Page 42 of A Very Monstrous Desire

“It is a serum, Theo,” Baku said.

Theo held the serum up to the light. Little sparkles seemed to dance in it. “What does it do?” he asked.

And Baku’s chest rumbled slightly, and Theo suddenly realised that the monster didn’t want to answer him because that rumble seemed to come when he was saying something Theo might not like. But if there was one thing that sharing a bed with someone had always done for Theo it was to give him an insight into their character. It wasn’t always an insight Theo enjoyed, and he’d had his heart broken plenty of times because of it, and it seemed that now was going to be another of those times, because whether he wanted to or not, Baku did answer, and the words were unexpected but also not. After all, hadn’t everything that had happened these past days been just like that?

“It allows you to become one of them,” the monster eventually said. “One of the nightmares.”

Chapter

Twenty

“You want to run that by me again?” Theo said, because he was pretty damn sure that the monster hadn’t just said what Theo thought he had said.

Baku gestured to the serum still resting in the palm of Theo’s hand, sparkling slightly in the light from the cave’s luminous walls. “The serum will disguise you,” he said.

“From the munching monsters?”

“Yes.”

“By turning me into one of them?” Theo asked and again, he was pretty sure that couldn’t be what Baku meant because why the fuck would the monster possibly imagine that was something that Theo would even contemplate let alone actually do?

“That is not the correct phrasing,” Baku said after a moment. “It…it changes the frequency your body vibrates at, so they think you are one of them.”

The image of one of those monsters filled Theo’s mind. Their purple bodies, their pulsating limbs, and those horrendous chattering teeth. He shuddered. “So the nightmares, the vile things that are eating my world, will think I am one of them, but I wouldn’t be,” he said quickly. “I would still be me?”

“In the main,” Baku replied.

“In the main? What the hell does that mean?” Theo demanded.

“It should work how it does on my people,” the monster said. “Our biology being so similar will make it so. A slight alteration is all.”

“Your people?” Theo breathed and he gasped slightly as he realised what Baku meant. “Which of your people have taken it?”

Baku shrugged one brawny shoulder. “Several of us, including me.”

“You…”

“Yes.”

“I don’t?—”

“It is why my skin now has this purple glow,” Baku said, and he sounded perfectly reasonable as he said that, like he was not talking about an experiment he was running on himself! “It was not there before. My skin is usually green.”

Theo ran his gaze over Baku’s body, the very same body that he had kissed and caressed the night before. The same body that he had allowed inside of him. He tried to imagine it green but utterly failed. “You’re part munching monster?” he eventually whispered.

“I have the essence of one, perhaps,” Baku said.

Theo did indeed gasp again. “I need a moment here…” he said as he stepped away from the table, his heart racing, and a horrible knot of something that might well be panic now swirling around in his stomach. And yet, what the hell had he expected!

He’d been abducted into another dimension by a monster.

A fucking monster!

The fact that Baku looked and talked like a human did not make him one. He himself had said as much. How had Theo let himself believe otherwise? And he had brought Theo here for a reason, he’d said so from the beginning. Theo was not in this dimension by chance!

“So, you…you…drank the serum and now you’re part muncher…I can’t believe I’m saying that…and you want me to become part one as well? Have I got that right? Does that sum it up?” he eventually said.

“Yes,” Baku replied.

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