My Monster

by Einat Segal

  I lift the cup. "Shawn, I can't. I need to drive after this."

  "I'll drive," Landon says. "You take your poison, lady, and listen to Shawnie boy here."

  "Oh, wow, you two are down to pet names. Are the rumors about you true?"

  "Why?" asks Landon with a naughty grin. "Do you want them to be?"

  My libido screams YES as my whole body fills with fire. "What if I say I do?"

  "I'll do anything to make you satisfied," Landon purrs in my ear, his eyes looking over Shawn as if he’s searching for an excuse.

  I'm afraid to say anything because I'm not sure how serious he is, and I want to pull them both to somewhere more private to find out.

  Shawn’s looking at Landon with a calculating look. Is he . . . considering? I’ve always thought of Shawn as a womanizer. I can’t imagine him as anything but straight. But what if he’s up for it? He shakes his head.

  Was that a no, or . . . ?

  I almost don't see Shawn do it. As we speak, he casually passes his cup to his lap under the table, pours in a good measure of whatever's in that flask, and then places the cup back on the table.

  "You've got some moves, Shawn Henderson," I say with approval, placing my non-spiked drink next to his.

  He looks into my eyes, holding my gaze. We both pretend we couldn't care less about our drinks. "You know it, Fee."

  In that moment, I can't say I feel nothing. I'm already hot from Landon's talk, and Shawn knows how to look at me so deeply, it’s sometimes like I actually have a soul and he can see it.

  But this feeling I have, both warm and painful, is accompanied by guilt. I take Shawn's cup and drink deeply as I swing my head around to look at Landon.

  He winks at me, his hand coming to rest on my bare shoulder, his fingers sliding over my skin. The alcohol hits the back of my throat, and I fight the urge to cough. I swallow down the burn. Whatever it is, it's strong and gross, mixed with orange juice.

  Landon moves my hair aside and kisses the back of my neck. "Don't drink it all at once. I'm going to get us some food.”

  * * *

  I don't know what I'm eating because all the things Landon took from the buffet tables are heaped on top of each other. But by the time Shawn polishes away the food I left on my plate, my head is buzzing and dancing seems possible.

  "What was in the flask?" I ask Shawn as both boys lead me toward the dance floor.

  "My dad's grappa," he answers.

  I laugh. "Wow, if he knew you took some—”

  "Are you kidding? He gave me that flask and told me—Dude, your eyes are glowing!"

  My head whips toward Landon. His eyes are indeed glowing gold, and the light is bright in the dark room. Any second, people will begin to notice.

  He quickly ducks his head and shields his eyes with his hand. "Something's wrong," he hisses. "Summervell is calling me."

  "Summer . . . vell?" I say slowly. It occurs to me that I've read that name somewhere.

  “Summervell—Sutherland,” Landon says matter-of-factly. "He needs me, Sophie. Something big's happening."

  The mysterious contact that appeared in my phone at the beginning of the year was actually Sutherland? Why'd he contact me like that and never mention it when I met him? What was all that talk about convincing me of something and me meeting my destiny?

  A chill runs through me. "You should go, then," I say after a short pause. "But . . . call me, okay?"

  And I realize I'm worried and that something’s off. Maybe after losing my dad, I’ve learned how fragile everything is. I'm worried that the ground under my feet is going to shift again. There's nothing set in stone. We're all walking on sand, and our next step may bring us to where we'll sink.

  Landon pulls me toward him and kisses me. My lips part for him, and as our tongues slide together, I try to make it count.

  "You still owe me a party where we dance together," he says, taking his warmth with him when he walks away.

  Shawn wraps his arm around my waist as we both watch Landon leave. "He just ruined your rebellion."

  I shrug. "Whatever."

  "Do you wanna dance?"

  I look at the dance floor. "I'm good."

  "Then I think we should get out of here too," he says, leaning his weight against me.

  I lift my head, my mouth close to his ear. "Don't you want to hang out with your friends?"

  "Sure, but not right now." He lets his face fall into the crook created by my neck and shoulder. "I don't feel right, Fee."

