Storykiller (33 page)

Brand nodded and went to the cabinet for the kit, which he brought back to the table and pushed to Micah who began fishing for bandages. “There was more,” she said, without looking up from her search. Tessa and Brand waited and then Micah looked up to meet their eyes. “Kill everyone except The Scion.”

“And indeed that is what I was hoping for,” said a voice from inside the house.

Tessa sprang up to see someone standing in her dining room.

Dr. Frankenstein wasn’t the mastermind.

It was The Monster.

And he was in her dining room.

Tessa sucked in a breath and backed up a step.

It was strange, he was instantly recognizable for what he was—The Monster of
Frankenstein
legend—and yet he looked nothing like the monster movies Tessa knew so well. His skin was yellow, not green, and the stitching that held him together was fine and almost subtle. But the pieces didn't fit right, they were stretched taut in places and then too loose in others giving an uneven appearance to his flesh, as if his skin could barely contain what lurked beneath. He was massive in size, nearly
eight feet tall and perfectly proportioned, not awkward. But the shoulder span of an eight-foot man is more massive than you can imagine. Not to mention the length of his arms, his hands the size of cookware, his feet like boats. His hair was longish, dark, and almost absurdly lustrous while his mouth was a black inhuman slash that made Tessa shiver.

She supposed this was your fate when you were assembled from spare parts.

But his eyes. His eyes haunted Tessa. Intelligence and humanity. This was no mindless monster. This was a cursed man. And yet his actions marked him clearly as a monster. Tessa felt conflict surging inside her over these unexpected revelations and with that conflict, a despair she didn't yet understand.

Three large figures loomed behind him in the dining room. They were similar but different, like corrupted reflections of The Monster. Inferior smaller copies, but still large and powerfully built, scary. Tessa’s brain was so busy calculating what it all meant that she had almost forgot to respond.

“Well, since we’re all still alive, then I guess you’ll have to mark that one down as a failure,” she finally said.

“I suppose, but even in failure there are things to be learned,” he replied. Tessa saw a tiger standing next to her in the kitchen, and she slid away from it with a gasp.

“Tessa, it’s me,” Micah said. “It’s the Shiki.” Tessa looked at Micah like she was insane.

“Yes, very impressive,” The Monster said.

“What do you want?” Tessa asked.

“Well, if no offer of beverages will be forthcoming, then you are right that we should get down to business. I’m here to correct my mistake.” He looked at the copies behind him. “Kill all but The Scion or don’t bother coming home,” he said almost casually before disappearing out the dining room window, broken, yet again. Her dad was going to lose it when he saw that.

The first one hit Tessa with the back of its hand, and she bounced across the room like a rubber ball. Before she could get to her feet it lunged at her and she felt like a house had been dropped on her. The weight and the speed of the thing shocked her. How could it be so big and heavy and still move so fast? Out of the corner of her eye, Tessa saw the Shiki leap at a second monster, knocking it back into the dining room. But the third made a beeline for Micah and Brand. Micah shouted and the Shiki tried to come to her aid, but the one it had knocked into the dining room was already back up, and it grabbed onto the tiger and pulled it to the ground. Tessa struggled with hers as she watched the third creature corner Micah and Brand in the living room.

Ten more seconds of this and her friends were going to be dead.

Tessa launched her monster away from her and into the foyer with her legs, trying to scramble free, to get to them, but as she did so she saw a streak run through the room, so fast she almost missed it.

It was Fenris, but in his human form, leaping at the third creature, knocking it to the ground mere inches from Micah and Brand. Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. The man had impeccable timing if nothing else. Tessa saw the Shiki tear off the arm of the one it was fighting in the kitchen and thought that seemed like a pretty damn good idea. When hers came back at her, Tessa called The Black Dove and then swung it into the thing’s shoulder, neatly severing the arm. It didn’t scream out but it did seem
concerned
. Tessa smiled. With Fenris here and this new Shiki as Tiger, these creatures didn’t stand a chance. When a blue-white flash of light illuminated the room and an arrow came flying out of the glowing doorway pinning a monster’s hand to the wall, Tessa couldn’t help but laugh.

These things were toast.

And they knew it.

Before Robin had even finished glowing blue from the doorway, the Franken-copies were stumbling over one another to escape out the dining room window.

When Tessa saw Robin, she was flooded with relief. Not because the cavalry had arrived but because he was here and all in one beautiful, living, breathing piece. As he stepped away from the glowing blue doorway Tessa was struck by the true depth of her feelings for him. Until this moment, on some level it had all been play. A powerful lusty crush. And who wouldn’t have a crush on Robin Hood? But seeing him now, his face creased with concern for her well-being, Tessa knew that her feelings had nothing to do with ‘Robin Hood’ and everything to do with
Robin
.

He was no mythical hero, no sexy bad-boy anarchist, no Fiction she had made up. He was just Robin, and that was better, so much better. He was the person in the room that couldn’t take his eyes off her. The person that worried for her with every breath and who would fight by her side, no matter what. He couldn’t be her whole world because there were people depending on her, and important things for her to do, but an ache inside her told her that she
wanted
him to be her whole world, and maybe just knowing that was enough to make her sure of everything she’d been afraid to admit to herself since meeting him.

Robin reached out to touch Tessa’s bleeding face with concern. It must have looked even worse than she thought. She pulled him to her and kissed him deeply, Shiki wounds be damned. She hoped the kiss would tell him everything she was thinking. Tessa didn’t care if it was gruesome and bloody, or public, and he must not have either because he kissed her back with the same intensity.

“Welcome back,” Tessa said, their mouths still touching. Tessa embraced him, hard, and ignored the pain of her face rubbing against his jacket. She noticed that they were alone in the room, the others having escaped to the kitchen.

