Page 4 of My Monster’s Keeper

Becky

I n my distraction searching for the owner of the booming voice, Puppy has gotten so close that I can see all the piercings through his ears, nose, and one eyebrow.

His eyes appear lined in eyeliner, his hair is jet black and hangs loose to his neck.

He smiles, and his tongue flicks out, licking up my cheek.

Oh, great, so apparently he can shift parts of his body at will, too, because his teeth and tongue aren’t human at all.

Wilder turns on him with a hiss. “Not for eating, Puppy.”

Four words that threaten to cut my knees out from under me. A perfectly normal tone when you tell someone off, but the words! The words are all wrong. I wheeze.

Stix clucks his tongue and reaches across with a long arm and pulls me away from the others, and, you know something, I go willingly into the arms of this strange yet protective creature because my mind feels like glass, and the dragon man wants to eat me.

“Relax. It will be fine, poppet.”

I peer up at him, and instead of finding his smile disturbing, I find it comforting. Because, of the four, stabby, angry, and bitey over there are not comforting in the least. I think they’d each prefer my death, or at least that’s just a feeling I get from their heavy stares.

The shadows move, and a huge creature standing eight feet tall steps out.

He’s got horns like a bull, and smoke eases out of his nostrils in thick plumes.

His skin is red, and he’s got jet black hair to his waist. I look at him, and something inside my mind screams and wants to run, but my body is paralyzed.

He is everything that I’ve grown up to fear.

All my nightmares in one creature walking towards me.

“Poppet,” Stix breathes into my ear. “Your fear is delicious.”

His words tear me from the paralysis. His hand rests on my hip, and, once again, I find myself reaching down and covering his hand with mine. Clinging to him in some helpless parody of friendship .

“Hartley,” the huge creature booms.

“Yeah, awesome. Every time I see you like this, I need to get a prescription to fucking sleep,” Hartley bitches.

“Every time I see you, I get a sour taste in my mouth. It takes three weeks to get out,” the creature snaps back.

Hartley grins widely and walks over to the huge creature. They do this full on dude-bro chest bump thing that is so fucking weird that I wonder if I’ve had a stroke and am just dreaming this shit up.

Stix laughs in my ear and strokes a long thumb along the side of my navel, drawing a hiss from me.

“All right, all right. Work first, then we can play,” the creature says to Hartley.

“Play?” I whisper.

“You don’t want to know,” Stix murmurs. “Really, I’ve seen it.”

I twist my head to look at him, and he smiles down at me and wiggles his thin black eyebrows.

“Why is your Puppy thing a person all of a sudden?” I ask quickly.

He frowns. “We can all appear that way. Hold on.”

I twist fully as his face stretches and then settles into a new shape. I take a step back from him and suck in a breath. He’s gorgeous, too. His skin is pale, and he’s thin and tall, but now he’s in proportion with wide shoulders and deep charcoal and black hair.

“You-” I cut myself short as he approaches.

My stomach twists, and I tell myself it’s because of the transformation, but a tiny voice inside my head sings ‘bullshit’.

“Lore, pay attention.”

The man I’m still staring at, transfixed by the incredible beauty of his human form, jerks his attention away from me, and, once it’s gone, I feel colder and lost without it.

“Lore?” I ask when I get myself together.

“Lore Stix.” Stix taps his chest with an index finger. He’s wearing a suit that clings to him like a second skin. I’ve never appreciated a man in a suit, but he’s really wearing it.

“Lore Stix, Nightmare Shadow King of unparalleled horror, Vivaldon Wilder, the great Lord of the Hunt himself, Illsonac Froststorm, Lost Prince of the Unseelie Court, and Puppy, who is one of the most savage Grims the worlds have ever seen,” the creature says affectionately.

“These are my rag-tag bunch of misfits that do my will. ”

Puppy snorts, and Wilder spits out what sounds like a curse in another language. Judging by how the monstrous creature’s lips are thinning, whatever was said was really offensive.

“And who are you?” I ask.

The creature exchanges an amused look with Hartley. “She’s got lady balls.”

Hartley shrugs. “If anyone can survive it, she can.”

I can sense the confusion in the air, so it’s not just me, good.

“I’m Diablos, or Devil. Really, I’m just a demon of some high rank. However, we’re, well, I guess I could call us police.”

“Demons have police?”

“All the magical worlds have police or rather enforcers, guards, security, whatever you want to call it that protect the worlds.” Diablos rolls his eyes.

