“I’m only strange because you’re too normal,” I counter immediately. Before I can claim Vin’s lips once more, a whine reverberates through the room. All three of us freeze, only our heads moving to stare at the closed door.
“Is it our baby?” Mason teases, finger idly drawing circles on my chest.
“Shut up.” I elbow him as the whine sounds again, followed immediately by incessant scratching. I make a move to get up, but Vin places a hand on my chest to push me back down and strides across the room, the evidence of his arousal poking through his gym shorts. He grabs his blade that he must’ve put on my dresser and wrenches open the door.
“Biscuit?” Mason exclaims, sitting upright and staring at the hideous mutt outside my dorm room door. The creature tilts his furry black head to the side, rivulets of color sludging down his back. He looks as if he has been through the meat-grinder, his ears torn and riddled with holes. His amber eyes train on me as another desperate whine escapes his body.
“You named the mutt from hell Biscuit?” I query as the creature, ignoring Vin entirely, gallops into the room, jumps onto my bed, and curls into a ball near my feet. His tongue lolls out of his mouth, and I can’t help but notice it’s a hideous shade of gray.
“He seems to like you,” Mason points out as Biscuit chirps happily.
Oh my freaking god. He is adorable.
“Can I keep him? Please? Please? Please?” I scratch him behind his tattered ears, and he leans into my touch, body vibrating with his contented purr.
“Violet…” For the millionth time that day, Vin pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can’t just keep a murderous Frankenstein-created beast as your pet.”
“But he’s sooo cute.” I press a kiss to his furry nose. To the beast, I ask, “Where are your brothers? Did they come too?”
“She said she wanted a baby,” Mason points out with a wicked grin. He leans around me to pet Biscuit’s rough hide.
“Why do I even bother with these children?” Vin murmurs, more to himself than to us. I’ll have him know that I’m extremely mature and intelligent for my age, thank you very much. And because I’m so mature, I’m going to refrain from sticking my tongue out at him and then slicing open his throat to drink his blood dry.
Mature Violet for the win.
Abruptly, Biscuit begins to cough, eyes widening slightly in his distorted face. Mason grimaces as a slimy beetle flies from the hound’s mouth and bounces off the wall.
“Ewww,” he laments, nose scrunching in disgust.
“Did you eat a beetle, handsome man?” I coo to the dog. “Silly puppy.”
“It’s a monstrous, fifty-pound beast of mass destruction,” Vin deadpans. “Not a silly puppy.”
Before I can retort, a green mist slithers across the floor of my room like a palpable entity. Immediately, my hackles raise as Mason grabs my waist, pulling me against him.
Vin spins towards the fog with his dagger brandished, eyes spewing vitriol and something akin to fear. “Who’s there?” he demands.
Because when the mist comes a’knockin, you go a’runnin.
Yes, that’s actually a nursery rhyme in the monster world.
The green mist begins to swirl rapidly like a tornado, and the acid in my stomach sluices around. Slowly, it solidifies into the silhouette of a large, muscular man with broad shoulders and dark skin.
Barret’s green hair is wildly mussed as he flashes me a sheepish grin.
“I would highly recommend not being eaten by a dog.” He pauses, an unsure expression crossing his handsome face. His painfully beautiful, handsome face. His painfully beautiful and dead handsome face. “Why are you all looking like you’ve seen a ghost? Do I have blood on my cheek?”
CHAPTER 36
FRANKIE
For as long as I can remember, I never knew what to call the man who created me. Was he my father? My creator? Something else entirely? All I know is that I went from nothing but a thought to a sentient being. In the process, I was gifted with an intelligence that surpassed those around me and an impenetrable body.
Not even a knife to the heart could kill me.
Now, I sit across from my father—my manufacturer?—in the small kitchenette I share with Mason, Vin, Jack, and Hux. He languidly sips from the porcelain teacup while his sharp eyes assess me.
Frankenstein is a sinewy man. Nothing significant about him in the slightest. His hair is beginning to gray, the wispy strands shorter on the top than the sides. A fine, pointy mustache rests above his thin lips, and his eyes are wrinkled with age—not from smiling or laughing. I don’t think I’ve seen the man laugh once in his life. His tan shorts contrast greatly with his plum-colored button up that seems a few sizes too large. The fabric swallows him whole.
Currently, his knee is bouncing with agitation as his eyes flitter from my face to the window and then to the closed door.
As well as being the top scientist in the world, he’s also a paranoid maniac. Living for centuries will do that to a person.
“You wanted to talk?” I ask curtly, glaring daggers at my own cup of tea. I have no intentions of actually drinking the liquid. Frankenstein made it himself, and anything that he creates is immensely dangerous—a tree that is being cut down, just waiting to fall and demolish everything in its pathway.
“Are we safe?” Frankenstein queries, jumping to his feet to survey first the windows and then the kitchen itself. He opens up every cupboard and places a strange, silver device on the swinging wooden doors. No doubt, it’s one of his newer inventions designed to track for both spells and listening devices.
As I said before, Frankenstein is a paranoid bugger.
Instead of answering, I allow him to sweep every nook and crevice of our quaint kitchen. Only when he’s satisfied that there’s no one lurking in
