Page 12 of A Mastery of Monsters

I stare at Margot and then Isaac, who stand still until we hear the sound of a car door shutting.

Then Isaac bends forward, and his spine, already bony, begins to push and shove against his skin, becoming larger and larger until it bursts from his back.

A noise leaves my mouth, but I can’t process it.

His skin keeps splitting from his neck to his tailbone, blood spurting from the wounds, and fur expands out from them.

It’s brown, wiry, and thick. His body folds in on itself, almost turning inside out, and what’s being birthed from beneath it keeps growing.

He makes small gasping noises as his limbs stretch, claws grow onto the ends of massive paws, and rippling muscle covered in fur emerges, wet and slick with blood.

And he… it is getting bigger, and taller, and by the time the head appears, I’ve somehow backed up to the tree line, because I’m clinging to the trunk, my nails digging into the bark.

And then it’s finished, and the creature that looks back at me is the sort of doglike beast I would expect to guard the gates of hell.

Its mouth is so filled with razor-sharp teeth that they’re protruding from its wet lips, drool dripping down and sizzling where it lands in the grass, scorching the earth.

This is the kind of dog that barks and snaps at you from behind a fence with a sign warning you away, the sort that you know would tear you apart if it ever got near you.

But worse because it has the height and size to crush me under a single paw.

“August,” Virgil whispers.

I turn and sprint through the trees.

What the fuck is happening right now? I joined up with Virgil to help me figure out how this monster stuff is involved with what happened to Jules, and now this kid literally transformed into that thing…

. I don’t know what to do anymore. But now I know what Virgil meant when he said the monster might have been in a “different form” when I was in City Park.

The thing that tried to kill me could be standing right beside me in human skin and I wouldn’t even know.

My head is too heavy for the rest of my body, like I’m drunk again, making me stumble across the dirt trail that I can barely see in the dark. I have no plan or sense of direction. The only thing I want to do is get as far away as possible from that thing and just think for a minute.

I trip over a root, slamming into the ground and gasping. I push myself onto all fours and stay there, panting and trembling. I need to move, but my body has seized up.

“August.”

I whip my head to the side, where Virgil is standing in the trees.

I hadn’t even heard him. Hadn’t noticed he was following.

“What is this? What are you?” He was so fast. Way too fast with that rabbit at Big Sandy Bay.

And the way his teeth seemed to grow longer as he got frustrated with Margot.

I think back to how he’d reacted when I asked why they don’t kill monsters instead of locking them up. He’d been weirdly upset….

Because he’s one of them.

Virgil swallows. “Our society works in the pursuit of the mastery of monsters. Some of us are born like this, and others are made. Everyone has a unique shape, but they’re all…

well, they’re all monstrous. We appear human, but at a certain point we become unable to retain that form.

When that time comes, we must find a partner to bond with.

That bond allows us to control ourselves in monster form and shift between the two forms at will. We call these partners Masters.”

“Slavery, much?” I spit.

The corner of his lip twitches. “It’s academic.

And the first Master was a Black man, if that helps make the distinction clearer for you.

Everyone belonging to the society is a student.

Bachelor and Master are ranks. Ranks that must be earned through initiation.

The competition. You have to win the right to bond. ”

“The competition where people die . Doing what? Fighting monsters?”

He winces. “Technically, yes, at least in the latter stages. I know this is not a small ask.” He runs his hand through his curls.

“My parents, they weren’t great. The people who will agree to partner with me are…

well, kind of the bottom of the barrel. But you , you can fight.

And you’re not affiliated with the society and therefore might give me a chance. ”

“What did your parents do?”

“They attempted to kill the leader of our organization, murdering a couple dozen people in the process,” he says, biting his lip. “Obviously didn’t gain them a lot of fans.”

Okay, some light mass murder. Making Virgil the son of mass murderers.

He comes closer, slowly, as if he expects me to bolt again. I’m considering it. I’m so fucking in over my head right now. He squats down in front of me. Reaching out, he pulls my hand into his own, enveloping my fingers between his, and looks into my eyes, his face only inches from mine.

“I need you, August,” he breathes. “That thing you saw, it’s still Isaac in there.

He maintains control because of his bond with Margot.

