Monstrous Intent, page 5
“If you’re really a hunter, then how about you help me?” he yells.
“I’m good,” I say as I realize he’s running after me, telling me he’s smarter than I gave him credit for. No matter how good a hunter is, they should never go up against a level four alone. That’s the kind of shit you call a whole team in for.
Slipping into a room, I realize that out of this huge building, I’ve put myself right in a room with no other door or window leading out. As Declan comes barreling in after me so quickly that he slams into me, I hear the noise of the chimera tearing the world apart in search of us. Our only saving grace is that the room is massive, so I slip behind an old desk, knowing it won’t give me much protection, but my hope is that the chimera sniffs out the hunter first and goes straight toward him. A chimera would always prefer to eat a human than another chimera.
I glance over as the door shakes from the weight of the chimera as Declan takes his own hiding spot. I blow him a kiss so he knows I’m devastated that he will now be monster fodder when our love could have turned to sweet and sweaty sex.
He flips me off. I flip him off too then make an O with my other hand and stick the finger into it before pointing at him.
From the look on his face, it takes everything in his being not to throw one of his knives at me, or maybe it’s the way the door is screaming against the creature’s weight. It’s flung open as I drop down so I can look under the desk to watch the hunter’s sad demise. Thankfully, my eyes allow me to see semi-decently in the dark, but not as well as they would in my other forms.
The creature barely fits through the doorway, having to squeeze his body into the room. Despite being covered in black scales with occasional patches of fur, he’s more catlike than anything, with long fangs that he’s baring as he enters the room. He looks like a shadow as he steps in and takes a big deep breath of air, trying to pull in all the scents he can pick up. He immediately fixates on the direction the hunter had gone, but the creature can’t seem to pinpoint him. Somehow, the hunter is keeping him uncertain, but the chimera is still getting closer as I watch. I could do something orrr I could protect my own ass. I mean… let’s be honest, this one really doesn’t have the best personality.
The chimera is getting closer now as I watch, curious what the hunter is going to do. He can’t be more than inches from him as the creature pulls in his scent with a deep breath that I can hear from over here. Declan won’t just take it lying down. He’ll fight, and the moment he starts fighting, I’ll slip out the door and—
My phone starts ringing, making the chimera stop in his tracks.
Yanking the phone out, I realize with horror that the very person who has taken this moment to call me…
Is Declan.
That asshole.
The chimera shifts hard, lunging toward the noise of the phone—and me. I get one look at Declan’s beaming face a moment before the creature slams down onto the desk I’m hiding under. The legs of it snap beneath his weight, sending him shifting away from me, so I grab the broken and bent metal as I scoot out the other side of the desk. He leaps down at me as I swing the metal rod hard, ramming it under his jaw.
“You’re such a dick, Declan! I thought I loved you,” I yell as I scramble up to my feet as I look around for another weapon.
The chimera is already recovering, the hit not detrimental enough to keep him down longer than a second. My foot kicks something, and I realize it’s a crowbar from someone who had once upon a time considered fixing the place up.
Swinging it hard, I bash the chimera in the side of the face, but I’m not used to fighting like this. No, I’m used to my other form.
If I could shift, I’d kill this thing and then, if I had to, I’d kill the hunter and go home. My body doesn’t understand, trying to push me into the shift involuntarily, and the bracelet around my wrist sends a shock through my whole body that makes me stagger.
“Hell,” I hiss at the pain rippling through me.
It throws me off my game so badly that I don’t even realize the chimera is on me until he’s pummeling me to the ground. Pain tears into my arm as I try to ram the crowbar into the side of his head, but with no room to swing, I have no driving force, and it merely knocks into the side of his head.
Is this seriously how I’m going to die? I at least thought I’d go out in a much more epic fashion.
He lowers his muzzle to smell me because he knows what I am, but I can’t stop. I have to—
Blood sprays out on me as the creature growls in anger. He moves so quickly that Declan leaps back, out of his path with mere inches to spare as claws tear through the air where he’d just stood. Scrambling up to my feet, I grab the crowbar and rush him as Declan moves in with practiced speed and slices his knife across the chimera’s throat as I drive the end of the crowbar into its skull.
The creature won’t go down yet—it doesn’t matter that blood is pouring out, that he’s been stabbed and hurt, he will eat the human if it’s the last thing he does—but Declan is quick and his expertise is quite evident.
The skill he uses is beyond anything I’ve seen, and I realize why Jameson wants him back. Honestly, I’m surprised he ever let him go.
I barely manage to distract the monster before Declan delivers the final blow. It barely looks like he broke a sweat while I stand here, drenched in the chimera’s blood as well as my own.
“You suck as a knight in shining armor,” I growl.
“I saved your life against my best judgment,” he says as he examines the chimera to make sure it’s truly dead.
“You… called me so he would eat me,” I remind him.
“It was like a test… I really thought you’d shift and save yourself. It’s not my fault you kind of just lay there.”
My eyes have to be huge as I stare down the man who looks quite content as he wipes his blades clean using the only unbloodied patch of shirt I have.
