Dawn had broken through Tasia’s bedroom window, prompting the werewolf to groan and pull the nearest pillow over her face. She had stayed up far ter than she intended, most of it driven by anxiety over the picture she had sent Eulie along with Dana’s complete ck of a response. Tasia had typed out numerous unsent text messages to Eulie in an effort to beat around the bush, but knew that the Arachne would see right through them.

  Feeling like an idiot teenager wasn’t a good fit for Tasia. Her father had found a discreet therapist to help her deal with the fallout of being exiled from the Order. The man had been good enough to dig up some long-repressed issues that stemmed from not having a real childhood. Those revetions had paired nicely with the impulsive nature of her inner wolf, meaning that she often found herself acting before thinking. The wolf inside of her wanted to make up for lost time, no matter what the human part of her desired.

  When it came to Dana, both parts experienced plenty of desire, and now there was a picture of Tasia’s tits floating around the world. She groaned again and reached for another pillow, wondering if two of them would be enough to smother her out of her misery. This was what she got for acting like an impulsive college co-ed.

  “Rough night?” asked someone through five inches of compressed goose down feathers.

  Tasia pulled her head from beneath the pillows and saw that Aurora had come in. The woman smiled politely and set a tray down on the dresser. The tray had a pte of bacon along with some herbal tea, the smell of both making Tasia’s stomach gurgle.

  “Maybe.” Tasia scooted to the edge of the bed, completely naked. Aurora, a former Order operative who has seen it all, didn’t even acknowledge this. The werewolf usually slept hot and ended up naked halfway through the night as a result.

  “I figured as much.” Aurora smirked. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.” Tasia got up and walked over to eat some bacon off of the tray. As she shoved the greasy meat into her mouth, she felt Aurora’s fingers along her left shoulder bde.

  “Not even a scar,” said Aurora, who gently probed the area with her fingers. “There’s no tenderness here?”

  “None.” Tasia had gotten into a fight with a Rākshasa the previous week. The bastard had been masquerading as a businessman while doing some wetwork for the Order. The man must have done something pretty bad to get on her father’s shit list, and so Alexandros had ordered a hit. Typically, Tasia healed pretty fast from her wounds, but the Rākshasa’s cws had been sharp and packed with some kind of magical venom. The demon had broken most of her ribs and properly fileted her back before Ingrid had sealed it in a binding rune, stripping away its powers.

  “Does it hurt when I do this?”

  “Huh?” Tasia frowned. “I don’t feel you doing anything.”

  “That’s because I’m not touching you. I’m making sure you aren’t faking.” Aurora spped Tasia’s healed wound with an open palm. “And if that didn’t startle a wince out of you, then I procim the injury fully healed.”

  “Werewolves are good at that kind of thing.”

  “It sure seems that way.” Aurora picked up Tasia’s robe and helped her slide it on.

  “It feels weird, still. You being so helpful, like you’re my butler.” Tasia frowned.

  “Your father has his own manservant devoted to the family. How is this any different?”

  “I’m not my father.” Tasia picked up the tea and sipped it. “Chamomile?”

  “Hibiscus.”

  “Damn.” She wrinkled her nose. “Some of the floral scents still confuse me.”

  “You can’t tell them apart?”

  “Oh, I can,” Tasia replied. “I’m just an idiot who can’t remember which is which.” She smiled at Aurora. “I do, however, smell more breakfast downstairs.”

  “You do. I made pancakes and sausage.” Aurora walked over to the bed and quickly made it. “I just thought you might want a little snack before eating.”

  “How has some lucky man or woman not snatched you up yet?”

  Aurora ughed, then fluffed Tasia’s pillow. “I was too busy climbing the corporate dder,” she said. “Thought I had a shot at a Director job someday.”

  “Director of operations?” Tasia drank her tea and frowned. “You didn’t strike me as someone who wants to get their hands dirty.”

  “Facilities. I could have been in charge of a dozen pces just like Paradise.”

  Paradise had been where Aurora worked before. A resort for Order personnel who needed a break, the whole thing had been brought down by some betrayal from within along with a csh between two powerful naga whose lovers’ quarrel leveled the entire facility. All of that happened before the undead stormed the beaches and a kraken had helped itself to the US Navy like a kid at a candy buffet.

  Dana had also been there, cracking heads and saving people. Tasia had watched some of the footage, recognizing her girlfriend immediately despite wearing a motorcycle helmet the entire time. Okay, not her girlfriend, they’d never actually put a bel on it and they’d been out of contact for a year, yet—

  “Hey.” Aurora threw one of the spare pillows at Tasia, who caught it subconsciously with her free hand. “You’re making that face again.”

  “Werewolf problems,” Tasia lied. “It’s a whole thing, the snout tries to come out, and—”

  “Uh huh.” Aurora grinned conspiratorially. “You were thinking about her again, weren’t you?”

  “No. I was just…savoring my bacon.” Tasia picked the rest of it up and jammed it in her mouth. She chewed slowly to ensure that she had an excuse to not answer any further questions.

  Aurora’s eyes softened. “It’s a shame that you’re essentially on lockdown,” she said. “I’ve had my own share of what-ifs and near misses with love. There was one boy I was getting pretty serious with, but he got fgged by the Order as an intel risk and I was told to break it off. That really sucked.” The woman sighed. “The st year has been…difficult enough that my old problems feel so small as a result. Do you know what I mean?”

  Tasia had undergone her own fall from grace. After being suspected of becoming a thrall to a succubus, she had volunteered for an experimental program that turned her and several others into werewolves. She was not only the sole survivor of the program,but had been forced to flee after being framed for the murder of several agents by a demon. Rather than compare emotional scars, she decided to speak from the heart.

  “Ith bin—”

  “Chew your food, Tasia.” Aurora smirked and walked past the werewolf. “I’ll see you downstairs. Since you’re so hungry for bacon, I’ll fry up some more.”

  “Thanksh.” Tasia managed to spit out a thick piece of bacon. Scowling, she chomped her way through it and swallowed a piece of meat that would have choked an ordinary person. Shaking her head, she tied the obi on her robe and checked her phone again to see if Eulie had said anything.

  Disappointed at the ck of response, she just sighed and went downstairs. The small ft they had rented smelled like dust when they moved in, but Aurora and her team had cleaned it up. It was one of many “off the books” properties sold off by Tasia’s family from a couple of generations back. While the Order was absolutely thorough in ensuring that their members weren’t involved in shady dealings, they were extremely unlikely to look into shell property purchases in the 1800s.

  That, and the fact that the Order no longer had their shit together meant that the odds were quite small that they’d be able to investigate anything non-digitized. From what Tasia remembered, the hard copy Archives had been low on personnel when she was still in training, and now that they were lowering requirements for mage and knight recruits, the number of researchers were at an all-time low. The Order would have to suspect that one of their upper members was actually up to something, and that simply wouldn’t be the guy who had publicly cast away his own daughter.

  She looked at the bck band on her wrist and smiled. It was a magical bde that her father had given to her as a sign of his support. Other than the rare training sessions she had received from him, it served as the only reminder of his paternal love.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid was already dressed and reading something on her tablet. She waved half-heartedly at Tasia, who took a seat at the table across from her partner.

  “Here.” She slid across a pte with half a donut.

  “You’re not gonna finish this?” asked Tasia.

  Ingrid frowned. “My pants were a bit tight this morning,” she grumbled. “Too much sitting around on our asses tely and not enough exercise.” Their current location didn’t have a training yard, and their ck of missions had meant that Ingrid was all caught up on some interesting shows she had found on Netflix.

