Making Monster Girls 3: For Science! Read online

  Chapter One

  Night had fallen over Edenhart, the stars sparkled brilliantly in the darkness, and I sucked in the cool air that smelled of the oncoming autumn. All three of my women stood around me and packed up the wagon as we prepared to drive down to Ortensia’s home. Daisy, the gorgeous, petite brunette stood at the back of the wagon, her short hair ruffled in the wind, and her golden honey-colored eyes glowed in the darkness. Valerie, the feline-woman, sat perched on the driver’s seat of the wagon, her sleek, brown tail whipped out behind her, and the cat-girl tilted her head curiously at me. Rian loaded supplies into the back of the wagon, her black hair shifted around her red-colored shoulders, and when she lifted her head, the spiraling horns sprouting from the sides of her head brushed the sky.

  The red-skinned imp-woman was my most recent creation, a combination of the Chief Constable and an imp I’d found in the aristocrat Josephine’s mines. Tonight, we had to cover up what we’d done with the Chief Constable, and we’d decided that we’d make it look like Ortensia was a brute sympathizer. We’d found out through the grapevine that the Chief Constable lived in something like a dormitory with the other constables, and I worried that this would be more difficult than I had originally thought.

  “Do you have the letters?” I asked.

  “Yes, Charles,” Daisy breathed, patted her pocket, and smiled softly. “I wrote them all out this morning, and then I wrote the threatening one later in the afternoon, but I dictated it, and Rian wrote it out, so the handwriting is different.”

  “Very clever,” I praised. “We’ll sneak in, drop the letters, and then steal all of the evidence that she had against us. We should be in and out within an hour, no one can see us, and if they do… you know what has to happen.”

  Valerie nodded vehemently, raised her hand, curled all of her fingers in except for her pointer finger, and made a dragging motion across her neck with the digit as she made a low, squelching noise through her lips.

  “Right, exactly,” I nodded. “We cannot have any slip ups this time, no evidence left at the scene, understand? I only agreed to bring all three of you because there’d be more people to help search the room.”

  “Hey now,” a familiar voice cried out from behind me. “That’s an insult to some of us who don’t have hands.”

  “It wasn’t an insult,” Daisy smiled. “You’re just along for the ride, A.B..”

  “After hours of begging,” the brain huffed. “And the only reason you agreed to build this backpack apparatus is because Valerie said that you should!”

  “That’s not true at all,” I chuckled. “I planned to bring you along, I just wanted to hear all the things you’d say if I didn’t.”

  “I still want those tubes,” the brain grumbled. “And if I don’t get them, I’ll… I’ll… protest.”

  “How?” Rian asked. “From what Charles told me, a protest is an expression of objection, disapproval, or dissent, correct? How will you, a stationary brain, protest?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” A.B. laughed. “But when I do, it’s over for you, Charles Rayburn!”

  “You could sing loudly, at the top of your… uh, lungs?” Valerie offered, made a face, and then chuckled. “But you don’t have any lungs, so just shout at the top of your voice telepathically.”

  “Oh, that’s what I plan to do,” the brain agreed. “Maybe I’ll even make up a song about you, Charles, a nasty song that will never leave your head.”

  “Well, you don’t have to do that,” I shook the apparatus attached to my back. “You’re coming along now, aren’t you? There’s no need to complain.”

  “Shall we leave, Charles?” the red-skinned imp-woman asked. “The night is young, the stars are bright, and the wind is fresh with change.”

  “That was so poetic!” the gorgeous ash-blonde sighed. “I’m so glad that Daisy gave you that book of poems this morning! It’s really helped your vocabulary!”

  “Indeed,” Rian bowed her head. “It took me about an hour to read, but I read it four times in a row. Every time I reread it, I learn a new word, and when I find something I don’t understand, Charles explains it to me! I wish I could teach all of you some of the imp language, though they are hard to pronounce without a native imp tongue, and I doubt that even if you learned it, you wouldn’t understand half of it.”

  “I don’t remember much of cat-language,” Valerie murmured. “It was just a bunch of syllables mashed into long, low meows. Sometimes high-pitched ones when we wanted to get a human’s attention, but with the aristocrats, that rarely worked, they only wanted the big animals out in the forest.”

