Page 23 of Misfit Monsters (Pack of Outcasts #1)

Periwinkle

N ight is falling through the forest. The trees have turned to silhouettes, the sky to slate gray. The lumpy ground keeps making its best attempts at tripping me.

At least I can feel the dips and ridges through the shadows. Needing extra guidance, Jonah aims the beam of his keychain penlight at the terrain just ahead of him.

Mirage and Hail merged with the shadows ages ago, and Raze only flickers out occasionally to give us glimpses of the trail to follow, but the sorcerer has to rely on his two legs. It doesn’t seem fair to leave him tramping onward as if he’s alone.

Unfortunately, my feet and ankles have joined the conspiracy against me. The pangs shooting up from them are sharpening by the minute. We’ve been backtracking the trail of that violent pack of shadowkind for hours .

The pain stirs memories I don’t want: noxious metals pressed into my skin, muttered words weaving right into my mind.

Jonah said the creatures that attacked us were probably controlled by another sorcerer. A sorcerer who sent shadowkind rampaging through the forest.

Not exactly a gesture of friendship.

Sorcerers are dangerous. Sorcerers push and cut and hurt …

I breathe as evenly as I can, hoping Jonah will take my silence for fatigue. I don’t want to talk about the other emotions conducting a dance-off inside me.

Of course, I don’t always get a say about what shows.

As we pass through a small clearing, Jonah veers closer. “Are you picking up on any unnerving impressions?”

My gaze darts to him. “No. Why would you think so?”

“I just noticed—your hair’s been flickering with a bit of that glow it gets when you’re feeling something strongly. An orange-y color that looks uneasy to me. But maybe I’m misinterpreting.”

He’s not, but I don’t want to tell him that. I also don’t want to lie.

I could take a page from Mirage’s book and turn the situation into a joke.

I summon a laugh. “It’s great being a walking mood ring. Always blaring what’s going on inside whether I want to or not. The forest is pretty spooky when it’s getting dark, don’t you think?”

I’d rather he assumes it’s the atmosphere that’s unsettled me.

Jonah echoes my laugh. “You can say that again. Maybe we should head back… but we might not find a lead this good again. ”

“You’re the only one of us who needs sleep,” I remind him. “It should be up to you.”

He smiles tightly. “I can keep going. Rollick is counting on us.”

I’m not paying enough attention, and my next step brings my foot into a hollow at a bad angle. The searing ache that lances up my calf has me biting my lip against a gasp. The orange glow flares bright enough for me to see it.

Soon I’ll be a mood torch. As much as I hate to abandon Jonah, it’s getting too hard to hide my discomfort.

“My physical body is getting tired,” I say as an excuse. “I’m going to slip into the shadows to give it a break.”

And to rest my throbbing legs.

Jonah nods without any sign of distress. But then, he’d never make me feel guilty for looking after myself, and he’s good at keeping his own emotions simmered down.

Maybe I should ask him to give me some lessons alongside Shanty’s… if we ever get back to the academy.

I hop into the nearest patch of darkness and ripple onward with all bodily sensations dispelled. In the shadows, I’m more clearly aware of Raze following the trail ahead of us, Mirage bounding among the trees to my left, Hail’s presence flowing along at a more measured rhythm to my right.

The sky is completely black when Raze pops out of the shadows and stays corporeal. He speaks in a hushed voice. “I think we’ve got something.”

I leap to his side and find myself at the edge of a larger clearing. Jonah points his light where Raze indicated.

A log cabin squats by the trees at the far end of the clearing. The structure stands only one story tall and maybe twenty feet across, with a wooden shed beside it.

Moss creeps across both buildings’ walls and roofs, and no light glints through the single dingy window. Jonah peers at it, braced as if for an attack. The other men materialize around us.

“I smell a human as well as shadowkind,” Raze says. “Just one. Male. Not very fresh. No one’s here right now—probably not for hours.”

