Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 073

The owl clacked her beak, then slumped her shoulders. "My apologies. I am nervous about our encounter with Leeds and may not have chosen my words wisely. My path with humans has been difficult, and I lean on old habits when stressed."

He nodded. "I'm nervous, too, but this isn't my first near-death situation. Your plan sounds like it will work."

"And it should. However..." she held up a clawed hand. Crimson light danced along her talons. "I feel as if I have overlooked something."

"Well, I hope you remember it." He backed away to give her some space. "When I went camping as a kid, I always felt like I was forgetting something. It seemed like the more convinced I was that I'd left it behind, the less likely I had actually screwed up."

"So if you weren't worried, it was because you forgot it entirely?"

He nodded. "You got it. Right now, I spend almost every day waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe I forgot whatever or didn't think everything through, and it will come back to bite me in a bad way. I'm the kind of person who is quick to adapt, cause I'm used to my plans going wrong."

The owl's feathers rippled, sending a couple onto the ground. They were larger than her bird forms, and he wondered if her current size dictated how large they were when they fell off.

"I am poor at adaptation," she replied. "When it comes to the hunt itself, I am fine. But that is instinct and planning. My spells take time to weave, for that is the cost of my magic." She shuddered again, sending more feathers to the ground. It seemed to be the equivalent of losing hair when stressed. "I suspect yours is your unpredictability."

"How do you figure?" he asked.

"When last we spoke, you did not carry such an earthen aura. You smelled of storms and lust, but now carry a certain heaviness. It is very much like the fae, but also the magic of the forest. Magic was never meant to be mixed in such a manner, for it generates chaos."

"Story of my life," he muttered. "So that's what I have? Chaos magic?"

"Caretaker." She clicked her beak for a few moments as if deep in thought. "The name itself isn't important, but appropriate. You should know that magic like yours can be quite powerful, but only if it can be controlled. Be warned that it has a life of its own, very much like a roaring fire. If you aren't careful, it will consume you."

"Metaphorically?' he asked, thinking of Emily.

"No. Literally. In its haste to help you, your magic could tear your body apart. And when you die, the magic doesn't simply vanish. It will be let loose in the world in ways we cannot predict. Never start a fire that you cannot put out." She flapped her wings a couple of times and transformed back into bird form. With a cautionary hoot, she flew away.

"Thanks for the advice, Hedwig," he muttered. He watched until she disappeared into the trees and then continued toward the cabin, his hands in his pocket. Finding out that he was potentially a magic bomb had dulled his enthusiasm, so he took his time walking.

As he was passing the barn, he saw movement within. Dana was still there, and she had taken apart most of the jeep. She stood in the middle of a mess as if contemplating her next move.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked.

"Hmm?" She regarded him coolly, then stared at the disassembled jeep. "What time is it?"

"Don't know. My phone was my watch." He knelt down to examine what might have been a carburetor. His knowledge was hardly extensive, so this was mostly a guess.

"I must have lost track of time." She wiped some grease off her face, only to smear some more from her hands onto her cheek. "I do that when I'm working on stuff."

"But why dismantle the whole thing?" He moved over to the body of the jeep and realized that she had pulled out most of the engine.

"It started as an oil change and I got carried away." She pulled a spark plug out of her pocket. "Found a box of these and wanted to put some new ones in. Figured I would change the air filter, and it kind of snowballed."

Mike kicked a tire. They had been stacked in the corner. "You don't say."

"Figured I would rotate them. Don't move those, I need to put them back on in a certain order."

"If you say so." He sat down in the passenger seat, which was on the floor next to the body. "Velvet is going to freak when she sees her dad's car like this."

Dana's face darkened. "Shit, you're right." She looked around her feet. "Don't suppose you want to help me?"

"Reassemble a car? Not really." He picked up a ratchet. "I don't know where most of this stuff goes. Didn't have a garage growing up or anyone willing to teach me about it."

Dana snorted. "It's not that different from your usual approach to things. Tab A in Slot B, you know what I mean."

Mike looked up at Dana. Even though she was looking away from him, he could see the small grin on her face. It had been hours since she had fed, so he was surprised to see her so...lively.

