American Monsters. Derek Landy

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СКАЧАТЬ I have devoted my life to the study of creatures like these bogles – creatures too vicious to survive in today’s world. Take you, for example. Those scales are wonderful. Not reliable, though, are they? I’ve found, in my studies, that they are tied to your unconscious instincts. Yes, you can control them to a degree, but I bet they’ve let you down before, haven’t they? When you needed them most? Have you ever asked yourself why?”

      Amber just stayed where she was. The bogles started going after her eyes again so she squeezed them shut, kept her head down. Some of them, on the lower half of her body, were still trying to stick their knives in between her scales. She struggled to control her temper.

      “It’s all subconscious,” Axton was saying. “If you think you ought to be punished in some way for sins you have committed, or are about to commit, your scales will let a little damage in. It’s really quite interesting, linked as it is to one’s own self-loathing. How about you, young lady? You must have done some rather dubious things to have been made the Shining Demon’s representative. How much do these sins affect you? How much do they eat away at you?”

      Amber tried to block out his words, but he was right. Her scales should have protected her from Elias Mauk the day before they reached Desolation Hill, should have protected her fingers from his hammer. In the battles she’d been in since, sometimes the scales shielded her from the punch, the slash, and sometimes they didn’t. They’d failed her before. If they failed her now, she’d be little more than a pincushion to these creatures.

      “It’s all about doubt,” Axton said. He had a miserable voice. Everything about him – his voice, his slumped shoulders, his sad little belly – screamed loser. More than that, they screamed lost. Defeated. “That’s the killer, isn’t it?” he said. “The moment a little bit of doubt creeps in, it all starts to go wrong.”

      Panic flared as Amber felt the scales on her stomach start to slowly retract. She tried to command them, to regrow them, but more retracted in an instant. She pressed her belly to the floor, did her best to pretend to be calm, but more scales were disappearing. A knife scraped her red skin and drew blood.

      This guy. Axton. This asshole. Talking about doubt. Talking about her scales failing her. He did this. He put these thoughts in her head and now they were there, they had taken root, and the more she tried not to think of it, the more she thought of it and the more her scales retracted.

      “Whumba de na poebee,” Axton said, and the bogles grumbled, but paused in their stabbing.

      Amber raised her head, looked up at him. “You control them.”

      “Me?” said Axton. “No, not at all. But I communicate, and they listen. Aren’t they wondrous? Terrific mimics. Although I think they may have picked up some bad habits from watching all that TV.”

      “You know why I’m here,” she said.

      Axton nodded. “Because I made a deal with the Shining Demon, and I welched.”

      “He sent me to bring you back.”

      “And you’re surprised I’m resisting?”

      “Nope,” she said. “Not surprised at all. Expected it, to be honest. Was surprised by the freaky little monsters you’ve got running around, though.”

      Axton smiled. “Didn’t see them coming, did you?”

      “I did not,” Amber said, feeling the air on her skin as more scales retracted. The small of her back was now bare, and she expected to feel a knife plunge into her flesh at any moment. “You’re a clever man,” she said.

      “I am?”

      “Got me doubting myself.”

      He chuckled. “It’s all true, though. Astaroth can’t have you too unstoppable, you see. You demons need chinks in your armour, both figuratively and literally.”

      Her arms. Her arms were bare. Amber could feel the bogles’ claws digging into her skin now. She could feel the cold steel of their knives pressing between her shoulder blades.

      “He didn’t just grant you the ability to talk to these little bastards, did he?” she asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

      Axton shrugged. “I can talk to anything and anyone.”

      “Including me. You’re getting me to calm down. The more I calm down, the less scales I have.”

      “We’re just having a conversation.”

      “While you’re getting ready to kill me,” said Amber.

      “That’s by the by, is it not? I’m not a violent man.”

      “How many people have you killed?”

      “There are plenty more people to go around, young lady. There are only a few of these bogles. Although, admittedly, they do breed incredibly fast.” Axton nodded to a bogle that sauntered towards him, holding its bloated belly. “They need very specific nesting conditions in order to lay their eggs, however. A very particular environment that provides both a viable temperature for birth and food for the offspring.”

      “Yeah?” said Amber. “And where’s that?”

      Axton blinked. “Why, on you, of course.”

      

      AMBER GLARED. “DON’T YOU dare.”

      “It’s actually a very beautiful process,” said Axton.

      “I swear to Christ,” she responded, gritting her teeth, “if it lays its eggs on me I’m gonna break every goddamn bone in your body.”

      Axton smiled with reassuring banality. “It’s not going to hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about. Well, it will, but it’ll be over before you know it. They are rather fast eaters.”

      “It’s not about the pain, Paul. I just have a rule that forbids anything from ever laying its eggs on me, that’s all. It’s a personal thing.”

      “It’s nature, young lady,” Axton told her. “It’s the circle of life.”

      “If it were the circle of life, it would keep happening to me. But this, this right here? This’d be the first time a little furry freak laid their eggs on my body, so it’s not the circle of life, it’s just gross.”

      “It won’t take long.”

      Amber watched the pregnant bogle get closer. “Which part?” she asked.

      “Any of it,” said Axton. “They have an accelerated hatching rate.”

      Amber took a deep, calming breath. “Paul, you pay attention to what it is I’m saying to you.”

      The pregnant bogle moaned.

      “Too СКАЧАТЬ