Toxy scurried over with her niddies clinging to the webs on her back. The spider queen’s six eyes were black, she had fangs, and she appeared monstrous. Yet she didn’t come to slay Roy. She was in her right mind. “Roy, darling, could you explain why your monster girls are trying to kill each other?”

  A roar rose from the spider lemurs, and Toxy wheeled to face them. All her eyes brightened with joy. “Are those spider minions for me, darling? Well, there certainly are a lot of them. I do appreciate you giving them so many lovely limbs. However, they don’t look happy.”

  Roy charged in front of the spider queen, flinging out his arms. Their plasma blasts hit his Effexium suit, scalding him even as the high-tech suit worked overtime to shed the heat. But Toxy was saved. “You’re immune!” he shouted over the plasma fire hitting his huge back. The Effexium was melting, but his skin was relatively impervious. It stung, but it was better than the acid burns on his arm. “The Pelerine were printing you to save them. You must’ve been immune to the UnWolf virus!”

  “The UnWolf virus?” she asked in wonder.

  “Mama! Nemenies!” Arra yelled.

  Nida echoed. “Yes, Mama! Enemies!”

  “Nemenies!” Arra insisted.

  Nida was not going to hear it. “No, Arra, enemies!”

  Toxy whirled, casting webs and gluing a zombie to a wasp. She spat poison and destroyed them both. A second later, she spun her plasma rifle around, shooting the heads off two zombies and taking down three wasps.

  Roy turned so Toxy could guard his back. The tarranghoulas swarmed him with their maces and spiked clubs. Even if those weapons couldn’t cut his skin, he didn’t want to risk a pounding that might knock him unconscious. He had to figure out the mystery of Toxy. She was an S-class monster, but then, so was he. What did that mean?

  The tarranghoulas swarmed him, and he had to defend himself. They buried him for a moment, their bodies stinking, their hair wet with sweat, claws and fangs trying to pierce his skin. Roy roared and flung the bodies off him, into houses, onto the strip, into incoming wasps. He even threw one of the tarranghoulas into the Chrissy and Tails fight. The poor minion was burned, then crushed.

  Free, Roy was able to use his webs to bind other tarranghoulas, immobilizing them so he didn’t have to kill them. Clubs went clattering to the ground.

  Toxy let out a hiss. “Ouch, highness, that nearly hurt.”

  The spider queen had been slashed by Joey. The panther goddess streaked by in a flash of blurred black fur.

  Suzanne slithered up in a burst of speed, trying to whip Roy with her tail. Instead, he caught it, but then he had the lamia general to deal with. She struck, trying to get her fangs into his throat. He caught her face in one of his giant hands. He shoved her back and covered her in webs, which kept her in place for an instant until she freed herself in a storm of acid and snake fingers.

  Roy was blindsided by Chrissy. She hit him like a ram on wheels, and he was sent sprawling, ass over teakettle. As Roy got to his feet, Chrissy growled and slammed one hoof then the other into the asphalt, like a cartoon bull about to charge.

  He managed to just duck hellfox fire from Tails, who was tossing fireballs at him, completely insane.

  Toxy screamed again. “Joey! We had that moment together, darling. Now is the time to be a bit more submissive.”

  Joey only hissed and kept running, claws out, dodging Toxy’s webs.

  Halcyon’s drone buzzed over. She went to say something, but a wasp soared down and the A.I. had to blast it to pieces. The drone then buzzed around and smashed into Chrissy’s head, destroying the helmet. The steel satyr had no choice but to peel the headgear off.

  Halcyon’s voice filled Roy’s ears. “Okay, the helmet is toast and I shut off the camera feeds. Our little satyr’s eyes are off. Try not to make noise. Because she’s going to be—”

  There was a squawk of static.

  Chrissy charged Roy, but it was clear she couldn’t see. “Over here, Chrissy!” he shouted.

  She rushed him. At the last second, he put out a foot and tripped her. She went horns first into the pavement.

  The smell of burnt fur filled the air, and Roy realized that Tails was throwing her flames at the tarranghoulas. They were going to lose their entire damn army, the army they had just printed.