Jonah frowns at the main structure. “It looks like a hunting cabin—meant for stays of only a few days. Did the shadowkind creatures hang around here or just pass by?”

Raze stalks along the edges of the clearing, his reptilian tongue flicking over his lips. I gaze down at the ground and notice the imprint of a boot sole in the dirt.

Not too long but wide. Like the person who made it was short and stout like that cabin.

An image of a man who fit that description wavers up from the depths of my mind. My pulse stutters with a fresh prickle of pain through my ankles.

Running away flailing suddenly feels like a good plan.

I squeeze my hands at my sides. I’m fine. Raze just said no one’s here.

And whoever was here before, it obviously couldn’t have been that man.

Raze returns with a grim expression. “As far as I can tell, the shadowkind creatures here recently came from different directions. The faintest trails are scattered. The most recent trail is all of them together, heading in the direction where they ran into us.”

Hail’s voice is flat and cold. “So the sorcerer gathered them here and sent them off on a hunt.”

Jonah grimaces. “Let’s take a closer look and see what else we can find.”

As we walk to the cabin, his light glints off tiny shapes amid the scruffy grass. Mirage ducks down. “Stars on the ground to match the sky! ”

His fingers brush them, and he recoils with a wince. “Stars that burn. They’re silver and iron.”

I peer at the trampled earth. Ringlets of pale gray metal shine amid the grass—few enough that I can barely pick up on their repelling quality.

My forehead furrows. “They look almost like…”

My voice trails off with a smack of panic that makes flailing feel even more appealing.

Hail finishes for me. “Links from one of those hunter nets.”

My heart is suddenly pounding twice as fast. A prickling sensation spreads all over my skin. Echoes of interlocking links searing into my limbs and face…

I drag in a steadying breath, but the air flows shakily into my lungs. My legs stiffen under me.

My voice comes out in a thin chirp. “I can stay out here! Someone should keep watch, right? I’ll shout if I see anything.”

Jonah shoots me a concerned look, but I manage to smile at him. He beckons to Raze. “Come on. We’ll need that keen sense of smell to investigate.”

All four of the men push into the cabin.

I take a couple of steps back from the scattered links and reach for the exercises Shanty started to teach me. Picture somewhere calming. The park in that city?—

A crackle amid the underbrush makes my pulse lurch. He could be coming, storming in to capture us all. We have to?—

I shut my eyes against the blare of panic.

No. What’s happening here has nothing to do with my past. I need to get a grip on myself and help with this mission.

The thought has only just passed through my head when Mirage bursts out of the cabin clutching a few metal objects in his arms. “Look what we found! ”

They don’t gleam as brightly in the dim moonlight as the bits of netting did in Jonah’s penlight beam, but I can make out their shapes well enough.

He’s holding a tarnished, scuffed medal, a small trophy cup with a dent in the side, and a figurine that I think is an award, the head knocked right off.

My mind blanks. All I can see is the display case in that basement room, the memorabilia the man who caged me kept of his “defeated enemies.”

A wail careens from my mouth. He’s found me again—he’s going to trap me and haul me away and?—

The horror explodes out of me in a wave of darkness thicker than the night.

Mirage yelps. There’s a shout from somewhere behind him. Distress and pain, reverberating into me from all of them?—

A few firm words cut through the cacophony in my head. I yank back the agonized energy pouring out of me, reining it in by some means I didn’t know I had.

Then I’m standing there, trembling and panting, staring at Jonah—who just gave me a sorcerous command to stop.

I didn’t rein myself in, not really. He did.

I only catch a glimpse of his fraught expression where he’s standing in the cabin doorway before he’s focusing on the other men. “Is everyone okay? If you need to enter the shadows to recover, we can sort out the rest after.”

Mirage is lying on the ground just a few steps away from me, the trinkets he was holding strewn on the ground, his arms wrapped around his stomach. Little puffs of essence drift up from his body, but he inhales raggedly and opens his eyes.

“It hit hard, but not too deep,” he says. His gaze flicks to me with a knitting of his brow.

