Page 22 of Misfit Monsters (Pack of Outcasts #1)

Hail

F ragments of ice spin above my palm in a controlled whirl. I focus on them rather than the rumble of the van, my “teammates” sitting around me, and the forested hills looming outside the windows.

If we were back at the school, I’d conjure a form that provides an obvious challenge: a feat of visible intricacy that would have my audience gasping in awe. But I don’t give a fuck about impressing the screw-up fox, the pipsqueak, the bloodthirsty brute, or the brownnosing prick at the wheel.

So I settle on something just for myself. Still a challenge but a hidden one—a challenge that’ll keep me occupied and away from the thoughts niggling at the edges of my mind.

At a nudge of my will, the particles spiral closer together. Bit by bit, they meld into larger pieces of the structure.

The sculpture trembles with a bump of the van over a pothole, but my concentration holds the bits in place. More and more frozen crystals condense into the larger whole.

When it’s finished, the final creation looks like a lump on my hand—a mountain crag dotted with ripples of forest and a snowy cap, with a waterfall tumbling to a pool at the base.

Only I know that behind that waterfall lies a network of caves full of all sorts of beings bustling around, sharing meals, playing music, or sprawled in relaxation.

A short, pudgy figure slides over on the bench. The cream puff peers at my creation and smiles at me. “Your sculptures always look so real. Is that a place you’ve actually been?”

Only in distant daydreams. I curl my fingers and disintegrate the sculpted ice into a sprinkling of snow. “I don’t need to see something to conjure it. Some of us have an imagination.”

I’ve kept my tone disdainful, but Periwinkle’s smile doesn’t budge. “You must have a very good one. Can you stop them from melting, or do they always only last a little while?”

I think of the immense ice structures that fill my dorm room, turning it into an enclave of hopes still out of reach. “They last as long as I want them to. My powers aren’t so shaky.”

If she picks up on the jab at her pathetic glow, she gives no sign. “You could make a whole collection of them. Put on a show like humans do—in a gallery! I bet all kinds of beings, shadowkind and human, would like to look at your art.”

The earnest admiration in her voice and the picture she’s drawn of me gathering all those beings together wash over me like a warm breeze. For a second, the chilly words I’d like to say melt in my chest. I have the absurd urge to keep listening to her.

What the fuck is wrong with me ?

What’s wrong with her that she’s showering me with supposed kindness when I’ve given her nothing but cold shoulders? Does nothing faze her at all?

My confusion wakes up my temper with a sharper edge. “Put on a performance for mortals? What idiot would want to do that? Other than you, obviously.”

Periwinkle doesn’t so much as flinch, but the lean figure sitting on the other side of the van snaps his head around. The fox shifter’s lips draw back from his fangs.

“It takes one to know one,” he says in a singsong voice like a mortal child’s taunt, but his bright eyes glitter with an unexpected warning.

Since when is he the pipsqueak’s bodyguard?

I narrow my eyes at Mirage. “Spoken like another idiot.”

His grin turns fiercer. “We can battle it out for the top spot. How many tails do you have?”

Before I can decide how I’m supposed to answer that, Periwinkle holds out her hands. “Hey. No one’s an idiot here. We’re figuring out how to be a team.” She meets my gaze. “If I’m being too pushy, you can just tell me. I’ll listen.”

How is it that my irritation simmers down with that one gentle remark? Suddenly I’m remembering her telling me how amazing I was for freezing the shadowkind beast that attacked us.

I grit my teeth. It doesn’t make sense that she has any effect on me.

Especially when I can’t seem to affect her at all.

Mirage lets out a little huff, but he leans back in his seat as if mollified. I consider tossing another barb at him to show I’m not so easily tamed, but right then the van grinds to a stop.

Up front, our sorcerer babysitter rolls down the window. “Have you found something? ”

The carnivore who’s acting as our tracker has materialized on the side of the road.

Raze nods in a jerk. “I caught another trail. It smells like there are a few of those odd creatures together. They traveled beside the road but then veered into the deeper wilderness. You’ll only get farther away from them if you keep driving.”

Jonah grimaces, but he cuts the engine. “We’d better continue on foot, then. If we can catch up with them or find out where they were going, we’ll need all our skills.”

Will we? Does the sorcerer expect me to lock them in ice like I did the first one?

I don’t think the poor beast deserved it. It wasn’t acting remotely aggressive until its sudden turnabout.

Something else is going on with these shadowkind. Rollick told us to investigate, not to slaughter them.

Jonah swivels in his seat to peer back at us. “All right, everyone out. We’re going on a hike.”

I pull my lips back in a sneer. Fragile mortal boy who can only stand alongside us because of his foul magic. Any of us, even the pipsqueak, could crush him if we moved too fast for him to speak a sorcerous command. But he thinks he should get to order us around.

“Of course, oh fearless leader,” I say with all possible sarcasm.

