The Hunter's Vow (Monster Hunter Academy Book 4) Page 10

  “Well, that’s freaking great,” I protested, throwing the claw to the ground. “Dude, you’ve been with me since I arrived at the academy. You know the truth. I don’t have magic. There’s never been any sort of magical woo happening with me when it came to fighting monsters. They showed up, I flipped out, I hit them with anything I had handy, and they either went away or they died for their troubles. Or I ran. I don’t know what you’ve decided I’ve got inside me but…”

  I frowned at him. “Actually, speaking of stuff inside me, is there anything else I need to know? Did you implant anything besides your own broken claw—like some of those devices Liam’s dad used? Is that what’s going on here?”

  Grim’s expression darkened as I spoke, and by the time I finished, he looked furious. “I would never have suppressed your magic,” he said. “I wouldn’t have left you unprotected like that.”

  “Uh-huh. And that’s all your little claw did? Protect me?” Irritation skiffed through me. “Was it a tracker too?”

  “No.” He fairly snarled the word. “I wasn’t hunting you, I was hunting your mother. The Hallowells had no idea you even existed. Once I had her scent, I could find her anywhere on the planet. Only, when I did, you were waiting for me, not her. And when I realized what you were, what you could be, I knew I wouldn’t be the only person who would figure it out, who’d hunt you down for what you were. What she was. Your mother…”

  Something in his tone made me stand up more sharply, and I swung my attention toward him, coming up on my toes like a brawler about to go into the ring. “What about my mother? You were supposed to kill her, I thought.”

  “Of course I was,” he agreed. “But I couldn’t. Which meant that I had to be convincing. The Hallowells had plenty of problems by that time. They hadn’t been tidy with their release of monsters into the wilds of the human realm, whether to serve as target practice for the rich and magical, or to extort cooperation for their schemes. Some of those monsters didn’t play by the rule book and had to be taken out. I was better suited to that work, and needed to stay focused on that—not your mother. I didn’t care about your mother.”

  “You took out your own kind.” I tried to sound appropriately upset about that, though I mostly wanted to know more about Grim’s work with the Hallowells. How could he have had the patience to stay near them for so long?

  He shifted toward me in the moonlight, eyes gleaming. “Not my own kind,” he corrected. “These weren’t my allies I was hunting down. Don’t make the mistake of believing every creature from this realm is a friend of all the rest. Even if you are the harbinger and can succeed in uniting us for this crucial battle—and that’s a big if—that solidarity will last only as long as the battle does. The moment one side or the other surrenders, there’s no alliance, no commonality. There shouldn’t be. We live as unique races, we’ll die as unique races. Solidarity isn’t our path.”

  I frowned. “Seriously? Wouldn’t you all be better off if you decided to work together?”

  Grim scoffed a sharp laugh. “Stop thinking like a human.”

  “Yo, I am a human. And maybe you should spend a little more time thinking like a human, since we clearly kicked your monster ass when you weren’t expecting it.”

  His choked snort was all that was necessary to show me what he thought of that idea, but I barreled on.

  “I’m serious. You’re going to hopefully succeed in pushing the Hallowells back this one time. Whether I’m involved in the process or not, good for you. But what happens when the next set of Hallowells comes along—or the Reids, the Cabots, or the Perkinses for that matter? You’re going to have to try to create this once-in-a-millennium collaboration again? That’s stupid.”

  He studied me coolly. “That would be stupid,” he agreed. “Which is why, at the end of this battle, assuming we defeat the Hallowells and negate their magic, the portals will be closed. There will be no connection between our realm and the human realm, not directly, not anymore. We’ll be cut off from you forever.”

  I couldn’t help it, I gaped at him. On the surface, this made perfect sense, but…was he serious? And why did I feel an aching loss open up inside me, like an organ had been ripped out of my body, leaving a hole behind?

  “Oh,” I eventually managed. “What does that mean for you?”

  “If I do my job, it’s not going to be an issue. Closing the portals between the realms requires sacrifice, and I long ago agreed to be that sacrifice.”

