Everyday Evil: A New Adult Urban Fantasy Harem Adventure (The Horned Mage Book 4)

by Liam Lawson

  The way she was positioned lined her sex up just over Absinthe’s. She bit her lip and gave me a quick, encouraging nod.

  That was all I needed. I surged forward, grabbing her lithe hips and planted myself inside of her. She let out a squeal as I went to town ploughing into her hot sex, my balls slapping against Absinthe’s entrance below. I don’t know how long I spent attacking her like this before I pulled out and thrust into Absinthe, earning contrasting moans from them almost simultaneously.

  My hands roamed everywhere they could but mostly stayed on the girls’ hips so that I could hold them steady as I thrust into them. I switched back and forth, going harder and faster each time. My dick slid from Scarlett, coated in her fluids, and then plunged into Absinthe. Then the other way. It was as if we were sharing all of ourselves with each other, each girl just as involved in my intercourse with the other. They kissed, breaking occasionally to let out a gasp or moan.

  Scarlett came first, which surprised me since she’d started a little bit later. Her entire body went rigid, clamping down on my length. I thrust into her over and over again, bottoming out each time, returning to the vigorous, passionate aggression we had always shared. She let out little squeaks that started in her throat as she came.

  When she finished, she rolled over, letting me slip from her, but pulling Absinthe along with her so that she and the biker chick switched positions. I quit switching between the two and buried myself deep inside of Absinthe. Instead of the raw aggression that my lovemaking had become with Scarlett however, I slowed, my strokes becoming gentle and slow but strong.

  Her back arched and she let out a little whimper as I withdrew until just the head remained inside of her and then slowly, excruciatingly, slid myself back inside of her, inch by inch until my hips pressed up against her golden ass. She gasped and buried her face in Scarlett’ shoulder. Scarlett met my eyes with a smoldering expression, as if I just as much inside of her as I was Absinthe and she loved it.

  She opened her mouth and gave Absinthe a gentle bite on the neck.

  Absinthe’s entire body spasmed as she was wracked by a massive orgasm. She screamed into Scarlett’ shoulder, her entire body shaking and quaking with pleasure. I tried to maintain my slow, thorough pace but couldn’t as her passage milked my shaft. I sped up until I was pistoning in and out of her as hard as my hips would let me. Each impact made her tight ass jiggle and summoned a fresh moan from her lips.

  I couldn’t hold back anymore and finally let myself go, spilling my seed deep inside of her, my hard shaft pulsing with ecstasy even as my entire body stiffened, muscles I didn’t know I had going taut. More cum spilled from me than I realized I could keep in my body until my orgasm ended and I fell back on my ass, spent member slipping from her sex in a mixture of our fluids.

  My semen trickled from her and had just made contact with Scarlett’s own sex when she managed to roll herself off, flopping onto her back on the carpet beside our lover, who was grinning at us like the cat who ate the canary. It was a good expression for Scarlett, and I was glad to see that happy, mischievous light back in her eye.

  Absinthe let out a groan, unfortunately not the pleased kind.

  “Something’s digging into my back,” she muttered, forcing herself to sit up and patting at the carpet. Sure enough, there was a lump there that the pattern concealed. It was one of those things that was all but invisible until you noticed it but once you did you couldn’t stop seeing.

  Scarlett cocked her head, still grinning. “What is that?”

  I shrugged, then froze. “Did you guys hear that?”

  Both girls scowled, faces screwing up in concentration. Their eyes shot open though I hadn’t heard anything. As one they began clawing at the carpet, yanking it out from under the nearest bookshelf and rolling it back to reveal a trap door with a padlock.

  It was my turn to scowl. I thought the storm shelter had been filled in. Why would it need a padlock if it had been filled in? A soft thump sounded and the padlock shook ever so slightly.

  All three of us jumped back, staring at each other wide eyed. I couldn’t understand the noises coming from below the trap door, but it sounded like a voice.

  Someone or something was down there. And they wanted out.

