Page 18 of Misfit Monsters (Pack of Outcasts #1)

Periwinkle

I hop out of the van and spread my arms in the crisply cool morning air. It rushes into my lungs in a deep gulp.

This isn’t the kind of environment I’m drawn to. I can’t see any buildings or people in any direction, only the winding road with tall trees on either side. There are no emotions to absorb except for the currently subdued feelings of the men I’m working with.

But there’s something refreshing about the solitude that I’m not sure I’ve appreciated before. No need to worry about how I’ll be affected by my surroundings. I can take in what makes the mortal world special with no pressure at all.

The men have spread out along the sides of the road in what’s becoming our typical approach at each stop. There’s not much I can contribute other than confirming that I’m not picking up worrisome emotional energy nearby. And moral support.

“Let’s find those weirdo shadowkind!” I declare, planting my hands on my hips with a warble of my new leather jacket. “They don’t stand a chance against us.”

The men go on searching for the strange beings Rollick told us about.

Well, I guess it’s mostly Raze doing the searching. He prowls along the treeline with his lips parted, inhaling every scent that drifts on the breeze. A forked tongue darts past his lips.

Apparently basilisks—which as far as I’ve determined are giant lizards?—have a good sense of smell.

So do foxes, but I don’t know how seriously Mirage is taking our mission. As soon as we stopped, he shifted into his shadowkind form and now is bounding between the tree trunks with whirls and flips, swishing his five bushy tails.

Raze shoots a frown Mirage’s way, but I don’t mind seeing the fox shifter cavort around. When we’re cooped up in the van for a long stretch, he starts giving off a vibe of painful restlessness that makes me think of cheek-puckeringly sour grapefruit.

I’m sure if he notices something strange out here, he’ll say so. In the meantime, we get an acrobatic show.

Would Hail’s powers help him pick up on any unusual shadowkind nearby? He’s ambling along the edge of the forest too, in the opposite direction from Raze.

The fae in movies have those pointy ears. Maybe he’s got super hearing.

He stops and tips his pale face to the beaming sun. Something in his expression softens from its usual icy sharpness.

I catch a trace of butterscotch pudding awe that brings a smile to my lips. “It’s gorgeous out here, isn’t it? ”

Hail’s eyes snap to me, his features hardening all over again with a much pricklier emotion that I barely taste before it’s gone. “Of course you’d be thinking about the view. I still can’t see why we got stuck with a cream puff.”

I would protest that cream puffs are delicious and delightful, and also shaped very differently than I am even if some parts of me are on the round side, but just then Raze lets out a grunt of apprehension.

Jonah takes a step closer. “What?”

The massive, sinewy man turns his head where he’s standing about thirty feet down the road. His tongue flicks farther over his lips.

He tenses. “Some kind of creature passed this way—not like anything I’ve smelled before. There’s something about the scent that … doesn’t seem totally right.”

Hail snorts. “Not totally right. I’m sure that description will have Rollick applauding our work.”

Jonah shoots the winter fae a glower of warning before turning back to Raze. “Can you follow the trail?”

The basilisk shifter stalks farther along the shoulder. “It’s faint, but I think whatever it came from started following the road here. The scent gets stronger when I walk this way.”

“Let’s see if we can catch up.” Jonah motions the rest of us into the van. “Raze, you sit up front with the window open. Let me know if I drive too fast for you to pick up the scent.”

I scramble into the back and nab the spot on the bench closest to the driver’s seat. A rumble spreads through the cushions when Jonah starts the engine.

As he drives, Raze tips his head out the open window like an incredibly over-sized Doberman. His eyes narrow against the rushing air. “It’s still getting stronger.”

When we reach a crossroad, we stop so Raze can quickly survey the area. He strides with a purposeful intensity that’s hard not to watch, his muscles flexing beneath his tan skin.

He points to the left. “That way.”

We’ve only been zooming in that direction for another minute or two when a shriek shatters the quiet of the wilderness.

Jonah mutters a curse and presses his foot to the gas. The van roars forward.

We all sit braced and staring out the windshield, even Hail’s icy detachment shattered. As we come up on a small cluster of buildings beside the country road, frightened shouts carry from deeper in the human settlement.

Jonah jerks the wheel to careen onto the even narrower side road. Outside a low brick building, several humans have scattered around a table laid with a checkered cloth and several plates of food.

They were having a breakfast picnic, croissants and scrambled eggs tragically abandoned. Now they’re backing away from a dark shape I only catch a glimpse of amid the nearby shrubs.

Jonah brings the van to a rasping halt on the gravel shoulder of the road and leaps out, but Raze throws open the passenger door even faster. He lunges past the panicked people toward the creature in the shrubs.

I dash after him, my pulse skittering with the memory of him falling during the morphball game. He was fine then, but we don’t know what this creature can do.

As I run past the humans, my new leather jacket flapping at my sides, their fear washes over me like a deluge of pickle juice. Then a more potent wallop smacks me from up ahead… from the unknown being crashing through the bushes.

“Stop!” The cry bursts out of me before I even think about it, but Raze listens. He skids to a halt a couple of strides short of the shrubs, his claws already extended from his fingertips.

I hold out my hands in a calming gesture both for him and the being shuddering a few feet away. “It doesn’t want to attack anyone. It’s not feeling aggressive, only scared.”

The other men come to a halt behind me.

“Mirage,” Jonah says. “You can alter perceptions—can you make these people forget they saw this thing—and us?”

“Faster than a fox fleeing a hound!” Mirage replies cheerfully.

I focus all my attention on the strange creature in the bushes. I can only make out some tufts of fur, the edge of what might be a wing, the lash of what I assume is a tail. It’s not terribly large, only the size of a standard poodle, but the humans wouldn’t have known what to make of it.

