Page 47 of Misfit Monsters
The creature gives its body a dog-like shake—and nearly topples over on its side. A seal-likearfescapes its mouth.
Jonah frowns and repeats his sorcerous command with more emphasis. The creature shudders, but then it turns away from the village and trots off toward the trees.
We follow much closer now that it’s being compelled, just a few feet behind it. I only get vague impressions of the creature’s current emotions—a little discomfort mingling with a flicker of relief to be heading someplace familiar. The sorcery doesn’t appear to have bothered it.
It sets off through the woods in a straight line, I suppose going directly toward the rift. Its spikes rake against the sides of the trees.
There’s no way we could follow it in the van.
Hail sucks a breath through his teeth. “This rift had better not be a hundred miles away.”
Raze scowls. “We didn’t drive very far after I caught the scent. It could be close.”
“Or we could roam all across the world,” Mirage puts in with a laugh.
Jonah’s tone goes dry. “I don’t think we need to?—”
It happens in a split-second. One instant, the creature is swaying along like it already was, seemingly free of distress.
The next, a vicious fury hurtles out of it like a charred but bloody steak thrown in my face.
“Watch out!” I yelp.
The creature whips around, its body blasting outward into a mass of clawed limbs and horned tentacles, most of which are slicing through the air toward?—
Hail flings out his hand. A wallop of frigid air surges off him.
The cold front slams into the creature and knocks it right off its feet. Its dark gray flesh turns blue, its skin and scales frosting over.
It tips over and hits a tree with a solid thunk, limbs as rigid as a statue. A few of the brand-new tentacles snap off and thud to the ground.
He froze it solid.
The fae stares at the results of his hasty reaction. His alabaster skin looks even paler than usual. “I—I wasn’t trying tokillit.”
He’s too startled to suppress the waft of fetid-gruel horror that rolls off him.
Not only was he not trying—it bothers him a lot that he did this.
Hail might be a jerk, but a twinge of sympathy quivers through me. I give him a grateful smile. “You protected us. It was going to hurt us, and you made sure it didn’t. You moved so fast—it was amazing.”
His dark blue gaze veers toward me. Then his jaw tightens.
He makes a harsher scoffing sound than before. “As long as teacher boy doesn’t dock points off our assignment for going overboard, I suppose it’s all right.”
I can tell he’s squashing the uneasiness, not recovered from it.
Jonah swipes his hand through his rumpled hair, peering at the creature in its enlarged, especially monstrous form. “That… is not something I want to run into unprepared again. Peri’s right, Hail. You did what was necessary in the moment. I should have made my command clearer so it had no room to turn on us.”
Raze’s expression has shadowed. “It didn’t seem like it would attack.”
I shake my head. “It wouldn’t have, before. It just… changed. A lot, all at once.”
We stand there in a moment of unsettled silence. Mirage breaks it with a flip through the air to the frozen beast’s side and a chorus of illusionary oohs and aahs.
He points off through the trees in the direction the strange creature was heading, fragments of sunlight glowing off his golden-brown face. “At least we know where our journey should take us next. Let’s enjoy our sense of direction!”
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