Page 67 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I loved how the monsters carried me. Not because I couldn’t use my own two feet, but because it made me feel loved and wanted.

Like I was so important to them that they couldn’t stand to let me out of reach for longer than a second.

That was another foreign feeling. My few previous boyfriends had always been happy to leave when I told them to.

They’d called me unfeeling and emotionally closed-off. Too concerned with things besides their own happiness.

I knew that was true. When I’d tried dating in college, all of my focus had been on historical research into the paranormal, and finally, the fledgling version ofSpirit Squadhad eaten up the rest of the passion in my life.

When it came to men, I had no passion left over for them.

And now my monsters brought out those feelings in me. I wondered deep down if I had really been meant for humans at all, or if my attraction to the monsters and their reciprocity was somehow designed into the alignment of the universe.

I’d spent my life as a puzzle piece that had never fit anywhere, but I’d found my matching parts on Duskwood.

Voraal’s shadows glided silently over the dark floor, the runes flaring where he passed, and I tried to memorize the route he took.

But there was somethingoffabout the temple now. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

My nose twitched as a new smell wafted towards us. The temple’s sweet jasmine and incense smell had been permeated by something far less pleasant… the reek of rotting fish.

Voraal smelled it at the same time I did, letting out a feral hiss that almost made me recoil.

He put me down, shielding me from the thing that came lurching out from between the temple’s pillars, but I got a good look at it before he blocked me.

No—not atit. At least three things crept from the darkness, making burbling, liquid clicks to each other.

My mouth fell open as I took them in.

They had been human once. There was no denying the bipedal posture, or general humanoid form.

But they were unnatural, nothing like my monsters, who had seemed designed perfectly for their forms.

Silvery-blue scales grew from soft human flesh, and their faces were deformed. Round, plate-sized eyes dominated the sides of their heads, eyes as shiny and flat as a fish’s.

Every one of those shining yellow plates was focused on me.

“Dagonites,” Voraal growled, already growing in size. “Go, Juno. Find a door and flee.”

I had no idea what a Dagonite was, but the sensation of malice emanating from them was palpable. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these fish-like men wanted to do me harm.

“You dare intrude on a guardian’s domain?” he spat at the Dagonites, now twenty feet tall and more inhuman than ever. Pale fire crackled from his eyes and mouth, sending scorching sparks into the air.

Then he switched to the language of monsters, and one of the Dagonites cringed away.

But not far enough. Whoever they were, they were bold—one was trying to ease around Voraal to get at me.

“Go, lover,” he rumbled at me, looking down and casting the bright glare of that gaze on me. Before I had to avert my eyes from the sheer pain of it, I saw dust and shadows swirling around his head in a halo.

If Voraal was worried, I was worried.

So I obeyed, turning on my heel and dashing down another corridor.

I had no concept of the layout of this temple. I hit a dead end and had to rebound, turning right and narrowly avoiding the clawed fingers of a Dagonite that lunged from the shadows.

Its webbed feet slapped the stone floor as it followed, the rasping pants of the creature sounding like it came from underwater.

I pushed myself faster, calves screaming as I searched for the tell-tale sign of a door out of the Void.

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