“Okay, look, I had a good reason for everything, I promise.” Mike’s shoulders slumped. “I was going to explain everything to you, but you fell unconscious. Jenny needed your body to show me how to get into the Labyrinth, but we got trapped. I never meant to endanger you or do anything without your permission, but there’s a crazy witch on my front lawn trying to break into my house, and I didn’t have time to wait for you to wake up.”
“Why is there a Labyrinth under your house?” Beth crossed her arms.
“It’s the Labyrinth. And we’re not technically under the house, we’re between the walls.” Mike shook his head. “Never mind that. Okay, your intern is a succubus named Lily who tried to kill me last week, but now we’re friends—well, kind of. After I moved into the house, I found a nymph, and she took part of my soul, and now I’m married to a goblin. Oh, and there’s also a banshee. And a gargoyle. And a centaur.”
“Sounds like quite the story.”
“It’s all true, I swear! I just need to help a snake woman destroy a magic artifact, and we can all go home.”
“A snake woman? You mean that lady who hypnotized me?”
“Yes! She’s one of the good guys. She just has some trust issues on account of my great aunt.”
“You are shit at telling stories,” Beth said, her body relaxing. “The gargoyle bet me fifty bucks that you wouldn’t sound like a mental case.”
“Abella has fifty bucks?”
“Not anymore.” Beth sat on the edge of the bed. “I have no idea how we got to this point, but here we are. Guess I’m a shit estate agent.”
“How do you figure?”
Beth leaned across the bed, inspecting something. “Somehow, a house full of monsters slipped by me. It’s one of those disclosures I should have mentioned.” Beth touched a green toe that had slipped out from under the blanket.
Tink immediately pulled her leg back under the cover and growled.
“I want to be mad at you for getting me involved, but I would feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite.”
“You would?”
“Mike. Monsters are real. Do you realize what this means?” Beth’s eyes shone with excitement. “Think about it. We grow up in a world of order and logic. As children, we are allowed to have fantasies that take us outside the box. We get to believe in dragons, and Santa, and Bigfoot. But when we get older, we are told that it’s time to stop imagining, to stop believing in magic. And I think, in a way, that makes that wonderful part of us die.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Mike looked at the goblin-shaped lump in the bed. “For me, I was just happy to meet someone who didn’t care that I have my own issues. It’s strange, but they feel more real to me than anyone else I know.”
Beth nodded. “I think I know what you mean. I never forgot what it meant to believe, and to see all this unfold before me…” She shivered. “It’s so damn exciting!”
“So…you’re not mad?”
“I’m madder that I thought I was going crazy.” Beth tossed her hair over her shoulder, then stood. “You’ll have to fill me in on why my memory from last week has major holes.”
“Uh…” Mike looked down at the foot of the bed. “That’s a pretty long story. I should probably go see if Ratu is done with her preparations. How is Abella?”
Beth frowned. “She’s injured. Ratu—is that the snake woman’s name? She gave me this nasty-smelling cream and had me rub it into Abella’s injuries after she released us from that obedience spell. She has to sit downstairs until it cures. We did have a pretty good talk about the state of things between you guys.”
“Uh…” Mike looked over at Tink, then back at Beth. “Between us how?”
Beth winked. “It’s none of my business, but I find it fascinating that they don’t seem to mind sharing you.”
Mike blushed, and Beth left. Once he was sure she was out of earshot, he pinched Tink’s ass, causing the goblin to squirt out from between the sheets onto the floor.
“Lawyer woman talk funny,” Tink said, finding her dress. “Tink think she hide secret.”
“What kind of secret?”
“Don’t know. Not bad, not good. Just secret.” Tink adjusted her hair, then tugged her dress into place. “Go see snake lady, get goggles, smash witch. Plan okay?”
Mike laughed. “The plan sounds great.”