  We dressed quickly. No point in meeting whatever monster lay beneath us naked, right? There was never a question between us that we were going to find a way to open that door. I actually tapped on it several times in quick succession. Tap-tapatap-tap.

  The answering tap-tap came almost immediately. Tap-tap. Whatever was down there was smart enough to know the pattern.

  “Should we burn our way through?” Scarlett asked.

  “No!” Absinthe said quickly. “We’d burn down everything in here, and maybe collapse this place. Then we’d never get that door open.”

  A memory stirred in the back of my mind. I started combing through the work desk’s contents.

  “What are you looking for?” Scarlett asked.

  I turned around and revealed the key that I’d found in there last night when I’d been looking for a phone charger. “Might not go to that lock,” I said. “But it’s worth a shot.”

  The girls stepped back and I crouched down to slide the key into the lock. It stuck. Guess that wasn’t it—a little jiggling and it turned. The padlock clicked open.

  Quick movements of something pulling away quickly echoed up through the door and with a grunt of effort I heaved it open. It was surprisingly heavy and almost caught my fingers when I first pried it up. Then it swung open all the way, revealing a ladder going down into a dimly lit…room? It had dirty wooden floors and it stank. The sour smell of unwashed skin and body odor combined with urine and fecal waste.

  Both girls gagged, their noses far more sensitive than my own. And I was nearly choking on the horrific stench.

  I swallowed and tried to breathe through my mouth without tasting the air. “Hello?”

  I sensed movement just beyond the edge of what the trapdoor hole would allow me to see. A woman shuffled into view. She was filthy, her hair hanging in greasy, tangled knots around an emaciated, grimy face. Her skin, beneath the dirt, was hyper pale from what had to have been years of sunlight deprivation. Her eyes were a familiar pale blue.

  My first stupid thought when I saw those eyes was that she had taken them from Nicole. Then I realized that it was the other way around. I hadn’t seen this woman in years, but I knew exactly who she was.

  “Caleb?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

  “M-mom?”

  Chapter Four

  Caroline Marshal was dead. I’d been to her funeral two years ago. She had always insisted that I call her Mom, even when she was disappointed in me. She’d been the closest thing I’d ever had to one. And she was here. Disgusting but not dead. Alive.

  “C-Caleb,” she said again, her entire body rocked by dry sobbing.

  “Mom!”

  I threw myself down the trap door and hit the dirty floor below hard. I didn’t care that it hurt my ankles and knees. I didn’t care that it stank worse than anything I’d ever smelled before. I threw my arms around her and she threw hers around me. She buried her face in my chest as her entire body shook. I was taller than her. I didn’t remember being taller than her. Guess I’d grown more than I’d realized since I was seventeen.

  She kept saying my name over and over again, rubbing her hands over my back and eventually my face, pulling back so that she could look at me. “You’re here. You’re here and you got so big. Oh my God, you’re so big.” A hand with long, dirty fingernails reached up to touch one of my antlers.

  “Those are darker than I remember.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve…I’ve changed a lot. You’re alive.”

  I pulled her back into a hug again. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t process anything. The single thought that she wasn’t dead just kept playing on repeat in my head until I took a deep breath and my surroundings registered.

  There was a cot in the
corner with a single filthy sheet. At the foot of the cot was a bucket where the worst of the stink was coming from. Her toilet. A small coffee table was pressed into a corner with a battery powered lantern providing our light. Beside it stood a bouquet of flowers—fresh flowers whose bright colors and soft petals didn’t belong here. They certainly didn’t belong next to the shriveled red thing beside them set up on some kind of display stand.

  My gorge nearly came up as the recognition began to stir. But it was too disgusting, too horrible to really process.

  “What is that?” I asked not because I wanted to know but because I needed to be proved wrong.

  Caroline Marshal pulled back from me and scooped the thing off the table, cradling it to her breast. She cooed at it, then smiled at me. “Caleb, I want you to meet your little brother.”

  I became very still.

