Page 12 of My Monster’s Keeper

Wilder

T he human…well, there is something sweet about the human, like the syrup she puts on the pancakes, but she is also hard like chocolate, with a bitter tone and sharpness. Wherever she goes, she is strong, just like this waffle house she has brought us to.

She reminds me of a female tiger. Becky is a warrior of her own right, needing no males to help her. She is fierce and skilled and smart.

But she’s also very delicate and, well, human. I fear for her.

She comes back to the table and hands me a bowl. I look at the round white spheres with hot brown liquid on it.

“What is this, human?” Frost demands.

“Ice cream,” she says shortly.

I watch as she picks up a spoon and dips it in. I imitate her and close my eyes to the warm and cool, sweet taste. It’s so rich. I get a sudden image in my head over covering her in this syrup and licking it off her.

Would she like that?

I look down at the bowl and eat the rest in three quick mouthfuls.

“What did you think, Wilder?”

“Adequate,” I say stiffly, trying to erase the images in my head.

Puppy slouches in the seat and stares at the flickering light above our heads. I look up, too, studying it.

“Princeling?” I say in deep warning.

Frost follows my gaze. “Well, that’s just rude.”

Stix stands up. “Forgive us, poppet, we’ll return when the vermin is dead.”

“Hey, wait.”

We don’t listen. We file through the restaurant, following Puppy’s superior nose. As soon as we’re in the back, Stix walks up the walls and then walks on the roof like a giant spider. His form shifts and his long legs, arms, and fingers erase any pretense of humanity.

He finds the vent and rips it off, slithering into the dark. Puppy follows. A moment later, the creature falls to my feet. I stab down with my machete, pinning it to the floor by its own arm.

It looks up, still human, a small one, with huge brown eyes and a whimpering cry.

“What did I do?” It begs.

“Show yourself,” I hiss.

“Oh, goddamn it all to hell. What is wrong with you? That is a child!” Becky hisses. She shoulders her way past Frost, but when she reaches, she finds herself held back in his powerful grip.

She fights, kicking out at him, growling, spitting out what sounds like curse words. I want nothing more than to fill her mouth with my tongue the way Puppy did earlier. What does she taste like? What does she feel like?

The Lord of the Hunt does not want nor need for companionship. I have one purpose, to lead the hunt and do the Seelie Courts will. Not to mate. I’m not supposed to want.

I turn back as the nightmare drops from the roof, landing in a crouch.

“Reveal your true form, Kinkiada!” he growls out.

The child giggles manically, and Becky, my human, stops struggling. She goes perfectly still as the goblin’s body shifts and changes.

Ears grow long and pointed like a cat's, its muzzle grows out from its face and pointed teeth fill its mouth. Its skin is an off-green colour that doesn’t look healthy, and it’s covered in dry blood.

“What is that?”

“Poppet, this is a Goblin,” Stix explains. “It’s been following us. I thought I caught its scent earlier.”

“Why?” She wrinkles her nose as it lunges, snapping its teeth at her. The machete keeps it pinned, though.

“Marked, you are. Marked. Owned and collared. Marked and collared.” He pauses and then purrs a single word. “Omega.”

It giggles even more manically and then shrieks.

“Holy shit, shut it up!” Becky hisses.

Its body contorts until its bones snap. I hear them and glance at Stix .

“What is this, Nightmare?” I demand of Stix.

“Controlling, binding magic. Blood oaths. I don’t know.” Stix shrugs his shoulders.

“Can we stop it?” Becky asks.

“No.”

The goblin lets out one last shriek, and then it arches its own neck so far back that it snaps. The body goes limp. I reach out and pull my machete from the corpse and sniff.

“That was strange. No prey I’ve ever hunted has broken its own bones in such a way.”

“Goblins are notoriously hard to capture. Even harder to get promises from.” Stix rubs his jaw and studies Becky. I turn to look at her.

She’s still staring at the creature’s body. “Let me go.”

Frost lets her go, and she kneels down and turns the creature’s head to the side. I want to urge her to wash her hands. The stench and greasy hide of the creature are turning my stomach.

“Look at this mark. Wasn’t this on the guy we saw this morning?”

“The human did have a skin drawing,” Frost agrees. “It looks similar.”

I peer closer, noticing the marking for the first time. Its three round circles inside each other, two dark, one light with a thick stripe through the middle that allows the markings colours to be inverted.

“Strange. It’s made up of lots of tiny rings,” Becky murmurs, leaning closer. “Like a barcode.”

“What is a barcode?”

“Puppy?” Becky says sweetly. “Are you hungry?”

The dark-haired grim studies her with his yellow and black eyes. Then he smiles. His piercings catch the light. I turn away so I don’t have to watch the nauseating sight.

Becky paces the area back and forth, waiting while we ignore the sounds of crunching.

“I had his tongue in my mouth,” I hear her mutter, and despite the fact that she’s disgusted, I’m jealous.

Fiercely, unreasonably jealous.

“Come, let’s go,” I snap. “Show me a barcode.”

She peers up at me, startled, no doubt, by my angry tone. “Fine. I will.”

“Good, start walking.”

