Rainer
Mama told me being in the middle of a fight that doesn’t concern you is a good way to become the first casualty. I’ve seen this firsthand.
The tension in the air has increased to something that’s borderline hostile. I track Drystan as he takes a seat on the mat he’d slept on last night. Keary follows him, continuing to rant.
“You don’t get to steal him away!” Keary hisses.
I wonder how long before he’s thrown out of the library by invisible forces again. Maybe that’s why his raging is being done through clenched teeth, hisses, and growls as opposed to shouting.
After Keary makes the same statement for the eighth time, Drystan sighs. “I didn’t steal him. I was bored, and you were being a tragic romance so I asked him if he wanted to go on an adventure.” He gives Keary a pointed look. “I asked him.”
“You can’t have him. Just stop. Both of you need to stop. He’s mine.”
“No,” I interrupt, making all three monsters turn to look at me. “I’m none of yours. You don’t own me. If that’s what you’re hoping for, you can go away. I don’t want or need your help.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Keary says. “You’re mine.”
“I heard you, and the answer is still no.”
His frustration turns to me as he huffs and stomps his way over. Kaida ruffles, her hackles rising, but I dig my fingers into her feathery fur to keep her there.
Keary’s hand closes around my neck, and before I can respond, he presses his mouth to mine.
Oh. Oh. He kisses me in a way that can only be described as possessive.
I feel his kiss throughout my entire body.
Not just in an arousing way but also in a way I can’t quite describe. I hear the word repeated though.
Mine.
His mouth comes off mine slowly, though he keeps my bottom lip and sucks on it. The sensation shivers its way through my body. “You’re. Mine,” he murmurs.
His hand flexes around my neck and… Am I angry at this possession? Do I want to argue?
“Oh, come on!” Drystan says, making me flinch. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Notto deadpans. “What kind of bullshit is this? Why him?”
I’m not entirely sure I’m following this argument. Deciding I don’t want to be a part of whatever’s going on between the three of them, I disentangle myself from Keary’s hold.
With Kaida at my side, I wander down an aisle and start perusing books. I can hear Keary’s furious but quiet outrage along with Drystan and Notto’s not quite as quiet responses. I don’t stop to read anything until I’m far enough away that I can’t hear them anymore.
“Are all monsters like this?” I ask Kaida.
She bows her head in what I think might be a yes.
***
The following days do not get better. I keep as much distance from them as I can. Sometimes, I think I’m going to go my own way so I can be free of the constant stress that their arguing brings. I’m not sure why I stay.
When Keary isn’t throwing random accusations at them about stealing me, telling them to go away, or insisting that he doesn’t want either of them, he’s at my side. We talk, and he tells me about the places we’re meandering through. I don’t hate his company.
By now, I’ve gathered that they’re all old. Really old. Drystan, who is over a hundred, is the youngest. Keary is somewhere just under two hundred, and Notto falls somewhere between them.
“How do you live so long?” I ask.
“We have good dental,” Keary teases. I shake my head.
“Honestly, there isn’t a ‘how’ that I can answer.
It’s all about genetics. Just as dogs tend to live shorter lives—ten years is average, right?
—humans’ average is sixty or so in this environment.
Before Silence destroyed the world and the human race, who had made a lot of medical advancements, they were living well into their eighties and nineties.
Monsters, depending on their species, can live for centuries.
We just don’t age the same way as humans do. ”
“There are humans inside that compound who claim to have been alive since before Silence killed everyone. How is that possible?” I counter.
“Monster magic,” he says, grinning.
I’m about to roll my eyes again. That’s not an answer. Keary already knows that’s my response, though, since he continues.
“But really, that’s what it is, right? Their lives are tied directly to their partners’, meaning their lifespans get longer. Their mortality slows down.”
“I feel like this is a dooming question, but what happens if their monster dies?”
“Monsters,” Keary corrects. “Plural. Monsters live in polyamorous family groups. It’s incredibly rare that there are only two monsters together.”
Huh. “Really?”
“Yep. Average tends to be five or six, but they get as small as three and as large as twelve.”
My eyes widen. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. Just wait until you meet some storms. Their family groups are enormous.”
“I—why? And just to clarify, you’re referring to family groups as lovers, not parents and children, right?”
Keary laughs. “Correct. Polyamorous families—so adults who have multiple romantic partners. I can give a lesson on what those relationships look like if you want because it’s not as simple as everyone fucking, but you asked another question. Which would you like the answer to first?”
Good question. I shake my head. “No idea. Just keep telling me things.”
He grins. “Storms have very large families because they’re filled with elemental power that feeds off each other.
People talk about the energy of a storm and how it gains power depending on the kind of storm and where it is.
But storms can combine and feed off each other’s energy, creating massive storm cells.
In the most basic of terms, storms come together until they reach their peak strength, then they’re considered the perfect storm. ”
“A perfect storm is…” I’m not sure how to ask the question or even what the question is. “The finality of their family limit? That sounds like a stupid question.”
Keary chuckles. “A complete family.”
“Yes. I think.”
He grins. “Correct. There’s a lot of feelings involved.
I’m not talking, like, emotional or romantic feelings but something more ethereal that’s dictated by our monstrous souls, right?
We know when we see someone that they’re our, uh, mates.
I guess. Like a pack of wolves, okay? But a pack of monsters instead.
You know when you’re missing a mate, and you know when you find a mate.
In the same way, you know when your family is complete.
