Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
“No one is going anywhere,” the green thing claimed, rearing up to its full height, anger again visible in its sturdy shoulders and boxy frame.
Some part of me realized I should’ve been frightened. This green swampy-looking monster might be able to rip me apart if it had the chance. It had nails so long, they’d classify as talons. It was creepy-looking too, no offense to it. It wasn’t like it chose to be born a being that wasn’t going to win any beauty contests with its mildewy skin and snarly-looking hair. Butttttt… it would have to touch me first, and it didn’t know it yet, but that wasn’t going to work out in its favor.
I kept inching closer, stopping when I was about twenty feet away from the kids, close enough to see that the creature resembled a decaying green woman with wild hair, and the kids were even smaller than they’d seemed from a distance. They were young. Way too young to be out here by themselves. No parent would have let a child at their ages out and about without supervision.
They were going to be in so much trouble when they got home.
Was someone already looking for them?
I could worry about that later. For now, I had a big mythical being with an anger problem and a taste for young magical meat to deal with. To each their own and all, but what a jerk. If it was going to eat someone, it might as well pick on somebody who could at least fight for their life.
I shrugged at it one more time. “They’re going to come with me, and you’re going away, hopefully somewhere far from here. And that’s if you’re lucky and their pack doesn’t hunt you down first, and if you don’t piss me off between now and then.” I crouched and held my arm out to the kids before meeting the green creature’s dark eyes. It had no irises or white in them, just a nearly black pupil-looking eyeball.
The kids, though, didn’t react to my gesture.
The thing laughed, and in a move so fast that my eyes missed it, it reached down and swiped the white pup by the back of its neck—it cried even as it snapped its teeth some more—and the swamp monster held it up. “You think I would have anything to fear from—” it started to threaten.
I hope this works.
I pulled my bracelet off and dropped it. I couldn’t send a message if it was touching me in any way. By some miracle, though the wind had been nearly dead up until that point, a breeze picked up through the trees, carrying my scent upwind now that it wasn’t hidden by my obsidian beads.
Sending me straight to the green thing’s nose. The real me. All of me.
And I said, in the calmest voice I could, “You’re about to piss me off. Put that puppy down before we start playing a game of tag that you’re not going to like.”
It was obvious the second my scent reached it.
It worked exactly the way I’d hoped it would. The way it had before when dealing with beings with noses who could sense magic, which was almost all of them. There were very few who had survived this long without evolution gifting them a biological warning system. It was mostly only people like me, I thought, who didn’t have those kind of life-saving gifts.
I’d come across people who liked the way I smelled from the get-go. Some beings, like werewolves, were almost always a sure thing, but I’d met a hell of a lot more who started off hesitant, and just as many who were repelled. I didn’t blame them, but I’d been banking on the latter just now, hoping it would be enough without having to touch anybody.
The swamp thing’s body stiffened. The look in its eyes changed to a very, very uncomfortable one dang near instantly. Its mouth parted, its teeth disappeared as it quit snarling, and it took a step back reflexively. I would have bet money that it didn’t even know it had done that— backed away, that was.
Some people smelled like sugar and spice and everything nice. Some of the time it was part of their magic, part of the way they lured things to them. Every once in a while, they just smelled good because they were good. That was how my friends with good noses had explained it to me. You could smell lies, anger, jealousy, and love, among a whole lot of other emotions that made up a person.
Me? I was good in my heart and in my actions. I liked to believe everyone who knew me thought the same.
But I was well aware that to a lot of beings, I smelled like sugar, spice, and sometimes everything not nice.