Sweet Venom
Page 22

This was the hardest fight I’ve had since . . . well, ever. Even my very first—a giant turtle that was attacking tourists down at the maritime park—was a piece of seaweed-wrapped cake compared to this.
With the adrenaline flooding my bloodstream, I can’t feel any of the aches and pains I know will be there in the morning. But not even a morphine drip could kill the searing pain burning across the back of my neck.
“You okay?” Nick asks.
He doesn’t even sound out of breath.
I roll off him. “Bastard scratched me.”
“Gretchen,” he asks, “are you—”
“I need to go.”
I can’t stick around to answer Nick’s questions because, well, there aren’t any good answers, are there? Besides, thanks to the griffin’s last-ditch effort, some nasty monster venom is now making its way through my circulatory system. Wait too long before treating it and I’m in for several days of excruciating pain—which I know from an up-close-and-personal experience with a cynolycus.
The clock is ticking.
Without waiting for Nick to say or ask or do anything, I jump to my feet and run from the courtyard. As I shove my way through the crowd inside, I wonder how on earth I’m going to explain the fight and the disappearing guys to Nick come Monday at school. I’ve never dealt with a hypno-immune human before, didn’t even know they existed. And I know he’s not the kind of guy to let this go without explanation.
Hopefully Ursula will be back before I have to face him again. She’ll have some suggestions.
I’m halfway through the main club room when I’m hit with the smell of burning sulfur. Another monster? Not just any monster, either. Sulfur means a fire-breather.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
That makes three in one night. What is this, the freakin’ monsterpocalypse?
Thankfully, I don’t have to look far to spot the lizard with a spiked tail and smoke curling out of its nostrils. It’s dancing by itself in the middle of the room. Even if they disguise their true appearance, some beasties are less than welcome in a crowd. Bad body odor is bad body odor, no matter the species. I kind of empathize with its loneliness.
“Poor thing.”
Still, it has to go.
I step up behind the lizard, ignoring the throbbing pain in my neck, and grab it by the wrist. It whirls around to face me, sending its spiked tail whipping through the crowd.
Most people don’t react, since all they see is a kind of homely woman in bondage-worthy stilettos and a floral sundress. But as I force its wrist to my mouth, I see the girl behind the creature leap out of the way of the swinging tail.
As I stab my fangs into the creature’s wrist—not the pulse point, apparently, because the lizard doesn’t go anywhere—the girl turns around.
With a gasp, I drop the creature’s wrist. Standing there, in the middle of a dance floor surrounded by dozens of ordinary teens, is a girl who looks exactly like me. I mean exactly like me. And, I realize as we blink at each other, she saw the lizard’s tail.
Just then, a stab of pain sears across my neck. Tick tock, tick tock.
Without stopping to think, I step forward, grab the girl by the waist, and fling her over my shoulder. I don’t wait for anyone to notice or even for the lizard to disappear. It will. I race for the front door, knowing that eventually my venom will reach the creature’s heart and send it home. Right at this moment my two bigger concerns are the monster juice making its way toward my heart and the Gretchen lookalike hanging limp as I run out of the club.
Chapter 7
Grace
Maybe I should have screamed, or kicked my legs, or struggled to keep from getting shoved into the black Mustang. On any other day I probably would have. Maybe this is another manifestation of my insanity, letting some random girl kidnap me from a nightclub without saying a word. But the truth is, I’m curious. I’m totally freaked about the girl who looks like me and the monster she bit on the wrist. Because she obviously saw the fire-breathing lizard too, which leaves limited explanations.
Either she’s another figment of my imagination—though the bruise on my left hip suggests otherwise—or we’re both equally insane—what are the odds of that?—or . . . the monsters are real.
I know which option I’m rooting for.
As she jams the car into gear and squeals out into the street, I study her profile. It’s like looking at a photograph of myself. We are virtually identical; the only differences I can see are cosmetic. Her long dark-blond hair is woven back in a tight French braid. Her face is clear of makeup and there are no earrings in her unpierced lobes. And her jaw is set in a rigid clench, with tension that follows the lines of her throat, around to the back of her neck where—
“You’re hurt,” I blurt.
She flicks me an annoyed glance. “I know.”
“You need to go to a hospital.”
She shifts gears, speeding through a yellow light.
“No hospital can fix this.”
I nod, somehow instinctively understanding what she means. A monster caused that wound. It couldn’t have been the lizard I saw right before she hauled me over her shoulder, because I’d have seen if it had been able to attack her. So it must have been one of the other two.
“Was it the eagle-headed lion?” I ask as we crest a hill and spend a couple of seconds airborne before slamming back onto the street. “Or the feathered snake thing?”
“The griffin and the Ophis pterotus.” Her knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. “You saw those too?”