Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters

by Annabelle Hawthorne

  The remaining Sebastiens looked to her for guidance, pointing at the sundial and yelling, their voices lost in the wind. She turned to see that another Sebastien was running toward her, his head bowed low. The hole in the geas had grown even smaller, and the storm was beginning to rage out of control. The situation was devolving quickly, and she still couldn’t figure out what Mike had planned for her.

  Sebastien ran past, dodging the lone Iwa by her side, then put his hand on the sundial. It suddenly occurred to her that this Sebastien didn’t carry a cane, nor did he have a mustache. Her jaw dropping in surprise, she sent the spirit barreling toward him, to stop him at any cost, and was shocked when a banshee stepped out of his body, her hair wild and her blank eyes wide with rage. She let loose a scream that could be heard above the roar of the storm, a scream that tore the Iwa to shreds. Kali grabbed her ears in pain, desperate to block out the sound.

  “What?” What had just happened? She commanded the snakes, the remaining spirits, anything, to stop him.

  Mike lifted his head, his lips blue with from the cold and his goggles aglow with runes of their own. He was dressed like Sebastien, which had fooled her, and had somehow bypassed the heat vision of her snakes.

  “It’s time for you to get the fuck off my lawn,” he said, then grabbed the sundial and gave the whole thing a twist.

  When Mike twisted the sundial, the protective magic of the house ripped through his core and then outward like a shock wave. Kali flew through the air and crashed to the ground next to the large snake that had watched over her. Then the lions on the entryway leaped down onto the grass, their manes ablaze with blue fire as they chased down each Sebastien and swatted him into nothingness. The remaining Iwa tried to flee but were torn from the sky by one of the lions and ripped apart. Kali struggled to stand as the other lion approached her.

  Beth’s plan had worked perfectly. While the others had diverted Kali’s attention, Mike had been able to finish activating the runes while disguised as Sebastien. He had ridden into the yard while hanging from Zel’s side, hidden from view when they had burst out of the garage, and then had fallen off by the bushes.

  Once in the yard, the true genius of the plan had been allowing Cecilia to hide inside of him, the cold from her magic masking his presence from the snakes. Getting to the lions had been easy, but activating the runes had not. Even with the goggles on, it was much like trying to catch a specific bee from a hive, and now that the sundial had been activated, it was finally over.

  He had won.

  The lion stopped long enough to eat Kali’s anaconda, then leaped toward the priestess. Kali was abruptly yanked away from the lion by hundreds of shadow arms that pulled her across the lawn and out onto the street. The lion gave chase but stopped at the boundary of his house, then paced, its stone visage locked on the dark figure that had appeared there to catch Kali in outstretched arms.

  The stranger wore a black suit and knelt to set Kali down on the wet asphalt. Up above, the storm broke itself apart, and rain fell across the yard.

  Mike thought that the man was black at first but realized quickly that the light seemed to bend away from him, his Middle Eastern features hidden away in the shadows. Even the rain itself bent away from him, leaving him dry.

  “I see that we have failed once again.” His voice was pleasant but somehow sucked the warmth out of the air.

  Mike, still frozen from having Cecilia riding shotgun inside of him, somehow felt colder even hearing it.

  The stranger shook his head, his dark curls unmoving.

  “And who are you?” Mike asked.

  “You may call me Amir. If you would like to invite me in, I would be happy to speak with you.”

  “Do you think I’m dumb?” Mike fiddled with the goggles, curious what the man looked like using its different settings. Through the goggles, Amir may as well have been a shadow. He had no heat signature or even a heartbeat. Amir’s magic was somehow invisible to the goggles’ power. “There’s no way in Hell that I’m inviting you in, and I am not giving you my house.”

  “The house is an issue for another time. I only want what is mine.” Amir’s eyes fell on Lily. She had bounced off the stone wall and was currently caught up in the damaged branches of the hedge Mike had hidden behind when he’d fallen off Zel. Her eyes were now wide in terror, and her now frantic struggle to get free had only further entangled her, so she started tearing through the branches with her claws.

