Monsters Below (The Creatures We Crave Book 2) Read online

  Monsters Below

  THE CREATURES WE CRAVE

  BOOK TWO

  R.L. CAULDER

  WHITE RABBIT PUBLISHING

  Copyright © 2022 by R.L. Caulder

  R.L. Caulder reserves all rights to and/or involving this work as the author. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people either living or dead, or events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whether electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems, now known or hereinafter invented, without written permissions from the author, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by: Luminescence Covers

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Other books by R.L. Caulder

  About R.L. Caulder

  Bite of Loyalty

  Chapter One

  ALEXANDRA

  What the hell just happened?

  One minute I was with Alora and my monsters, looking forward to a normal night of partying and introducing my new friends to one another. The next, I was whisked away to potentially identify a woman at the barrier to the school grounds, who Estrid told me exuded an energy that was on par with my own, similar to that of a god.

  Goosebumps covered my skin from head to toe, and the hair on my arms stood on end as I sucked in deep breaths, trying to calm myself and my powers that surged in response to the threat of the unknown woman. Everything about her was venomous, from her cruel, taunting smirk all the way down to the black shadows swirling around her waist-length black hair. My hair fell back down to its normal place, the glowing energy dissipating as the shadows around my hands faded. The knot in my chest loosened, and I finally felt somewhat back to myself.

  “I get to deliver the good news to my family that the hope we’ve been waiting to crush for good has appeared.”

  To crush for good…Did she mean they intended to kill me? Everything she said was directed toward me…so that had to be it. Right?

  Looking at the dead ground where she had held her hand to it, I took note of how it seemed that she had somehow pumped a disease-like darkness into the plants, killing everything it touched. Threads of darkness spread through the area, stretching like the veins in our body, sucking the life and color out of an area about six feet in diameter.

  Elwin stared at it as he clutched one of his upper, claw-tipped hands to his chest, as if in pain from the havoc she’d wrought in the ground. In my stories, he was able to remove death and sickness from people around us. Maybe he could feel the same illness in the ground? Volleying my gaze back and forth between him, the ground, and Estrid, I tried to fit all the pieces together. Everything she said and the way she impacted Elwin…I couldn’t deny that we were all somehow tied together. But how?

  Running my fingers through my hair to the nape of my neck, I pulled on the ends lightly, taking comfort in the sting of pain rooting me to the moment. I blew a frustrated groan through pursed lips.

  “Alexandra, I asked you a question,” Estrid called out sharply, pulling my attention away from the darkness on the ground. She pinned me with a serious look before saying, “What do you know about Pandora’s box?”

  “Pandora’s box?” I parroted back to the Headmistress, confused by her question. My eyebrows scrunched together as I thought back to what I knew of Greek Mythology, which I wasn’t proud to admit wasn’t that much. Shrugging my shoulders, I offered, “I mean, I know the basics, I guess. When it was opened, it let out horrible curses into the world, right?”

  Estrid’s body was rigid, and her face was etched with concern, a frown marring her usually-jovial expression. Reaching out, she gripped my chin in her fingers, tilting my head back to look up at her as she nodded in response to my answer. Her bright blue eyes bore into the depths of my soul, as if she truly needed me to understand how important her next words would be. My stomach churned with anxiety as a thousand possibilities, each worse than the last, raced through my mind.

  It felt like she was about to change life as I knew it, and hell, I’d only known this life for a couple of days. It felt like the hits just kept on coming. Don’t get me wrong, I would be eternally grateful that my monsters had come to life and that I’d begun a life here at the academy with them. That alone was an incredible change in my life–one that had brought immense love and happiness to the forefront. But all I wanted was to be a normal student at this school. To enjoy the little things I’d never been able to experience in my life before.

  I wanted to have sleepovers and sneak my guys into my dorm.

  I wanted to have girls’ nights with Alora and Alina.

  I wanted to go to dances and parties and not feel like a social pariah for once in my life.

  And I knew that those things were so damn trivial to want, but I couldn’t help that a part of me longed for what I hadn’t had growing up. My inner child wanted to heal so that I could move on for good and focus on these incredible people in my life, leaving the bleak memories in the past where they belonged.

  As I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat, I took a deep breath, accepting that my fantasy life just wasn’t in the cards for me. In the depths of my soul, I felt that I was meant for so much more.

  “Hope was the last item left in the box, and from what she implied…” She trailed off, taking a deep breath, chest heaving before she blew it out in one large, deflating gust. “From what she implied, you are that hope, Alexandra. She implied she is one of the curses manifested into a living being and so are you.”

  The woman’s strange words echoed back in my mind.

  “Hello, little curse. I see you finally got let out of the box. How delicious that hope inside of you must taste. Why don’t you come out here so I can sample it?”