In some cases, packs even know just how many mates they’re missing. ”
I shake my head. That’s wild.
“It’s also not optional,” Notto mutters from behind us. “Though some people like to pretend it is.”
I immediately feel Keary’s hackles rise as if he’s become one of the wolves he was just speaking about.
“Shh,” Drystan says, stepping between Notto and us, his hands out.
I stop and look at him, but he’s staring into the distance.
He has different horns today. They’re crazy and twisted.
I love them. There is certainly something sexy about these horns in particular, though I’m not going to pretend I know what it is.
A howl fills the air, though it’s distant. Not the kind of howl that’s called between members of a pack as they communicate. This one is unmistakably filled with pain.
“Is that an animal?” I ask.
“No. It’s a beast,” Notto says. “Come on.”
We take a left off the main road we’ve been walking on to follow the sounds of the beast. I question this decision, though only silently.
I’ve never encountered a beast that I felt comfortable enough to approach, especially when they were in pain.
If they’re in pain, that means something else is inflicting that pain.
Anything or anyone in pain is dangerous.
We walk for quite some time. All the while, the howls and snarls get louder. It isn’t until we’re practically on top of it that I realize it’s obviously being terrorized because its pained howls aren’t long and agonized, like they’re dying and crying.
They’re actively being hurt.
Interestingly, there’s only the sound of one beast, which means it’s not fighting with another.
“Is it caught in a trap?” I wonder, mostly to myself, but it ends up being asked out loud.
“Yes, but probably not in the way you mean,” Notto says.
Once again, I wonder why we’re moving toward it instead of away from it.
By the time we begin to see movement, I catch signs of other monsters. The fires. The chain link gate. The voices, though I can’t make out the words. Laughter.
Notto grips my wrist and pulls me behind a rotted-out car. We’re looking through the window with a direct line of sight to the beast. It’s wrapped in chains, and there are monsters surrounding it with weapons.
“Trying to muzzle it?” I ask. I must be seeing that incorrectly.
“The beasts were created by Silence. When they unleashed them into the world, they were controllable," Keary says.
“Until the beasts met their kryptonite—a shade named Rue who had created their image in drawings as a child. Her father, a director of Silence, used her drawings to manufacture these creatures, but he gave them a kill switch in an attempt to protect his daughter.”
“I feel like those are notes you took from the margins of a book, and I don’t have the full story,” I say.
Notto laughs quietly. “Rue overrode their loyalty. They no longer answer to anyone, including her, though they still won’t attack her.
They’ll move around her as if she’s not there at all.
If she throws herself in their path, they’ll make abrupt turns, even if that means running into a stone building. It’s wild and quite hilarious to see.”
“So these monsters here… What’re they doing?”
“That’s a pod,” Keary says. He grips my arm and points.
My heart stops dead in my chest as I stare at the familiar symbol. A sick feeling twists in my gut, threatening to make me vomit. I can’t look away.
“Is this the pod that killed your parents?”
I shake my head. I’m not sure how I know that, but I’m sure. The color in the center must not match what’s hidden deep in my memory. “That’s not them.”
“They’re probably trying to find a way to turn the switch back on,” Keary answers. “If they can control the beasts’ movements, they have massively dangerous weapons at their disposal. They don’t care how they find the switch.”
“We already know they will use whatever brutal methods they need to meet their goals,” Notto says.
I glance at Drystan. I haven’t spoken more than a couple words here and there to Notto or Drystan since the library. Keary has made himself a barrier between us.
“Do we do something?” I ask.
Notto holds up a little remote. “Already sent the coordinates home. It’ll be taken care of.”
My attention remains trained on the remote until he holds it in the palm of his hand. There are half a dozen buttons on it.
“They’re coded with different languages,” Notto tells me, “to report what we’ve found. It’s equipped with tracking, so not only does it send the message of what we’ve found but also where we found it. This button, the one I hit, said to them that in this spot, they’re messing with the beasts.”
“Messing with? Is that the technical term for what we’re seeing?” I ask.
He gives me an amused grin. “What we know is speculation since they don’t come to weekly meetings to report what they’re up to. We don’t really care what they’re up to. All we want is to stop them from doing it.”
Keary takes my hand, and we head back in the direction we came.
“If your base of monsters is actively hunting these pods, how are there still so many that exist?” I ask.
“I’m sure they recruit somehow. Maybe by force,” Keary says, shrugging. “They breed and train their offspring in the same mindset that they have.”
“How long before they’re all killed?”
“It’s a very big world, Rainer,” Notto says. I look over my shoulder and find his arm around Drystan’s shoulders. They’re walking kind of awkwardly because Drystan is turned into Notto’s side. “It’ll take some time to eliminate all the shit out there.”
“In reality, the sick, dark, evil things will never be fully gone,” Drystan says. “Everything has a balance, even the good and the bad. For every good out there, there’s an equal and opposite bad. No matter what we’re talking about. That’s what physics teaches us.”
I’m amused that he’s talking about physics when I’ve literally seen shit while at his side that physics says isn’t real.
“Let’s go find a house to occupy for the night,” Keary says. “It’s getting late, and my human is tired.”
This, of course, leads to more muttering and arguments. With a heavy sigh, I move ahead of the monsters and walk alone with Kaida, trying to tune out their constant bickering. Though my very existence tends to trigger their arguments, I’m not even a part of it. It’s exhausting.
I hope that the house we find is stable so I can lock myself in a room away from their noise for the night. I could use some peace.