Where Monsters Hide (The Monster Within 1)

His eyes are shifting nervously, darting back down towards his friends and then back up the empty end of the street.

“What is it?” I ask, then again, in broken Romanian.

He glances up at me and licks his lips. His eyes are wide and terrified.

“The old lady, she lies,” he says. His eyes dart back down towards his friends and stay trained on there as he continues. “She does this every Halloween.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

I hear more footsteps and pull the boy further down the alley and into a doorway. We can’t see his friends from here, but I can hear more voices echoing our way. The other hunters are here.

“I can see them too,” he says, suddenly. He’s looking back up at me, with those wide, staring eyes of his. I can see the terror in them, and I know exactly what he means. “You believe me?”

I put a hand on his shoulder. Any other sane adult would tell a small child that monsters aren’t rea

l, that they have nothing to fear.

I ask him where to find it.

He points me in the opposite direction of town. “There’s a bad forest there. You’ll find monsters.”

The flicker of lights has died down in the alley. From the sounds of it, the other hunters got the same information I did and are already heading off to investigate the old woman. Even if I try heading that way, I’ll likely be too late now.

I look out towards the stretch of forest the boy pointed out. That area of town is dark. It’s the old part of the village, all thatched roofs and old women in scarves. I close my eyes for a moment, recalling a map of the area. The southern part of the village tapers off into a thick woods, with nothing beyond for miles and miles until …

Until the river.

Erin’s warning comes back to mind. The al will be heading towards the river. I gather up my things, thank the boy, and hurry down the alley as fast as I can.

Before I disappear, I stop and glance back.

“One day, you won’t see them anymore,” I say. “I promise.”

The boy just looks at me with those wide, terrified eyes. My promise doesn’t matter. I’ve seen that look before—on Professor Waldman’s face when she mentioned the Wendigo. One day he might not be able to see the monsters, but he’s never going to forget them.

This part of town grows quieter with each passing moment. Far removed from the lights and festivities of the holiday, the old buildings practically advertise nooks and crannies for the creatures of the night to hide. I find myself alone, the streets barren—no sign of monster, stranger, or hunter to be found.

I get to the edge of the forest, to the place where the road abruptly ends and the thick mass of pine begins, without so much as a claw mark to examine.

The al. Snatcher of babies. If there was an al sighting, there had to be a baby … right?

I have an idea. I pull my phone out of my back pocket and, using the spotty reception I’m able to wrangle up, start looking for any breaking news on missing babies in the area. If I can just find out where the baby was stolen from, I might be able to track the al from there.

I hear footsteps and step into the shadow of one of the trees at the edge of the forest. Without the glow of my cell phone screen, I’m nearly blinded for a minute in the dark. It takes a moment before I can make out the figure: an old, hunched over woman fiddling with keys in a door.

My breath comes out in a slow, silent whoosh of relief.

That sound, however small, makes the woman freeze.

She whirls in the dark, her keys brandished out in front of her and pointed in my direction.

I leave my spear behind the tree and step out of the shadows, my hands up in the universal sign of ‘I mean you no harm’. At first she looks frightened, but then as she takes me in and sees I’m just human, she stands down. Which, for her, means she starts yelling at me in Romanian and loudly jingling her keys in the lock again.

I’m about to make a hasty retreat when the door flies open from the inside, and it’s my turn to freeze. A heavily pregnant woman squints out at us, her face flushed red and her brow beaded with sweat. The warm, flickering light of the fire inside also makes it apparent that this woman isn’t just pregnant—she’s in labor.

“Holy shit,” I say, my voice lost between the loud bickering of the two women in their native tongue. My eyes are stuck on the woman’s protruding belly, just as my mind works out how I went wrong.

No wonder I didn’t find an announcement about any births. The al hasn’t already snatched a baby … he’s about to.