by Simon Archer
Monster Girl Defense Force
Book 1
Simon Archer
Contents
Prologue
1. Christoff
2. Christoff
3. Rozmarin
4. Rozmarin
5. Christoff
6. Christoff
7. Sahar
8. Rozmarin
9. Christoff
10. Rozmarin
11. Christoff
12. Rachel
13. Sahar
14. Christoff
15. Christoff
16. Christoff
17. Rachel
18. Rozmarin
19. Christoff
20. Christoff
21. Rozmarin
22. Christoff
23. Christoff
24. Rozmarin
25. Sahar
26. Rozmarin
27. Christoff
28. Rozmarin
29. Rozmarin
30. Anix
31. Rachel
32. Christoff
33. Christoff
34. Rozmarin
35. Rozmarin
36. Christoff
37. Rozmarin
38. Anix
39. Rozmarin
40. Aerywin
41. Christoff
42. Rozmarin
43. Christoff
44. Christoff
Author’s Note
Prologue
Darkness settled over the village, and puffs of gray smoke billowed from the little chimneys of each house. This house, in particular, looked more like a run-down shack with a slouching, patchwork roof, but a soft and warm light emanated from the windows.
That light spilled out into the darkness as a woman opened the front door. She looked around, confused until she noticed the bundle at her feet. A sharp gasp escaped her, and she quickly scooped the thing up into her arms, cradling it.
It was a baby boy.
The woman peered into the night, looking up and down the street for any sign of who might have left this poor child on her doorstep, but she saw and heard nothing.
She looked down at this boy in her arms, instinctively rocking him side to side and cooing sweet nothings down to him. She kissed his forehead and smiled at the bundled baby, tears falling from her eyes.
Another figure appeared in the doorway, a man, and he stood next to the woman, wrapping a large arm around her shoulder.
“What is it?” He asked, and then he saw the baby in his wife’s arms.
“The gods have answered our prayers,” she replied, never taking her eyes off the baby.
The man pulled the blanket from the baby’s head, getting a better look at this strange child who had appeared outside his door. His big, rough hand, with surprising care, cupped the tiny boy’s head, and he rubbed the wisps of hair with his large thumb. Tears welled up in the man’s eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
“What shall we call him?” he asked the woman.
And as if she had this name pre-selected for her first son or if the name had magically formed in her thoughts, she replied, “Christoff. His name is Christoff.”
1
Christoff
Get in and get out.
That’s what I told myself as I shoved my arms through the holes of the oversized servant’s uniform. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the material was comfortable and breathable. The color was nice too, blue and silver with gold stitching.
Maybe I should consider becoming a Queen’s servant. The pay had to be better than pickpocketing and thievery, not to mention safer.
I shook my head, clearing the ridiculous thoughts from my mind. Of course, I couldn’t become a servant of the Queen. Humans rarely ever landed jobs in the castle at all. Still, I hoped that no one would question the average-looking man with questionable intentions soon to be roaming the halls of the Vampire Queen’s castle.
I sighed and looked into the dirty mirror of an abandoned public restroom that was less than a ten-minute walk from the castle’s entrance. Heavy bags sat beneath my hazel eyes, which betrayed my serious lack of sleep over the past year. Even though I was only twenty-two, I had become the sole provider for my adopted family. My father had passed away and left me to take care of my two younger siblings and a barely functional mother all by myself. Not long after my father died, my mother grew sick and was unable to do more than sleep and cuddle up around the fireplace in our tiny, depressingly run-down cottage that we could barely afford.
Smoothing down my wavy, light brown hair before it stuck up all over the place, I checked my appearance in the mirror one more time, straightening out my stolen uniform on my five-foot nine-inch frame. The blue and silver material hung loosely on my shoulders, the sleeves reaching a little too close to my elbow to be short-sleeved. The skin around my eyes was tight with tension and worry.
“If you smile, you can trick even yourself into being happy,” my mother used to say. Sometimes I caught her in front of the mirror in our sorry excuse of a bathroom, doing just that since my dad passed, though the brittle, desperate smile never quite reached her eyes.
I smiled at myself in the mirror to see if the tension would ease. It did not. I sighed and walked out the door without another glance.
Just another day on the job.
As I approached the western entrance to the castle, I marveled at its beauty. While massive security precautions protected the castles of the Medieval times like moats filled with dangerous, man-eating creatures, barbed wire fences, and stone walls, the security for the castle of the Queen of Constanta was far less… extravagant. Not because of a lack of resources, but because it was simply unnecessary. Not many dared pose a threat within the castle walls for fear of the Vampire Queen’s wrath.
Instead, most of the security effort was concentrated on the outskirts of the kingdom where a giant wall separated us from the rest of the world… and the zombies.
