Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 111

The knight sneered at him, but looked up to see that the guards were now standing outside the door with their weapons raised. Reluctantly, she handed over the syringe.

"Today's lesson is about departmental cooperation. The Order hired the SoS to capture these children and contain them. The SoS hired me to be in charge of containment. So really, who's in charge of whom?" Cyrus moved toward Callisto, who was glaring at everyone. "Is it the woman who has her head so far up the Director's ass that she can taste his lunch? The same person who fell apart after one scary encounter with a fucking child's toy? Arm, please."

Callisto reluctantly lifted his arm. Cyrus tucked his wand into a pocket, then leaned forward to block everybody's view, including the camera's.

"You'll feel a pinch," he said as he palmed a pair of blood-filled vials from his pocket. "I'm pretty bad at this."

Cyrus jabbed at Callisto with the needle, but didn't break the skin. The centaur cried out in false pain and stomped his back feet. Cyrus feigned filling up the two vials, then stepped back.

"No band-aids, kid. Put some pressure on it until it stops." Callisto obeyed, covering his false wound with a finger.

Cyrus turned around. "From now on, we're doing things my way or the hard way. For anyone curious about what the hard way entails, it does come with a one-way trip to one of the spare holding cells once I'm done with you. Are there any questions?"

Laurel started to sputter something, but Cyrus moved past her and grabbed the syringe from the other kit. The knights left Callisto's cell and closed the door behind them.

"If you have a problem with me, you need to take it up with Darius. He's my boss, now, remember?" Cyrus used his keycard to open Grace's cell. "Okay, kid, Papa Cyrus needs to get some of your blood."

He knelt down in front of the Arachne and held up the syringe. Grace stared at it for a couple of seconds before looking past it to his face.

How much did she understand, he wondered. There was a cunning intellect behind that gaze, but was it enough to play along? When he put that needle next to her skin, would she decide to pull off his head?

The thudding in his ears took over, and he took a deep breath in through his nose and stuck his hand in a pocket. He pulled out the shredded barbecue MRE he had taken from the command center.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, hoping to see anything in her eyes other than that cold, calculating look. "This is an instant meal, ready to eat. I'm afraid it's all I've got on me at the moment, but here, look."

Cyrus tore open the MRE and dug through the packet. "Ah, here it is. An oatmeal cookie. Do you like oatmeal cookies? I know I do."

Grace continued to stare at him, her eyes briefly flicking toward the cookie.

"For gods' sake, don't you ever blink?" he muttered. Grace blinked exactly once.

"Anyway, I'll let you have anything that's in here if you're a good girl and don't give me any problems." Cyrus unwrapped the cookie and stuck the trash in his pocket, which allowed him to palm the remaining vials of blood. "If you don't want the cookie, we've also got beans. What about some shredded beef? I won't eat it unless I have to, but that's because I'm a vegetarian."

At the mention of beef, Grace's eyebrows lifted. Cyrus grabbed the beef packet and showed it to her.

"Do you want some? Here, let me open it for you." Cyrus tore a small piece off the corner of the shredded beef packet. "We don't have any plates, so the easiest way to eat it will probably--"

Grace snatched the packet from his hands and put it to her mouth. She squeezed the bottom with her hands, her eyes never leaving his as she slowly consumed the contents of the pouch.

"Well how about that? You really were hungry." Cyrus moved his hands toward Grace's forearm, then pushed up the sleeve to reveal her skin. "So you know the drill, you might feel a little--"

Grace reached down and grabbed his hands so fast that the lid of one of the vials popped off. Cyrus quickly capped it with his thumb, his eyes now locked with hers. He had accidentally pressed the needle against her skin, but it had bent. The Arachne studied him for several seconds, her nostrils flaring as she took in his scent.

This was the moment. The smell of blood was in the air, and it was his. She would be able to sniff him out no matter where he was, and that was if she allowed him to leave this room alive.

"That's it," he said, keeping his voice calm. "Keep being good for Papa Cyrus. Let him take your blood for those grumpy people back there."

Grace studied his face as if she was looking into his very soul. She took one last slurp of her meat packet and then dropped it on the ground. With her thumb, she hooked a chain around her neck and gave it a tug. A silver rectangle popped free.