"My dad restored an old car when I was seven," she told him as she started putting stuff back under the hood of the jeep. He couldn't see what she was doing because she was moving too fast. Between her memory and the fact that she didn't tire, it was like watching a one-woman pit crew. "It seems dumb, but I don't remember much about it now. He would only work on it on the weekends, and my mom let me stay up late to spend time with him. He was always working long hours, so weekends were our only time together. There was one Sunday night that my mom went to bed early, so he let me stay up until almost three on a school night. Mom gave him hell for that."

Mike chuckled but said nothing. He didn't have a story of his own to add and was too busy watching Dana's facial expressions. He had spent so many months seeing Dana devoid of almost all emotion, and he was now seeing tiny bursts of it. It was almost like watching an actor in a play break character. Was Dana even aware she was doing it?

"So what has your panties in a bunch?" she asked him.

"Who told you that I'm wearing panties?" he asked.

Dana snorted. "Are they mine or Quetzalli's? I don't think you'd fit in mine, and if you stretch them out, I'll eat your hands. Don't dodge the question."

"I had an experience with Abella in the woods," he replied. "My magic did something weird, and now the owl has me all paranoid I'm going to explode."

She stopped what she was doing and stared at him. "I'm going to need you to run all of that by me again. More details this time."

Except for the sexual details of his interlude with Abella, he told her everything. How the magic had connected him to the land, how Abella had started breathing fire. She listened without a single word until he had finished.

"So what do you think?" he asked. "And before you answer, we both know that you're acting differently than you usually do. Something has changed, and you were affected, too."

Dana bowed her head in contemplation, then nodded. "This rush of mine should have worn off some time ago. I think it's why I lost track of time, I'm used to falling out of the rush. It's like having the perfect amount of caffeine, you feel all inspired and energized, but you know it's going to wear off eventually so you try to get as much done as you can."

"You're smiling," he told her.

"Why, so I am." She grinned at him. "And before you ask, I'm not fixed or anything. Slashed open my forearm earlier, didn't even hurt. Being dead has made me a little careless at times, I will admit. Has its perks, though." With that statement, she rolled a tire over to the jeep and lifted the chassis off of a group of cinder blocks with one hand.

"I knew you were strong, but this?" He watched in amazement as she casually stuck the wheel back on and then tightened the nuts down with an old-style bar-type lug wrench.

"That's about my limit," she explained. "I can actually feel the strain in my bones from it. If I lifted it too quick, I would probably snap my spine or rip a muscle. The human body is an interesting place when you don't feel pain anymore. It really reminds you that you're just a bowl of pudding piloting around a robot made of meat."

He frowned at the visual, but she wasn't wrong.

"Sometimes, if I'm not too involved with whatever I'm working on, I can actually feel how my joints work," she continued. "Or how my muscles contract and extend. It's almost like I'm able to shut out the noise and really feel all the things my body can do."

"You mean kind of like when you're falling asleep and can hear your own heartbeat if it's quiet enough?"

She feigned shock. "Discrimination! Check your privilege, beating heart."

It had been a while since he had seen Dana and Lily hanging out, and he now worried just how much the succubus had rubbed off on the zombie.

"But yeah, close enough." She put another tire on the opposite side of the first. "You wear your body your whole life without really understanding how it moves. There's a process in there that we take for granted. Have you ever tried to program a robot to walk? It's super hard, but toddlers can nail it pretty quick. I had a professor once who was obsessed with biometric design."

He nodded, now lost in thought. It was easy to see her point, but now he could apply it to his immediate problem. Instead of his own body, it was his magic that had him flummoxed. He used to have good control of it, but those were just baby steps.

"What's the fine line between understanding how something works versus just figuring it out?" he asked. "When do I know if I'm overthinking it?"

She shrugged. "Ask a baby, I guess."

Frowning, he turned his attention to the dirt floor of the barn. Thinking about how a baby learned to walk, he could easily picture how they would use something to stand up first, then move. Was there a way he could learn to stand first instead of having to hit the ground running?

