American Monsters

Copyright

First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

Visit us on the web at www.harpercollins.co.uk

Derek Landy blogs under duress at www.dereklandy.blogspot.com

Copyright © Derek Landy 2016

Jacket photography © Larry Rostant 2016

Jacket design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008157104

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008157074

Version: 2016-08-10

This book is dedicated to Morgan.

You’ve changed, man …

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Also by Derek Landy

About the Publisher

THE DEMON WAS TALL and strong, red-skinned and beautiful, and she had two black horns that curled up from her forehead. She sneered, and even her sneer was beautiful. “You really think you’re getting out of this alive?”

Amber ignored the whisper, ignored her demon-self, ignored everything that wasn’t real, and stepped through the darkness of the department store.

A creature stood on the glass counter ahead, trying on sunglasses and gazing at itself in the mirror on the display spinner. This was real. As bizarre as it was, this wasn’t a hallucination. Amber could tell the difference now. The critter was maybe two feet tall, its body and head covered in light brown fur. It stood on spindly legs and its arms were thin. It turned this way and that, admiring itself, gurgling happily. It had a wide, wide mouth, and a small snout. When it took off the sunglasses, its eyes were big and blinking.

Amber had never seen a bogle before. Hadn’t even seen a drawing of one. It was, she supposed as she got closer, kind of cute, like an adorable Disney animal. It certainly wasn’t anything like she’d imagined. She’d broken into this Walmart expecting to be greeted by a horde of vicious monsters – not a solitary, cute and furry creature trying on sunglasses at night.

But, even so, she shifted. Just in case. Her body transformed, and now she was the red-skinned beauty; she had the strength, and the height, and the horns. She passed a mannequin wearing the same outfit as her – yoga pants and tank top – but while the mannequin’s outfit was flashy orange on grey, Amber’s was black, and she wore it better. She didn’t want to spook the bogle, though, so she gave a low, soft whistle before emerging.

“Hey there,” she whispered, moving even closer. “Hey, little guy.”

The bogle looked at her. It cocked its head, made an inquisitive gurgling sound.

“Who’s the best little bogle?” Amber continued, smiling, showing it her empty hands. “Who’s the cutest little imp? Is it you? Is it?”

The bogle figured it might well be, because it grinned happily, its long tongue flopping out of its mouth.

Amber couldn’t help but return its smile. She hoped her fangs wouldn’t scare it off. “I’m looking for your master,” she said quietly. “Could you take me to him? Could you do that?”

The bogle waddled to the edge of the countertop and held its arms out for a hug.

“You are a cutie,” Amber said. “Maybe when I’m finished with your master I could take you with me. Would you like that? How does a life on the road sound to you? Sound good?”

The bogle chittered, and Amber chuckled. She doubted that Milo would approve of her keeping a pet in the back of the Charger, but he was in some other part of the store, and so his opinion was rendered invalid.

“Then it’s a deal,” she said. “You take me to Paul Axton and I’ll adopt you.”

It looked at her with its huge eyes and she almost scooped it up there and then, but something stopped her. Maybe it was how eager the bogle was for her to get closer, maybe it was that wide, wide mouth with all those teeth, or maybe it was the fact that the bigger its eyes got, the more red veins Amber could see in all that white.

Whatever the reason, she hesitated before picking it up, and the bogle didn’t like that. It didn’t like that one bit.

Its little hands grew little claws and it swiped at her and Amber jerked back. A trail of blood ran from the narrow cut on her cheek.

She stared at the bogle. “You little dipshit,” she said.

It leaped at her, a frenzied ball of fur and teeth. Amber batted it away and stumbled as the bogle hit the ground and immediately resumed its attack. She evaded it as much as she could, throwing things in its path, jumping to avoid its swipes, but it was closing in and suddenly she had nowhere left to go. She kicked at it and missed and it leaped at her leg, tried to dig its claws into her flesh, but beneath the yoga pants her skin grew black scales, and the bogle bounced off. Right before it hit the ground, Amber managed to land a solid kick that sent it hurtling into the shadows.