  Tasia stared at the donut for roughly two seconds before shoving it in her mouth. She grinned at Ingrid. Being a werewolf had its own problems, but being able to eat whatever the hell you wanted and keep an athletic figure was a definite plus.

  “Any word from your person?” asked Ingrid. “If not, you might want to give her another call. We need to know sooner rather than ter where to go. I’m willing to bet that we won’t be the only ones going after it.”

  “Ummm…” Scowling, Tasia pulled out her phone again. She let out a sigh and sent Eulie another text. Setting down her phone, she managed to pack away several pancakes as well as some more donuts that Aurora had bought. Ingrid kept throwing the werewolf dirty looks, then eventually got up with her coffee and left.

  Aurora, who had finished serving everyone, took Ingrid’s seat across from Tasia to eat her own breakfast. The werewolf looked up at her and smiled. She couldn’t help but notice the way that Aurora twirled a lock of hair, or how she tugged at her own colr while quietly reading something on her tablet. When she pulled on the fabric, it caused her blouse to shift, revealing just the edge of her bra.

  “I’m, uh…” Tasia stood up from the table, causing Aurora to look up at her. “Gonna go get dressed now.”

  “Okay.” Aurora went back to her tablet. Tasia walked away, making sure to tighten the belt of her robe as she quietly went back up the stairs. Occasionally her thighs would rub against each other, sending a small shockwave through her pelvis.

  Back in her room, she opened up her robe and let out a sigh as she slid her fingers down through the thick patch of hair on her groin to tease at the swollen folds of her bia. Her clitoris immediately popped free, and she squeezed the skin around it, letting out a tiny gasp at the sensation.

  She was horny. Thinking of Dana all night had lit a fire inside of her, and now was the time to put it out. Doing an awkward waddle across the room toward her bed while flicking the bean, she finally fell onto the mattress. Rolling onto her back, she let out a sigh as she frantically fingered herself.

  Tasia was just building up some steam when someone knocked on the door. Letting out a hiss of frustration, she smmed her legs together around her hand.

  “What?” she growled, her canines elongating.

  “Your phone just buzzed,” said Aurora. “I think your contact just replied. Can I come in?”

  Scowling, Tasia sat up and adjusted her robe. “Yeah,” she replied. Doing her best not to give Aurora any attitude, she took the phone from the human and unlocked it. Sure enough, there was a response from Eulie.

  “Huh.” She clicked the link and frowned at the phone.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Aurora.

  Tasia chuckled. “Nothing,” she said. “Can you tell Ingrid to be ready to leave? We have a meeting set up.”

  “Really? I can start the computer in the living room, just let me know what program she’s running so that I can get our VPN enabled to bypass any tracking protocols.”

  This time, Tasia ughed. “It won’t be necessary. The meeting is in person.”

  “Huh?” Aurora blinked. “Is your source staying somewhere nearby?”

  “Something like that. Let me get dressed and we can be on our way.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Aurora. “In case you need backup.”

  “We won’t,” Tasia replied. “It’s not dangerous.”

  “I haven’t left this pce in two weeks and am really fucking bored.” Aurora grabbed Tasia by the hand and begged. “Please take me with you.”

  “Fine, fine.” Tasia pulled her hand away, hoping that Aurora wouldn’t notice the faint musk that now clung to them. “Your fingers still smell like bacon grease. You should wash your hands or that’s all I’ll smell once we get there.”

  “If it means getting out of this pce for an hour, I’d shave my damned head.” Aurora practically skipped out of the room, leaving Tasia behind.

  The werewolf dug through her wardrobe to pick out an appropriate outfit, then sent Eulie a message informing her that Aurora was coming along as well. She got a Thumbs Up emoji in reply, but nothing else.

  “Okay,” she muttered quietly to herself. It had been quite the shock to learn that Eulie was actually an Arachne, but times had been desperate and she hadn’t really had much of an opportunity to freak out. Ingrid and Aurora? Plenty of both.

  However, that was Eulie’s choice, not hers. The st thing she was gonna do was remind the Arachne that she had eight legs and was supposed to be extinct.

  Once Tasia was dressed, she walked downstairs where Ingrid and Aurora were waiting. The mage nodded at her and gestured toward the front door. Aurora held a binder close to her chest, which was likely for note-taking purposes. She had changed her clothes as well and was now in a bzer with a matching skirt.

  “So where are we off to?” she asked.

  “The attic.” Tasia smirked and pointed back up the stairs.

  “What?” Ingrid frowned. “There’s nothing in the attic.”

  “And you’re still correct. C’mon.” Tasia led them upstairs to the hallway outside of Ingrid’s room where a hatch had been installed in the ceiling. She jumped up and grabbed the ring to pull it down. “Go on up,” she said.

  “I don’t understand. Did you let someone in earlier?” Ingrid looked at Aurora.

  The Hawaiian shook her head. “I’ve seen nobody else today,” she replied.

  “It’ll make sense if you just go up.” Tasia shooed both of them up the dder and followed. Once in the attic, she retracted the dder and pulled the hatch shut. They should have been plunged into darkness, but a faint light glowed behind a stack of boxes toward the back.

  “This is some Narnia shit,” Ingrid muttered as she walked toward the light. The others followed, and they discovered a glowing portal in the wall. Ingrid paused to inspect it, then turned to Tasia. “This is like what we saw all over Hawaii. We had reports of rats that could do it.”

  “Eulie’s their boss,” said Tasia, and she stepped through into a log carbon’s bedroom. On a nearby wall was yet another glowing portal. “This is also a security thing, so don’t be surprised when—”

  There was a loud bang as the portal behind them was smmed shut. Everyone spun to see a trio of rats standing around a colpsed pile of two by fours. Tasia knelt down to pick one up and sniffed it, then looked up at the wall, which was in pristine condition.

  “Is this new?” she asked the rats, holding up the wood. It had bite marks along the edges. “This is way less scary than the metal door trick.”

  “It’s faster to set up, too,” said a voice from the other portal. “Now will you hurry up? I didn’t have a lot of time to get this done.”

  Tasia jumped to her feet, dropping the two by four, which startled the rats and caused them to scatter. She smoothed out her blouse on the off chance that Dana was also on the other side.

  “What’s going on?” asked Aurora.

  “They chew portals into the walls,” said Tasia. “But they take time to open and close. But if you can cause that part of the structure to colpse—”

  Eulie loudly cleared her throat from the other side of the remaining portal. “Our test method involves a variant of sashimono, or Japanese wood joining. Those pieces of wood fit together like puzzle pieces, and the rats fasten them to the wall with a single nail. As long as the nail is in a stud, the structure itself is considered part of the domicile, allowing the rats to chew a portal directly into what would be considered a piece of hanging wall art. They can then pull supporting pins and shut the portal quickly without having to essentially demolish a building.”

  “Genius.” Tasia looked at the others and ughed. “C’mon,” she said. “I can’t wait to see this pce.” She stepped through the next portal and stopped, looking up in awe at where she had just arrived.

  “Pretty cool, right?” When Eulie spoke, Tasia dropped her gaze to see the Arachne was sitting in what appeared to be a motorized wheelchair. None of her extra eyes were visible and her human eyes were hidden behind an old pair of gsses. Somehow, she had concealed the arachnid portion of her body inside of the wheelchair itself. Eulie squirmed for a moment, clearly uncomfortable.

  The werewolf ughed and turned around. “Hurry up, you two. You don’t want to miss this.”

  ---

  Ingrid stood just on the other side of the portal, her eye twitching as she heard Tasia ugh and beckon them to come with her. The mage turned to Aurora to get her opinion, but the woman was clearly waiting for Ingrid to go first.