The clearing Abella had taken him to was teeming with life, which had overwhelmed him. Looking at the dirty floor of the barn, he could see the occasional sprout of dead grass along the boundaries of the building. This was a place that was connected to the earth, but minimal on nature. Could he connect with it as he had in the glade?

When he closed his eyes, he could sense that thick bass note from before. It was dim, as if very far away. He tried to focus on it, and shifted in his chair to get comfortable. His hand slipped off the side causing him to brush his fingertips in the dirt. The volume in his head jumped several levels on contact.

Okay. That's interesting. He put the palm of his hand on the ground and waited. The musical tones pressed against his flesh and a sense of peace permeated his body. His magic matched the rhythm and pulsed outward from him, scattering loose dirt away from his hand.

Even with his eyes closed, he could sense where Dana stood. His senses expanded, and now he could feel the family of mice that lived in the corner behind boxes of motor oil.

The sensations were there, but they were quiet compared to the cacophony from before. Little by little, he expanded outward from the barn. The land around them was largely short brush, so he met plenty of burrowing critters waiting on warmer days to emerge from their homes. He felt the corners of the cabin, then immediately withdrew when he discovered an intense presence. Unsure if it was the entity that he sensed, he decided to expand his senses somewhere else.

The land around the barn was covered in snow, yet teemed with life that hungered for warmth. The fleeting thoughts of small mammals and insects touched his consciousness like whispers. As he explored the land, he felt it try to cling to his magic. It was easy to imagine that his magic was similar to sunlight, and that it could nourish the surrounding property. If he wanted, could he wake up the vegetation as he had in the clearing?

He took in a sharp breath as he realized that the sexual nature of his magic still applied here. While he hadn't dug a hole in the ground and fucked it physically, his magic was currently mixing with the earth in a very intimate manner. It was inside of him just as much as he was inside it.

For just a second, he thought he heard a woman's laugh. Whether illusory or not, it definitely belonged to the cabin.

What could he even do with this knowledge? Was it just this land, or could he connect with the house, too? Maybe it would be a means to speak directly to the house, or even his other properties. If they were alive, then surely they had desires that he could assist them with. Maybe the house wanted a new coat of paint, or the cabin wanted to cut some trees for a better view of the mountains.

In turn, maybe they would be more forthcoming about what was expected of him. It would be nice for a change to simply be told what to do next.

Sparks flowed down his arm and into the ground, and he gasped when he felt the trees touch on his consciousness. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the tiny flames at their center, each one connected to its neighbor by gossamer strands of light. More and more flames appeared of all shapes and sizes, and it wasn't until he saw one swoop through the air like a bird that he realized that he was looking at souls.

In awe, he tilted his head in Dana's direction. Hers was like a tiny star strapped in chains of darkness, bound tightly to her body. Fascinated by the sight, he didn't notice the chill in his gut until it bloomed violently throughout his entire body.

Distant flames were being snuffed out at an incredible rate. As they vanished, he realized that whatever was happening was headed right for him.

"Dana!" He opened his eyes and pointed at the wall of the barn. "Something is coming!"

There was the loud snapping of wood, followed by a high-pitched shriek. The wall of the barn exploded inward as a massive figure crashed through it. Mike held up his hands, only catching a brief glimpse of the beast through his outstretched hands.

Dana, already in motion, had picked up the tire closest to her and whipped her body around to throw it like a discus. The tire slammed into the intruder hard enough that it was knocked off course, crashing into the ground next to Mike.

"What the fuck is that?" he cried, jumping to his feet. The thing on the floor was a tangle of long black hair that was filled with branches. Expecting the creature to stand, he flinched when it levitated off the ground and turned to face them.

"Holy fucking hell," Dana muttered.

It was a giant head, almost six feet tall. Fearsome eyes that blazed with malevolent intent sat over dagger-like teeth. With a cry, it flew toward them, its hair spreading out like a pair of black wings.

Dana shoulder checked Mike out of the way. He crashed hard into the ground and felt something in his knee pop. The sharp pain of impact vanished in the rush of adrenaline as he leapt to his feet and looked for a weapon.

The head had Dana in its teeth and was growling as it tried to bite through her. In the corner of its mouth was a lug wrench that Dana held, using it as a wedge to keep it from closing.

