Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,60

and I still had dreams of seeing creatures in a thousand weird and wonderful landscapes but, right now, nothing was as disturbing as reality. I’d tried to catch some Zs, if only to keep my promise to Genie, but after a brief attempt that resulted in hopeless twisting and turning, I’d given up and moved to the desk.

“Grendel. Male. About… twelve feet when standing on its hind legs.” I jotted down notes in my Purge diary so that they surrounded the rudimentary sketch of my latest Purge. I’d fill in the color and details later, but I wanted to draw the basic outlines now while they were fresh in my head. Victoria and I were both still hoping a pattern might emerge, of course, but there was a therapeutic aspect to it, as well. I liked keeping a record of everything I’d created. I’d filled it with page after page of comprehensive drawings—first, I made sure to draw the entire monster, then I zoomed in with etchings of important features, all painstakingly annotated so that I wouldn’t forget anything if I encountered the same monster again.

I flipped through one of the books Nathan had lent me and copied down the most vital characteristics that I couldn’t see just by looking at the Grendel. Or Gren, as I’d decided to call him. Not my most inventive name, but I was running on empty. “Venomous bite. Teeth that can puncture steel. A mace-like tail with poisoned barbs. Suspected Empath sensibilities that can be used to detect an enemy. Destroyer and devourer of humankind.” I paused. “That can’t be right; he didn’t eat anyone.” I puffed air through my teeth, letting my fingertips trail across the old, yellowing pages. “Some of these books really need a do-over… or I just got lucky with Gren.”

The empathic part lingered with me for a while as I jotted down some more supposed “facts.” Perhaps Gren had been channeling my emotions when he’d attacked my kidnapper. He hadn’t been able to understand what I was saying, but he’d gauged my panic and desperation and worked from that. Plus, back in the Repository, he’d gotten sad when I’d felt sad about his plight. Had he done the same thing then, feeling out my emotions and making sense of them? It wasn’t without issue as a way of communication, but it was a good starting point since I had no song for him, and no magic word that could break down the language barrier. I guessed I could’ve called Tobe or linked up to Leviathan for a trick or two, but the stubborn, eager-to-learn part of me wanted to try and figure Gren out on my own first. I felt as though I owed him that, without a cheat sheet.

Even if I won’t get to see him for much longer. After the trouble he’d caused during his capture, not to mention his sheer size and dangerous characteristics, I knew Victoria would want him out of her hair as soon as humanly possible. If only to add a decent boost to the Bestiary’s energy resources. To her, bigger was irrefutably better.

I returned to the task at hand, distracting myself from Gren’s fate. At least, if I could sketch him properly, I’d be able to remember him… and his heroic act that had potentially saved my life. Not much of a consolation, but it was all I had.

“Big eyes—tapered at the sides,” I wrote. “Not much of a nose, just two slits.” I wrote quickly, worried that his image would fade faster than I could draw. Sure, I could visit him again, but I liked to work from memory like I did when I had my monster dreams. I added some shading to the pupils and picked up my eraser to take away a speck of the gray, bringing a glint of light to his eyes.

I closed my eyes and tried to recall his face more clearly. But instead of his intelligent green eyes, a burning, red gaze stared back in my mind’s eye. I flinched, my body frozen with fear. Gripping my pencil so hard I worried it would snap, I felt my skin prickle, remembering the heat that’d seared off my kidnapper. The red mist, tumbling off him and swaying around his body like swathes of gauzy, scarlet cloth. And the way it had hit me, like it was hitting me now—as if everything bad that had ever happened to me had collided inside my brain at once, leaving