Page 18 of My Monster’s Keeper

Stix

S he tastes like sunshine. Something new and exciting, and I don’t think I could go the rest of my life without it. I’m so sure that she is my one.

I delve into her mouth again, learning her sounds, her taste, the sexy way she clings to my shoulders. But all good things must end, and, sadly, so must this. I slowly move my hand and then slam it into the wall beside her head. She squeaks but turns and finds Puppy almost cheek-to-cheek with her.

I glower at the Grim. “Get away.”

He bares his teeth at me. The Grims have seldom had to be afraid of the Shadows, not because we fear them, but because we feel no need to interfere. But if he interferes with me, he’s going to find out how I became king.

Puppy growls and flicks his tongue out, tasting her lips, tasting me on her lips. I consider him for a long moment and then let go.

Grims are incorrigible, they are wild and untamable. Violent, unpredictable, but this one, he’s more so. His reputation is worse, but she is his weakness. I can see it, but so can he. As long as he’s all right with it, he can live.

I step back and pull her to my side just as Frost and Wilder appear. They drag three humans with them.

“Briox is dead,” I say calmly.

“Oh, so sad,” Frost murmurs. “I was looking forward to catching up. He jumped me when I first arrived here. I’d been looking forward to rectifying his stupidity.”

Wilder shoves the bigger human forward. He trips and drops to his knees.

“Ey, watch it!”

“Shut up!” Wilder rolls his eyes. “This one is loud.”

“Good, maybe he can speak,” Frost murmurs. “You’re a cop. What are you doing with all the people who come here? There are scents and tracks of hundreds of people going in and none coming out. Where are they? ”

The cop laughs and glances at his friends. The woman looks drugged and out of her mind, but the man keeps peeking at the front door like he’s trying to escape.

I snag the other man and drag him across the room. “Do you want to live? Do you want to walk away from this?” I hiss.

The man shakes, and the acrid scent of urine fills the air.

“Tell me.”

“This is just a way station.”

“A what?”

“A place to let the cattle sleep. They stay here for a night or two. We divide them up on where they need to go, and some people come with trucks and take them away. Omegas get picked up by a bus, and the rest go in the back of a truck. Honest.”

I rub my chin and glance back at Becky to weigh how mad she is. On a scale of angry, she’s hit inferno.

She rushes over to stand beside me. “Who delivers the people?”

“Cops, thugs, different people.” The man stutters and flinches when the bigger human howls in rage.

Frost punches him in the face, and he falls silent.

“When?”

“Anytime,” the thin human whispers, his eyes locked on the blood dripping from his ill-fated companion.

“How do you know they’re coming?”

“We get a phone call.”

“How could you do this?” Becky roars.

The man cringes. He is pathetic, this snivelling coward of a man. “My life is not my own,” the man whimpers. He holds up his wrist, showing me a ghostly grey bracelet.

I study it and reach out to touch it, but the minute that I do, it constricts, fading into the skin. I feel a pulse of magic, and then the human’s eyes widen and his life just turns off.

He drops heavily to the ground. I turn in time to see the other two fall.

“Great!” Wilder growls. “What was that?”

“It was a binding. A magical binding. When I touched it, I alerted the owner of these people that I was too close, and he killed them rather than let them continue talking to us. ”

Becky glowers. “What do you mean, the owner? They’re people. They can’t have owners.”

“In my world, we have owners and vessels, beings who are tied to stronger or more powerful beings.”

She gapes at me. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It is our way.”

She snorts, but her eyes flicker with panic. I move closer and curl my fingers around her wrist.

“Poppet?”

She peers up at me, and the fear leaches away. She smiles at me, but there is concern that can’t be erased. “You’re going to help me stop this, aren’t you? You’re not here to tie people to you, are you?”

“Yes,” I say easily, honestly, and without question. I’d do anything she asked me.

“Okay then." She looks around, but the bodies are gone. “Can we go home, then?”

I glance at the others and nod. “I’ll take you.”

