The door closed, leaving us alone. For some reason, the ladies were stripping, and all of what he said started to make sense. We were supposed to go out and mingle… without our clothes.

  “We can’t seriously be considering this,” I protested.

  “What’s there to consider?” Ahlaksiz asked. “We get out there, have a look around, then make our move.”

  “You want me to walk around in a house full of strangers—monster strangers, at that—naked.”

  She nodded, smiling slightly. “Actually, I very much want that.”

  My jaw fell open in response, but a kiss from Kinara brought me to my senses. “You have nothing to be shy about. Like Blue said, tell them you’re under a curse and can’t change back.”

  “Come on.” I turned to Jalee, then Milkshake. “Nobody has a better plan?”

  They shared a confused glance, then Milkshake turned and said, “My wing is in the way of this strap, can you help me?”

  I did, grumbling, but felt less awkward when first her clothes were off, then the rest of them—including Ahlaksiz, who had her tail and cougar ears now.

  “Why is it she can shift back and forth, but not the rest of you?” I asked.

  “Training,” Ahlaksiz said. “They haven’t been here long enough.”

  “And I don’t really need to,” Jalee said with a shrug.

  “You do look more human than the rest of us,” Kinara admitted. “Ferris excluded.”

  “Humans dye their hair sometimes,” I explained. “So even the blue hair’s not so uncommon, though I’m not sure what they do about their hair downstairs.”

  She twirled a bit of her blue pubic hair, teasingly, and smiled my way. “Come on, now. Nothing we haven’t seen before. Most of us.” Her head swiveled to Ahlaksiz.

  “Oh, I’ve seen, too,” Ahlaksiz said.

  “There you go.”

  I wasn’t too excited about the idea, but this mission was bigger than me or any of us. With that in mind, I pulled off first my shirt, then kicked off my shoes, and finally dropped my pants and boxers. There we all were, as if we had decided to visit a nudist colony instead of steal a magical item from a demi-monster’s mansion full of monsters.

  “At least it looks bigger than last time,” Ahlaksiz said, giving me a joking thumbs-up.

  I looked down to see that it was still quite swollen, and not exactly limp, what with eyeing each of them and Ahlaksiz like that.

  “Try not to get hard in there,” Milkshake said. “Monsters don’t get hard as often as you humans, but when they do, it’s expected that they fuck the first thing they can get hold of.”

  Kinara clicked her tongue, head swiveling. “Best avoided in our case, for now.”

  Shit, now they were making me nervous. On the other hand, at least my nerves were getting rid of any bit of an erection I might have had. And since this was apparently the route we were taking, I finally took off my socks and handed them to Jalee, who was putting all of our clothes in a section of the closet.

  “Let’s find this d—”

  Ahlaksiz was at my side in a second, hand covering my mouth. She slowly shook her head, eyes wide, then whispered into my ear, “Watch what we say in here. We can’t risk letting them know why we’re here.”

  I gulped, nodded, and tried to figure out where to put my hands when standing there naked.

  “I was going to say ‘dip,’ as in chips and dip. Of course.”

  “Good thinking, almost.” She pulled her hand away, going for the door—her tail swaying as she walked. “Except for the fact that no monster party would have dip in the sense you’re thinking.”

  Kinara took my arm, smiled comfortingly, and we followed with Jalee and Milkshake bringing up the rear. If you’ve ever walked around bare-ass naked with a bunch of other naked people, imagine that but with a mix of terrifying and sexy-as-fuck monsters. We passed tables of raw meat and drinks that looked like blood, and at one point I was fairly certain I saw a finger on a platter. Human? I couldn’t be sure.

  We went through one room with a pool, where mermaids and mermen relaxed, laughing at the sight of us.

  “Come for a swim, boy,” one of the mermen said. “I promise not to bite.”

  “Maybe just a nibble from me,” the mermaid next to him, with long, green hair, said with a mouthful of sharp teeth.

  “Looking for the host,” Ahlaksiz said. “Have you seen him?”