She ran for the DIY section, listening for the telltale patter of tiny, evil feet. She heard a noise and turned, saw nothing but gloom and darkness. She backed up, her foot nudging something heavy. A man, lying there, and covered inexpertly in hockey jerseys. She crouched, clearing them away, revealing first the security-guard uniform and then the face. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and his eyes were missing.

Amber straightened, and a bogle landed on her shoulder – a different one, with darker fur – and she cursed and swiped it off. More of them were on the shelves above her, flinging themselves down with delighted yips of sadistic pleasure. One landed on her head, its claws getting tangled in her hair. She yanked it off, held it by its leg as it twisted and snapped, but another one came down right on her horns, impaling itself and squealing as it writhed.

Amber drop-kicked the one in her hand, tore the other one off even as she felt its blood trickle down to her scalp, and stomped on it till it shut the hell up.

She stared down at the mess she’d made, couldn’t help but feel like she was beating up teddy bears.

There was a high-pitched whine and a bogle came at her with a goddamn electric saw. She jumped back, tried to kick it, but it was too fast. Her scales would probably protect her against the saw, but she didn’t want to test that theory. She jumped on to a display table that proved as wobbly as a rickety boat, and the bogle circled her like a shark with a whirring, serrated disc for a fin. Around and around it went, cackling madly, going faster and faster, but then it must have tripped, because suddenly the disc vanished and the cackling stopped, and chunks of fur and flesh flew up and the saw cut off.

She stayed where she was, making sure it wasn’t a trick, but then another bogle rammed into the table legs and Amber found herself leaping off, getting a foot on to something in the dark and springing off that, before crashing into the sports section. She got a foot tangled up and fell, bringing down a rack of sportswear around her.

She stayed on the ground for a moment, groaning. There was movement around her, stifled cackling, and when she looked up she saw a bogle holding a golf club.

“Bwuuh!” it squealed, and swung the club right into her face.

Black scales formed before the impact, but it still hurt like hell, and Amber rolled sideways, grabbed a shelf and pulled herself up, turning just in time to take a baseball bat right to the jaw. She whirled, tripped over her own feet and went stumbling, overturning a display of tennis racquets.

The bogle with the baseball bat chortled, leaped off a display of catcher’s mitts and scuttled away. Amber let it go, focusing instead on remaining upright.

When her vision stopped spinning, two small figures came into view, standing on the overturned display and brandishing racquets. These bogles were wearing toddler tennis clothes – the one on the left wore white shorts with its T-shirt, while the one on the right wore a white pleated skirt. They even had headbands.

The first bogle threw a ball high into the air – only it wasn’t a ball: it was one of the security guard’s eyes – and when the bogle swung the racquet the eye exploded on contact. The bogle howled in dismay, and now the one in the skirt threw its eyeball into the air, swung the racquet and connected beautifully. The eye hit Amber in the face with a wet smack, and she charged after them. The bogles jumped down and ran away, screaming.

She frowned when she heard a strange sort of gurgling behind her. Recognising a distorted version of the Rocky theme tune, she turned to watch a bogle wearing boxing gloves emerge from the darkness.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

The bogle shuffled forward, threw out a series of jabs, moving its head from side to side as it got closer.

“This is insane,” Amber said loudly. “Who’s dressing you? Are you dressing yourselves? How do you even know that movie?”

The little boxer-bogle paid her no heed as it closed in.

Shaking her head in frayed disbelief, Amber took a step and kicked it and watched it sail away over the racks of clothes.

Then she heard a warbling voice from the other side of the partition.

“Plahby-pluh!”

Amber frowned, moving forward slowly.

She peered round the side of the partition, seeing nothing but gloom and display stands. She carried on.

“Tooty-plahb!”

Then she saw them, maybe eight or nine, lined up in formation on the floor ahead, all of them wearing football helmets that covered most of their bodies.

“Bloe! Blah! Blee!”