Hail is leaning against the cabin’s outer wall, one hand clutching the side of his face. His pale cheek looks scraped raw, more essence trickling off it. He stares at me, but he’s on his feet, so Jonah must decide he’s not on the verge of kicking the bucket.

And Raze… Raze crouches on the ground in front of Jonah. As I watch, he shifts from basilisk to humanoid form. A few patches of the tan skin on his arms give off whisps of essence.

Only Jonah looks uninjured. He was the farthest back—he must have gotten me under control before the worst effects of my outburst reached him.

My throat closes up so tightly it takes several seconds before I can pry it open enough to speak. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—I got scared—the emotions overwhelmed me.”

My voice breaks with a hitch.

I wrench my gaze to Jonah. “Thank you for interrupting the outburst. I didn’t know how to stop it on my own.”

He offers a tentative smile, but the other three men are all staring at me. Shame tingles through my hair, casting a reddish-orange glow into the air around me.

Hail, for all his impenetrable cool, winces.

When it's clear my latest emission isn't going to hurt him, he seems to feel the need to recover his honor with a caustic remark. "How the fuck does a pipsqueak like you fling out a power like that?"

Raze doesn't say anything, but his jaw works. I can feel how taken aback he is in the salty-bitter torrent of emotion coursing off him.

I told him we'd protect each other, and then I hurt him.

I take another step back, my eyes filling with tears. The urge grips me to spring into the shadows and flee, as far away from here as I can get.

If I move fast, Jonah might not be able to stop me. I could go all the way around the world, never set foot within a thousand miles of the academy again, be ever so careful how I ease in and out of the mortal world.

It would be better for them too, wouldn't it?

At my next backward step, Jonah speaks up in a quiet, steady voice. "Peri, it's going to be okay. You're not in trouble. You didn't do that on purpose."

I swipe at the first tear that trickles down my cheek. What does that matter when I injured my supposed team anyway?

He keeps talking in the same soothing tone. "Something upset you—it set you off. That might be the key to figuring out what we're dealing with here. Stay with us, and let's work it out."

He can’t know that what upset me was something from years and years ago, nothing that's really here. Just a few vague similarities...

But what if this sorcerer is similar to my former captor? Maybe they have a club of evilness?

Is it possible what I know about that awful man could be useful in finding this one?

Mirage has rolled onto his feet. He studies me with his bright eyes, his mouth slanted. "You didn't mean to hurt us, did you, Rainbow?"

A choked sound escapes me. "No. Of course not. I never do."

Hail's eyebrows shoot up to the fringe of his pale hair. "How often have you exploded like that?"

Raze's eyes widen even more. "That was like—right before we were threatened with banishment. You were upset about our dorm room. There was a surge of darkness..."

I have to answer the question in his voice. "Yes. That was me. That's why I'm here."

Hail blinks, looking at me as if he's never seen me before.

Jonah breaks in, setting a reassuring hand on my arm. "You can help us finish this mission, Peri. Tell us what bothered you."

Deep down, a lot of me still wants to escape their bewildered gazes and vanish into the woods. But every memory of past pain summons a growing determination to make sure it doesn't happen again.

How can I say I want to make up for my past crimes if I don't do everything possible to end this new threat?

I consider Jonah's face, tasting the emotions simmering beneath his controlled surface. Watching for a lie. "Are you going to tell Rollick that I lost control?"

If I'm going to be banished as soon as we go back to the school... I don't know if it'll change my decision, but I'd like to be prepared.

Jonah shakes his head. "You didn’t do any significant harm. And now we know my sorcery can rein in your power, at least if I catch you early in an outburst. That makes you less of a threat, not more."

Is he going to follow me around every day back at the academy, reminding me to chill out?

Actually, that idea gives me a thrill I'm not sure he'd appreciate.

I rub my hand across my face again and square my shoulders. "Okay. I'm not sure how much I can help, but a few things here... They remind me of a sorcerer I knew before."