was the one who saw you enter,” Patrick says.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I want you to know that Roger really did check into things once you let him go. He knows you’re telling the truth about the chimeras… we don’t know how deep it goes or how many there are. We don’t know who to trust. There’s a group of us willing to fight to take the DRD back, but… we don’t know who we’re fighting,” Patrick says.
“They’re beyond anything your team has ever gone up against,” I say as I see him walk into the hallway, hands up, like he wants to assure me he has no weapons on his person. “They’re level… fuck… Our scale has never gone beyond a level five and even then, had we ever really met one? They’re beyond the hypothetical five. Sixes? Sevens? Patrick, you have no idea what you’re getting into, but you also need to know that not all of them are bad. Lake is trying to help us. Some of the others are trying to stop them, but they’re being controlled.”
“Meet with me and Roger?” he asks. “There’s a group of us.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” I ask. “There’s shit going on in the DRD that I also don’t trust, Patrick.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I… don’t know. Honestly, I don’t, Declan. I’m sorry we tried to kill you guys back at Lake’s apartment. I still feel uneasy… like are they really chimeras, you know? They’re so good at being human. But the more we’ve looked into stuff, the more everything correlates to them. They’ve built up who oversees the DRD so they now have complete control. It’s… weirdly convenient how they’ve moved in and anyone who was previously of use has either died or mysteriously moved on.” He shakes his head. “Obviously people die in this field. People die so often in this field that we never even thought to question why. The new people in charge seemed to actually make things better. We were getting fewer attacks, and we thought we were finally doing something right, so why would we complain? We were at the all-time lowest chimera sightings in ten years… until we weren’t. Until they seemed to be flooding in.”
“Yeah, they were able to keep them away to gain the trust of the hunters, but now they want control of the city. They want the humans to think that the hunters need more resources. More funding. More help. That the hunters can protect them, but they’re so limited in resources and people that they need more. They’ll be allowed to bring in more people and the state won’t be able to say no because they ‘protect us,’” I say.
“So we just have to stop it at the head. We know that at times these things move as a pack. So we pinpoint all of the chimeras in the pack, find the leader, and stop them,” Patrick says, sounding confident, like this could actually be easy.
“You don’t understand the level of these things, do you?” I ask.
He leans against the wall and lowers his arms that he was still holding up. Instead, he crosses them over his chest as he stares at me.
“Declan… we don’t have a choice. We either die fighting or win. Do you have any better idea? Looks like you’re planning on running off to fight something.”
“Yeah… I’m helping Lake.”
“If you can help Lake, I’m pretty sure more guns will only help more… you sure you can trust him?” Patrick asks.
“I trust Lake with my life. But he’s stubborn. He thinks he can do this alone because he wants to protect me. But I don’t play damsel in distress well,” I grumble.
“I have at least ten hunters on my side, Declan. They’re willing to fight for what we believe in because that’s what we were raised to do. We were raised to go into every battle, never caring whether or not we came out the other side alive. But if you really think there are some chimeras that will help us… maybe that’ll keep us from being slaughtered.”
“Okay. I need to know where the people in charge are at. This Mona lady seems to be the head of it, and there are others—Indigo, Sy, Niles, and Reagan. I believe Indigo and possibly Sy would help us if given the chance. The others will not. And also, Patrick… these chimeras—this Mona and there’s another called Niles—they have a third form.”