  “Nothing here is yours,” said Mike.

  “I beg to differ.” Amir’s eyes locked on Mike. “I will offer you a one-time deal, Mr. Radley, but you will only have moments to make it, so please, hear me out. I am a patient man. I am patient enough to simply wait until you have passed away, leaving this place to the next Caretaker. I am patient enough to convince the others that this fight we have with you is not worth the toll it has already taken on my colleagues. I am patient enough to admit defeat and return again when you have been long dead in the ground.

  “However, I have no patience for disloyalty. That succubus belongs to me, and I will have her back. Hand her over to me, right now, and we will go away.” Though his face was dark, his teeth were bright, making him look like a sadistic shadow.

  Mike watched Amir, then looked at Lily. She scrambled out of the bush, her dark eyes on the stranger at the edge of his yard.

  “I don’t know that you really have any bargaining power,” Mike said. “With this sundial, I can keep you out of here for the rest of my days.”

  “Indeed. But you will be under house arrest. I will wait for you to step away, and I will kill you. A lifetime of being stuck in that tiny little home, wondering when we will try again. Paranoia at every hour of the day. Or you could return my property and have your freedom and my word that we will never bother you again. It seems to me that you are getting the better end of the bargain.”

  “Mike.” Lily’s voice shook. “He means it. He won’t just kill you either. He’ll make you suffer.”

  “What? Do you want to go back with him?”

  “She does.” Amir held out his hand. “Even if she doesn’t know it. Return her to me, and I will take Kali and Sebastien away and leave you in peace.”

  Mike chuckled. “I wagered my soul to gain her servitude. She can’t break the deal.”

  “But you can.” This time, when Amir held out his hand, Mike could see the shadows clinging to him. It was like he had been poorly Photoshopped back into the real world, the extra dark lines around his body the main indicator. “Now hand her over. I won’t ask again.”

  Mike sighed. He walked to the edge of his yard, the stone lions at his side. They were an extension of the house and, while activated, he could feel them in his mind, eager to obey a direct command or act of their own accord. Unfortunately, he knew they couldn’t pass the boundary of the house, which meant he couldn’t just sick them on Amir and end this right here and now.

  When Mike was about ten feet away from the boundary, he stuck his hand in his pocket. Amir’s smile grew impossibly wide.

  “You know what? Maybe she is too much trouble.” Mike frowned. “Wait, hold on.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and felt around on the outside of his pants, then looked around. The dagger and its sheath was tucked into his back pocket, and he casually closed his fingers around the hilt. “That’s so strange. Where did it go?”

  Amir’s smile faltered. “What happened?”

  “Well, sometime between yesterday and today, I ran out of fucks to give.” Mike grinned sheepishly. “Guess you’re just going to have to be patient enough for me to grow a new one, or something.”

  Amir’s eyes narrowed, and the ground shook, but Mike held his ground, his eyes never leaving Amir’s. The rain had finally stopped, and the sun was coming out, but the tension in the air was suddenly so intense that he tightened his grip on the dagger.

  “You are a d
ead man, Mike Radley.” Amir knelt to pick up Kali, then lifted her easily. “You should have taken my offer.”

  That cold feeling spread in his gut, but he was ready. An arm made of shadows quickly crossed the space between them and seized him by the shirt collar. Mike swung up his arm, the dagger clutched tightly in his fingers, and severed the shadow limb. It tumbled onto the ground and shattered, freezing the grass around him. The edge of the geas sparkled momentarily, and when Amir sent another shadow limb in to grab Mike, it exploded on the edge of the geas and ran like wet ink down onto the ground.

  “Do you want me to check my pockets again, Amir?” Every fiber of his being told him to run away and hide, to flee from this man, but he felt it deep within his being, that voice of reason that said if he turned his back now, Amir would kill him.