  Before I could respond to that, he stepped forward. “You’re not going to be a sacrifice, but you will be put to the test, Nina. You’ll be expected to fight.”

  I flapped my hands at him. “So we’re back to this? News flash, I still have no weapon. There’s legit no way—”

  He didn’t give me a chance to finish. One moment he was standing there, tall, fierce, and feral, the next, he was leaping for me, claws out, his long hair transforming into a thick roll of fur, his eyes alone remaining uniquely Grim-like as they widened and changed shape and size, becoming those of a cat.

  I half turned to flee, but he was on me too quickly, his immense body crashing me to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I rolled several feet, almost to the edge of the clearing, and barely got to my feet before he came again. This time, I ducked and rolled the other direction, but I came up with only one clear thought in my mind.

  Run.

  “I have no magic,” I screamed as I streaked off into the night.

  But of course, Grim was faster than that. He pounded alongside me, then drew ahead, angling sharply to stop my headlong flight and knock me back into the clearing. I struck the ground again, and this time, I didn’t get up. My lungs heaved, and tears sprang to my eyes. He stomped over to me, his mighty head dropping down, and glared at me as his breath rolled over me, hot and sweet.

  “I have no magic inside me, Grim,” I shouted again. “I fight monsters because I have no other choice. Because they keep hunting me. What will it take for you to understand that?”

  “You’re wrong,” he said. The words formed in my mind instead of dropping from his enormous jaws. “You don’t just fight monsters, Nina. You call them. There’s magic all around you. Your need has brought it here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I gasped, tears burning against my lids as my vision swam. But Grim merely dropped back on his haunches. I heard a new sound then, one that had been masked by the fury of our chase. A shuffling, huffing noise.

  I turned my head slowly and gaped. Standing around us now, in a half circle at the very edge of the forest, were six jaw-dropping creatures. A ten-foot-tall firebird like the one who had pulled me out of the Hallowells’ house, a Hulk-size minotaur with the head of a bull and the thick, heavy body of a man. A wolf easily as large as Grim, his ears perked, his gray eyes intelligent, his large black nose sniffing the air. A pair of sofa-sized lizards, long, sleek, and sinuous, leaning together and cooing softly even as they watched me, and finally, one of the six-foot-tall Laram, the elf-like watchers who had stood outside my apartment when I first came to Back Bay, who had followed me on to the campus, who had loosed their deadly bolts into Zach and me. This dark-haired, silver-eyed representative clearly wasn’t a fan. He stood at the edge of the clearing with a scowl marring his beautiful face, his bow half-cocked, poised to attack.

  “I hope you didn’t come for the show, because you’re going to be disappointed,” I grumbled, rolling first to my knees, then staggering to my feet before I glared again at Grim, practically vibrating with embarrassment.

  “I have no magic in me. I’ve never had magic in me. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

  “No, Nina Cross. You’ve always had magic in you. We just never saw it completely until now.”

  It was the Laram who spoke, and his gaze swung from me to Grim—still in his Akari form—and back. “You were hidden not only from those who would harm you, but from those who would help you as well. Shrewdly done, Akari.”

  There was censur
e in that declaration, but I could only shake my head.

  “I don’t know who you think I am.”

  A new voice cracked over the clearing. “I know who they think you are. And they’re wrong.”

  A man strode out from the trees, his hair long and dark and lashed back from his face, his skin neither pale nor dark, his eyes an ordinary brown. He was dressed in a long gray robe over a gray tunic, with black leggings shoved in his boots. But for all that he gave the impression of being an ordinary person, he wasn’t. He practically glowed from the inside, the trees bending away from him as he stepped into the clearing. His gaze went from me to Grim, who sat on his haunches and placidly regarded him.

  He glared at Grim. “Your people will die for this, Akari. She’s not the harbinger. There is no harbinger.”

  Grim’s voice filled my mind, and clearly the man’s too, given how he stiffened. “It’s time for you to acknowledge what you’ve wrought, wizard Cyrus, and claim Nina as your own.”

