Gloam (Monstrous, #4)

by Lily Mayne

We still didn’t know exactly what had happened at the base—well, maybe Aury had told Ghost more—but we knew the beasties had gotten free and escaped. Were these cages really strong enough to hold them? None of the monsters were trying to escape, though, or even making any noise. The one closest to my left was watching me with big, mournful eyes in an electrifying shade of teal.

It didn’t look dangerous. It just looked broken. And sad. I let out a shuddering breath and slowly let go of the window ledge, taking a tentative step deeper into the barn. I wanted to save these beasties.

They were behind bars and glass. They couldn’t get me. Not that any of them seemed to even want to. All of them were quiet, and only some were watching me.

That was a viewing platform. This cage was a ring of some kind—a pit. This was where Mary made the monsters fight. For entertainment.

Each one was different and beautiful in their own way. Mary had clearly spent time curating only the most fascinating looking monsters for her collection.

Mary had wanted to put Aury in one of these cages. Sweet, gentle Aury who I was pretty sure Ghost had already been in love with when they left for the Topeka camp. Rage made me go hot all over, my hands clenching into shaking fists. I wanted to free them all now, but I didn’t dare—not without Gloam.

“Ahhh, here they are.” Mary’s jovial voice made my lip curl in disgust. “Hello, my pets! Did you miss me?” None of them made any noise, but I didn’t think Mary was looking for an answer anyway. I wondered if any of these beasties were the same level of intelligence as Gloam or Aury. If they could speak, but didn’t dare in their captor’s presence. I went still, realising Gloam was with her when she spoke again.

Gloam was the smartest person I’d ever met. Smarter than she could ever fucking be. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t an oaf. Part of me hoped that when we set her monsters free, one of them ripped her to shreds.

“I suppose they must be hungry.” Mary sounded entirely uninterested in that aspect of her imprisoned monsters’ upkeep. God, she’d been gone weeks. Had they sat here starving that whole time? “Tend to them, and then go to the west wing and stay there until I call for you. Major Bratton will be arriving soon. Make sure you remain out of sight.”

I jumped and barely managed to suppress my gasp when a whisper of sound came from behind me in the room. I’d been focusing so hard on listening to Mary that I hadn’t even turned around to scope it out. Heart giving a mighty thud, I slowly turned my head to look over my shoulder. My gaze met dozens of clustered eyes, blinking back at me sporadically from a shadowed corner of the room.

“Go and see what it’s doing!” Fuck fuck fuck. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the monster, but I had to. I stumbled for the window and wrenched it open, having no time to worry about how loud I was being. I doubted anything could be heard over the furious screaming of the creature in the cage anyway.

I needed to get away before they came back out of the barn. The west wing. Mary had told Gloam to go and stay out of sight in the west wing of the mansion. I just hoped she’d ordered it because it was the part of the house that she didn’t occupy—that it was where she made him go when she had no use for him.

I exhaled in relief when I reached the far end of the mansion and peered through a window that was slightly ajar, seeing that this part of the house looked far less opulent. It was dusty, the windows smeared and smudged and the furniture inside far simpler and more worn out. There was no way Mary lived in here.

Exhaling, I tugged off my mask and stuffed it in my duffle before I ducked inside and pulled the doors shut behind me. Then I curled up on the floor of the closet, my arms wrapped tight around my knees, and waited for my beastie to find me.

Holding my breath, I leaned forward and peered through the slats of the closet door. Gloam stepped inside and slowly closed the door behind him, leaning his war hammer against the wall. He stood still, as though waiting, or trying to sense if I was in here. His chain was still wound around his thick forearm, cumbersome as ever. I couldn’t wait any longer, and I couldn’t hear any sounds at all coming from outside the bedroom. He was alone. I scrambled up and out of the closet, launching myself at Gloam as he turned sharply toward me.

able to stand being apart from him now, after everything we’d gone through together. It had been me and Gloam against the world for weeks. He was my partner in crime. He was my… my friend, but more than that. Not just a friend. What I felt for him far surpassed that.