"Papa," she proclaimed proudly, her voice quiet as she pointed at the dog tag. Cyrus pinched the tag between his finger and thumb and turned it sideways to read the name. The whole world spun around him as he clung to that single piece of metal for support.

Darren. Nothing else on the dog tag mattered, because that name alone told him everything he needed to know.

"Papa?" he asked again, the chain rattling as his hand shook.

"Papa." Grace smiled, revealing sharp teeth packed full of shredded beef. But her face no longer looked like the cold-blooded killer that sometimes haunted his dreams. It was the face of a child, overflowing with joy and pride at her first word. It was a moment she had shared with Cyrus alone.

He didn't know what to think or say, not for several moments. Cyrus cleared his throat and then tucked the dog tag back into her shirt.

"Let's put that back where it's safe," he said, his voice breaking. "It's very special, and we don't want to lose it, now, do we?"

Grace shook her head, her eyes wide. No, the thought of losing such a treasure was simply horrible, more horrible than the situation she found herself in, or so Cyrus gathered, anyway. He had never been around kids.

Clearing his throat, Cyrus took the vials of blood and set them on the ground. He used the cleaning wipe from the MRE to wipe some sauce off of Grace's chin, then picked up the vials and the remainder of the food packet. When he stepped out of the cell, he handed the vials over to Laurel.

"Priority testing on those to figure out what she is," he said. He turned to one of the SoS guards and handed him the MRE packet. "See if the boy wants any of the food in there. We don't want our guests to starve. I'll look into getting them some proper food but need to check in with Darius first to figure out next steps."

The man nodded and took the packet from Cyrus. The old man looked at Laurel, who was now sulking over by one of the tables as she filled out some paperwork. He had no doubt in his mind that she would pull something else, but there wasn't time to ponder what bullshit she would surprise him with later.

Cyrus headed for the elevator, his hands clenched tightly in his pockets. All he could hear was Grace's voice in his head, that single word playing over and over again.

Papa. Darren was that little girl's papa. So if Mike was her father, it meant that Grace was likely Ana and Darren's granddaughter. Those two had obviously created a secret family, away from the world and those who would hunt them. Today, their world had once more collided with his in the form of a small child who carried her grandfather's dog tag like a talisman and ate the world's shittiest beef with a smile.

When the elevator doors closed, Cyrus pushed the button for the top floor and then burst into tears. He had tears for the situation he found himself in, tears for all the mistakes he had made, the people he had put in the ground, and the life he could have lived. They were tears of sadness, anger, and wrath, all of them dripping onto the floor to form a pool of regret.

Ingrid stood at the edge of the dock, her eyes on the horizon. She scowled with disdain at the distant water, hoping that Captain Francois' magical cloaking system would somehow fail and she could organize a proper assault. Sadly, even the merfolk couldn't find him, something about the magic of the ship being far stronger than even their own.

Behind her, the heat from Paradise had finally died down enough that people could properly approach the rubble. Order teams were now devoting their time to stabilizing the area. The structures had been so hot that there was no hope for anyone who had gotten trapped inside. Aurora had been able to create a list from memory of who should have been there, and most of the missing had been found dead. Everyone was careful to avoid the massive spiral of glass on the beach. Even though it was no longer active, the sight of the ground sucking down the dead and churning them into a gory mess had been extremely unnerving, and nobody was quite up for walking across it just yet.

"There you are." Wallace walked up behind Ingrid, one of his arms in a sling. The merfolk had set up triage for the injured, and Wallace was covered in small, sea kelp bandages. "Someone said you were doing a perimeter walk."

"I was. The magical boundary managed to hold in all that smoke, but just barely." While they had a million problems right now, the sudden, magical appearance of a collapsed, smoldering building packed full of merfolk would easily double that number. "We had to reinforce a few of the runes, which are deep underground."

"Too bad Ratu couldn't stick around. I bet she could have gotten that shit done quick."

