Dead and Horny Ch. 12

A similar wand to the ones being wielded sat on his desk. In an hour, it would be his turn to gather some of the younger acolytes and instruct them on the same exercise. The wand was carved of yew with ivory inlays, and weighed no more than a few ounces. Yet when he picked it up, it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

The Council had spent most of the previous month investigating him. While Cyrus was no stranger to the procedure itself, it had been an interesting process to endure. The Council was absolutely certain that a number of details had been missed. Cyrus had sat in a circle of runes that lit up in a certain order depending on his degree of honesty. It was apparent that his answers had not fully satisfied the Council, and he did not blame them.

The incident at the Black Palace was shrouded in more than a bit of mystery. The cleaning crew had been unable to salvage much from the wreckage except for ash and the occasional item leftover from his squad. Amida himself was the only one with a body to bury, as the rest had either been incinerated or tossed into the ocean as shark bait.

Cyrus attended Amida's service while sitting just behind Tasia. The knight remained motionless until the final consecration was completed, a ritual meant to ensure that Amida's soul had properly moved on.

The knight had had it especially rough. With several fractures in her ribs, it took longer than usual for her to heal, but that wasn't the main problem. The experience of being so casually dominated by Tristan had shattered her confidence. Though her sword had been found sticking out of the dragon's skull, nobody was certain how it had gotten there.

"Do you know where the succubus went?"

Cyrus could hear his superior's voice clear as a bell, and once more pictured the dark room they had put him in. Surrounded only by candles, he had been unable to see who was speaking, and had shaken his head.

He had no idea what had happened after being knocked unconscious. The runes around him had flickered, but he was telling the truth. Lily's final destination or master was a mystery, and though they had cross-examined him until he was exhausted, he had been unable to give them any clues.

But what had bothered them the most was that the succubus had let him go.

There was a knock at the door, and a young mage walked in. Behind him, Cyrus could see his guards, both a knight and a mage, standing against the far wall. The Council was convinced that some deal had been made with the succubus, despite Cyrus' assurances that no such transaction had taken place. They simply could not believe that such a wicked creature had granted him clemency, and the teaching position they had offered him was a compromise. As long as he was part of the Order, he would be watched, and the best place to do it was here.

"Master Cyrus?" The mage was a young woman with auburn hair and green eyes. He recognized her from the intel branch.

"Please." He waved his hand at a nearby table and she took a seat. In her hands was a folder, which she set down in front of her. He joined her at the table, then crossed his hands in his lap. "May I offer you some tea?"

"No, thank you," she told him, then removed a report from the folder. "There was an incident in the States recently, and I was hoping you could take a look at some documents for me."

"Hmm." He took the papers, which consisted of photographs and dossiers on several men and women. "What am I looking at?" he asked.

"We're not entirely sure. These men and women were a known cluster of magic users, but despite decades of surveillance, we never had reason to move on them. Until now, perhaps." She leaned over the table and slid one of the photographs out. It was a satellite photo of a giant crater in the middle of a business park. "This happened a few days ago. The media is running with a gas leak, but we know better. According to our investigators on site, it looks more like an implosion."

"I see."

He found the photographs interesting, because he could see in some places that it looked like someone had used a giant cosmic spoon to scoop out a section of reality. This would involve another plane of existence, or at least a dimensional shift. His mind flicked back to Dana's backpack warping and distorting in the darkness. Watching it sprout legs and crawl down the hallway on splintered limbs to shred and devour their attackers in a bloody frenzy had easily been one of the most terrifying things he had ever seen. Since the Order had no reason to ask him about the presence of a mimic, he had decided not to bring it up. It was a simple act of defiance, but serious enough that there would be major repercussions if it were ever discovered.

He glanced at the young mage before speaking. "If you look here, the lines are clean around the blast site. The concrete on this section of street should have cracked in a blast, but it's too smooth. There is also debris in the parking lot of this building, which confirms an explosion, but there should be far more of this building to be found."

"We were wondering if you had any ideas on what could have caused it. There are a couple of theories, but rumor has it that you've worked a similar case."