  My jaw dropped, mouth falling open as my lashes fluttered against my cheeks. Confusion swelled within me as I tried to wrap my brain around what Estrid had just told me. I had been prepared for a life changing revelation, but to be told I was a myth come to life? How was that even possible? There had to be another explanation.

  As I glanced back and forth from her to my monsters, I managed to stutter out, “M..Me? Hope? From inside Pandora's box?”

  I had so many questions.

  Who was going to help me learn how to control my powers if this was true and the only other beings of my kind were trying to kill me?

  Did that mean I truly had no birth family? Was I born from some old magic?

  What was my role in all of this?

  If I was what she claimed—which is a big fucking if—why was I only released twenty-one years ago? What caused that to occur now of all times, and why had I just been able to summon my monsters to life a few nights ago if I’d always held this power within me?

  Not to mention there was a huge plot hole in the story Estrid was spinning for me right now. If I was hope in any form, shouldn’t I inspire good in the world? From what I’ve seen in my short twenty-one years, I was nowhere close
to making the world better. The people I grew up surrounded by were vile and nasty, and every day spent around them was a day I lost a little more of my own hope. If I was the embodiment of the emotion, I sure was doing a shit job of spreading it.

  Memories from a conversation with Hannah came rushing to the surface, from when she had initially knocked on my door. She’d said, “You give me hope that the world isn’t as bad as it seems sometimes.”

  Had that just been a coincidence, or had I truly spread that kind of energy?

  The real question, though, was what existed within me for that woman and her family to crush? It seemed if they were the malevolent curses, they’d done a spectacular job of sinking their claws into the human realm, making it reek with the vile nature of the world. There was simply no way I could make a difference in a world seemingly so set on loving hatred.

  I startled, head jerking in Elwin’s direction at the sight of him suddenly pounding at the invisible barrier that separated him from the dead ground with both sets of his arms. Estrid broke away from me, a look of worry creasing her brows, to quickly intervene.

  “I have to heal it,” he cried out, pain seeping from his sorrowful tone when Estrid asked him to stop. His razor-sharp claws looked like they were trying to cut into the barrier to no avail.

  My heart squeezed at the agony I felt emanating from him, and I glanced at Kylo and Lucien helplessly, unsure of how to best help. Their gazes mirrored my own helplessness back at me as they shook their heads.

  “I cannot let you through that barrier, Elwin,” Estrid explained softly as she took steps toward him. She held her hands aloft in the air, like she was approaching a rabid animal. “We can’t risk that they might be waiting for you all to step onto the other side of the barrier. We aren’t sure of their plans, so I’d rather we play it safe. I’m responsible for keeping you all safe.”

  Her concerns were valid, and I knew deep down that if that woman appeared again, I wouldn’t be ready to fight her. It didn’t matter that my powers surged reflexively to her presence. I still had so much to learn in order to harness them enough to actually protect us. Even worse, if there were more people lying in wait with her, I would never stand a chance. From the energy she gave off, I could tell Estrid was incredibly powerful; but when we knew so little about our opponents, it just wasn’t a smart idea to go head first into a battle we weren’t absolutely certain we could win.

  Squinting, I fixed my gaze on a darker patch of ground closer to our side that I hadn’t seen previously. I noticed the veins of darkness spreading slowly toward us, seeping beneath the barrier ever so slightly. Rushing over, I pointed at the ground beneath Elwin, “Look! It’s still spreading. The barrier isn’t keeping it at bay.”

  Instantly, he dropped to the ground, closing his eyes as he placed his four hands to the once vibrant grass beneath him. Estrid took a few steps back, placing her arm out to try to move me back with her, but I shoved it to the side and stood my ground. I wouldn’t leave him to deal with whatever this was alone. This was my problem as well, and I’d be damned if I stood back and let my guys take the brunt of anything that went wrong. I’d stand by their side through hellfire and back.

  The emerald center of his chest began to glow brightly, and I flinched as he grunted with the strain of whatever he was doing to cure the earth. I knew from previous stories I’d written that he got sick from the death and disease he absorbed. For a few seconds, all I could do was hold my breath and wait to see if there was something I could do to help. I didn’t want to interject myself and possibly make this whole situation worse.

  Then his shadowed hands lifted, and with it came the very darkness the woman had injected into the ground, swirling around his forearms. The cloud of shadowy darkness grew in size as he continued extracting it from the ground.

  My hands flew to my open mouth as I watched the ground return to its natural state, grass green and flourishing. Her touch was completely removed from the land on both sides of the barrier. Elwin had extracted whatever disease she’d infused it with, drawing it from the ground and into himself.

