Page 57 of Misfit Monsters
Especially when I can’t seem to affectherat all.
Mirage lets out a little huff, but he leans back in his seat as if mollified. I consider tossing another barb at him to show I’m not so easily tamed, but right then the van grinds to a stop.
Up front, our sorcerer babysitter rolls down the window. “Have you found something?”
The carnivore who’s acting as our tracker has materialized on the side of the road.
Raze nods in a jerk. “I caught another trail. It smells like there are a few of those odd creatures together. They traveled beside the road but then veered into the deeper wilderness. You’ll only get farther away from them if you keep driving.”
Jonah grimaces, but he cuts the engine. “We’d better continue on foot, then. If we can catch up with them or find out where they were going, we’ll need all our skills.”
Will we? Does the sorcerer expect me to lock them in ice like I did the first one?
I don’t think the poor beast deserved it. It wasn’t acting remotely aggressive until its sudden turnabout.
Something else is going on with these shadowkind. Rollick told us to investigate, not to slaughter them.
Jonah swivels in his seat to peer back at us. “All right, everyone out. We’re going on a hike.”
I pull my lips back in a sneer. Fragile mortal boy who can only stand alongside us because of his foul magic. Any of us, even the pipsqueak, could crush him if we moved too fast for him to speak a sorcerous command. But he thinks he should get to order us around.
“Of course, oh fearless leader,” I say with all possible sarcasm.
Jonah frowns at me. His reply comes out flat. “Then get going, Hail. If you want to be finished with this mission sooner rather than later, the important thing is finding these beings.”
It’s particularly annoying that he has a point. I keep my sneer in place and wait for Periwinkle and Mirage to step out the back doors before I deign to follow.
At least the fresh, piney breeze outside revitalizes me after the stuffiness of the van. We set off between the trees, Razeleading the way with his basilisk tongue periodically flicking from his hulking, otherwise human-esque form.
A chipmunk chitters from a tree branch overhead, and a couple of sparrows flutter by, but there’s no sign of humans. Just untamed wilderness, all that guileless life completely free. The best of the mortal realm laid out before us.
Only the knowledge of the confrontation that might lie ahead stops me from enjoying it.
We tramp across a couple of miles of uneven ground with the brush tugging at our legs. Then the terrain slopes upward. Rough knobs of rock protrude from the soil amid the trees and shrubs.
The effort of climbing sends an achy but not unpleasant sensation through the muscles in my legs. Physical bodies have so many unexpected quirks.
We’re halfway up the hillside when Raze leans forward and inhales deeply. “The smell is thickening quickly. I think they might be?—”
Before he can finish the sentence, a dozen dark shapes hurtle over the crest of the hill toward us.
The shadowkind creatures lunge into our midst, jagged teeth snapping here, bladed claws slashing there. They leap and thrash so wildly I can’t make out more than glimpses of fur and feathers and scales.
I stumble backward and manage to knock aside one creature’s snapping jaws with a swift thrust of my arm. Raze roars and throws himself at the densest cluster of them, shifting into his immense lizard-like form as he does.
His maw closes around one beast’s neck with a crack of its spine and a gush of smoky essence. His pitch-black eyes sear into another being so viciously it squeals and spasms.
I dodge a third creature, this one the size of a wolf but covered in coarse hide like a elephant. It throws itself at mesideways, quills jutting from its skin, and all I can do to keep myself from getting impaled is hurl a blast of ice at it.
Even through my jolt of fear, I don’t want to kill it. None of this makessense. Why would these beings suddenly group together to attack us?
But in the chaos of the moment, the bolt of frigid energy hits the creature not just in the legs but in its lower torso too. It keels over, eyes glazing.
I’ve stopped its heart.
Guilt clogs my throat. I take another step back, my gaze darting over the battle.
Raze is tearing into another of the beasts, one as large as a tiger. Jonah is shouting out words in his sorcerous language that set my skin creeping. I can’t see that any of the shadowkind in the onslaught are responding to his commands.