I exhaled. “I heard Mary telling you to stay hidden. Was it… Is it because the military would try and take you if they knew you could be controlled?” He gave me a stiff nod. She always makes me hide when they are here. Fucking asshole. As if she couldn’t get any worse, making Gloam hide away from her guests like a shameful secret, even though he probably appreciated the break from her vile presence.

Mary doesn’t come to this part of the house, he wrote. She has a bell that she uses to summon me from her wing. I go when she rings it so that she doesn’t come looking for me here. His shoulders hunched. Do you judge me for that? “God, no,” I breathed out loud, leaning in to kiss his shoulder.

“So… she doesn’t come here? Ever?” I asked Gloam, my eyes briefly slipping shut when he held me tighter and stroked his big thumb over the pulse point in my neck. He wrote with his other hand. No. We are safe here. I will make sure you stay safe.

Gloam heaved a breath and smoothed his hand down my back in long, sweeping strokes that made my eyelids droop. I forced them back open when I realised he had written more. You are tired, my precious Adam. Let me look after you. Please.

I need to look around to find something while she’s distracted. There must be something in this giant fucking house I can use to get that cage off. They will be here a while, they always are, Gloam told me, his long fingers twining through my hair as he wrote. We have time. First, you need to rest and eat. I’ll rest and eat after the cage is off, I wrote back stubbornly.

Wouldn’t you like a nice hot shower? Goddamnit. I raised my head and glared at him. “Of course I’d like a nice hot shower. I’d give both my testicles for a nice hot shower. You’re such a sneaky bastard.” Gloam let out an amused rumble. Go and take a shower while I get you some food.

I was suddenly very aware that I was dressed only in my pants. Gloam had already seen me naked several times when he’d kept an eye out while I washed in a lake or river out in the Wastes. But he’d always been respectful, even though a few times I’d definitely felt his heavy gaze linger on my bare ass when I’d leaned down to retrieve my clothes after getting out of the water.

When he didn’t move, I knew he was waiting for me to say it out loud, and I barely suppressed my impatient huff. “If I want you to stop, I’ll say stop or squeeze your hand. I promise.” At that, he surged forward, pushing me back onto the bed. The moment I was flat on my back, he tore open my pants and yanked them and my underwear down together. “Holy shit.”

“I don’t want to stop touching you to get our book, so I’ll just say now that I’m down for anything,” I croaked. Maybe I was being too trusting, but… I didn’t think so. I trusted Gloam entirely, and I had no reason not to. “You don’t need to ask, okay?” I told him, tearing my hungry gaze away from his cock to look at my rough estimation of where his eyes were beneath the cage. “If I don’t like something, I’ll use my signal.”

“Do whatever you want with me, Gloam.” Something in him snapped. In hurried, frantic movements, he tore my hand away from his cock and clambered higher over me, until his thick thighs were straddling my waist.

Suddenly, he wasn’t moving slow and steady anymore. He was riding me with hard, increasingly fast movements, fucking himself on my cock like he’d needed this for decades. Centuries. I could relate.

there was no way I would have been able to keep up with Gloam’s frantic pace. I was just along for the ride and I had absolutely no problem with that. It was already the hottest fuck of my life.

“I wish I could kiss you,” I told him, and heard his answering, sadness-tinged rumble. Somehow, I could tell he was saying it back to me. That he wanted it just as much. It made me all the more determined to get that fucking cage off his head.

His thumb smoothed over my lower lip, but his touch was hesitant, like he was doubting what I’d said in the heat of the moment. “I mean it,” I told him, squeezing his thighs. “I’m getting that cage off you, and then I’m not going to stop kissing you for hours. Days.” The longing in his answering rumble was somehow so clear.

Maybe she had a key—not that I could spot any kind of lock on the thing. But it had been fastened around his head somehow. I’d already spotted the thick, bubbled seam cutting across the centre of the cage, telling me it had been welded together. But… surely they hadn’t welded it on his head?

God, I hoped her creepy little pet was with her. I’d never seen her without it, so odds were it was still cradled in her arms out in the barn. Still, I couldn’t help but picture it flying out of one of these rooms and tearing my arm clean off with its stretching lamprey mouth.

Where the fuck was I meant to start? I had no idea how long Gloam had been with her. No idea how long she’d been part of the Herald’s cult. No idea when she’d even started writing these things. She could’ve started keeping diaries as a kid. I did not want to read Mary’s life history.

