Page 39 of Aberrant Monsters
Had I just felt his pain?
I tried to catch his eye but he remained stoically elusive. “I’ll find out what’s going on, and if there is a civilization or a sentient entity behind the creations, then I’ll find that out too.”
“You want her to chart the eldritch realm as well as be your catch-and-return system,” Nandi said. “You’re asking a lot of her.”
“In exchange for saving her life.”
Silence reigned for several seconds.
I’d do whatever was needed to stop my descent into becoming a monster, and if that included actions that helped me solve my mother’s murder, then so be it.
“What do I have to do first?”
* * *
My head was reelingfrom the info dump Quentin had offloaded into it.
They had a backlog of uncleared cases that went back as far as six months. The aberrant attacks had really messed with the rift walkers still on staff, and even though the Order practically owned them, getting them to thoroughly investigate an eldritch entrance was impossible when the handlers couldn’t verify if the rift walker was telling the truth.
The Order might be able to identify a breach through a rift—they had mystical alarms for that stuff, and their dispatch department sent the nearest rift walker to investigate, track, and bag. But only the rift walkers could see the residues and the echoes of the entrant, so if they decided to say the trail had run cold, there was no way to verify.
According to the discrepancy between the dispatch data and the bag-and-return stats, there were still thirteen eldritch in our city unaccounted for.
It was my job to find them.
Starting with the oldest entrant.
Uncle Fred topped our mugs up with tea, gaze flicking to me every so often.
“Are you all right?” Nandi asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, just absorbing it all.”
“Telarion ran off pretty quick,” Archie pointed out.
“He’s not a people person. Not unless he’s eating them. The urge to snack must have been unbearable.”
Archie chuckled.
I shot him a flat look.
His smile fell as he realized I wasn’t joking.
“I’d like to sit in on your training tomorrow,” Nandi said.
Quentin had instructed me to join him in the morning for weapons instruction. “If he’s going to show me some special move that knocks me on my ass, I’d rather not have an audience, thanks.”
Nandi smirked. “Spoilsport.”
“You’re safe when it comes to me,” Archie said. “These peepers don’t open until ten at the earliest. I need my beauty sleep.” He winked.
My uncle cleared his throat. “I think we need to continue to be on our guard. The Order made a deal to set you free from Telarion once you’d helped them, but it makes no sense to me why they’d agree to release you from service.”
“Oooh.” Archie sat forward, his eyes bright. “You think they’re gonna shaft us.”
“You think they’ll renege?” I frowned. “They stuck to the blood contract.”
“Yes. Because it was abloodcontract. It’s void now. Did they give you a new contract?”
