Page 8 of My Monster's Keeper
Becky
In 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.”
