Page 13 of The Monster of Darkspell Comics

Pashar

M y eyes search the darkness before settling on my prey, my corethi twisting eagerly beneath my wings.

The Halloween decorations sway faintly in the breeze below where I’m crouched, filling Dead End Square with their twisted shadows and the faint sheen of moonlight on orange plastic ribbon.

The vapors rising up from the giant fountain in the center of the square glow faintly as they rise from its basin.

The human doesn’t seem to immediately take note of it, perhaps thinking that it is an illusion set up for the holiday.

I’m not surprised to find that the cultivated atmosphere and décor for the upcoming Halloween festivities has already infected the town any more than I’m surprised to find my prey there.

The human male is just as Fanny described him.

Tall, athletic physique, and yet also possessing predatory stillness, he stands there at the edge of the square, smoking a cigarette.

I can’t imagine what purpose a human would have standing here in the middle of the night.

Just standing there, too, as if waiting for someone or something.

Not too far away, I see Jasper, the resident ghoul, making one of his regular nightly trips into town—probably heading to MoonRise Market for supplies.

Fanny is right. The human is up to something, but I cannot determine exactly what.

I’m honestly not entirely interested in what he wants—that’s an issue for the higher-ups.

What I’m interested in is keeping him away from my shop and away from my Fanny.

My corethi tremble eagerly with the desire to just kill the interloper and be done with it.

“See, what did I tell you?” Fanny hisses from behind my shoulder, nearly making me drop from my perch.

My head swings around to glower at her but with my wings ungainly stretched out in odd angles in an attempt to keep me from falling, I know that I likely don’t look as intimidating as I would like.

Not to mention that I’m certain my confusion is stamped deeply into my face since my mind is busily trying to work out exactly how a human female snuck up on me.

And why being so close to her is suddenly making heat churn deep within me far more than it had before.

“What are you doing up here?” I demand in a vehement whisper.

She gives me an arched look. “Same thing you are, I suspect. Spying on Mystery Theater Weirdo down there since you didn’t remember to ‘go-go-gadget’ the leash.” She taps her collar with a fingernail, and I give it an annoyed look.

“That wasn’t permission for you to just go anywhere that you please,” I grumble. “You definitely shouldn’t be spying from the roof if you don’t even have wings for basic safety.”

“If being wingless kept humans from doing things, we would lead pretty boring lives,” she whispers back. Suddenly, her eyes dipped, and she made a strangled sound. “And holy shit, you’re naked!”

“I am not,” I hiss back. I’m clearly wearing pants, but I also have an idea what it may look like to someone with poor night vision. With my superior vision, I can see the blush rising in her cheeks.

“Close enough. Warn a girl next time,” she mutters.

I frown at her in disbelief. “You weren’t even supposed to be out here,” I remind her.

“Okay, that’s fair,” she replies and scoots closer, despite her initial surprise. “So, what do you think?”

My wings twitch at her nearness, her warmth teasing my scales as her unique, sweet scent folds around me.

Distracted, my corethi seem to have forgotten our target as they twist toward her, the venom in their barbs shifting and changing into something intoxicating to encourage mating.

All it would take is just a scratch. A shiver rushes through me at the temptation.

The urge to mate is so rare for my kind that I almost miss it before I realize what’s happening.

It has such a stranglehold on me already that I just barely manage to breathe through the urge coursing through me.

Thankfully, I catch myself in time and fold my wings tightly around my corethi, pinning them down with their weight.

If they aren’t going to function properly when there is a very real threat to my Fanny’s safety down there, then they aren’t much use to me at the moment. It’s definitely not the right time and place to even consider anything else.

Jaw clenching from the considerable effort I’m exerting over myself, I peer down at the male.

The human is walking closer to the fountain now, the ember on the tip of his cigarette glowing brightly as he takes another drag.

Jasper, taking note of his presence, growls and ducks down a dark street, but the human doesn’t follow after him.

Instead, he draws closer to the edge of the fountain and peers down into its pool.

My spines rise subtly as I watch him, and I hope that Xilixi, the nix who inhabits sprawling grounds deep within the well, doesn’t suddenly make an appearance.