“I just… excuse me… I just lay there? You called my phone. It pummeled me to the ground. It fucked me up and I didn’t have anything to stab it with!”
He looks extremely pleased with himself as I glower at him.
“I’m finding a better hunter to woo,” I decide as I head out while my arm throbs like a bitch. “I hope you take a long walk off a short pier!”
“Thanks!” he shouts back.
Humans… the biggest monsters there are.
CHAPTER SIX
DECLAN
While I could call this in to Jameson or Patrick, I just call Officer Riley’s personal phone instead. We’ve gotten a bit too close for my liking over the years.
“I just did your job again.”
She groans like I’ve disrupted her evening. “Where at, what’d you kill, and were there any witnesses or casualties? And don’t forget, it’s not my job. It’s the DRD’s job. You just call me because you refuse to deal with them.”
I ignore that part. “Level four in the old Akron building.”
She falls silent. “A level four? Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“How the hell did it get in here? Don’t leave. Be there when I get there,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m probably not going to be,” I say before hanging up on her and heading outside where I can finally see better again.
Lake is trying to mop the blood off his face before turning to glower at me some more. Honestly, I’m more confused than ever as I stare at him. I was convinced he was a monster, but the way he reacted makes me second-guess everything. He really was going to die in there and yet, he never did shift.
“Bye, Dickhead Declan. I hope to never see you again,” he says, and as he turns, I notice something I hadn’t realized before.
I quickly step forward and take his wrist, which makes him hiss. “You’re hurt.”
“You threw a level four monster onto my innocent body! What did you think would happen?”
I thought he’d shift and kill it, and then I’d kill him. His arm looks quite bad, and he shouldn’t be standing here, he should be headed to a hospital. “Come on, I’ll drive you or call an ambulance or something.” Why do I feel guilty? I mean… I really did think he’d shift…
He plucks my fingers off his wrist with his other hand and starts walking. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your arm is torn open,” I say, feeling minorly guilty. In my defense... I had been planning on killing him. Is that a defense? Hmm…
Lake hurries off as I’m left standing there wondering what I should do. Do I call an ambulance anyway? Do I just let him wander off and bleed to death, solving my problem?
“Shit,” I hiss as I take off running after him. A woman who’d been walking down the street gets one good look at the man coated in monster blood and screams. He pays her no mind and me even less as I walk up beside him. “I… might… apologize for siccing the monster on you.”
He shifts his vivid aqua eyes onto me. “Might?”
I hate apologizing, so instead, I tear my very nice shirt and wrap it above the wound on his arm before tying it.
“Wow, so romantic,” Lake says dryly as he continues on his route to his apartment. For some reason, I keep following him because now I’m caught in this weird stage of feeling guilty while also positive he has to be a monster. Even if he’s not a true monster, he has something wrong with him because no regular human would be walking around with their arm like that.
But nope, he kicks the handicap button on the door since the bottom of his shoe seems to be the only thing not bloody and heads inside as I trail after him.
A startled teenager looks at him and he just waves at her. “It’s paint,” he says.
She doesn’t seem overly certain, but then she sees me glowering at her and hurries off. I call the elevator and get inside with him as we stand in awkward silence up to the fourth floor where he gets out and continues toward his apartment.
“I’d really prefer you don’t murder me in here, my landlord is a rather lovely lady, and I can’t imagine my dead body would be good for business,” he says as we walk into a shockingly normal apartment. Honestly, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but not this.
“Just tell me if you’re a monster.”
“I’m a monster in the sheets,” he says as he heads into the bathroom and opens a cupboard where he pulls a box out. He pops it open while running water in the sink.
“Walking around like this with your… arm flesh just hanging there is making me feel like you are a monster,” I say.
“Calling my cell phone makes me think you’re an even bigger monster, so…” Lake sticks his arm under the water and grits his teeth as the sink turns red. Then, without a care in the world, he plops down on the bathroom floor, sterilizes the wound and starts sewing his arm back together.
There is absolutely no human who would do this, right? People only do ridiculous things like this in action movies.
Why is this so frustrating? I guess it’s not my problem, right? I’m a schoolteacher! Schoolteachers don’t give a shit about monsters, right?
“I love the way your eyes bore into me like you’re not sure if you want to fuck me or murder me. It makes my penis confused,” he says while stitching up his arm like a psychopath.
“Your existence makes me confused,” I assure him.
“Yay! We can be confused together. Want to take a shower together?”
“No.”
“Want to make me brownies?”
“Didn’t you just eat like a full eight-course meal?”
“I did but seeing my life flash before my eyes made me hungry for chocolate, and I really feel like you owe me.”
I stare at the man as he finishes up like this is a normal thing to do.
And that’s how I find myself making brownies for a monster. What the hell is wrong with me and why am I doing this?
The moment I’m positive he’s not dying—and the brownies are in the oven—I head out, positive that somewhere along the line… I screwed up.
I guess I just have to wait and see how badly I screwed up.