He studied the pictures for a few minutes, then cycled through the dossiers. "Did any of these people survive?" he asked.

"Not to our knowledge. Their identities were all faked, so it's hard to know if someone walked away from it. A simple web search on the group itself revealed that someone hacked into their website and gave them all vulgar names, but they shut the site down later. We've been watching the area since the blast in the hopes that one of them comes back. The Council would like to bring them in for questioning."

He nodded. Whatever had happened here was of potential concern. "This almost looks like a dimensional collapse, which would be an implosion right after an explosion. But that would be one hell of an explosion to leave a crater this big."

"We have records of the blast in audio format. Nearby cameras caught the sound. It's loud enough that this pit should be a lot bigger." She shook her head. "It may be something new, and there's concern that maybe this may have been a summoning gone wrong."

"I see. Well, to my knowledge, summonings that go wrong can have a blast this size, but the dimensional collapse wouldn't be so smooth. The things that can be summoned come from terrible worlds that would leave other signs. You may also have lesser beings that escape during the explosion and—" he had been thumbing through photographs of the gathered crowds and was now looking at surveillance photos from after the fact. Anyone who came with a hundred feet of the location was being recorded in the hopes that somebody familiar would be spotted.

In this picture, a little girl with black and red hair held hands with an older woman who wore dark shades and a baseball cap. Though the woman looked young, her hair was gray.

"Master Cyrus?"

"Just gathering my thoughts," he told her, then shuffled past the picture of Dana. Had they been involved? The timeline didn't match up, but it wouldn't be the first time those two had done the impossible.

Dana had become an enigma to the Order. During the investigation, it had been discovered that somebody had hacked into the cameras around the Black Palace and wiped any video showing her. It was almost as if someone had been watching her every move, only to erase it moments later. The prevailing theory was that she had used magic to enslave someone with government clearance, but he knew better.

This was also a fact he had kept to himself. They hadn't asked him about her true nature, which was yet another oversight on the Council's part. Bad questions meant that he could dodge the truth, a feat which reminded him constantly of Lily. What loopholes of her own had she exploited?

He shuffled through a few more papers, then set them down. "My best guess is that this group of individuals tried to connect two planes. It is possible, but the process requires a tremendous amount of magical power. Without a proper stabilizing field, they would have lost control of the spell, which caused the explosion."

"And the implosion?" The mage was hanging on his every word. Even though his superiors had good reason to doubt his recollection of events, he was still seen as an authority on magic.

"The space between planes is a mysterious one. It isn't technically a space, and you have to punch through it. When reality meets a plane without the rules of physics to dictate it, this can happen. This other place collapsed, but briefly tried to merge with our reality. Hence the vortex effect. My assumption is that anyone inside of this building is either dead or in this other place." He collected the papers and pushed them back over, but not before double checking the address. "Still worth watching the site for any members of this group, but I doubt a full investigation would turn up any more information."

"Thank you for your time, Master Cyrus." She put the folder back together and then bowed her head before leaving.

The days passed, and Cyrus found no joy in teaching the next generation of mages. A single seed of doubt had been planted within him that grew larger every day, and a job that had once felt like a holy calling now filled him with too many questions. It wasn't uncommon for a knight or mage to develop doubts, especially after such a long and storied career. Yet he was the only one of his rank who had lost the faith, a fact that he could never share.

Almost a month after the incident, Tasia left. There were rumors about her disappearance, but Cyrus could not get a straight answer from anyone on the Council.

One rumor said that she had gone home to her family. Her enslavement at the hands of the dragon coupled with killing her own teammates had only been exacerbated by the humiliation of being saved by a succubus. Some thought she had left the Order entirely. Another rumor said that it was just for retraining with her father, a man who had been a legend amongst the knights for his skill with a blade. This was the more likely explanation, because Tasia had been bred for battle, and he couldn't see her turning in the towel quite yet.

