Monster Mine Read Online Free PDF

I’d
seen my father, though I didn’t know he was my father at the time,
in his ’swang form. After Barrow, I knew why his hide had been
unscarred, smooth, and shining, while nearly every other ’swang was
marked by their female mates.
    Hex’s mate had been my mother, a human
hunter from the university. She hadn’t followed the female aswang’s
ritual of uniquely scarring their mates.
    The hall separated in front of us and
Ghost steered us left, toward what looked like a common gathering
area and kitchen, which appeared barely used. I wondered about the
chilly air and the meager sandwich Ghost had brought me. Were they
trying to keep this place off the grid?
    “ Why are the halflings
here if this really is Irena’s place?”
    Ghost’s attention fell to the
forgotten sandwich in my hand. “Are you going to eat
that?”
    Without a word, I handed it to
him.
    He took a big, chomping bite and spoke
around the peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Your
mom started gathering the first halflings in secret back in the
eighties, before she left the university.” He said the word
“university” the way hunters said “aswang.” “Hex took over when she
died. Oh . . .” He darted a gaze toward me. “Uh, sorry,
for your . . . loss.”
    “ In the eighties?” I
asked, forgetting about the tour and focusing solely on Ghost. “You
mean before she disappeared?”
    The file with the pictures I’d found
in Killian’s office had been labeled “1986,” but Killian had
planted it to make me think the aswangs had performed breeding
experiments on my mother. I couldn’t trust the date, but my mind
stumbled over the thought that she’d done all this before she
disappeared and had me.
    Ghost scuffed his feet against the
floor and took us back toward the front of the warehouse, though I
paid little attention to our surroundings, aside from the fact that
we were back in the main hallway. “Thad said she was working as a
double agent between the university and here when she fell in love
with Hex.” He blushed at this. “She brought us together and created
a safe place for us. No one tries to kill us here.”
    He said it so casually, with half his
face lost to the darkness around us, that I knew his short life had
been hard—too hard for a kid.
    “ Who tries to kill
halflings?” I asked.
    “ Everyone.” He let loose a
long breath. “Aswangs who think we’re messing up the gene pool.
University hunters who believe we could exist even though the
university’s experiments never proved we, like, actually exist.
They had no clue until . . .”
    I cringed. Until me. Until I’d shown
up at Fear University with no idea what I was. It hadn’t taken Dean
long to figure out his experiments were right. With me, I had
validated his research. “Sorry about that.”
    “ Some of us were mad, but
Thad said it would’ve happened sooner or later. He says we can’t
hide forever.”
    I heard the admiration in his voice
that bordered on hero worship. He practically drooled every time he
mentioned Thad’s name. The thought clicked into place in my
mind.
    “ Hey, Ghost,” I said. “Why
is everyone calling Thad, well, Thad ? Didn’t you all know him by
another name before he infiltrated the university under a dead
hunter’s identity?”
    We came to the end of the top floor. A
metal railing separated the upstairs from the bottom floor, which
was just an empty stretch of concrete.
    Ghost started down a
rickety set of stairs that bounced and clanged with every step. “He
and Lauren fought a lot about that after they came back with you, but he
told everyone he was going by Thad now. I didn’t understand until I
overheard him telling Reece he liked himself better as Thaddeus
Booker. He felt like he’d done more good as Thad, which really set
Lauren off. She, like, called him a bunch of really mean names and
said he’d gone soft at the university.”
    I frowned as we reached the first
floor, which was an open,