  The merman shook his head, waving us off. We continued, but as we went I had to wonder where all these monsters came from.

  “Are these types of get togethers common?”

  Ahlaksiz opened a door to a smoking room, a dark-elf with a pipe sitting on the lap of an orc-looking guy. We passed by them and on to a hall. “Likely a portal that brought them here. My guess is this is one of several common meeting spots, where they can come and go as they please. Living on Earth as a monster can be stressful. So having an escape like this can be… wonderful. Then again, many of these might be people you would recognize, when wearing their human disguises. That elf we just saw could be one of the stars of Friends, for all we know. It’s hard to tell when they take off their disguises.”

  I glanced back, but only saw Jalee smiling. She gave my ass a gentle slap before saying, “I feel right at home here.”

  “Great.” I couldn’t imagine the thought that monsters could live among us, maybe as Hollywood stars or politicians.

  We entered a kitchen, where an old harpy was cutting up hunks of meat. She turned to me, withered old breasts covered in feathers, and snarled. “Brought me more meat, did you?”

  My voice caught in my throat, but at least Kinara was there to get my back. “His disguise won’t wear off—a curse, you see.”

  “That so?” Her eyes bored into me, knife moving along the bloody meat in front of her. After a couple of seconds, she bent over, returning to what she was doing, but muttered, “Guests don’t belong back here. You looking for something?”

  “I was led to believe your master has quite the collection,” Ahlaksiz said.

  “He does, he does.” She motioned to the door opposite and to the left. “That’ll take you to the viewing rooms, but security is strong, so no funny business.”

  We followed her directions, finding the few monsters who lingered in the viewing rooms to be of a different sort than the others. Much more sophisticated. One woman stood staring at a painting on the wall, and at first I might have thought she was merely a slim woman—Chinese, maybe, but when she turned, her skin rippled as if she were a pond someone had thrown a stone into. She took a step toward the next painting, and then suddenly was there, having simply skipped the ten feet or so between. The music back in the main part of the party picked up, and a pinch pulled my attention to Kinara.

  “Focus,” she said. “And I don’t mean on her ass.”

  “I was observing the way she moved,” I whispered in my defense, then realized how it sounded. “Not like that, but—”

  “Oh, let him look,” Jalee said. “It’s not like he’s going home with anyone other than us, and if he were, we would be there, too.”

  Kinara pursed her lips, pondering this.

  “She doesn’t have anything on this ass anyway,” Milkshake added, walking past, pausing to make sure I saw her ass as she lifted her tail, then continuing on. I wasn’t about to compare, but there was no doubt all of them had beautiful asses.

  “We’re not here to look for ass,” Ahlaksiz said, and I think the woman must’ve heard us at that point, because she glanced back with a frown, her eyes moving over me for a moment. Next, she took a step toward the wall and flickered before walking through it.

  “Ah, I hope you’re not too sad that we scared her off,” Kinara said, pinching my arm for emphasis, then laughing.

  I shook my head, pulling my arm away from her. “If you’re going to be jealous, maybe I should—”

  “Get back over here.” She pulled me next to her again, and with more strength than I expected. “You’re mine, or rather, I’m yours. Either way, I’ll be as damn possessive as I feel like.”

  When a woman with what looked like cow legs and humongous breasts entered a few seconds later, I did my best not to look—I swear. Unlike the chaos that one might expect to find in paintings on a monster’s walls, these were quite nice. Flowing colors and vibrant landscapes. Then we entered a room that had a thick, red curtain on one side that reminded me of a movie theater I’d been to long ago. Sure enough, this room was the owner’s collection of film memorabilia, including the black statue of a bird from The Maltese Falcon, some animation cells from the Japanese movie, Spirited Away, and a series of weapons that looked like they included the axe from The Shining, the sword from Hercules, and some figures from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

  The collection continued, but I stopped at a mirror, straight out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as far as I could tell. It was one of those funny mirrors. Odd, looking into one of those when naked. It had the effect of making my dick look as long as the monsters back in the main area of the party, and for a few seconds I had to stare at that image, chuckling.

