Bayou Moon (The Edge #2)(58)
Author: Ilona Andrews

Where was that kid going? William leapt over a fallen branch. He hoped with all of him that Lark wasn’t meeting some "nice" monster in the woods and telling him all of the secrets of her family.

A large white oak loomed in the woods, a lone giant tinseled with maiden hair moss. The air currents slapped William with a dozen odors of carrion, some old, some new. What the hell?

With all this carrion, he could smell nothing else.

Cough barreled on ahead. Dogs. Stupid creatures.

William jogged closer.

A dozen small furry bodies hung from the oak’s branches. Two squirrels, a rabbit, an odd thing that looked like a cross between a raccoon and an ermine – something the Edge had cooked up, no doubt – fish . . .

A skinny shape scrambled through the branches above him. Lark’s small face poked through the leaves.

"You shouldn’t be here. This is the tree where the small monster lives," she said. "This is the small monster’s food, and that’s the small monster’s house."

He looked up to where she pointed. A haphazard shelter sat in the branches of the oak, just some old boards clumsily nailed and tied to make a little platform with an overhang. A small yellow something sat on the edge of the platform. William squinted. A stuffed teddy bear next to Peva’s crossbow.

Cerise was right. Lark thought she was a monster. A small one. Who the hell was the big monster?

The teddy bear looked at him with small black eyes. Looking at it made him feel uneasy, as if he was sick or in serious danger and he wasn’t sure when the next blow would be coming. He wanted to take Lark and her teddy bear away from the tree, just carry her off to the house, where there was warmth and light. His instincts told him she’d bolt if he tried.

Human children didn’t do this and she wasn’t a changeling. If she was one, he would’ve recognized her by now and Cerise wouldn’t be surprised by his eyes.

William tapped the tree. "Can I come up?"

Lark bit her lips thinking. "I can trust you?"

He let the moonlight catch his eyes, setting them aglow. "Yes. I’m a monster, too."

Lark’s eyes went wide. She stared at him in silent shock for a long breath and nodded. "Okay."

William took a couple of steps back and launched himself up the trunk, scrambling up like a lizard. It took him less than two seconds to crouch on the branch across from Lark.

"Wow," she said. "Where did you learn to climb that fast?"

"It’s something I do," he said.

Cough whined below.

Lark scuttled down the branches, pulled out a small knife and cut the rope holding a water rat. The rat’s body fell with a wet plop. Cough sniffed it and sat on his haunches, panting, long sticky drool stretching from his mouth.

"He never eats them." Lark frowned.

That’s because they’re rotten. "Do you come here a lot?"

She nodded. "If we don’t find my mom, I might move here. I like it. Nobody bothers me here. Except for the big monster, but I usually run away when I hear him."

"The big monster?"

She nodded. "It moans and snarls when the moon is up."

The Hand’s agents were freaks, but he doubted they would howl at the moon. "Is it something that’s always lived here?"

"I don’t know. I only started this tree four weeks ago."

"What does it look like?"

She shrugged. "I don’t know. It gives me the creeps, and I usually run straight to the house." Her face shut down.

"Do people bother you at the house?"

Lark looked away.

"Monsters belong in the woods," she said. "They don’t belong at the house. Were kids mean to you when you were a small monster?"

William considered the question, trying to sort through the mess that was his childhood to find something a human girl would consider mean. "I grew up in a house with a bunch of kids who were monsters like me. We fought. A lot." And when they really went at it, only one changeling got up in the end.

Lark scooted closer to him. "The adults didn’t stop you? We aren’t allowed to fight."

"They did. They were strict. We got whipped a lot, and if you really screwed up, they would put you on a chain in a room by yourself. Nobody would talk to you for days."

Lark blinked. "How did you get food?"

"They would slide it through a slot in the door."

"And bathroom?"

"There was a hole in the floor."

She pursed her lips. "No showers?"

"No."

"That’s nasty. How long did you stay in there?"

He leaned back, lowering one leg down. "The longest was three weeks. I think. Time is odd when you’re in that room."

"Why did they put you in there?"

"I broke into the archives. I wanted to find out who my parents were."

"Did you?"

He shook his head. "No."

"So you didn’t ever have a dad? Or a mom?"

William shook his head. This conversation had gotten deeper than planned.

"How can you not have a mom? What if you got sick? Who would bring you medicine?"

Nobody. "What about your mom? Is she nice?"

A small hint of a smile crossed Lark’s lips and twisted into a pained frown. He guessed she was trying not to cry.

"My mom’s very nice. She makes me brush my hair. And she holds me. Her hair smells like apples. She makes really good food. Sometimes, I come and sit by her in the kitchen when she cooks, and she sneaks me hot cocoa. It’s hard to get, because Uncle Kaldar has to bring it from the Broken, and we only get it when something big happens. Like birthdays and Christmas, but I get it a lot …" Lark clamped her mouth shut and looked at him. "Do you know when your birthday is?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Did you ever get any presents?"

William sucked the air in through his nose. She asked bad questions. "I’m a monster, remember? The birth of little monsters isn’t something people celebrate."

Lark looked away again.

Great. Now he made the kid feel bad. Nice going, asshole.

William reached over and touched one of the ropes holding a squirrel carcass. "Did you catch all these?"

"Yes. I’m good at it."

Both rats bore bolt marks. She probably did shoot those. But the rabbit carcass was at least eight days old, and there weren’t maggots on it. William picked up the rope, pulled the rabbit up, and looked at it. His nose told him not to eat – there was some sickness in it.

Water rats were ugly, but the rabbit was cute. She wouldn’t shoot one. She probably just found the corpse somewhere. A changeling child wouldn’t have any problem killing a rabbit. It was good meat, slightly sweet.