  It was time for Roy to figure this shit out. His eyes went to Toxy, who was busy dodging both Joey and Suzanne, cat girl and snake woman.

  Why make your savior-class monster a spider? For the babies? No, she’d only had the two babies, and if you were going to want a monster girl to procreate fast enough to kill off your world of UnWolf perverted monsters, she would’ve had to lay thousands of eggs. No, this was different.

  Suzanne tried to bite Toxy, but Arra smacked her in the face with one of her spider legs. “No! My mama! My mama!”

  Nida then shoved the snake woman back. “Bad snake girl!”

  Less than six months old, and they were fighting. Both of the niddies were sporting their spider faces—a bunch of black eyes and fangs dripping venom.

  Venom? Or was it antivenin?

  Roy didn’t waste time. He caught Joey right before she could run past him. He lifted her up and slammed her down onto the pavement. That stunned the panther woman.

  “Toxy!” Roy called out. “Bite Joey. Fill her with every bit of venom you have.”

  “What?” the spider woman screamed. “That will kill her!”

  “Normally, yes,” Roy said. Joey slashed up his arm and he had to hit her again. Good thing the panther goddess could take a punch. “But not with the UnWolf virus in her system. It’s why we’re savior-class, to be immune, and for you to be the cure!”

  Toxy’s eyes brightened. “Why, darling, I believe you just might be right!”

  Then she swirled her body around Joey, who was caught in all those legs, and without another word, Toxy fanged Joey. The panther woman let out a yell and then charged back, holding her neck. “You bitch!”

  She could talk. That was proof enough.

  Chrissy charged Roy again, but she missed by a mile because, yeah, she was blind. However, she was too full of fury to stop. Roy caught her in a rope of webs. He ran over and slammed her down, having visions of cowboys wrestling a prize steer to the ground. He got her on her back.

  Toxy skittered over, lifted the satyr up in her front legs, and fanged her. Chrissy yelped. “Ouch! Toxy! You hit me!”

  “Bit you, darling,” Toxy hissed. “And the next time I bite you, I want it to be the bedroom.”

  Tails had finished off a good number of tarranghoula, as well as the wasps and zombies. It was basically only Roy and his monster girls surrounded by wreckage, bodies, and burnt offerings. The hellfox charged them. She was going to be hard to capture since she was so big, so full of fury, and burned with such fire.

  Toxy had it under control. She stormed forward, throwing enough webs to put out the fire on the fox girl’s tails. Once most of the flames were taken care of, it was like watching a black widow capture a fly. In seconds, Toxy had the hellfox hog-tied, and then it was a simple matter of biting her. That put an end to her UnWolf madness.

  While the spider queen was healing Tails, Suzanne swung out of nowhere, moving fast but not fast enough. Toxy caught the lamia in her legs. Arra and Nida giggled like they were on a roller coaster.

  A bit of fang later, Suzanne slithered back, holding her neck with her snake fingers. She didn’t say a word, but there was a look of confusion and wonder on her face. She turned and sprayed Roy in the face with her acid. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to melt his goggles. He flung them off.

  By that time, Suzanne was speeding away.

  Joey was still recuperating. It was up to Roy to catch her.

  However, the lamia had gotten too much of a head start. Still, he hurried after her, his feet crashing into the pavement, leaving holes. The snake woman slithered faster and faster. The last of the wasps descended, striking Roy all together. He quickly crushed them, punched them, or stomped them to pieces, but they’d held him back long enough for the lamia general to escape through a hole in the wall.

  Then an army of fix-it drones dropped down to start fixing the neighborhood, the houses, and the pavement to undo the battle. The automatic ant-like flying robots meant them no harm, but watching them work made him wonder at how advanced the Pelerine were, and how tragic their end had been.

  He realized they hadn’t heard from Halcyon since she’d kamikazed her drone into Chrissy’s helmet. The A.I. didn’t need her drone, and she should’ve been talking to them during the battle through their implants. However, that hadn’t happened. It put a bad feeling in his gut.

  He walked back to the steps that led down from the labs and the cul-de-sac beyond, where most of the fighting had occurred.

