Damaged Gods (Monsters of Saint Mark's #1)

by K. C. Cross

  Pell was a little worried about this for a few days. He muttered some concerns regarding the balance sheet of the universe, but even he had to admit that it’s not our fault the book disappeared, and let it go.

  Tomas is another huge change at Saint Mark’s. First and foremost for him, there is no dragon version of himself in the dungeon. That smelly beast is gone. In fact, the smell is gone too. Everything that was down there is all gone.

  And not only does Tomas get to be the hot dragon chimera he was always meant to be, one hundred percent of the time, but when he and Pell leave the sanctuary to go get provisions, he gets his hot-guy human body back too.

  It’s crazy good luck.

  First and foremost for Pell, he’s not the only monster. This place is crawling with them now. And he’s got me, his dreamy wood-nymph better half. And when he leaves the sanctuary with Tomas, he turns human! So does Tomas! Though Pell isn’t as excited about it as Tomas is. And they still have their curfew or whatever. Can’t stay gone longer than a few hours. So there are no nightclub trips to Pittsburgh in Tomas’s future, but there are still plenty of things out here in the sticks for him to explore.

  Pia is back. She’s not the same as she was. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. I think this is because I’m her now. Or she is me. But she stays near me the same way she used to, so maybe it’s more natural this way? None of the other monsters can see her—not even Pell or Tomas—so she’s still my fluffy little personal hallucination.

  One day, perhaps, I will find a spell to make a bird talk and we will have another conversation. But it’s just as likely that she stays this way forever. She sings a lot, something she never did before. So I think she’s happy with the new arrangement.

  I haven’t seen the moths again. But that makes sense. I never really learned to control them, they just appeared when things got stressful and magic was my last resort. I actually hope they stay gone forever. I am satisfied with who I am at the moment so if they never come back, I’ll get over it.

  Almost everything about Saint Mark’s feels… easier now.

  There are a few small snags that we’re still getting used to. For me, it’s that I can’t leave the sanctuary boundary at all because my human form died. I have horns, and hooves, and hind legs at all times. So whatever magic is being used to glamour Pell and Tomas, it decided to skip me, even when I have my ring on. I will not be running errands for the monsters any time soon. I’m OK with this. I have no desire to see Sheriff Russ Roth again. And yes, he’s still there. When I banished him, or whatever, it knocked him back into town and put some kind of memory spell on him. Because Pell and Tomas have been to Granite Springs and bumped into him twice now and he just smiles and tips his hat as he passes. No clue who or what they are.

  But if I were to be in front of him, there’s no telling how that magic might go wrong.

  Better safe than sorry.

  As far as Grant goes—no one has seen or heard from him since Dragon Day.

  “What are you thinking so hard about?”

  I look over at Pell, smiling. We’re lying on a blanket down by the lake. It’s a nice late November afternoon and the sun is warm on my bare back. “Us.” It’s my standard answer because he’s always asking me this question. But I like the question and it’s a true answer too. “I’m just so… content these days. It’s like a dream, Pell.”

  We’re both on our stomachs, shoulder to shoulder. He bumps me a little. “Are you worried about waking up?”

  I was. Maybe for a day. But what’s the point? So I shake my head. “Nah. I’m not worried about anything. I’m just… counting my blessings. I feel like a princess who was rescued from the tower and now I’m living the full-on happily ever after.”

  Pell kisses me, then he flops onto his back and sighs with his eyes closed. Agreeing with me about my conclusions.

  There’s some good-natured yelling a little way down the lake shore. A group of monsters are playing Frisbee and one with wings just made a good catch. For whatever reason, all the monsters are allowed to walk through the back gate now. So the lake and the woods are part of their curse. They can’t find the country road that runs past the front of Saint Mark’s, but they don’t seem to care. They like it down here by the lake. They like to wander the forests. They like the hallways in the cathedral too. Lots of them spend time up there. But they do not like the tombs.

  Most of the monsters who came out of the dark wood with us hang out here instead of inside the sanctuary walls because even though everything is pretty great, there is still one more mystery: None of the monsters who came back with us were from the tombs. Those are all still locked. Only now, I can’t see the doors. No one can see the doors. It’s like we were banished from the tombs.

  I dunno. It’s weird.

  And Tarq didn’t come out of the dark wood with us, so he’s still in his tomb.

  And here’s another kinda fucked-up thing that’s weird. In fact, there’s maybe a lot of things about Saint Mark’s that are still weird—but this one’s the kicker.

  There are no girls. None. I’m talkin’ a zero number of those monsters are female.

  And it’s OK now because it’s only been a couple weeks. But eventually—what will they do? I mean, not even Pell was celibate this whole time. He went looking for human women.

  One day their satisfaction with freedom and their hesitation about the outside world will wear off at the same time and they will go looking for the out clause the same way I did.

  Which leads me to the final snag: The ring.

  It’s still here on my finger. Oh, heck yeah, it’s still here and it’s snugger than ever. No way is this thing coming off.

  But now there is one for every single monster in this place.

  We know this. We counted them.