“But in a world that has been growing a belief in devils and evil and nightmare creatures, you keep opening doors with that awareness, and your world keeps brushing and letting more and more of my kind out. So, sometimes I need to reach out and ask for a human to babysit and help us out, especially when we all come to play on Earth.”

My eyebrows raise to my hairline. “Babysit?”

“Indeed. Teach my little team to walk in this world without raising suspicion while they do what I need them to do.”

I narrow my eyes. “That’s…” I glance at the team. “They want to eat me!” I end up shouting.

Diablos has the courtesy of looking away, so he doesn’t laugh in my face, but I can see the mirth lines around his slash of a mouth. He clears his throat a couple of times and looks over.

“Maybe eating wouldn’t be such a bad idea-”

“You take that back right now!” I howl. “Look at that thing-” I point at Puppy, who’s having to be restrained by Frost. “He’s going to take that as permission.”

“Diablos, he can’t see her as anything but food. You need to enforce an order,” Hartley says from where he’s leaning on a pylon.

I can really see the concern oozing off him.

Diablos considers Puppy and then snaps his fingers.

“Do not eat her. That’s an order. She is for learning and other things but not food, and don’t hurt or maim or injure or strand her.

Do not exorcise her.” Diablos thinks for a minute.

“No burning, burying, freezing, electrocuting, or anything that might harm the human. ”

Puppy’s mouth has fallen open, his eyes wide with outrage. “She’s meat!”

“I’m not meat!” I snap back at him.

He glowers at me, and I glower back. I reach down just to check my gun is still on my hip. Puppy narrows his eyes.

“Try and eat me, you fucker, and I’ll make sure you have to squat like a bitch dog to piss,” I growl.

His brows snap down, and he lets out a rattling hiss that raises the hairs on my body.

“Enough!” Diablos shouts. “Jeez Louise, this fucking bullshit. I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass. I should have given this job to Lochy.”

I don’t know who Lochy is, and I don’t care. I want to leave. Three of the four are glaring at me, and the fourth is staring at me like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

“I don’t want to be part of this.”

Diablos doesn’t even look up. “Oh, you don’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean, I don’t have a choice?” I growl.

“You were slated to be murdered by your own kind. They know you were there that night. They are coming for you. You need this small pack of…” he pauses, pursing his lips, “monsters? And they need you to track down the omegas and protect them.”

I gape at him and turn to Hartley.

He shrugs. “Suck it up, princess. Di gets what he wants, and what he wants he gets, so just settle in for the ride. They’ll do the work. Just consider yourself the, umm, pilot of a 747.”

“They want to eat me!” I shout again, since everyone keeps missing that very important detail. “Wait a minute. What is an omega?”

Hartley rolls his eyes. “Di gave the order, they won’t now. Just give it a bit of time. You’ll be surprised at how well you’ll like this job. It’s got better perks.”

I glare at him. Damn Earth traitor. “What is an omega?” I shout, causing an echo that silences everything else.

Diablo crouches so his head is now about level with my head. “A thousand years ago, the last omega, the strongest and most wise of us, died.”

I raise an unimpressed brow. “I don’t want to hear your history lesson.”

Diablo glowers, and I have to say it’s effectively terrifying .

“In all the worlds, there are beings created as alphas, betas, or omegas. They are set apart. They are something more. The exceptional among us. Think of it as the top of humanity and imagine they were all superhumans. That’s what I’m talking about.”

I sniff. “Uh-huh.”

“Alphas are stronger, dominant, dangerous, and full of volatile rage that is tempered by an omega’s innate balance.

They become your warriors, soldiers, fighters.

They can’t help themselves, and, eventually, that blood lust drives them mad.

But omegas are instinctive, a compass, a reason that anchors them to sanity.

They are balance, soft to the sharp, love to the rage.

They are breeders, providers, and the centre of an alpha pack. ”

“A yin to their yang,” Hartley offers.

I cast a glare in his direction and take in the new position Puppy has moved to. My stomach flips to find that yellow eye on me again.

“So, there are lots of alphas, then, in your worlds?”

“Yes, there are a lot. But there are also a lot of bad beings who want to make sure omegas never come back. Because a pack in balance is a force of ultimate power. And if a pack finds a queen, then they can rule. An omega queen is a once in a thousand year event.”

“I see. So, what are betas?”

“Betas are different again. They are a balm to both omegas and alphas. They can temper the emotions and impulses of an alpha pack and their omega.”

“Pack?”

“A group of alphas or betas with an omega is called a pack.”