Page 70 of A Very Monstrous Desire

“Theo…that is amazing. The number of lives you will have saved.” She shook her head. “It was madness down there, like nothing I imagined. Every time we shot one, they just bred more and replaced it. We couldn’t keep up.”

Theo described the egg sacs to her, and she gagged slightly. “That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah…the smell…” Theo sighed. “I’m going to stop them all, Julia.”

“And close the rips?”

“As many as we can but you know it is a cascade effect now. We can close them, but more will appear.”

She nodded, almost sadly. “I know.”

“We’re going to do our best though,” Theo added. “Any we find, we’ll close.”

Julia shook her head, but she wasn’t denying what Theo was up to, she was just impressed by it. That made Theo feel good. He had wanted Julia’s approval from the start. Perhaps it was because she had volunteered, and he had been conscripted. Or maybe it was just that even then, subconsciously, he had known this was what he was supposed to be doing and Julia had seemed to sense that too.

“The monster who took you...” she began.

“He’s close by,” Theo said quickly.

“He’s a person?”

“Yes.”

“So there are people in the other world.” Julia shook her head again. “I knew it. They kept saying there wasn’t, that it was just a world of monsters, but of course there would be people.”

Theo paused. “Do you want me to call him over?”

Julia took a slight step back towards her gun, but Theo chose to ignore that. “Okay…”

Baku stepped out from the bathroom. Perhaps it was just that he was in human surroundings, but it struck Theo all over again just how big his monster really was. Theo had gotten used to it in the past weeks, but Baku really was massive, so heavily muscled, and so angry looking, though he was anything but. That, along with his purpleness, his pointed ears, and his silver hair, it all made him look like a monster.

“Oh my god,” Julia gasped when she saw him. “You’re purple as well. Is everyone in your world purple?”

“No.”

She gaped at the very human word leaving his very not-human mouth.

“You’re also a human.”

Baku growled.

Julia grinned. “Listen to that! He growled!”

“He’s not a human,” Theo said quickly.

“He looks it. He sounds it. He’s speaking our language!”

“Life on our worlds is closely aligned,” Theo said, and he felt almost like some kind of inter-dimensional ambassador when he said that. It was like he was living in an episode of Stargate, Theo realised, and he was pleased by the thought.

Julia stepped forwards, circling round Baku, considering every detail of him. “Not human? Uh huh.”

She started asking questions.

How many of them were there?

Where did they live?

How long did they live for?

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