Jonah frowns at me. His reply comes out flat. “Then get going, Hail. If you want to be finished with this mission sooner rather than later, the important thing is finding these beings.”

It’s particularly annoying that he has a point. I keep my sneer in place and wait for Periwinkle and Mirage to step out the back doors before I deign to follow.

At least the fresh, piney breeze outside revitalizes me after the stuffiness of the van. We set off between the trees, Raze leading the way with his basilisk tongue periodically flicking from his hulking, otherwise human-esque form.

A chipmunk chitters from a tree branch overhead, and a couple of sparrows flutter by, but there’s no sign of humans. Just untamed wilderness, all that guileless life completely free. The best of the mortal realm laid out before us.

Only the knowledge of the confrontation that might lie ahead stops me from enjoying it.

We tramp across a couple of miles of uneven ground with the brush tugging at our legs. Then the terrain slopes upward. Rough knobs of rock protrude from the soil amid the trees and shrubs.

The effort of climbing sends an achy but not unpleasant sensation through the muscles in my legs. Physical bodies have so many unexpected quirks.

We’re halfway up the hillside when Raze leans forward and inhales deeply. “The smell is thickening quickly. I think they might be?—”

Before he can finish the sentence, a dozen dark shapes hurtle over the crest of the hill toward us.

The shadowkind creatures lunge into our midst, jagged teeth snapping here, bladed claws slashing there. They leap and thrash so wildly I can’t make out more than glimpses of fur and feathers and scales.

I stumble backward and manage to knock aside one creature’s snapping jaws with a swift thrust of my arm. Raze roars and throws himself at the densest cluster of them, shifting into his immense lizard-like form as he does.

His maw closes around one beast’s neck with a crack of its spine and a gush of smoky essence. His pitch-black eyes sear into another being so viciously it squeals and spasms.

I dodge a third creature, this one the size of a wolf but covered in coarse hide like a elephant. It throws itself at me sideways, quills jutting from its skin, and all I can do to keep myself from getting impaled is hurl a blast of ice at it.

Even through my jolt of fear, I don’t want to kill it. None of this makes sense . Why would these beings suddenly group together to attack us?

But in the chaos of the moment, the bolt of frigid energy hits the creature not just in the legs but in its lower torso too. It keels over, eyes glazing.

I’ve stopped its heart.

Guilt clogs my throat. I take another step back, my gaze darting over the battle.

Raze is tearing into another of the beasts, one as large as a tiger. Jonah is shouting out words in his sorcerous language that set my skin creeping. I can’t see that any of the shadowkind in the onslaught are responding to his commands.

What provoked their rage? I’ve had to put up with these dopes for days, and even I’m not that pissed off.

We have to be missing something.

The atmosphere of the forest resonates through me, reminding me that I’m a creature of the wilderness myself. I focus all my senses on the rampaging beasts.

What’s driving them? Is there a threat they’re reacting to?

What I see leaves me colder than before. There’s just… nothing.

I can’t pick up any actual fury in the creatures’ violence. No impression of instincts kicking in, no signals of panic or protective agitation.

All my own instincts about wild places tell me this is a totally mindless frenzy.

To my right, Mirage springs in front of Periwinkle to pounce on a ferret-sized beast that hurled itself at her. Raze rips open yet another being among the several smoking bodies already littering the hillside .

The few remaining creatures seem to recognize that the tables have turned, though I still don’t observe any signs of distress. They simply wheel in tandem and sprint up the hill the way they came.

Raze halts over the corpse he just savaged and shifts back into humanlike form, his chest heaving.

Jonah glances around. “Is everyone all right? Any injuries?”

“A few scratches,” Raze rumbles. “Nothing that won’t heal quickly.”

My bewilderment comes out in rancor. “We’re all fine. But what the fuck happened there? Aren’t you supposed to be wielding your vast powers to harness the demented beasts, sorcerer boy?”

Jonah cuts his gaze toward me with a twist of his mouth. He isn’t happy with the results of this battle either, even if we “won.”

He drags in a rough breath before answering. “I tried. My sorcery wouldn’t catch hold.”

Periwinkle’s forehead furrows. “Is it because they’re the strange kind of shadowkind? But you were able to control that one before.”

“I was. It did take more effort than usual, but it wasn’t impossible.” Jonah’s expression darkens. “The only cases I’ve ever come across where sorcery was completely ineffective… it was because another sorcerer had already imposed control.”

Ah. So we can blame more humans for this mess? What a shocking surprise.

Mirage has bounded up the slope and is peering over the crest. “They ran east. Should we follow them?”

Jonah’s revelation and everything I know about the patterns of the natural world collide into a knot of certainty at the base of my throat. “If we want to get to the source of the problem, we need to follow their trail backward and find out where they came from.”

And which mortal asshole pointed them in our direction.