Hello there!
Here's the next chapter of your favorite cross-country zombie/succubus/mimic buddy adventure (with Bigfoot as a guest star)!
I'm posting this toward the end of 2020, and it has been a rough ride. I hope that this story finds you well, and that your holiday season has at least a little bit of light and sunshine.
Thanks to everybody who has supported me so far on my monster-tale journey. Without the readers of Lit, these would just be words on some hard-drive, so thank you for remembering to click those stars at the end. They help people find these stories, and I've had at least a few of you reach out and let me know that they've helped you through some rough times. (I never thought I would be writing sexually-oriented fantasy that actually helps people, so this makes me feel extra good).
Anyway, this story will end on Chapter 12 and my brain will finally be able to live in one timeline. As a reminder, the events of D&H are parallel to the events of HFHM Book 3. In this chapter, we get to see the other side of the conversation that Beth had with Lily in Chapter 33. Hope that helps those of you who have emailed me asking about timelines.
Without further ado, I give you some more time with our family in Oregon. Thanks for reading!
Legs to Stand On
Sunset for Dana was a surreal affair on top of the barn. The view was quite lovely as the sun descended behind the distant mountain, and the breeze was strong enough to create little ripples in Bigfoot's hair, an effect that was magnified by the ripples that traveled across his massive chest.
The sasquatch sipped at his beer and nodded appreciatively. "Lookin' good, kiddo."
"Thanks, Uncle Foot." Eulalie was deftly weaving a long line of spider silk down Dana's back. She couldn't feel the needle piercing her muscle, but she could feel the skin being pulled back together as Eulalie worked her magic.
The last couple of days had been like a mini vacation. Between sword dodging lessons with Velvet, the occasional hot spring trip, and going through surveillance photos at night, the days were rolling past quicker than ever. In two days they would be able to leave, and Dana was starting to think that Eulalie's efforts to find the Dragon's Seed would be in vain.
However, if nothing else, Dana was a quick learner. Eulalie had to patch her up on multiple occasions, but the wounds came less frequently now, even as Velvet had ramped up the speeds of her attacks. They had even given her a bit of practice with the blade, but her dead girl brain was far better at reacting than attacking. If she got into another spat with a member of the Order, she was far less likely to lose another limb over it.
As for winning? Her memory was photographic, which meant she knew which way to move based on the swing and possible follow-ups. Velvet was murderously fast, and she knew that she wouldn't be caught off guard again. But unless someone attacked her in a way that Velvet had demonstrated, she was out of luck in that department. Still, the mental exercise of trying to predict the arachne's movements while relying on her own reactions had done her some good, and it gave her something to process during the long, lonely nights.
Lily had been disappearing in the twilight hours and kept her lips shut on her activities. All she had done was tell Dana that it was nothing to worry about, she just needed some time to think and process some things. Figuring she would be a massive hypocrite to push the issue, Dana had left it alone.
"Okay, all done." Eulalie moved back and Dana rotated her arms. Her back itched, a sign that the wound was healing, and she put her shirt back on.
"Won't get me next time," Dana told Velvet. Velvet was sitting next to Bigfoot, her legs splayed out around her. She held up her own beer in a mock salute and then drained it.
"Blegh." Eulalie made a face at her sister. "You're drinking the cheap stuff tonight."
"I'm drinking to get drunk, which means the cheap stuff." Velvet held up her bottle and sighed. "Unless you want to share some of your wine with me."
"Hell, no, you drink five times what I do and then complain about the taste." Eulalie took the needle she had been using and put it away in a small sewing kit with the word Dana written across the front in black Sharpie. "And then I have to wait a month until Dad can make a trip into town just to refill me. No thanks."
Velvet frowned at her bottle. "Fine. Guess I've got to drink the shit dad doesn't like."
"He's getting picky in his old age." Bigfoot finished his beer and then picked out another from the multi-pack. "Getting too old to waste his day on shit he doesn't enjoy."
Everybody went quiet. Velvet finished her beer and then helped Dana off the roof once the sun was down. While the arachne walked down the sides of the barn, Bigfoot took a casual hop and landed on the ground with a thud, leaving two giant footprints in the dirt. He stopped long enough to wipe them away with his feet, then saw Dana watching.
"Good habit to have," he explained.
Dinner was a quiet affair, and Lily returned shortly after, claiming that she had hiked a nearby mountain and allowed herself to get lost. After dinner, they played a board game as Bigfoot left to scope out some shortcuts that would get them back to Montana, and, if nowhere else, home again. Emory fussed over Velvet, who went to bed early on account of all the beer she had imbibed. Eulalie followed shortly after, leaving Dana alone with her thoughts. Lily left long before everyone went to bed, but would inevitably surface in a few hours.
With everyone gone, Dana let herself into Eulalie's office. There wasn't a chair at the high-countered desk, so she stood and surveyed the small bank of monitors. Eulalie had multiple rigs running, but the ones Dana wanted only displayed on a few monitors.
Data had been pouring in all week, and now it was time to sift through it again. Eulalie had written a quick program that allowed Dana to load one image per screen and then change every second. She stood and watched as the images filtered in, turning just her eyes as each image popped.
The images displayed had been processed by four different research computers located somewhere in the U.S. Many of the images she saw were simply social media posts, but there were also several surveillance pictures that made her question just how little she understood about how much a private citizen was under surveillance at any given time. Hundreds of images of men and women who wore similar jewelry blurred past, and she only paused on occasion to zoom in or contemplate the nature of the image she was seeing.
Hours went by, and the forest around the house came alive with the sounds of insects and birds. She occasionally heard Darren mutter in his sleep, but those were the only sounds she ever heard in the cabin.
Lily made a brief appearance sometime in the early hours. She kept Dana company for a bit, and then went out to the front room and asked Emory to start a fire. The succubus seemed out of sorts, but you couldn't solve a puzzle without opening the box, and Lily, contrary to her nature, wasn't letting anybody touch her box these days.
When it happened, she almost missed it.
It was a social media post, and in it was a picture of a couple of well-known celebrities. However, behind them was a young man leaning forward awkwardly to include himself in the shot. As if by accident, his necklace had slipped free of the confines of his shirt.
She had to rewind to find the image, and just stared at it for a bit. The necklace dangling from his throat looked similar to many other pearl necklaces she had seen (though not very similar to the 'pearl necklace' images Eulalie's search algorithm had returned on the first night). However, the twist in the gold and silver inlay just above the necklace was very close to what had been drawn on the piece of paper she had seen, as well as what Ratu had shown her.
"Hey, Lily?" She waited for the succubus to appear. When she did, she was holding a mug of coffee in her hands, her fingers wrapped tightly around the mug. "I didn't take you for a coffee drinker."
