Brownie Havoc (The Origin Story of Monsters Book 7) by Martha Carr & Michael Anderle

Author:Martha Carr & Michael Anderle [Carr, Martha & Anderle, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2023-07-09T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Halsey couldn’t immediately comprehend what she was looking at. Only when Eugenia gagged and clapped a hand over her mouth did it become clear that the sight in front of them wasn’t simply another pile of debris on the property.

It was a pile of bodies.

“Oh, shit.” Rupert reeled away from the haphazard mound and grimaced in disgust. “Are those…”

When he didn’t finish his question, Greta stuck her hands on her hips and jerked her chin at him. “What’s the matter, kid? Never seen a brownie before?”

“Oh, he’s seen ’em, all right,” Brigham commented with a tight, humorless smile as he gaped at the carnage. “Today, even.”

Rupert shook his head. “Only…not like this.”

Though he hadn’t meant to, he’d spoken for all of them. Before today, no one had heard of brownies scuttling about in the daytime, let alone attacking an elemental on the open road where anyone else might see. Rupert had seen it with his own eyes a few hours ago, but even his strange interaction with the tiny, troublemaking monsters felt like a normal daily occurrence for an elemental monster hunter compared to what lay in front of them now.

Hundreds of brownies, their wrinkled, brownish-gray skin covered in mud and soot like Greta and all her property. One or two of them wore faded, stained clothing that looked like it had come off the department-store shelves of infant clothing, though those outfits were as soiled as the rest of them. The majority of the creatures remained clothed only in strips of stained and shredded rags, leaving most of their grotesque little bodies bare. The occasional streak of muddy brown-green sludge could be seen across awkwardly bent limbs or motionless faces contorted in bizarre silent snarls and wild fury.

Seeing all that brown-green color splashed among the macabre pile of gray-brown bodies made Halsey pull her gaze away. She settled it instead on her grandmother. If the copper stains on the woman’s khaki overalls were blood, it had to have been Greta’s. No signs of anyone else having been out here during the enormous battle the woman had fought alone.

Not that any of the A-Team elementals could see, anyway.

Halsey wanted to go to her grandmother. To turn the woman’s attention to those potential blood stains, to tell her she probably needed medical attention, to ask if anything hurt or if Greta felt weaknesses in any particular area. Though she knew who Greta Ambrosius had been in the field and had heard all the fierce, unembellished stories of her grandmother’s exploits as a monster hunter, she still couldn’t help but worry about the woman.

Greta’s strength, ferocity, and determination to do what needed to be done in any given situation were legend. Though she didn’t look like it, the woman was already in her eighties. If she’d sustained any injuries while battling a hundred brownies or more on her own and obviously trying to put out the fire consuming her home with the river running conveniently right past it, those injuries had to be addressed.

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