8 comments/ 15092 views/ 16 favorites My Nine Monsters Ch. 01 By: clrainyweather Prologue She is looking for me. I haven't decided yet if she's hunting me, or just searching for evidence of my existence. The thought that this young, slight woman that looks like she splits her time between the library and the running track could possibly be hunting me makes me laugh softly to myself. I've been hunted before. Fools have come looking for me, and the glory that might come with capturing or killing something like me. They've hunted my brothers as well. Since the Scientific Revolution, we've been tracked more by the curious and seekers of the biologically impossible than by glory hounds. But they all end up just as dead. The other creatures of the world are more careful, and they leave us well alone. But humans are apparently not so bright as that. Chapter 1 "Good Morning, Chloe." Thomas says a little too loudly for this library, greeting me the same as he has every day for the last two weeks in his musical, lilting Irish voice. It's a voice made for soft words, and whispers over whisky in front of a warm fire in old rooms. In short, all of the things I've denied myself ever since I resigned myself to scholarly spinsterhood upon completion of my undergraduate degree. It isn't as though I've been celibate, I was involved with a man all through my time at a smallish American University pursing my Bachelor's degree, a relationship that ended when I commenced a torrid affair with my Master's thesis advisor, a man almost two decades older than myself. That ended predictably, having forgotten my sister's advice, "Remember Chloe, if he'll cheat on someone else for you, he'll probably cheat on you for someone else." And it's not that I don't like men. In fact, I adore men. My personal taste being for the biggest, burliest, roughest, most stereotypical man's men I can find. And if such a man can clean up and look good in a suit, my panties get automatically wet. But such men are emotionally messy and complicated, and besides, in my experience a man rarely knows how to really rock my world on his first trip to my bed. To really get the toe-curling satisfying fuck I need usually takes a bit of practice. So usually when I have an itch to scratch I turn to my trusty drawer full of toys, which are uncomplicated, dishwasher safe, and have never yet failed to get me off. But I haven't needed to did into that drawer too much in the last couple of months, and barely at all since planes and trains brought my to a darkened carrel in The Bodelian, Oxford University's most famous library. I can barely understand what I'm doing here, searching ancient books for a secret so outside of my normal, completely natural historian's existence that it cannot possibly be true. I'm here looking for what can only be monsters. These are monsters that cannot die. Monsters who, carefully concealed, have carved a bloody trail through human history going back at least two millennia. When the thought first occurred to me that the legendary warriors that served the Khans in the butchery Mongol hordes inflicted across Eurasia were actually the same man, I laughed out loud at the preposterousness of the idea. But the more I read, and the more cultures I looked into the more and more I couldn't deny my own hypothesis. Now I know that their isn't just one. I know there are a least five, if not possibly more. I found the phrases translated, "he who tames the beast within" in an ancient codex in the Near East, that should have been translated from that long dead Semitic dialect, "He that becomes the beast within." In a dusty bin in Berlin I found a Roman record of Germanic folk tales about the beast that guards the people of the North. And later in Munich a record of a man who held a bridge against an army single handedly. That text was rendered to English, "He fought like a pack of wolves, and destroyed us all." But only because of that professor's lack of knowledge of the Old Latin, or perhaps unwillingness to admit that the text actually should have been read, "He became a pack of wolves, and destroyed us all." I'm still not sure what these things are, or where they come from, but I am convinced that if the same vicious warriors keep showing up again and again across the bloodiest page of human history for centuries then some of them might still be alive. This is what led me here, to a long table alone in the great room of the oldest and grandest of all the libraries still left in the world. If only the Library of Alexandria hadn't been burned to the ground in antiquity. I'd be at a table there, combing the very earliest records of humanity in my search. But for now this place will do. I've just gotten myself settled, and my pencils (no pens allowed here) and notepad arranged when the cute for a librarian Thomas comes in carefully carrying the manuscript I've asked him for. It's one of the oldest extant copies of the epic poem Beowulf, one of the few works remaining from Old English, composed as early as 700 AD and first written down over as a thousand years ago. Of course I don't think Beowulf himself, the hero of the story, was one of my monsters but I'm looking for clues in his supporting cast. "What would such a pretty lass as you want such a dark tale for?" Thomas asks me, in a drippingly patronizing tone. I despise it. But I've been hearing this shit since I entered the University at 16, so I won't punish him too harshly, and I just ignore the comment. "Thank you, Thomas. Set it here please, and let me get to work." My tone is unmistakably one that suggests I do not wish to be bothered. "As you wish Dr. Bishop." His reversion to my title rather than first name does not go unnoticed; I had no intention of wounding him. I favor him with my brightest smile and pay him an innocuous compliment and thank him. Having thus gained temporary forbearance from the impending storm of my displeasure he lashes himself to the tiller and sails madly on, "Perhaps after you're done with the death and the darkness you'd like a pint or a whisky to cheer up with, and maybe some company to go with it?" It does sound nice for a moment, but my typical detachment and single-mindedness when work is present take over, and I only smile slightly and offer a short, "Perhaps" with only the small amount of flirtation necessary to ensure that he will continue to dote on me and obey my every whim as only a sexually frustrated graduate student will tolerate. For just a moment I watch him go back down the center aisle of the long room that I have to myself, watching him pass through the streaks of sunlight angling in through the enormous gothic windows along the right side of the room. I absorb my scholarly surroundings and think for the millionth time about what a truly wonderful, safe, studious place this is. All this passes through my mind as I place the aged book gently in the cradle that protects its fragile pages from the touches of too many hands and remove my page turning tools and gloves from my kit, where they live free of rust and acids and anything else that could damage such a priceless tome. In mere moments I am lost in the world of ancient Sweden, following Beowulf and Hrothgar through their adventures, chasing the monsters I'm sure will appear in the background. I