Page 3 of Monsters After Dark

He didn’t answer—but he really didn’t need to, because in place of the terrifying-but-handsome-human now stood a monster.

It was still shaped like a person, but bigger, with dark, red-tinted scales covering its body and black, curled horns atop its head. Where Kurt’s irises had been black before, now his sclera were too, stained like ink on bone.

It smiled at me.

I screamed. I screamed until my throat ached and the numb terror freezing me in place finally released its grip on my body. Mindlessly I hurled myself off the bed and threw myself toward the door—but the second my hand touched the doorknob, something dark closed around me and held me tight.

I wheezed a sob of terror, fighting with everything I had to free myself, but no matter how much I strained, I couldn’t move.

“Do you believe me now? Or should I devour one of your roommates in front of you to make sure we’re on the same page here?”

“N-No. I b-believe you!” I stuttered. “Don’t—don’t hurt anyone. P-Please!”

“Good.” The darkness released me. I slumped against the door, too shaken to mount another escape attempt.

“Then perhaps we can talk business now, hmm? The drive from Cincinnati was a pain.” A strong, warm hand grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me to turn around. To face him.

I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut in a childish attempt at not seeing that thing again. It was that or wet myself.

Kurt huffed a sigh and shifted his grip from my shoulder to my chin, shaking my jaw enough to make my teeth clatter. “Come now, I don’t have all night.”

A demon. I’d summoned a demon. My mind kept circling back to that impossible fact, my brain entirely short-circuiting at my attempt at grasping that demons were real.

This had to be some fucked-up fever dream.

Slowly, I cracked an eye open.

Kurt was still standing in front of me—way too close, but thankfully he once again looked very much human. Had I just… hallucinated a monster in his place?

As if triggered by my thoughts, the black of Kurt’s irises bled into the whites—a small reminder of what lay underneath his pale skin.

Okay. Not a fever dream.

“Don’t, please, don’t!” I babbled.

Kurt gave me another of those slanted smiles, but his eyes reverted to normal—or at least to their human states, which possibly wasn’t normal for him. Christ.

“Now that we have that settled…” The demon sauntered back to my salt-circle, giving me room to breathe. He nudged a foot at the white grains again. “What did you call me for, darling? Need money? Or do you desire the favor of a young man’s heart? Perhaps you want someone dead? This Barry character, mayhap?”

“Money,” I whispered. “Just… Just the money.”

Kurt appraised my small room and tsked. “How… unsurprising. But your wish is my command. How much do you need?”

It was only then that the realization that my harebrained plan of summoning a demon to save my ass from the Russian mob… had actually worked.

There was an actual demon in my bedroom… and he was asking me how much money I wanted, like a leather-clad genie. Bless Barry and whatever goth-y acquaintance he’d stolen that book from.

Despite my fear of his true face, my heart gave a thud of pained relief.

“Can I… Can I just say a number, and you’ll provide it?” I asked. It sounded too good to be true, but…

“Sure can, darling,” Kurt said, his smile widening without warming a single degree.

“Okay. A hundred million, then,” I said, expecting him to laugh. “Wait—two hundred million.”

He chuffed through his nose, walked to my makeshift bedside table, and snapped his fingers. Smoke puffed around his hand, and a sheet of paper and an old-fashioned pen appeared on the rickety chair.

Magic.Actual magic. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, what with having just learned that demons were real, but seeing non-traumatizing proof of this man’s otherness was mesmerizing.

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