Page 78 of Aberrant Monsters
I exhaled. “Okay, let’s do this.”
* * *
I wasn’tsure what I’d expected but it wasn’t a wasteland of nothingness. The terrain remained ragged, rough, rocky, and dead. I spotted a few apertures in the ground, and the tall rock mounds home to the creatures that preferred the night, no doubt.
There was a forest in the distance. A green line on the horizon to aim for.
“Do you remember what it was like here for you?”
Monotonous. Lonely. A time filled with hunger and confusion.
His openness shocked me. “I’m sorry.”
Don’t be. This was done to me and when I find out by whom, that person will be the one who has reason to be sorry. Very sorry.
I didn’t doubt it. “When you found me in the rift, that night when I was being attacked, youaskedme if I’d host you.”
Yes?
“I mean…you didn’t need to ask, did you? You could have just taken me as a host.”
Yes.
“Then why did you ask my permission.”
He was silent for the longest time, and I was beginning to think he’d retreated when he finally spoke.
It felt wrong to do otherwise. Taking refuge without being offered is a violation.
A monster that cared whether he violated or not. I wasn’t sure how to reconcile that with the idea of monsters in general.
I guess my gut was a better judge of character than I gave it credit for.
Telarion may have pissed me off, he might have made me want to scream in his face and throttle him, he might have even scared the shit out of me from time to time, but he wouldn’t hurt me, and that wasn‘t just because he needed me. Could it be that in his own twisted way, he’d grown just as attached to me as I had to him?
“You’re a good person, Telarion.”
He snorted.I’m no person at all, August. Remember that always, for there may come a time when I forget the rules ingrained in my mind by a life I do not recall. When that time comes, no one will be safe.
My stomach trembled at the thought. “That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”
My watch beeped, signaling that it was time to head back. I turned away from the horizon and set off the way we’d come.
Telarion was silent all the way back to the rift. My spine tingled and my nape tightened as we approached the spot where the grave marker had been.
Something was here.
I could feel it too. I scanned the ground and found fresh animal prints that turned into large footprints. They led to the marker, and there, laid on the ground beneath the shadow of the stone, was a single white rose.
twenty
Ileft the white rose where it was, taking the disconcertion of the discovery with me, and stepped out of the rift back onto Silent Hill Trail where a fog had settled.
Telarion retreated, leaving my mind my own, and I spotted Quentin, a shadowy figure leaning up against a lamppost, collar kicked up against the moisture in the air.
He was so still he looked like a statue.
I approached and he remained stationary, gaze fixed on a spot in the distance, his azure eyes empty and unseeing.