  “It doesn’t bother you that someone essentially built a portal into our top-secret location without our knowledge and now we’re god knows where hopping across the pnet at someone else’s whim?”

  “There’s literally nothing on TV to watch,” replied Aurora. “I spent most of yesterday organizing my admittedly limited wardrobe by color. We should probably just trust your partner.”

  Ingrid groaned, but Aurora was right. If this really was an ambush, they were already out of their depth. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she mumbled, then stepped through the portal into a space so white it was almost blinding. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but once they did, she realized she stood on a marble floor in the biggest room she had ever seen. Distant, building-sized columns had massive stacks of books built into them. Floating ptforms moved between the columns, some of them with carts filled with books. Nearby, a massive wooden desk, with a huge, stone globe of the earth rotating behind it, gave the impression they were in a lobby. Just in front of the desk was a woman in a wheelchair wearing a nametag that said Eulie.

  The mage stared in awe at the elevated ceilings, wondering just how far up those skylights were. She was standing in a marvel of magical engineering, an impossible building that should have crushed itself beneath its own weight. Where the hell were they even?

  "Welcome to the lobby." Eulie pushed the control stick on her wheelchair and promptly drove straight into the welcome desk, smashing her legs on the deep-grained wood. "Fucking bullsh--" she noticed Ingrid staring, then looked down at her own legs. "Ah, right. Ow, I guess. Gonna have to check those for bruises ter." She chuckled awkwardly and scratched at her head, nearly dislodging her gsses. Fumbling with them for a moment, she got them back on. "Anyway, this is the long-lost library of Thoth. Repository for all knowledge across the entire multiverse!" She threw her hands in the air dramatically toward the nearest pilr of books.

  "Multiverse?" Ingrid raised her eyebrows.

  "Well, no. I mean, we have a lot of books and books are portals into...other worlds." Eulie coughed into her hand. "Anyway, so...this is my pce. The Library has been lovingly tucked into the buttcrack between realms, unassaible by anyone who cks a doorway to get here."

  "Which you just put in our ft," said Aurora. She was hugging her organizer, staring in awe at the rotating sphere of the Earth. Right now there were a pair of lights, one on the East Coast and the other near where the ft was.

  "Yes, well...the rats have already closed it. You are trapped, mwahahaha!" Eulie grinned maniacally. When nobody ughed, she coughed into her hand again. "Not really," she said. "It's just closed until we're done here and then I'll send you wherever."

  Tasia snorted. "You seem to be in a better mood these days."

  Eulie shrugged. "The st year has given me perspective. Besides, I had been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life."

  An awkward pause followed. Eulie made a face like she was clearly expecting a specific reply. When it didn't come, she scowled and tried to turn her wheelchair again, promptly clipping the corner of the desk and tearing a chunk free.

  "Do you need help with that?" asked Ingrid. "Your chair seems to be on the fritz."

  "Nah, I just don't use it that often." Eulie winced. "I mean, I have another chair that is in the shop, and this is my spare. I'll get the hang of it again."

  Tasia made a face, then looked away when she caught Ingrid watching.

  "So we have records of this pce on file," said Aurora. "The Library was st seen centuries ago during an invasion."

  "An invasion?"

  Aurora nodded. "The Greek Isles, by the Order. They cimed there was a problem with the local cryptid popution, but I've learned to read between the lines. They wanted this pce and failed to take it. I don't know much about it beyond that. It's one of the big legends that new people like to talk about while getting drunk. This, the Holy Grail, the Loch Ness monster, you get it."

  "Does this pce have a gift shop?" asked Tasia as she walked toward a nearby hallway.

  Eulie waved her hands frantically. "Nope, but I can arrange a T-Shirt for you, no, uh...don't go back--" A diminutive green creature with a massive belly stepped away from the hallway, carrying what looked like a club.

  "Tinker Radley?" Ingrid stared at the goblin in shock. She hadn't seen her since the incident in Maui, and the goblin looked like she had aged by a few decades. She was almost as wide as she was tall.

  The goblin sniffed the air and tried to heft the club in both hands. It bounced off her belly and fell to the floor. When she tried to squat down and reach it, her fingers couldn’t quite grasp the handle.

  “Stupid fuck!” she yelled, then kicked the club. A catgirl that Ingrid hadn’t noticed before knelt, picking up the club up with both hands and giving it back to the goblin.

  “You need to go back to your room,” said the catgirl, who Ingrid now recognized as Mike’s familiar, Kisa. “This much excitement—”

  Tink blew a giant raspberry and hefted the club over her shoulder. She waddled over to the stunned trio and sniffed at them. Everyone waited quietly as the goblin finished her inspection.

  “Dumb mage,” she decred, pointing at Ingrid. “Dog girl.” This time, she gestured at Tasia. The goblin sniffed Aurora extra hard, then cackled madly. “Tink knows what you’ve been doing,” she decred with a giggle that became a snort.

  “Ex…excuse me?” Aurora looked at the others in horror. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

  “Tink can smell it,” the goblin sang as Kisa got behind her and pushed her away from them. “Hawaiian cutie has been sticking fingers in the dog-treat jar!”

  Ingrid looked at Aurora for crification. Aurora shrugged, her face frozen in shock. Tasia was refusing to make eye contact with anyone, pretending to be interested in the floor.

  “I have no idea what she’s talking about,” said Aurora. “Is it some kind of goblin thing?”

  “More like Hawaiian cutie has been goblin deez—” Whatever Tink was going to say next was cut off by Kisa, who had spped a hand over the goblin’s mouth. There was a bit of disgruntled shouting between the two of them before the lobby went silent.

  “Sorry about that,” said Eulie. “It’s a weird living situation…thing. We’ve got a conference room, we can go discuss it there.” She picked up a rge staff that had been sitting by the front desk and waved it in the air. A wide ptform floated down from above and the librarian fought with her chair to get the tires up over the lip of the ptform.

  “Um…” Aurora got behind the chair. “Would you like some…help?”

  “What? No, I…shit.” Eulie was practically wiggling back and forth in her wheelchair. Ingrid could only stare in horror as the poor woman clearly hadn’t thought this through. “Tasia, give me a push. This chair is…heavy.”

  The werewolf chuckled and grabbed the chair by the wheels and lifted. “That is pretty heavy,” she said. “Has your chair gained weight?”

  “Shut the fuck up, dog breath,” muttered Eulie. “It’s only heavy because you’ve gotten weaker.”

  Aurora, who had wandered back to stand next to Ingrid, frowned. “I assume this is friendly banter,” she said.

  Ingrid could only nod.

  “Alright, there.” Eulie set the staff by the edge of the ptform and put her hand on some sort of control sphere. “All aboard! The library express is ready!”

  “You’re trying too hard,” said Tasia, who sat on the edge.

  “Fuck you, I’m nervous.” The librarian let out an awkward ugh. “I don’t get to meet new people that often.”

  “Are you…in charge of this pce?” asked Aurora.

  “Incorrect,” said Eulie. “The Head Librarian is on vacation for a bit.”

  “Head Librarian?” Aurora cocked her head to one side. “How many librarians are there?”

  “If you count me? Two. But you really shouldn’t count me. If you count the rats…don’t count the rats. It would take you days to do so.” Eulie ughed at her own joke, then frowned when nobody else responded. “Anywayyy…uh…just enjoy the scenery as we go to the conference room.”

  “Why didn’t you just have a portal opened there?” asked Ingrid. Her brain had clocked a few red fgs already about the librarian’s behavior, but she couldn’t figure out why. “It seems it would have been less trouble for you.”