don't know how long I had been sitting there translating, very much enjoying the art of unraveling words not heard spoken aloud on this planet in a thousand years, when what feels like the warmest breeze to ever blow across the humid delta of the American South ripples softly across the back of my neck. I instantly whirl around in my chair, looking for the source of such a current, having not felt anything remotely like that here in autumnal Britain since my arrival in this cold and damp place. But, I was still alone here. I looked all the way into the darkness at the back of the hall, and no, there was no one here but me. "I must have imagined it," I thought to myself, too much time spent inside manuscripts on the dark and the occult. I turned back to my work and my books, and nearly screamed when I saw what was now sitting across the table from me. It had the shape and form of a man, a very attractive man at that. It looked like a man, smelled like a man, and casually crossed its right leg over its left as though just sitting down in the manner of a man. But something primal in my mind screamed, "NOT. HUMAN." He, it may not have been human, but it was definitively male, was dressed in a standard black suit, blue shirt, nice tie. His eyes were dark blue, almost purple even, and his hair was a dark honey colored blond. He was exceptionally beautiful. Even though the monsters I was looking for were generally described in old-fashioned versions of good looking, whatever this was, he wasn't one of them. My monsters didn't' look like this, they were all huge men, roughened and scarred by thousands of battles. This being was tall and broad shouldered, but built more like a swimmer or accomplished gymnast that a warrior. "Hello, Chloe." It spoke in a chocolate baritone with an accent I'd certainly never heard before. My face flushed instantly red. "Hi." I squeaked. I squeaked. I am a grown woman with three degrees and a research fellowship, and two words and a look from whatever this thing was and I have apparently lost all power of speech. And now it's not just my face that's flushing, my entire skin is starting to heat; I'm burning up all over. It was only then that I noticed I'd put my hands on the edge of my worktable and was holding on to it like a strap connecting me to reality. "What is it that you are looking for in this place, Chloe?" The man-angel-thing asks me. I don't know what to say. I'm not entirely sure I can force myself to respond. It is doing something to me. I'm not just flushing now, or my skin heating, I am rapidly becoming thoroughly aroused. I can feel my breasts starting to swell as my skin flushes from my neck down through my cleavage. It feels like I've turned red from neck to navel. It knows what it's doing. It smiles. No it doesn't, it smirks. Only half it's mouth goes up. Its eyes do not smile at all but remain firmly fixed on mine. "Never mind." He says, I can't tell if he means his previous question or what's happening to me. My knees instinctively want to open to let in all of the pleasures this thing's voice seem to promise but I don't seem to be able to move my legs. The soles of my shoes feel riveted to the floor, my hands still gripping the table, my vision is starting to blur. "Chloe, the things you are seeking do not wish to be found. If you do happen to glimpse one, it will probably be the last thing you see during your time on this Earth." After he says my name again it becomes a struggle to focus at all on the rest of his words. I'm only dimly perceiving the sound of his voice in my ears. I can feel my sex swelling and beginning to dampen. Blood is rushing to my ears and down through my mound, I can feel individual threads of my wool sweater scratching across the tops of my breasts. He speaks again, but now it is truly just a sound. A sound that drips in my ears and down my spine and settles in the last two vertebrae of my back; it travels to the tendons between my shoulder blades and begins to pull them together, pushing my breasts out, preparing me to arch upward and howl my onrushing climax to sky. I look across the table at this thing that tortures me like this, peering out of half open eyes through a haze of lust that borders on pain. He only watches me as I instinctively writhe in my hard wooden chair trying to rub my aching clitoris on something, anything that will bring me relief. But whatever it is that he is doing to me that brings on this insatiable need for sex, at the same time wont' allow me to come yet. I don't know how I know this, but I know it as surely as I know if I don't come soon I will fall off a cliff of madness and will never be quite sane ever again. Another part of me knows that my polished nails are dug into that old wooden surface now only to resist shoving them into my panties to give me the release I want more than air or food or water. I hate him for this. I would grovel at his perfect feet for a thousand years if he would just let me come. "Say please, Chloe. And I will stop this." He whispers to me. I don't know how I can hear this now, when before I could barely make out sounds, but I know what he wants. He's going to make me beg. A wave of hatred crashes over me, but I do not pretend for even a millisecond that I am not going to do exactly that. A noise that is an enraged growl and a sob of frustration claw their way up my throat and out of my mouth. My pussy is on fire and will consume me at any moment. Inexplicably, my arousal deepens even more, I don't know what is happening or what he's doing to me, but I am no longer able to care. "Say please, darling." Tears are rolling down my cheeks now, just as arousal flows hot from my aching slit, I have never needed anything as much as I need this now. Of course I haven't, I haven't died of thirst, I haven't been burned alive, I have nothing to compare this to. "Please, Please, Please." I sob into the table. "Please, what?" it says, with its sardonic smile. "Please let me come now!" I howl, full voice, equal parts despair and anguish and desperate hope. The instant the "c" in "come" passes my lips he vanishes. He disintegrates into a cloud of golden vapor that sweeps toward me. I can hear a soft laugh coming from where he used to be. The cloud rushes to me. I feel the warmth of its breeze sweep down my sweater and over the tops of my breasts, flowing over my nipples. It sweeps up my skirt, and my knees are suddenly snapping open on their own to receive it into my desperate sex. And then my body comes apart as I am somehow made fuller than any man has ever made me feel. I come without ceasing. I come for hours, maybe for several days. My chair shakes, I rake deep gouges in the oak of my table. The sinew and muscle that holds my body together beings to melt and I am steadily turning to liquid and flowing down over the seat of my chair into a puddle on the hardwood floors. Golden light creeps at the edge of my vision as orgasmic shocks rip through my body. I hover very near the far edge of consciousness. Some time later I come back to myself, still sitting in my chair; albeit slumped in it, arms and legs draped languorously about. I take a deep breath and try to recall what exactly it was that just happened to me. I feel wondrously relaxed and satisfied at this moment. Then a creaking door