Page 1 of The Monsters We Are
Chapter One
“Ew, I just licked at the cotton candy sticking to my upper lip and got a taste of my face paint.” Anabel shuddered, sticking out her tongue. “Tastes like chalk.”
“Why did you choose to have your face painted in that stereotypical green witch style anyway?” Wynter Dellavale asked, eyeing her coven member curiously.
“Well, thisisan ‘It’s almost Halloween’ party.”
“And you’re dressed in a blood-stained cheerleader’s outfit. The face paint doesn’t go with the look.”
“Yes, but everyone will now assume that the boils and hairy warts on my face are fake.”
Wynter felt her brow crease. “No, they still look real.” They wouldn’t be there at all if the blonde didn’t use herself as a trial subject when she created new potions. Some caused all kinds of aftereffects. Rashes. Hallucinations. Bad guts. Perhaps even the belief that you were the reincarnation of Bloody Mary . . . unless Anabel’s claim to be exactly that was in fact true. Her souldidhave the ability to retain all her memories from her past lives, to be fair.
Wynter sighed. “If you’d just stop experimenting—”
“I know, I know,” said Anabel with a flap of her hand.
“And yet, you keep doing it.”
The blonde’s back straightened. “Excuse me, I’m not the only person here who has bad habits.”
Xavier’s brow knitted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Anabel sniffed at him. “It meansyoulie all the time for no real reason. Hattie is always asking random people embarrassing questions about sex. Delilah keeps cooking up self-proclaimed karma potions that will one day get her shanked. And Wynter keeps coming back to life every time she dies—part of being a revenant, yeah, but it’s still freaky. So, you know, I don’t think any of you should be throwing stones at my glass house.”
“I’m sensing you’re expecting us to be fair,” said Xavier. “Why?”
Anabel plucked at her skirt. “I guess I thought it would be a nice change.”
“You reached too high,” he told her, scratching at his head with a grimace. “Christ, could no one have warned me that the hair chalk makes your scalp itch like a mother?” His usual tousled brown hair had been slicked back and colored lime green to go with his outfit.
“You think chalk is bad, try wearing a veil,” grumbled Hattie. “I forgot how uncomfortable they are.”
“One would think, after the amount of times you’ve been a bride, that you would have remembered,” Delilah said to her. “But then, one would also think that you’d have chosen divorce over murder, even if you do insist on the first being a sin while the latter is somehow excusable.”
Hattie shrugged. “Divorce is too lengthy a process. It was quicker to just . . . help them pass on.”
Snorting, Wynter shook her head. The woman spoke like she’d arranged for her ex-husbands to die peacefully in their sleep but, yeah, it hadn’t quite played out that way. Which was why it was weirding Wynter and the others out that Hattie was dressed like a bride right now.
Wynter and her group hadn’t been a coven for very long, having only met for the first time when they’d been kidnapped by bounty hunters who she later killed. Well, to be more exact, it was the monster that lived inside her who was responsible for the deaths.
The position of Priestess hadn’t been something Wynter ever coveted. She’d resisted for a while, just as she’d resisted officially proclaiming them a coven—one that Delilah had named the Bloodrose Coven. But it had been a pointless resistance. Still, they were more of a family. A family with rather dysfunctional dynamics and a streak of crazy that couldn’t be tamed.
Hearing squeals, Wynter looked to see a mechanical hand zooming across the floor, scaring the dancers. She fingered her renaissance-style gothic gown as she glanced around. She had no idea whose idea it was to temporarily convert the warehouse into a cemetery-themed bar, but she saluted them. The dim lighting and dry ice machine made the place feel dark, chilly, and unwelcoming. Fake tombstones, dead flowers, hanging cobwebs, and open standing caskets revealing rubber skeletons added to the creepy factor.
Most patrons were in fancy dress, and many had had their faces painted. Most had also plied themselves with alcohol. They stood around in groups, danced on the manmade dancefloor, tackled iconic Halloween songs on the karaoke—most of which were from the 70s and 80s—or even played bowling with pumpkins at the other side of the warehouse.
The building normally stored vehicles—all of which were now parked in driveways or at curbs around the town that was smack bam in the middle of no man’s land. Woods, lakes, and mountains bordered the town. Varying types of houses were situated around it. Stores, bars, and restaurants could be found at the pretty plaza. Beyond those were warehouses, utility structures, and pastureland.
The town was vastly different from the medieval city below them, where many residents lived, including the Ancients—seven beings who’d founded Devil’s Cradle. Beings who could also grant people all sorts of things in exchange for their soul. Not weird at all.
The badlands landscape surrounding the town was wild and untamed with the hills, spires, and crooks. So very different from the lushly forested town of Aeon—a place she’d once lived before the immortal beings that ruled it unfairly decided to end her life . . . at which point she’d cursed the land with a wasting disease before fleeing.
It could be said that she was somewhat unforgiving.
Wynter took another sip of her warm cider. “Gotta say, as special events go, this is way better than that midnight 5k fancy dress run we did last night.”
“I agree,” said Hattie, reaching beneath her veil to adjust her fading red hair. “That race was brutal. My feet are still killing me.”