Page 3 of My Monster’s Keeper

Becky

I walk into the squad room two days later with my ears ringing. Every blue shirt makes me jump. Who is involved? How deep does it go?

I’ve never been this uncomfortable anywhere. I’ve barely slept, my eyes ache from crying, and the choice of leaving the city in the middle of the night and coming back here to make them all face the music was the hardest choice of my life.

Grant and I had a dream. We were going to make it safer for kids like us.

“Where the fuck are Packwell and Rocklea?” Manning, our chief, shouts across the room.

His white hair is stark against the red of his weathered skin.

The chief’s nose is a little on the large side, and he’s built like he was born to pull slabs of concrete.

His sheer size intimidates everyone around him.

I thought he was a good guy. But…maybe, maybe I was wrong.

“Dawson!”

I flinch and look up at the chief. “Chief?”

“Where the fuck is your partner?”

Holy shit, I am so not prepared for these questions. My mind, that had been sluggishly trying to fall apart, snaps back into my normal self. Dead, sir. A monster killed him. “I haven’t seen him since our shift ended two nights ago. He said he was going to hang out with Lee and Tanner.”

“Who are also missing?” The chief growls. “And the new recruit, Grant Adams, there was a call out about him being missing, too.”

Grant’s name hits me like a bowling ball to the stomach.

He glowers around the room, meeting each one of our eyes.

“If any of you know anything about these bastards, nows the time to fucking fess up. The fucking paperwork’s going to be a nightmare. Right, get your asses out there, clean up my streets, and find those assholes.”

His eyes scan the room and finally land on me again .

“Hartley, you’ve got the rookie.”

I hear the man groan and turn to find him studying his phone. His shoulder-length brown hair covers the side of his face, so I can’t see his reaction. After a moment, the room clears, and he stands up, putting on his gun and grabbing his keys.

I pad after him, carefully not making a sound. Whatever enthusiasm I had three days ago is as dead as those cops. This job feels dangerous in a whole new way. I can’t trust anyone here.

The car smells like sweat and cigarettes, but I don’t say a word as I sit in the passenger seat and wait for Rob Hartley to acknowledge me.

His eyes are light green, but he just looks like your average middle-aged man. Tired around the edges and bored.

He drives out of the car park and cruises around for a while.

But just when I start to relax, he reaches forward, turns off the radio, and turns down Ashburne Street.

My pulse races. I shift in my seat, discreetly checking my weapons.

Ashburne is a well-known mecca for drug deals, criminal activity, and prostitution.

During the night, there are lots of people who will, for a price, not see you conducting your illegal business. But during the daylight, it’s barren, only the overfilled rubbish bins, broken glass, and tagged walls indicate what happens when the sun goes down.

“Hartley?” I ask in a low voice.

He ignores me and turns into a car park. We pass into the underground car park at the far end of the lot, and I see the still burning barrels that the homeless use. He stops and turns the car off. The engine ticks as I watch out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to move.

“If this is your idea of hazing, it’s a bit off, mate,” I say, forcing a laugh.

Where’s my gun? Do I have my mace? Is he going to kill me here?

He turns his head really slowly and studies me. “You’re a pain in my ass, Dawson. I ain’t never spoken two fudging words to you, and you’re already so far in it…” He shakes his head. He turns more fully towards me, angling his body. I tense but don’t move.

“I got orders to bring you somewhere I don’t want to bring you.”

My skin breaks into prickles, and I want to explode out of the car, but how far will I get?

“Whose orders?”

“Oh, someone I really can’t say no to. ”

I study him. He’s about twenty years older than me. He’s not huge like the chief, but he’s still bigger than me. I could probably take him if I had space to move. But if he gets hold of me, he’ll most likely overpower me.

I wipe my palms on my pants and clear my throat.

“So, what are you going to do?”

He sighs. “I have no choice. I can’t fight them.”

The door rips open. I let out a scream because I wasn’t expecting the attack to come from that direction. I’m picked up by my torso and dragged from the car.

When the world stops spinning, I find the man who was sporting antlers.

He’s not anymore. In fact, he could easily pass for human, except that green hair just isn’t a shade we have on this planet.

He leans in close and inhales. I go stiff and drop my eyes so I’m not making eye contact.

His nose runs up the side of my throat, and a deep rasping growl erupts from him, causing my whole body to break out in goosebumps.

I’m lifted so easily, like I weigh nothing. I’ve been in so many fights growing up in the system, being a poor kid at a shitty district school, being a woman in a male-dominated career pathway, but I have never felt powerless the way I do right now.

He sniffs me over and then rears back and sneezes so violently that I flinch.

His eyes are deep green like pines, and his lashes are black with green tips. That’s all I notice before his gaze meets mine. Green with a star-shaped pupil. Not human eyes. Not at all. They feel old and ancient.

I swallow the fear that rises, vividly recalling the ease of his machete dicing through limbs.

The screams are as real in this moment as they were when it happened, but I push it all away.

I reach out, placing my hand on his wrist. Grounding myself in this moment. If I die, I’m not going to be afraid.

He grunts and drops me so suddenly that I land in a messy crouch. I hesitate and then bounce back up, peering around the car park and then into the car.

“Is that who you’re bringing me to see?” I ask in a low voice.

“Yep. I just fucking do as I’m told now. That’s my job. Hartley the fucking errand boy.”

His door is peeled open, and he’s pulled out and flung through the air. The blond guy smirks as he catches and pins him to a pylon.

“Hey!” I shout in protest.

“Hartley, we’ve missed these catch ups.” The voice is crisp with an accent I can’t place. It’s beautiful .