hinge jars me back to reality. I can't let Thomas see me like this; I can't ever let anyone see me like this. "Chloe?" He calls out from somewhere at the far end of the long room. "Chloe are you all right? I heard... noises?" The only thing I can do now is to run. I sweep my tools, my notes, my other belongings unceremoniously into my bag and sprint for the door at the opposite end of the room. I'm running full tilt for the door as tears break onto my face as Thomas calls out my name. And then I'm at the door and I fling myself through it, flying headlong down the corridor that leads back to my small, safe rooms in an adjacent building. To be continued... My Nine Monsters Ch. 01.5-02 First I must apologize, dear reader, for the delay in bringing you this second installment of young Chloe's tale. While Chloe and I suffer different challenges in the Academy, her deadlines are not so hard written as my own. On that note, it was necessary to greatly expand and revise chapter one in order to make chapter two possible. The expanded material is presented here, in the interest of clarity. If you haven't read the first chapter please do so, otherwise this entry will make absolutely no sense. And one final note, I have filed this story under "Mind Control" as that is the overarching theme of the novella length piece I hope this to become, but this chapter could fit equally well under Erotic Horror, or perhaps several other categories. So please do read on, but consider yourself warned. ***** Ch. 1.5 Standing at the opposite end of the long room Thomas struggled to make sense of the last few seconds. A librarian by nature as well as training, he preferred to have his thoughts organized before making conclusions, but what had just transpired defied rational description. Peering around the edge of the door he had just swung open on it's creaking hinges, he saw Chloe fleeing out the back door an instant before it slammed shut. The air at the other end of the room appeared to shimmer, as though Thomas was looking down an asphalt road on a hot day, rather than down the length of one of the oldest library reading rooms in the world. The floor to ceiling windows to Thomas's left cast bright shafts of daylight every few feet, unusual for Britain in the fall, alternatively the spaces between windows were virtually uniluminated, black with shadow. In the light, golden motes of dust hovered suspended in the air. Surely the unusual light accounted for the disturbance to his vision, Thomas thought. But nothing could remove from his mind the hard "c" of Chloe's voice begging to come, which still seemed to echo from one end of the room to the other, pounding on his eardrums with each pass of the sound waves. Chloe had been talking to someone, he was certain of it. But no, talking was the wrong word, she was pleading, making a desperate entreaty to some unknown man or woman that had brought her to such arousal. And frustrated academic or not, the sound of an orgasming woman was not entirely unfamiliar to Thomas. He didn't think of himself as a great lover, he knew he was sometimes too eager, and occasionally too quick. But he liked to think he made up for his faults in generosity and thoroughly refined oral technique. In fact, his favorite joy in the bedroom was employing his talented tongue to tease his partners to the edge of bliss and keeping them there for interminable amounts of time before allowing them release. Thomas had moved slowly to the center aisle between the great oak tables, each which sat twelve, arranged in two rows down the length of the room. He trod lightly, endeavouring to make no sound as he approached the table where Chloe had been working. He had not admitted anyone else to this portion of the library today, and his instincts told him he was alone here. Still, he struggled to see into the shadowed corners, and though walls, and into the small alcoves between the sagging bookshelves. Something here made the hair of the back of his neck stand up, but whatever it was gave no hint of its nature. As he walked towards the table two thirds of the way down where he had left Chloe earlier Thomas felt he was steadily losing control of his thoughts. He had heard Chloe coming! Damn his eyes why hadn't he come to check on her as soon as he had heard her first cry out? He could have seen her! He had struggled to keep his desire for the young Historian secret to anyone but himself, but secretly he burned for her. All the way from the vault where the oldest volumes were kept to Chloe's workstation he had envisioned what might happen after he finally, after all these weeks, managed to find the courage to make his move. But of course he had wrecked his chance, probably his only one. And now this catastrophe had happened! Clearly she had some lover who had snuck in here to see her, and had managed to depart before Thomas caught a glimpse of him. Or her, Thomas further ruminated, whatever young Chloe's sexual proclivites were (surely she had them?) she kept them well concealed under her matronly attire and the steely expression on her beautiful face. In his jealousy, and in his imagined fantasies of earlier, Thomas's own arousal began to impose itself on his conscious thoughts; sneaking in from the back corners of his mind. He saw Chloe, as he had imagined her many times, pushed back from her worktable, her single-minded devotion to the old and odd replace by desire for himself. He imagined her, with her woolen skirt pulled up above her pale and muscular thighs, reavealing the downy hair on her sex. He saw himself on his knees before her, gently teasing her clit with his tongue. He imagined her unbuttoning her sweater show the creamy skin of her breasts, to run her hands over her engorged pink nipples. He almost could feel her twisting her fingers in his own red hair as he pleasured her. Her voice that he heard echoing earlier began to change, and it was he to whom Chloe made her impassioned pleas. "Make me come Thomas!" she wailed in his mind, as he curled a long finger inside her to push on the spot he knew would send her over the edge. All of these fantasies flying about Thomas's mind in such an inappropriate place at such an inappropriate time were the residual effects of the magic unleashed in full upon Chloe earlier, though he had no idea, nor any way possible to understand that this was what was happening to him now. A dozen steps from Chloe's table, which was still burdened with the old book he himself had brought her, Thomas stopped in his tracks. He was rooted to the floor in shock at the aroma that had just drifted past; and he knew it exactly, at once. He had never given this smell words, nor had anything he'd ever read given it a description he found satisfactory. To him arousal smelled like arousal and that was that. And even though it was always the same and he always knew it for what it was, it was also as unique to every woman as a fingerprint or a strand of her DNA. And this was Chloe's! This was how she smelled! He reeled, drunk on his own need and the smell of the woman for whom he longed, and there on the chair that Chloe had shoved back so roughly in her flight from this room was the source of the scent. A small pool of clear fluid no larger than a half dollar coin lay there. Odd that such a small amount