I keep my voice as soothing as I can. “Hey there. We won’t hurt you. We just want to find out what’s going on. We’ll make sure those people don’t yell at you anymore.”

Thankfully, whatever Mirage is doing allows me to keep my promise. No more yelps or hollers split the air. Door hinges squeak—I think he’s persuaded the humans to go into the building.

The sour flavor of terror starts to recede.

“Very good,” I murmur. “We’re going to come around the bushes so we can see you better. I promise we’ll give you lots of space.”

Hail scoffs under his breath. “This is ridiculous.”

“Let her try,” Jonah says, quiet but firm.

I move first, backing up a few steps and then easing through a gap between the decorative bushes. The shadowkind creature gives off a brief quiver of renewed anxiety, but it stays huddled next to its temporary shelter rather than bolting.

I’ve never seen a being like it before, but lesser creatures do come in a wide range of appearances.

This one gives me the impression of a bedraggled cat that’s ballooned far beyond its ideal size, with crooked ears, one useless leathery wing, and not just a tail but two slim appendages whipping back and forth from its belly.

The men follow me, hanging even farther back. The creature starts to cringe away.

I hold out a hand toward it beseechingly. “You’re safe. We’re only going to look at you. See, we’re staying all the way over here.”

It relaxes slightly. Mirage lets out a low chuckle. “Beating the beast with sweetness.”

At the edge of my vision, Jonah sends a smile my way. “Thank you, Peri. You’re doing great.”

Hail takes on a bored tone. “What the fuck is that thing?”

The moment he’s asked, the answer changes—because the creature does. All at once, its legs shoot up, its chest expanding, the wing vanishing into its side and a ring of spines jutting out in its place. It surges up and out to nearly my own size.

I can’t help flinching backward with a shiver of surprise. “I didn’t think lesser beings could change their forms.”

Jonah’s brow has furrowed. “They normally can’t. I’ve never seen one do that before.”

Raze’s voice comes out uncertain even in its gruffness. “Neither have I. It’s definitely what I smelled before—and its scent just changed too.”

Even Hail sounds a bit taken aback. “It hardly looks dangerous , in any case.”

Nope. Now the thing looks like a bedraggled, swollen, spiky bulldog on stilts—incredibly weird, but wobbly as a newborn foal.

“We don’t know that this creature caused any problems,” Jonah says. “There could be something much bigger going on. I’m going to ask it to show us the rift it came through.”

I’m confused about how he thinks asking is going to work until a string of sorcerous syllables tumbles off his tongue. The hairs on the back of my neck rise even though the command isn’t aimed at me.

But this is one of the reasons Rollick sent Jonah with us. There isn’t any other way we could convince the creature to lead us to the place where it emerged from the shadow realm.

The creature gives its body a dog-like shake—and nearly topples over on its side. A seal-like arf escapes its mouth.

Jonah frowns and repeats his sorcerous command with more emphasis. The creature shudders, but then it turns away from the village and trots off toward the trees.

We follow much closer now that it’s being compelled, just a few feet behind it. I only get vague impressions of the creature’s current emotions—a little discomfort mingling with a flicker of relief to be heading someplace familiar. The sorcery doesn’t appear to have bothered it.

It sets off through the woods in a straight line, I suppose going directly toward the rift. Its spikes rake against the sides of the trees.

There’s no way we could follow it in the van.

Hail sucks a breath through his teeth. “This rift had better not be a hundred miles away.”

Raze scowls. “We didn’t drive very far after I caught the scent. It could be close.”

“Or we could roam all across the world,” Mirage puts in with a laugh.

Jonah’s tone goes dry. “I don’t think we need to?—”

It happens in a split-second. One instant, the creature is swaying along like it already was, seemingly free of distress.

The next, a vicious fury hurtles out of it like a charred but bloody steak thrown in my face .

“Watch out!” I yelp.

The creature whips around, its body blasting outward into a mass of clawed limbs and horned tentacles, most of which are slicing through the air toward?—

Hail flings out his hand. A wallop of frigid air surges off him.

The cold front slams into the creature and knocks it right off its feet. Its dark gray flesh turns blue, its skin and scales frosting over.

It tips over and hits a tree with a solid thunk, limbs as rigid as a statue. A few of the brand-new tentacles snap off and thud to the ground.

He froze it solid.

The fae stares at the results of his hasty reaction. His alabaster skin looks even paler than usual. “I—I wasn’t trying to kill it.”

He’s too startled to suppress the waft of fetid-gruel horror that rolls off him.

Not only was he not trying—it bothers him a lot that he did this.

Hail might be a jerk, but a twinge of sympathy quivers through me. I give him a grateful smile. “You protected us. It was going to hurt us, and you made sure it didn’t. You moved so fast—it was amazing.”

His dark blue gaze veers toward me. Then his jaw tightens.

He makes a harsher scoffing sound than before. “As long as teacher boy doesn’t dock points off our assignment for going overboard, I suppose it’s all right.”

I can tell he’s squashing the uneasiness, not recovered from it.

Jonah swipes his hand through his rumpled hair, peering at the creature in its enlarged, especially monstrous form.

“That… is not something I want to run into unprepared ag ain. Peri’s right, Hail.

You did what was necessary in the moment.

I should have made my command clearer so it had no room to turn on us. ”

Raze’s expression has shadowed. “It didn’t seem like it would attack.”

I shake my head. “It wouldn’t have, before. It just… changed. A lot, all at once.”

We stand there in a moment of unsettled silence. Mirage breaks it with a flip through the air to the frozen beast’s side and a chorus of illusionary oohs and aahs.

He points off through the trees in the direction the strange creature was heading, fragments of sunlight glowing off his golden-brown face. “At least we know where our journey should take us next. Let’s enjoy our sense of direction!”