Page 49 of My Monster’s Keeper

Puppy

I don’t think I’ve ever been this enraged. I throw myself up the cliff, using my front paws to propel me forward and my hind legs to catapult me up. It makes me look like I’m flying.

I can see the fear in their eyes. The stink of their terror in the air. The Grim is coming for them. They know. They should run, they waver, eyes widening, tiny squeaks of sound erupting from empty lungs, and then it’s too late. I throw myself straight through my first kill.

I hit the ground on the other side as his bodily remains fall to the ground. Blood and gore drips off me, and I casually spit out the heart. Only a mark of true disdain for my enemies to waste food. Another indication they will get no mercy.

A tall, willowy female with antennae screams and runs, but I slap a rock into her skull, blowing half of it away in a spray of rosy chunks.

A huge bear with seven limbs roars at me.

I cock my head to the side, flex my talons.

Every moment in that fucking cage pulses in my brain.

Every moment they kept me from her.

Every moment away from my murder.

She had a heat. She needed us.

The rage builds, and I attack. My talons flash, my teeth sink easily into flesh. I hear screams in my mind and with my ears. I tear them apart, laughing as they try to run, try to hide from me.

I’m thrown and land hard on a tree. An involuntary yelp is torn from me. I hear her scream my name, and the rage intensifies.

I shift again, fur replacing scales, my teeth longer, my claws harder. I square up with the army of shadows, and I let out a deep, low growl .

I throw myself back into it. Blood fills my mouth and coats my fur. The ground gets wet and slippery under my kills.

A momentary change in the air alerts me and the happiness inside my chest when the blond princeling and the hunter appear is unnerving enough that I almost forget about killing the Slinking-belly Rotcher before me.

His form wiggles and tries to escape me, but, with one slap, I crush his spinal column, turning him into a breathing rock.

“Puppy,” Frost says when he sees me. His eyes track over me for a long moment, and I realise he’s checking for injuries.

My chest tightens, and I feel warm inside. Is this what a family is?

I stand up, and he does something even stranger. He sweeps me into his arms and hugs me tight.

“I was worried.”

It’s all he says.

My heart is beating too fast. This is odd, nice, but odd. Before I can think of what to do, he smacks a kiss to the top of my head and then steps back and spins away.

Wilder puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Good to see you free, big guy.”

I peer up at the huge Fae. He’s much older than I am, perhaps as old as Stix. Wise. He is pleased to see me?

“Why do you care?” I mean to say it angrily, but it comes out confused. The growls come out, but he seems to understand my intent clearly.

“Because we’re a, what does Stix call us? A murder? A family. We’re mates. Her mates. She is our omega, and we are her alphas. Just us. That binds us against everyone else.”

I bob my head, letting that information sink down into my soul. The beast that I am chews on the words and absorbs them. Us against them.

A fundamental change in my thinking.

Very well.

They keep on coming. I continue to tear them down to scraps of flesh, of bone, but they push us back, over and over, to the edge of the cliff.

She needs time. We just need to give him time.

I grit my teeth and wince as a wound pulls. Frost and Wilder look beaten and weakened, too, but they, like me, aren’t giving in.

“Did they send the whole of this realm here to attack us?” Wilder snaps.

I peer out at the legion of black, writhing shapes in the growing darkness .

“They come to challenge for his crown. If they can challenge while he’s weak and kill him, it’s theirs by right. It’s our laws,” I explain the little information I have gleaned over the years.

“I didn’t know you had laws.”

“We don’t have many,” I mutter and glance over my shoulder, trying to see down there. “Is he awake yet?”

“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. She needs us to do this. So we will,” Frost says and flicks a blue flame.

“It does matter. He needs to feed,” I snarl. “He needs to kill and absorb the life to get strong.”

Wilder and Frost do a double take, and then the former grabs the nearest idiot to charge us and hurls him into the gully below.

Frost throws his head back and laughs.

I whip around, grinning at Frost.

“Drive through?” Wilder says with a chuckle.

I spit out an unexpected bark of a laugh. Together, we send another five down there.

Still not sure if it’s working or not, but my mate hasn’t called for aid, so it’s either working or it’s not.