  The red thing had a soft, bloated head that had clearly been stitched back onto the mostly skeletal body. Skeletal except for the equally bloated belly, from which a bit of umbilical cord was still attached. The eyelids had never fully developed so the reattached head stared at me through fleshy lenses that didn’t really conceal the dark spots beneath. It was covered in veins and should have been slimy. It wasn’t. For some reason that made seeing the taxidermied fetus even worse.

  “His name is Colin,” she told me. “He-he’s a good boy. He’s kept me—he’s kept me from being alone.”

  She fell to her knees, clutching the fetus tight to her chest as she shook. “He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He can’t be dead but he’s dead and you’re not really here. You’re not real. He’s not real. Colin’s dead. I’m dead.”

  I dropped to my knees beside her and grabbed her shoulder. “Caroline Marshal! You’re alive. I’m real. I’m here. We’re going to take you out now. Okay? We’re going to get you to a doctor.”

  She looked up at me, eyes watery with unshed tears. “We’re going to get Colin to a doctor?”

  My mouth was so dry that it was an effort to swallow. “We’re going to get you and Colin to a doctor. You need to come with me now.”

  Dammit, I had no idea what I was doing. She was clearly traumatized and there was no telling how badly she’d been wounded inside. For all I knew I could be making this a thousand times worse.

  No. Leaving her here was the worst thing I could do. Getting her out was the first step to getting her the help she needed. That had to happen no matter what. She needed out and she needed to get to a hospital.

  And we couldn’t stay here. This was Albert’s office. She was his wife. He had kept his wife locked up as a prisoner beneath his home office. He’d brought her flowers—the same kind that he’d given to his daughter last night—and had stuffed an aborted baby. Albert was a fucking psychopath. I couldn’t let him find out what was going on. Oh shit, I couldn’t leave Nicole here either.

  God, if he’d been willing to do this to his wife, what the hell might he do to his daughter?

  “Absinthe,” I called up. “Absinthe, I need you to check to see if Albert’s still here.”

  “Who’s Albert?” she called down.

  “My adoptive father,” I told her. “I don’t know what time it is. But we can’t leave if he’s still here. And we need to leave.”

  I told her what kind of car he drove, and she took off. Slowly I coaxed Mom out of the hole. She stopped at the trapdoor, wincing at the sunlight gleaming in through the windows. Her lower lip quivered.

  “It’s okay,” I urged in the kindest voice I could manage.

  She came out slowly, still clutching Colin.

  Scarlett stared at it. “Is that—”

  I shook my head as hard as I could and made an abortive gesture with my hand.

  “—uh, is this your mother?”

  “Scarlett, this is Caroline Marshal,” I said, then gestured at Scarlett. “And this is my girlfriend Scarlett.”

  “She’s Mexican,” Caroline said. “And she’s pretty. You did good, Caleb. Who was the other young lady?”

  “That was Absinthe.” I debated on how much to tell her, then decided she’d been through enough without me lying to her. “My other girlfriend.”

  Caroline scowled at me. “Caleb Marshal you had better not be two timing on this nice young girl.”

  The nice young girl in question grinned at her. “I think I like your mom.”

  “I’m not cheating on her, Mom. We’re both together with Absinthe. She’s both of our girlfriend.”

  “Both?”

  “Yes, she’s Scarlett’s girlfriend too.”

  Caroline blinked at us both very slowly. “Is that what the kids are doing these days? I don’t know if I like that. You’d better not set a bad example for Colin.”

  I did my best to smile. “I’ll try not to.”

  Absinthe opened the door, making us all jump. Caroline actually took a step toward the trap door as if she meant to flee back into her prison.

  “He’s not here,” she said. “But there’s another car in the driveway.”

  Nicole. Right. This was going to be awkward as all hell.

  “Okay, let’s get Nicole and get out of here. There’s no way we’re leaving either of them here with that fuckjob.”

  Caroline smacked me upside the back of the head. “Watch your language.”

  I stared at her for a moment and then grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Slowly, Caroline took her first tentative, barefoot steps outside into the morning sunlight. She winced, then took a moment and simply basked in the sun’s glow. How long had it been since she’d felt the touch of it on her skin? The full two years I’d thought she’d been dead or did that fucker take her out for walks? The image would have been beautiful, even with the grime coating her, if it weren’t for the fetus in her arms. Was it supposed to look bloody or was that just how they naturally looked?