  Amir chuckled and handed Kali over to a bundle of shadow arms that cradled her like a child.

  “We have no more to say to each other.” Amir walked backward onto the street, the shadows following him. Someone had left a large, ornate rug just sitting on the asphalt. Mike’s jaw dropped when it lifted Amir and Kali into the sky and flew away, Amir’s dark eyes never leaving his until they were gone.

  “Mike.” Lily was at his side, her hand on his arm. “You should have given me back. Now they’ll never stop. He’ll never stop.”

  “I don’t expect that he will.” Mike let out the breath he had been holding, his limbs suddenly heavy. “Dude scares the shit out of me. Shadow arms and a flying carpet? What the actual fuck?” He looked at his front yard. “Shit. It’s going to take days to fix this.”

  Lily laughed. Mike liked the sound of it.

  Satisfied that Amir wasn’t going to show his face again, Mike set the lions back on their pedestals. They assumed their original forms—simple stone statues—once up there, but he could feel their magic burning in his blood still. The sundial had rotated slightly—of all the magical artifacts he had seen so far, he found it ironic that the most powerful defensive magic he had seemed to function like an egg timer. He had only partially twisted it, so he paused long enough to twist it the rest of the way.

  Twenty-four hours. In the next twenty-four hours, he would have to twist it again to keep the lions activated. Part of him secretly hoped that the society would show back up, magic blazing, only to get crushed by the lions.

  Celebrations were brief. Tink took the goggles from Mike, then swatted him on the ass before inspecting the damage to the house. Sofia was using the garden hose to wash the blood off Abella, and Beth sat with Cecilia on the front swing, her head in her hands as she woke back up. Lily had vanished shortly after Amir had, and he hoped that wherever she was, she was doing okay. The mimic was still in the yard, a macabre scarecrow wearing one of his favorite shirts torn to bits. He picked it up and carried it through the door. Not knowing where else to put it, he leaned it against the wall.

  He walked through the house into the backyard. Dana and Naia sat in the middle of the fountain. Dana was smiling but still looked sickly. She had remained behind with Naia, just in case Mike’s blood hadn’t worked.

  “That was quite the commotion,” Naia said. “But it’s gotten pretty quiet. I take it you activated the defenses?”

  “I did.” Mike sat on the edge of the fountain. “The lions made very short work of the situation.”

  “Any intruder using magic against the house or the Caretaker will be taken care of. It doesn’t work on people who have been invited in, though, so you have to be careful. I wish I could have told you sooner.”

  “It’s all part of the journey, isn’t it?” Mike thought back to the last couple of days. Maybe it was a weird thing to think about, but he felt almost like every challenge was part of a path that had been set before him. He briefly thought of his vision, moving game pieces across a board, then dismissed it. He was ninety percent sure it had been a hallucination, a dream that had chased him into the real world. “And you?” he said to Dana. “How do you feel?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t feel like I’m going to tear your face off, but I don’t feel good either. Kind of cranky, mainly.”

  “I am so, so, so sorry you got pulled into this. You need to tell me what it is I can do to help make this right.”

  “She still needs something from you,” Naia said. “She’s operating on borrowed time. The blood is rapidly wearing off.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” He let out a sigh.

  Dana was avoiding his gaze, her fingers drawing shapes in the surface of the water.

  “But I’m getting the feeling that there’s more to the story.”

  “There is. Do you want to tell him, or should I?” Naia asked.

  “Zel originally gave me a potion she had made, which was far better than the blood,” Dana said. “She said that your sperm was in it, and I wanted to think it was gross, but I was so hungry that it really didn’t matter. Anyway, Zel has a theory that if I were to eat your…fluids straight from the source, the effect would be magnified.”

  “And?” He could tell there was more.