But without it… we become wild. Mindless.

A beast who doesn’t know how to do anything but maim and kill.

Those things, they get put underground, imprisoned within themselves.

Fodder for the front lines. You heard Bernie mention his son…

. His son was a monster too, and he and his partner lost last year, so he ran away to escape that exact fate.

But if we run, they chase us down and either take us back or kill us.

There is no escaping this. Either you win this competition, or I lose.

And losing means my only existence would be to wait to be useful or die, and even if I can be used, it will only be to fight until I die.

But if a monster is paired with a Master, we become a protector.

A real soldier worth something. We’re allowed to have a life.

” His eyes shine with unshed tears, but he doesn’t turn away to hide the emotion. He keeps his gaze on me.

He’s like Isaac. Just like I guessed. Inside of Virgil, there’s a thing like that. Fur and sharp claws and teeth.

A monster. Just like Jules warned me about.

I don’t understand any of this soldier shit, but I get that he needs me to avoid becoming a wild monster locked up by this society they keep talking about. Needs me to fight things that could kill me.

“I promise you,” he says, voice cracking.

“I promise you that if you win, if you become a Master and partner with me, I will do everything within my power to help find your brother. And it could never be a lie because I will need you, forever . But you have to save me, and to do that, you have to succeed. You have to work hard. And you have to be able to face monsters.”

His hands have started to tremble. There’s tension throughout his entire body. He should be the one with the power, and yet here he is, begging.

He wasn’t trying to scare me before. This is serious. I could get hurt. I could die.

The best way for you to stay safe is to stay away.

Jules is all I have left. He could be in real danger. I could lose him, permanently.

This is the one time that Jules has seriously asked me to do something. He wants me to stay away. He wants me to not get involved.

Some part of me wants it too. To go out and get drunk and dance and forget about living in a world with monsters. To forget this boy holding my hands and staring at me, pleading for my help.

But I can’t lose Jules.

This time, I’ll have to disappoint him, too.

“I’m no one’s hero,” I tell Virgil.

“You are to me.” The worst part of him saying it is that I know he isn’t lying.

I pull my hands away, and he lets me go, his eyes dropping to the ground.

When I stand, he stays on his knees. “This isn’t a rescue mission,” I say. “This is an exchange.”

Virgil’s head whips up. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a ‘fine.’?”

His lips peel into a smile, and I turn away, crossing my arms over my chest, my face hot.

I couldn’t care less about Virgil and what he wants me to do.

But I need him as much as he needs me. He hadn’t just known about that thing we saw at Big Sandy Bay.

He was intimately familiar with it. This is bigger than I thought.

Something is going on, and if I have any chance of finding out what it is, it’s going to come from associating with these people.

I don’t like the idea of a long game, but I need to get in the game somehow. Even if I’m starting to wonder how equipped I am to play.

I walk back to the clearing with Virgil beside me.

When we get there, Margot is next to it—not it , her brother . He’s calm. As if he’s a tame puppy instead of a vicious beast.

I force myself to stare into his wide, dark eyes, and somehow, I can see him. He’s in there. They’re Isaac’s eyes. He’s not just a monster. It’s not that simple anymore.

I turn to Virgil. “What’s next?”

He laughs, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes from the force of it. I ignore the way it makes my lips pull into a smile.

Margot is more reserved. “Welcome to the Society for the Pursuit of the Fundamentals of Learning. You are now a student.” Then she mutters under her breath. “May you not come to regret it.”

My limbs go stiff.

It’s the exact name of the organization that sent Jules that letter. No wonder Virgil recognized it. I whip toward him. “The letter my brother—”

“I know,” Virgil says. “We keep track of everyone we send an invite to, and everyone involved in the society, even at the student level. I checked, and his name isn’t there.

I don’t know how he got that letter, but it didn’t come through the official channels.

I also checked out that monster from Big Sandy Bay, ran its description through our public database.

There’s no monster like that registered either. ”

“What does that mean?!”

Margot says, “It means finding your brother is going to be more complicated than you think. I suggest you take this candidacy seriously, because our help depends on your performance.”

I can do that. Play by their rules. Do this competition.

And the second I find Jules, I’m ditching this monster cult.