Monster Girl Islands 2

by Logan Jacobs

  Well, they sure as hell wouldn’t live to try it next storm season.

  “What’s happening?” Talise demanded as I sprinted past her.

  “Giant beast things!” I hollered over my shoulder. “Get everyone into the back rooms for safety. Now!”

  Another crack and boom sounded as I skidded into my room and snatched up my sword, only to be met by Mira just outside my door.

  “Let’s take this thing down, my king,” she told me with a giant grin and absolutely no hesitation. Then she sprinted down the hall and outside with me into the storm.

  This shit was like nothing I’d ever felt before. When I’d traveled with the Coast Guard, and even by myself, I’d been through hurricanes with hundred mile per hour winds and rain that pelted down like little shards of ice from clouds.

  And I’d thought that shit was bad.

  Storm season in my new home was a million times worse. The winds were so strong they picked up fallen branches and two-foot-wide rocks and spun them around like they were nothing but feathers. The three of us, George included, were immediately met with rain that felt like a million little knives.

  But I couldn’t focus on that. The conditions were unchangeable. What I needed to focus on were these giant ass things in the air above us.

  “Duck!” I shouted when one of them yanked up another palm tree and sent it straight at us.

  Mira and I slammed to the ground while the tree sailed over our heads and managed to miss our home by yards. Then I heard the palm smack the ground just behind it in an explosion of dirt.

  “George, stay here in case we need to get everyone out,” I instructed my dragon friend. “If Mira and I don’t make it, I need you to make sure our loved ones are safe!”

  I hope we do not need such a precaution, but I will do as you wish, dear one, George replied with a deep nod.

  Without another word, Mira and I skidded out of the village, past the huts, and toward the beach so we could try and draw the attention of these beasts.

  Extraordinarily strong winds caused rocks and branches to fly across the village, and we were forced to zig zag and duck way more than I would have liked.

  “What are those things?” Mira breathed once we’d reached the beach, and we finally managed to get a clear look at our newest enemy.

  Huge didn’t even begin to describe them. They looked like pterodactyls to me, only twice the size of any rendering I’d ever seen. The beasts were as big as semi-trucks, with long, hooked beaks and bulky bodies that rippled with muscles, attached to two enormous, feathered wings and a set of two clawed feet. A crack of lightning ripped through the sky and illuminated everything for a brief moment, which gave me just enough time to see these creatures were covered in striped feathers of black and green. Their claws were as sharp as our sea glass swords, and unlike actual dinosaurs, these monsters only had a single, beady red eye set in the center of their skulls.

  Hideous didn’t even begin to describe them.

  “Hey, dickheads!” I hollered out over the raging storm, just as one beast swooped down to grab another tree.

  They must have had super hearing, too, because the moment the words were out of my mouth, their massive, ugly faces turned toward Mira and me.

  “Smart thinking,” the warrior hissed next to me before she joined in. “You ugly fucker of mothers! Look over here!”

  One day, I’d have to sit down and give Mira the rundown on slang. Although, I did kind of like “fucker of mothers.”

  “That’s right, look at us!” I hollered. Then I backed up a bit and started to jump up and down on the sand while I waved my sword around.

  With a loud, angry screech, the beast with the palm tree in his massive claw dropped it back into the middle of the jungle, and then they both swooped down and headed directly toward Mira and me.

  “Get ready,” I warned her.

  Another crack of lightning eerily lit up the night sky, and I could see the anger in those beasts’ eyes.

  Good. When things were angry, they made mistakes. And when they made a mistake, I’d kill ‘em.

  When they were about twenty feet away, Mira swung her bow down from her back, took aim, and let loose an arrow right at the heart of one of the beasts.

  A broad smile spread across my face in anticipation of seeing the massive monster’s body hit the ground, but my expression quickly faltered when the sharp arrow bounced off the beast’s chest like it was nothing more than a spitball.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I murmured at the same time the monster let out a Jurassic squawk and dive-bombed Mira in anger.

  The warrior dropped her bow and drew her sword in one fluid motion, but I couldn’t maintain focus on her, because a millisecond later I had my own beast to deal with.

  It flapped just above my head in a flurry of wings and noise loud enough to nearly overtake the howling winds.

  One shiny claw-filled foot made a mad grab for me, but as if Oshun had smiled down on me and sent some help, a burst of wind pushed me back and out of reach just in the nick of time. The claw grasped at sand, and I snatched the opportunity to take a running leap and wrap myself around the monster’s scaly leg the way a kid wraps itself around a tree trunk.

  “Take that, fucker of mothers!” I yelled as I jabbed my sword up and tried to cut open the underbelly of the beast.

  But instead of a clean stab like I expected, my sword clanged off the green and black feathers as if it had been met by a thick sheet of steel.

  Natural armor. It covered their entire bodies.

  The beast squawked again and tried to use its other leg to knock me off, but I twisted and twirled around to avoid it while I forced my mind to kick into overdrive and think.

  Just then, I noticed the air was thick with fog, and I couldn’t really even see because it was so dark.

  A spike of lightning cracked not two feet from my face, and I realized that, while I’d been preoccupied with stabbing the shit out of this thing, it had carried us up nearly thirty feet above the beach.

