Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters by Annabelle Hawthorne (highly recommended books .txt) 📕

wondering how it got back here. Take a seat.” He sat on one of the chairs. Beth made herself comfortable on the couch, setting down the files. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her blouse, then tucked away a wisp of hair that had come loose.

His whole body went numb, the feeling in his gut expanding through his limbs. What had been a simple attempt to tuck away a strand of hair had suddenly become a revelation. It was subtle, nearly impossible to notice, and even Mike had doubts. But the chill in his stomach persisted, and he had to know why his brain was telling him that this wasn’t actually Beth.

But how? It looked like her, right? When she had tucked away that stray hair, Mike had noticed that the part in her hair was on the wrong side of her head. But was he wrong? There was an easy way to find out.

“Just a sec.” Mike pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly snapped a picture. It only took him a second to flip the image horizontally, and the revelation chilled him. The Beth on his phone looked correct, a mirror image of the one sitting across from him, except the one across from him seemed to realize what he was doing on his phone.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, then lunged at him with lightning speed, her files now scattered everywhere. Strong hands caught him around the throat and yanked him out of his seat. Gasping for air, he struggled to free himself, but her grip was impossible to break. She casually lifted him in the air, his legs dangling below him.

The doorbell rang.

“You need to answer the door,” she told him. “Let him in.”

“Let…who…” He kicked her legs, but she ignored him. He swung his legs even harder now, planting his feet firmly in her gut, but it felt like pushing off a brick wall. Beth marched him toward the door, stepping over the fallen folders.

What was going on here?

Jenny, still on the table, tipped over and crashed to the floor, then ran across the room and disappeared beneath the couch. The couch lifted off the ground, hovered briefly in the air, then launched itself across the room at Beth. It busted apart on impact, and Beth grunted, largely ignoring the assault.

His vision going dark, Mike closed his hand around the hilt of the dagger, hoping that he was right and that this wasn’t actually Beth. With a single swipe, he sliced cleanly through Beth’s wrist and fell to the floor, gasping for air. Beth’s hand spasmed for a moment, then crumbled into a pile of sand before his eyes.

He hadn’t been expecting that.

“Oh shit!” he yelled, then got to his feet and slashed wildly at Beth’s other hand when she reached for him. The pile of sand on the floor moved toward her and merged with her foot. Beth’s hand now grew back, and she flexed it experimentally, her eyes never leaving his.

“Answer the door, Mr. Radley.” She moved toward him, her face expressionless and her hands reaching. Mike slashed again with the dagger, spilling sand everywhere. It climbed up his body and into his mouth and eyes, causing him to cough and stumble around until he fell to the floor. She grabbed him by his shoulders and lifted him free of the ground to slam him into a nearby wall.

Cecilia phased through the front door, hair billowing wildly behind her and her white eyes wide with rage. The temperature dropped, causing frost to form on the walls and floor. Mike dropped the dagger and stuck his fingers in his ears.

The banshee screamed, and Beth’s features rippled, sand blowing off her skin and filling the room like a miniature dust storm. Cecilia floated closer to Beth, her arms stretched wide and her body aglow with fey magic as she continued to scream.

Beth’s features blurred further, sand now flowing off her body in torrents. Her arms had thinned out to the point that Mike was able to break free and drop to the floor. Once there, he picked up the knife, his unprotected ears now ringing with Cecilia’s scream. He stumbled to his feet and made a run for the back door. He wasn’t going to win this fight on his own, and when he looked back, he saw Cecilia fade from view.

“Mike!” Naia stood on the edge of her fountain, lines of worry written on her face. Zel stood at the other edge of the fountain, a waterskin in one hand and a vial in the other. Several vials had been laid next to each other on the rim, and the centaur paused, concern on her face.

“She’s made of sand!” Mike shouted at them as the back door ripped free of its hinges. Beth walked out, a maelstrom of whirring sand following close behind to form up along the back of her body. “Someone made a copy of Beth out of sand. How do we stop sand?”

“That’s actually a homunculus,” Zel stated as she grabbed her vials, then galloped away around the back of the house. Mike circled the fountain, the dagger held in front of him. He needed a plan but couldn’t think straight. His ears were still ringing from Cecilia’s scream.

“Mike.” Naia was by his side, her hand on his wrist. “Get her in the water.”

He nodded and got in the fountain with her. Beth’s eyes were focused on Mike, her hands clenching and unclenching mindlessly as she approached. When she stepped into the fountain, tiny spheres of water rose into the air, circling the homunculus like angry birds. Beth swatted them away from her face, causing large chunks of her flesh to vanish into the magical, swirling orbs.

“Hold on to me,” Naia told him, then threw her arms around his torso. Already, he felt the swirling current on his legs, threatening to suck him under. He held on to the nymph, the waters of the fountain churning beneath