could overpower Thomas's senses to such a degree, some back corner of his mind reported in, completely unnoticed by the rest of his conciousness. His sense of decorum was gone entirely now. He would be shocked at his own behavior if he saw himself doing what he was doing now, falling to his knees, entranced by this pool of clear liquid, and the thoughts ricocheting of the interior of his skull would shame such an outwardly proper man. But still he moved ahead, Thomas was barely aware of releasing the top button of his trousers with his right hand as he stretched out his trembling left toward Chloe's vacated chair. He was fully hard inside his pants, without having touched himself at all previously, he noted to his mild surprise. Inhaling deeply, he bent toward the chair. He had intended to touch it, to feel it with his fingertips, only to confirm that it was what he believed this substance to be. But that wouldn't do now, he dropped his outstretched hand and bent towards the gift that Chloe had left him. As he moved his head forward to partake of this sacrament, his vision began to narrow and the little pool almost seemed to glow. Thomas couldn't help himself now, even though some part of his mind knew what he was about to do was disgusting. He was going to lick that chair. He was going to lap up Chloe's juice that she had left behind from an encounter with some other lover and he was going to like it. Now without will, without volition, with nothing existing at all but the smell, and soon enough the taste of Chloe, he bowed his head and extended his tongue. Flavor and inexplicable visions exploded through Thomas's mind the instant his tongue met the little pool. "This was Chloe!" his mind rang! Here. This. This was all he ever wanted forever. All his harbored fantasies and things he never even recalled imagining before raced through his head, and tore down his spine, and exploded out of his cock, far surpassing the power of any orgasm he had ever experienced before. He immediately felt faint, his cock still pulsing in his hand, the taste of Chloe's arousal on his tongue, everything began to go dark. "I love you, Chloe," was the young man's last conscious thought before collapsing to the hardwood floor in a heap. **** I'm running at a dead sprint all the way back to my small flat the University provides me with. I couldn't let Thomas see me in the state I was in. I couldn't let him see my hooded eyes and swollen breasts. I couldn't let him see my full lips, I couldn't let him see what I look like with my mask of scholarly indifference stripped away. If I had seen Thomas, if he had seen me looking like that, I would have fucked his brains out right there in the library. So I ran away. Honestly, that's my typical response. When I finally get to my apartment I throw myself headlong through the door and slam home every lock in it and jam a chair under the door handle for good measure. I have no idea if this works or not, but I saw it in a movie once. Then I run for the small closet just off the hallway: shucking off the clothes I was wearing in the library as I go. I burrow to the bottom of this nest of old quilts and pillows that I keep in this tiny place, where I hide from light and noise when the migraines come to split my skull apart and turn my stomach inside out. Now, here, alone in the dark, I start to cry in earnest. This is an all out, sobbing, ugly cry. The rage and frustration of what just happened to me in the safest place I know runs so hot down my face it seems to turn to steam on my cheeks. My arms and legs are still shaking. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that the single greatest orgasm of my life was forced on me by some supernatural rapey thing. I cry out the humiliation I feel because I loved it. I scream and beat the walls with my little ineffectual fists because deep down in some dark part of my soul, I want to find that thing again, and I want to let it do whatever it wants to me. Some time passes before I notice the scent in my closet. It smells rich and spicy and exotic, and very, very good. I freeze in terror with the thought that something is in here with me. A quick sob of horror jumps out of throat before I have any chance to push it back down. I don't know how to deal with this. I am in no way prepared for this new reality. I was looking for monsters recorded in obscure ancient texts. I never thought that I would encounter actual beings, lovely, lovely, good smelling beings that look like men, that can appear out of thin air and fuck me blind without touching me. Minutes pass before I can breathe. I am alone in here. I must be. Then it dawns on me that what I smell is my own sex, and some essence of the Library Thing lingering on my skin. The little tuft of hair at the top of my slit is still wet from what happened just mere minutes ago. I realize that even though it feels like a long time to me, it has probably only been a brief period since what happened at my worktable and my full-blown flight into this closet. Gingerly, I run my fingers through that downy hair and over my still aching lips. I'm just as swollen and just as wet as I was back in the library. Just that light touch has started heating me up all over again; I slowly rub my sex, hating my body for its betrayal of my mind. My brain tells me this was forced on me but my pussy doesn't care. When I come it is a pitiful shadow of what happened before. I fall into a fitful jerking sleep in the safety of my closet. I wake frequently from fevered dreams of being fucked inside out by angelic looking men. I rub myself to orgasm and back to sleep a half dozen times before the dawn finally must have come to the outside world. Dawn is a pale gray smudge of an affair, the rare sunshine of yesterday has been banished in favor of weather much more typical of Britain in the Fall. Slowly, emerging from my cocoon of blankets, and my tiny closet one thought dominates my mind, I'm sure this is likely to become the most pressing question of my life until I find a satisfactory answer. "What in the world have I discovered, and what in the hell do about it now?" Ch. 2. "Goddammit, Freyr! You were supposed to frighten her off! Not mind-fuck her insensible!" The impossibly big man roared at the smaller, but still rather large man across a broad desk from him in what appears to be a normal, if very well decorated, modern day office space. "Michael. You knew I'd never be able to resist such a sweet as that one. She's spent her entire life restraining herself. Denying what she really wants. I had to find out how she looks when she comes. Which is lovely, in case you were wondering." His counterpart glowered in response, a look which should have terrified anyone, but Freyr was calm in his seat. As he spoke the blonde man seemed to be changing. But instead of transforming, it appeared something camouflaged beneath his exterior was bleeding through. Gradually the smooth shaven face of the man who had prowled the Oxford libraries earlier that day gave way to harder planes and a flaming red beard. He tended to wear it cropped close to his face these days, but in the days songs had been sung about him it had fallen to his now rapidly broadening chest. By the time the last of the glamour had worn off he appeared to be nearly