During history classes in school, we had learned of the virus that infected only humans. It made their flesh rot and fall off their bones before turning them into mindless, man-eating zombies with a hankering for human brains. The virus had wiped out well over half of the entire human population all across the globe, only slowing when the mysterious, gorgeous vampire, now known as the Vampire Queen, led the war against zombies with her war general, the Doom Bringer, at her side, and won.
While not all of the zombies were destroyed during the Great Purge, we humans who weren’t moaning, cannibalistic drama queens managed to form our own kingdoms, or kingdoms, as others called it, alongside our supernatural neighbors who had made their way out of the shadows after the fall of the Old World, and away from the beasts. Hence, the giant thirty-foot wall on the outskirts of the kingdom that very few humans or supernaturals dared to venture outside of.
The Queen’s castle sat atop a hill, surrounded sparsely by evergreen trees.
As I got closer, the uniform gray walls and blue roof became an intricate work of art, so proudly and carefully put together. During the spring and summer, vines grew along the castle’s walls, and color bloomed all throughout the kingdom.
The snow had begun to melt two full moons ago, so I didn’t have to bring an extra jacket to wear over my servant’s uniform. The toughest of the foliage had already begun to bloom, scattered among the courtyard and on the sodden ground. Soon, greenery would be bursting from every nook and cranny in the castle, over the trellises, and even over the rooftops. By winter, the foliage would fade, replaced by damp moss and cold stone.
I slipped through a heavy wooden door, supported by a cobblestone arch on the west end of the castle. A sigh of relief escaped my lips when I heard no voices in the stairwell, but I still made su
re to keep my head down, afraid to risk looking up.
After careful consideration, I chose midday for this mission because most of the servants would be in the Great Hall for lunch, including the few guards left to guard the castle, leaving my path clear. Red velvet covered the marble floor, and I briefly wished that I wasn’t wearing shoes so that I could feel the softness against my bare feet. When I made my way to the staircase, I finally looked up and froze in place. While the outside of the castle wasn’t unimpressive by any means, the inside was spectacular.
Oil lanterns lit the staircase well, and color and art covered the walls as if someone went on a massive, manic artistic spree. Some were paintings, some were drawings, and others were carvings. Most were clearly not professional works. Some looked like a five-year-old child drew them, and others were the creations of talented amateurs.
Warmth flooded my chest as I took a closer look at one of the childish drawings depicting the castle. One of the kingdom’s young subjects had signed it, and still, it was framed and displayed proudly on the wall as if Da Vinci himself painted it. This stairwell was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
And this was only the ground floor.
I slowly traced my fingers along the stone ridges, committing every detail to memory. Lost in an appreciative trance, the click of a door opening behind me made me look over my shoulder. What I found was a small, purple-skinned fairy with dainty, green, see-through wings fluttering out of the room. Her outfit was a twin to mine, and she returned my nervous smile with a polite nod of her own before fluttering up the staircase ahead of me without a second glance, her tiny feet never hitting the stairs.
When the faerie was out of sight, I breathed a sigh of relief and continued up the steps, running through the plan in my head once more. Get to the gallery on the fourth floor, steal the art piece, and get out, unnoticed and unscathed.
Yup, that was pretty much the extent of it. It was a dangerous mission, one that would probably cost me my life if I were to get caught, but I didn’t have a choice. My family was counting on me, and we desperately needed the money. While I didn’t enjoy stealing, I was good at it, and it put food on the table.
One of the West Village’s gallery owners was one of the few remaining members of an original native tribe who had settled in northern America long before my own ancestors, thousands of years ago. He was willing to pay a solid lump sum upfront if I could get back an old carving that his own ancestors had made long before the zombie virus was a flicker of a thought in anyone’s mind.
The problem was that the carving now hung in the Queen’s castle, and no one, no one, stole from the Queen. Still, the money that the old tribe member was willing to pay would feed my family for months, though not much more. Even that small sum was worth the risk.
That’s how I ended up alone in the Vampire Queen’s castle, a human thief hiding among the Queen’s loyal servants. I soothed my conscience by telling myself that it was technically not stealing since the carving belonged to the tribe in the first place.
Rumors had it that the Queen loved to collect art, that her art gallery was more akin to a museum than a gallery, and that it boasted artifacts from the Old World, before zombies, before walls and kingdoms separated by miles of zombie-infested land, and fear. Now, after the destruction that took place over the past seventy years, those relics were utterly priceless, a reminder of a different world.
I made my way up the spiraling stone steps and kept my head down. Up and up I went, past three landings until I found myself before the door to the fourth floor where I knew the Queen’s art gallery would be. With one last deep breath, I cracked the heavy wooden door open just enough to see if the hallway was clear.