  Fucking perfect.

  I couldn’t even see Mira from up here, and that scared the shit out of me. I needed to kill this thing so I could help her.

  “You wanna play?” I shouted up at the monster’s head. “Let’s play!”

  It squawked and stared down angrily at me while its massive wings beat against the wind to just hold steady.

  I was soaked, freezing, and pretty sure I had wind burn in places it most definitely shouldn’t have been, but I gripped my sword tighter in my hand and started to shimmy up the beast’s leg.

  I had an idea. It would be hard as fuck, but if I could get up to that massive red eye, I was sure I could drive my sword down into it and through this asshole’s brain.

  As if it had picked up on my inner thoughts, the demonic bird knockoff suddenly flipped over and took off, back toward the beach.

  I didn’t have time to sit there and try to figure out what the monster thought it was doing, so I grabbed a fistful of coarse green feathers and hauled myself onto its back.

  I fought against wind, rain, and the crazy ass flight patterns of the monster as it flipped, dipped, and tried to get me off its back, but I managed to scoot myself to just below its long neck, right in between its two massive wings.

  Now came the real challenging part.

  Right as I was about to haul myself onto its neck, the monster flipped upside down completely, and suddenly we were both falling.

  “No!” I yelled out as my hands scrambled to find a hold anywhere. I grabbed two fistfuls of feathers near the monster’s ass, but that meant I needed to let go of my sword, and I watched in horror as my trusty blade hit the sand below.

  I managed a quick glance to see Mira was holding her own with the beast she fought off, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last.

  Now, I was weaponless on the back of this monster. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  It seemed the flying asshole was just as pissed that I’d managed to hold on
to him, too. As he zig-zagged and flew through the wind and the rain, his wings slammed against the air with a newfound malice, and the long beaked head on his skinny, eleven-foot-long neck reached around and tried to snap me up in his jaws.

  “Hell no,” I muttered to myself as I swung from hand to hand to avoid the snapping beak. As I did, I managed to get another brilliant idea.

  I may not have a sword, but I sure as hell still had my hands.

  I took in two deep, rain filled breaths as I timed out the monster’s snaps. When I found the perfect moment, I leapt from my perch on its back straight onto the top of its beak, where I stared right into its ugly red eye, which was now wide with surprise.

  Clearly, this thing wasn’t used to food that put up a fight.

  “What’s up, dickwa--?” I hollered, but I hadn’t accounted for quite how slippery it would be thanks to all the damned rain, and I had to shut down my insult so I could focus on clamping my arms and legs around the monster’s beak.

  The beast let out a squawk and started to shake its head back and forth like a dog shakes a squirrel, but my new dragon muscles were strong enough to hold me in place, and he couldn’t throw me off.

  If I wanted to take this monster out, though, I needed to try to get to that eye. Getting up to his eye meant I’d have to climb, and having to climb meant I’d need to let go with one hand so I could move up.

  I wasn’t sure I could hold on with just one hand while he thrashed around, though.

  We zoomed up and down and side to side, and I managed to haul myself up the beast’s slippery beak despite being pelted by rain and wind and the fiery brightness of the lightning. Finally, I was face to face with the giant red eye, which was nearly the same size as my torso, and I readied myself to attack.

  As if it knew what I was about to do, the creature made a sudden dive bomb, straight for the beach. My stomach seemed to leave my body, but before we both hit the ground, I hauled my fist back, and then punched straight into the beast’s ugly eye.

  My fist squelched through eyeball goo and gods only knew what else until I was literally shoulder deep in the creature’s skull.

  The massive wings stopped beating mid-air, and its beak went completely limp, but we were still on a fast track course to the center of the earth.

  I quickly tore my now blood and gore coated arm out of its skull and chanced a glance back at the rapidly approaching sandy beach. Then I did the only thing I could think of to stop myself from being crushed under the weight of this massive thing when its dead body hit the sand.

  I leapt.

  Right off the beak and toward the soaked sand from about twenty feet up.

  I was already traveling at a high velocity, but I jumped sideways and counted on the extra distance and the gale force winds to help slow my fall.

  Sure enough, they did, and I tucked myself into a tight somersault the moment I slammed into the sand.

  Every ounce of air whooshed out of my lungs, and I was pretty sure I heard my shoulder crack like an eighty-year-old man’s does when he reaches up to the top shelf, but as I rolled over and over in the wet sand, I knew I wasn’t seriously injured.

  The same couldn’t be said for the fucking monster.

  As soon as my body came to a stop, I whipped my head around to get a good look at the massive, dead form of the beast.

  “Yes!” I shouted. I pumped my fist in the air only once before I ran over to where my sword had hit the sand, snatched it up, and then desperately searched for Mira on the beach.

  I saw her about a hundred yards away as she sliced, ducked, and tried to find a way to take her own beast down. She looked so preoccupied I was sure she hadn’t seen or heard me take my fat brute down.

  “The eye!” I hollered as I sprinted toward her. “Go for the eye!”

  The wind swallowed my words, though, and I knew she couldn’t hear me.

