Page 62 of A Very Monstrous Desire

And with that he pulled them out from behind the rock and they went straight into the crowd of monsters who were waiting for them. It truly was like something out of a nightmare. There were dozens of them, and they immediately leapt at Baku. He responded by smacking them away, one after the other, but there were so many and who knew how long he could keep it up for. Theo hesitated for just a moment, torn between his desire to help his monster and his task, which was to kill the queen.

This is what you were meant to do.

Just a moment.

Just a thought.

And then he ran.

And she knew he was coming. Only, she thought he was coming to protect.

Bigger than the others by at least a couple of feet, she was almost Theo’s height. She was wider, larger, and her mouth was the size of Theo’s head. It was wide open, biting away at the air directly in front of them, causing explosions of those horrifically repulsive lights.

Theo ran for her. He held his knife high in the air. She let out a screeching vibration as she sensed danger, but she didn’t understand. He was one of hers. She could feel him. The other one, the one now fighting the monsters who would protect her was clearly the invader. What was happening?

Theo jumped and he jumped higher than even the time he’d had to traverse an upended bin during a park run and had pulled a hamstring that kept him out for a week. But there was no torn hamstring today. Theo was fast. He was strong. And he landed on her in a flurry of limbs and a scream of anger.

She was the reason he was here.

She and her kind had killed tens of thousand of his people.

The nightmares.

But no more.

She screeched against him and tried to push him off and she was strong also, and she was fast, but Theo held on tight. He lifted his knife and without so much as a heartbeat’s pause he plunged it into her. She opened her mouth to its widest extent in a scream and as she did so, she bit into the air, bit into the gaps between worlds. For just a moment Theo found himself in the space that exists between it all. Lights surrounded them, every single colour in existence pulsing there. Time seemed to stop, or at least not to be anymore. Theo couldn’t breathe, there was no oxygen here, but then he didn’t need it, because there was no him there either.

It was the space between it all.

The space where there was everything but also nothing.

And Theo had been here before and he would return here again. He closed his eyes as he let that knowledge wash through him, as he accepted what it meant, and when he opened them just a moment later, he lifted his knife, and he sank it deep into the queen’s brain.

She let out a piercing shriek as he did so and screamed once more as she died. Around her, her children did the exact same thing, and the sound rang out across the beach, travelling from Theo to Baku who was surrounded, and even all the way to the MDF who had quickly realised that something was afoot and were waiting to see what would happen.

The lights of the space between worlds exploded out one last time but then faded as the new rip settled. It was a space a meter or so across that looked through into a bleak, dark landscape beyond.

Theo fell to the ground, on top of the queen’s body, pulling in air as he did so, settling himself back into his own dimension, the place he had always belonged. Pain shot through his wrist, and he realised that he had wrenched it as he stabbed her. He waited only a moment before gathering himself and then looking for his monster. Baku was there, on the ground, dozens of dying munchers surrounding him.

Theo pulled his knife free from the queen, swapped it into his good hand and raced over and straight on top of the muncher who was attempting to eat Baku’s face. Theo stabbed him hard and then kicked him aside. Another dying muncher barrelled into him, followed by several more, and Theo realised his serum was wearing off.

Baku let out a roar and he grabbed them one after the other, flinging them across the space. He was covered in blood, he had lost several chunks of flesh including a large one on his upper arm, but he turned, and he stood over Theo, and he smashed nightmare after nightmare aside as they tried to get to him.

“He is mine!” Baku roared. “Mine!”

And slowly but surely the munchers began to weaken, and bit by bit they began to die, and there in the middle of it all were Theo and Baku, the monster and the human, and they had done exactly what they had set out to do.

They had saved the worlds.

At least for now.

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

The queen’s death and the chaos that followed as her monsters died one by one was quite horrible to witness. Theo and Baku were right in the middle of it, and they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Baku had taken a real beating as he bought Theo enough time to deal with the queen. As well as several bits of missing flesh that would take many months to heal, Baku had several deep cuts over his face where the nightmares had clawed at him, and he was bruised all over. Theo held him close as they moved past the new rip to the other world. Baku could not close it. His device only closed rips between their two worlds. Theo wondered how the MDF would deal with it.

They did have the other rip to close though, and they re-traced their steps back to it, Theo’s wrist throbbing as he did so. It was packed even tighter on the journey back through, which slowed them down quite a bit. The nightmares were on the floor, thousands of them just dead because they could not survive without their queen. It made no sense, and Theo said as much to Baku.

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