An Invocation of Monsters (The Void Book 2), page 23
The tentacles in my pussy withdrew as he slammed me home onto his cock.
I screamed, writhing against him at the sensation of invasion. He was sucking at me everywhere, at my nipples, my clit, my ass full of slick as he pumped into me.
His cock was thick, but several tentacles slipped in alongside it. I was so full I was going to burst. I couldn’t physically take any more.
And yet he kept thrusting, going deeper and deeper, the tentacles swelling to the point that I’d surely burst. I felt—more than heard—a low rumbling coming from his throat as he drove into me.
Then he tensed, and I felt it as he let out a satisfied groan in my mind: a hot gush of fluid filling me, his tentacles and cock pulsing in unison, and the sensation of flooding made me come again.
He kept going, holding me firmly on his cock as hot seed rushed forth into my spasming pussy. I felt completely swollen with both tentacles and semen, satisfied to the core.
“My god, Drazan,” I said weakly, not expecting him to hear it. But he held me close, still impaled on his shaft, keeping all that seed and slick trapped inside me.
My beautiful little mate, he whispered. You must never leave. You are what we have craved all our lives.
I melted against him, enjoying being held, being full of him. After a while I had the faint sensation of movement, water rushing past; in time the darkness receded as he brought me to the shallower parts of the lake.
When I could just barely see through the water, Drazan stopped. He still held me, but he slowly eased me off his cock.
His semen gushed out of me, and his tentacles delicately cleaned me. I was covered in slick and come, but soon enough I was shiny-new; these monsters took cleaning their mates very seriously, I was coming to realize. There were a lot of baths in my future.
I would like to keep you down here, but I hear disturbances. They wish to see you, he said. I kept my arms around him; I was relaxed, no longer terrified, and perfectly happy to drift in this peaceful abyss.
Finally I sighed. “I know.” He couldn’t hear me, but he could probably read my lips.
Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t time to bask in the afterglow.
I’d been chased out of my bed by a creature that never should have been there in the first place. There was too much to take care of.
I kissed Drazan’s cheek, feeling the bubble-mask tickling between us, and gave him a rueful smile.
I will be here, Elle, ready to fill you again, he said, a wicked glint in his eye.
“Don’t tempt me,” I told him, and his laugh filled my head.
Reluctantly, I let go of him and swam towards shallower water. As soon as my face breached the surface, the bubble-mask popped and disappeared, like it had never been there.
One day I would wake up, and all my mysteries and problems would be solved.
I was determined to do this, because all I wanted was one day of living out that monstrous fantasy that Drazan had put in my head.
Monster sandwich.
I sighed. Maybe one day.
33
Elle
I emerged from the water and threw back my hair, wringing it out as I strode up the beach.
My fear had left me entirely; I knew Toth would be there, and the creature was dead and gone.
But I was still stopped dead by the sight in front of me. Kiraxis was further up the beach, watching me over his shoulder; he had been crouched in the grass, speaking to a dark, hulking shadow.
It was another Mlul’dra.
I paused, my hair half-wrung in my grasp, staring at this newcomer.
He was clearly of the same species as Kiraxis, but he looked… older, somehow. Six angular crimson eyes watched me just as cautiously as I watched him. His dark pelt was accented by pale, silvery hairs that seemed to be forming spirals in his fur.
I exhaled slowly, lowering my hands. I didn’t want to appear threatening to this strange Mlul’dra. “Kiraxis?”
My mate came to me, but he didn’t seem alarmed.
If anything, he was more joyous than usual, picking me up and cradling me.
“See?” he said to the stranger. “This is my mate. She is very perfect, as I told you.”
The stranger nodded, his eyes running over me. I felt a brief moment of alarm as I considered my monsters’ territorial tendencies; what if this Mlul’dra was planning to attack Kiraxis for his treasures, or even worse, me?
But the newcomer just inclined his head.
I was relieved to see nothing sexual in his assessment. “Good, Kiraxis. We will meet again when my Lady commands it.”
I blinked. Kase’s words were the first thing that popped into my head, calling me the Lady of the Open Door.
But this Mlul’dra clearly did not mean me.
The Mlul’dra cast his assessing gaze over the lake, then the ruins, and then his eyes lit on me once more before he loped away, moving swiftly on six limbs and vanishing into the forest.
“What?” I asked out loud, watching the grass sway from his passage. “The heck?”
“I am overjoyed that Rask is pleased with my choice,” Kiraxis said proudly. “He is a very brave Mlul’dra warrior. He comes from the seed of the Starsmasher. I am only a seed from the World-Ender, but one day I will also have the warrior-pattern on my fur.”
“The spirals?”
“Yes. Mlul’dra warriors gain them with age and wisdom.”
So, like the Klee, the Mlul’dra underwent their own metamorphosis of sorts. How fascinating.
But I couldn’t focus on that just now.
He carried me towards the cavern as my thoughts reeled. “Who is he? Who is the Lady he’s talking about?”
