Page 51 of A Very Monstrous Desire

The questions ran through Theo’s mind and ceased only when something, and something big, something familiar, swooped above them.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Baku responded in an instant. With his free hand he quickly took Theo’s and pulled him over to a large tree that created a massive canopy above them. It was infested with hundreds of little silver insects. Baku didn’t seem perturbed by them, so Theo decided to treat them in the same way, even when a couple tried to fly into his mouth.

He crouched down next to Baku under the canopy of the tree, hand tingling as always from the monster’s touch, and leaned into whisper, “What is it?”

It took Baku a moment to respond, but Theo knew why. He was waiting for the thing to swoop across the sky again, which it soon did.

“It is a rage.”

It couldn’t be more than two in the afternoon. It shouldn’t be awake yet. Theo sucked in an unsteady breath, not at all keen on the horrible spike of adrenaline that shot through him at the monster’s words.

“It’s still daylight.”

“We must have awoken it.”

“It hasn’t cried,” Theo whispered, which allowed a silver insect to crawl into his mouth. He spat it out.

“No.”

“Is it going to?” Theo asked.

“Yes,” Baku replied. “And it will wake the others when it does.” He paused. “We have no choice but to kill it.”

Theo shuddered. He shrank back against the tree, and several of the silver insects took that as an invitation to try to burrow into his ears. Theo swatted them aside.

“How…” The word came out weak, trembly but Theo couldn’t help it. He was frightened of the rages. The way they had made him feel was like nothing he had ever experienced before, and in a really bad way, and he did not want to go through it again.

“We must lure it out,” Baku said.

Theo swatted a fresh wave of insects away. They hissed in response. “I’m guessing I’m the bait?” he asked.

“That would make sense,” Baku responded, eyes darting back and forth across the canopy. “If you can lure it out, I can kill it.”

There was no dimension, not this one, not his own, not any of the others that the nightmare queens were trying to munch through, where Theo wanted that to happen. He honestly could think of nothing worse and yet what choice did they have? Baku had a better chance of killing it than Theo did.

“We must act quickly,” Baku said.

“It isn’t attacking us yet though,” Theo replied.

“No, look,” Baku said. “It’s waiting.”

He pointed up to where there was a gap in the canopy. Theo leaned forward a little so he could see it and when he did, he gasped. The rage looked nothing like Theo had imagined it would.

Nothing at all.

It had to be about Theo’s height. Its body was an other-worldly shimmering silver, and two huge, silvery wings surrounded it. Its face was almost human with the same features that Theo and Baku had, including eyes that were greener than any Theo had ever seen. The rage was beautiful. Theo doubted that any human could ever be more so, and tears pricked his eyes as he marvelled at it.

“How…” he whispered.

Baku gave him a hard shake. “Look properly,” he said.

Theo blinked, the tears clearing from his vision, and when he looked again the beauty disappeared to be replaced by something else entirely. Theo wasn’t sure what it was, but he shrank back from it. It was horrible, malevolent, something filled with rage.

“It is very young,” Baku said, and Theo could see that his monster was holding himself tense as he resisted whatever the rage was trying to do to them.

---