The Almighty Herald has granted me the greatest of gifts, the highest of honours. I am surely one of their chosen few! They have given me one of their sacred protectors to watch over me while I carry out my missionary work with the military. How exciting! I told them of my plan—of my idea to get close to the military. They loved it. And now I can grow my collection safely, all while carrying out the Herald’s divine work! Their instructions were clear on how to control the beast: a single, simple command that will eclipse all others. ‘Protect me from all danger.’ I say the words of power, his name, and then I say the command. So simple!

‘There is a race that is SO easy to control. With just words! With just their names!’ That was how she’d done it? With Gloam’s name? My heart slammed against my ribcage. I go by Gloam, I remembered him writing in our first conversation. So it wasn’t his real name—because his real name was too dangerous for others to know.

The handwriting was different to Mary’s. Honestly, it reminded me of Gloam’s, but I’d seen his handwriting enough to be able to pick out the small differences. He wrote his As differently to this. I’d noticed because I loved seeing my name written in his jagged, elegant scrawl. Had one of his brothers written this? Written down the instructions for the Herald—and then Mary—to control their own brother? Their flesh and blood.

The beast’s head is already caged—to stop him breaking free of the control, the Herald told me. They are transferring the power over him to me tomorrow night, in a special ceremony just for me. They have three new coals who will be offered the gift of transcendence. If any of them refuse, we will have a great feast. It’s such an honour!

I actually laughed when I stepped into the room and saw that it was a workshop—a quiet chuckle that felt like it was coming from someone else. Renewed hope buoyed me. There were tools here. Actual tools.

There was nothing that would be powerful enough to get the cage off. I spotted a saw, its teeth still sharp and gleaming, but the blade was more likely to snap before I even got close to getting through the thick metal of the cage.

Then I spotted it. On the lower shelf of the workbench were power tools. A drill, an orbital sander, a jigsaw. And an angle grinder. My heart was banging against my ribs as I knelt down and reached out to take it. It looked brand new. This could work.

His wide shoulders heaved with a shuddering breath, and he quickly turned to scribble in the notebook. You’ve been gone a long time. I went to look for you in the garage and you weren’t there.

“I found something, Gloam. I think it… I think it’s how she got control over you.” He went totally still. With trembling fingers, I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out the slip of paper.

“Maybe it’s nothing but I… It felt like something you should have.” As if finally realising I was waiting for him to acknowledge it, Gloam looked up and gently cupped my chin. His caged head dipped once in a jerky nod.

He went still again. For a brief, terrifying moment, I wondered if the all-encompassing order to protect Mary would force him to hurt me, or at least stop me from getting the cage off. It had stopped him from telling me things that would point me in the right direction.

We’re so close. And then we can—we can get away from here and never see her again. I’ll never let her hurt you again, I promise.” I was babbling, trying to distract myself from the terror of what I was about to do.

“I… I’m just scared of hurting you,” I whispered, reaching out and curling my fingers under the straps of his harness, wanting to be tethered to him somehow. Gloam wrote something in the notebook. After handing it to me, he reached out and rested his huge palm on my sternum, the warmth of it seeping through my shirt. Don’t be scared, my Adam, I read. I know you won’t.

“Will they hear us?” I whispered. Gloam shook his head and took back the notebook. You might not be able to hear it, but Seraph is screaming in his cage. No doubt because of the military. They will hear nothing over that.

In the end, the cage came off shockingly easily—a fact that devastated me, but I didn’t tell Gloam that. No one had ever tried to help him, and it hadn’t even been all that hard. The thought was utterly heartbreaking.

Slowly, being painstakingly careful, he eased the front of the cage away less than an inch. And I realised why he was still holding it up. I covered my mouth when I saw the two thick, rusted rings piercing his lower jaw, welded to the inside of the cage. Holding his mouth open, protruding over his teeth between two short, sharp tusks that jutted up.

I should have known Mary would have been this sick. She’d pierced his spine with metal rings too. But then, this hadn’t even been Mary. The cage had already been on him when the Herald gave Gloam to Mary. This had been his brothers. His fucking brothers had shoved thick metal rings through his jaw