seven feet tall and at least as broad as the average handicap accessible doorframe. The man across from him had similarly outsized dimensions, but where Freyr looked a Viking warlord in a modern suit Michael was not distinctly anything. He had olive skin and dark hair; he also had blue eyes, but a lighter shade than the Norseman across the desk. His apparent age might be in his mid to late thirties, but whatever humans he might have resembled must have died out long ago, something in him was much more fiercely animal than anything else that currently walked the Earth. "You must stop her, looking into us." Michael said softly in a tone that brooked no argument. "Or what? You're gonna bend my dog tags? Take my birthday away? I'm every bit as impossible to kill as you are." Countered the impish Freyr. "You have clearly spent too much time in the armies of this age," the darker man sighed. "Why do you still fight when the rest of us haven't shed blood in a hundred years?" "It's what I do, Michael." Freyr murmured, in acrid tones of modern cordite and ancient forges. "But don't worry. I'll go frighten off the tiny human that unmans you so." "I'm not afraid of her, you blithering idiot! If she finds out enough about us, she'll eventually find out about them. And you know what that will cause." It's been decades, maybe even a century or two since the last time Freyr felt whatever it is he's feeling crawl up his spine now. The feeling is so unfamiliar it takes him several long moments to recognize it as fear. He knows perfectly well whom Michael was talking about with that word they, and he didn't like it even a single bit. "You can't possibly believe they could be around, it has been a very long time since last they were seen." Freyr kept his voice quite steady as he spoke, but there are far too many memories between these two for Michael to possibly be deceived. The darker man merely tilted his chin down a quarter inch, then moved it back to its original position once to confirm the old Viking's suspicions. "You're not telling me someone has seen them?" "The Gaul did." The darker man almost whispered. "Oh fuck you, Michael!" Freyr exploded out of his chair as though he had been seated on a land mine, or a basket of the world's most venomous snakes. It occurred to Michael that at least he was now understanding the gravity of their problem. Under any other circumstance, the sight of the truly massive, nearly thousand year old thing that Freyr was pacing a trail into his office carpet would have been nothing short of hilarious, but Michael had his doubts that anything would be funny today. "The Gaul hasn't spoken to you ever since you bollocksed up that cavalry charge at Gettysburg!" "He's old. Not elderly, Frey. He's fully capable of sending an email." "And another thing, why do we still call him The fucking Gaul anyway? He has a name. And Gaul has been France for a long goddamn time now. " Rage is starting to well in Freyr's voice, his mind wandering back to a very old grievance as he goes on, "For fucks sake he got to lead the sack Rome himself. He got his revenge." "Just go take care of the girl, Frey. Quietly. It wasn't that long ago that we finally managed to push the darkness back a step, I have no intention of giving back the ground we've gained." With that, their meeting was over. ********************* I crawl out of my closet and start going about the business of making myself human again. I start the coffee and go to shower while it brews. As I go through the rituals of washing and dressing my mind turns over and over this question, "What now?" Since I woke up this is the only question I can ask myself. "What have I stumbled into, and what do I do now?" If Impossible Sex Monsters and Where to Find Them 101 was offered at any of the universities I've attended I must have missed it in the catalog. I am utterly unprepared for the situation I now find myself in. 12 hours ago, despite the fact that I had accepted the existence of a supernatural mystery, it had only been in a theoretical sense. I wasn't actually looking for one of these things themselves, not if I was really honest. I only wanted to find enough documents that hinted at their existence, and tie a neat bow around them. Honestly wouldn't even have been able to reveal my discovery to the scholarly world. Really, who would ever believe me? Certainly that has changed now. I knew about the monsters, or at least I thought I did, but what was the thing in the library? If I'm right and he wasn't one of them, then what other things might there be living secretly in the world, far outside of human existence? And what powers might they have? The ability to totally control a woman's sexuality was a new one for me. I'd never even heard of it in all the lore and legends I've ever read. But if the Library Thing can do that, what other abilities might these creatures have that I know nothing about? And how do I find out about them? Can I protect myself from them? My mind reels in possibilities equal parts horrifying and erotic. Learning more about what I'm dealing with is my only option. Of course it is. My entire life the only response I've known to a crisis has been to try and find something in a book to help me. I let one little snort of resignation blast through my nose. Under attack or not, I'm a scholar to the bone. Still, lame as that is, the fact remains that my only option is to try and find out what I'm dealing with. Everything I've learned thus far about these things, for lack of a better word, is contained in six large corrugated cardboard boxes I had shipped over two months before I left the States to come here. Media Mail for scholars is a great way to ship heavy books on the cheap, but everyone knows they come on the very slowest boat. I thought I had it timed so that my materials and myself would arrive about the same time. I spent a full month waiting for these to come in. Thankfully, I didn't follow the advise of an older, cheaper, colleague and ship my clothes concealed amongst the books. Trying to do research in only what I wore over the flight and had in my carry on would have quickly become embarrassing. My Nine Monsters Ch. 01.5-02 Diving into my old notes I find mostly things I already know. I don't so much take notes to review after the fact; generally in the act of writing something down I etch it into my memory. Most of my hints about the Warrior-Monsters I've found have been in mistranslations of very old copies Norse and Irish lore, despite the fact that they show up here and there in the documents of every culture that developed a written language. But the Nordic sources have offered the most information the easiest. After the change in my situation I need that knowledge fast, so I'm going to go to the deepest well of it that I know about. But the Bodleian isn't a safe place for me any more. I wonder if anywhere in Britain, or the world for that matter will be safe for me now. There are old archives around the world that I haven't searched yet. If I had the resources, I could flee to any one of them, but I don't, my teaching and research grant is tied to Oxford. But the British Library in London might serve. It doesn't have the very oldest collection in the world, but it does have the largest. And, more importantly, there are