  “I used magic to break into your home and bring you here. Figured I would at least show you to the lobby so you didn’t feel like I was trying to be super secretive.” Eulie rolled her eyes. “That, and I didn’t think of it. I’ve been really busy recently.”

  “If you were worried about how we felt, why not just come meet us?” pushed Ingrid.

  Eulie winced. “I can’t really get into it, but my attorney said I’m not allowed to leave the library because I might get my mind read by entities who will want to know what books she and the Grim Reaper checked out recently.”

  “Your attorney?” Ingrid ughed, everything clicking into pce. “Do you mean Beth?”

  “Yeah. It’s a whole family thing right now, I don’t even want to eborate.”

  “You were the Rat Queen who helped us on Maui,” said Ingrid. “Along with Tink. Both of you coordinated our defenses.”

  Eulie actually sat up in her seat, clearly pleased. “Guilty as charged.”

  Ingrid let out a sigh of relief. Seeing Eulie’s appearance, at least she understood why the librarian hadn’t come herself to coordinate efforts. That, and she’d run all kinds of digital tasks for them. The woman was an absolute whiz with electronic machinery.

  Aurora continued asking questions about the Library, which Eulie seemed happy to answer. The trip was only about fifteen minutes long, but most of it was straight up. Ingrid examined the magical wards on the ptform and was impressed by the sheer number of safety protocols that had been yered together to prevent them from falling out. This pce was many centuries old, yet the magic was far more advanced than anything she had ever seen the Order put together. Thoth had been one of the old gods, their power beyond compare.

  The Order had several dossiers and many theses on what happened to the old gods and where they could have gone. For someone like Thoth, it didn’t quite make sense that the god of writing and wisdom would create a pce like this and then simply leave it for someone else to care for. Then again, the gods were absolutely known for abandoning their projects, so what did she know?

  Other than a few minor deities that the Order regurly tracked, the bigger gods had all abandoned Earth as if it were a sinking ship. Ingrid bit at one of her fingernails, deep in thought. There were some whispered rumors about an altercation between the gods themselves and the Others, Outsiders, or whatever name they were being called. It was odd to think that gods feared anything, but it made sense that they would struggle to fight against beings that existed outside of time and space. Where had the Others come from? They were little more than an abstract idea forced into a world that demanded concrete realities, and this is where they gained so much of their power. It was like trying to upload a bullet into a computer program by firing it directly into the harddrive, a nonsensical task that destroyed the components involved.

  “Third floor, lingerie, raincoats, conference room!” announced Eulie as the ptform swooped toward a lip in one of the massive columns. There was an archway with beautiful mahogany doors just beneath it. As everyone stepped off, Eulie wheeled her chair forward and it thumped on the ground. The librarian winced and made a face.

  “You okay?” asked Aurora. The two of them seemed to be hitting it off.

  “Hurt my ass is all.” Eulie moved toward the door and then stared at it. “Um…can someone open this for me?”

  “This pce isn’t very ADA compliant,” said Aurora. “You should have the rats install ramps for you.”

  For whatever reason, Tasia found this hiriously funny. Ingrid just rolled her eyes. It seemed like the day had been primed for madness, so this was just another oddity.

  The inside of the conference room contained a rge wooden table and an LED screen on the wall. There were a trio of monitors nearby, and all of them had been plugged into the ptop at the head of the table.

  “Okay, let’s begin.” Eulie moved to the computer and looked back over her shoulder at them. “Also, you should know that the Library will acquire you food if you’re hungry. The rats will bring it in for you as soon as—”

  A small door near the back of the room popped open and a cart pushed by a group of rats came out. There was a ptter stacked high with meat, and the rats slid it onto the table. Tasia immediately sat behind it.

  “This must be my seat,” she said with a grin, then grabbed onto a steak and promptly bit a huge chunk off of it. Aurora managed to snag a sausage from the pte.

  “Not hungry?” asked Eulie.

  “No,” Ingrid lied.

  “Suit yourself.” The librarian hit a button on the ptop and the screens turned on. “So let’s discuss your issue. We’re tracking massive shifts in funds across international borders, many of them through crypto accounts that are supposed to be anonymous. The good news is that I was able to pull the data for the receiving accounts straight from the Order records.” Eulie clicked on a screen and a ledger appeared on the big screen.

  “That stuff is public?” asked Tasia.

  “Eh.” Eulie waggled a hand. “The original appeal of crypto was anonymity, but you can still see money moving through these different accounts due to public ledgers. For example, this account here sent almost ten million dolrs to the auctioneers.” She clicked on one of the transfers. “But we have no way of knowing who that account belongs to. So when we do a deep dive on the account itself, we see the transactions it's been built up with.”

  “Which are also unbeled,” said Aurora.

  “Yep.” Eulie looked at the screen. “We also have a situation where something that sold for a hundred million dolrs may be paid for with 9 different sources of funding.”

  “So…how are we supposed to figure out who bought that…thing?” Aurora frowned at the screen. “How many accounts are sending them money right now?”

  “Thousands. Not all of them are cryptocurrency, by the way. We do have some traditional transfers using actual banks.”

  “Thousands?” Ingrid felt her stomach drop. “You didn’t call us here to break bad news to us, did you?”

  Eulie snorted. “Hardly. The first thing I did was a deep dive into the auction itself. You see, they pride themselves on maintaining anonymity and all that, but their clientele is from a pretty select group. Just by using flight records, I’ve been able to assemble dossiers of the people who regurly attend. I also pulled files from the Order’s archives and matched them up.” Eulie typed something into her computer. “That allowed me to eliminate people who I knew did not attend your auction.”

  “The person who won did it over the phone,” said Tasia.

  “Let a girl do her big reveal, okay?” The librarian ughed. “The whole point of telling you all of this was to say that I was able to tie most of these accounts to their real-world counterparts. Once we start pulling at those strings, the web of mystery begins to unravel.”

  “While I can appreciate a good plot reveal, this isn’t a book.” Ingrid crossed her arms. Maybe she was just grumpy because she was hungry, or annoyed because they were somehow feeding Eulie’s ego by being here. Either way, she was impatient. “Time is of the essence and we shouldn’t be fucking around. Do you know who bought the shoggoth or not?”

  Eulie turned her chair so suddenly that it almost looked like she hadn’t touched the control stick. She frowned at Ingrid, then sighed. “Look. These people who run the auctions aren’t stupid. Most of what I’ve discovered was based on mistakes the buyers made. Your big buyers didn’t pay for everything with one lump sum. I ran some algorithms to add together different transactions and double check owner identities to try and isote who your potential buyer might be. We also don’t have any idea if your buyer was one person or a conglomerate. There’s simply no way of knowing.”

  “So you couldn’t do it.”

  The librarian snorted. “Nobody could, not with the avaible data. But that’s why I brought you here. You see, unlike anyone else who may be investigating, I know what pieces we need to at least create a better picture.” She tapped some keys and a map appeared with a trio of glowing lights. “Your outsider was captured shortly after the Maui incident. Right now, it’s being held under lock and key, but by whom? And where? There are a limited number of facilities capable of holding such a thing, and all of them are owned by people who would want to keep it for reasons only the gods know. So now we’re looking at potential motives of the seller. Why would you want to sell something so valuable?”

  “Money,” said Tasia around a chunk of ham the size of her fist.

  “Well, yeah. Money. Allow me to posit a potential situation here. You somehow get your hands on a shoggoth and learn that it’s more trouble than it's worth to keep. Since you are part of an elite group of rich mother fuckers who get off on owning shit like this, you contact the auction to get it up on the block.” Eulie clicked on another tab and pulled up a list of people. “So our seller is likely someone who can’t do anything with it.”