Mike stared at Ratu, his mouth open in disbelief. They stood at the edge of a frozen lake, fog rising off its surface and spilling across the rocky shore like waves. Up above them, the chained gem burned silently, its rays melting the surface ice into a thin layer of water that was perfectly still. It had taken them almost an hour to get here, bypassing several trapped corridors in the process.
“So you threw it in the lake,” Mike said, “and then froze the whole thing.”
“I did.” Ratu was holding a stack of golden disks in her hands. They were each roughly the size of a vinyl record. “I was worried that Emily would eventually snap and come for the artifact herself.”
“Still seems like overkill.” Mike looked at the others. Tink stood by his side, followed by Abella (who had insisted on coming) and then Beth. If not for the heat source above, he would be shivering. The fairies circled the edge of the lake, their lights chasing one another through the rising fog. Sofia stood to the side, the dagger tucked into the waist of her pants. He didn’t want to have something that sharp on him just in case the artifact did influence his behavior.
“I assure you, it was worth the risk. Asterion?” Ratu handed the disks to the Minotaur, then pulled a large crystal from the sleeve of her kimono. When she pointed it at the gem, the Labyrinth rumbled as a fiery beam lanced its way into the top of the ice, cutting downward at a gentle angle. “We may have to go digging for it a bit, I’m afraid. Shouldn’t be hard to find, but unless you want a fifty-foot drop straight to the bottom, we need to take the long road on this one.”
The gem melted a sizable tunnel, the tight beam giving off plenty of warmth. Ratu took the disks from Asterion.
“Stay here with the others,” she told him. “We should be back within the hour, but come for us if we don’t. Even if we die, the artifact still needs to be destroyed, so maybe the goblin can do it. Shall we?” Ratu smiled for Mike and then moved into the tunnel. Mike followed behind her, stepping carefully on the ice. The melted water made it slicker than usual, and Mike had a horrifying vision of slipping into the beam and cutting himself in two. Ratu was about twenty feet ahead—she tossed one of the disks in the air, and it hovered there, moving into the path of the beam.
“Cool,” Mike muttered, watching the beam deflect and cut into the side of the tunnel. He stayed behind Ratu and observed as she repeated the process several times.
“How do you know where to go?” Mike asked.
“Easy. I listen to my instinct and then do the opposite.”
“How does that work?”
“You try.” Ratu stopped in the tunnel, holding up one of the disks. “Use your gut. Which way do you think we should go?”
Mike frowned, looking left then right. He felt a strong urge to go right. “That way.” He pointed.
“Then we go the opposite.” Ratu tossed up the disk, and the beam carved left. “The artifact is a perversion of the natural world. Every fiber in your being wants to avoid it. When we get closer, you will probably begin to feel sick.”
“Yikes.” Mike wiped sweat off his brow, wondering if Ratu was right. His body was hot and cold, a result of the beam’s heat and the cool ice around them, causing him to feel feverish. Yet the feeling of unease increased the farther they went, a nauseous feeling in his gut that spread out across his body. When he placed a hand on the wall of the ice tunnel to steady himself, Mike’s balance suddenly shifted, and he slipped.
“Ahh!” Mike slid several feet, putting his arms and legs out to steady himself
. Finally coming to a halt, he sat up, expecting to see Ratu right in front of him. His eyes widened when he realized that Ratu was farther down the tunnel than she had been when he’d slipped. Somehow, he had slid uphill.
“We are very close,” Ratu told him, a frown on her face. “The effects are fairly strong. Now I worry I might have further damaged the case it is in.”
“Could the beam destroy it?” Mike asked.
“No. Put on the goggles. Just in case.”
“On it.” Mike held up the goggles. He hadn’t put them on yet because they limited his peripheral vision quite a bit. The goggles themselves looked like they had walked out of a steampunk wet dream. Several lenses could easily be flipped into place, revealing untold secrets to the wearer. Sliding the band over his head, he took a deep breath before sliding them into place.