LAKE
The pounding on the door is not my kind of party… unless there are strippers on the other side.
I sit up, realizing that I must have fallen asleep gorging myself on brownies since I’m currently cuddling the pan like it’s some long-lost lover.
“Open the door,” Jameson barks from outside it.
I groan as I get up, my body aching beyond the normal ache that comes with constantly being stuffed in this dreadful and suffocating body. My arm is throbbing as I make my way over to the door, swing it open and seductively lean against the wall as I wipe brownie crumbs from my face. “Well, hello there, I’m so glad you decided to irritate me at…” I look over at the microwave for the time. “Two in the morning.”
“Why are you naked?” he asks.
I glance down before looking back at the chair where the towel I’d had wrapped around my waist must have fallen off sometime during my chocolate overdose. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m naked.”
He shuts the door behind himself and promptly shoves his phone in front of my face. “My alarm went off.”
“A bit late for that. I set that off hours ago.”
“You tried shifting?”
“I sure did. There was a level four in the area that thought it’d snack on my ass and chewed on my arm a bit, so I involuntarily tried shifting.”
Jameson lifts my arm and takes a look at the bruised and bloody mess. It’s healing slowly, I’m not human after all, but at least it’s good proof that I wasn’t just messing around.
“You killed it?”
“Ah, no, my date did,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “Who was your date?”
“Declan. He might have tried to get it to kill me first, but we’re tight, you know?”
“You… you went on a date with Declan?” he asks, weirdly more surprised by this than the fact that I was nearly eaten by a level four.
“Yeah, we went out to eat, planned our Halloween outfits, and talked about the best way to kill me. He paid, of course, because he’s a gentleman. Real nice fella. Even walked me home.”
Jameson’s eyes are bulging out of his head in a way that gives me minor satisfaction. “I need you to bring him back to work.”
“That wouldn’t be a very good date. I mean, what would we do? Just look at dead bodies? Kind of seems like a mood killer.”
He stares at me. “Lake, bring him.”
I take a step into him, pressing into his space. His body’s reaction to me gives me far too much satisfaction. He’s afraid of me, which fuels my desire to hunt. It makes me want to see him quivering on the ground, shaking at the—
Nope, no. I’m a good monster.
“Don’t do that again,” he growls as he jabs me in the chest with his finger.
“Do what?” I ask as I innocently turn on my heel and walk over to the table where I cut out an extra-large chunk of brownie I start chowing on. “Want a piece? Declan made them for me.”
“Declan… Declan made you brownies?”
“He’s so sweet, isn’t he? A real family man, am I right?” I ask as I sit down.
Jameson walks up to me. “Don’t forget why I keep you here. You want shit from me, and I want shit from you. It’s an equal exchange. Don’t mess that up.”
I glance down at the band around my wrist.
Very equal.
“I’m not.”
“I want to see Declan in my office tomorrow.”
“Declan is going to do what he wants.”
“If he knew what was good for him, he’d be there at the crack of dawn. Don’t disappoint me.”
“Of course not. Lock the door on the way out,” I say as I head off for my bedroom.
Once I hear the front door shut, I slide into bed. Sir Reginald is already asleep, but sleep feels like the furthest thing from me because maybe I was wrong going to Jameson… maybe Declan is the man I need.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DECLAN
My doorbell rings at nine o’clock, and I instantly get a nagging feeling. The possibilities of who is behind that door are all negative.
Could be the police harping at me for another dreadful statement. Could simply be the mailman five hours early or could be—
“Good morning to you, my dear Declan,” Lake says as he leans against the doorframe all smiles. Apparently, he has short-term memory problems and forgot that I tried getting him murdered.
“How the hell did you find my house?” I ask.
“I followed your scent… I mean… Um… Google,” he says.
“You are literally the worst disguised monster I’ve ever met,” I say as I slam the door before realizing his foot had been in it.
“Ow, hell… Declan, why?” he cries as he falls against the door and proceeds to let himself in my house. “Why do you keep hurting me like this when all I try to do is love you?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask as he hurries over to a picture frame of a family that most definitely isn’t mine.
“Is this the picture that was in the frame when you bought it?” he asks.
“One hundred percent.”
He starts laughing as he puts it back and hurries deeper in the house. “Aw, these little seahorse pillows are so cute.”
“They came with the house.”
“Did you threaten the staging company to leave all their stuff or something?” he asks.
“Or something.”
“You’re such a delight, you know that?”
“And you are not. What are you doing here?” I ask, irritated that he would invade my safe space.
“Jameson heard about our date and how you made me brownies, and now he’s super jealous and wants me to take you into work.”
I stop what I’m doing and walk up to press into his space. “I want nothing to do with that place, do you understand?”
He’s watching me closely with eyes that seem to always be calculating something. “Declan, there’s something going on in this city. Something that’s drawing them here. I’m not saying you have to come back. I’m not even saying that’s the right thing. What I am saying is to watch your back. You have a pretty nice ass, and I’d hate to find that a chimera got it before I got a taste.”
