Page 2 of My Monster’s Keeper

There’s a man standing in the middle of the car park with white hair.

He’s not moving. His jacket is white, and his pants are white.

Wait, is that armour? He must be half the car park away, but I can feel his eyes on me.

I want to hide in ways that I haven’t since I was a child and my foster father was on a bender.

The rain turns to hail, hitting my skin hard enough that I cry out and huddle up against the wall. I look up, but I can’t see the black thing. Or the man in white.

I hear a thump and the sound of a car alarm and turn.

A gigantic man with antlers is crouched on the destroyed shape of one of the squad cars.

He stares at me first before he looks behind me.

I turn, finding the five cops close, too close.

But they’re distracted by the stranger. Packwell lifts his gun up. His arm is really shaking now.

I should run, but I can’t move. My brain won’t believe what I’m seeing. I mean, obviously, the wack job is wearing some kind of hat or Halloween disguise. But they look so real and so huge.

“He’s not a wack job. Bit crazy, but aren’t we all? They’re real, by the way,” the voice whispers in my ear. “The antlers.”

I whip my head around, and my lips almost graze the lips of the man, no; the creature crouched beside me.

He’s gaunt, almost to the point of being skeletal.

His legs are too long, and when he smiles, his mouth is a hole of darkness.

But it’s the ice-cold fingers that are three times too long gripping my jaw and holding me still while he leans in and stares into my eyes.

I don’t know what he sees, but I see curiosity and depravity.

I see something other than human in those eyes.

I must have been shot. I must be bleeding out and having hallucinations.

“No, you aren’t,” he singsongs and leans in to inhale the smell of my hair. “I think…yes, I think we might let you live. You smell…hmm, pretty. Not what I’m looking for but pretty.”

He lets go of my jaw and stands up, catching my wrist and dragging me with him. I fight the hold, but his grip tightens until my bones ache, and I still can’t free myself .

“Let me go!” I growl out.

His laugh raises the hair on my arms. It’s inhumane.

He drags me like I’m a bloody rag doll, and just when I think I’m going to lose my footing, he sweeps me up into his arms and smiles down at me.

“Boo.”

I don’t scream. Not even when I go flying through the air.

I tense, expecting to hit hard concrete, but arms catch me and hold me to a hard chest. When I peer up, I find the palest man I’ve ever seen.

His pupils are huge and black, but everything else is white, even his hair that hangs down his back, his eyelashes, the iris of his eyes.

But he’s beautiful, and, yes, it is white and silver armour.

He glances down at me and bares his teeth. Sharp, pointed teeth. My head spins like I’m still flying through the air. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

“Put me down.” My mutter lacks strength and conviction.

He snorts. “No. Puppy is hungry.”

Puppy?

I follow the pale guy’s gaze and find the shadow thing creeping down the side of the building.

Its body is roughly the size of a man, but its head is more like a dinosaur or a dragon.

A long tail waves slowly, and from the size and thickness, I imagine that it might be able to break legs with a single swipe.

That’s not a freaking puppy.

He pushes off from the building, and I tense and sit forward as he lands twenty feet away. I know he didn’t make a single sound when he landed because Rocklea is still searching the rain. For what, I don’t know, but he isn’t even aware of the black dragon behind him.

The dragon attacks, his jaws biting over Rocklea’s head entirely. I hear a popping sound and then a crunch, and when I look back, the dragon is chewing with slitted eyes. I remember seeing a dog licking a spoon of peanut butter with the exact same expression of contentment.

I shudder and look away.

And that is the only reason I spot the horned guy as he points.

Twelve snarling dogs creep out from behind cars.

Three dozen cats and a veritable plague of rats surge towards the cops still on the ground.

The antlered man stalks through the group of terrified cops.

He swings a machete and sends blood flying into the sky in a graceful arc .

I whip my head away and peer up at the pale guy. He smirks, watching the massacre. I hear the screams and find myself curling my fingers into his shirt and holding on.

“I got the last one.” The ghastly man calls out and throws him towards me.

Packwell rolls across the wet concrete and comes to a stop at my feet. I’m suddenly standing, the hands remove themselves from my upper arms, and the presence steps away. I don’t know why, but I experience a loss of safety when he lets me go.

The taller, thin guy approaches and strokes my cheek. “You were so wronged tonight. But I’m going to give you a chance to clear the slate.”

I peer up at him. The complete disaster of a day goes round and round in my mind. The crunching of animals eating my colleagues barely even registers, though I’ll probably have nightmares forever.

He places a gun in my hand.

I lift it, staring at it blankly. He stands behind me, pressing against me, somehow fitting our bodies perfectly despite his abnormal height. His fingers caress my arms until he reaches my hand. He tightens my grip and moves my arm in the direction of Packwell.

“Just squeeze. We’ll do the rest.”

I fight.

I fight the voice.

I fight my urges.

I’ve done the right thing all these years. Every step was hard because I wouldn’t do the wrong thing. But they shot Grant. They stole the job I worked for all my life. All my work and effort, and they’ve done it before.

I can’t pull the trigger. All the hours of training, all my beliefs, all the pain, it will be for nothing if I do this. No, this isn’t what I do. I don’t take the law into my own hands.

“It’s okay, poppet. I’ll take care of this for you,” the voice croons, and I think I hear amusement.

He squeezes my finger.

It’s easier than I thought it would be. My bullet goes through his forehead and into his brain, and the desperate pleading is cut off.

My gasp is loud in the sudden silence. I smell the blood and something musky that isn’t unpleasant.

I killed a man. My gun, my finger. It doesn’t matter that this creature is using my fingers like a puppet.

What does suddenly make painful sense is that my mind suddenly accepts that this, these monsters are real. This isn’t a dream or a hallucination. All it took was a hole to bloom in the forehead of Leon Packwell Senior and his miserable life to be snuffed out .

I killed a man. No, I killed my partner.

There are monsters in the world. They are real, and they are touching me.

I killed someone.

Grant’s dead.

That thought rips through me, causing me to double over, pain making my knees weak. I hit the concrete hard, but I ignore the ache in my bones. The creature allows me to drop out of his grip with an eerie laugh.

The rain falls, mixed with my snot and tears. I barely notice the movements around me. I wait for them to kill me. On the shitty ground in the shitty weather, I wait for understanding, for clarity, for a goddamn answer as to why this fucked up world would take someone as fucking beautiful as Grant.

But no answer comes.

The monsters do what they do, and then I realise I’m alone in the pouring rain. There isn’t even a scrap of bone to indicate what happened here. It’s all gone. Even the destroyed squad car.

It’s like it never happened. All that remains is me, the shattered wreck of who I was.