The frozen lake around him unfolded in his eyes, bright-yellow lines crisscrossing through the ice. Staring in awe, Mike looked all around him. He was seeing flaws in the ice, lines that bent and adjusted to account for the hole they had tunneled. He could see the bedrock at the end of their tunnel, a vein of quartz buried several feet within. Looking at his hands, he saw the blood flowing gently through the veins on the back. There was a spot on one of his shoes where the stitches had come loose and would eventually become a hole.
“Mike.”
Shaking his head, he adjusted the lenses. Through trial and error, he was able to eliminate most of the distractions, though now he was able to see pockets of warm air floating along the ceiling like giant bubbles. Walking just past Ratu, he tapped the ice at a slight upward angle.
“If you hit here, you’ll miss the object but get us close enough,” he explained. He had seen it through the ice, a dark block of nothingness that refused to yield its secrets to him. Nodding, Ratu used another golden disk to tunnel even farther. Following close behind, Mike noticed that Ratu’s kimono clung tightly to her body, revealing a pair of shapely shoulder blades beneath her hair. Her slim figure swayed gently side to side while she walked, the beam casting thin shadows on the ice beside her.
“There it is,” Ratu said. She fidgeted with the crystal in her kimono, and the beam of light disappeared, casting the lake into darkness.
Waiting patiently in the dark, Mike heard the silent dripping of water, liquid that was flowing downhill and likely refreezing at the bottom somewhere. “What now?” He was answered by a giant ball of fire, summoned into Ratu’s hand.
“We widen the room,” she said. “We need some space.”
“Sounds good.” Mike waited while Ratu cast out the ball of fire. She summoned several more, and water flowed freely around his feet while she created a circular room with a domed roof around them. In the middle of the floor was an object wrapped in a cloth. She walked toward it, her hands slipping into her kimono. She withdrew a pair of sticks that unfolded themselves into a small table, then lifted the object and set it on the table with a grunt.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Naga are somewhere between divinity and humanity,” she explained. “This thing makes the human side of me sick in a physical sense, and it makes the divine part of me sick in a spiritual sense. The sheer act of its existence is a stain on reality, and it deserves to be destroyed.”
“What does it do?”
“Nothing. It has no purpose. A hole was opened into the other side, the place where the Ancient Ones were sealed away. It was poor luck that one of the Ancient Ones was slumbering near the portal. It was only open for a fraction of a second here, but time doesn’t exist on their side. When the portal closed itself, it ripped away a small piece of flesh, leaving it behind.”
“How was the portal opened?”
“Men of science who made a mistake. They paid for their lack of caution.” Ratu slowly uncovered the box. It had strange lettering on the outside and looked extremely old.
“Is that…Russian?” Mike asked.
“It is. When mankind entered the nuclear age, the Soviets hoped to find something that outstripped the power of the atom. When they found this sometime in the eighties, they got the crazy idea to extract energy from it, hoping it would eventually become a weapon. They had no idea what they were messing with, and many of them died. They covered it up, and the land is now uninhabitable.”
“So they put it in this box?”
“After the incident, Baba Yaga herself tracked it down and used her magic to seal it in this box. She took it home for safekeeping, but a fox demon stole it from her, and it has been bouncing from hand to hand since then.
“I have no idea how Emily got it here, but the spell has worn thin. The Labyrinth itself now changes on its whims, which has been a pain in the tail to keep track of.”
A Soviet energy source? Could she mean Chernobyl? It was a lot to think about, and he was further distracted by the fact that the longer Ratu held on to the box, the more her features seemed to melt into it. Even protected by the goggles, a cold pit of fear had opened in his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole. He wanted to run away and never look back. “So what do we do?”
“You will open the box,” she said, tapping it. She pulled a candlestick out of her kimono. “You will have to hurry. This piece of flesh is no bigger than the tip of your pinky. You will use these silver tongs to hold it in the flame until it has burned away.” She pulled tongs out of her sleeve, making Mike wonder what else she had stored in there.