Her shoulders stiffen, and her chest inflates. I get the impression of rising danger. Her eyes flash and narrow .

I raise my own in challenge. “Well?” I drawl the word out, teasing her, poking at her temper the way I’d insolently challenge the Seelie Princes.

She steps close and cocks her head to the side, looking up at me.

Pleasure hits my chest, having her look at me, only me, seeing no one else.

Yes, this is what I want. Her scent is warm, slightly sweet and like flowers but spicy.

Her lower lip is plush, and I want to bite it.

I find myself leaning towards her, captivated by the shine, the flash of a white tooth that peeks out as her lips part.

The pink tongue that dips out and swipes across the plump tissue.

What would it feel like? What would she taste like?

What am I thinking? What magic is this? I resist her siren spell and step back. She blinks as if she has forgotten where she is, and, despite my rising anger at her manipulations, there’s a streak of pride that I’ve bespelled her as well as she has done me.

***

“Barcodes are stupid,” Stix grumbles. “There is little sense to these lines and markings.”

“There is,” Becky tries to say, but she’s cut off as a woman runs screaming from the shop. Puppy steps out of a curtained area, smiling.

Becky levels him with a flat look that I find strangely infuriating. I want her eyes on me. “What did you do now, Puppy?”

“You have no rolls around your middle,” Puppy says and circles around her. “Your ass is not as jiggly. And these are too small.” He reaches out and grips her breasts.

Now, even in the courts of barbaric cruelty and malice that I’ve served in, gripping a woman’s breasts is considered an act of open warfare.

“I will need to fatten you up to your potential before I feast on your flesh,” Puppy says with a content nod. “I want to see you jiggle.”

Becky’s face has turned an interesting colour of puce. Her arm flashes out faster than I can almost see. Her fist slams into Puppy’s throat, hard. He lets go of her and stumbles back, reaching up to grab his throat.

“For the last time, Puppy. You are not eating me!” Becky hisses. “And there will be no jiggling.”

“You jiggle a little bit,” Frost points out helpfully.

She turns her gaze on him, in slow predatory movements that stir my cock. I adjust myself and watch as her cheeks turn crimson, her eyes become flinty.

“We are done here. Go do whatever you do. I’m going out alone. ”

She starts to leave and discovers she has Stix on her heels almost immediately. She glances over her shoulder at him and glowers.

“I said nothing, poppet, but it would be…” he purses his lips and looks at me for a second before he returns his gaze to her, “safer if you had one of us with you.”

“I’ll go,” I offer.

“Fine. I’m hungry anyway,” Puppy sulks. He shoots up the wall and disappears into the shop’s air vents.

Frost shrugs. “I have a person to find.”

We watch him leave.

“Does he know people here?” Stix asks.

“I’m not sure. Our courts did not mix very often, and I was in mine even less,” I admit. “What time he spent with people was also cut short from his time in exile.”

“You’re from a court?” Becky asks.

“The Seelie Court, or the Court of Summer and Spring.”

“The good court?”

“There is no good court. We are depraved beings, intent on warfare and political intrigue. We love deals and tricking people. Hunting.”

She cocks her head to the side.

“So, both courts are the same?”

“Similar. We do different things. Unseelie has powers over winter and autumn and all the world that falls under their dominion. Seelie has summer and spring.”

She rubs her hands on her thighs and glances around as she leads us back through the store. “Okay, so are you a prince, too?”

I bark a laugh. “No, I’m not a prince. I’m much older than the princes. I’m much more powerful. My role is eldritch and ancient.”

“I see.”

She clearly doesn’t, but if we’re stuck together, she will eventually.

Just as she will need to learn that the nightmare playing her gentleman courter is truly one of the most frightening and strongest demons to ever spawn.

Just as she will discover that Frost is as monstrous as he is beautiful, and Puppy is far more than what he appears.

Perhaps we underestimate the human.

“Wait a second. How old is old?” she asks.

“Thousands of years. Time means little.” I shrug .

Her eyes are wide. Why is my age such an issue? You’d think of all the things I’ve told her. It would be fear of the courts, fear of my being, but, no, what’s got her messed up is my age.

Humans are strange creatures.

A small child flings itself into our path. She shrieks so loud my ears ring and moves to fly out onto the road. I catch her arm and lift her into the air. She peers up at me, her shrieking dying and her mouth opening wide.

“Do not run in front of the metal steeds,” I advise grimly.

Her mother approaches reluctantly, her eyes filled with fear. They sense something wrong with us. They’ve forgotten what we are, but they can still sense that there is something evil about us.

Becky doesn’t seem to feel that way, though. I shove the child into her mother’s arms and stalk after the woman who is currently holding all of my attention.

Just when I convince myself I feel nothing, she throws a glance over her shoulders, meeting my eyes straight on. Electricity sizzles my blood. I grind my teeth, resolved to ignore this unpleasant feeling until I can figure out what she has done to me and remove it for once and for all.

But perhaps I’m not the only one who feels this way.

The nightmare has an expression on his face of intense concentration, and he is never more than a few steps away from her.

I recall crawling into her bed, needing to know what she feels like, the silk of her hair, the scent of her skin.

She is a spell, a distraction, and one I need to be free of as soon as possible.