Page 119 of My Monster’s Keeper

“It’s there.” I point to the only house on the street with its curtains wide open.

“Stands out, doesn’t it?” Frost murmurs, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

I glance up at him and smirk. “Shall we?”

“We shall.” He strides towards the yard and steps over the fence.

Stix lifts me over the fence, and I glance back at him, meeting his eyes in the dark.

Frost barely waits for us before he kicks the door open. Even several feet back from the front door, I recoil from the power of the stench that pours out of the house. I gag, my mouth filling with saliva that I spit, while I fight to control my stomach.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Nothing good,” Wilder says and rests a hand on my shoulder. I wipe my mouth, take three more calming breaths, and stand up.

“You don’t have to go in,” Wilder says quietly.

“Yes, I do.” I have a feeling I know what’s inside, and I need to look.

We make our way inside, there’s no electricity and no light, so Frost holds a ball of fire out to guide our way.

The house is empty on the ground floor. Only the old, torn furniture tells a story. I study it in silence. Claw marks on the couches and walls. Blood stains on the carpet. Ispot a human fingernail and circle around it while I look at the wood, finally realising the grooves I’m seeing came from a human desperate enough to not care about losing a fingernail as they struggled to save their life.

We came too late.

Puppy pauses near a stretch of cable, sniffing it before throwing it across the room to Stix.

“This held an omega human.”

It’s a bleak image. I spot a door and move towards it. Everything in my body wants to refuse to open this door, but I have to do it. I need to know.

I push the handle down, and the door swings back. There’s a row of stairs, but it’s the smell that tells me everything I need to know. My mind finally throws a piece of the puzzle and translates the smell as dead bodies.

I grip the handle on the side of the wall and step down each step, forcing myself. Frost follows right behind me. The glow of his firelight casts blue illumination into the darkness.

I stop on the third stair from the bottom and stare uncomprehendingly at the floor that doesn’t look like a floor. For long moments, my brain won’t let me see it, but then the veil is ripped away, and I see clearly what it is. Bodies. So many decomposing bodies that they don’t resemble bodies anymore.

Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god.

“Frost?” I lean backwards, and he’s there, holding me.

Puppy slinks past us and leaps up onto the wall. He scurries into the basement and investigates everything from the walls.

“Are they all…omegas?” I ask in a strangled whisper.

“Yes, each and every one of them.” Frost murmurs.

“What happened to them?”

“Throats were sliced,” Stix says as he passes us. He reaches out and grabs a handful of shadows and vanishes, reappearing on the other side of the room, clinging to the wall.

“They were kidnapped, weren’t they?” I expel the words with a high level of aggression. Humans are helpless. “This has got to stop. I mean, you guys being here is one thing, but using my people as cattle for slaughter is a totally different, a not okay act.” I wrinkle my nose. “Why kill them like this? What’s the point?”

Puppy looks up, and I only just catch the look he exchanges with Stix before he looks away.

“What was that?”

“What was what?”