“Really? I have been pleasantly relieved not to see you,” Hartley snaps. “Get your hands off me, Frost.”

The blond man growls, and the tone is pure menace. White blond would be a better description, maybe even white, the more I study him.

“My name is not Frost.”

“Uh-huh. People call you Frost. You answer to it. You put it on signed documents. That’s called your name, dumbass.”

“I should freeze your flesh and then pulverize the bones while you wail your pain, meat.” The way he says meat makes me think that he might actually eat humans, and I don’t want to even go down that line of thought.

Hartley, bless the poor suicidal old soul, rolls his eyes. “Piss and vinegar, son, piss and vinegar.”

“What does this piss and vinegar mean?” The blond snarls with deep suspicion.

I have this crazy impulse to start giggling and have to bite my cheek to hold the sound inside.

“Argh, I’m not your English teacher, Frost. Where’s Stix?”

“Here, poppet.”

That voice, I hear that voice in my dreams. I hold my breath and try not to shudder when those fingers caress my shoulders.

“I missed you.” He’s not talking to Hartley, not even a little.

“Me?” It’s the dumbest thing to squeak out of my mouth in the entire history of my life, but there it is. I catch sight of the black thing on the roof, upside down, watching me with slitted, alien eyes that are black and yellow.

“Yes, you.”

I’m turned in the hold and find myself staring up at the gaunt face again.

He grins, showing me that opening into hell.

But, this time, I’m not so shocked. I find his eyes and am surprised to find green eyes, the colour of mowed lawn, bright and sparkling.

His pupils are slitted like a cats, but there is a deep well of intelligence there.

These creatures, these others, are intelligent and far stronger, faster, and superior than us.

I almost ask ‘what are you?’ but bite my tongue because I don’t want to piss them off. Instead, I force my brain to work faster and put together the pertinent information and form a single question that is more important than what are you.

“Why do you want me? ”

The bemused expression grows on my captor, and he looks over my head to the antler guy.

“Wilder, you hear that? She’s smart, too.”

He grunts. “A single question doesn’t mean she has what we need.” The scathing tone makes me feel like a child caught stealing.

They argue back and forth.

But I’m not listening any more. The dragon thing has crawled down the pylons and is sneakily moving in my direction. Its gaze is fixed, and it hasn’t blinked. I’m not looking at it, but I’m watching from the corner of my eye with growing alarm.

It gets close enough that I can see the overlapping pattern of its scales. A huge black tongue rolls out and whips around, tasting the air before it vanishes back into its mouth that is filled with far too many teeth.

I feel faint.

He moves closer, his paw, no, giant freaking hand, lifts with lethal fingers tipped with long black claws. My mouth is suddenly so dry I can’t even swallow.

I can see the flex of his muscles as he moves, as he times his attack. But just as he shifts his arm down to snatch me into his lunch, I’m shifted into the protective hold of the big not-antlered man who I think is named Wilder, if I’m following this conversation right.

Stix jumps on the thing and slams it into the ground.

And there ensues a fight like none I’ve ever seen.

I can barely keep up with where they are.

They move so fast. The sounds of their blows are deafening.

Hartley ends up moving and sitting on the boot of the squad car, smoking a cigarette.

He looks like a man who’s had a gut full.

As the blows get more contained, I find myself leaning into the creature behind me. Wilder might be cold, but he’s feeling like an awfully safe wall right now.

Frost appears on the other side of the car, and our eyes catch. His strange white and black eyes consider me for a long moment before he quirks his eyebrow. It’s such a human gesture that I feel like the entire world just tilted on its axis.

“Enough!” I shout.

It’s torn out of me: frustration, fear, grief, a false sense of safety, and also a bit of suicidal tendencies coming to bat.

To my endless surprise, it works, and the two stop rolling around.

Now, all eyes are on me, and I start to sweat.

I didn’t think this through; I didn’t think about it at all, I just reacted .

“What do you want with me?” I snarl. “I am an officer of the law, a servant of this city. Look, I want to thank you for saving my life, but I cannot condone the eating of people! Bad though they were. So,-”

“Wait,” Hartley says, looking between us. “Did they eat Lee, Trance, Rocklea, Packwell, Fiedlstein, Tanner, and Adams?”

I snap my mouth shut with an audible click. I feel a bit queasy just thinking about it.

“No,” Hartley sings and slides off the boot. “You promised. You swore you wouldn’t eat anymore cops! Do you have any idea how much paperwork I had to do to cover that last incident up?”

“Last incident?” I echo.

“They were killing her,” Wilder growls menacingly. “The cub, Adams, died at their hands.”

Hartley closes his eyes. “Motherfuckers. Why does this shit keep happening to me?”

I look between them. My new partner doesn’t seem surprised at the turn of events. If anything, he’s annoyed.

What is wrong with him?

“What is going on?” I snap.

No one even looks my way, except that dark dragon thing. It’s still observing me with sinister intention in its beady eye.

“What is that one’s name?” I ask Frost.

He follows my arm and grins. “That’s Puppy.”

“Puppy?” I frown. I heard that on the night, too. I thought I’d heard wrong. Still not a puppy.

The creature stiffens and stands up, shucking his skin like he’s flipping a blanket over his head, and, oh, my fucking god, he’s a darkly Gothic, incredibly tall and handsome man who is also a lizard who eats people.

One eye is black and the other bright yellow. He grins, and I find myself leaning back into Wilder’s body. That smile is the most inhumane promise of impending death I’ve ever seen.

“Right, we’re all here,” a voice booms from the dark. “Let us begin.”