  “We don’t care about the seller,” said Ingrid. “The auction currently has the creature in their own holding facility, and we have no idea where that is.”

  “Do they?” Eulie raised an eyebrow. “It seems a little silly to me that the auction would spend the time and money building such a facility for a creature they never thought they’d get their hands on. If so, why not sell the facility with the beast?”

  “I—” Ingrid paused. The librarian had a point. “So you think the seller still has it?”

  Eulie nodded. “After these transactions are finalized, it’s not like the buyer can just show up with a kennel to put it in. You need a specialized transport, and that would take at least a few days to arrange. I’m willing to bet that we can get to this thing before your buyer does, and then this information doesn’t matter.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” asked Aurora. “What if the buyer has everything in order and is able to transport the creature immediately?”

  “We can’t account for everything,” said Eulie. “Which is why my pn covers the bases. The seller and the buyer have one thing in common, and that’s the auction itself. If we can break into their messaging system, we can at least determine the current location of the entity. After all, even if everyone remains anonymous, that physical location will be tied to somebody.”

  “So you’re going to hack the auction?” asked Ingrid with a snort of disbelief.

  “Nope. You are.” Eulie grinned. “You see, hacking is such a vague term which can mean anything. I have no way to simply login to their system or brute force passwords. But if I can get you all inside their building, we can access their system and take whatever they’ve got on this transaction. Worst case, we get a location. Best case?” The librarian cackled. “We get everything.”

  “That sounds ambitious, but how do you pn on doing that?” Ingrid gestured at Tasia. “We’re good at hunting things and a little light espionage. Sure, we can probably break in and fight our way back out. But I’m willing to bet that it’ll be impossible to gain access to their systems without a man on the inside. So since you’ve thought of everything, I would love to hear your pn for that.”

  Eulie grinned. “I’ve already got a team on the ground. And before you ask, yes, they have experience with infiltration, data acquisition, and they’ve even gone head to head with an outsider before!”

  “Who in the hell has that kind of resume?” asked Aurora. “Former Order?”

  Tasia had stopped eating, her wide, unblinking eyes fixated on the librarian. It took all of a couple of seconds for Ingrid to put the pieces together.

  “Are you referring to…the succubus?” Ingrid was reluctant to say the demon’s name, as if it would summon her.

  “And a couple of others.” Eulie winked at Tasia. “You guys are headed to Lucerne where I’ve located their primary data center.”

  “Switzernd?” asked Aurora.

  “Indeed.” Eulie looked up at the monitors and sighed. “I wasted too much time on some of my visual aids,” she muttered.

  “When do we leave?” asked Tasia. The werewolf was already standing.

  “Right after you finish your second breakfast,” Eulie replied.

  “I’ll take it to-go.” Tasia looked at Ingrid, then Aurora. “Um, we’ll need some of our gear from home.”

  Eulie nodded. “I’ve already opened a new portal between your current domicile and the base of operations in Lucerne. In fact, the others are probably already waiting for you back at your pce.”

  “What?” Aurora jumped to her feet. “You mean that succubus is unattended in our house?!?”

  “Yeah, why? Is that a problem?”

  Ingrid winced. Lily had made quite the impression on everybody during her stay at Paradise, and none of it was good. “Let’s just say we’re familiar with the demon’s antics,” she replied.

  “There’s a good chance she has all new ones by now!” Eulie grinned, expecting them to ugh. When nobody did, she sighed. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get going. Basil?” She looked down to one side and a rat appeared. “Can you please have the others bite open the portal to their house.”

  The rat saluted and ran off. The side door opened and they all got onto the ptform together to ride to a different room a couple of minutes away. A light breeze circuted the room which had an open portal inside. Eulie bid them farewell, then got Aurora’s contact information to send her further details.

  After passing through a couple of different locations, the group stepped out of the pantry in their ft and into the kitchen. Aurora immediately raced off, determined to locate the newcomers.

  Ingrid looked at Tasia. “If we’re on the same team, it can’t be that bad, can it?” The werewolf, instead of answering, sniffed the air and then silently wandered off.

  Somewhere else in the ft, Aurora screamed out, “Why are you naked on our couch?!?”

  The mage took a deep breath in through her nose and let it all out. Forcing herself to walk toward the commotion, she silently cursed her luck. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

  ---

  Lily’s morning had started out innocently enough, which was actually saying something for the succubus. They were currently between targets, which meant that she and Dana were sitting in a house by the beach in Mexico.

  While Lily had been a hundred percent behind the idea of tracking down the SoS and murdering them for their crimes against the Radley home, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the finer things in life, such as a beach house. The demon was sitting on the balcony, staring out at the waves next to Jenny. For now, the spirit was dormant. Once upon a time, Jenny had just been a simple farmgirl, maybe even the vilge idiot, but a couple centuries of madness had taken a toll on the poor ghost’s psyche. Confined to a doll, her travel options had been limited.

  Yet now, she was able to travel the world. While she had a single-minded focus when it came to torturing her prey, scenery like this seemed to render her inert. Lily had no way of going inside the spirit’s mind to see what she was thinking about, but it really didn’t matter. If the sight of the ocean could be this soothing for a demon, why not a troubled spirit?

  She looked over at the doll and frowned. Leaning over, she adjusted the pair of sungsses she had conjured onto the doll’s face.

  “Don’t stare directly into the sun,” she warned with a smirk on her face. Everybody had learned long ago that the best way to interact with Jenny was to treat her as if she was actually alive. The second-best way to be around the haunted doll was to treat it like a bomb about to go off, but those days were becoming few and further between. She wasn’t sure if Mike or any of the others had caught on yet, but Jenny was already barely tethered to the real world, held down only by some remnant of her unfinished business. Would killing off the SoS complete it? Or was there some other prerequisite that nobody was aware of?

  Everyone had been surprised when Jenny had volunteered for this mission, but only because it meant time away from Grace. Lily was convinced that it had been a simple coin flip between the doll’s murderous impulses and her desire to be snuggled by the Arachne all day. She had been worried at first that Jenny had become jealous of Grace’s new stuffed toy, Paw-Paw Cyrus, but the ghost had approved. That had been good for Lily, since she was the one who had given it to the little girl.

  Lily tilted her head back to see if Dana was still inside looking at her schematics. The zombie had become obsessed with her telescope project at home, and everyone seemed quite surprised that she hadn’t finished it yet. During the build, there was always some complication that seemed to undo Dana’s hard work. Nobody was quite certain why Dana felt compelled to restore that old observatory, but the entire house was filled with people who had odd compulsions, so it was just accepted.

  Work had definitely slowed down on the observatory after Tink’s pregnancy. The goblin could barely reach past her own stomach, a fact that had gotten Lily bitten when she had ughingly pointed it out.

  “You know, I could get used to this,” said Lily, putting her hands behind her head. “Murder for hire, sit on the beach between jobs, go home for a quickie every now and then. It would be the perfect life.”

  Jenny remained silent.

  “Now if only I could get Romeo on board to come with us. I could be going for a nice walk on the beach with him right now. See those rocks over there?” Lily pointed toward the south where some breakers were. “We could take a picnic and then he could bend me over one of those stones and rail me until my legs stop working.”