  “Um, what?” I managed, staring from this stranger to Grim and back again. Wizard? As in the last remaining wizard in the monster realm, not counting the sea snails grubbing around at the bottom of Lake Bashai?

  “Even now she changes,” someone murmured, two someones, the joint melodic tones of the lizards twining around each other.

  “The harbinger,” somebody else said.

  “Not the harbinger,” the man-or-maybe-not-a-man retorted. “Her mother was a fool who betrayed me. I cursed the ground she stood on, but I forgot her before the night was through. She bore no child. She couldn’t have.”

  “She did,” Grim countered. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  That pulled Cyrus up short, and from his expression, Grim had apparently scored a direct hit. What was going on here?

  Cyrus’s gaze flicked to me, cold and furious. “She isn’t the harbinger,” he seethed. “She is an abomination.”

  While I stared at this man who was supposedly my father, a cold rush of air signaled Grim’s transformation back into the form I knew him in best. Tall, stoic, and angry—and speaking with his outside voice.

  “So you don’t claim her?” he asked mildly.

  “No,” Cyrus the gray wizard snarled. Somehow, I wasn’t even surprised. If this asshole had as much magic as Grim thought he did, he could have found my mother a thousand times over in the human realm, whether he was a monster or not. He hadn’t. Which meant he’d never looked.

  Now he flicked his cold, dead eyes toward me. “Kill her,” he growled.

  I jerked back, alarm flooding through me as the six monsters ringing the clearing surged toward me. Without any other option, I lifted my hands and shouted, “No!”

  Nobody paid any attention to me.

  Sudden, blinding panic crashed over me, a punch of terror at once so new and yet so familiar that I was caught in perfect stasis—I had to run. I knew I had to run, but my legs wouldn’t work. My breath had stopped in my throat, my blood had congealed into concrete, my bones had turned to salt.

  I was going to die.

  And it was going to be a bad, bad death.

  12

  This wasn’t the first time I’d experienced fear like this, of course. It happened anytime I was caught outside without my tools or weapons. I learned from a pretty young age never to be defenseless, but here I was in this stupid pink dress without my knife in its sheath, with nothing but my hands and knees and elbows and—

  And the claw necklace. It was made of silver. It would have to do.

  As the monsters converged on me, I ripped the chain off my neck, the clasp breaking easily with the force of my yank. The small jagged pendants fell naturally between my fingers as I balled my fist around it and came up swinging. There was desperation behind my strike, of course, but something else too—hope. The tiny sliver of hope that I could land maybe one shot.

  One shot that would provide enough separation between me and the slashing claws and chopping teeth. A breath, a moment. That’s all I would need. Then I would run as fast as my legs would carry me, pulling these creatures away. I always needed to run. Because if the monsters followed me, they couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  In the chaos, I had no idea which monster reached me first. There was a vague impression of wings and claws and beak, so maybe the firebird? Made sense. It rushed at me, but I struck out blindly and screamed, my shout coming out not with the panic I truly felt, but with a roar of absolute fury. “No!”

  The force of my fist as it connected with the creature’s forelimb rocked me back and simultaneously unleashed a wave of energy, like some sort of electronic pulse. I swung around in a full circle, vaguely aware that this creature wasn’t alone, that there were other monsters coming for me, but my fist didn’t connect with anything.

  As I whirled, I saw the ring of terrifying creatures stop midattack, their eyes wide, their mouths stretched open, their arms reaching toward me, grasping and clawing. Only the Laram hadn’t moved, and his face was transfixed with—shock? Horror?

  Where was Grim in all this? My brain seized on that question even as the monsters’ energy shifted and they turned away from me, leaping backward toward Cyrus the magician at the edge of the forest.

  I leapt for him too. Because this was the real monster, the driving force behind the attack.