  Joey sat with her face in her hands. She wasn’t crying, but she seemed so ashamed. Toxy had her legs around the panther woman. Tails was back in her human form, petting the panther goddess’s head. Chrissy stood aloof, blind, and looking worried.

  The panther woman jumped to her feet. “I want none of your pity! I should’ve stayed at the forest temple!”

  “Are you evil anymore?” Tails asked innocently.

  “No!” Joey screamed. “No! But how can you ever truly trust me? Enough! Enough of this!” She sped off before anyone could stop her. It looked like she was going to the green space.

  A few of the spider lemurs had survived. Ellis One crept up, a smile on her fanged face. “Master. Ellis here. How can Ellis serve?”

  “Take the surviving tarranghoulas. Go to the green space and serve your panther goddess.”

  “Unless she’s evil,” Tails added awkwardly. “Then, uh, don’t serve her. Come back here.”

  Ellis One nodded and took the remaining spider lemurs down the street.

  Toxy sighed. “I healed all the surviving tarranghoulas that were infected. They seem fine. But, darling, is the effect permanent? If one of our lovely monster girls is infected again, what will happen?”

  Roy didn’t know. He wanted to talk with Halcyon. “Let’s get to the lab. I have a bad feeling that Hal might be in trouble.”

  They all gathered in the Hub. Arra and Nida were sleeping in a sling, close to their mother’s chest. The afternoon battle had worn them out.

  Roy sat in his normal place at the main computer. He was about to start looking when Tails, at her own workstation, let out a gasp.

  Morcom’s face appeared in the 3D monitor. “I have more of the UnWolf serum, Roy Boss. And I have my Suzanne coming back to me. And...I have your Halcyon. Or rather, she’s there, on your hard drive, but she won’t be able to help you. She’s...tied up.”

  “Check your documents folder,” Tails whispered.

  Roy navigated to the folder, and there was a huge zip file called HALCYON_ENCRYPTED.ZIP.

  Morcom had found a way to zip up the A.I., trapping her and crippling them.

  The villain’s laughter was cut off as Tails locked him out of the system. He couldn’t get to them, but he’d been in the bowels of their computers. What had he found? And where was he?

  Roy didn’t know. But he was going to find out.

  Also, Roy had levelled again, and so he could add another ability. Doing that without Halcyon was going to be rough, but he had to try. They would need every power they could get to go up against Morcom and his armies.

  Tails had a determined look on her face. “I’ll try and unencrypt the zip file. We have to help her.”

  Roy worked with Tails to create a quick hacking program to get into the contents of the file. Chrissy stood over them. It was clear the satyr didn’t understand what was going on, but she did want to be close to them because she couldn’t see.

  Once they got the code working, they turned. Toxy gazed at them with a lust in her six eyes. “I’ve been patient, and yes, I suppose I might be a little worried about the ghost in our machine, but from what I can gather, we have a moment while your program works. In essence, darling, I’m saying I want my minion to serve me, and I want her to serve me now.”

  The timing might be awkward, but the spider queen wasn’t about to be denied.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ROY WATCHED THE CODE work on freeing Hal. He kept one eye on a log file, but so far, there hadn’t been any error messages. No successes either.

  Toxy wanted sex, but there were a few things they had to take care of first. The spider queen left to put the niddies down for their nap in the break room and to change clothes.

  Chrissy and Tails stayed with Roy. Chrissy had on a blouse and skirt as well, a welcome change from the Effexium suits they wore in battle.

  Blind again, the satyr sat sipping tea when Tails approached her with a tablet and a hand scanner. “Hey, Chrissy, while searching around Halcyon’s folder, I found some notes on your eyes. I think I can fix them.” Tails reached out and touched the blinking lights.

  “I’d like to see, Tails. If you could help, I’d be so happy.”

  Tails tapped a claw on the tablet, made some adjustments, and Chrissy blinked. “Yes, I can see through the cameras. This is wonderful, but I do miss my helmet.”

  “I’m printing up a new one as we speak,” Tails said with a smile.

  Chrissy rose and hugged the fox girl.