The last rumor bothered him the most. There had been whispers for years about a special program that was for volunteers only. Prior to his fall, even Cyrus hadn't had the security clearance level to know about what it entailed, except that anyone who had signed up was never seen again.

Unable to pursue Tasia's disappearance any further, he found himself looking into the city where Lily and Dana had last been seen. The town seemed nice, and it wasn't too far away from the ocean. A long search through local records revealed that there was a house in the area with multiple reports of noise violations, strange weather patterns, and even ghost sightings from periods the home was vacant. He found these reports interesting, but made sure not to give them more than a cursory glance.

Over the decades a pattern had emerged regarding the house, though nothing definitive to alert the Order. He was still on the fence regarding his hunch, but sometime after Halloween, he saw multiple police reports about people in costumes causing havoc in the area. A social media search of the area had revealed a video of a goblin throwing toilet paper at someone's house. Though it was chalked up to just some foul-mouthed kid in a costume, Cyrus knew that he was looking at the real deal.

The home had passed to a new owner earlier in the year, a man named Mike Radley, but little else was found in the records. He didn't bother looking the man up, because the last thing he wanted was for Radley's name to be listed on any of the Order's computers as a search. Instead, after doing a proper amount of research, he went to his superiors and submitted the necessary paperwork to retire.

Nobody seemed surprised that he was leaving, and he was heartily commended for his many years of service. He had already found a small rental not too far from Mike Radley's home. Taking long walks around the neighborhood became part of his daily routine. Occasionally, he found himself in front of the enormous Radley estate, an old Victorian era manor with large stone lions watching over the entrance.

He always walked past without giving it a second glance. The occupants of the home didn't seem to have any interest in the outside world, and he preferred it that way. On his walks, it wasn't uncommon to see familiar faces in the neighborhood, but the one which stuck out the most was a woman in her forties with long braided hair. He had recognized her from the Order's dossier. Not only did the woman always look a little bit angry, but she also carried an aura of magic around her that left a bad taste in his mouth.

It was clear that he wasn't the only one interested in the Radley house. What would a witch even want with the place? Did she know something about its inhabitants, or the secrets that it hid? He desperately wanted to ask, but had very little doubt that her intentions were less than friendly.

And what of his own intentions? He had become lost, a man uncertain of his future. Lily's actions had himself questioning everything he thought he knew. If Lily's master was capable of turning her away from darkness, then what other powers might they possess? Was this someone who could be persuaded to help maintain the status quo, to keep magic from the world?

Or were they a threat that needed to be destroyed?

He might never have the answers. After all, he was an old man, and it could be some time before anything noteworthy happened with the house. A quiet ending was rare for a man of his knowledge and talents, but it was known to happen every century or two. It would certainly be a boring way to go, but maybe boring wouldn't be so bad.

But until death found him, he would maintain his vigil. And should the opportunity ever arise, he would find a way to pay the succubus back for her dubious kindness.

After all, it was the right thing to do.

That's it, my dear readers. We have come to the end of Dead and Horny, and the tale continues in Home for Horny Monsters Book Four.

Thank you so very much for indulging me and my desire to give Dana and Lily both a chance to breathe outside the pages of my main storyline. This was originally going to be a simple story about retrieving magical objects while on a road trip, but Lily quickly took over with a tale of her own.

I hope that this little slice of my imagination has brought you some joy in the last year. I adore spending time with my characters, though I will admit I swear a lot more after writing scenes with Lily in them.

Thanks to my beta readers who helped me polish this up for you. Thanks to my regular readers here on Lit who have cheered me on as I continue to put words to pages. I am slowly closing in on a hundred chapters total, and will cross that million-word mark soon enough.

I hope to do other stories about my characters away from the main story line, but that will have to wait until I find a way to put more than an hour of my day into writing.

If you enjoyed this tale, please remember to click some stars and say something nice. Those kind words definitely help, especially on days where I feel like I'm just not good enough to continue. I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep improving my craft, and I really hope it shows.

Anyway, I shall leave you with this: take care of yourselves and each other. Thank you again for reading my story, and I will see you next time!

~Annabelle Hawthorne