  The bird monster, however, did, and it whipped its head around to stare me down, only to be met with the dead body of its friend.

  With a giant squawk, the last beast beat its wings twice to put some distance between it and Mira as it stared at its companion’s body.

  Mira followed its gaze and grinned when she saw the corpse.

  “Now, it’s your turn!” I bellowed at the beast above us when I skidded to a halt at Mira’s side.

  With a screech, the monster looked between us and its dead companion before it flipped over and took off back toward the jungle.

  “Guess that scared it off!” Mira cheered. Then she spun around and hugged me faster than either one of us could think, but when she pulled away, worry suddenly clouded her features. “Do you think it will come back?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her truthfully, “but at least now we know how to kill them.”

  “We should go back inside,” Mira said after another gust of wind knocked into us both and nearly flattened us on the beach.

  We fought against wind and rain to head back inside, and I couldn’t help but smile, even as I surveyed the damage those fuckers had caused with their stupid tree throwing games.

  There might be scary as fuck monsters on this island, but I would defeat all of them to keep the women I loved and my children safe.

  Chapter Eight

  Over the next several weeks, the entire tribe of beautiful serpent-women and I crammed into the palace like sardines in a can. I thought Nerissa would have asked me to impregnate her or Talise again, or move on to Careen or one of the other women who were eager to carry my child, but there was virtually no privacy at all in the palace. So, we all decided to wait until the storms cleared up. This way, whoever I made love to next could enjoy the experience more.

  My queen and tribe of women fell into a routine while the rain poured out of the sky, and it seemed like everyone in the village took a turn trying to wear out the babies. Marella took advantage of her newfound mobility and ran anywhere and everywhere her little chubby legs would carry her. Arrick had gotten two teeth, was eating solid food, and was crawling all over the place, too.

  They weren’t kidding when they said it took a village to raise a child.

  We all were relieved when Nixie would come into the great hall and play with the babies, though. They always fell asleep after she chased them around and let them climb all over her, and I now understood why parents back in my old world spent thousands of dollars on things to occupy their kids’ time with.

  When I wasn’t chasing one of the children, I was working on a raft made with the leftover bamboo meant for making bows and arrows. I knew this wasn’t going to be the final product, but I wanted to get the build just right while I had time on my hands. Then we’d be ready when the storm season was over.

  “Do you have or know of any plants that produce a thick, sticky substance?” I asked Talise one day while we were having our midday meal.

  “There are quite a few,” she said as she tapped her chin in thought, “like sugarcane and aloe.”

  “I need something sticky,” I shook my head, “but it needs to harden once it dries without becoming too heavy.”

  “You’re not going to like this,” she laughed, “but the ganjika you so affectionately call weed does exactly that if you boil it long enough. I must insist you do it outside, though. The smell is quite heinous.”

  I blinked in surprise. Of course good old marijuana was the answer to everything.

  “Thank you.” I grinned. “If we get a light day soon, I will boil a small amount and see if it does what I hope it will. Now that I think about it, the smell alone might be enough to discourage the shipworms from making dinner out of my boat.”

  Talise laughed as she gathered up our dishes and returned them to the kitchen.

  I looked over at Sela to see what she thought since she also had a lot of plant knowledge from her time as a healer. Then I laughed out loud when I saw she’d fallen asleep in her chair at the table. The woman was completely wiped out by this pregnancy. She also seemed to be growing at an alarming rate
, since her stomach was much bigger than both Nerissa and Talise’s had been, but I wasn’t stupid enough to point this out.

  “To bed with you.” I walked over and scooped her up in my arms to carry her to her room.

  “Mmmph,” Sela grumbled as her face creased in discomfort, but she remained fast asleep.

  I snickered quickly and waved down Careen on my way. After the rough pregnancy Talise had, and Nerissa’s terrifying delivery, I really wasn’t in any kind of mood to be surprised by something new when it came to one of the mothers of my children.

  “Careen,” I whispered as I passed by her, “if you aren’t busy, do you mind giving Sela a quick look over? I am sure it’s just exhaustion, but I can’t help but be leery.”

  “Of course,” the pink-haired healer said with a smile, “I will go with you now.”

  Sela continued snoring in my arms as I carried her to her private room. We had to rearrange rooms between her and some of the other warriors when her pregnant belly got so big it started making her snore like a rabid beast. She’d been keeping Hali up all night, and the chef was ready to stab anyone who crossed her until we made the changes.

  We finally reached Sela’s new room, and I laid her down carefully on the bed, but she didn’t even stir.

  Careen giggled to herself before she pulled out her stethoscope and listened to several spots on the warrior woman’s large tummy. She kept throwing me looks as she did, and I started to get worried.

  “Careen,” I growled as my heart skipped a beat. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Um, nothing is wrong,” she hesitated, “it’s just … ”

  “Spit it out,” I begged.

  “I think,” Careen bit her lip, “I want to get Talise’s opinion, but I think … I hear more than one heartbeat.”

  “We could hear Talise’s heartbeat when she was pregnant with Marella,” I sighed with relief, “so that’s not weird.”

  “No, Ben,” the healer smiled, “I think I hear two baby heartbeats. I think she is carrying twins.”