Page 114 of Monster in Disguise

"Are you done?" Vlad asks in a bored tone.

"Not yet. You might as well help me if you're awake."

"Ugh, fine." He blabbers something but comes to my side.

He surveys my handiwork, reluctantly acknowledging it.

"What now?"

"The heads. I need to break the skulls."

"What do you want to do?" He narrows his eyes at me before realizing. "No way! You're serious?"

"Yup. Should be feasible."

"You can't possibly control how they're going to break," he adds.

"I'll just put them together. I need the skulls broken; it doesn't matter how."

"Fine." He shakes his head before proceeding to violently smash the skulls to the ground. Yeah, I didn't expectthatmany pieces. That's a lot of reconstruction.

"You did that on purpose!" I accuse him, especially after I see his uplifted mouth.

He shrugs.

"I don't know how no one's renamed you so far,Berserker." I give him a look, knowing he hates the moniker. "So wild, no wonder no one wants to date you." I pretend to shake my head in despair.

Vlad merely raises an eyebrow, unaffected.

"I wouldn't want to date me either," he says, tongue-in-cheek.

"Right, Casanova, either help, or go back to sleep."

He pouts, looking between the smashed pieces and the torsos. His eyes narrow before he gives a deep sigh.

"Fine, I'll help."

A smirk threatens to appear on my face, but I school my features. There is one thing that I can be sure of with Vlad – he's incredibly easily bored. He needs something to challenge him constantly, or he becomes a pain in the ass.

"Help me glue the pieces you smashed into the shape of a chalice, but with no bottom."

"Hmm." He brings a finger to his chin as he processes the information. "You want to make it like a funnel?"

My eyes widen in surprise at his quick thinking.

"Indeed," I respond.

Before we get to work, I gather the brains and separate them from shards of bone, putting them aside.

Then the painstaking work begins. We glue the shards until the funnel-shaped chalice starts to form. It takes us hours before we complete it to a satisfactory degree.

"I'm done." Vlad wipes a hand over his forehead, leaning back on his elbows. "This is boring."

Yeah, can't say I didn't expect that.

"You can go," I dismiss him. The bone sculpture is almost done. I don't need him anymore. Yet, he doesn't move.

"I want to see the finished thing." I shake my head at him, but I continue to focus on my task.

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