people everywhere in it. Surely, if whatever accosted me in Oxford wishes to stay a secret, it wouldn't show itself in front of crowds of people. After forcing the events of yesterday into the bottomless well of denial growing up in the American South blessed me with, I unbolt the doors and hurry out into the grimness of a British fog to catch the next train. There is a crow sitting of the railing across from my flat. It looks at me strangely. Can a crow look strangely at a person? I'm sure that this one does, until it quorks loudly and flaps away. I being to think I'm cracking up and seeing monsters and omens everywhere, especially when they aren't there. The hour and a half on the train from Oxford to London is uneventful, miles and miles of lush, verdant green that eventually gives way to the grit and grime of the ancient, modern city. As I travel, I try to make sense of the thing that accosted me in the Library. I pull out my notebook and begin to make a list. I knew It appeared to be a male. It was tall, and broad, but didn't fit the outsized dimensions common in the legends that connected to the Monsters. I knew It was able to control my sexuality, and while it only did this to me in a pleasurable way, I got the sense it was toying with me. If it could do that for it's own amusement the thought of what it could do to me in anger chills my blood. I struggled to think of anything I might have missed, or anything I had read before that might point me in the right direction without success. By the time my train pulled into the grimy London station, my list was still exactly three items long. I've been to this library several times before and have no trouble getting to the section I want. I'm hunting a copy of Cormack's Glossary first written in the 9th century. It's basically a dictionary, but in its explanations of old Gaelic words fantastic legends and creatures pop up all over. I'm not after an original copy, because I'm not familiar with this particular source, and can't read ancient Gaelic anyway, so an English copy will have to do. Coming in the main entrance I veer to the left through a short hallway into one of main rooms of the library, which contains the massive card catalog. It may be anachronistic to search the library by such old-fashioned means, but for some reason I prefer to research this way. My professors as an undergraduate taught me that this was the way to do real research and make connections. One of my more codgerly profs had insisted that trying to get scholarly research via the internet was like trying to take a drink from a fire hose, and was therefore a useless endeavor. I'm not quite so anti-technology in my own career, but I do still always start with the cards. I find the location of the volume I'm after without trouble, but my stop at the card catalog had an ulterior motive. From the huge box of boxes, I could observe both entrances to this room surreptitiously, if anyone or anything is following me, they're either staying far back, or are invisible. If they're as invisible, or perhaps just preternaturally stealthy as the Library Thing I'm pretty fucked anyway, but I can at least pretend to be cautious. I drift through the stacks, the part of the library where unpopular volumes are housed. These rooms are the same in every library on earth. The ceilings are very low, the shelving metal and cheap, and steep iron staircases connect one level to the next. There are no tourists here, but here and there is a student working at one of the desks or carrels that end up haphazardly dotting this sort of space. On the third level up I find the appropriate shelf, according to the ancient card catalog downstairs. I suppose these books are checked out so infrequently that no one has bothered to digitize this part of the vast collection of documents housed in this building. These aren't the old, precious, books written on vellum and bound in hide that I was used to searching. These are books written by modern academics, on cheap paper, and bound in red or blue fabric, with no titles but only catalogue numbers written on the spine. My own dissertation on the minutiae of Viking culture and oral storytelling sits in a similar binding, on a similar shelf, back in Delaware where I studied for my doctorate. I'm letting my mind wander back to that happy time and place, and all those hours learning to find happiness in work, and in books, in place of other less satisfying pursuits. I drift down the aisle of this library now, until I've realized that I've come to far down this row and double back. And now something unusual happens at last. This entire day, this trip to London, being back in a Library after what happened to me yesterday, I've felt as though I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. This dropping shoe doesn't hit me over the head like yesterday's did, but there on the shelf beside the copy of Cormack's that I came here for sits a small, old, and very obviously out of place book. It's small, about the size of a back-pocket notebook, and bound simply in old leather the color of butter. It smells strange. I'm used to the smell of old books, and in fact have rather learned to regard the scents of the library as something of an aphrodisiac, but this book doesn't smell like that at all. There's something rancid to it's subtle odor, which is so faint, but in no way anything other than foul. And underneath the rancid is something acrid, smelling almost exactly like the burnt insulation on the cord of a hair drier I once owned. Icy cold threads run up my arms the moment I pick it up, and every hair on my body stands on end. From somewhere far away I hear something screaming at me to not pick it up, not read it, not to even look at it. This voice is low and deep, and it sounds quiet to my ear, but it's timbre and quality suggest that if I was near the source of that voice it would be terribly, painfully loud. A softer voice, an alto feminine voice whispers to me from the pages of the little book in my hands. It tells me that there are answers inside, that there is power inside. The first voice comes again with a rolling thunderclap telling me again to me to put it down. The alto voice comes again; it knows what the Library Thing is! It tells me somehow that it knows him, knows how to defeat him! I need these answers! I must know what that thing was! Smell or no smell I decide right then that I am going to read this book and I open the cover. In the same moment I read the first word on the first page, the book itself reaches out and grabs me by both wrists. I'm yanked face first into the binding. I know now that I have made a very terrible mistake. I should never have come here. I should have never picked up that book. I should never have left the U.S. I fall for a long time through darkness. With a shock my feet hit the hard, bare, muddy ground. The first thing I register is the cold. The next is the smell. The reek of death is all around me. I open my eyes and immediately want to shut them again in horror at what I am seeing, but I can't. They aren't my eyes anymore. I am standing in a broad valley between the walls of two high mountain ranges. Thousands of dead and dying men are strewn across this miserable field. Crows peck at the eyes of the dead, while the dying cry in