I step into the shadows, reaching for the ones I need and pulling myself across the world. It doesn’t take long, but I’m extremely skilled at what I do.

We appear in the shadow of the gigantic oak in the backyard. Instead of stepping away from me, she laces our fingers together, almost absently, and tugs me up to the porch.

She stops in front of me. On impulse, I don’t stop. I walk into her, taking my human form and pressing my body to hers.

“Becky,” I whisper her name.

She shudders, and just when I think she hates it, she leans back into me.

I lock my arms around her waist and close my eyes when her fingers rest on my arms. It’s not sexual, but it’s comforting, and it’s nice.

I’ve never done anything like this before.

It’s soft and intimate, the opposite of my world.

She smells floral and spicy, and the longer we stand here, the stronger it gets.

Her brown hair is a colour that can’t exist in the dusky darkness of my world.

She is everything that I’ve never seen before, and I can’t resist. I was afraid that I frightened her, but this isn’t fear. She wants me to touch her.

Her breathing gets heavy, and I grind myself into her, slow, sensual twists of my hips.

I listen for every change in breathing, and I find myself flirting with madness.

Her soft gasps and this need to have her.

It drives me into forgetting everything but her.

I suck on her neck, leaving my mark on her skin.

She tilts her head, giving me more space, giving me more room to ruin her skin.

I’m addicted. I’m on my knees.

I hear the others arrive inside and try to pull back from the edge. It takes a moment, but I get my faculties together.

I walk us forward to the door and pull it open. She leaves my embrace, slipping into the house, but she doesn’t go far. Becky turns, her eyes tracking my movements.

“You know what we are,” I whisper. “We can’t change that.”

She shrugs. “You can change some things.”

I frown, and she claps her hands, her eyes gleaming.

“I’ve brought you some information to watch about human females.”

She brushes her hair back over her shoulder and reaches out to the wall, tapping her fingers nervously.

“You’re going to watch it. Most people have to at some point.”

I nod my head. “I will study it intently.”

With a nervous smile, she disappears into the house. When we’re all gathered, she points to a room we’ve seldom used.

“Come and sit.”

“What are we doing?” Puppy asks.

“You need to learn about humans,” Becky says firmly. She waits for us to sit and then presses play. A huge screen starts playing some awful tinkling music, but then the humans appear.

***

I stare at her, my mind going over everything I’ve learned.

Humans are strange creatures. Their biggest strength is their curiosity and ingenuity.

Their weakness would appear at first glance to be their bodies, but considering how many things are out to kill them, the fact they can survive to a hundred is a miracle.

But women. Human women. They bleed once a month, but, even in pain, that doesn’t stop them; they go through hormones during adolescence and then later in life that give them appalling side effects and, to top it off, they birth live children.

I still can’t get the images of the live birth out of my mind .

Puppy’s scales are standing on end, indicating his unease. Wilder’s staring blindly at the black screen, and Frost staggered from the room minutes after it finished.

“And now that I’ve brought you four to a standstill,” Becky says with a grin. “Anyone want to order Chinese?”

I look back at her and glower. But the image of the sweaty mum crying as she held her spawn to her chest appears, and Becky’s face superimposes it. I stop, my mouth open, my thoughts scattering as my body fills with a yearning. I’m so lost in thought, I’m not even sure when she left the room.

Wilder staggers up and shoves past me. “Human women are warriors.”

I nod my head in agreement, but I’m still thinking about her carrying my child.

We find Becky sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal. She looks up as I enter the room and pull out a chair to straddle beside her.

I exhale through my nose. “You would like us to stop treating you like you are weak.”

One eyebrow raises, and she drops her head in a yes. “That’d be awesome.”

“Okay. But if you are in pain, you let us help you. That’s the deal.”

Her spoon freezes halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean?” Her voice gets a little bit higher with the panic she’s trying to hide.

“That’s our deal, Becky Dawson. If you are hurting, let us help you.”

“I’m not hurting, I’m fine. All women go through this. I can get painkillers,” she says rapid fire.

