Radley's Home for Horny Monsters by Annabelle Hawthorne (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📕

“That was no simple fire elemental,” she told him. “He was almost too hot for me to hold onto.”

“She’s right,” Naia added, kneeling by Abella’s side. She ran her hands gently over the gargoyle’s skin. “Whoever summoned that creature has use of some powerful magic.”

“We know where it came from.” Mike explained what he and Tink had found in the trashcan. “The fact that it came from the trash and didn’t just attack me when I walked in the door means something, but I have no idea what. The Society clearly wants this house, otherwise they would have just burned the place down. Ideas?”

“I’m thinking this was partially a scouting affair,” Abella said, holding up a blistered palm. Naia summoned a stream of icy water to wash across it. “The elemental needed to see who was here first. I’m sure they have ideas, but it would be a bad idea to just attack without knowing who and what. I saw it in wars all the time.”

“You’ve been in wars?” Mike asked.

Abella nodded. “Usually I used forts or castles as hiding places. I loved watching the people below, and nobody questions another statue on the roof of a church. I have seen my share of sieges. My guess is that they sent in the elemental to scope out the territory and then kill you if possible.”

“If I die, that’s it. It was hard enough to find me, and as far as I know, I have zero family left anywhere.” Mike shook his head. “I almost sold the place anyway, but the will stipulated that I had to come and see it first, and could only sell when full ownership transferred, which takes a few days. I die, it’s only a matter of time before the Society gets this place, and then they get to you.”

“Who are they?” Naia asked.

Mike looked at Tink, who sat on the edge of the fountain. “Let’s find out.”

MIKE AND TINK SAT AT the dinner table, his laptop open in front of him. Tink wore her goggles still, carefully watching everything Mike did. Even though she got the basics of navigation, he showed her how to streamline her searches, avoid leaving a trail, and not spend all his money.

“I’ll try and walk you through this,” he informed her, clicking on a small icon in the corner of his desktop. It was designed to match his screensaver, a basic “Lake in the Mountains” photo that came with it. Prompting him for a password, he logged in to the desktop computer that was at his old apartment.

Having more than three months left on the rent, Mike had never bothered to formally move out. Right now, a person sitting in his room would watch the desktop come to life, controlled remotely by his laptop computer. He needed something far heftier than what he had now. Even though he had parted with his hacker ways many years ago, he knew better than to simply throw away the programs he had kept. His job, after all, was website maintenance, and knowing what the bad people were using was the best way to keep his clients safe.

He opened up a Dos command window, typing in the phrase ZeroDarkThirty.exe. Anyone digging through his directory wouldn’t even see the hidden file, but his computer rebooted itself into Dark Mode, a term he had laughingly coined one night between rounds of Counter-Strike.

His computer began running subroutines, bouncing off of servers all over the world. Anyone trying to trace it would run into difficulty without some hacking knowledge of their own, and even then, he had ways to erase his tracks.

He pulled up the Society’s website and looked at its members. Elizabeth was his first target, and he immediately began digging into the local records. Tink watched intently as he pulled up easy stuff like birth records, address, and then went deeper with police records, real estate sales, and anything else he could find. Every time he found a lead, he opened a new window and let his programs do their work.

Nearly an hour passed in this manner, with him digging and creating his own file. He had Tink eat the pineapple off of one of the remaining pizza slices so that he could finish the rest, while drinking a beer from the fridge. A second hour passed, and then a third. Only darkness could be seen through the kitchen window.

“Well, that’s that.” Mike stared at the results of his digging, shaking his head in disbelief.

“What Mike find?” Tink asked. She had been by his side for the majority of his hunt, but had kept quiet.

“Nothing. Which, in and of itself, is something.” Mike showed her the website for the Society. “Clearly, these bitches stink,” he said, pointing at Elizabeth and Sarah. “But the only reason we know that is because we’ve met them, right? Well, look at the other eleven members of the Society.” He pointed at the circular portraits on the website. “Statistically, I should have found something, anything, about even just one of them. A parking ticket, a court summons, anything.”

“Mike have empty hands?”

“Mike have empty hands. And they shouldn’t be empty.” He stared at the strange faces before him. “Other than birth records and their current addresses and such, I can’t even find pictures of them from when they were younger. It’s almost like they came out of nowhere.”

Tink nodded to herself. “Everyone come from somewhere.”

“Exactly.” Mike rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. “I’m not sure where to go from here.”

“Everything look better in daylight,” Tink informed him, her face cracking into a yawn. “Old goblin saying.”

“That’s a human saying, too.” Mike stared at his computer. He had even hacked into the website hosting the Society, only to find that it was just a run-of-the-mill Weebly page. Nothing of interest. He changed the name on Elizabeth’s picture to Queen Cunt. Deciding that wasn’t enough, he uploaded pictures of dicks for the rest of the members’ profiles. He quickly