pain and terror. Off to my right a young man sobs for his mother as he tries to hold his intestines inside the cavity of his body. The earth is a reddish mud everywhere I look. This mud churned up out of the black soil by hooves and hobnail boots from the dirt and ice and mostly blood of this awful place. Whenever it was that this happened it was long before I was ever born. The men wear steel helms and boiled leather shirts studded with iron rivets over quilted padding, only three out every five have shoes. A few have on oiled mail; fewer still wear heavy plate, the ones that don't have arrow shafts protruding through their soft bodies to show it. The body I see this through is female, but not at all my own. I am clearly not in charge; I am along only for the ride now. She stops to look into a pool of water going steadily going red and I get to see her for the first time in our reflection. She is naked from the waist up. All we have on is a long skirt made of crow feathers hung low on our waist, and rings of black iron through our nipples. A moment later realization rings my head like a bell. Our skin? Our skirts? What in the whole world of fucks has happened to me? Her skin is the bluish white of glacier ice that hasn't melted once in ten thousand years, her hair and eyes are not just black but they seem to absorb light from our surroundings. In her right hand she carries a spear eight feet long, tipped with another foot of wickedly sharp obsidian. Slowly, we walk the battlefield, our bare feet kicking up the edge of her long feathered skirts. Somehow I know is our name is Macha, and that we are one of the dreaded three sisters that comprise The Morrigan. These Three are the goddesses of death and destruction that ruled battlefields in the North for three thousand years before their eventual, unexplained downfall. All the while she walks I feel more of her mind intruding upon my own. She loves the sight of this destruction far more than I could ever be horrified by it. She walks slowly to the dying young man, and to my horror we are getting more turned on with every step. "This one doesn't deserve to fuck us." She thinks as we approach. It does not escape me that she distinctly thought, "Us." "Yes, Chloe. I know you're there. I know you're seeing this with me, this vision of long, long ago. I am showing you this. I am letting you feel this. With me you will know what true power really is. All the power that you lacked yesterday in the library when Freyr was fucking you." If I was in my own body, my vision would narrow to a pinprick like the last frames of an old cartoon. How can she possibly know about that? And who in the fuck is Freyr? The Library Thing? We walk on towards the dying man, his face a mask of terror and desperation, "Mother?" He says again as his voice breaks, but he speaks in the old and guttural language, in the tone of all the dying men of all the world. I have never heard it before, but Macha has, and she understands, and so therefore I do too. "No, sweet one." She croons to him, as she kneels and places his head gently in her lap. "Quiet now," we softly whisper to him as we brush curls of sweat-matted hair off his brow. He might be twenty, I think bitterly; this is probably the first time he's ever left the village he grew up in. As Macha and I bend to kiss him, I wonder if he's ever kissed a woman before. Suddenly, I see a fresh faced girl with flowers in her blonde hair grasping his hand and pulling him away from the great bonfire that raged near his home as the soldiers gathered to make each other feel brave again before riding off to battle. I don't think it's just my imagination, these images rushing into my mind. I see flashes of these two stealing off while the rest of the village dances and chants around that fire, I think Macha is drawing these last happy moments of his life to the front of his mind. I'm not sure whether or not she wants me to see these, or if she's doing it for him, to ease his dying. I see the quilt for she hid for them in a dark alcove at the back of a rough structure that serves as her father's barn, and I watch her lead him there, I can feel the sweat on his palms. The grass underneath their bare feet is damp but not too cold. This is summer, when this happened, the boy has been away for months, maybe a year or more since he left this place. I feel the man-boy think to himself, "How are my hands so hot when the rest me is so shivering cold?" This farm girl loves him, this boy turning into a man, she wants nothing in life more than for him to survive this war and come home. She wants him to come home and plant the fields that belong to her father. She wants him to come home and raise a flock of sheep and a few acres of crops and lay with her at night to give her strong sons and pretty daughters. She shouldn't, and she knows it, but she wants to give herself to this boy, just in case. Just in that awful case that he never comes home. He comes so soon after he enters her I wonder if it is his first time. He shudders and shakes his joy into her as she binds him to her with arms and legs wrapped tight around him. All of this Macha shows me in the moment between when we touch our lips to his, and when she drives our spear through his heart. He dies with our mouth still pressed over his, and Macha breathes deeply in. I think she is breathing in his soul. We stand up, Macha and I. We continue to walk the battlefield, looking for the warrior worthy of us, the one we will make special, one worthy to serve us forever. We find him moments later. He looks like he'd be middling height but he would be very stoutly built if he could stand, but he's pinned to the ground by a long spear driven through his body near his shoulder. His beard is as deep red as the puddle he lies in. For a long moment as we walk towards him I wonder why Macha is choosing this one. I find out the answer soon enough, as he spits blood and broken teeth at us, screaming. "Get the fuck away from me you fucking hell-bitch!" He howls at us, spitting blood and broken teeth. His rage goes straight to our sex. The infusion of the man-boy's soul has made us powerful but we need so much more than that. Neither Macha nor I care now if hillsides of men have to die for us to get what we want. Even now his bravery and his anger and his terror at the sight of us burns hot in his soul. That hate laps at our sex, it strokes our nipples gently, a thin glimmer of arousal drips blistering hot on Macha and I's thigh. He reaches for the spear in his shoulder and wrenches at it trying to pull it free to fling at us. Somehow, the pain that costs him is transformed into a gentle stroke across our slit that flowers for him as he bites his tongue against the pain, hard enough for him to draw blood. We want this one. I want this one. My sex is hot and slick for this dying man. My own mind screams in terror as Macha imposes herself on my will. I want to feel the heat of his rage scorch my womb. I know, and so does he, that the moment he comes for me will be the moment he dies. And I know, because Macha knows, that when he comes it won't just be his seed, but his very soul that will fill me. She works the belt that joins our skirts together and they fall away. We are perfect. Despite the glory of our nude form, he hates