  "What's wrong?" The worry hammers in my heart. I'm feeling things strongly tonight. There's a disquiet I can't conquer. "Did you drink too much grappa?"

  "I didn't drink any. I hate the stuff. Landon told me that we should get you a little drunk."

  Say what? There's private talk between Landon and Shawn now? "You guys are buddies, huh?"

  "He's not so bad. Can we get out of here, please? It’s like there are tiny mice running under my skin."

  I lead Shawn outside. He clings to me the whole way, and his feet drag. But when we walk out into the fresh air, he takes a deep breath and seems to feel better. It's still light outside. We walk around the building toward the parking lot, but suddenly, Shawn stops and pulls me back so that we're hidden around the corner of the building.

  "Shit, shit, fucking shit!" he whispers.

  "What is it?"

  "Remember Ola? The Polish student?"

  "The one whose boyfriend didn't use the door and beat you up?"

  Shawn nods. "She's standing next to your car."

  I blink. His face is pale, and he looks both sick and horrified. I edge against the wall and carefully peek around the corner.

  I quickly turn away and reach out, grasping both of Shawn's arms. "That's not Ola," I say quietly.

  "Of course she is, Fee."

  "No." I shake my head. "She's Dianne. She was driving Landon around before he got his American license. She's one of them and works for the dragon and isn’t even Polish."

  "What?" I can see on Shawn's face that he's more scared than he's ever been.

  I don't know why, but I'm terrified myself. "What's she doing here three minutes after Landon leaves on an emergency mission?"

  "We should go back inside, Fee," Shawn says, "and find another way out. Call a cab, maybe."

  I nod. "Did you rent a room in the hotel?"

  Shawn's face brightens. "Of course I did, when I was with Gretchen. They wouldn't let me cancel the reservation."

  "Let’s hide there until Landon calls," I say. "I'm going to check if she's still there."

  I turn away from Shawn and peek around the corner again.

  The parking lot is empty.

  “Oh no," I hiss, turning back to Shawn.

  And come face to face with Ashley Glick and Dianne.

  Shawn's sprawled motionless on the floor at my feet. My heart clenches in terror. I hope he's only unconscious. Oh God, oh God. If Shawn is dead, I'm going to . . . I'm going to . . .

  Something's different about Ashley. She looks taller, brighter, and better than ever before. "Good night, bitch," she says with a savage satisfaction that I know isn't human.

  And I'm out.

  15

  I Hate To Face Reality

  The sky above me is grey with twilight. Birds squawk in the distance. I smell the moist green smell of nature and hear the whisper of the breeze between the branches of trees.

  We’re in some kind of forest, and I can’t move.

  My eyes are the only part of my body that I can control. I blink them as I try to move the fingers of my hands or part my jaws. But it’s like I don’t have fingers and jaws. Except for my eyes, my body is gone. I’m locked in and can’t feel a thing.

  I can’t hear, either. The only sound that’s loud and clear is my own rapid breaths, like when you lie down in the bath and water fills your ears. I may or may not be hearing the low drone of talking voices, but I don’t know.

  The earth vibrates beneath me as something walks by or
toward me. I try to look from the corner of my eye, but I can’t see and can’t turn my head. From my peripheral vision, I see Shawn’s profile. He’s lying equally motionless on the ground next to me, his eyes moving in his face.

  Something blocks out the sky. It’s a sphinx like I saw on the hill, with its totem pole-like head and several faces drawn on it in rough blue strokes. The creature’s drawn mouths curve upward into an unnerving grin. “Wakey, wake,” it says in a sickeningly musical voice, the cotton-like feeling vanishing from my ears. “Little humans.”

  There’s a brittle tinkle like the sound of breaking glass, and then an icy prickling all over my body—but I feel my body. I gasp and shiver, rubbing my arms. Next to me, I hear Shawn doing the same. We both scramble to our feet as quickly as we can.

  There are seven sphinxes surrounding us, with four humans standing on our left.

  Not humans, monsters.