Robin pulled back from Tessa and turned her face to examine it. “What did this?”

Tessa nodded at The Shiki, lying on the kitchen floor not far away, and watched as it shifted from ferocious tiger to a sweet, grey-striped kitten. “It’s a long story though,” she said.

And then she saw that Tal was standing in the kitchen with Brand, Micah, and the Shiki, and she was looking at Robin with a sour, possessive look on her face. Tessa looked at Robin and then back to Tal. She could feel some tension, a strain. There was something undeniable between them, and Tessa’s mind raced at what exactly it might be. A tremor of fear ran through her unlike any she had ever felt before.

Different than fighting monsters.

Scarier.

Maybe in part because at least she was good at fighting monsters,
this
, she had no idea what to do with, how to fight, how to win.

Robin shook his head at Tessa, seeing the confusion and suspicion taking over her face. “I needed Talia to get back,” he said quietly. Tessa nodded at him, trying to let the practicality of it soothe her and trying to ignore the fact that he had just called her Talia when everyone else called her Tal. She told herself that she had misread what she’d seen between them. What had she even seen, anyway? Nothing. A look, a gesture, nothing.

Tessa opened her mouth to say something but the Shiki meowed plaintively, drawing their attention. Micah fussed over The Shiki, clearly concerned. It was the only one hurt badly from this latest encounter and it mewed pitifully. Robin walked Tessa into the kitchen and then sat her down at the table, reaching for the pillaged first aid kit.

Tessa looked at Micah. “Does it hurt you too?”

Micah nodded. “A little,” she said, wincing. Brand picked the Shiki up carefully and laid it on the kitchen counter. He dabbed at the wounds with a wet cloth while it protested.

Tessa turned back to Robin. “It’s not Dr. Frankenstein, it’s The Monster.”

Robin nodded. “Yes, we discovered the same thing. I got back as soon as I could.”

“How did you find out?”

He hesitated and it seemed almost as if he was going to a lie for a moment and a bite of fear pricked at Tessa. “Actually, Morgana told me.”
“Morgana?”

“Yes. I wasn’t entirely sure she was telling the truth. Obviously she was.”

Tessa bit her lip. “I wonder why,” she said more to herself than Robin and then, looking up, “Did she tell you anything else?”

“She told me about Circe, that they’re working together.”

“Hmph,” Tessa said, “I didn’t think she was an ally.”

Robin shook his head back at her. “I’m not so sure she is. She could have known what was happening here. She could have told me knowing full well that you were about to learn it for yourself anyway, in the hopes that it would work in her favor later.”

“So she’s an enemy?”

“I honestly don’t know, Tessa. Here’s what I do know. Morgana is like Fenris. She’s the slow knife.”

“The slow knife?”

“A blade that is able to penetrate and kill because it takes its time. It succeeds where others fail, because it asserts itself slowly over time, often unnoticed, so that it has killed you before you realize what you have let in.”

“Jesus, Robin.”

“We’re playing a serious game, Tessa.”

Tessa blinked and opened her mouth but before she could speak the Shiki cried out nearby and Brand raised his hands helplessly, stepping away from the creature. “I—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Tal, who had mostly been glaring at Tessa, glanced at Brand with the Shiki and then sighed dramatically.

“Do you have something to add?” Tessa asked. Tal glared at her again and then walked over to where Brand was standing and held out her hand for the towel. He put it in her gloved hand, and she shooed him to the side with a flick of her wrist.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Micah asked nervously, as Tal examined the Shiki. Tal looked up at Micah and her eyes softened.

“I’ve patched up Hecuba many times in the field,” she said. Tal took off her jacket and unstrapped a leather belt that had a small pouch attached to it. From the pouch she removed a syringe and bottle as well as a needle, thick black thread, and gauze. Tal uncapped the syringe carefully and filled it with some of the liquid from the bottle. Micah inhaled sharply. “It’s just a local anesthetic,” Tal said, and injected it into the Shiki without waiting. The Shiki hissed and then relaxed.

“Deep,” Robin said, touching the side of Tessa’s face, turning it to better see the largest cut that refused to heal.

“I know,” Tessa said, watching him.

Robin held a damp towel to her cheek. “This one cut is bad, I’m afraid it might scar,” he said and Tessa winced both from pain and at the thought of a permanent scar on her face.
That
would make life extra awesome. Then again, the Shiki seemed to be permanently scarred no matter what shape it took thanks to Tessa’s blow with her axe, so maybe this was only fair. An eye for an eye and all that.
Robin went about cleaning her wounds without further comment. At the counter, Tal handed Brand the needle and thread.

“What?” Brand asked, confused.

“I’ll walk you through it,” Tal said, her voice clipped.

“Why can’t you just do it?” he asked, pushing the needle and thread back at her. In answer, she held up her gloved hands with the thick metal fingertips that would make fine work—like stitching a wound—nearly impossible. She clicked them together rather than saying anything. “So take them off,” Brand said, pushing the tools back at her again.

“She shouldn’t,” Robin said from the table, without looking up from Tessa’s injuries. “She’s Sleeping Beauty,” he said. Everyone looked at Robin in slow motion, their mouths hanging open. “She pricks her finger on anything sharp and she’ll be asleep for a
very
long time, possibly taking a bunch of us with her,” he added almost matter-of-factly.

Heads turned from Robin back to Tal, drinking her in. Now that he’d said it, it seemed obvious, the perfect princess-like beauty, the crazy long, golden hair, the figure that supermodels would kill for. Of course, the leather and hunting gear, not to mention the surly attitude, didn’t fit Tessa’s preconceived image of her, but the steel tipped gloves should have been a dead giveaway. The room was perfectly still for a moment and so quiet that you could practically hear hearts beating, and then Brand cleared his throat and pulled the needle carefully away from Tal.