Page 136 of My Monster's Keeper
I can’t move. I glance around. Where’s Stix? Just thinking his name materializes him. He appears in a long, flowing black cloak of shadows and with that same guise that I sawthe first time I met him. His mouth is a pitch hole in his face, his teeth are serrated, and his lips stained black. He’s gaunt and proportions out of whack.
He seizes two of them and dances around the roof, attacking until he finally sends them flying into the darkness. I glance back at Puppy and find the first creature is dead. He’s climbing the roof, while Frost is directing ice to push the other four towards Stix.
My breath hitches as I watch. Puppy lunges, snapping his formidable teeth, and the dark shape lunges backwards into Stix’s reach. He hurls it into the shadow.
They quickly dispatch the next one, leaving just two more. But these two appear to have learned. The second, slightly taller but otherwise indistinguishable from the other, leaps off the roof and lands in front of me.
I blink, and when it reaches for me, I duck out of its way, backpeddling quickly. Frost hisses, and then he’s in front of me, his hair a massive white cloud that shields me from view.
He moves so quickly, but he never steps out from in front of me. At all times, keeping between me and the creature.
The fight is violent, and I know the minute Puppy joins. I can hear flesh tearing and the quiet shrieks of the creature, but still, it won’t give up.
“This is insane,” I whisper. “Why are you doing this?” I howl.
A hand closes on the nape of my neck hard and pulls me backwards. I step away from Frost, one foot at a time. Dragged away from him.
“Let me go,” I say quietly.
The hands tighten, and I gasp, drawing all four of my guys’ attention. They go still. Stix snags the creature and hurls it towards the shadows. Leaving just the person who has hold of me and the four of them.
One human shouldn’t be so bad.
“Let her go,” Wilder growls.
The person behind me starts to laugh, and my ears strain, my whole body going still. There is no way. No way.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
“Not until they do as they’re told.”
I close my eyes. No, it can’t be. “What are you doing? Don’t do this.” Still, I doubt myself, doubt my mind and memory.
The hand moves up to my hair, threading through it and pulling it so tight that my eyes water. My head is jerked back, and I stare into a face as familiar as my own.
“Grant,” I whisper. “You’re alive?”
“Hey, little sister.”
“You died,” I stutter.
He smiles, the same smile I’ve seen a million times before, but, for the first time, he looks like a stranger.
“Now, I think we need to have a little conversation about just what exactly you think you’re doing.” Grant smirks at me, but it’s cruel, and, for the first time, I’m scared.
I’m scared about what it all means, but I’m scared for Stix, Puppy, Wilder, and Frost. Because this Grant isn’t human.
Chapter 39
Stix
The man holding her isn’t a man. I mean, he looks like a human, but there are subtle differences, signs that give him away. His eyes are a little too big, his fingers have an extra set of joints. He’s pretty, too pretty.
How did we miss this?
Ah, yes, because they splattered him onto the pavement. We didn’t think to look at the body, and I doubt Puppy counted the corpses before he ate them.
This is the Grant, though, the friend, the brother. Has he always been this? Did she know? No, her shock is real. Becky looks sick. She had no idea.
