Page 14 of Stone Temptation
“And stay down there!” the mermaid yelled.
The protection magic didn’t kill a monster. Only the weapons and strength of a gargoyle did.
I sagged with relief. “Thank God for that.”
Maren swam over to me. “Are you okay, darling?”
“All good. Thanks for dealing with her.”
“Oh, Luke. There is no need to always praise my blessed nature.”
Modesty wasn’t her strong point.
I got back to the business of driving to work, time slipping away from me. I flipped the radio on, quickly switching off some Christmas song. This time of year was bad enough already. I didn’t need some festive tune adding to the grind of the season.
Maybe when Finn returned, I’d allow “Jingle Bells” back into my life.
There were some instances when monsters did get a human to remove their protection, leaving them open to two types of doom—a monster would either devour human flesh or consume a human soul. The latter misfortune cursed the unlucky human, transforming them into a terror.
Like Finn.
Terrors were soulless killing machines with the ability to smash gargoyle magic. Vicious, wild, and unkillable, they were perfect tools for monsters. Only, they came at the price of a monster’s life. Devouring a human soul poisoned a monster, killing it quickly—some weird monster magic then leaving the human cursed and immortal.
There were terror houses in every town and city to secure terrors while the gargoyles tried to figure out a way to either save them or end them. Finn waited for me in the huge house on the eastern edge of town, the emerald glow of its roof viewable from the top of my lighthouse.
I never looked and always tuned out the agonized cries of the prisoners in the dead of night.
A second octopus monster appeared, keeping pace with the car on rolling tentacles. Purple this time, the fish heads lime green.
“Come swim! Come swim!” The heads cackled, the slimy tentacles pulsating.
Maren groaned.
“Ignore them,” I said.
Mote spirits loved a monster scrap as much as the gargoyle knights.
“We swim!” the monster declared. “Come swim. Come swim.”
I drove on, turning up the radio. The monster followed, hurling abuse, calling me ugly, a boil on all existence, a worthless piece of seagull shit.
Nice.
“So terribly rude.” Maren looked ready to blow.
“Ignore it.”
More insults came my way.
“How?” she said.
“Water off a duck’s back.”
“I am no duck.”
“Don’t rise to it. You’re above that crap.”
Maren broke a minute later, after the monster got particularly rude, scraping the bottom of the barrel for insults. She launched herself out of the car, tail-slapping the tentacled bastard off the cliff.