Ingrid's heart fell. All she could picture now was the look of utter devastation on Mike's face at hearing that his children had been taken. The man had left without another word, allowing Lily to drag the Director by his throat with her tail. Some members of the Order had tried to stop him, but Ratu had snapped her fingers and buried them up to their necks in the sand. Nobody else had tried to follow them as they stepped off the property, but Ingrid could only assume they had all gone home.

But what had shaken her even more was the absolute feeling of impending dread that had come crushing in on her from every direction. It had been a shared sensation, as several of the people present had cried out in alarm. Something about the Caretaker's rage had triggered a very primal reaction, as if the skies themselves had cracked open and the gods above had found them wanting. She wasn't certain what that could mean, but doubted it was anything good.

Ingrid looked down at her feet and saw a pair of bony fingers by the edge of the dock. She kicked them into the water.

"It is too bad," she said, her voice quiet. "For all of them. And us, I suppose."

"If you're referring to the idea that our beloved Director essentially tossed us on a sacrificial altar in order to get back at an old girlfriend, I would have to agree." Wallace stood next to her now, his features unusually pensive. "For me, what makes it worse is that if they had been weak, we never would have known."

"Hm?"

"Think about it. Yeah, the Radleys played us for chumps, but we had it coming. Personally, I like the guy. Never took anything seriously, traveled with beautiful women, stinking rich, everything I aspire to. But if they had really been as incompetent as we thought? I doubt we'd even think twice about sacking his house. The Director would have dragged Ratu off without another word, and we would all be oblivious to the monsters we actually are."

Ingrid nodded. "It kind of makes you wonder how many times we've already been the villain, but never even knew. How can we even trust the Order after this?"

Wallace shook his head. "I don't think those are thoughts you should voice out loud, at least not for now. Something pretty big inside the Order needs to change, and we're never going to change it from the outside. Once they know you feel that way, you're out. For some people, perhaps that will be the best solution. But me? I still believe there's plenty of good we can do in the world, but the best way is from the inside."

"You're suddenly very philosophical."

"Didn't you know? Multiple near-death experiences in the jungle does that to a man. We contemplate our own mortality, our place in the universe. Have we done enough? Or did we make things worse?" Wallace looked toward the beach where Aurora was. The hostess was speaking with Princess Leilani, who had stayed behind with the others. "I saw her sister die out there, protecting her knight and another mage. Tried to help, but they were too far away. All three of them died. Their lives were cut short trying to make a difference, but it didn't matter in the end."

"Maybe it did." Ingrid looked at Wallace. "Maybe it served to make you a better person."

Wallace shrugged. "Perhaps. There's a lot that happened out there that I see whenever I blink my eyes. I don't know how much of it you experienced, but those skeletons became savage. During one skirmish, they grabbed the knight standing next to me and pulled him apart, much like they used to draw and quarter people. It was essentially a cosmic coin flip that it was him and not me."

"I'm sorry." Ingrid sighed. "We're all going to need so much therapy after this is done."

The knight laughed. "There's going to be so much paperwork, I think therapy may be the least of our problems. We did sort of participate in a coup, after all."

"The evidence will speak for itself." Ingrid looked back at the wreckage of Paradise. "That man spent over three decades working closely with the Order. I looked up his record once, did you know that?"

"Doesn't surprise me." Wallace pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "You always were thorough when it came to who we worked with and our targets."

"What could you possibly have in your teeth?"

"Fish." He nodded toward the beach. "Merfolk brought us some poke. They're trying to make up for their fuck up."

"I'm surprised they fed you."

He shrugged. "Probably didn't recognize me."

"Or you stole it."

"That, too."

She laughed. "At least some things haven't changed. The Director started as an outside consultant, primarily on earth magic. It's so hard to find naga willing to put up with our shit, right? Anyway, he helped out with a few hunts, always eager to please. Eventually got hired on full time about fifteen years back, took on a small leadership position. I almost trained under him when I was starting out, but I changed my mind to work with a mage directly in the field. Supposedly, he was an amazing teacher, got all sorts of accolades from his students. Once a position in Operations opened up, he applied and they seriously considered him. Eventually gets promoted to overseeing North and South American ops, and here we are."

"Well, it'll probably be the last time the Council hires a cryptid to do anything important. Once word gets out, I suspect a few of our affirmative action hires will be forced to step down."

