Page 7 of Monsters of Midlife

I took a deep breath and turned away from the mirror. I pulled my curly brown hair back into what resembled a certain amount of order with a couple of hair clips. I looked like a total nerd, or like a librarian. Nothing was geekier than a cancer research scientist.

It didn’t matter what I wanted. There was no way this guy was going to be interested in me anyhow.

I pushed my way through the crowds in the town hall to find the pub. I hadn’t been out here in ages. Typically, this was an area where people came for tourist summer excursions with their children. It wasn’t my scene. I was a homebody. I didn’t like crowds. I didn’t like people in general, so I spent time in the lab.

I stopped for a moment, shooting Laney a text. “Why did you pick the Boston market?” I asked. She started to type something out and I was staring at my phone avidly when I heard a deep calm voice off to my left.

“Caroline?” The man said.

I jumped as I turned to look at him and my eyes grew wide. This guy was dangerously hot.

“Oh, hi,” I said, trying desperately to remember his name as I stared at him with my stomach in knots.

He extended his hand and shook my sweating palms. “I hope I didn’t startle you,” he said.

“No, no,” I lied wondering desperately how I was going to get through the next hour talking to this guy.

Chapter 5

RYDER

We left the Crown Hotel and decided to walk over to Antonio’s place, which was on the far side of town, far being a relative term. It only took us a minute to get to the bridge that ran over Cougar Creek itself.

“There’s a whole lot of demigod power working on that river,” I said in a quiet tone. I glanced up at O’Halloran’s bar with its rooftop terrace. I could see Helen’s blond hair shining in the light.

“It’s what you call using your powers for good,” Ratchet said.

“We use our powers for good,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to be questioned, certainly not now; we had other things to deal with. “We need to get to Antonio. He’s either going to be at his place with Chloe or he’s going to be up at The Estate.”

“My money is that he’s at The Estate,” Ratchet said.

“That’s where I’d be,” I said. The truth was I never wanted to be anywhere except with Caroline or fighting. When I wasn’t with her, I wanted to punch the shit out of everything I came into contact with. With her, I felt so peaceful and so loved and so calm; it made it hard to do my job. I did things others considered unsavory, but they didn’t bother me; my human self could easily justify the good that came from sending monsters back to the rift. It was not like I was killing them. Their bodies just disappeared here and returned to Torschpank, the native home for monstrous creatures, on the other side of the rift. Or sometimes they got stuck in the rift. That’s where the danger was. Monsters in the rift liked to cross to the human side and see how long they could get away with staying over here causing havoc. That was my job to see them back. Fortunately for me, there were a whole contention of monsters who knew that sometimes, if you entered the rift or crossed it, well, sometimes you never came back.

“Why don’t you go up to the estate and I’ll go check out Chloe’s house,” I said. “We’ll find out if anyone’s heard anything about her or these demons. So, help me God, if anything happens to her, everyone’s going to pay.”

“I have no doubt,” Ratchet agreed.

I shot him a glare, but it had no effect on him. He turned around and in a whisp of fire he was speeding towards The Estate. I walked leisurely over the creek, looking down into the cool blue waters of the Styx, knowing there were souls floating in the river but it was so well guarded by the powerful magic of the Cougar Creek Coven, they would never escape. Cougar Creek was a supernatural tourist attraction now, with everyone coming down, not just to see the Styx flowing above ground through the town, but to meet the Cougar Creek Coven. Their ability to thwart the demigoddess Styx and the Morel and bring peace had not gone unnoticed. There was no doubt in my mind that the powerful magic they had embodied had attracted supernatural visitors and created almost like a supernatural boom town.

The Witch’s Brew Café was buzzing as I walked by, but I kept my head low. I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself. I wanted to find out if there was a mark on Caroline, but I had to do it discreetly. I needed somebody who knew everybody but who wouldn’t let it be known I was interested in the life of a human.

Antonio was the last one who would ever tell his secrets. I had met Antonio in the wars in the deserts. I’d gone out to the gulf war because battles always attract rifts. The fabric that separates us from the monster world always gets agitated by large swathes of death. Knowing the war was breaking out meant we needed to get out there and stop it. For years and years, I just remembered fighting day and night against the beasts with hardly any respite. It was just fucking sand and hedonistic monsters taking advantage of it to terrorize humans.

Antonio answered at the first knock as if he was expecting me. How, I don’t know, but he seemed to have a sense of exactly the moment I would arrive.

“Hola amigo,” he said, greeting me with familiarity. I glared at him, not wanting to recognize the term of endearment. Didn’t seem to stop Antonio from treating me like I was his long-lost brother.

“Where is Chloe?” I asked, looking around their house. She was one human I was wary of. Well, she wasn’t human anymore; she been turned into a vampire while on the hunt of a case she’d gotten mixed up in, but it turned out she was one of the members of the Cougar Creek Coven. She’d helped them build their foundation and stay together through the hardest times. From the things I had seen with them, the challenges and rewards had both been great.

Antonio had saved Chloe’s life and stayed by her side ever since. I swallowed sharply at the thought of it. He had stayed by her side. If only I could do that with Caroline. I would never leave her but the world I was from was so much more dangerous than the mundane world she lived in I couldn’t expose her to the supernatural world. If there was one thing, I knew about battling evil of any kind, the larger you flew off in anger, the more destructive you were. That was the only way to deal with true evil. It was called karma, calculated. Unfortunately for me, it was my specialty. Dishing out karma to the monsters who tried to destroy earth one person at a time.

“This ring was given to me by a demon,” I said. “I want to know how he got it.”

“You put a lot of faith in me.” Antonio took the ring from my hand. “I like it,”

“We’re doing the same job,” I said. “You go after rogues just like I do, I simply specialize in monsters.”

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