Hey all! Annabelle here with the next chapter of Home for Horny Monsters!
As always, your support overwhelms me! I appreciate all the comments and emails (I read them all, even if I don't respond). Your support during this lull in my schedule over the last couple of months has been amazing and I had several nights plagued with self-doubt where I would come here and read what you had to say. Your encouraging words helped keep me on the path, kept me writing, and I will keep working hard for you, my readers!
When you are done with this chapter, please don't hesitate to leave a rating or a review. It's a wonderful way to support me (emotionally), and it really does help! If you are new to this series, it is written in novel format, with Book One starting in Ch. 01 and Book Two starting in Ch. 13.
Enough from me. It's time for Mike to reunite with one of his monsters.
*****
Caught in the trap
Water flowed through a crack in the wall. On the other side, Mike could hear the river. Placing his hands against the hard stone, he could feel the vibrations through it. Cupping his hands, he collected a mouthful of water and drank it. It was cold with a slight metallic taste, but Blue had informed him that it was safe enough to drink.
"Is it good?" Blue asked from her perch on his shoulder.
"It tastes like water," Mike responded, sucking down huge mouthfuls. Wiping his mouth, he turned away from the wall. Blue had led him away from where the fairies had found him, citing safety concerns about the potential arrival of the minotaur. The river acted as a natural barrier, but Blue had informed him there was a single bridge that the minotaur could cross if it needed to.
In the distance, he heard the minotaur cry out. It sounded different from earlier, but Mike was no expert on monster shouts. If Mike had to venture a guess, it sounded like the minotaur had found a bag of gold or a shiny new axe.
"Lucky boy," he muttered to himself.
"What?" Blue asked.
"Oh. Nothing. Thinking out loud." He contemplated the paths before him. There were three, and each one looked equally suspicious. Blue had informed him that they were in the inner circle in relation to the river and that the passageways had been booby-trapped. They had only walked for about ten minutes, and Blue had pointed out at least three traps that Mike could have triggered that would have killed him.
Mike leaned against a dry section of the wall, closing his eyes and letting the rhythmic vibrations of the river lull him into a meditative state. His clothes, dried by Blue with fairy magic, still retained a mystical warmth.
He had asked Blue about the traps. The Labyrinth wasn't just a random maze, he had informed her, and the fact that someone would put in a giant maze with killer traps and a minotaur meant that the Labyrinth must have a secret or a treasure worth protecting. Blue had shrugged away his answers, being deliberately evasive. She also wouldn't speak to the fact that she and the others were trapped, which was also a piece of the puzzle.
Why would a maze be designed to keep people out, but then never let them leave? His eyes closed, he sank deeper into a state of relaxation, tiny lights flickering behind his eyelids.
The world of darkness receded, chased away by glowing beams of light streaming through his windows. He walked through his house, humming a song to himself that he didn't recognize. A large table had been set up in the family room, with an equally large game board.
"Every room has its purpose, every monster has its place," he sang out loud, but it wasn't his voice. It was Emily's, but that wasn't quite right either. It almost sounded like Emily's voice mixed with Naia's. The game board in front of him reminded him of Clue - it was a layout of his house. On the board, he saw that several pieces were scattered through the house. He picked up a sultry figurine that was standing in the fountain, immediately identifying Naia. Setting it back down, he picked up another one on the front porch. This one was Cecilia. Even Lily was there, her figurine currently in the back yard with Naia and Zel.
There were other pieces on the board, pieces he didn't recognize. When he held them up, they were blurry, his vision unable to see any detail. Frowning, he stared at the board. Where was the Labyrinth?
He touched the spare bedroom, tracing his fingers over to the closet. The board shimmered beneath his touch, and unfolded another section, revealing the enormous structure somehow in the walls of his house. The pieces were on the board, standing in various locations. He found his own piece, picking it up to inspect it. Setting himself back down, he spotted the minotaur with a couple of other pieces.
Beth and Abella. Fuck. He set these backdown. He saw the other fairies, their figures very tiny, and even Sofia. Her figurine scowled at him somehow. In the center of the Labyrinth was a pair of figurines. One was Tink, but the other one was blurry. Holding the piece in his hands, he tried to identify it by feel.
"Mike!" His eyes snapped open, and he stood up. Had that been a dream or a vision?
Green was hovering in front of him, glitter shedding off her wings.
"What is it?" He asked.
"I found one of your friends," Green informed him. "She needs your help?"
"Who did you find?" Mike asked.
"The one with one eye." Green's face twisted up. "She is really mad."
"Is she okay?"