  “I prefer the real thing,” Jalee noted, walking past but then returning to turn and put her ass out toward the mirror. It made her ass look three times as big, giving her a big ol’ badunkadunk ass.

  I stifled my laugh, but not before a new entrant noticed. This woman slithered in, her lower half that of a gold snake, with a thick bush of matching hair covering her crotch and answering the question of how lamia had sex. Some anime did it this way, and apparently they had gotten it right. She had petite little breasts, but a sophisticated, womanly demeanor. She wasn’t completely nude, though, as gold bracelets and a matching necklace adorned her skin. Matching gold makeup curved up from the corners of her eyes.

  “You like what you see there?” she asked. Eyeing the mirror and my elongated cock in the reflection, she chuckled. “Of course, a human would see that in the mirror of desire.”

  “Isn’t it a funny mirror?” I blurted out, not even addressing the fact that she’d called me a human. “You’re saying it’s like the one in Harry Potter?”

  “In fact, it’s the mirror those books based the mirror on, though the movie got the look and shape of it all wrong. It doesn’t quite work the same, either, but close enough.”

  “Oh, I see.” I cleared my throat, hands on my hips, awkwardly. “And this is my disguise, of course. Just a… curse.”

  “Clearly.” She furrowed her brow, slithering around our group, eyes never leaving mine. “Humans are so pitiful, wouldn’t you say? These disgusting forms they walk around in, mutations of the beauty that is us monsters.” She held her hands out, twisting around to show off her body. Kinara didn’t say anything this time as I looked, but maybe because I was looking out of apprehension, not appreciation.

  “You work with him, don’t you?” Ahlaksiz asked.

  The lamia turned on her and smiled. “I’m familiar with you. So elusive, and yet… here you are.”

  “Here I am. I’m familiar with you, too.”

  “Great, we’re mostly all familiar,” Kinara said, hand raised. “Now, can someone tell me what’s going on here?”

  The lamia scowled at her, a forked tongue darting out. “How cute that your little group includes not only a human, but dinner.”

  Kinara was not okay with that comment, as little as I understood it at the time. She leaped across the distance between her and the lamia, tackling the snake lady and delivering three quick claw-strikes across the ribs and neck before going in for a bite.

  13

  The snake tail of the woman quickly circled Kinara’s feet, though, pulling her off balance so that now the lamia had her turn to attack. Long fangs emerged, and I had no doubt they had to be venomous.

  “Enough!” I grunted, interjecting myself into the mix and trying to keep them apart.

  At the same time, though, Jalee shot a bolt of electricity that hit the lamia and me, blasting us in two separate directions. She hit the wall, while I hit the mirror. Rather, I should have, but my head went right through. No crash or breaking glass—simply through. There I was, looking at them through the back of the mirror as if my head was underwater, and I turned to see another viewing room. Two guards—large, cave troll types, turned on me. One held up his wrist to his mouth, muttering something, while the other pulled out what I thought to be a club at first, but turned out to be something between a club and a cattle prod.

  I started to pull my head back out of there, but not before noting that there was a wall on the far side with a special case. What was in the case, I couldn’t be sure, but my guess was something valuable. Possibly the something valuable we were after.

  As soon as I emerged back into the main room and saw the lamia and my team staring at me with wide eyes, including a radio chatter from nearby, I popped up and said, “Through the mirror, go!”

  Kinara attempted to scramble toward me, but the lamia’s tail whipped out and tripped her. Jalee moved fast, but this time the lamia was ready and dodged the strike. Milkshake summoned her sword, while Ahlaksiz went to all fours, teeth bared in a growl.

  This was the first time I saw her really get ferocious, and it was exciting. She took on the lamia like a mongoose fighting a cobra or habu like I’d seen many times on the internet. Spoiler alert—the mongoose pretty much always won. In this case, too, the cougar managed to tear open the lamia woman’s gut before throwing her to crash into a glass wall that gave way to a courtyard and little waterfall. How peaceful that would have been, in other circumstances.

