Page 82 of Misfit Monsters
“I know you might not want to talk to me right now,” I say. “But I’m sorry if I upset you last night.”
Hail’s response travels through the shadows in a mutter. “Don’t worry about it.”
I don’t think he means he’s actually fine, but I do have plenty of other things to worry about. Like whether we’ll encounter more feral beasts while we wander through the woods. Like what the sorcerer who commanded them is up to now.
“All right. I’m still glad you invited me to walk with you!”
Hail simply snorts.
As we keep pace behind Raze, the sun reaches its peak over the treetops and begins descending to the west. Jonah swipes at the sweat on the back of his neck. I re-materializeto keep him company and dip back into the shadows when my ankles are throbbing.
Finally, the basilisk shifter jerks to a halt. He stares at something farther ahead of us, his stance rigid. “That’s… I’ve never seen one like that before.”
I flit forward through the shadows. Before I’ve quite reached him, a current of energy tremors through my being.
That feels almost like?—
I pull myself into physical form and find myself staring at the most formidable rift I’ve ever encountered.
It’s true that I haven’t observed a whole lot of the portals that connect the shadow realm with the mortal world. I only returned to my native habitat a few times after I first stumbled into this realm and realized how invigorating human emotions were.
And then, after I got away from my captor… I stuck to just one place, traveling through the same rift to sample the emotions of the local mortals. Practice makes perfect!
Except when it doesn’t.
But all of the rifts I’ve passed through were easy to miss if you weren’t specifically looking for one. The hum of shadow energy normally blends into the general thrum of mortal life. There’s nothing really to see unless you squint just the right way to make out the blurring of the terrain on the other side.
And they’ve all been up off the ground, not accessible except through the shadows.
This rift… With just a few more steps, the sense of the world of darkness beyond it jitters right through my skin. The vast, hazy maw stretches up above the treetops—but it also gapes all the way down to the forest floor.
It’s several times bigger than any of the rifts I’ve encountered before. You could toss Ted McGaffery’s entire house in there without scraping the edges.
I peer at the forest around us as if the trees might offersome explanation. My gaze catches on a bit of thread snagged on a twig.
The olive-green color makes my pulse hitch with a flash of memory—the suit jacket my former captor liked to wear, the same color of fabric stretching across his wide shoulders.
I inhale the cool forest air and peer closer. When I consider the details, this thread looks like yarn from a sweater, nothing that would have come from a suit jacket.
I can’t keep panicking at scraps that mean nothing.
Jonah is still studying the portal in front of us. He lets out a low whistle. “Now that’s a rift. How could the shadowkind community not already know about this one?”
“Maybe it’s new?” I suggest, but that idea seems absurd considering how huge it is.
A shudder ripples through Mirage’s lean form. His fox ears pop from between the strands of his bright red hair. “It feels too big. Like it’s… pushy.”
Hail inclines his head in a slight nod, his gaze fixed on the rift. “All the ones I’ve come across in the past give off a neutral impression. This one makes my hackles go up.”
I hug myself. “What do we?—”
Before I can finish my question, a shadowy figure tumbles out of the rift. It transforms into a physical body as it hits the ground just in front of the portal: a creature standing a little taller than my waist, with four bowed legs, a squashed face, and scales that lift into jagged tips.
Someone drew the shortest straw.
Raze’s nostrils flare. “It smells like the other strange creatures.”
As if to confirm his remark, the beast spasms. Its legs shrink while its jaw juts several inches longer. Not an improvement.