It would do me a favor if the water spirit took it into his head to drown and devour the male, but, compared to many among his kind, Xilixi is not typically the violent sort.

He is more likely to investigate out of curiosity if he notes the presence of the human.

Not that the nix is the most vigilant, either.

He is probably busy composing whatever performance he is planning for the festivities, especially given the male’s preference for sitting on the fountain, or dancing around it, as he performs his music.

He is fortunate that he is a popular draw for the tourists passing through; otherwise, the town council and mayor would never have permitted him to dwell there.

“Dude is so creepy,” Fanny whispers beside me.

I huff with amusement despite myself. “You are sitting next to a demon without flinching but find a human ‘creepy.’ Does the irony of this escape you?”

She nudges me playfully. “Better the devil I know than the one I don’t,” she quips as she leans forward curiously. I casually shift my arm so that it partially blocks her from leaning too far. “What do you suppose he’s looking at?”

I shrug, my wings flexing a little with the action, which seems to momentarily draw her gaze as she peers at them briefly with fascination. “Hopefully nothing. The nix living there isn’t terribly social with males, so I doubt he will approach him.”

“What’s a nix?” she whispers back.

“A water spirit,” I reply.

“In the desert?”

She says that so incredulously that I choke back laughter as I nod.

To my surprise, she purposely shifts and leans more firmly against me so that she can tip forward a bit more to squint down at the square.

She doesn’t seem to notice that her breasts are crushed intimately against the back of my arm, but I do, and it sends hot desire snaking down to my dormant cock, awakening it fiercely.

“Weird,” she murmurs. “Is it just me or is this guy intentionally loitering everywhere there are non-humans hiding within this town? He went straight for Chewy, and the mall can’t be that big of a pull for someone out-of-town, outside of dipping in for a memento to take home with them.

It’s more of a hub for locals. I also saw him just watching everyone at the roller rink.

Who goes to a roller rink and not skate?

And now he’s standing here in the middle of the night staring down into what is essentially a haunted fountain.

It’s extra suspicious. It’s like he’s scoping the town out for some reason. ”

I frown in response, my eyes narrowing on him.

What she says does make sense. I have noted the male lurking in the mall previously, staring silently into shops or sitting watchfully in the food court, but had never paid him much attention since he didn’t bother my shop.

Finding out that he had entered when I was not there and was lurking around my human didn’t set right with me.

“Paperwork be damned, I’m going to kill him,” I growl decisively.

Shifting my weight forward, I expand my wings as I prepare to sail from the roof but suddenly find myself blocked by Fanny as she throws her body in front of me. Alarmed that she might fall, I wrap my arms around her and hold her firmly to me as I glower down at her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand.

“You can’t just kill him,” she hisses up at me, her face scrunching in a pensive way that strikes me as ridiculously adorable.

“Don’t you watch TV? Go to the movies? Anything?

This is like some secret organization shit.

It’s like a roach. If you see one, there is likely an infestation somewhere.

There has to be someone who sent him here or someone he’s working with.

We don’t know why he is here, but the ‘why’ is probably a lot bigger than one person.

He doesn’t look like your average ghost hunter looking for spooks and thrills. ”

I squint at her thoughtfully and then peer back down at him as he begins to circle the fountain.

Eventually, he finishes his cigarette and flicks it into the pool before striding purposefully away.

I note the direction that he’s walking. He’s heading out of town, which means that he likely has a room at Deadman’s Inn.

Had the ghoul’s activities alerted him to what was in the town?

Damn Jasper’s hide. What sort of ghoul ran an inn, anyway?

“Hold tight,” I growl as I adjust my grip on Fanny.

“Where are we going?” she whispers as my wings snap wide.

“MoonRise Market. I need to have a word with a certain ghoul, and I’m not letting you out of my sight after this.”

I drop from the roof, allowing myself to glide for a moment before my wings beat the air to draw us up above the rooftops.

To my pleasure, other than letting out a strangled gasp at our initial drop, Fanny remains calm within my arms, her head twisting back and forth as she attempts to look everywhere at once.