  I gently took her by the arm and guided her across the backyard. We made it all the way to the back door before Nicole threw open the door. She didn’t even look at Scarlett or Absinthe, just at the woman beside me.

  “Mom?”

  Caroline grinned. Her teeth were brown and crooked, but it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. It lit her up from within and made her eyes shine. “Nicole.”

  Nicole reached out slowly, as if afraid she might be electrocuted at any moment, and touched her mother’s face just as Caroline had touched mine only moments before. Then they were hugging, silent tears streaming down Nicole’s face.

  “Mom. Oh, God, Mom I’ve got so much to tell you.”

  “Oh baby. Baby I missed you so much.”

  I didn’t want to interrupt but we had to move. If Albert caught wind of what was going on…damn, I don’t know. I should fry the fucker. I could do that now. Oh, my Dear and Fluffy Lord I wanted to roast him.

  No. Nicole and Caroline were the priority, not hurting him. I cleared my throat. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  Nicole pulled away from her mom, looking as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “What? Why? How?”

  Okay, I guess she hadn’t. In her defense, her mother had just come back from the dead.

  “I found her beneath Albert’s office. The storm shelter had been made into a prison. We have to get out of here before he realizes she’s not there.”

  Nicole stared at me for a moment and then took off at a sprint, tearing around Scarlett and Absinthe as she bolted for the shed. She vanished inside, the door swinging wildly on its hinges behind her. What was that about?

  The girls and I exchanged glances. Did she think I was lying or something? I mean, this was pretty unbelievable, but I’d never lied to her before. Why would I make up something like this?

  “Where’d she go?” Caroline asked. “She can’t go in there. She’ll get trapped in there. Caleb, go get her—bring her back. Bring her back!”

  I was just starting to do that when the shed door burst open again and Nicole came bolting out, just as quickly as she’d gone, she was sudden
ly at our side. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  Thank you!

  Chapter Five

  The adrenaline rush wore off after about an hour on the road. Nicole and Caroline rode in the back of Nicole’s car, which I drove, while Scarlett and Absinthe followed in Valencia’s car. Scarlett had gotten permission to borrow it from her mother to come pick me up. None of us had a car of our own, though Absinthe had her motorcycle, but fitting three people on that wasn’t a good idea, let alone for a longer trip.

  Getting Caroline into the car had taken more effort than expected. She really hadn’t liked being outside, growing more and more agitated the longer we were beneath the open sky. I don’t think she was even aware of the change in her demeanor. Getting her into a small, confined space like the back of the vehicle though? That had been a challenge, but Nicole had eventually coaxed her in there and now sat with her mother leaning against her, her dead son, our dead brother, still cradled in her arms.

  God, I hoped we didn’t get pulled over. That would be a hell of a thing to explain to the cops. What’s that officer? Oh, that’s just my mother’s dead baby. Illegal? You mean driving around with a dead baby is against the law? Are you sure? I had no idea! Yeah, that would go over real well.

  But no sirens flashed. No cars chased after us. Nicole received no mysterious or threatening phone calls from Albert. We just drove with Scarlett and Absinthe following behind us, an awkward silence steadily growing heavier with every mile. Caroline didn’t seem bothered by it. She had a small smile at her mouth and kept caressing Colin’s bulbous head. I tried not to look at the thing or think about what Caroline had been through.

  I failed horribly at both.

  It made me nauseous. No sunlight or anything to do except wait for her captor to come back and…do whatever it was he did to her. Nobody to talk to except for her oppressor and her dead baby.

  Her stench hung in the back of the car like a cloud, making everything that much worse. My knuckles whitened as I tightened my grip over and over again on the steering wheel. As soon as she was taken care of Albert was going to be seen to. I didn’t know the exact details yet, but it would be violent. Thinking of Albert gave me the anger and focus to finally keep my eyes from flitting back to the rearview mirror every few seconds to check on Nicole and Caroline.