Page 62 of A Mastery of Monsters

It’s not a bad plan, but I need to score well to get my rank up. Assuming that all four Progressives give me their points at the end, that’s only four. It could help in a close race, but I need to win to make any real progress.

Just passing is no longer an option.

Virgil must pick up on my thoughts, because he says, “The alternative is getting eliminated right here, right now. Not everyone is going to make it through this. We need to manage the bare minimum first.”

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Do you have a strategy for finding these eggs?”

“Finding them is the easy part, trust me. This test isn’t about that. It’s not like the first one. It’s about the combat.”

“Uh, you and your blindfolded ass think finding them is going to be easy?”

“Yes,” he says. “But we need to be fast. I’m not allowed to touch them, so you need to follow me and run. Trust me on this. We can’t waste even a second, okay?”

“Okay…”

The sound of a short whistle goes off in the air, and I straighten. The second the long whistle goes off, Virgil runs.

It takes me a moment to get my bearings, and then I’m sprinting after him. He’s fucking fast, which you’d think I would remember from when I failed so badly at target practice with him. It takes everything in me to keep up.

He finds a spot on the ground, pushes leaves away, and points at an egg. I blink at him. “Dude, what the fuck?”

“Don’t waste time!”

I shove the egg in my sling bag, and we take off again, sprinting from location to location to location.

I’m breathing hard, and I’m glad that at least I’m not the only one.

Virgil is huffing too. I don’t have the headspace to count how many eggs we’re getting.

I’m just running as fast as I can. He scales trees to shake down eggs, and digs holes, and directs me to fish around in the ponds.

I’m a glorified gofer, stuffing the eggs in my pouch and rushing from spot to spot.

Then he stops suddenly, sweat dripping down his face onto the golf shirt this loser wore to the competition. “That’s it,” he says. “The others are already captured.” He holds out the wrist his watch is on. “Time?”

I’m about to tell him when the halfway horn blares. Virgil swears.

I ask, “How do you know the rest are gone? Actually, how did you know where they were?”

“They smell like plastic,” he says. “Fresh plastic, like, new.”

“You can smell that?!”

“When I concentrate, yes. I can also smell the others, just like they can smell us if they’ve got a monster at all worth their salt. That’s how I know all the eggs are claimed, because there are people scents mingling around them. How many do we have?”

I swallow, counting the eggs once, and then again. “Nine.”

“Fuck. I tried to keep us away from other people. I hoped we could manage the ten.”

“So we find Violet and Bryce now,” I say. “And hope we can steal enough. You can sniff them out, right?”

Virgil scratches the stubble on his face. “That’s not how it works. People, for the most part, generally smell the same. Maybe if they were wearing a specific perfume, or if I knew them well enough to recognize more subtleties in their scent.”

“Does that mean you know my scent? What do I smell like to you?”

Virgil coughs into his fist and shuffles in place. “Is this really the time to get into that?”

“Didn’t think it was that complicated a question.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking. People don’t smell like woodsmoke or thyme or whatever beautiful poetic descriptions that get put into books. And you smell to me the same way you would to any monster who knew you for long enough. Which is, honestly, like hair products.”

“What sorts? Nice hair products?”

He waves his hands around. “You know, like shea butter, and almond oil, and mint sometimes that I guess is from your shampoo? And coconut and—” He stops and swallows.

“Sounds pretty poetic to me,” I say, fighting the urge to rip off the blindfold on his face so I can see his expression properly. “Also, you listed a lot of things.”

“Can we please move on?!”

“Fine, fine. So basically, we have to just accept encounters with random people until we find Violet and Bryce.”

“Yes. I can tell some are smaller groups. I figure we can try those and see how things shake out.”

“Awesome. Well, odds-wise, there’s a redheaded guy and a Black girl who haven’t formed any close attachments as far as I can tell.

Caden has two guys, so he’ll be in a bigger group, hopefully easier to avoid.

And there are two girls I know are teaming up.

That’s, like, most people accounted for.

Let’s go for someone who’s alone first so we can get our minimum. Then go to Violet and Bryce.”

“I agree. Let’s get going, then.” Virgil rolls his neck. “You ready?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve inspired so much confidence in me,” he says and takes off running again.

We reach someone faster than I expect. It’s the redheaded guy and his partner, a slim white boy whose fists tremble as he raises them when we come around the corner. I assume he’s smelled us.

I pause. Virgil doesn’t.

He drops the kid like a fucking hot potato. Just straight-up decks this dude in the face. Instant KO. My jaw is on the floor. “August!” he shouts. “Do something!”

I jerk to attention and move to fight the redhead. His partner was unprepared, but this guy isn’t a pushover. I swing at him, aiming for his head and gut like Margot taught me, and kicking out intermittently.

“We don’t have time.” Virgil bounces from foot to foot in my periphery. “People are coming.”

I weave out of the way of a punch. “Working on it!” Finally, I land a hard kick on the redhead’s shin that makes him howl.

“Hurry,” Virgil says. “We’re going to be outnumbered soon. End it.”

“?’Cause it’s so easy.” I’m dripping sweat, and besides that one kick, not getting anywhere with this. I look at the guy, bobbing and weaving.

The problem with this is I’m fighting the way Margot taught me, which is all well and good, but I’m not Margot. And I don’t have time to be this well-behaved.

I spit in the guy’s face. He splutters and reels back, and I rush him, shoving him to the ground and slamming my foot down on his stomach. Once, twice, three times. While he curls into a ball on his side, I unclip his sling bag and take it, running into the trees.

There’s muffled laughter behind me.

I glare at Virgil even though he can’t see it. “What?!”

“Did you… spit at him?” he manages between chuckles.

“No!”

“I heard spitting.”

“ He spat at me .”

“Really? Because I swore I heard a spit and then he made a disgusted sound—”

“I thought we were running from people! Stop talking!”

Virgil pulls ahead again, and I let him lead me. And I guess we’re far enough away, because he stops so we can catch our breath.

I open my bag and dump redhead’s eggs into it. “Shit. He only had five.”

“Not surprising. The egg finding puts a lot of pressure on the monster, and his partner wasn’t very skilled. But we did it. You dealt with the candidate quickly too.”

“Because you rushed me,” I hiss. And it hadn’t exactly been easy to do. We need to find Violet and Bryce.

A howl tears through the air. Not a monster. But a boy. A set of boys. Howling. “Come out to play, August!”

Me and Virgil look at each other.

We’re so fucked.