Page 46 of Monstrous Hunt
Pausing, he looked down at me, tipping his head with a smug smirk on his lips, a black shadow against the blaze of blue. “In the jump.”
I looked around, trying to understand. I’d seen glimpses of other worlds when we jumped before, but the rest of the squad had been right there with me. We’d been together. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking you to the cave as we agreed.” Impatience tightened his voice.
I turned my head, but I still couldn’t see anything but blazing blue and darkness. “Why can’t I see?”
He huffed out a harsh breath and thumped his hand against something. “Is that better, princess?”
Soft white flooded the room. Room—not a cave. The walls were stone but smooth and shiny like polished silver. Thick rugs covered the floor, and the ceiling glittered with crystals, casting prism rainbows around the room like a disco ball. “Where are we?”
“The cave,” he repeated. “I told you that I’d made some improvements.”
It still didn’t make sense. I couldn’t reconcile the tiny cubbyhole of a cave with this spacious, glittering chamber. I didn’t feel suffocated by hundreds of feet of stone overhead. There was even a large, round window. No, it had to be a video screen displaying a movie. The sky sparkled like warm, living amethysts and blue-green vines curled around the round frame.
I turned my head so I could see his face, searching his eyes. Trying to understand.
“When I jump to another location, I bring the coordinates together. They lay on top of one another, blending realities. As long as I hold the jump steady, those two places exist independently of their given parameters, together, outside of space and time. Since I’m holding them together, it’s accessible only through me.”
“So you’re holding the cave into a new reality?”
He tipped his head side to side and gave a careless shrug. “This place is a mixture of many realities. It’s the cave, yes. Deep in the ground beneath a thick, protective layer of lead, on a backward planet that no one in the universe cares about. But it’s also a piece of Gioiello.”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember exactly. Seeing the confusion on my face, he added, “Snryx noted on the grid that your favorite color is purple. He spoke of the planet when you were upset.”
The planet of mermaids. Awed, I looked out the window again, watching the vines wave back and forth. “We’re under water?”
He did the side-to-side motion of his head again. “Sort of, yes.”
“And in the cave.”
“Yes.”
“At the same time.”
He rolled his eyes and set me down on my feet. “The human begins to comprehend the magnificent scope of my abilities.”
“Fucking amazing,” I breathed out, not even offended. How could I be with such a beautiful sight? “How long will it hold like this?”
“Indefinitely.” He shrugged again, as if it was no big deal. As if he didn’t care about my opinion of this place. But I watched as he dragged his palm over his head again, back and forth. A nervous tick. “I set the grid weeks ago and it’s held without me being here physically.” Briskly, he waved his arm toward the bed. “Rizan’s bag of crap is over there. Also all of the food Lohr and Snryx specified is in the kitchen.” He pointed toward a doorway, where I saw a sleek, modern refrigerator. “Though Lohr insists you should drink the smoothies first while the nutrients are the freshest. I can work magic but I can’t keep freshly blended smoothies from degrading in this atmosphere.”
Slowly, I turned in a circle, taking everything in. Comparing it to the nasty cave he’d stashed me in before. He’d been working on this for weeks. This was more than just a temporary shelter while they eliminated mrions. This could be a place of safety where no one would be able to find us. That’s why the room was so spacious and outfitted with everything we’d been using at the beach house. Down to a bed even larger than the one Rizan had ordered. “This is amazing. Thank you. Really.”
He turned away sharply, giving me his back. “We should return before you even begin to run out of supplies.”
I should let him go. The squad was waiting for him. I didn’t even know what to say, but when would I ever be alone with him again? I didn’t know him like I knew the others. He spent the majority of his time alone. Apart from his squad. Debilitating them—and himself.
A sense of unease rippled through me. A foreboding premonition. I needed to fix this hole in the squad, or they might not all come back to me.
It was a mistake to antagonize him. I knew that. But I blurted out, “Scared of being alone with me?”
He spun toward me like a furious hurricane, dashing me against the rocks. My back slammed against the wall hard enough to knock the air out of me. I couldn’t breathe, his forearm shoved against my throat, pinning me to the wall. “Fuck yeah.”
I blinked, surprised that he admitted it. “Then what are you going to do about it?”
He stared down at me, his jaws working, clenching, his neck corded and strained, before he finally said, “I’m going to end up being delivered to Nyan Station in pieces.”
I had no idea what that meant, other the reference to the decommissioning location Kroktl had mentioned before. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
