Page 11 of The Monster of Darkspell Comics

Pashar

I knew I shouldn’t have trusted her. The smell of cheap food, stale beer, and rank gym socks in the air makes my stomach curdle with disgust. Even the loud music being played is of an obnoxious sort that mingles with the sounds of the arcade and the shouts of the guests in a way that scrapes across my nerves ceaselessly.

But it is the strange shoes fastened to four wheels that the clerk at the desk hands me that really makes me believe that Fanny must be the spawn of something unholy bent on tormenting me.

“No,” I growl as I stubbornly cross my arms over my chest instead of taking the suicide shoes.

An uncertain look crosses the young male werewolf’s face, which should have been at least a little pleasing except that he glances toward Fanny, seeking help from the damned female. He’s also looking a little too long at her, which makes me want to rip his eyeballs out.

“Come on, Pashar,” Fanny urges, dragging the words out in a way that makes my eye twitch.

My gaze shifts to her. “You cannot seriously expect me to put those on my feet.”

“Trust me, it’s fun! Afterward, we can grab a couple slices and chill.” She smiles at me hopefully, and I feel my prickly resolve starting to crumble.

“I’m not going to enjoy this,” I inform her as I take the skates. “How long are you expecting me to do this for, anyway?”

“Oh, tonight is Moonlight Madness; we are open all night on account of the full moon,” the male explains cheerfully.

“Isn’t the full moon tomorrow night?” Fanny asks, peering curiously at him.

He nods happily, cheerful as a damned lap dog and just as eager to cuddle up to my Fanny. I fight back the urge to throttle him. “It is! We are closed tomorrow night and the next two nights following, so be sure to enjoy your skate!”

Fanny nods quizzically and appears to be ready to fire another question, but I grip her forearm and give it a slight squeeze, bringing her attention back to me, where it belongs. “Do you want to skate or not? Or would you rather stand here yapping?”

She gives me a startled look but promptly grins with renewed excitement. “I just knew you would get into the spirit. Come on! Oh, bye... uh...”

“Lucus,” the male calls after her, and I’m pretty sure I hear a couple of my teeth break with how tightly I clench my jaw.

“Dude really seems to be into the moon,” Fanny observes as we head over to the benches off to the side of the polished rink. She plops down on the bench and immediately toes off her shoes. “He’s nice.”

“He’s going to end up as a nicer throw rug this full moon if he doesn’t watch himself,” I growl as I lower myself beside her.

Although I have no actual shoes to remove, I make it a point to make it appear as if I’m removing my shoes as I unravel the illusion around my feet.

Using the skates as a model, I draw the etheric mists from the air around my feet, encasing them in something identical that I can actually wear on my feet.

It’s still uncomfortable since I’m not accustomed to wearing much in the way of actual clothes and definitely never anything confining my feet and toe claws.

Already, I’m starting to seriously regret my life decisions.

“Throw rug?” she queries, her expression turning thoughtful. “I don’t get it.”

“Werewolves may be able to hide their wolf features during the rest of the month, but not on the full moon,” I explained.

“They go full wolf, so that’s the best time to get a good quality pelt from them.

” I allow myself as moment as I mentally savor the image of a good werewolf pelt on my living room floor.

“There are werewolves here?” she says in awe, her head whipping around.

My hand comes beneath her chin, cupping her face as my thumb and forefinger put light pressure on her jaws, and gently turn her head back to me. “You are with a demon, and you find werewolves exciting?”

I can’t quite keep the note of disdain from my voice. Fanny giggles in response, however, and gently extricates herself from my hold.

“Trust me, you’re exciting enough,” she assures me. “I just didn’t realize that you aren’t the only non-human around here.”

I bark out a laugh. Sometimes I forget how painfully oblivious humans can be. It’s easy for them to ignore the unusual and unexpected. Their minds just mentally adjust to it, making everything seem normal unless it’s blatantly not.

“Ridiculous. This entire town has a large non-human population. It’s ultimately what made me decide to enjoy my vacation here.

While you can find non-humans everywhere, you don’t typically see thriving communities of them living among handfuls of humans.

It makes things a bit more convenient for less conventional species. .. like demons.”

She shifts closer, practically vibrating with excitement. “What else is there?”

I roll my eyes, but I’m privately pleased with the way her attention is raptly focused on me.

I nod toward a pair of females gliding together.

“Vampires.” I point to a gangly male speeding around the rink.