  Next to Dianne stands Ashley Glick—or whoever she is now. She doesn’t look the same. There’s nothing of the prissy, weak princess I knew her for. There’s no fear from blood and violence. Out of her dull-green eyes, she looks at the world as if she’s seen it a thousand times and can tear it apart. There are two other men besides them. One of them is young with the sort of face that’s easy to forget, and the other one is fat, bordering on obese, and middle-aged.

  “Shawn Henderson,” says Ashley, coming to stand by the sphinxes. Her accent is strange. She doesn’t sound like she’s from New Jersey anymore. She sounds like someone from Europe trying to imitate an American accent. “And Sophie Green, which one of you would like to die first?”

  I’m still in my prom dress, with my high heels, my dangling earrings, and my two corsages, one on each wrist. I don’t have a moment of epiphany when I realize what I’m going to do. I just act.

  I lift my left hand and kiss the feather on my corsage.

  With monsters, running isn’t an option. The only way to battle a monster is with a bigger monster. So, I figure that the time has come to kiss Landon’s feather.

  A roaring inferno breaks out before me, lighting up the dimming clearing we’re standing in. I shield my eyes from the fire and smoke as I careen toward Shawn. He catches me, and we hold each other, managing to stumble back from the unbearable light of the fire.

  Landon came for me. He spreads his wings, spanning nearly the entire clearing, displaying his gryphon glory.

  Shawn and I cling to each other. The sphinxes back away, and so do Ashley and Dianne. If I listened to my monster history lessons correctly, I just pulled out a joker.

  But then Landon tosses his mane, folding his wings, and, looking at Ashley, speaks one word with his strange gryphon voice, and my heart stops.

  “Revenna.”

  The levels of contempt and hatred that shake his voice are immeasurable, but he folds his hind-legs and sits down as if calm. “So, this is what they did?” he says. “When I killed you in Australia, they meddled and prevented you from reincarnating, and now you’re there? Inside that? That’s not going to work. This is when you die for good.”

  I don’t know what he means, but Ashley doesn’t seem disturbed by any of this. “My, my, Little One,” she says in a sweet voice. “You talk so big for one so small. You’re the grandest fish now that the pool is empty.”

  “It’s empty because of you!” roars the gryphon, and charges. For a moment, I think he’s killed her and that it’s over, easy-peasy, because she just stands there with a smirk and crazy eyes but doesn’t move or transform.

  “Down,” she says when he’s barely an inch away from her, and just like that, he lies down flat on the ground.

  He trembles as he struggles, as if there’s an invisible mountain sitting on him.

  “Oh, silly Little One, you hoped it was over?” she asks, wearing the expression of one witnessing the antics of a sweet child. “Return to your human form.”

  The gryphon roars, but the roar dies down into a human scream, and human Landon, still in his prom tux, appears on his hands and knees.

  “Yes, they needed another gryphon to use the lens, and they couldn’t very well wait sixteen years for me to remember who I am. This arrangement may not be ideal. It’s crowded in here, but eventually we will settle our disagreements and come to be one,” Revenna says with Ashley’s mouth. “Though I still have the power over you, my son.”

  A geas. She has him under a geas. That’s why it was so important for him to tell me about them—does that mean he knew this would happen?

  I’m out of cards to play. I can’t say anything, and I pull Shawn closer to me. Why is he here? Maybe there’s something he hasn’t told me.

  Ashley lightly steps over Landon’s struggling form and looks at us and then turns to the largest sphinx, the one who first spoke to me. “Which one of them has it? The boy or the girl?”

  “All mortals look the same to me,” answers the sphinx in the sickeningly musical voice. “I did not know they were one of each gender. The brown one has it, but do not kill either before you retrieve and use it.”

  “They’re both going to die,” Ashley suddenly blurts out, her head and shoulders jerking as if she has a tick. Her eyes, for a moment, are normal and human, her accent perfectly American.

  “Of course,” answers the sphinx.

  “And the wards that protected him?” asks Ashley, back to speaking like Revenna.

  “Down to the last one,” Dianne confirms. “There will never be a ward that I cannot break.”

  Ashley takes a step toward Shawn. I’ve always been self-serving. I’m not a hero, and I’m actually a coward, but my initial instinct is to tighten my grip around him, to want to protect him.