  But, of course, Cyrus was no longer alone. Even as I rushed forward, a volley of arrows shot over the heads of the monsters in front of me, somehow tracking me. The first one embedded itself in my shoulder, making me spin around, but instead of panic rushing through me yet again, I grinned with triumph. Another weapon. Something I could use. I reached up with my left hand and pulled the silver bolt free. It wasn’t smooth like the Laram’s bolt and ripped my skin cruelly as I yanked it out, but now I had two weapons. And two weapons were all I could hold anyway.

  I screamed in primal rage, and the monsters in front of me peeled away, leaving me with only the gray wizard and several shadowy blobs behind him that I couldn’t quite make out. I didn’t care. Then those creatures rushed forward, large, blocky monsters the size of vending machines, more teeth and fists than body, like cartoon Tasmanian devils. I slashed, cut, and tore without regard to anything other than the urgency and the sheer joy of the fight.

  And there was joy, dammit. These monsters were trying to kill me, or at least incapacitate me, and I had no problem giving them back as good as they got. What I didn’t expect, however, what shook me so hard that I let one of the bastards get close enough to carve a chunk out of my left shoulder, was when the tall silver-eyed elf, the Laram, suddenly went down beneath a crowd of the Tasmanian devil freaks.

  That was wrong. Despite their initial attack, these monsters were fighting for me, trying to protect me, and they were getting injured, taken out. In a flash, they changed from enemies to allies, to my own army that I needed to keep safe. I barreled my way over to the pile of devils and howled in rage, my fists a blur as I swept the creatures out of the way. Finally, the Laram was up again, spinning away from me to fight anew.

  Now for every strike I landed to deflect a monster coming directly at me, I spared one for an ally monster flanking me, the heavy-shouldered wolf, the sinuous fire lizards, the powerful minotaur, and, once again the silver-eyed Laram, who remained close to my side. The monsters attacking us dwindled, the attack of jagged-edge arrows stopped—but not soon enough. I heard a snarl of fury as a ripping slash of pain opened across my back. I stumbled forward, turning around to see Grim leap on a horde of Tasmanian Devils and rip them to shreds. The damage had been done, however, and I remained on my knees for a few minutes more as the fighting finally ended.

  I settled over on one hip, blowing hard as the piles of devils shimmered in the moonlight, then disappeared. My newly allied monsters remained around me, but the gray magician was gone.

  “She called, she united us, she fought. We are satisfied,” the sinewy fire lizards said, and the others picked up the chant, saying the words three times. We are satisfied
, we are satisfied echoing over the moonlit field. At that point, I wasn’t seeing so well, but I was happy they were satisfied. I was even happier to see none of them appeared to be gravely wounded. At least not as gravely wounded as I was. A rush of cold air whispered over me, then Grim stood beside me, his powerful calf and outer thigh close enough that I put aside my pride and leaned against him, my ears still ringing.

  “I am not satisfied,” Grim shot back, his growl low and menacing. “If that’s your best effort, she’ll die before the opening campaign.”

  The minotaur snorted in derision. “All she needs to do is get us to the campaign. She doesn’t need to fight.”

  The words were meant as a taunt, but also a test, I somehow understood, even though I was currently more fascinated by the way my blood was dripping down onto Grim’s gray boot.

  “That’s what the old books say, yes, but there’s a battle to be won here. A battle against an adversary we’ve never successfully faced. We should go into it with every weapon at our disposal. Working in true unity, not just showing up to do battle in such a way that protects our own races for the length of the battle and not beyond.”

  This made eminent sense, but then again, I was losing track of what Grim was saying. He shifted slightly, pressing more heavily into my side, and I took the support gratefully. I didn’t want to appear weak to these people, but I didn’t so much care anymore.

  Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth and lifted my chin when Grim reached down to haul me upright. Pressed alongside his body the way I was, I didn’t have to worry about standing on my own two feet, but as I studied the group around me, I wondered what they saw. A small woman in a ripped pink party dress, blood spattered across her face and exposed arms and legs. Still gripping weapons and jewelry made of Akari claws as if they were some magical talismans against all that was evil in the world.