It floated around the barn, slamming itself into the walls in an attempt to dislodge her. Up above, the barn creaked dangerously as if it was going to topple any moment.

"Abella! I need you!" He shouted, then ran to the back of the head. The long hair was matted and smelled swampy, but he jumped on and tried to climb up the scalp. The odor made his eyes water, but once he was on top, he tried to punch the head in the eye.

It slammed its eyelid closed, pinning his hand in place.

The head spiraled around, scattering the pieces of the jeep before colliding with the chassis. The jeep toppled over with a large screech, the undercarriage sliding violently over the cinder blocks.

"Shit!" Dana cried, then disappeared from sight as she moved further into the head's mouth.

The smell of gasoline filled the air, and Mike realized that the tank must have been ripped open. He really hoped the giant head hadn't brought along a giant cigarette to light up.

"Mike!" Abella's cry came from outside, and he saw her from a distance through the broken wall. She was still far away, her face set in determination.

A metal blade popped through the head's eye, and it emitted a terrible shriek as Dana stabbed it from within. It spun violently, throwing Mike to the ground, followed shortly by Dana. Both of her arms were bent the wrong way, and her clothes had been slashed up.

"What the hell is that thing?" he asked her as the head fell over, its mouth gasping like a fish out of water. He had so many questions, like how it breathed, and if it needed to eat.

Up above, he heard a chuckle. When he looked up, he watched in horror as the shadows coalesced into a dark figure with bat-like wings and a horse's head.

"That was my insurance policy," Leeds told them as the head shuddered one last time, its remaining eye going slack and its mouth hanging open. "What is that phrase that always bounces through your head? Be prepared?"

Mike was going to say something witty but held his breath instead when Leeds held up an old zippo lighter.

"Burn in Hell, Caretaker." Leeds tossed the lighter toward the spreading pool of gasoline. It clanged against the jeep and promptly put itself out when it landed upside down in the dirt.

"Dumbass," Dana muttered as she tried to stand up. One of her legs was crooked. "By the way, you give terrible head."

Leeds snorted and dropped from the rafters onto the ground near the jeep. Mike tried to tackle Leeds away, but was grabbed from behind by a shadow that yanked him off his feet. The pain in his knee blossomed, and he almost blacked out.

"Let's try this again," Leeds muttered, then picked up the lighter and lit it. He knelt down and held the flame against a line of gas until it ignited and the fire rolled toward the gas tank. With a laugh, Leeds stepped into a shadow and vanished.

Mike closed his eyes, thinking the jeep would explode. When it didn't, he opened his eyes and saw that the shadow holding him was gone. He crawled over to Dana.

"There wasn't much gas in the tank," she explained, using her one good limb to scoot toward the exit. "Darren never bothered refilling it before he died, most of it has probably leaked out already."

"So it won't explode?" he asked.

"Not a lot, but—" there was a loud boom, followed by a roar as the fire expanded, filling the air with smoke and fumes. The barn shifted around them, the structure groaning. "We need to go."

They crawled toward the door as the flames surrounded them. The barn was old and full of plenty of things for the fire to consume. His leg dragged across the uneven ground, each bump causing him to grit his teeth in agony. He didn't bother looking back over his shoulder at the burning vehicle, nor contemplate how this was exactly the kind of situation that would put him back in therapy.

He could feel the flames licking at his back when Abella arrived. Saying nothing to Dana, she picked up the zombie and threw her out the door. Dana bounced and then slid across the snow, safe from the flames almost thirty feet away.

"Didn't take you long to get in trouble," she muttered, kneeling down to pick him up. With her body between him and the flames, he felt the temperature drop several degrees. Abella looked over at the giant head, which had caught on fire, and gaped. "What the fuck is that thing?"

"That's Todd." Mike tried to laugh at his own joke but started coughing instead. "Nine out of ten dentists hate him."

She cradled him against her body and leaned forward, hot embers bouncing off her back. Once they were outside, she set him in the snow and turned her gaze toward the roof of the barn.

Leeds stood up there, his coal-red eyes blazing in the fading light of day.