  No one’s touching Shawn. No one is taking him away from me.

  “Back off, bitch,” I yell. “I’m warning you.”

  “Fee.” Shawn shivers against me.

  “How unlike you, Sophie,” Revenna coos. “It’s such a shame. I liked your style. You would have made a glorious me.”

  “Don’t talk to her like you like her,” Ashley—the real Ashley—suddenly yells. “She destroyed my life. The fucking whore needs to die.”

  Looks like Revenna and Ashley don’t exactly see eye to eye. Oh, this is rich. Who cares about magic? I’m just going to get out of this by being Sophie Green.

  “Well, you would’ve made a lame-ass Sophie, Revenna,” I say. “You’re not even being a half-decent Ashley, and what kind of idiot gets Ashley wrong?”

  “I love that mouth of yours, dear,” Revenna says. “We’ll have fun with it soon, I promise.”

  I open my mouth to reply.

  “Shush now,” she says, and my words are gone. Not because I have nothing to say; I literally can’t speak.

  She walks up to us until she’s standing a foot away and stretches out her arm. A powerful force tears Shawn away from me. I cry out, but it’s useless.

  We’re nothing compared to monsters, nothing. They want silence, they silence. They want to take, they take.

  They want to kill—they kill.

  Shawn floats suspended in the air. He gasps and chokes out a scream as Revenna traces Ashley’s fingers through the air. His whole body begins to convulse as if he’s having a seizure.

  No, no, no, no.

  I lunge forward, but just as I reach Shawn, she lets go of the spell holding him in the air. He falls to the ground like a bag of potatoes, and Ashley holds something sparkling and silver between her fingers.

  Landon’s lens. Shawn had Landon’s lens? Why?

  Is that . . .

  Is that where he hid it?

  Landon hid it inside a person? Even I treat people better than this.

  How could he do this?

  “Shawn, oh God, are you okay?” I whisper, glad to discover that my voice is back too.

  He sits up, and we cling to each other again like two frightened children.

  Because that’s what we are.

  His body shakes against me, and there are tears in his eyes. I
’m not crying.

  Because I’m just so fucking angry.

  Ashley flicks the lens between her fingers as if she’s doing a coin trick. “This little thing took up all the magic of your greatest life to make? Oh, Little One, you do live up to your name. But so clever to make it only useful to gryphons.”

  “Handle it with care, Revenna,” scolds the sphinx, and I can tell they don’t like her. “Use it on these children.”

  Revenna rolls her eyes but nevertheless puts the glowing silver disc to her eye and looks at me and Shawn.

  She points at Shawn. “He’s just got a whole lot of space, handy for storage.” She points at me. “Holy fucking moly, she’s got one and it’s huge.”

  “We already know the girl has a SET, Revenna,” Dianne says drily. “Orien has been targeting her for months hoping that she would allow him to activate it.”

  “What the fuck is a SET?” I ask before I can stop myself. I don’t expect an answer.

  “What does it stand for again?” Revenna asks. I get a feeling she actually likes me. “It’s something silly, isn’t it?” She looks around herself with an inquiring expression. “Little One made it up. He’s always been terrible with names. I think he got his sense of humor from his father.”

  “It stands for ‘Soul Egg Thingy,’” offers the young man standing next to Dianne. Everyone cringes.

  Revenna snorts. “That’s why we stick with SET.” She reaches out and grabs my chin, bringing my face up so she can look into my eyes. “Some humans are born with an egg in their soul, and it can be identified and located using this lens. When hatched, the human becomes one of us—immortal. Aren’t you lucky, Sophie? Not only will you live to see tomorrow, but you possess the potential to be immensely powerful. You should be grateful we’re gifting you with your hidden nature.”

  I slap her hand away and take several steps back.

  “Wait! No!” yells the mortal Ashley, the one who’s been conned into this, thinking she’d get revenge. How dumb could one person be? Why didn’t she just choose the good-ole knifing or shooting that most psychopaths go for? “That’s not what we bargained! Sophie Green and Shawn Henderson die tonight. You promised me their heads on a platter!”