Jade would most likely be elbow-deep in dust and full of determination to do the job Liz had hired her to do. She had a chip on her shoulder about it, and I had not made it easier for her, not at first. When I turned toward Main Street, I could see the shiny, clean windows of the general store I ran and thegolden letters I always kept neatly polished. Beside it, brighter but still a little worn, the library stood, and I could see Jade moving around inside. For a moment, I stood on the edge of the old, cracked sidewalk and looked my fill.
From this distance, I could not see if she’d put on the jade silk lingerie I’d bought her, or the bracelet with its protection spell. I imagined she had, though, Belfry would have been there to insist she put them on. He knew why. When Jade moved out of sight, I forced myself to turn toward one of the many derelict houses that lined the street.
Much of the town was like that, following a twenty-six-year-long exodus of supernaturals and humans who had once made the Hollow their home. Most of the buildings had been bought up by Sunworld last year. The house I sought was not quite neighbors with my store and was directly across the street from the B&B Gwen ran. There was only one person I knew who might have some answers, and if a monster had slipped its chains, then I needed to know who had been rattling them.
Kiran’s temporary residence loomed between two abandoned homes like a sickly tooth wedged in a rotten jaw. The structure leaned inward on itself, shutters hanging by a single nail, paint blistered and peeled. The garden—if one could call it that—had erupted into a wild, choking mass of green: a veritable jungle of plants that would make a nymph smile and any other homeowner moan in despair. Vines strangled the porch railing out front, what little hadn’t rotted straight through, and thorny fingers crept up the walls as if they intended to tear them down. “Rosemary,” I muttered. “She really must learn restraint.”
I knocked hard, the sound echoing into the hollow interior. The wood of the door had too much give, as if it were soggy, rotting, and about to fall apart. There were no lights on inside, the windows were dark, and the curtains were drawn, once possibly white but now gray and riddled with holes. There was no warmth, nothing even resembling a welcome.
After a long moment, the door cracked open, though I had not heard any footsteps approach. Kiran regarded me with cool, assessing eyes, his pinstriped suit immaculate despite the ruin behind him. He did not invite me in, his mouth tight with distaste and a sharp bite of superiority. “What do you want, vampire?” he asked, flatly.
I smiled thinly, offering only the barest veil of sophistication. “A conversation, and perhaps a meal recommendation. You look well-fed for someone who hasn’t visited my store.” We all knew I ran the only store in town that sold food, and I was the one who arranged supplies for Mikael’s diner—when he bothered to have it open. Since he was visiting family in Norway, Mikael was not the source of Kiran’s full stomach, which left hunting or a long drive to the next town over. I knew he had not left.
His jaw tightened, the angle sharp and biting. Interesting. “I’ve been… managing,” he said, but his eyes, glowing with a hint of feral gold, told me a different story—of hunts under cover of darkness, of poaching from the land. Kai was not up in arms, so somehow this man—this tiger—had stayed under the radar. Or perhaps… No, that was unlikely. He had been injured last fall, and Arden, our resident troll and healer, had nursed him back to health. Did tigers like fish?
“I’m sure,” I said, my voice filled with mockery. My eyes flicked from his face, along his frame, to his expensive leather loafers. No, this tiger was a powerful fighter, but a hunter, he was not. I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “You’re going to tell me what Sunworld was doing here last summer.” He would find out soon enough that I was a hunter, despite my own preference for suits and expensive Italian shoes.
That did it. I felt the air shift as his expression hardened into something grim and guarded. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped back, allowing me to enter without a word.
The house was abysmal, worse than the outside. I had seen crypts with better upkeep. Dust coated every surface and the furniture was sparse, broken, or missing altogether. The curtains looked worse from this angle than they had through the dirty windows; moth eaten and tattered. There were no soft rugs, the floorboards were warped though not rotten, and bare bulbs flickered weakly overhead. “Even the library was in better condition than this,” I grimaced.
Kiran ignored the comment as if I had not spoken, turning to stand in place at the center of what was supposed to be the living room. This place didn’t rate the word “living”—it was that bad—but this was where the weretiger had made his home. Temporarily, I hoped, but nobody had figured out why he was here yet. He’d kept to himself and made no trouble; that was the only reason we hadn’t sent him running after what he’d done on Rosemary’s land.
“I need answers, Tiger. Now.” I didn’t think he’d give them—I expected the usual song and dance before he denied everything and sent me packing. Then I’d have to come back and take moreserious measures to make him talk, and I might end up with blood on my suit. It would be very tedious—and very pointless.
The weretiger surprised me though. He exhaled slowly, and then began speaking in a low intense voice. He spoke in a way that commanded my attention and made me lean in closer to catch every word.
“I was following orders last summer, working as security for Sunworld. I was never part of the plan, not then. I was just meant to do as Miss Elie demanded,” he explained. I hissed in displeasure, and when I shook my head to indicate I did not believe him, he rushed on. “I swear, I believed they wanted to buy up all the properties for a huge fracking operation. There’s good money in that; it was the party line. I only became suspicious that it was something else when Miss Elie appeared to fixate on that derelict farm on the outskirts of town.” He pointed in the direction of Rosemary’s farm with eerie precision.