Ingrid sighed and stared back toward the horizon. "And that's the problem. The Order needs to stop thinking in terms of us versus them. Mohan wasn't human, but so what? How many times has a human Director, President, or whatever the fuck you want to call them done something similar? The only reason this feels so bad is because--"

"He went full Jafar and blew up a multi-million dollar property." Wallace smirked. "It's not much different than that woman last year who made twenty million vanish from our accounts before disappearing. Seems like there's been a lot of that lately. The difference here is that we'll actually have to clean up this mess instead of just pretending it never happened."

"Yeah." Ingrid watched a pair of merfolk weeping over the corpse of another. The dead had been laid out and covered with seaweed, human and merfolk alike. Tonight, when the tide came in, they would all receive a proper burial at sea. In the end, everything died. It was the one truth that men and most monsters lived by. "That's if the merfolk even let us stay here. They're being real friendly right now, but it wouldn't surprise me if they kicked us off the lease."

"Wouldn't blame them." Wallace shook his head. "Not even in the slightest."

They stood there and watched the waves while the others mourned on the beach. Ingrid lost track of time, her heart full of bitterness. As if reading her mind, Wallace broke the silence.

"So what are you going to do next?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

The knight spat his toothpick out into the water. "There's something different about you. Just a gut feeling, really. How many days until you tell the higher ups that you're done working for them?"

"Is it that obvious?"

Wallace grinned. "Yep."

"What about you? Maybe you could come with me?"

"And do what?" He shook his head. "I mean, yeah, I've seen some things, maybe even learned the lesson of the week. But I'm not the kind of guy to change things from the outside. Well, not quietly, anyway."

"I see." Ingrid frowned. "Do you think I should stay?"

"No." The mirth in Wallace's eyes immediately vanished. "This isn't the kind of job you can do with doubts in your heart, no matter how noble. A moment's hesitation will kill you, or maybe even kill the person who has your back. If you know this isn't the life you want, you should bail. But..."

"But?"

"You should wait, just a little bit. Try and figure out a plan first. If nothing else, let them send you on a month-long sabbatical to rest up, do your planning then. That's what I would do, anyway." The knight pulled another toothpick out of his pocket.

"You're ridiculous," said Ingrid.

"Fuck you." Wallace grinned. "I'm on vaca..." He cocked his head to one side, eyes focused on the horizon. "What the hell is that?"

Ingrid followed his gaze. It was a ship on the horizon, but it was difficult for her to see any detail. "It looks like a ship."

"That's an awful lot of sails for a ship. Hold on a second." Wallace left the dock and started wandering among the survivors, asking them for something. Eventually he returned with a pair of binoculars that had a crack through one lens. "Here," he said. "I already looked, but think I didn't see it right."

Ingrid took the binoculars and looked through them. Three massive, tattered sails had been unfurled, the ship cruising across the horizon. It definitely wasn't Captain Francois' ship, or if it was, it had changed shape.

"It looks like a Spanish galleon."

"Well, shit. That's what I was thought I saw, too." Wallace took the binoculars from Ingrid and looked through them again. "There's at least two...no, three more, now."

"What the hell?" Ingrid took the binoculars back. After a moment of searching, she saw the ships Wallace had mentioned. They were far enough away that there was a haze around them, but she could see enough detail to tell that the ships looked old and cobbled together. Another one appeared on the horizon, but instead of sails, a series of massive oars rowed the boat forward.

"Looks like our buddy Francois is coming back with friends." Wallace touched Ingrid's shoulder, then pointed to the east. "Lots of them."

As if appearing through a fog, dark shapes manifested across the horizon. At first, it was only a handful, but they simply kept multiplying. Ingrid lowered the binoculars in shock.

Francois had returned, and it looked like he had brought an army. Or a navy. Whatever. The details didn't really matter. She counted nearly forty ships now.

"Go tell the merfolk," Wallace said, his features pinched. "Right away."

"On it." Ingrid ran down the dock, pulling out her cell phone as she did. There was one other person who needed to know that the Captain was coming back with friends. And even though they didn't deserve it, she prayed that the Caretaker would help them.