day you’ll listen. One day you’ll know your place is most certainly not here,” Dirk gestured at the rundown motor home we lived in. As a paid assassin, I could afford a life of luxury, but I felt most comfortable in a trailer similar to the dump I grew up in with Tiffany.
I knew where my head was. I wasn’t—I’m not—ready to change. My appetite, body, strength, and immortality were different. But giving up my humanity? That meant becoming a monster—something I wasn’t ready for.
I was stubborn. Really fucking stubborn. I’d been denying those little shits for decades. There wasn’t anything—or anyone—that would change my ways. I could continue rejecting their ways for centuries.
If I decided to live that long.
Pulling a cigarette from the pack on the table, I lit it and leaned back against the sofa cushion. I blew out a smoke ring, and Marty said, “Are you going to the human festival?”
“Ain’t got nothing to do with me,” I said, inhaling more smoke. What did it matter? My body didn’t succumb to sickness and disease the way humans did.
“It’s been years since I heard of the festival,” Marty murmured with a slight irksome thrill in his voice.
The witch, Melinda, had made it clear the festival was a twisted tradition that had to be stopped. So why was the shithead looking all dreamy, as if he were thinking of a faraway place? “Should I kill you, Marty?”
He turned his gaze to me and quickly bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Sire—I mean, Boss. I know what’s allowed and not allowed. The festival is a horrid thing, but if it’s the beginning of the end… What if such a thing reaches this world?”
“Like I said, ain’t got nothing to do with me,” I said more sternly.
“The disease and strange happenings in the human world are evidence it’s coming,” Dirk muttered. “In time, the darkness will reach every corner of both worlds.”
I gritted my teeth before shoving the cigarette between my lips and inhaling sharply. Dirk watched me with his beady beige eyes and smirked the second I stood. If he kept it up, I would shove his ass in the trash can.
Smug demon.
“Where are you going?” Wallis asked as he followed me, dragging his doll behind him.
“To the store.”
“Yes! I need more Fruity Pebbles,” said Marty.
“No. You’re all staying here.”
“Try not to get lost down there,” Dirk added.
I ignored him.
For a nasty gremlin, he always seemed to know my every move.
______
It had been a long time since I’d been to the City of the Dead. On my first trip, I met a warlock who offered to escort me to the Underworld. Within five minutes, I knew my curiosity had been a mistake. I didn’t belong there. Considering it took me a decade to get used to my own reaping form, the sights I saw weren’t anything I’d ever get used to.
Humanlike men and women sporting tentacles, multiple eyes, and rows and rows of pointy teeth. Everything from ogres to banshees—and of course gremlins—occupied the territory.
That was how I’d met Wallis, Dirk, and Marty.
Wallis humped a dead demon in the middle of the street, and I almost tripped over them. The putrid creature hammered his miniscule hips into the deceased’s open mouth. I couldn’t forget the vacant stare on the dead male’s face. Wallis’s actions were so disgusting that I grabbed him by the neck and squeezed. The ugly creature looked into my eyes and instead of screaming, he flashed his jagged black-spotted teeth and smiled. “Sire, I’ve found you at last.”
“Finally.” Dirk, perched on a windowsill watching Wallis, jumped down and lumbered toward us. With his arms crossed and narrowed gaze, I assumed he was their leader. “We’ve been waiting a long time for you to find us.”
“Master!” Marty ran out of a shop, threw himself to the ground, and bowed at my feet.
I had been so confused by their responses I dropped Wallis to the ground.
And the rest was history…
No matter how much I threatened or left them somewhere—I tried hundreds of times—they always, always found their way back to me. According to them, a bond formed when we met. The connection enabled them to find me no matter where I went.
For some strange reason, no matter how frustrated I got, I couldn’t kill them either. The nasty fiends probably put some sort of hex on me the night we met. Why else hadn’t I killed Wallis whenever he did something disgusting? It was my fucking luck to be the