I remembered Miss Elie all too well. As a vampire, she’d tried to approach me several times, appealing to my senses and my ambitions. She’d even flirted a little while trying to destroy all that Hillcrest Hollow stood for, abandoned and sad as it had become. She was slick, and she was cold, and I was very glad we’d gotten rid of her.
“After the fight,” Kiran continued. He didn’t have to explain which fight he was talking about; it was instantly clear he meant the battle Chardum now feared had set his prisoner free after all—the fight during which both the dragon and his nymph mate had nearly died, only their soulmate bond pulling them through. “The survivors returned to Sunworld headquarters.”He completed that sentence with such a dark look that I knew what came next wasn’t good.
“I watched Sunworld’s upper management execute Miss Elie for her failure. No hesitation. No mercy. I was promoted on the spot and sent back here to finish the job.” He hesitated, because I leaned in, fangs on display. The way he spoke made me think he wasn’t the loyal Sunworld employee he used to be, but if he was a threat, I would not hesitate to take him out.
His half-smile was a little cocky, like he thought he might enjoy seeing which one of us was the strongest. For a breath of a moment, we stood there, facing off on the edge of a fight. Then his golden tiger eyes became shadowed as he continued: “That was when I learned the name of the creature they are after. A Galamut. Whatever it is… it was sealed for a reason.”
My fingers curled at my sides. Damn it, there was that name again, but what the hell was it? It still wasn’t more than a vague sense of danger and an even vaguer recollection of having read it somewhere. “What is a Galamut?” I asked, but I had a feeling Kiran knew about as much as I did.
He shook his head, confirming my suspicion. “I don’t know. I only recall that my grandmother used to sing a nursery rhyme about one when I was a child. It was a thing that walked like a man and a beast, a demon in disguise, and it killed everything it met: forests, cities, people.” His voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “I wanted no part of that, you understand?” He and I had both lived long enough to know that there was always a bit of truth in a nursery rhyme.
I nodded slowly as I contemplated this. A creature powerful enough to level cities? There were a handful that fit that bill. A very old and powerful vampire could, though not in the literal sense. A dragon like Chardum? He might, but they tended not to care about such things, not even a dragon like Chardum, called the Destroyer. Perhaps a particularly powerful warlock or witch could wield that kind of power. I had a feeling, however, that we weren’t talking about a normal creature, but something that took great pleasure in that kind of death and destruction. Any of the ones I knew wouldn’t do such a thing unless they had a good reason… So the question remained: what was a Galamut?
“I’ve been trying through my contacts at Sunworld to find out more,” Kiran admitted voluntarily. “So far, nothing. Nobody seems to know anything, just that upper management wants the creature. I’ll keep trying but…” he did not need to finish that statement to make it clear that information on this creature was extremely hard to come by.
The silence stretched as I shared a look with Kiran, that was filled with a surprisingly mutual understanding of the danger this creature, if it existed, posed. I opened my mouth to ask more, but something twisted sharply in my chest. It was a pull, abrupt and painful; a warning. This was about Jade. I turned for the door in a rush, my belly coiling with pain and fear. “I have to go,” I said, in a semblance of manners, by rote and not heartfelt.
Kiran moved fast, blocking the doorway before I could get out. His body a living barrier I could only pass if I wanted to push him aside by force. “Is it out?” he demanded. “Is there really one here?” I bared my fangs, he barely had time to react before I struck him aside and surged past, already running. He’d been inin town for months, waiting and watching, and he thought now was the right time to start asking his own questions?
Inside the library, the temporary lights were on—indicating Jade had been here, working—but I saw no sign of her. No, that wasn’t true. The box with the bracelet imbued with protection spells I’d had delivered for her was sitting on the corner of the large central table. I snatched it up without thinking, my eyes searching between the shelves for any sign of her. Then I saw the partially ajar bookshelf on the other side of the room. The hidden entrance to the secret library, as ancient as Hillcrest Hollow. Oh no, she’d gone down there, hadn’t she?
I heard the growl before I reached the door, low, furious, wrong. It made my skin crawl and my mind fill with images of horrors: of creatures all wrong and misshapen, dark and twisted. A Galamut, though I knew not what one looked like. Charging down the hidden stairs, I burst into the secret library just as Belfry came flapping toward me, silk vest askew, gold chain glinting wildly.
She’s down there!he cried into my mind, twisting midair to arrow back toward a row of bookshelves. Something shadowy snapped out, writhing from between those wooden bookcases.Oh, Luther, it’s awful, Belfry moaned. He wheeled through the air ahead of me as I charged forward, then ducked behind me for protection.
The smell hit me first, old magic, splintered wood, rot, though that couldn’t be from the secret library itself. It was pristine, made that way with magic. I saw a pale hand curl from behind one shelf and rushed forward. Jade lay sprawled between theshelves, unmoving, and for a blinding moment, I was certain she was not even breathing.
Beyond her stood a creature I’d never seen before. It was human-shaped only in mockery, with limbs too long and wrongly shaped. Blackened roots threaded through flesh, and bark split skin. Its mouth opened too wide as it howled and raked claws through a row of ancient leather-bound volumes.
