Free Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs Page A

lift my shades to get a better look.
    Plenty of gyrating hips, glitter-enhanced cleavage, and titanium body piercings, but no griffin.
    After winding across the stage to the back wall, I leap down, landing Doc Martens–first in the doorway that looks onto the techno room. It’s almost as full as the main room, but with a tenth the lighting.
    â€œWhy do they always go for the back rooms?”
    Easier to lure some lonely, heartbroken, or otherwise desperate human into a dark corner, I suppose. Synergy’s back room is darker than the deepest corner of Hades. Even if the monsters had no veil, no one would notice them standing two feet away in this black hole.
    I sniff test the room and discover that the smell is coming from outside, from the open door leading onto the small courtyard to the right. As soon as I step out under the stars, I see it. Prowling around a pair of girls at a picnic table who look like they’ve been drinking something that didn’t come from the alcohol-free bar.
    They’re sitting ducks.
    I’m about to step through the doorway and introduce the griffin to a shiny pair of fangs when I catch a new scent.
    I stopped my scan of the courtyard when I spotted the griffin and the party girls, but as I complete my survey, I see the second beastie. A great big serpent thing covered in dark green and brown feathers.
    â€œWhat?”
    Before they spot me—or notice that I’ve spotted them—I duck back into the techno room to regroup. Two monsters? That’s impossible. They can only get out of their realm one at a time. It’s one of the first things Ursula taught me when I followed her out of that warehouse four years ago.
    She’d led the way to a nearby diner, not uttering another word to me until the waitress set a steaming bowl of stew at my place. Ursula waited until I had a spoonful in my mouth before saying, “I know you see monsters.”
    My only response was a brief hesitation before swallowing and taking another bite. If this lady was going to tell me I was nuts, just like Phil and Barb always did, I’d just take the hot meal and then take off.
    â€œI also know you are not insane.”
    At that point I didn’t think anything could shock me more. I set down the spoon and asked, “How do you know that?”
    â€œBecause,” she said with a warm smile, “I see them too.”
    I was wrong. That shocked the life out of me.
    â€œYou—” I couldn’t even speak. Someone like me. I never knew how much I wanted that—needed that—until right then. I balled my fists in my lap and asked, “What are we?”
    â€œYou belong to an elite lineage of guardians,” she explained. “Destined to hunt down the monsters that escape into our realm and send them back to theirs.”
    I can’t remember how long we sat in that diner, me asking questions and her answering. It felt like years. Sometimes her answers were cryptic; some questions she refused to answer at all, promising all would be revealed in time.
    As she explained about my heritage, about my destiny to keep the human world safe from the kind of monsters most people think exist only in ancient myths, I was scared. Fine, terrified. How could I, a lone twelve-year-old girl, stop all these awful things from prowling the streets?
    She smiled at me, her gray eyes full of caring and compassion—two emotions that had been in short supply when she found me living on the street—and said, “You are stronger than you think.”
    â€œBut what if they surround me?” I asked. “What if a bunch of them gang up on me? I could never win.”
    She reached out with her elegantly wrinkled hand and gently patted mine. “Millennia ago, when your ancient ancestor Medusa was slain, the doorway to the abyss was left inadequately guarded and the world faced the great danger of being overrun by monsters. The gods convened a council to decide