  I knew deep down that this was his gift, but there was just something astonishing about seeing it happen in real life for the first time…

  Holy shit. He was incredible.

  “Fuck,” he hissed as he pushed back up to his full height. The added shadows swirled around him for a moment before siphoning directly into the center of his chest, like the shimmering emerald light was a portal for the darkness. “That was some nasty stuff.”

  “Elwin!” I exclaimed, closing the short distance between us to stare up at him as I placed my hands on the center of his chest. The second my skin made contact, I felt the well of power within my chest expanding, knocking the breath from me as it was filled. Once again, my powers surged to the surface, lifting my hair and causing it to float around me with the same purple energy from before. Shadows floated in the space where my hands rested on him.

  As I felt the power flowing between us, he shifted back to his human form and gripped my forearms, eyes blazing with concern. “Alexandra, are you okay? I feel you taking the pain from me.”

  I felt the energy shifting between us, but what I felt wasn’t pain. No, I felt extreme power with each drop into my bucket of energy. “I’m okay,” I breathed out, letting my hands fall, knuckles grazing his chest before resting my hands on his abdomen. “I really think it’s like what you all guessed it was before. It’s like I’m a conduit for whatever you feed on, and once I take it in, it transforms into raw energy inside of me. It doesn’t hurt right now–I just feel full to the brim of power, but I’m not sure how to expel any of it. I don’t think I could take much more.”

  If I did, I was almost certain the burning heat that consumed me when I’d taken power from all three of them would return, and I was in no rush to feel that pain again.

  Saying I didn’t know how to expel it wasn’t entirely true, though. I could take on more if needed, but I couldn’t contain it for long, and if I had to get rid of some of that energy…the only option I had in mind was completely indecent for the public eye. So far, I’d figured out that I could expel some of the energy back into my monsters through sexual acts. I knew Lucien would be more than happy to provide his assistance in the matter, regardless of whether we were in public or not. The library showed exactly what we brought out in each other, the boundaries we were willing to push together…Just the memory sent a rush of blood to my cheeks as my tongue darted out to wet my lips.

  My entire body tingled as I felt the connection between Elwin and I break, his shoulders sagging in relief as I removed the pain from him entirely. I felt the looming presence of my other two monsters at my back, showing silent support for us both.

  My thighs pressed together as desire built within me. The heady feeling of the power, and the thought of blowing off some of it with my monsters, was almost enough to send me toppling over the edge. The time I’d spent intimately with each of them was incredible and only further reaffirmed why I needed all three of them.

  Each of them filled an emotional need inside my heart, but they also helped me realize there were so many facets to who I was and what I needed physically as well. They continuously pushed my boundaries, encouraging me to explore these tantalizing new sides of myself with them. I wanted more of that exploration with them, no matter what shit was coming our way with this new development.

  “Fates,” I heard Estrid breathe out as if in awe, quickly dousing my arousal with the reminder of her presence. “I think I have an idea of what you all are now.”

  No way.

  Simultaneously, our heads whipped toward her, and I took a step forward.

  “What?” I demanded, my stomach instantly churning with anticipation.

  Deep down, I’d secretly been worried this whole time that they would disappear as quickly as they appeared in my dorm room, leaving me alone once more. To have information that would prove how real they were…It was invaluable. It would help
provide me peace of mind as well as ground my frazzled emotions.

  Her gaze fell to the ground as she rubbed her forehead, muttering to herself, “No, but that couldn’t be. Could it?”

  A scoff came from my chest, and I cocked my head to the side, pinning her with a stern look. “Estrid, you can’t just announce that in the most vague way possible and then retract it!”

  “She’s getting feisty,” Lucien purred from directly behind me. “I like it.”

  Leave it to my crazy monster to enjoy my agitated mood.

  “What do you think we are, Estrid?” Kylo asked as he came to my side, now in human form, and grabbed my hand. Giving it a squeeze, he smiled down at me before resting his gaze back on Estrid.

  I swore I would vomit from anxiety if she didn’t say whatever she was thinking in the next few seconds.

  “What I think you are would require a lot of research to confirm,” she warned, switching her eyes to meet all of ours one at a time.

  I bit my tongue, barely refraining from telling her to spit it out already.

  “It really would be quite exceptional,” she admitted, a single brow quirking toward her hairline as if lost in her thought. “I mean, truly…it would be a myth come to life.”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer, annoyance bubbling up through my core as I opened my mouth and uncharacteristically yelled, “Estrid! Just tell us!”

  “Right, right,” she murmured, rubbing her hands on her dress pants in what seemed like a nervous fidget. “From what the woman said, along with how she displayed her powers, and taking into consideration what you both just displayed…And not forgetting how you spoke of the conduit system…”