I trust her to take care of herself, I realise. We hurl another five down there until I hear a dark laugh that rises in volume as it climbs the walls of the canyon.

My scales lift in response, and Wilder hisses and turns to look over the edge.

The wind picks up his long green hair and blows it around, but he doesn’t take his eyes from the wall. I snap the neck of the idiot that charged me, then dart to Wilder’s side, scanning the walls. There he is.

I throw myself down the cliff walls, grappling my way at breakneck speed until I arrive beside them. Stix’s black eyes peer at me, and, when he smiles, his fury is a delicious sight to be seen.

This is why he is their king.

Stix swings her into my arms. I sling her onto my back.

“Hold on.”

She tightens her grip. Stix looks at me, and we both fly upwards, climbing the side of the cliff walls easily. Blue light, unlike nothing my world has ever seen, clears a massive stage for us .

As we climb up and take our places, Frost and Wilder join us. Becky climbs off my back and, when I shift, takes my hand in hers.

There are more of them than I’ve ever seen.

“Can you take them?”

Stix looks around and shrugs. “No idea, but it will be fun to find out.”

He gathers the shadows and rips, reaches out with his hands, wrenching them free of their hosts. Bodies drop by the thousands.

His insane laughter is a glorious accompaniment to the screaming panic.

“This is too easy,” Stix hisses.

“Perhaps we can come back tomorrow,” Becky says in a whisper and picks up Pitch. “Who wants pizza and to kick Grant’s ass? And Diablos, we need to find the Demon.”

I consider it, but her plan does sound tastier. “I will agree.”

“Yeah, I’m out. This is a pointless waste of killing. I almost feel guilty,” Wilder agrees.

The portal opens, and Frost slips through. Wilder follows. Stix hesitates, but I shove him and Becky through and follow just in time for it to snap shut.

“We’re back.” I say and frown.

I inhale and smell something strange, grief and sadness and something familiar in a place I’ve never been. I turn and continue sniffing. Confused.

“What’s wrong?” Becky asks me.

Clarity hits me.

“Song! Here Song!”

The braying warble of the excited dog bursts into the air and grows in volume as the blue dog comes racing towards me. I smile and crouch as himself dances around on two feet, wagging himself into almost falling over.

I scoop him up and laugh as he licks my face.

I freeze when the others just stare at me.

“What?”

“You laughed.”

“Repeatedly,” Becky says with a small smile. “It was nice.”

Pitch has draped herself across Frost’s shoulders and is watching us with a slitted eye.

“We need to find Diablos,” Becky mutters and leads the way towards the exit of a huge warehouse. “Last I heard, he was in a cage somewhere. By getting them out of there, we gave them a chance. ”

“Wait-” Stix pulls her to a stop. He inhales deeply, his eyes burning as he turns around and around, catching the scent that is just reaching me.

“What happened to you?” Wilder asks gently.

“Oh, it wasn’t too bad,” She says, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

The truth is there in the air. I turn towards the strange smell; I put the pup down and follow the tease in the air.

To a steel door. I kick the door open, and the stench of my mate, in agony and terror, rises.

Her heat is etched into the walls. It’s soaked into every bit of the concrete. Every part of the room.

“Why wouldn’t you just give them what they wanted?” Wilder whispers. “Why would you let them do this to you?”

Becky lifts her chin. Her brown hair isn’t as shiny. Her blue eyes are chips of wildness. She’s thinner. I missed those details. Are those bruises on her skin?

“They wanted me to close the worlds and cut us apart forever. I wasn’t going to do that.”

“Becks,” Frost murmurs and grips her jaw. He kisses her hard and then lifts her and carries her out of the room.

I catalogue each and every single scent I find.

She went through all that for me. For us.

I feel another shift inside me. An alignment that changes me. My omega queen.

Stix crouches, reading the floor, the ceiling, the walls. He runs his hands over the chain, while Wilder pulls his own magic and has bugs and rodents sitting and conversing with him.

“She opened the gates permanently. For us. The worlds are open pathways to each other now,” Wilder whispers. “And there are two more. These doorways. Where do they go?”

“We can worry about it later,” Stix growls.

