Page 39 of My Monster’s Keeper

Becky

D iablos’ instructions find us in the middle of suburbia. The houses are homes that I’d dream about living in. Who needs a mansion when you can aim for mediocrity?

White picket fences surround every yard, the grass is cut exactly two inches high and is uniform in its perfection. The houses have cute flowers in flower boxes, are painted white, and have huge, clear windows with frilly lace curtains shielding the insides.

I used to think people who lived in places like this were living the dream, but then I realised most of these people are in their own personal hell. They just hide it.

“We’re after one thousand and one,” Stix murmurs. He peers down the dark street and flicks his fingers. The street lights flare all at once in an explosion of sparks.

“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. I spot 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?”

“What was that look?” I snap. “I saw that. Share with the class, Grim.”

Puppy frowns, it looks cute and somewhat sinister. “What is this class?”

I go to answer and snap my teeth together, grinding them. “Oh, no, I’m not getting distracted. What was the look?”

“There was no look!” Stix assures me.

I glower between both of them, my temper growing colder. “Do not lie to me.”

Stix glances behind me and shrugs.

“There’s someone upstairs,” Wilder says gently.

The basement door slams shut and is hurriedly locked. I don’t take my eyes from my shadows. When they refuse to speak, I turn and pad up the stairs. Vines rip out of the ground and tear the door apart.

“Thanks, Wilder.”

He mutters something that I don’t hear. The culprit is caught in a massive web and is slowly being pulled towards something clear and viscous. A chunk of the matter splatters on the floor, holding its shape for a few moments before it collapses into a liquid.

“That looks bad,” I say absently. “I don’t want to touch that.”

“Good instincts,” Wilder says. “It’s known as Arachnia Blood. It’s a thick substance that will turn any animal into a liquid high protein juice ball for the spider when she returns.”

“Oh, that is lovely,” I snark.

The guy's getting closer to the liquid, and he’s struggling now. A moment later, his screams start.

“I don’t want to die,” he wails loud enough to make my teeth ache.

“We could put him out of his misery? Or just speed up the process?” Stix says absently.

I only just catch his words. Puppy could eat him first, I add helpfully and then put that thought aside. I am not the person who hand feeds people to my boyfriends.

Boyfriends? Mates?

Wait, they lied to me.

“Get him down,” I say to Wilder, but my voice is softened and intimate. I’m not mad at him.

The blob freezes instantly, and the forward momentum of the human’s imminent death is halted .

“Who are you?” Frost growls menacingly.

“I’m Coby Lucas Wainsworth. I’m twenty-one. Where do I live? Oh, crap, I can’t remember. Oh, I know! I live at One hundred and one Albright Lane, Effusion City. I have a mother and a father, and I’m a good boy, and I never get into trouble.” He bursts into tears.

“What’s it doing?” Puppy asks me as he moves closer.

The suicidal human throws himself to his knees and grips Puppy’s hands tightly.

“I’m too young to die, and I haven’t even had sex.

Please, dude, I’m twenty-one and a virgin.

I need to have sex. I can’t die. I’m too young.

And, and, and I have got a mortgage, yeah, that’s right, I’m paying off the house.

I haven’t done anything. People don’t kill me. Please.”

“If he offers to suck Puppy’s cock, I’m all for putting him back in the spider’s web,” I say grumpily. I really dislike the way he’s touching and pawing at my Grim.

“Please, man, please. I didn’t see nothing. Listen, bloke to bloke, I swear, I didn’t see nothing. I promise. I’ll tell anyone who asks that I didn’t see you perform magic and turn into a creepy lizard.”

I wince. Poor word choice, Coby.

“Lizard?” Puppy asks in a soft but deadly voice. “You think me a lizard?”

“To be fair, Puppy, you do have scales,” Stix adds helpfully. “You’re like a Komodo dragon.”

“What is this kokomo dragon?” Puppy snarls and twists his arms, breaking the grasping grip of Coby so he can hold the guy by his throat. “Show me a picture of a kokomo dragon, now!”

With a resigned sigh, I Google an image and hold it up so he can have a look. He narrows his eyes and studies the image with an intensity that is mesmerising.

“How deadly are they?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Eh. They can kill humans.”

“Not good enough. I’m ten kokomo dragons,” Puppy snaps at Coby. “How dare you.”

“Tell me what the look was,” I growl in Puppy’s ear. His eyes flash with warning, the yellow growing brighter before it deepens to a gold.

“No.”

“Why not!” I snap at him.