“He is Rask,” Kiraxis said, frowning as he thought. “A strong Mlul’dra. He was the one who guided me to find my own place. I do not know his lady, though. You are the only lady who matters to me.”
As sweet as that was, it didn’t even remotely answer my questions.
I was formulating a different way to ask the question—trying to make it as blunt and literal as I possibly could—but Toth fluttered to Kiraxis’s side, his face grim.
“You must come with me,” he said to both of us, his voice tense. “You will find this of interest, though it is disturbing, Elle.”
Kiraxis growled low in his throat, following the moth-like monster into the forest. I recognized where we were when I saw the wide gap of the ravine’s mouth.
I supposed Toth had been planning to dispose of the creature’s corpse here. My stomach turned when I saw the body on the ground, and then shock made me sit upright.
The limbs he’d torn off the thing were already gone, probably at the bottom of the ravine.
But the body lying on the ground was not the thing that had hunted me.
“Let me down, please,” I asked Kiraxis, and he complied. I walked carefully across the grass, avoiding the droplets of blood on the ground.
In death, the creature had… changed.
It was still skeletally thin, the legs wasted away.
But the remaining arms were jointed like a human’s. There were a few thin, long black hairs growing from its scalp.
I recognized the face, twisted though it was.
“This… this creature was Tasha Vintner,” I said through numb lips.
Ruined, warped, twisted almost beyond recognition… but it was undeniably Tasha.
I sank to my knees, staring at the body before me, then abruptly turned to the side and threw up in the grass.
Toth held my hair back, and Kiraxis gently stroked my back as I emptied my stomach of what little was in it.
It was embarrassing to do this in front of my monsters, but as Toth whispered soothing words to me, I quickly discarded that embarrassment.
There was nothing to be ashamed of in the sight of seeing a human being dead before me.
Especially when I had this particular person’s last words engraved in my mind.
“Why did she want to kill me?” I groaned, my stomach lurching again.
If I am missing, I did not go willingly. If I am gone, I did not kill myself.
No. In a way, she had brought death on herself by attacking me; but how the hell had she made it into the Void in the first place?
If I was going off what she’d written, she hadn’t come here of her own accord.
“I have no answer for that beyond one,” Toth said. His hand, carefully knotted in my hair, was gentle. “Many mortals cannot look upon this realm for long without giving in to madness. And when the mind goes, the body may follow. The Void warps reality in time.”
I grabbed a handful of grass and used it to wipe my mouth. “So her mind went, and her body was… it was just a reflection of that.”
So that was what insanity looked like when given flesh.
“She may not have perceived you as another human,” Toth said carefully. “I… I did not realize you knew her, or I would not have shown you.”
“I didn’t,” I whispered. “I only knew of her from old pictures. She was my mother’s best friend, one she’d never told me about.”
I forced myself to think it through, even though my brain was saturated with shock.
If Tasha had left that note, she’d known that something bad was coming for her.
She’d known she was being targeted… perhaps she just didn’t anticipate that it would involve descending into madness and becoming a creature of bloody appetites.
The members of the Wendigo Society were so close-mouthed about her fate, insisting that she had just vanished into thin air.
But neither Kase nor Willow had known anything about it; they’d only been aware that they weren’t permitted to speak of her.
That left only two people who could know what had befallen her: Mary and Joseph.
I took a few deep breaths, resting my clenched fists on my thighs, and squeezed my eyes shut tightly.
One of them had done this. They had brought her into the Void, and… what? What had happened next?
I couldn’t imagine what it would take for a human being to become that thing that had hunted me.
All I knew was that the leaders of the Society were actively dangerous.
I exhaled again. Counted to ten. Grounded myself.
What would Juno do?
“I want to give her a proper burial,” I said without opening my eyes. I didn’t want to look at her body again yet. “This… none of this was her fault. Someone did this to her against her will. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, that’s it.”
Kiraxis rumbled deep in his chest. “I can dig the grave for you, my Elle.”
“Thank you. It would be nicer to bury her on Earth, but…” I shook my head. “If anyone ever investigated the Lodge and found her body, there’d be no explaining this. It’s better if… if no one disturbs her.”
I couldn’t imagine what a coroner would think upon finding a human skeleton with multiple arms and several rows of teeth.
Better not to risk it.
“Where would you like to do this?” Toth asked. He kept his voice gentle and steady, ensuring I remained grounded.
I looked around. I couldn’t imagine any place in the Void that Tasha would’ve been fond of, given what it’d eventually twisted her into, but the least I could do was find somewhere restful. “Somewhere pleasant, I think.”
Toth picked up the body, and we walked until we came to a meadow mirroring the one on Earth.
Only this was a Void meadow, of course. The flowers wriggled, chiming strange songs as we passed them.
“Here is as good as anywhere,” I said heavily, and Kiraxis chose a flat patch of ground to begin digging.
It went fast, as he had four arms to work with and used his claws like shovels, and I forced myself to help Toth lower her into the grave.
Her flesh was cold in death, making my skin crawl, but I felt I had to do it.
