A Soul to Keep
Duskwalker Brides
Book One
Opal Reyne
Copyright © 2022 by Opal Reyne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-6455104-0-9
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art: Sam Griffin
Ebook Internal Illustrations: Opal Reyne
To all the MonsterFuckers out there, This book is for you.
Don’t pretend that you’ve never wanted to be railed by some human eating, dark entity that has a skull for a face –
you saw the cover, you knew what you were getting yourself into, and you still chose to open this book and read it.
For as long as she could remember, there had been monsters.
Demons that lay in wait in the shadows. In the snow, in the trees, in every shadowy crevice possible. The disgusting creatures sought the darkness as they listened and waited for their prey. Swallowed by the yawning depth the moonlight did not touch beneath the canopy of leaves, they hid inside shrubs with claws ready to clutch unsuspecting prey.
They were evil. Unholy. Foul.
They terrified the humankind.
They haunted near cottages, houses, and towns to grow that delicious, mouth-watering scent of fear for themselves as though they found their prey sweeter if they were afraid.
Howling and emitting crackling, clicking noises, like the rattling of dry bones together, they rustled trees and snapped twigs in the distance – anything to ensure the humans knew they were waiting for them.
Towns attracted the Demons by the sheer force of the scent alone, creating a feeding ground. Like a contagion, one terrified human ignited a stench throughout the entire village.
Along with human guards, walls made of towering wooden spikes circled the towns and kept them at bay.
But sometimes, it wasn't enough to keep them safe.
They came in many different sizes, which informed their prey if the monster in front of them would guarantee their death or not. The smaller the Demon, the less likely they had fed from a human before. With the bigger Demons, one could only imagine how many humans they had consumed to grow to their monstrous height, frame, and strength.
Their skin was black like a void, and they usually crawled around with a human-shaped head and body disgustingly meshed with animal parts. Their faces had human angles except for around their mouths, where instead they had monstrous fangs with some kind of muzzle.
Some had horns on their heads, others spikes. Some had feathers or fur, and others nothing.
Then there were those with bat-like wings sprouting from their backs who were considered ancient. Rare, but some of the deadliest because of the number of humans they’d eaten to obtain wings for true flight. These ancient Demons swooped from above, and before a person even knew they had been taken from the ground, a large, fanged-filled mouth stretched around their head and clamped shut with an explosion of blood and brain matter.
There were only two ways to avoid being caught in the clutches of these monsters. People could either live secluded from the towns that drew the attention of the Demons, or live confined within their walls.
If one chose to live within the towns, they could only walk from the relative safety of the town walls in the daytime, when the light of the sun kept the monsters at bay. It was their only comfort, that most, but not all, of the Demons couldn’t withstand the light.
Those that lived secluded did so with small families and erected their houses in the middle of clearings to protect them throughout the day.
At night, windows had to be closed, doors locked, and it was best not to make much noise or create too much light in order to remain hidden. They also relied on spells placed on the walls by human Priests and Priestesses who travelled the world to help the many towns and their residents. The spells were weak and easily broken, but they kept the smaller Demons at bay. The ward would not stop a torrent of them, however – or the strongest ones.
Thankfully for humankind, most of the Demons that terrorised the world were small. It was the only thing they were thankful for considering the horrible state of the world.
All these monsters lived in the Veil, the place they called home and where it was believed they were created. It was a large expanse of forest, as far as the eye could see, making up one fourth of the entire continent. Surrounded by cliff edges, the shade of the trees never seemed to allow any space for the sun to touch the ground. It was a place all these creatures could roam freely – even in the daytime.
That was the only solace for humans. Demons couldn’t stand to be in direct sunlight and often fled to the safety of the Veil throughout the day.
No one dared venture near that frightful place, and anyone who had never returned. No one knew what lie inside of the Veil.
It was a place of nightmares.
But, despite the Demons and the Veil, there were beings even more terrifying. There were nightmarish creatures that roamed the world as terrible omens. Those that could walk in the sunlight. They were nothing like the Demons, believed to be something else entirely.
Duskwalkers.
To see one meant death was near. Not just for humans, but also the Demons, animals – everything. They were terrifyingly intelligent. They could speak, they could bargain, and they could destroy if their mood decided it.
Some villages, far, far away from where she lived, had never encountered one. Most humans would live their entire lives and never see one, nor speak to someone who had.
Unfortunately, that had never been the case for the town she called home.
Even from when she was little, she’d known about Duskwalkers. That if she saw one in the distance, to run.
The easiest way to spot a Duskwalker was their face, or rather lack thereof.
The Duskwalker that presumably lived closest to them in the Veil walked around with black clothing that covered its body from neck to feet. It also wore a black cloak that covered its head.
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