Page 12 of Monster Whisperer
“Kimon is fighting tonight, right?”
“I am. We never know who we are up against until we step into the area. Hades used to tell us, but then Demeter found out, and now it’s this big secret.”
“Tell me why all the Underworld hasn’t risen up against her.”
“I’ll tell you exactly why. It’s not that she outnumbers us or that only the monsters here can beat her. The entire Underworld loves Persephone. She’s our queen. The only reason the monsters surrendered to Demeter’s army was that they had her at knifepoint. We could have slaughtered them, but I saw the look in Demeter’s eyes. She would have killed her daughter because she didn’t want to return home.
“Demeter went on a smear campaign after that. She said she came to get Persephone because she couldn’t bear to stay in the Underworld anymore. Hades found out and sent us to capture her. She said her army subdued us with these collars, but we gravely injured Persephone. Our own people come to bet on these fights because they think we hurt her, and they won’t help Hades fight back because they think he sent us to keep her against her will,”Kimon said.
“Of course, if Persephone could get away from Demeter, she could rally everyone to push her mother and her army out. Everyone is just accepting Demeter’s draughts and famine in Elysian Fields because they think it’s just a mother’s reaction to her daughter getting hurt. That bitch has been planning this for a long time. Eventually, I will get this collar off, and she’ll end up in my web.”
“I hate your web-slinging guts, but I’d peck that bitch’s eye out just to help you.”
Tryphon’s tentacle was creeping just a little bit too high. I gently pushed it down.
“You’re both wrong. The wicked belong to the Kraken.”
Okay, I never had to give anyone in my exam room lessons on sharing who they would kill. I kind of wanted to kill Demeter myself. Sure, these monsters were scary looking, but they were pretty magnificent looking if you really looked at them.
Kimon was over seven feet tall and ripped with muscle. He looked like some sort of male model if you didn’t count the fact that he had a bull’s head. His horns looked deadly, and sometimes when he got angry talking about Demeter, he blew smoke out of his nose. That ring through his snout looked like it hurt like hell.
I’d never been afraid of spiders. Most of them ate pests and didn’t bother people. They were beautiful in a way. They were designed to ensnare their prey and keep them there until they were ready to eat them.
I’d never seen a Black Widow spider as big as Pavlina before. If there were any spiders I would be afraid to come into contact with, it would be a Black Widow. But I found Pavlina beautiful in a way. She was so black it was like looking into the void except for the red hourglass on her belly. The red was so vivid against her inky black body.
Sure, her pinchers looked like they could snap me in half before her venom did the job. If you looked at her just from a design standpoint, she was a perfect, deadly killing machine, and I had no idea why that was so exciting. She could easily decide to kill me.
Demos was beautiful enough that he probably deserved to have a little bit of the ego he had. Not all of it. He could be an insufferable asshole, and I didn’t like the way he talked down to me, but I could appreciate that he was one pretty bird.
He was bigger than any bird I knew of in existence back home, and he was way more colorful. His feathers were an explosion of reds, oranges, and yellows, so he looked like moving fire even if he didn’t give off sparks when he wanted to make a point.
Even his eyes looked like fire. They were golden with red and yellow flecks. They looked like some sort of expensive gem forged in fire. Of course, even if I was looking at a giant bird, he still managed to look at me with total disdain.
I hadn’t got a full view of Tryphon because he was just that massive. He could slither into the hallway and join us, and he always seemed to want to touch me. There was something oddly comforting about his smooth, wet tentacle around my ankle, and that probably said something fucked up about me. Tryphon was getting a little too bold with his tentacles, and sometimes, they crept up a little too high.
Maybe it was fucked up. I’d always liked dogs and cats better than I liked people, even if dogs tended to over share, and cats could be snobby. I’d only just met them, but I liked these monsters better than most people back home.
Sure, they were all a little murdery, and some of them ate people. They could change their mind and eat me at any minute, but I just got the vibe they wouldn’t.
They needed me for more than just tending to their wounds after a fight. I could keep them as comfortable as I could in this nasty jail, and I could keep them company.
And I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when, but I would find a way for them to get their revenge on Demeter.
Chapter 9
River
I
knew what they wanted. They wanted to rescue their queen and kill the evil witch. But who were my new monster friends? I dragged a chair to the center of the cells and tried to get comfortable. Tryphon wouldn’t let me sit unless he had one tentacle wrapped around my ankle and another around my waist. It was kind of like a weird sea monster hug.
I tried to sit where I could see all of them. They were stuck in these cells. They didn’t just need someone to talk to. They needed to be seen other than just fighting to the death.
“Tell me about all of you.”
“We are more interested in you, baby bird. It’s not every day we get a visitor, and it’s not every day they can hear us.”
“Yes, pretty thing. Tell us all about you,”Pavlina purred.