  When we went looking for the Book of Debt, we found a bag of ancient silver rings in its place. This is how Tomas and Pell are able to walk out the gates and go to town. Everyone gets a magic ring.

  Which is kinda cool. In theory. Because the whole point of freedom is to be free, right?

  But they are monsters. So we didn’t give them the rings.

  It’s one thing for Pell and Tomas to leave. They’ve been living in this modern world the whole time. They kinda get it. At the very least, they understand that human society has rules.

  But do we really want to set fifty-seven chimera monsters loose in the world?

  Can you imagine Old Lady Blue down at MoMack’s Towin’ coming face to face with the monsters of Saint Mark’s?

  And here’s another weird thing. None of those rings are the same. They are all different.

  Tomas thinks this means they belong to different gods. And once the right monster is paired up with the right ring, there’s no telling what will happen. They could get super-magical powers, they could turn into maniacal evil beasts, or they could die, for all we know.

  Pell isn’t as sure about that god theory. He insists there were only twenty old gods involved in the chimera breeding program, so it must have some other meaning. Cults, maybe.

  There’s that word again.

  And even though I understand it better now—a cult is more like a club in the eyes of the ancient gods—it’s still unnerving.

  Then there are the doors.

  The poem over every door in the sanctuary went like this:

  A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone.

  A man, a girl, a place of stone.

  A tick of time, a last mistake.

  Keep them safe behind the gate.

  But now they all say this:

  A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone.

  A man, a girl, a place of stone.

  They fight, they fall, they rise again.

  A brand-new dawn, a new domain.

  What’s that about? Sounds a bit ominous if you ask me. Like perhaps there’s some kind of war brewing.

  But hey, what do I know? I’ve been a monster for a grand total of two weeks.

  “I’m hungry,�
�� Pell says, lazily rolling back over onto his stomach. “Wanna go grab a Pop-Tart with me?” He waggles his eyebrows, like we’re just going to mess around when we get in my cottage kitchen.

  And I’m up for that. So I say, “Sounds delicious.”

  We get up and he folds our blanket, then takes my hand and leads me along the lake shore. I admire the bright autumn colors of the leaves as we enter the parking lot and then pass through the gate.

  I’m still looking up at the trees when Pell suddenly stops on the path. I’m just about to ask him what’s up when I look up the hill towards the cathedral and see a huge, imposing dark monster standing at the top.

  “Oh, shit,” I say, just as Pell says, “Tarq!” He drops my hand and the blanket and then he’s practically running up the hill towards his friend.

  I follow, but with a lot less enthusiasm.

  They are hugging, and slapping each other on the back, and talking excitedly as I approach. “Look!” Pell beams. “Tarq!” Then he points at me. “You remember Pie, right, Tarq?”

  Tarq—still looking very much like the urban minotaur—nods his head and smiles. “Oh, I sure do.”

  “Hi,” I say, waving my hand a little. There are fifty-nine monsters in this sanctuary—sixty, if you include me—and none of them unsettle me the way this guy does. Not even the ones that have a healthy dose of Cyclops in their pedigree make me want to hide the way Tarq does.

  “What’s that?” Pell says, pointing to Tarq’s hand. And that’s when I see the book.

  Tarq doesn’t answer Pell. He just smiles at me.

  “Tarq?” Pell asks, maybe a little bit nervous. Like he’s starting to get the feeling that something is off here.

  I’m not starting to get that feeling, it’s already overwhelming me. Because Tarq isn’t holding just any old book.

  It’s the book.

  My book.

  The Book of Debt.

  “Like I told you, Pie,” Tarq finally says, “it all evens out in the wash.” He flips the book open and I don’t need to read the name at the top of the page to know what it says, but I look anyway.

  And it says, PIE.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK TWO…

  SAVAGE SAINTS

  GET IT HERE

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit. This is the last chapter in all my books where I get to have an opinion about what you just read. It’s never edited, I write them last minute… blah, blah blah. You know the drill.

  But I’ve been thinking about these EOBS’s lately because of all the crazy shit that’s happening in the world and how in like fifty years, or whatever, people might want to read journals about people who lived through this time in history. Maybe? For historical context? And I have always wanted to write a journal or have a diary but I’m just so not that… what’s the word?

  Reliable?

  Dependable?

  Responsible?

  I think all of these words fit.

  I like the idea of having a journal but I just don’t have the ability to follow through. Nor do I have the time to just casually ponder the day’s events each evening and then spend hours making pretty bullet-journal pages. If you do that, I wish I was you. I would love to be that kind of person, I’m just not.

  I once took part in this study in college. This woman was doing her master’s on blah, blah and she put an ad out on the college board or wherever the fuck it was I saw this ad, looking for women who “fit this certain profile” and I fit the certain profile and my life was a shit show of epic proportions at the time, so I contacted her. And she wrote her fucking master’s thesis about me. lol

  I’m literally laughing out loud as I type that this actually happened.

