Page 3 of Mated to the Monster God
Screaming mold.
One wrong step, and it releases a cloud of spores so fine, you won’t even feel them enter your lungs. But once they’re in? Oh, theyscream. Loud enough to rupture your eardrums. It’s like having a banshee fight club inside your skull.
I carefully retrace two steps, crouch, and chuck a rock over the mold. The second it hits—SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—the jungle explodes with sound. I slap my palms over my ears, wincing, teeth clenched.
When it finally dies off, everything’s gone still. The birds. The bugs. The jungle’sheartbeat.
Too still.
Then the ground vibrates beneath me.
One slow, thudding beat.
Then another and acrack-snap!—a tree explodes twenty meters to my left.
The Hooknose bursts into view like something out of a nightmare.
Twelve feet tall, black-and-rust feathers, beak shaped like a serrated scythe. Its feet slam the earth like living jackhammers. Its eyes lock onto me—beady, dark,hungry. That beak clicks once, twice. It’s deciding which part of me it’ll rip off first.
“Oh,shiiiiiit,” I breathe.
Itscreeches. The sound is so high-pitched my bones vibrate. It lunges.
I dive to the side, roll, and come up running. Plasma pistol smacking against my hip. Jungle branches whip my face. I hear it thrashing behind me, trees cracking like toothpicks.
The terrain dips. Roots slick with slime. I nearly wipe out and catch myself on a fangleaf that drools clear acid. Burn sizzles across my palm. I hiss and keep moving.
Think, Esme.Think.
Can’t fight it. Plasma might as well be spitballs against that armor-thick hide. Can’t outrun it. Not for long. It’s built for this jungle—long legs, steam-powered muscles, nostrils that can pick up a sweat trail from miles away.
What do I have that it doesn’t?
I almost trip over the answer.
Mud. Water. Slime.
The swamp.
My breath rasps in my throat. The swamp to the west is riddled with Protean slug nests—nasty little bastards that suck blood and nerves and heat. Everyone avoids them. They’re worse than leeches. But they’rehungry, and they’ll latch ontoanythingthat thrashes in the water long enough.
I veer hard left, heart pounding, lungs heaving. Behind me, the Hooknose bellows again.
I don’t look back.
The stench hits first—like hot pennies boiled in vomit.
The swamp rears up before me in a festering wall of steam and insect buzz. The trees thin into stilt-like shadows, their roots curling down into dark, churning muck. Sulfur rolls off the water in greasy ribbons. It's disgusting. It's perfect.
I charge forward without slowing, leaping across a ridge of gnarled tree roots and splash into the water up to my thighs. Cold, slimy, alive. Something slithers past my ankle, and I grit my teeth.
Behind me, the Hooknose barrels into the clearing.
It stops.
Itknows. It remembers. They always do.
I spin to face it, chest heaving. “Come on, you overgrown Thanksgiving reject. Follow me.”