“Goblin. And that group over there, night elves of some kind. That brother-sister duo who are holding hands and spinning in circles—they are trolls from what I can tell. That larger, rowdy group, all werewolf pups,” I point out, my mouth curling reluctantly as they practically pile all over each other in their attempt to out-skate each other, though a few of the older ones are pulling the youngest of them along with them.

Her eyes flick excitedly from person to person.

Suddenly her gaze fixes on a point on the other side of the rink for a long moment, her expression sobering and becoming withdrawn.

I crane my head, trying to see what she does.

There’s a bunch of milling humans. Among them there is a man wearing shades, watching the activity within the rink expressionlessly.

That’s odd. My eyes narrow speculatively, but Fanny grabs my wrist and tugs until I look over at her and reluctantly stand.

Almost immediately I feel the wheels trying to slip from beneath my feet, and I abruptly grab hold of her with both hands, my eyes growing wide.

I want more than anything to stretch my wings out to help my precarious lack of balance, but the roller rink is far too crowded, and the humans are bound to notice if my invisible wings randomly knock them over.

Things are easier to disguise when their presence can be ignored, and people are unaware of it.

The illusion won’t hold very well if they actually feel my wings slap them.

Swallowing back the curses that immediately spring to mind, I shuffle forward, the wheels rolling hazardously beneath me as Fanny giggles and pulls me toward the rink.

“Don’t worry, we will stay on the outer edge until you pick it up,” she says encouragingly. “When you leave the rug onto the waxed floor, just push off with one foot.”

I feel a bit nauseated as we enter the rink, and I tighten my wings against my back, pinning my corethi even more firmly to prevent any accidents.

The moment I step onto the rink and push off the carpet, however, my foot shoots out from beneath me, taking me out and bringing Fanny down with me.

My ass hits the ground hard, and I topple backwards as Fanny slams into me.

Pain shoots up my tail, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve put a kink in it, and I can’t breathe right since the female’s weight falls on my chest and diaphragm.

I drag in a deep breath and feel every part of her body pressed against mine as I stare into her brown eyes.

And suddenly I can’t breathe for an entirely different reason as something dark and unfamiliar uncurls deep within me.

Fanny’s eyes widen and she giggles as she awkwardly slides off me. “Okay, sometimes that happens. Let’s try again. This time, try to imagine your weight centered between the four wheels.”

I nod absently as I ungainly push myself back to my feet.

The moment I’m up, I grip the sidewall of the rink with my free hand like a lifeline.

I’m holding onto it hard enough that I’m surprised that my claws don’t puncture the wood, and it’s partially because I’m doing my damnedest to make sure that I don’t accidentally injure Fanny’s soft and fragile human hand.

All the same, I wobble like a newborn calf as I slowly push forward in tiny increments, one foot at a time, while the music blasts from above us and children bypass us in waves.

It’s a bit humiliating as well as deafening, but bit by bit my balance is improving, and my speed is picking up.

I finally rouse the courage to let go of the wall and skate only a short distance before I come down again.

This time, however, I make sure to release Fanny’s hand so that I don’t bring her down with me again.

Still, I lie there on the rink gasping for breath as I wonder if it is possible for demons to die from shame.

My human stops in front of me and leans over me as she grins down at my prone form.

She offers me her hand, which is absurd because she hardly has the strength to lift a grown nightmare demon, but I take it anyway, enjoying the warmth of it as I push myself back to my feet.

Re-establishing my balance, I push forward with her as we glide hand in hand.

I’m still horribly wobbly and fall several more times, but there is enough progress that keeps me pushing on until Fanny calls a halt to it with a bright peal of laughter.

“Okay, enough,” she giggles, though I don’t miss the way she glances back across the rink. Something is clearly disturbing her.

I peer over at the crowd clustered around the arcade games near the rink again and frown. “What are you looking at?”

She shakes her head and laughs dismissively, though it sounds hollow to my ears with no real mirth behind it. “It’s nothing. Let’s go grab some slices and park ourselves somewhere before you end up bruised from top to bottom.”

“Demons never bruise,” I mutter resentfully, but something flutters warm within me as she takes my hand again and leads me out of the rink.

I have to admit that food sounds pretty damned good right now.

Even if it is cheap pizza and stale beer.

And while I can’t drink the warm piss that humans call beer, I do manage to swallow down several slices of pizza one after another.

It tastes like cardboard, but Fanny’s pure enjoyment of the place is infectious.

I even allow her to drag me over to the arcade where I dutifully hand over quarters while she repeatedly destroys herself on a game called Ms. Pacman.

I normally don’t have any patience for human merriment, preferring to feast upon their screams of terror, but from Fanny. .. it’s not so bad.