“She said she’d burn the worlds to get us back!” Wilder whips around to glare at the door. “You’re never, ever to go to war with anyone without us!” he shouts.

My smile is slow to come, not because of what he said, but because my mate’s pain is still saturating my mind. She’d burn the world for us? Worlds?

She is a worthy mate.

I stalk out, with Wilder and Stix by my side. Song joins us halfway down the hallway. I keep adding more scents to my death list. It really is becoming quite extensive.

“Where do we find the red one?” I snarl .

“Who?” Wilder blinks. “Oh, Diablos? He has a secret home. I’ve been there once. Chances are he’s lying low.”

“No, he’s not. They have him. The best hope we have is to find Hartley,” Becks says softly. “I don’t know if either of them are okay or not.”

“I have a list of safe houses,” Frost says. “But I think we should check his personal home first.”

“Let’s go check, then,” Stix says and scoops up Becky’s hand and tugs her towards the road.

Becky pulls to a stop. It’s like all the sad and anger suddenly hits her, and she starts to shake. Frost pulls her into a tight hug and rocks her. For long minutes, she just clings to him while the icy wind tears the scents of that awful place away.

I march over to her and snuggle up against her back. “I will kill all of them, my mate. Everyone that hurt you. All dead.”

She shudders but reaches one arm back to grip my waist.

Stix and Wilder stay at the edges of our group, watching around us with hard, furious eyes.

“You know the way?” Wilder whispers to Stix.

“Yeah, I can get us there.”

“Okay, do it. Get us out of here. There are too many eyes. Far too many eyes.”

Frost hears him and lifts his head. His face and hair are whiter than they’ve ever been. He looks up, and lightning strikes, over and over. Thunder booms, deafening us, but the spray of fire and sparks is incredible.

“This place is mine,” Becky whispers in protest. “They can’t have the doors to the other worlds.”

“We got it,” a voice says from the dark.

I turn and spot the five Sirens and the Healer. She is gagged and trussed, but I can’t feel any distress from her. The urge to rush over and slice through the softness of their throats and bathe in their blood is overwhelming. One thing stops me—their scents weren’t in there.

“Go. Do what you need to do. Nothing leaves, nothing comes in. We’ll hold this place.”

“Why?” Becky asks. She’s full of suspicion now.

“Because we have people we don’t want coming through. And people we don’t want going back and tattling. Yet.”

“Can we trust them?” Becky asks me .

“No, but you can trust her. She’s not really a prisoner, she’s pretending. The Healer is tricky,” Stix murmurs.

I dip my head in a slow nod, agreeing with Stix. The Healer is not one who will tolerate a broken bargain. The consequences would be catastrophic.

“Fine. But do not allow anyone from this world out. I have a whole heap that needs to have a conversation with the sharp side of my knife,” Frost barks.

The auburn-haired Sirens nod and move into the factory, vanishing from view. They are like snakes. Dangerous and threatening. But I feel better with them than most others I have met.

In all this time, the thunder and lightning haven’t once stopped. Frost is really enraged.

Stix grips the shadows and yanks them around us, wrapping us tight. And then we’re pulled to other shadows that are cleaner, without the stench of my mates’ agony.

I look up at the trees, the perfectly quiet suburban street, with none of the chaos and none of the disorder.

“What house is it?” Wilder growls.

“It’s the one with the pink hearts on the letter box,” Frost says through gritted teeth.

Lightning strikes the street, turning the world white.

We all take a moment to let that sink in, and then we cross the road quickly and slink up to the front door.

A quick knock reveals a shattered Hartley. I’ve seen more lively corpses. His eyes are bloodshot, and he wipes his nose on a knitted jumper and then throws himself at Stix, hugging him tight.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

Stix grimaces and peels the human off him. “Let us in.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

We enter, but I can smell the absence of Diablos. I can smell the interesting beast hiding in the middle of the room. The poor human is none the wiser. Or maybe he is, and that’s why he has such a hunted look about him.

I spring past Hartley and rip the creature apart. He’s fine right up until I drop the corpse at his feet.

Hartley’s eyes widen, he staggers, gasps, making a strange wheezing sound, and then screams.