We scooped dirt back into the grave, patting it down over her. There was no marker, but perhaps that was best as well.
When it was done, I sat back on my heels, staring at the patch of naked ground. “I feel I should… I don’t know, give her last words or something.”
That was what Juno would do. She was sensitive to death, and she would not hide a body without at least saying something.
Finally I sighed. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know her. But… she seemed happy in the pictures, when she was with my mother. I hope she gets to see her again somewhere, if there’s a Heaven out there.”
And why not? If the Void existed, maybe there was yet another dimension beyond it where souls could meet again.
Maybe there were a million dimensions, a never-ending loop of them.
I stood up and brushed off my hands, but I felt grimy and weary.
My next move was clear. One of the two remaining Wendigo Society founders was responsible for this.
I had no doubt I would never manage to force a confession from them, but maybe, if I questioned often enough, one of them would slip up.
Nobody deserved a fate like this one. It was sickening.
I let my monsters lead me away from the meadow.
“I think I’d like to go back to Earth for a minute,” I said, my hand pressed against my stomach. “I want to wash this off and just… think for a minute.”
They both agreed, bringing me back to the door that led beneath my bed. I kissed them both before I climbed up, but I didn’t want to touch them for too long with my grave-stained hands.
Burying her had made me feel weirdly complicit in her death, even though I wasn’t the one who’d warped her.
I climbed through the door to a mess. The creature—Tasha—had torn it up in her effort to catch me.
I slid under the shattered edge of the bed, where her claws had ripped huge gouges in the wood, and through a thicket of dead flowers and torn pages.
I gathered them slowly, putting them in messy piles on the coffee table. She’d torn up the Deepwater text, and had knocked over my mother’s old ganja box, crushing the stale buds underfoot.
A bunch of photos had been ripped out of the album and torn in half. I tried to put the pieces together: photos of the Void, my baby picture, and—
I examined them more closely.
She’d torn up every single photo where Joseph was present. In some of them, she’d punched a claw right through his face.
The chill that was beginning to feel omnipresent washed through me, and I gave up on the cleaning and went to the bathroom, cranking the shower as hot as it would go.
As I washed and scrubbed grave dirt from under my fingernails, I began to feel a little better.
She would never hunt me again, and now she was buried and hopefully at peace.
Well… maybe not. Toth had torn her mind and soul free, and sent it into the endless warp of space and time.
But he’d also spoken to her in a pitying voice when he did so. “I see what they did to you,” he’d said.
I hoped he’d seen that it was not her fault, and had sent her somewhere pleasant.
I stepped out of the shower, a towel wrapped around me, and brushed my teeth multiple times, scrubbing the taste of sickness out of my mouth.
When I collapsed into my broken bed, I fell into a deep sleep, but it was not dreamless.
It was full of nightmares, Tasha screaming as the Void took her mind.
34
Elle
I woke up with a start, sensing a presence near me.
Again.
But fear gave way to an unpleasant jolt of surprise when I pushed the covers back and saw Willow sitting on the edge of my bed, holding something in her hands.
She was staring out the window at the lake, her eyes far away.
The sun was just rising, sending soft warm rays over the water and painting it gold.
How long had she been sitting there? She toyed with the thing she was holding—what looked like a leather-covered journal—flipping the ribbon back and forth, back and forth.
She didn’t look too much worse for wear, considering she’d almost died not that long ago.
“What are you doing here, Willow?” I felt oddly vulnerable in bed, with her perched there like a thin, pale bird of prey.
She slowly tore her gaze from the window and turned her too-large eyes on me.
There was nothing dreamy or vague about her today; her gaze was sharp, and there was an almost cruel tilt to the corner of her mouth.
“I thought I would thank you for saving my life,” she said. She stopped playing with the ribbon, smoothing a hand over the cover of the notebook.
God, this was the last thing I wanted.
“No problem,” I muttered, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
She continued to stare at me in silence, which creeped me a little.
Okay, a lot.
It was eerie, especially since the sclera of her right eye was still tinted pink.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I finally asked.
Willow’s lips twitched. “Not anymore.”
Alright. I’d had enough of this. I climbed out of bed, gesturing to the door. “Well, you’re welcome, but I’m going to get dressed now, so you can go.”
She lowered her feet, standing up and looking around my room with open curiosity, her gaze resting on the piles of wilting wildflowers, the shredded papers, the shattered wood of the bed frame.
Then she exhaled and extended her arm, dropping the journal on the bed. “This is for you. I see a lot, you know.”
“Good for you,” I muttered, wishing I could teleport her at least ten miles from my vicinity.
“I hear a lot, too,” she continued, her gaze still sharp. “Sometimes I have sex with Joseph and he talks in his sleep.”
That floored me. I stared at her, feeling nauseated.
I didn’t even know what to say to something like that. ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t seem like it would even begin to cover that scenario.
“When you came here, I hated you.” Willow tilted her head, looking at me up and down. “I didn’t see what made you so special to them. I did everything they asked, but they still didn’t want me. They wanted you. But I kept quiet. I kept their secrets.”