  Lily’s demonic hearing picked up the sound of Dana’s phone vibrating, followed almost immediately by the sound of the zombie dropping it. That immediately had her attention. Dana’s reflexes were far too good to be dropping a phone. Twisting in her seat to look into the beach house, she saw Dana staring at her cell phone as if trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

  “We get a new gig?” she asked. “I hope we’re not just the opener. Last pce was a dive. I didn’t even get dinner out of it.” Lily made a point of jabbing Jenny in the belly with a finger. “Somebody was a rotten cunt and stole all my peanuts.”

  Vibrations inside of Lily’s stomach told her that she had just received a text. Reaching inside her own body, she pulled out the cellphone. It was one of only two real objects that she constantly carried around, the other being a neckce that Mike had given her. Unlocking the screen, Lily stared at the text message and ughed.

  “Holy shit, Dana, are you seeing this?”

  “Seeing what?” Dana sounded nervous for some reason. “What did Eulie send you?”

  Lily frowned. When was the st time Dana had exhibited any kind of vibe other than driven or murderous? “Eulie has a non-SoS lead she wants us to pursue.”

  Not interested. Jenny’s chair scooted itself away from both of them and toward the edge of the deck.

  “Sounds like she wants us to subcontract out…you got the same text, right?”

  “Yes,” Dana lied.

  Lily made a face, now insanely curious. What had gotten the dead girl all wrapped up in a…OH! “She sent you something different, didn’t she?”

  Dana promptly locked her phone and stuffed it away. “Maybe,” she mumbled.

  Lily looked back at the text from Eulie. “She needs us to break into a data facility for her, but we’re supposed to work with another team.” The succubus put a hand against her cheek and raised her voice in a mocking tone. “I WONDER WHO SHE WANTS US TO WORK WITH?”

  The zombie pulled a piece of jerky from her backpack and nibbled on it, ignoring the succubus.

  Lily ughed and stood from her chair. “I don’t know if it’s a job we should take,” she said, pacing pyfully on the deck. “I mean, we are a democratic team of murder bitches, and one of us has already vetoed the job…”

  Dana looked up from her snack, her lip twitching. “If Eulie says she needs our help, then we help,” she replied.

  “I don’t knoooooow…” Lily looked back toward the water. “I don’t really see any incentive to work with people I’m not familiar with. They might start sniffing around our business, or maybe even p up all the credit when the job is done.”

  The zombie narrowed her eyes. “I hate you, sometimes. It’s Tasia.”

  “Ooooooooh!” Lily walked inside the beach house and threw herself on the nearest couch, her bikini transforming into a cute pair of pajamas. “Is this the girl from school you’re crushing on? O. M. G! What’s she like? Have you kissed her?”

  “You’re an ass.” Dana reached into the closest silverware drawer and pulled out a knife. She threw it at Lily, who snatched it out of the air with her tail. “Can you be serious for a moment? It sounds like the others need our help.”

  “Others?” Lily frowned and looked at her phone again. She had only read the first couple lines of text, but the rest didn’t reveal who they might be working with. “I guess the way it’s worded implies a team, but who else is on it?”

  Dana sighed. “Tasia has a partner, apparently. It’s Ingrid.”

  “Ingrid?!?” Lily cackled. “Our little mage muffin has gone rogue and started her own team? How progressive of her!”

  “Yeah, well…she had to do that after realizing how rotten the Order became.” Dana started packing up her schematics. “This sounds like the kind of job we should take.”

  Lily sat up properly. “Is it, though? I get that you’ve got a thing for the werewolf, but I don’t know that it validates our own involvement. We’re on a hot streak with the remaining SoS.”

  Kill them all. Jenny’s thoughts were followed by the cupboards in the kitchen fpping.

  “It sounds like this is sort of an ‘us’ problem. Did you even read the whole text?”

  Lily shrugged. “I skimmed it.”

  “Did you see the part where something supposedly escaped from that giant portal colpsing?” Dana stacked up the schematics and then rolled them up before shoving them into a tube. “Something…not of this world?”

  The succubus frowned and pulled her phone back out. This time, she put proper thought into scrolling through the details and winced. “Oh, okay, this is actually…pretty bad.”

  “You don’t say?” Dana came to sit by the demon. “I’m sure you and I both know who would want to get his big, creepy hands on something that could theoretically undo the geas on the house.”

  Lily nodded. The Curator was just the kind of bastard who would be behind something like this. The man was an enigma, but one thing was certain: he had his hands in everything. If the bastard got ahold of an outsider for his weird experiments, nothing good could come of it.

  “Okay, you’ve sold me on it.” Lily groaned and looked outside at the beach. Rest and rexation would have to wait for another day. “So when do we start?”

  I’m not going, said Jenny.

  “That’s fine,” Lily replied. “We don’t expect you to be strong enough to handle the job, anyway.”

  Dana and Lily both pretended to completely ignore the poltergeist tantrum that followed. Cupboard doors rattled so hard that they sheared from their frame, and crockery was hurled around the beach house, most of it shattering on the floor. The telekinetic storm sted nearly five minutes before settling down.

  Fine. The door to the porch opened to reveal that Jenny’s chair had moved so that the doll was facing inward now.

  “Yeah, I guess you can come.” Lily stood and casually walked across the room, ignoring the ceramic shards that crushed underneath her boots. She picked up the doll and brought it inside. “Looks like La is gonna lose her deposit again.”

  “I don’t think money is even a real thing to her.” Dana reached into her bag and pulled out another piece of jerky.

  “You know,” said Lily, watching the zombie eat the meat. “You’re gonna run out of that vampire at some point. You’ve got a weird addiction to it.”

  “No, I won’t.” Dana looked up Lily, smiling to reveal the food stuck in her teeth. “He keeps regenerating.”

  “Nasty.” Lily replied to Eulie, then waited. “Annnnd, it looks like we need to wait a bit. Apparently Tasia and her puppy pals are still asleep.”

  Dana looked around the beachhouse. “Maybe we should clean up.”

  “We could.” Lily pulled out a pair of sungsses. “Or I could go for a walk and take in the sunset.”

  “Hmm.” The zombie contempted Lily’s answer for a bit, then knelt down to pick up her own sungsses, which had gotten knocked onto the floor. “Lead the way.”

  The trio went for their sunset stroll, which eventually turned into a midnight hike along the sand. They occasionally spotted fishermen on the beach, or even some shady characters lurking in the shadows, but to Lily’s chagrin, nobody bothered them. A midnight snack would have been nice.

  When the call came that Tasia’s team had awakened and it was time to go, the trio had already returned home and packed up. Well, Dana did, as the only one who actually had luggage. They stepped through the first of a trio of safety portals, and she handed off her schematics to a pair of rats who would take them home for safekeeping. Once they reached their destination, it was just an empty ft.

  “So what now?” asked Dana. “Should we just sit and wait?”

  “Hardly.” Lily walked out into the living room and dismissed her clothing with a wave. If she didn’t get to make an entrance, she may as well provide a proper reception. “I think you should do something dramatic, like figure out which room is Tasia’s and go y naked on her bed.”

  “That’s…presumptuous.” Dana pulled out her phone and looked at it.

  “What did Eulie send you?” asked Lily. “You keep checking that thing every fifteen minutes. I know you’ve got a photographic memory.”

  “Some things are better seen than remembered.” The zombie smirked. “I’m going upstairs to look around.”

  “Sure, you are.” Lily winked and watched Dana leave. She looked down at Jenny, who was currently nestled in her arms. “Should I strip you naked, too?”

  The furniture rattled angrily in response.

  “Fine, fine.” Lily set the doll up on a bookshelf. “There. This way you can at least see their reactions when they get here.” After snooping in all of the drawers in the living room, the succubus felt the air pressure shift as another portal was opened up. She tossed herself onto the closest leather couch and picked up a magazine that had been set aside and thumbed through it.