us as fiercely as the enemy he slaughtered just a short while ago. That same enemy that only hours ago a human priest told him about, and told him that he would live forever in paradise, if only he would die slaying the invaders. He would kill us in heartbeat if he could. All the tenderness Macha showed the dying boy is gone now. She wrenches off his helm and throws it behind us. She runs a razor sharp fingernail that looks like a claw down the length of his chest, parting the leather and steel as easily as if they were made of cheesecloth. I watch through her eyes as Macha does the same to the laces of his breeches and he springs forth, wonderfully hard for us in spite of his wounds and his hatred. He curses us again; Macha places our finger over his lips to silence him and grinds our pussy against him. Another iron ring adorns us here, and slowly she drags it through his wiry dark red hair. The ring may be Macha's, but it is my clit that it tugs on. "He wants us, Chole." The Morrigan whispers into my mind, "He wants to fucks us, he wants to please us. He wants to make us come even though he knows it will be his last act in life. Someday, you'll want to please me just as much as he does." Her words send a ripple of arousal and terror running through our body, and the part of my mind that is still my own knows that I'm so far beyond my own control that I'm about to fuck a man to death with the stench of a thousand bodies around me and I don't care any more what is right or wrong. I am the goddess now. And the goddess fucks as she wishes. She straddles us over him, arching our back forward as she pushes him inside us. Oh he feels so good. We take our time; we draw this out for as long as we want it to last. Macha hunches us forward, taking his full length into us and offering him our iron tipped breast. His beard scratches slightly as he draws our nipple between his teeth. We draw ourselves along his length until only his very head is inside us before slamming our hips back on him. Over and over again we push our pussy forward and back along his full length, dragging our clit along his shaft with every stroke. He seems to get harder, fuller, with every stroke until he feels like steel inside us, and we know he's close. He is close to coming for us. He is close to dying for us. In just a few moments, not just the ability to make life but his life itself will soak our womb, all his wants, and deeds, and memories will erupt into us. Later, after he dies, a bit of his soul will trickle down our thigh, we'll dab up that drop on a clawed finger and suck deeply of whatever it is that soul tastes like. I lean back and reach behind me for his thighs, pushing him inside me to that perfect place in my pussy that I know will make me come with the force of an onrushing train. My eyes close involuntarily as my orgasm builds; I stretch out my hands to the sides, open to the gray sky above me. He comes for me, oh he comes. He comes hotter than any man I've ever felt, it's not mere semen but his life itself that gushes into me, and my own orgasm rips through me, starting with the muscles in my inner thighs. I quiver as the shocks rip through my body and claw their way up out of my throat and across this desolate battlefield. The orgasm drives me forward as Macha plants her claws in the man's chest, laying it open as the last of his life force spends itself in us. And then I start screaming... The little book whumps closed at my feet, and I'm still screaming. Now that I'm not sharing Macha's body and mind the full horror of the scene I just witnessed hits me full force. It hammers me to the rough metal non-slip floor of the stacks and my screams go on and on. "Get up, lass! We have to get out of here!" A vaguely familiar voice intrudes on me. I feel strong hands under my armpits, pulling me to my feet, but my legs won't hold up. Whoever it is that's come for me picks me up, bride style, and starts to carry me. I'm still screaming when the last of consciousness flees me and I black out. My Nine Monsters Ch. 01.5-02 I come to warm and wrapped in a soft blanket in front of a fire, seated in a large cushy leather armchair. The only light in the room comes from the fire, and muted tastefully recessed dimmed fixtures. The walls are paneled wood. There are long bookshelves on two of the three walls I can see. This appears to be an older man's study, a place built for cigars and contemplation. The grogginess from my earlier episode is fading slowly, until I notice the man in the adjacent chair with a start. "Who are you?" The question comes out in a raspy whisper, my voice is completely gone. Vaguely, I remember the screaming. Why was I screaming? "My name is Paul, I work in the Library, Thomas is a mutual friend. He told me something strange had happened to you, but didn't go into details. He called this morning to let me know you were coming to London and asked me to keep an eye after you if you came to the Library today. I saw you pick up that book, then read it for a few moments, when you started screaming I thought it prudent to remove you under my care." His voice was soft, and deep, with a hint of a Scottish brogue that seemed to be almost but not quite erased from having spent years in the academy himself. We wore working profession trousers and a lose cream colored fisherman's sweater. He was between fourty-five and and fifty-five, judging from the streaks of gray in his ginger beard, and the kind crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Book? I don't remember any book?" But as soon as I said it, memories started flooding back, choking me, I clamped my eys shut, but that only served to paint the horrors of my episode with Macha in more vivid hues on the backs of my eyelids. "I think you do remember." Paul prodded me gently. "Oh. Oh God, I do." The screaming was coming again now. I could feel my diaphram squeezing and tightening, I could feel the scream rooting in the deep part of my lungs, ready to be loosed on the world when Paul squatted on his heels in front of me and took my hands. "You're safe here Chloe. And you don't have to tell me what happened if you don't want." Instead of a scream, what comes out of me is a sob then. Two days of impossible experiences and trauma to my sexuality threaten to crush me. The tale of what happened with the book, of what happened at Oxford, of Macha forcing me to fuck that guy, the whole horrible thing spills out in a gush of words, and tears and snot. I can't bear to hold anything back. I don't stop for a moment to consider that I don't even know this man. I have a two sentence story to explain how he is now involved in my life. What has happened to my simple little life with my books? "That's. I think that's all." My voice is as small and fragile as a little girl confessing her obvious and poorly concealed wrongdoing. "Thank you for telling me this, Chloe." The man named Paul tells me, I notice just before he speaks again, the shimmering edge around his frame that seems to outline a much larger man than he is. "Sleep now, sweet one." His words push at me, and for a just a moment I feel terror again, but it's just comfort. The blanket he settles around me is real, and heavy down, and so very, very warm. I slip back into dreams comfortable and unburdened. Stay tuned...