Page 19 of Monsters of Midlife

“I’m not going to go with you.” She said it like I would listen to her

“It’s not safe here,” I ground the words out.

“And I’m supposed to think it’s safe with you?” she asked. “All this crap started when you came back into my life. You can’t come in here with your half-truths and lies and just expect me to drop everything and come with you.”

She turned and looked at the pit, her eyes wide with shock as she realized her house was gone. “What happened?” She asked softly.

“Looks like an earthquake,” I said gruffly, stepping toward the limo and motioning her toward it. She was so damn stubborn. She was completely ignoring me. Instead, she started to walk toward the edge of the hole.

“Caroline, get back! It’s not safe.” I insisted.

She didn’t pay any attention to me. Instead, she started clambering over the rocks.

“It’s completely unnatural,” she said, standing on top of the rocks and looking up and down the street. “Nothing happened to anybody else’s house.”

I heard a popping sound that heralded the arrival of Ratchet. I glanced over into the shadows of a nearby cluster of trees. We used shadows to teleport between locations. I had traveled from the club in the shadows of the same trees, the limo making its way separately. My driver, Danny, was a satyr; he used to run with Tony Furlan’s crowd on the West Coast until he’d gotten married and wanted to settle down. I kept him with me; he was part bodyguard part driver. He stood now at the front of the limo, his arms folded over his chest, staring at the hole as he glanced over at me.

“Looks like demons, boss,” he said

I motioned for him to keep his voice down. The last thing I needed was Caroline listening to us talking about things like demons. She was out of earshot and Danny just shrugged. “Well, it does.”

“I know exactly what it looks like,” I said. A hole made by demons.

I stormed over to Caroline. “Get down off the stack of rocks.” I didn’t stop, though. I walked straight up to her. I realized she was going to put up a fight, but the truth was, there wasn’t any kind of a fight Caroline could put up that would stop me.

I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder; she immediately started beating on my back. “Put me down you big oaf!”

“We’ve resorted to stealing humans now?” Ratchet said as he walked up.

“Would you shut up?” I grumbled, stomping toward the car with Caroline over my shoulder.

“You’re kidnapping her?” Ratchet asked incredulously. “That’s your solution to keep her from Undirheim?”

“I can’t just leave her out here for anyone to come and get,” I pointed out. “Look what just happened.”

“He’s got a point,” Danny agreed with a shrug.

“I said I wasn’t going to go with you, and I meant it,” Caroline said as I set her down on the ground by the door to the limo.

“I heard what you said.” I stared at her blankly. “But it’s not enough to stop me. Even if you’re too stupid to see how to take care of yourself.”

“Too stupid?” she exclaimed. “Did you just call me stupid?”

“Technically I don’t think he did. He said you were being stupid, which is more like a case of the stupids,” Ratchet said.

“It’s an action not a condition,” Danny agreed.

Caroline’s gaze whipped between the two in exasperation.

“Looking at the state of that hole, I would have to agree with Ryder actually,” Ratchet said. “As much as I hate to. The pit is something else. It swallowed your house. Imagine what it would do to you. I don’t think this place is geologically safe.”

“I heard you say something about Undirheim. Isn’t that the Underworld?” Caroline looked directly at Ratchet.

“Here we go.” I muttered. Now we were going to have to fuck with her memory again. I hated doing that, but there’d been a couple of times when it had been necessary. The first time was when we had first made love. I’d gotten so carried away I’d let my monster form show. I couldn’t control it. The second time had been right before I left her; my anger had taken control of me, the chaos, and I had not been able to control my shift when she first told me she was leaving me. I realized not only was there nothing I could do about it, but I shouldn’t do anything about it. Us splitting up was the right decision, no matter how much it hurt. Still, my anger with the situation was uncontrollable. It had driven me wild and made it me shift in front of her as I punched a hole in the wall. I had seen how much it terrorized her and even though I had gotten rid of the memories for her, I would never forget the look on her face as she saw me in my monster form.

I was not fit for human consumption.

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