“There was a section in that video about sexual health. Orgasms specifically. Wilder asked the ghost in the house why orgasms help during your…” I stop stumbling over the word, “menstruation.”

Her cheeks are so red right now that I want to reach out and feel them.

“The house said that orgasms and sex help with cramps,” Wilder explains with more confidence.

“What ghost?”

“Ghost, say hello,” I say to the house.

“Hey, how may I be of assistance.”

“Oh, the smart house, right.”

I smile at her attempted deflection.

She stands up abruptly. “Uh, listen, that’s not necessary.”

I trap her against the sink, leaning over her, crowding her. I ghost my fingers down her side and hook just inside her belt .

“I could make it feel better. I want to make you feel better. Not a single one of us likes seeing you in pain.”

She sucks in air and finally nods. I reach down and snap open the buttons of her shorts.

Images of the video play in my mind. It was really very informative about human bodies.

When they like to be touched. Like this spot just behind the ear.

Or, I slip my hands up under her t-shirt and inch them upwards.

Screeeach!

I jerk away from Becky, putting my back to her, as I search the roof for the source of the noise. The sound is maddening, like a repetitive wail of a dying creature. It makes my ears want to curl into themselves.

It’s so loud it’s making my ears ache. I change into my other form and pull shadows to me, shifting through the house quickly.

“Wait!” Becky calls out. “It’s an alarm.”

I bare my teeth as Wilder charges into the kitchen with a bow drawn. He trains it around the kitchen and growls.

“Kill the alarm!” Frost roars from the back of the house.

Puppy lands heavily on the table, breaking the legs. He slides off it and straight into Becky. The two go under, but Puppy pops back up, hissing, his eyes wild.

“What is it?” he snarls.

“An alarm!” Becky says. “It’s the fire alarm.”

“There's a fire?” I ask urgently. What kind of beast is an alarm? We have a banshee type creature where I’m from, but this is extra dangerous. I didn’t even sense it in the house.

“I, no? I don’t know?” Becky says and drags herself up from the floor.

“Frost, there’s a fire!” Wilder roars. “The alarm monster set it!”

A moment later, a flash of cold air slams the four of us into the cupboards and races through the house.

Becky stares at the hallway and whimpers.

I rub the side of my nose and wince. Whatever the Fae just did, I’m guessing our resident human is going to hate it. But we killed and silenced our enemy. That’s good, right?

There’s silence, though, perfect, crystalline silence. Becky creeps towards the hallway door and pushes it open.

I bring my fingers up to cover my eyes and tilt my head back while I try to figure out how to fix this .

The hallway is white. Glittering white. Like it’s frozen white.

Becky reaches out and whimpers. “Please no. Frost!” She shouts urgently.

She goes to run, but I catch her first, lifting her up. The last thing I’m going to allow is her poor, unprotected feet to get hurt.

“I need to see each room,” she says to me.

I take her from room to room. Her electronics are frozen. She stares at them sadly. I take her to her bedroom, but when we try, neither of us can open her wardrobe. When she goes into the toilet, the water inside is frozen, but the throne is shattered.

She picks up a bra. It’s one long line of frozen material.

“Damnit, Frost.”

She turns on the spot, and when he walks in, his scowl fierce, I can almost see how defensive he is.

Becky spins and pins him with a wrathful glare. “You! You beautiful idiot!” She stalks towards him, and I expect her to hit him or yell, but she stands on her tiptoes, grabs his face,and drags him down to her and slams their lips together.

When she pulls back, she pulls out her phone and glares down at the screen. “Diablos, you need to send another team to fix the house. We need to stay at a hotel.”

I hear Diablos cursing. But Becky hangs up on him and holds her arms out to me. I lift her easily into my arms.

“Come on, Frost.”

The stunned Fae obediently follows us as we pick up Puppy and Wilder.

“Nice kill, Princeling,” Wilder says with a pat on Frost’s back. The problem is that although I know we’ve somehow done the wrong thing, none of us are sure what we did wrong, and, judging by the results, I can’t find a reason to care.