  “Why are you naked on our couch?!?” somebody screamed.

  Lily smirked and looked over the top of her magazine. She was a bit surprised to find herself looking at Aurora. She hadn’t really seen the woman since their shared time at Paradise when Lily had been pretending to be an intern to allow her to aggravate the employees.

  Oh well. Go with what you know. “I’m making myself at home,” she replied, then wiggled her ass back and forth on the couch. “After all, it sounds like we’re going to be roomies, and I call the top—”

  Aurora had reached into her pocket to pull out a small vial. She popped the cork and tossed the whole thing at Lily. When the holy water nded on the succubus, her skin bubbled and burned as she threw herself on the ground.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” shouted Lily as she rolled on the carpet, swiping the water away from her skin. It hadn’t been nearly enough to hurt her, but it still stung really bad. “Ow, shit! We’re on the same team now!”

  “Oh, I know.” Aurora pulled a rag from her pocket and moved to where Lily had been sitting. She made a point of wiping the leather and then tossed the rag into a small trash can hidden by an end table. “I’m just making a point right now that I’m the boss bitch around here and won’t put up with your bullshit. Do we have an agreement?”

  Lily cackled and sat up, her skin now covered in blisters. “Boss bitch, huh? I like it.”

  “I don’t give a shit. Now put on some pants before you leave coochie stains all over the pce.” Aurora walked out of the room just as Ingrid came in, her wand raised. Tasia was right behind her, sniffing the air.

  “Thought I heard fighting,” said Ingrid.

  “It was just forepy,” Lily replied. She saw the look on Tasia’s face and grinned. “Dana went upstairs to look around.”

  The werewolf nodded and followed.

  Ingrid sighed and sat on a chair across from Lily. The two stared at each other for several minutes before the mage groaned and got up.

  “Where are you going?” asked Lily.

  “To get something to drink,” muttered Ingrid. “Can’t stand looking at that face of yours any longer. You should fix it.”

  “Cunt,” Lily muttered. She stood and made some clothes appear, then looked over at Jenny. “If they’re annoyed with me, wait until they get a load of you.”

  Jenny cackled quietly in the back of Lily’s mind.

  ---

  Upstairs in the ft, Dana moved slowly through the hallways, her eyes taking in every detail. The pce was immacute, kept clean by someone with an eye for detail. In the hallway, she stopped to look at a table with a vase on it. It was a dry arrangement of different grasses along with one pnt she recognized, eucalyptus. The arrangement reminded her of fall weather, Thanksgiving, and the fact that she had no pns to go visit her parents for the holidays.

  Things with her parents had been tense after st Christmas. Two years ago, she had taken Quetzalli with her to act as her older girlfriend, which her parents didn’t like. This st year, it had been Beth, in order to help her dodge some of the May-December romance issues that her mother and father had with Quetzalli. Though the attorney had been charming and pyed the role well, it had been Dana who had faltered.

  Her parents had immediately noticed how disconnected she was during the evening. Compared to the things she had been through and experienced, the whole meal had been excruciatingly boring. She had spent most of the meal contempting her observatory rebuild. A small part of her realized that she had hurt her parents’ feelings by acting so aloof, but there was no way she could ever expin why. After she had returned to the Radley house, she expined her behavior by saying that she was going to ‘break up’ with Beth, which had started a long argument about what Dana really wanted from life because her new girlfriend ‘seemed so lovely.’

  In her mind, she was already distancing herself from her parents. Her mom and dad belonged to the Dana who had died a few years ago. Though it wasn’t fair to them, she couldn’t contempte any other option that wouldn’t eventually hurt them more.

  At the end of the hall was a bedroom that smelled like Tasia. Dana pushed the door open and stepped inside, inhaling the werewolf’s scent. Smirking to herself, she pulled out her phone and opened the picture of Tasia that Eulie had sent her, preceded by the words ‘Merry Tits-mas!’. Where had it been taken? She turned back and forth, holding it up in front of the bed, the window, and even the vanity.

  The moment she had gotten the text, she had immediately recognized those breasts. There was a thin scar below one of them that was new, but they were otherwise a perfect match for the pair that dominated her fantasies. When they had st spoken, Dana had wondered how long it would be until she heard from Tasia again, unaware that it simply wouldn’t happen. She had thrown herself into projects in order to distract herself, then tried unsuccessfully to track the werewolf on her own. Even Eulie had been unable to find her.

  Now she stood in a room filled with Tasia’s clothes and scent. Dana moved to the bed and picked up a pillow, pressing her face into it and inhaling. There was the faint musk of arousal lingering on the sheets, a scent that she’d become sensitive to. Licking her lips, she pulled a piece of vampire jerky out of her pocket and chewed on it.

  The energy that suffused her veins was like fire, yanking her more fully into the present. It had become an alternate fuel source, much more convenient than eating Mike’s magical spooge shots from the Radley fridge or directly from Lily. Vampire meat didn’t drive her absolutely mad with lust.

  Devouring the vampire was changing her, though. Maybe it was the reason she was less receptive to her parents. Perhaps it was fueling her self-imposed isotion. Deep in her chest, she felt the dull thud of her heart as it absorbed the monster’s lifeforce and squeezed its power through her veins. She licked her lips as her belly grumbled, demanding she devour more, consuming flesh like mad to fill the bottomless void of her gut.

  Dana moved to the closest window and looked outside, her gaze lingering on the horizon. As her body came to life once more, the events of the st couple of days settled heavily on her mind while she processed them emotionally. It was easy to lean into anger in the moment, to justify killing bad people who had it coming, but there was always a price to pay ter.

  Taking several deep breaths, she closed her eyes and let the scent of the room wash over her. Down below, she heard someone yelling, most likely at Lily. The succubus was at some of her worst behavior right now, but she knew it was because Mike had left the house without her to chase a lead on Tink’s dangerous pregnancy. Dana felt bad that they hadn’t come home right away, but old SoS personnel were hard enough to track these days as they had gone to ground, and the intel was quickly running dry. Every incident couldn’t be all hands on deck or they’d never accomplish anything else.

  That, and Jenny had been insistent that they continue their hunt. The doll was…unnerving, even with so many of Dana’s emotions dulled. The tormented spirit had taken Grace’s abduction personally, and the sheer magnitude of violence she had rained down on the mercenaries they caught had been more than Dana could bear.

  She missed Tick Tock. The little mimic was capable of ruthless, bloody violence, but it didn’t take great pride in the absolutely awful mind games that Jenny employed on her prey. Since the creature was currently holding a powerful magical grimoire inside its body, the decision had been made for it to stay behind and act as a guardian for Grace.

  Shivering, Dana moved to eat another piece of vampire flesh. It was less like jerky and more like a piece of sashimi, honestly. Once it warmed up in her pockets, it would occasionally move, as if hoping to put itself back together. She had set a piece on a table one time and it had eventually started crawling south toward where the main body was being held below the Antarctic ice. Before the piece of meat could hit her lips, the door of the bedroom opened then closed and she turned to face its entrant.

  Tasia stood there, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail that hung over her shoulder. The werewolf had changed since the st time they met, but it was primarily in her shoulders. The definition of the muscles there reminded Dana of sculpted marble. She stuck the snack back in the baggie in her pocket.

  “Dana.” Tasia seemed at a loss for words.

  In response, Dana unlocked her phone and opened the picture again, then held it up roughly at the same height as Tasia’s chest as if using magical X-ray vision.

  “Got your picture,” said Dana. “A simple hello would have sufficed.”