  The satyr then sat back, sipping her tea. When Roy glanced at her, she flashed him her secret smile.

  Tails took a seat at her own terminal, dressed in a lab coat, cleaning up the digital mess that Morcom had made as well as scanning for where Suzanne might be. Joey was in the park, turning the basketball court into her own temple with the help of the minions. It wasn’t necessary work, but after all that had happened, the panther woman needed something familiar to keep her grounded. So far, Joey hadn’t reverted back to Morcom’s evil programming, nor had she become a mindless monster, poisoned by the UnWolf. It seemed that Halcyon’s reprogramming might not have worked initially. Joey had freed Suzanne, but now the panther goddess was her own woman again. However emotionally damaged.

  Roy went through the security settings and saw the port that Morcom had used to infiltrate them. He closed it and then added a few other protocols to stop it from happening again. He’d been relying on Halcyon for their cybersecurity up to now—after all, who better than an A.I. to protect their network? But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to keep his systems secure. He saw an alarm pop up, but it wasn’t anywhere around the West Meadow neighborhood.

  It was Suzanne, slithering down Rudyard, until wasps picked her up and swept her downtown. The Big Town skystacks were buzzing with activity. Various cyborg zombies, wasp creations, and, yes, more snake women—only these naga had already been killed. Morcom had modified the dead naga, adding cybernetic components. Every monster he’d made had the UnWolf serum in stingers, syringe fingers, or fangs.

  The log file continued to stream down the screen.

  Tails frowned. “Toxy’s UnWolf antivenin removes the nanotech that affects our higher brain functions, but it doesn’t make us permanently immune. We can get infected again, so we’ll have to be careful. Hal was working on something, a virus of her own, to infiltrate Morcom’s server room. Not that we know where it is for sure, though it must be downtown.”

  Roy remembered the missiles that had been fired off, aimed at Joey. “We’ll keep an eye out,” he said. “If we know the location, we can hit him for once.”

  “It won’t be easy, Roy,” the fox girl said quietly. “Morcom has continued to print up his army, and he’s not shy about using the dead, either. Also, now we know about the UnWolf. We’re all in danger. You and Toxy are immune, but Joey, Chrissy, and I aren’t. We’ll have to play this smart.”

  “You know we will.” And Roy was thinking that he just might have a way around this UnWolf business.

  Tails wrapped both her arms and her tails around herself. “I’m still so jittery. From the fight, yeah, but more from, you know, losing my mind from the UnWolf. I can’t tell you...I wasn’t thinking. In some ways, it felt good. And then when Toxy...when she grabbed me...bit me...” The fox girl shivered. Tears leaked down the side of her snout. She wiped them away. “I know what I need. I’m super horny.” Her eyes went to Chrissy.

  The satyr had just been minding her own business, sipping her tea, but when the fox girl turned her heated gaze on her, Chrissy blinked her eyelids, matching the blink of the lights on her temples. A little color rose in her chest. “No. I’m not ready.”

  Toxy skittered into the room on six long legs. A long gown covered her top, bunched over her big body backside. She swept herself around the satyr girl. The queen brushed a finger down Chrissy’s cheek. “Did I hear you say you weren’t ready? I think you’re ready. I think if you really mean no, you should say the word ‘lavender.’ Do you want to play our little game with us now, my little goat girl?”

  “No,” Chrissy peeped.

  “Then say the word ‘lavender,’” Toxy whispered.

  “No,” Chrissy said again, breathing hard.

  It was a clear sign she wanted to be taken.

  Roy checked their hack one more time before turning away from the screen.

  Tails knelt between the satyr’s legs while Toxy plucked the girl’s mug from her chubby little hands. Chrissy was sweating now, mouth half open. “No. It’s not the right time. We have to...save Halcyon, and we have to fight...and maybe we should wait.”

  She threw a seemingly scared glanced at Roy.

  Normally, he would’ve asked her if she was all right, but that wasn’t what turned Chrissy on. She seemed to be someone who liked to be forced a little into doing things they normally wouldn’t do.

  He had to make sure. “You can stop this, Chrissy. Say the word. Before I do anything else, I need to hear your consent. Do you want this?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.