"For now." Green turned into a ball of light. "Follow follow!" She whizzed away, stopping at the entrance to the corridor on the right. Mike followed close behind, Blue sitting on his shoulder. Green moved at a pace consistent with a fast walk - she was easy to keep up with but would zip farther ahead if Mike tried to catch up
Mike was already lost, but Green led him through a series of twists and turns that made it so that he knew he wouldn't be able to find his way back to the river. He looked up, marveling at how his brain couldn't even identify a landmark in the dark ceiling up above.
"Duck!" Blue shrieked in his ear. Mike threw himself flat, and a large stone on a rope swung where his head had been. He was going to stand up when he heard the creaking of a second rope. Crouching down, he moved forward, the second rock crashing into the first one. His ears rang, and the pile of rubble buried the passageway behind him under a few feet of stone.
'Holy shit," he muttered.
'You're telling me." Blue squeezed out from under his collar, where he had crushed her. Her chitinous shell readjusted itself, her wings tucking back beneath them. She smoothed out her antenna, and rubbed her left shoulder.
"Sorry." Mike stood up. "I'm glad you saw it in time."
"Part of that is thanks to you," she said, her antenna twitching playfully. "My senses haven't been this sharp in years!"
"Have you guys really been stuck here that long?" Mike asked.
"A woman named Emily banished us to the Labyrinth over a misunderstanding," Blue told him. "She thought we did a bad thing, and told us we could live here or leave the house."
"And you chose to live here?" Mike looked around. "Why not go live and be free?"
"Fairies like us are almost extinct, you know." They had started walking again, and Blue spoke softly into his ear from her perch on his shoulder. "The human world isn't as friendly as it used to be. Our fields and forests got torn up, and fairies learned long ago never to trust humans."
"You trusted me." Mike pointed out.
Blue shrugged. "We had been down here for quite some time and figured if you weren't the Caretaker, then something had happened to the House. We could smell Naia's magic coming off of you." Her voice then lowered to a whisper. "It also didn't help that we were all so horny."
"Well, if we get out of here, we can discuss your current living arrangement. I want to hear more about this 'bad thing' some time."
"Step around that," Blue told him, pointing at the floor. Mike knelt down, finally seeing the seam in the stone from up close. He was able to scoot by easily, wondering what sort of trap that would have set off. They continued walking, and Mike noticed the trap frequency had increased dramatically.
"I have no idea how the others made it through here," Mike said.
"They didn't come this way," Green told him from up ahead. "This is a short cut, so the number of traps is really high."
"A short cut to where?" Mike asked. Neither of the fairies answered.
Their pace slowed dramatically with the appearance of trip wires and pitfalls painted to look just like an ordinary floor. Mike nearly fell in one of these, but a quick thinking Green bounced herself off of him hard enough in the chest that he tipped back onto the path instead of falling forward. The way forward was perilous, and Mike moved only a few steps at a time at the fairy's insistence. It had been a long time since the minotaur had called out, which made him nervous. If he were to come across the beast now, it would become a battle of luck as he ran away.
"Whoa." They came to a three way intersection and Mike stopped to survey the other two paths. Whoever had come through here before him had set off several traps down the other corridors. Spikes from the ground and wall were evident everywhere, and a few piles of rock could be seen in the distance. Mike followed Green, who was moving a bit faster now.
"Most of the traps have been sprung already," Green told him. "Except for a couple of the nastier ones, so watch your step."
"What could be nastier than spikes?" Mike wondered aloud. To answer him, Green flew ahead and grabbed onto a small wire near the floor, pulling it backward. Jets of fire filled the hallway for several yards. The whole area became hot enough that Mike broke into a sweat.
"You made your point," he announced. Green's twinkling light hovered by his face, doing lazy figure eights.
"The fire jets are the worst," Blue told him. "Even if you trip the trap, you can't get out of the way. There's one part of the Labyrinth where there aren't any traps except for that one. It's a giant pressure plate that takes up the whole floor for about ten feet, so you can't avoid it. It scorches everything for a couple hundred feet in either direction."
"It pisses off the minotaur when it goes off," Green added with a smile on her face. "It leaves scorch marks that he has to remove, otherwise people will realize that one is there."
"How often do you guys set that one off?" Mike asked.
"About once a year." Blue giggled. "Then we all jump out when he shows and yell 'Happy Birthday!'."
Mike laughed. "You three are a riot."
"It passes the time," Green said. "Especially because she won't let us leave."
"She who?" Again, silence from both of them. "Why won't you tell me who is running the Labyrinth."
"Because we can't," Blue whispered. "It's part of the Labyrinth's magic."
"I don't understand why it matters who runs the Labyrinth," Mike said.
"She doesn't want people to know she is here." Blue told him. "She's protecting something important. It's why she is down here."
Mike mulled over the possibilities. "Is the Labyrinth separate from the house, or an extension of it?" He asked, thinking about the vision he had.
