“I’m not sure how much help I’ll be,” she comments. “I only shoot lightning. If I aim at the beast, I will electrocute it.”
“Which is why you’re going to be Flint’s backup,” Jaxon tells her. “Worst-case scenario only.”
“I can do that.” She glances around. “Where do you want me?”
“Probably as close to the mountain as you can get,” I tell her, “but on ground level. That way if Macy and Flint miss, you can come in behind him and do what you need to do.”
“How about over there?” She points to a small alcove carved into the actual mountain that’s only a couple of feet from the entrance.
“That’s really close.” I look around for someplace else. “How about something a little farther away?”
She grins at me. “Don’t worry, Grace. I got this.”
“I know you do, but—”
“Don’t worry,” she repeats. “Just make sure you don’t get eaten, okay?”
“Yeah.” I smile sickly. “That sounds like a plan.”
When all three of them are in position, Jaxon looks at Xavier and me. “Ready?” he asks.
Not even a little bit. I don’t say that, though. I can’t. So instead, I just nod before shifting into my gargoyle form. It’s past time to get this show on the road.
100
Carpe Slay-Em
Xavier, Jaxon, and I walk through the craggy rock entrance to the beast’s oasis like we own the place—partly, I think, to shore up our own nerves when it comes to being bait and partly because it never hurts to look more confident than you feel.
“What do you think it is?” Xavier asks as the path we’re on winds past the hot springs.
“I’m less concerned about what it is right now than where it is,” Jaxon answers as he sweeps his head back and forth, checking out every single hiding spot we can find.
Thank God the water is glowing so brightly, or we’d be fighting this monster in the pitch dark. And most likely all about to die.
Stop! The voice inside me is growing more insistent with each step I take toward the Unkillable Beast.
It’s creepy as fuck, and I can’t help wondering if my gargoyle knows something I don’t. If its senses are picking up on the danger I know is here but can’t quite pinpoint yet.
Unlike my gargoyle, Hudson is oddly silent. He stopped asking me to reconsider right about the time we got everyone in position, and I thought at first that he went away to pout the way he sometimes does.
But I can feel him inside my mind, senses on high alert as he looks out at the world through my eyes, trying to spot the beast, too. Trying—I know, even though he won’t admit it—to help Jaxon and me any way that he can.
Which is the dichotomy of Hudson and always has been. He’s capable of doing such horrible things that his own brother wanted him dead—or human—but now he’s here, doing his best to defend Jaxon against a threat he doesn’t even think we should be facing.
“You shouldn’t be facing it,” he tells me. But he doesn’t say it with his usual snark—for once, he’s not trying to pick a fight. Instead, he’s quiet. Sad, almost, like he knows what’s coming and has given up any chance of stopping it.
A sudden noise cuts through the night air, a clanging of chains that has all three of us freezing in our tracks.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, whirling toward a sound I think is coming from behind the waterfall.
“Sounded like chains to me,” Xavier answers, his werewolf ears working overtime.
The clang of chains comes again, more enthusiastically, and this time it’s very obvious where it’s coming from.
“Chains?” I murmur to Jaxon. “What’s that about?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
The voice inside me is screaming now. Go back, go back, go back!
It’s beyond scary, has me pausing for several seconds to draw in a shuddering breath as panic takes root deep inside me. But it’s too late now. We’re here and the clock is ticking away. We need to get this done.
So we exchange one long look among the three of us before squaring our shoulders and heading toward the cavern, where the clanging continues to grow louder and louder.
Not going to lie, I’m terrified. Terrified of what awaits us in that cave—I mean, what kind of monster uses chains to fight?—and terrified of what we have to do. I’ve never deliberately killed anyone or anything in my life (I even relocate bugs outside when I see them), and the idea of coming all the way up here to kill this monster and take a heartstone it clearly doesn’t want us to take—when it has done nothing to me or any of my friends—doesn’t feel right.
But what’s the alternative? Leave my friends to continue alone? There’s no right answer here, nothing to do but forge ahead and somehow hope that everything turns out okay, though I don’t know how that’s possible right now.
Jaxon looks at me questioningly, but I just nod. And then the three of us walk toward the cave and the Unkillable Beast, whatever that might be, heart pounding in my chest. Palms sweaty. And a sick feeling growing in my stomach that something truly horrible is about to happen.
The cave is dark as we approach, and we’re all on high alert, waiting for something to attack us. But the closer we get to the cave, the harder it is to ignore the clanging sound, to not focus on that to the exclusion of everything else.
Add in the low, husky growls that have started coming from deep inside, and it takes every ounce of courage I have to keep going—and that’s before I look down at the ground and see the plethora of bones lying around. Some long and in perfect shape, others broken clean in half, but all recognizable as human bones.
People, I can only imagine, who had come before us and failed to do what we have to do.
When we get to the entrance, Jaxon holds a hand up to stop Xavier and me, then takes the first step into the cave himself. The chains go wild, but nothing else happens. Even the growls seem to have quieted.
Jaxon takes another step into the cave. I follow right behind and Xavier follows me.
I shine the flashlight on my phone around the darkened cave, but I don’t see anything—and neither does Xavier or Jaxon, apparently, because seconds later, their flashlight beams follow mine.
We look around, though there’s not much to see. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this barren cavern. There’s nothing here, just rocky walls and bones scattered all around—skulls and leg bones and rib cages still intact.