  “I’ve never been with a man before. This isn’t a naive virgin thing; this is a lack of interest thing. I loved Alex, and I still do. And I’m confused because you’re the only guy I’ve ever even been attracted to. Like, not the first time we met. You were cute, but that’s all. But after? I was surprised by that sudden attraction, which Naia explained was because her magic is inside of you. Apparently your sex appeal is off the charts because of it, and I just don’t know how I feel about that.” Dana sighed. “I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore either, and I hate that.”

  He nodded. “I think I understand, but please continue.”

  “If Zel’s theory is correct, the effect diminishes immediately upon exposure to air. Something about intent and intimacy. That’s why she wants me to…you know. ” Dana frowned. “Which brings up the other problem. When I drank it before, it made me super horny. And it ended up being okay but only because someone was there to help me through it. I’m still in love with someone that I lost, and the idea of being with anyone else feels like a betrayal to her memory. If not for Lily being able to transform into Alex, I don’t know how I would have handled it.” Her eyes were misty now, and she struggled to speak. “I’m still me, even if I’m dead. And part of me is afraid of what I’ll become if I have sex with you just to stay alive. Is it okay because the situation is weird? Or is it still some kind of betrayal? I feel like I have to choose between ravenous hunger and losing my mind. It’s hard for me to say this, but even if I just let you jack off in my mouth, I think that part of me will be gone forever, and it was a part that waited for so long to be alive.”

  “Damn.” Mike hadn’t thought of that. She was dependent on him to stay sane but didn’t want to be involved with him sexually or romantically. “The important thing is that you need to decide what is okay for you. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “You’re not? I thought…I thought the others had to have sex with you to stay here?”

  “Who gave you that idea?”

  Naia rolled her eyes, then made a pair of horns with her hands.

  Mike laughed. “Lily’s been telling stories, it sounds like. I’m guessing she implied more than a few things. May I?” He gestured at the spot next to Dana. She nodded, so he sat next to her. “This is going to sound weird, but sex here and with the people in this house isn’t like sex out there. Here it’s no different from going to a movie or eating ice cream with friends. Granted, there are a bunch of emotional attachments, but I’m not forcing myself on anyone. In fact, I think more than a couple of them have forced themselves on me.”

  “I guess I don’t know how I feel.” Dana put her head in her hands. “I have a lot of time to think about stuff like this. It keeps my mind off how hungry I am.”

  “You need to feed, but you don’t want to
forfeit who you are.” He looked at Naia, then back at Dana. The spark of an idea was forming. “Out of curiosity, if I were a woman, would that help?”

  “Well, yeah, a bit. But you still wouldn’t be Alex, and you couldn’t, you know…” Dana made a jacking motion in the air. “I mean, maybe if you were a squirter, but that’s different. Something about how your sperm is meant to make life, which is why it carries so much life force. A girl who squirts is just having a really good time, which is different.”

  “But you wouldn’t mind being with another woman?”

  Dana thought about it for a minute. “I would feel a lot more like myself, so it wouldn’t bother me. Is that…like, you can’t turn into a woman, can you? ”

  Mike laughed. “No, that’s not a trick I’ve picked up yet. But I think I know a workaround.” Mike lifted an eyebrow and turned to Naia. “Exposure to air ruins potency. What about water at body temperature?”

  “Interesting.” Naia’s brow wrinkled in thought. “We could try it, but I would recommend passing it along as quickly as possible.”

  “If it works, then we just need to figure out timing.” Mike looked at Dana. “But you would have to be nearby to swap out with me.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “I’m going to have sex with Naia.”

  “That doesn’t help me.” Dana crossed her arms. “Even if you came in her and pulled out, it still gets exposed to the air.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Mike reached over to Naia and flicked her arm. The moment his finger touched her, her skin became water. It made a tiny splash. “If I come inside of Naia, she can make her body turn to water and keep my sperm warm. In a weird way, it’s kind of like it came just from me. Then you can drink it directly from her.”

  Doubt was written across Dana’s face. “Maybe.”

  “If it doesn’t work, I figure it will buy you a couple of hours at least. Some is better than none, and we can try to figure out a different solution. What do you think?”