  Tasia blushed, the sudden vulnerability on her face making her ten times more appealing. The brunette winced and fidgeted with her fingers as she looked away. “I was trying to be silly and wasn’t thinking—”

  Dana crossed the room at inhuman speed, pushing the werewolf back against the closed door. She pinned Tasia’s shoulders with her hands, then closed her eyes and sniffed her colrbone. Just beneath the skin, werewolf blood pounded loudly, causing her carotid artery to visibly throb.

  The vampire meat didn’t make her horny like the magical semen did, but it absolutely amplified her desire. Whether that was a thirst for violence or lust for revenge depended on the moment at hand. Right now, Dana would do anything she could if it meant she could possess the woman beneath her hands, to cim her eternally.

  “Um…hello?” Tasia wiggled beneath Dana’s grasp. “You’ve gotten stronger.”

  “You smell good,” said Dana as she buried her face in Tasia’s neck. Her eyes fluttered in delight as she inhaled the heavenly scent of Tasia’s body as if trying to absorb it all. When she pulled back, their faces were less than an inch apart. The rest of the world had melted away, it no longer mattered. Her own heart was pounding, jackhammering in her ears like a massive drum.

  “You…do, too, actually.” Tasia leaned forward and sniffed. “You must be eating well.”

  “Not well enough,” Dana growled, then kissed the werewolf. Tasia moaned, the scent of her arousal filling the air between them. Dana’s tongue danced nimbly across Tasia’s, then she broke the kiss and worked her way along the werewolf’s neck, licking and nibbling. She had an obscene urge to bite, maybe even hard enough to draw blood, but she indulged a different whim instead and ripped Tasia’s blouse off.

  “Aurora is gonna be pissed,” Tasia muttered.

  “Don’t care,” Dana replied as she buried her head between the werewolf’s breasts. The bra suffered a simir fate, the csps snapping long before the estic broke. The zombie nibbled and sucked on this tender flesh as well, losing herself in the moment. She slid one hand down Tasia’s belly and past the waistband of her pants.

  “Yesssss,” Tasia hissed, arching her back to shift her hips forward. This allowed Dana’s fingers to better slide across thick, puffy folds within. “Be rough with me, I can take it.”

  “I know you can.” Dana slid two fingers inside of Tasia. The werewolf groaned. “If I didn’t think you could, I wouldn’t do this.” Flexing her bicep, she pulled, lifting Tasia off the floor.

  “Fuck me, that feels so good.” Tasia grabbed onto Dana’s shoulders to steady herself. Dana continued to feast on the werewolf’s breasts, greedily sucking on her nipples until both of them stood firm. Then she switched to biting them. Tasia clutched Dana’s head to her chest. “Harder! Bite me harder!”

  The zombie obliged. Though Tasia’s skin looked soft and supple, it was incredibly durable. On the rare occasion Dana actually drew blood, the wound closed itself in seconds, allowing her to drink her lover’s blood. A growl of contentment rumbled in Dana’s throat, and she tried to fit a third finger inside of Tasia. When the fabric of Tasia’s pants resisted, Dana pulled her dagger and cut the offending fabric away.

  Tasia’s pants peeled away from her legs, dangling like a partially-shed snakeskin. After tucking the dagger safely back into its sheath, Dana paused, the sharp tang of pussy having filled the air so completely that she could taste it on her tongue. Without any thought, she simply lifted Tasia up higher. The werewolf bumped her head against the ceiling, then folded her thighs around Dana’s head as the zombie dipped her tongue between those thick folds.

  It was bliss. She could hear Tasia’s cries of delight through her thighs, could feel the tremendous pressure of her muscles as she squeezed. Dana grabbed Tasia’s ass in both hands and feasted on her pussy, licking and sucking as if to somehow devour her completely.

  When Tasia came, the werewolf dug cws into Dana’s skull and howled. Pster rained down on them from above as Tasia smashed her head through the ceiling as her body went taut, and the sudden shift in mass caused Dana to lose her footing and the two of them toppled to the floor.

  The two came apart with Tasia nding on her back. Dana hastily unbuckled her pants and ripped her own underwear away, driven by a need of her own. Tasia beckoned for Dana, a mischievous glint in her eye as Dana promptly sat on her face and began to ride her.

  “Is everything—” The bedroom door swung open to reveal Ingrid, who had her wand drawn. Dana gred at her defiantly as she rode Tasia’s face. The mage’s cheeks burned crimson as she looked up to take in the cw marks on the ceiling along with the hole in the pster.

  “I am soooo fucking sorry,” she muttered, pulling the door shut behind her.

  Tasia’s powerful arms flexed as she wrapped them around Dana’s thighs. The zombie gasped as she continued to drive her hips down into the floor, Tasia’s long tongue causing her clitoris to tingle in wet anticipation. Dana grabbed handfuls of Tasia’s hair now and face fucked the woman until she came.

  Still, it wasn’t enough. She rode Tasia’s face to another orgasm before the werewolf folded in half to yank Dana away with her legs.

  “My turn,” Tasia growled as she pinned Dana to the floor in a simir manner. More than happy to py rough, Dana rolled both of them over again, the wooden floor creaking in protest as they continued to sm each other into it. The zombie lost track of time as the two of them cwed and bit each other pyfully while trying to satisfy primal desires.

  Dana had pinned Tasia to the ground and was frantically working her entire hand into the werewolf’s vagina when the bedroom door burst open and Lily stormed in with a disgruntled look on her face. She pulled a spray bottle from behind her back and shot the pair with squirts of water.

  “Bad! Bad!” she shouted at both of them.

  Surprised by the sight, Dana flinched away when the water struck her in the eyes. Tasia scooted free and grabbed a nearby pillow, which she threw at Lily.

  “Hey!” Tasia shouted back. “We’re catching up, give us a minute!”

  “You’ve already had a minute,” Lily said. “In fact, we’ve been listening to you two fuck monkeys for the better part of two hours and we’ve got shit to do.” Satisfied that the two of them had stopped, the succubus smirked at Tasia. “Nice to see you, dog breath.”

  “Fuck off,” muttered Tasia.

  “I would if anyone would let me.” Lily pantomimed jacking off as she headed back out. “In all seriousness, we need to be ready to go in thirty minutes. You two should probably take a shower, you both smell like ass. I do mean that in the nicest of ways.” She looked over her shoulder and winked before stepping outside.

  “Damn,” Dana muttered, licking Tasia’s fluids off her fingers. Two hours, huh? Her eyes met Tasia’s and noticed that she was licking her own fingers clean. Now that the immediate need was gone, she actually felt a little embarrassed. Her heart was now beating just a couple of times a minute, and would likely stop soon. She ughed and stood, helping Tasia off the floor.

  “I wanted to call,” said Tasia. “I can expin everything.”

  Dana let out a sigh. That part of her that wanted to be mad had been fucked into submission. It was time for the logical part of her brain to do the heavy lifting. “Why don’t you tell me about it in the shower?” she asked.

  Tasia made a face. “It’s a pretty tiny shower,” she said. “There isn’t a lot of room.”

  Dana stepped forward until their noses touched, then grabbed Tasia by the chin and held her face still while their lips met. This wasn’t a kiss driven by lust. This was the kind that took time to fully appreciate. There was only one other person she had ever kissed this way.

  “I don’t fucking care,” she replied.

  Tasia, her eyes full of hope, broke into a huge grin. The werewolf briefly scanned the room and groaned. “We trashed the pce,” she muttered.

  “Won’t be the first time,” said Dana. “And I hope it won’t be the st.”