The bogles charged forward and the quarterback stepped back and Amber just had time to catch the glint of the pistol in its hands before it opened fire. She dived out of the way even as the recoil flipped the quarterback head over heels, and then the helmets were flung off and the rest of the bogles came at her with the butcher knives they had been concealing underneath.

She cursed, rolled away from them, her scales deflecting some early slashes, but they were too fast. In an instant, they were all over her, knives stabbing downwards. She turned over and over, but they kept their balance like they were goddamn log rollers or something. Amber’s clothes were being hacked to shreds, but her scales covered her, head to foot. Some of the little bastards were attempting to force the tips of their knives in between her scales to get at the skin beneath. The ones on her head were trying to stick their knives in her eyes, her ears, her mouth.

Amber thrashed, knocked a few off, struggled to sit up and then a tsunami of bogles descended on her. She managed to turn over on to her belly, tried to crawl, but they flattened her to the floor again.

Then their master walked into view.

“Aw crap,” she muttered.

MIDDLE-AGED AND SAD-LOOKING, PAUL Axton dragged a cheap plastic chair behind him. He sat on it, and looked down at Amber.

“So you’re the Shining Demon’s new representative,” he said. “Prettier than the last one, and that’s no lie. Astaroth’s demons tend to be the best looking – have you noticed that? I could have been one of you, you know. I could have asked to be a demon, to be tall, and strong, and handsome. Red, too, and horned, but you can’t have everything. Of course, I didn’t ask to be any of those things. I just asked for the ability to communicate with these fascinating creatures.”

Amber wanted to respond, but the fascinating creatures kept trying to stick knives in her mouth.

“Naturally, I’ve heard about you,” he continued. “You discovered your demonic heritage only a few months ago, didn’t you? Which means you’re sixteen years old. That’s the age when all this happens. When you go through your … changes. But, instead of a heart-warming family moment, your parents proceeded to hunt you clear across the country. Bill and Betty Lamont. Quite a notorious couple, in certain circles.

“Interestingly, though, they are not the only parents who like to eat their young. Lions, polar bears, certain types of prairie dogs … they all indulge in infanticide when the mood takes them. Lots of others, too. And that’s just the mammals. But only demons like your parents have absorbed the strength of their offspring in such a blatant fashion.

“How long has it been going on? A hundred years? More? You had a brother and sister, didn’t you, that your parents and their friends consumed? I can barely imagine what that must have felt like. That rush of power. That taste of immortality. And then it was you on the dinner platter.

“Only you turned the tables, did you not? Now that you’re Astaroth’s representative, the hunters are the hunted, and the hunted is the hunter. Although, obviously, in view of your current situation, the hunter is back to being the hunted again. The circle of life is rarely kind.”

Axton chuckled thinly. “Once upon a time, I was something of an anthropologist – now I am so much more. 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 late, I’m afraid,” Axton said. “Fahl-ahey booshop.”

Amber felt dozens of little hands grabbing her, and before she could lash out she was flipped on to her back. The bogles swarmed over her once more, their knives tearing through the lower half of her tank top, poised to pierce her red skin as her scales continued to slowly retract.

“I wouldn’t move, if I were you,” said Axton. “Their eggs can be laid on a freshly killed corpse, but it’s certainly not the ideal way to do it.”

Some of the other bogles lay down, forming steps to allow the pregnant one to waddle up on to Amber’s bare belly. The bogle poked and prodded and Amber growled, and got a couple of blades nicking her throat for her efforts.

Finally, the pregnant bogle squatted down, right over Amber’s navel, and closed its eyes and started straining.

The scales on Amber’s face were now fully gone, and the knives had more places to threaten. It was Axton’s voice that was doing it, even more than his words. His voice was getting into her head, lulling her defences to sleep.

“Someday I want their eggs to be laid on me,” Axton said. “To be a part of this, to be such an integral part … that would be the ultimate honour.”

“Take my place, then,” Amber said quickly. “Come on, time’s a-wasting.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Axton. “They were going to use the body of the security guard, but now they have you. I can only hope that someday soon I prove myself worthy of being a nest.”