“Is this a special candle?” Mike asked, inspecting the candlestick. Up close, the pearly surface looked more like clouds rolling across each other.
“It is. The wax is made from the rendered fat of a dead god, and its flame is capable of destroying anything it touches except for silver. However, it can only be used once.”
“And you had this just lying around?”
“It’s a family heirloom,” Ratu said, taking it from him and setting it on the table. “I will be right behind you with my eyes closed. If something goes wrong, I should be able to withdraw to the surface for help. If you haven’t gone mad, we can try again. Otherwise, the goblin will be responsible for helping me.”
“Fuck,” Mike whispered. Could he really do this? Swallowing the lump in his throat, he switched places with Ratu so that he now stood over the box. A tiny piece of some long-banished god was inside this magic box. His whole body was wracked with a sudden bout of chills.
“Whenever you are ready,” Ratu said, her voice tense.
“No time like the present.” Mike held up the candle. Ratu snapped her fingers, and the wick lit.
“Don’t put your fingers in that,” she said. “Your whole body will burn up like a moth in a bonfire.”
“I’ll do my best.” He set the candle on the far side of the table. Grabbing the lid of the box, he saw several runes appear over the Russian letters, glowing symbols that rapidly swirled before him. Flicking through the lenses of the goggles on instinct alone, he quickly saw that most of these glowed an angry red. Five of them, however, glowed a soft blue with numbers next to them, and he touched these in order, avoiding the angry red runes. The runes disappeared, and a thin line appeared in the middle of the box. Mike grabbed the edge, taking a deep breath.
“Are you going to keep standing there?” Ratu asked.
“It just opened.”
“You’ve been standing still for almost half an hour.” Ratu squeezed his shoulder. “Time is already distorting. You need to act fast.”
“Jesus.” Grabbing the tongs, Mike pulled open the box. The room filled with the stink of rotting soil, a sinister wind wrapping itself around Mike. Ratu’s arms slid around his waist, holding him tightly. Her dark hair blew against his face, briefly obscuring his vision.
A black mist burst out of the box, clutching at him with spectral claws and swallowing them both in darkness.
Beth watched Tink running around on the shore. The fairies were
flying in circles over the goblin’s head, and Tink was jumping in the air, trying to catch them. The fairies’ laughter sounded like the gentle tinkle of bells, contrasting heavily with Tink’s cackles of glee.
“How long will they be down there?” Abella asked Asterion.
The Minotaur said nothing, his eyes on the ice.
“I wouldn’t think too long,” Beth suggested. “I guess there’s probably some sort of ritual involved, and if it was going to take them a while, they would have brought it back up. Choosing to stay down there for hours would be—”
She was interrupted by a loud crack, which ricocheted off the ceiling of the Labyrinth. The lake rumbled, and sections of the ice cracked and then crumbled. The tunnel shook, and Beth heard the collapse farther in. Standing there in shock, Beth realized that the ringing in her ears was Tink screaming. Abella held the little goblin back.
“What do we do?” Beth asked the Minotaur.
Asterion lifted his ax, fixing her with intense eyes. “We dig.”
Walking into the tunnel, he was soon followed by Tink and Abella. The fairies rushed in behind them, and Beth found herself bringing up the rear. About twenty feet down, a large chunk of ice had fallen down, blocking further passage. Asterion began knocking giant chunks off with his ax, and Abella lifted them away. The fairies circled near the top of the passage—Tink was handing them blocks of ice, which they were melting into the cracks and then refreezing to keep the ceiling secure. Sofia’s eye would occasionally flash, and she would immediately redirect their efforts.
After a few minutes of this, they got through the first section. Tink slid ahead of them, her bare ass on the ice, then returned to declare a more serious cave-in up ahead. The others started to work again, and Beth stood back, marveling at how they all worked together.
I want to help.
Beth pulled Jenny out of the bag around her hip and ran her fingers over the porcelain doll’s features. Looking at the others, she realized that she didn’t have the strength or magic to help them.
Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters Page 31