Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Author:John Wiswell [Wiswell, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: no data
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Monster!”

“Monster!”

“Monster!”

As though yelling names would help. The thing wasn’t dissuaded by talking, and drowned out the shouts of orders with its own bleating and honking. Its voices sounded like the calls of adult bucks, while the skulls that protruded from its mass all came from female deer. It was like an entire herd had crashed together into one grotesque being.

It had more than deer parts, stamping closer on its thick branch legs, kicking holes in the hard-packed earth. The opening at its front quivered like a snout, smelling the entire party. All three of its deer skulls clacked their jaws in unison in Shesheshen’s direction, and it snorted her air again. The creature dragged one branch-leg along the ground like a bull about to charge and lowered its flank at her.

Did it recognize her by scent? What the hell was this thing?

The rosemary poison on the trap was too strong for her to yank her limb free. Pain disoriented her leg, refusing to let it shapeshift. Shesheshen pried her daggers between the teeth of the wretched bear trap, working them to get any slack. Her shin bones were crushed and the pain scissored through her soft tissues, telling her there would be no limping on that ruined limb.

As the creature ran at her, Shesheshen sliced the daggers into her own limb to cut it off. It was the only way.

The rope line jerked away from her lap, reminding her that some of the mercenaries kept their heads. Malik slashed at the creature’s underside with a broadsword that glistened with oil. Rourke came up behind his partner, aiming a crossbow over the man’s shoulder. It loosed a familiar-looking bolt, striking the creature at the seam where one of its branch-legs entered its gray flesh.

The creature wailed again and kicked with its hind legs, knocking both monster hunters to the ground in a shower of pine needles. It kicked until the crossbow bolt and the adjacent stick leg both came loose, thudding to the ground. Deer jaws chattered, and the creature bolted.

“The camp!” Malik yelled, pointing. The creature was headed straight for the clearing, where Blueberry was still bound and helpless.

Malik and Rourke sprinted together, with the spare mercenaries behind them. They didn’t cast another look at Shesheshen as she tried to cut her own leg off.

It was better that way. She was too bewildered to put on a show for frightened humans. Her facial features melted away, eyes sinking into her head as she finished sawing off her knee. It took a force of will to pull her face back together, and to clench her wound shut. All that blood her worthless new heart-like organ had made came spilling out, leaching her body heat with it.

There wasn’t time to cry over lost fluids. Blueberry needed her.

Tentatively, she picked up the fallen crossbow bolt. It smelled of agony and poison; she had to hold it by the far end, not wanting to get a drop of its extracts onto her. A thing with rosemary-poisoned chambers near the tip had nearly killed her once.

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