Radley's Labyrinth for Horny Monsters, Annabelle Hawthorne [smart ebook reader TXT] 📗

of quartz buried several feet within. Looking at his hands, he saw the blood flowing gently through the veins on the back. There was a spot on one of his shoes where the stitches had come loose and would eventually become a hole.

“Mike.”

Shaking his head, he adjusted the lenses. Through trial and error, he was able to eliminate most of the distractions, though now he was able to see pockets of warm air floating along the ceiling like giant bubbles. Walking just past Ratu, he tapped the ice at a slight upward angle.

“If you hit here, you’ll miss the object but get us close enough,” he explained. He had seen it through the ice, a dark block of nothingness that refused to yield its secrets to him. Nodding, Ratu used another golden disk to tunnel even farther. Following close behind, Mike noticed that Ratu’s kimono clung tightly to her body, revealing a pair of shapely shoulder blades beneath her hair. Her slim figure swayed gently side to side while she walked, the beam casting thin shadows on the ice beside her.

“There it is,” Ratu said. She fidgeted with the crystal in her kimono, and the beam of light disappeared, casting the lake into darkness.

Waiting patiently in the dark, Mike heard the silent dripping of water, liquid that was flowing downhill and likely refreezing at the bottom somewhere. “What now?” He was answered by a giant ball of fire, summoned into Ratu’s hand.

“We widen the room,” she said. “We need some space.”

“Sounds good.” Mike waited while Ratu cast out the ball of fire. She summoned several more, and water flowed freely around his feet while she created a circular room with a domed roof around them. In the middle of the floor was an object wrapped in a cloth. She walked toward it, her hands slipping into her kimono. She withdrew a pair of sticks that unfolded themselves into a small table, then lifted the object and set it on the table with a grunt.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Naga are somewhere between divinity and humanity,” she explained. “This thing makes the human side of me sick in a physical sense, and it makes the divine part of me sick in a spiritual sense. The sheer act of its existence is a stain on reality, and it deserves to be destroyed.”

“What does it do?”

“Nothing. It has no purpose. A hole was opened into the other side, the place where the Ancient Ones were sealed away. It was poor luck that one of the Ancient Ones was slumbering near the portal. It was only open for a fraction of a second here, but time doesn’t exist on their side. When the portal closed itself, it ripped away a small piece of flesh, leaving it behind.”

“How was the portal opened?”

“Men of science who made a mistake. They paid for their lack of caution.” Ratu slowly uncovered the box. It had strange lettering on the outside and looked extremely old.

“Is that…Russian?” Mike asked.

“It is. When mankind entered the nuclear age, the Soviets hoped to find something that outstripped the power of the atom. When they found this sometime in the eighties, they got the crazy idea to extract energy from it, hoping it would eventually become a weapon. They had no idea what they were messing with, and many of them died. They covered it up, and the land is now uninhabitable.”

“So they put it in this box?”

“After the incident, Baba Yaga herself tracked it down and used her magic to seal it in this box. She took it home for safekeeping, but a fox demon stole it from her, and it has been bouncing from hand to hand since then.

“I have no idea how Emily got it here, but the spell has worn thin. The Labyrinth itself now changes on its whims, which has been a pain in the tail to keep track of.”

A Soviet energy source? Could she mean Chernobyl? It was a lot to think about, and he was further distracted by the fact that the longer Ratu held on to the box, the more her features seemed to melt into it. Even protected by the goggles, a cold pit of fear had opened in his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole. He wanted to run away and never look back. “So what do we do?”

“You will open the box,” she said, tapping it. She pulled a candlestick out of her kimono. “You will have to hurry. This piece of flesh is no bigger than the tip of your pinky. You will use these silver tongs to hold it in the flame until it has burned away.” She pulled tongs out of her sleeve, making Mike wonder what else she had stored in there.

“Is this a special candle?” Mike asked, inspecting the candlestick. Up close, the pearly surface looked more like clouds rolling across each other.

“It is. The wax is made from the rendered fat of a dead god, and its flame is capable of destroying anything it touches except for silver. However, it can only be used once.”

“And you had this just lying around?”

“It’s a family heirloom,” Ratu said, taking it from him and setting it on the table. “I will be right behind you with my eyes closed. If something goes wrong, I should be able to withdraw to the surface for help. If you haven’t gone mad, we can try again. Otherwise, the goblin will be responsible for helping me.”

“Fuck,” Mike whispered. Could he really do this? Swallowing the lump in his throat, he switched places with Ratu so that he now stood over the box. A tiny piece of some long-banished god was inside this magic box. His whole body was wracked with a sudden bout of chills.

“Whenever you are ready,” Ratu said, her voice tense.

“No time like the present.” Mike held up the candle. Ratu snapped her fingers, and the wick lit.

“Don’t put your fingers in that,” she said. “Your whole body will burn up like a