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Tell me now, Puppy!” I shout .

“Excuse me, but if you’re going to have a lovers’ quarrel, can you let me go? He’s got sharp claws.”

“Shut up, Coby!” We both snarl at him.

Puppy abruptly tosses the human to Stix, who catches him easily, but it doesn’t matter because his hands are on my chest, shoving me back into a wall. I grunt, but shadows lock me in place. I did not know Puppy could do that.

“I will tell you when I’m ready to tell you, and not a moment before,” he growls into my mouth. “Stop pushing me.”

I bare my teeth, but his mouth claims mine, his tongue pressing forcefully into my mouth and down into my throat. I panic as I always do until the drugging nature of his kiss stops the fight instinct and leaves me pliant and hot for him.

“You can’t just kiss me into submission,” I say when he pulls away. I watch in pure frustration as he shifts shape and meanders up the wall to the ceiling, where he watches me balefully.

“There’s no submission in you,” Frost says from the other side of the room. “You just turn one battleground into another.”

“Wow, I sound bloodthirsty,” I snap at them, offended.

Frost turns, a smile ghosting his lips. “It’s not a bad thing, Becks.”

I slowly turn towards him, stunned at the shortened version of my name, but loving it.

“What’s wrong?” Frost says, looking around in alarm.

“No one’s given me a nickname of my name before. I always hated my name, but I could get behind Becks.”

“Why do you hate your name?” Frost asks.

I shrug. “It’s the one I came with. Becky, it’s so common. Not even Rebecca. Just Becky on the birth certificate. No parents. No last name. Just one single name. Becky Doe.”

“That’s not your name.”

“No, I chose Dawson,” I say and smile when Stix laces his fingers with mine.

“Becks Dawson?” Frost says. “It’s a strong name.”

“Are you really going to stand here and discuss the origins of her fricken name while I’m about to die?” Coby suddenly shouts.

He’s a young twenty-one, and he’s wearing clothes that I could not afford.

Even on a cop salary, I couldn’t afford brand name items. His brown hair is cut in the latest fashion, longer on top, with it short at the sides.

It’s styled to look like he just crawled from his sex nest. Except we know this poor guy’s only action is he, himself, and Mr Palmer. He looks like your average kid.

“Well, you aren’t talking, so we were just going to kill time until whatever killed all the people in the basement came back,” Wilder purrs.

I love that sound. I bite my bottom lip and look up at the spiderweb so I don’t go and jump my Seelie lover’s bones.

Wait. I glance at Coby.

“You knew about everyone being dead down there?” I stalk towards him. He backs up, but a wall of fire stops him in his tracks.

“No. I. No!” Coby looks from me to Wilder to Stix and back to me. “They were nobodies. Just junkies and homeless bums. No one would miss them.”

I feel sick.

“Coby,” I swallow thickly. “Did you bring these people here to be killed? In a truck?”

His face undergoes a swift series of expressions before he settles on a deep sulk. “I want a lawyer.”

“Call Diablos,” I say shortly. “He can deal with him.”

Puppy comes tearing back into the room and throws his weight on me. We go crashing to the floor.

“I got you a gift.”

“What?”

“A gift!” Puppy says and giggles.

Oh, dear.

A moment later, a huge grey and white Pitbull comes in sight and barks joyously.

“I gave him to you. You can’t give him back!” Puppy shouts.

“Wait! Hold on a second! Dogs are expensive. Ugh, Puppy, get off me for a minute.”

I scramble up, trying to get my thoughts together.

“I gave her to you,” Puppy says slowly, and is that a whine in his voice? Is he excited? He really wants this dog?

Can I say no? We have the money. We have a home. All the reasons I don’t own a dog suddenly become very small, quiet, and insignificant. Technically, I can have a dog now. So, can I really say no to Puppy?

No, I can’t because I’m a sucker for these four men from other worlds. “Okay. You can bring him home with us. ”

Puppy lets out a laugh. It’s delightful. It sets my pussy aching. The whole situation is maddening, and I watch as he leaves me to go play with the dog.

It’s skinny, a bag of bones. There’s a thick, heavy chain collar around its neck. That has to go. It appears young, though. It’s very quick and agile but strong. I can see that already. The dog has got a blue head and body with a white chest and four white socks.

“You need to find a name for your dog, Puppy,” I say loudly. Too loudly, I don’t mean it that loudly.

“I think you found his weakness,” Frost whispers against my ear.

“I think you guys found mine, too.”