  I had a copy of it and everything. It was a serious hardcover book. Of course, I was anonymous. And I never read her thesis. Just… fuck that. But when we first met in person, she asked me to keep a journal so she could “get my honest thoughts” about things. And I told her to fuck right off. I do not journal.

  So I’ve known for a long time that future generations would never get my personal slant on things. I came to terms with it.

  But then, I started thinking, well, these End of Book Shits are kinda like personal essays. And I’ve got a shit ton of them by now. This is book number who-the-fuck-knows. And all but the very first couple of Junco books have an EOBS because I started writing these in March of 2013.

  So I guess the joke is on me, eh?

  Anyway.

  Here’s my point. My EOBS is about writing. Because this Damaged Gods book is a first.

  My very first paranormal romance.

  Junco was not paranormal romance. I could lie and say it was, but when I wrote Junco I didn’t even know what a genre was. That’s why that series has no real genre.

  Is it a romance? Not exactly.

  Is it paranormal? Not exactly.

  Is it sci-fi? Yeah. Mostly it is. Except for those “angels” right?

  So I guess it’s a sci-fi thriller. That’s what RJ, my one and only editor for almost ten years now, called it at the time. And she would know better than me. She has an actual degree in shit like that and I went to school to be a veterinarian then ended up with a masters in forensic toxicology. So I actually know nothing about the “serious world of publishing”.

  So after Junco I just went full-on sexy romantic suspense until the Anarchy supervillain series in 2016-ish. And then I got super bored in 2019 and decided to write the Harem Station series. I set out to write the most ridiculous sci-fi romance I could because have you seen the state of sci-fi romance lately? lol Yeah. It’s… a unique genre. And I figured, hell—let’s just give those boys two dicks. It felt like a really funny idea at the time. But that series got serious and… long.

  Harem Station was not paranormal. It really was a full-on sci-fi alien romance so this is why I got the KC Cross pen name. I didn’t want a pen name, but I could see the reviews in my future. And listen, while I generally give no fucks about reviews, I do like to meet expectations of readers. I didn’t want any of my one-click fans to one-click Booty Hunter and be like—what is this alien with two-dicks shit?

  So I gave myself a pen name and made that name the most prominent text on the cover so long-time readers would pause before they clicked and actually make sure this was a story they wanted.

  That worked, BTW. If I got any reviews complaining that readers were “tricked” I didn’t see them.

  I thought maybe I’d write three or four books in that series. But it turned into seven.

  And then, because I am always plotting six or seven stories in my head as I’m writing my current work in progress, I figured I was gonna write some vampires. I have a really cool “new take” on vampires. And that’s coming. I’ve been thinking about that story for about three or four years now and I’m just about to the point where I’m ready to get to work.

  But then I came up with this monster romance idea last summer. I had the actual Damaged Gods title for about two years now. So I had been thinking about that story—meaning, the story that went with that title. And it was always one girl who got stuck with monsters, but I couldn’t quite pull together how this whole scenario came to be until I stumbled into the subtitle, The Monsters of Saint Mark’s.

  I don’t think I’ve ever said this before in any other EOBS, but I always have a title for the story first and then I build the story off the title. Sometimes this doesn’t work. Sometimes the title gets tossed because the story went a different way. But most of the time it does work. Because once I get a title, or in this case, a subtitle, I have a direction.

  So this is how I ended up with this story of Pie, Pell, and Tomas.

  And I had the first scene. I had the gas station, the flyer on the bulletin board, and her first encounter with the sanctuary and the three people inside it.

  But I didn’t have anything after that. Nothing. I literally pulled this story out of my brain one page at a time once I sat down to seri
ously write it in January 2021. I didn’t even have the fucking bird. I think I added Pia about a week after I started writing.

  Writing Damaged Gods was exciting for me. I had just come off polishing up Sick Heart which is a very… I mean, it’s dark. But it’s also sweet. But it’s very serious. Very serious.

  So Damaged Gods was going to be my fun book.

  And I needed a fun book in the worst way—not because of Sick Heart. Though, that was part of it. But because I just spent two fucking years writing TWO seven-book series.

  Oh. My god.

  I don’t think people understand how hard it is to write a long series like Harem Station and Bossy Brothers, both of which have a stupid-complicated mystery running through all seven books, and then have to pull all those threads together in one final story.

  It’s pretty stressful. The time between Harem Station book six (Veiled Vixen) and Harem Station book seven (Uncrossed) was almost a year and a half. And every day when I woke up to write both Uncrossed and the last Bossy book, Luke, I was soooooooooo unmotivated. I wanted to do anything BUT write those two books.

  I am fully aware that I do this to myself because I always write these twisted plots. It’s so hard for me to write a straight-forward plot. My story brain just doesn’t work that way. And every single time, without fail, there I am on the last book going why the fuck did I write all that complicated shit?

  I get stuck every time. I would not call this writer’s block. It’s just ending block. lol

  And this has always happened for as long as I’ve been writing because in order to have a perfect ending it must be “inevitable, but unexpected”. That’s a direct quote from Larry Brooks, author of Story Engineering. And Story Engineering was one of two books that taught me how to plot a story back in 2011.