Once again, the sheer beauty I witnessed blew me away. This time, a midnight blue velvet carpet ran along the giant hall. Tens of doors stood on either side. Only one of them, the fourth door to the right, had two guards stationed outside of it.
Of course, that was the door to the art gallery.
I rolled my eyes. The Queen sure loved her art.
While I was used to seeing supernatural creatures, I still balked at the impressive size of the two gargoyles standing outside of the gallery. While they weren’t fully armored, swords hung at their sides, and I knew they had to have other weapons hidden away in their midnight blue and silver guard uniforms.
Gargoyles were natural-born fighters and protectors. While not all of them became soldiers or guards in the Queen’s force, most did. It is said that long ago, humans carved them from stone to protect their people and to cast away evil, but as time went by, the people began to forsake them for their grotesque faces and demon-like forms until they were all but forgotten. When the angels fell from the sky, they brought those forsaken gargoyles to life as giant winged creatures with the choice to choose for themselves who and what they were willing to protect.
As my brain scrambled for some sort of distraction, my hand slipped on the door handle, and it made the smallest jangling sound. A human wouldn’t have heard a single thing, but those guards weren’t human. They were gargoyles, and they were made to defend and protect. Both of the giant’s heads whipped up at the same moment, and I knew there was no way I was making it out of here if I started to run now.
So, I did the only thing I could think of.
I burst through the door, the panic on my face not entirely forced. “Guards! Guards! Someone has gone after the Queen, hurry!” I yelled, praying to whoever was listening that this would work.
My prayers were answered. Without a single word, the two gargoyles immediately sprinted past me, their post forgotten.
Well, that was easy.
Satisfied with the small victory, I looked up and down the hall once more to check for more guards and found it empty. All clear. I tip-toed to the entrance of the art gallery and marveled at the giant door.
The entryway was an art piece in itself. The door boasted intricate carvings, which created a storyboard of history. It seemed to have different eras in time carved into it. The top sections represented the Old World. There were carvings representing the Medieval era of kings and knights and castles, to hunting scenes with native folk and children playing in fields of wildflowers.
The middle section looked like the twentieth century and early twenty-first, just before the virus took over with images of skyscrapers. And below that, carvings of mass destruction. Zombies and death and mutilated bodies littered the third and final section of the door. I couldn’t help but wonder why the Queen chose to leave out the current times, after the Great Purge. Perhaps they ran out of room.
I shrugged, pushing the thought aside. Now was not the time to question the Queen’s choice of decor.
I gave the door a try. To no surprise of mine, it was locked. I pulled out a metal pin that I kept hidden in my shoe and bent down to get a better angle on the lock. When you’re in the business of thievery long enough, you learn to pick a lock… fast.
Four and a half seconds later, the lock clicked. Dang. Half a second slower than my personal record.
I turned the handle and pushed. The door swung open silently, so I slipped in and closed it behind me. I flinched as the door loudly clicked shut, and after a moment of tense listening for alarmed voices or rushed footsteps down the hall, I heard nothing.
My shoulders relaxed.
As I turned to observe the room, the sweet smell of magic hung in the air, and my chest constricted. It smelled like incense and flowers. I hadn’t considered the possibility that the artifact might be protected by magic. Not that I hadn’t ever stolen artifacts that were magically protected before, but this was the Vampire Queen. She would have the very best sorcerers at her disposal to protect her treasure. I would need to be very careful.
Then, my breath hitched for a different reason. This wasn’t just a room. It was more like a great hall. I recalled all the rumors about the Queen having a museum in her castle, and none of those rumors did this gallery justice.
Tho
usands of pieces of art and artifacts from varying eras were displayed proudly on the walls and in display cases, and some hung from the ceiling. It was a grand assortment: swords, whole suits of armor, paintings, carvings, and even entire skeletons of extinct species.
I reached out to run my fingers over a steel helmet. I jerked my hand back as if the helmet were on fire, and I backed away from the display.
Focus, Chris. You need to find the carving.
I scanned the displays, moving deeper into the room until I found the piece I was looking for. It was a wooden carving formed into the shape of the sun with an elderly face in the middle, the nostrils of the wide nose flaring slightly. The chipped red and black paint glinting in the light beneath the glass case it sat in.
It was beautiful. Primitive. Ancient. Our people rarely ever made art like this anymore. The taste in art had changed over the generations, and wood was scarce.
This was truly a relic, and its people wanted it back.
I cocked my head at an angle so I could assess the display case. A standard iron lock held the case shut. The tightness in my chest loosened slightly. Maybe magic didn’t protect this one. Could I have gotten that lucky?
My hand shook as I reached into my shoe again to pull the metal pin from my sock, and I willed it to be steady as I lowered it to the lock. The pin slid in without any issues, and I relaxed a little. With a few moments of work, the lock clicked, and the lid of the glass case loosened.