  I was charging back for the mirror when the door to my left burst open and first, two slick guards came in. These ones were almost round, lacking in genitalia, with two sets of wings and glowing light at the ends of their hands. They each had one long, red slit for an eye and no hair on their gray bodies.

  They lifted their hands and I realized real fast that blasts were about to shoot out from those glowing hands. Kinara was already half-through the mirror, when something connected and sent her flying back to land in Jalee’s arms.

  “Enough!” the lamia said, holding up a bloody hand, the other trying to hold her gut together. “Let them be!”

  “But, Mistress…” one of the guards said.

  The lamia managed to push herself up, grunting in pain, and slithered over to the mirror, where one of her rock trolls had stuck out his head.

  “Move aside,” she told him, “we’re coming in.”

  “We?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

  “Me and my guests,” the lamia replied. She offered us a smile, though she couldn’t exactly hide her glare. To us, she added, “You’ve proven you aren’t pushovers. Join me, so that we might discuss ways we can work together.”

  “Together?” I grunted, eyes on the blood she had dripped on her way over there.

  “We’re looking for Mr. Jacobs,” Ahlaksiz said.

  “Well, you see,” the lamia said, grinning wide. “I am he.”

  My eyes instantly went to that blonde hair between her legs, expecting to see a penis plop out or something of the sort. At this, she laughed.

  “No, Ferris, I am female, at least when in my true form. It’s only when I take on my Hollywood persona that I have to wear a tiny weenie, and that’s only because you humans haven’t managed to see females as equal yet.”

  I frowned, in part because this was a big-time producer, one who was pretending to be a man. If she went as a woman instead, she’d be helping the very people she claimed were kept down. On top of that, Hollywood was changing. Maybe not fast enough, but it was.

  “You know my name?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The instant you set foot on my property, I had monsters looking into your past. The last couple of days seem to be a mystery, but everything before that, I know.”

  “How do we know this isn’t a trap?” Kinara asked.

  The lamia bared her fangs again, then shook her head, forcing her lips closed. “You don’t, but you could try to fight us all, break into my back room there and try to steal whatever it is you’re after… or we can make the whole process much easier. I assume, judging by this man’s jewelry,” she indicated the hexagon on my wrist device, “that you’re looking for the sun disk?”

  All of us shared looks of concern, but she was right. Since there was no more hiding our purpose, and since Ahlaksiz had made it clear that our chances of winning a fight here would be slim, what with all the monsters around, I said, “Let’s hear her out.”

  “That’s all I ask. And do hurry, so that we can get this over with before I bleed out.”

  She didn’t wait then, but disappeared through the mirror. The rest of us followed, though I flinched and prepared for a fight as I went through. Those rock trolls were scary motherfuckers.

  In the back room, we didn’t meet any resistance. As the rock trolls stood off to each side of the entrance, the lamia had approached one of the walls and pulled out a drawer. Now I saw that the pattern wasn’t for decoration, but a series of small drawers. She had what looked like spider webs dangling from one hand, an orange goo in the other. Smearing the orange goo into her wound, she then turned to us as she spread the spiderweb over the goo.

  “Healing goo?” Ahlaksiz asked.

  “Accompanied by a web given to me by the great arachnid herself, queen of the Fair Woods.”

  “There is no queen of the Fair Woods,” Kinara hissed. “Only a warlord overstepping her bounds.”

  “Talk like that won’t get you on her good side,” the lamia chided. Turning to me, she nodded at the wrist device. “You took it from the hunter—before or after he lost his head?”

  “I—”

  “If you’re asking if we killed the hunter,” Ahlaksiz said, eyeing the stone trolls, “answer’s no.”

  “Good thing, because, while these others might be able to claim ignorance, you know as well as I the cost of such violence out here.”

  “Death?” I suggested.

  “You should be so lucky.” The lamia, to my surprise, removed her hands from her midsection and was already looking much better. Where before there had been a clear opening, now a thin layer of skin had grown back over it. I could see how one might want to be on the arachnid’s side, or whoever this goo came from.