  “Bears didn’t have a language,” Daisy interjected. “Maybe a few words here and there, but they were mainly aggressive like when we roared at each other or got into fights with other bears.”

  “It sounds fun to be a bear,” Valerie bubbled. “You often describe taking naps in fields of long grass, eating a lot of honey, and wandering through the forest, searching for beehives.”

  “I did enjoy it,” the stunning brunette smiled. “I get a lot of my current traits from Delphine, though I hate to admit it. If I have to thank her for something, I guess, that would be my elegant way of speaking. If I’d gotten that from the bear, I’d probably be going around, grunting and bumping into things.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad you’re not a bear,” I tittered. “Everyone into the wagon, we have to get a move on before daybreak. By then, people are going to notice that the Chief Constable has disappeared.”

  Valerie and Rian scrambled forward, climbed into the bed of the cart, and nestled themselves down beside each other. Daisy hopped into the driver’s seat, turned, smiled down at me, and then offered me her delicate hand. I moved forward, but then paused as a realization suddenly hit me.

  “What is it, Charles?” Rian asked. “You looked pensive.”

  “If the Chief Constable disappears,” I exhaled. “They’re going to go looking for her.”

  “Oh,” Daisy murmured. “That’s true… Edony won’t rest until she knows exactly where the Chief Constable went.”

  “But…” I muttered. “If Ortensia were to have killed herself… then there’s no question about where she went. If we leave the threatening letter with her body, Edony won’t have a reason to be suspicious.”

  “But we planned on cremating Ortensia’s body and killing her horse?” Valerie questioned. “Are we not going to do that now?”

  “No, we’re not,” I uttered, shouldered off A.B.’s apparatus, and handed it over to Rian. “I’ll be right back, stay here.”

  I raced toward my laboratory, thumped down the stairs, slammed the door open, and then stomped toward the closed door of compartment B. As I passed my side table, I grabbed a spare tarp, draped it over my shoulder, and then ripped open the metal door of the compartment. Ortensia’s still body laid on the floor, and I gazed down at it for a second as I gulped for air.

  The scarlet-haired woman laid on her side with both hands frozen at her neck. Her contorted face was bruised purple and green, but her single jade eye was tightly closed against the immense pain I assumed she’d gone through when my machine ripped her life force from her body.

  I paused for a moment, I never really thought about what the human patients went through during the experiments, but here was the proof. Their last moments were sheer agony, not that I really cared, most of those who entered into my machine deserved what was coming to them.

  I laid down the tarp on the floor next to Ortensia’s body, came around her, lifted her onto the edge of it, and then rolled her up tightly. I grabbed her by the middle, hauled her off the floor, and then rested her corpse against my shoulder. I m
oved for the door and the stairs beyond, and only paused as I snatched up a coil of rope from the counter. I hooked it in the crook of my arm, adjusted Ortensia’s body, and hurried back to the wagon.

  “What are we going to do with it?” Valerie asked. “How are we going to make it look like it was suicide?”

  “We’re going to string her up,” I replied. “And then either place the threatening letter in her hands or at her feet. That way, when her body is found, it’ll be one of the first things they see.”

  I stepped up to the open back of the wagon, tossed Ortensia’s limp body in, and then placed the coil of rope on top of it. Then, I hurried to the driver’s seat, climbed up into the back, and gripped the reins in my hand. I smacked the leather lengths against the backs of the horses, guided them down the drive and down toward the town. Barely any lights were on in the distance, and I knew once we reached the city, no aristocrats would be wandering through the city.

  “I’m most worried that the constables will catch us,” I admitted. “They’ll be out on patrol this late at night, and a few of them will be coming back from the second shift.”

  “We’ll just have to be extra quiet,” Valerie giggled. “I can turn invisible, and no one will see me in the dark!”

  “We also noticed that you’re getting better at it,” the brunette commented. “When we were at Josephine’s mines, we couldn’t see you even in the daylight.”

  “Really?” the feline-woman gasped. “I’ve been practicing! I even slept a whole night with it activated, and when I woke up, I was still completely invisible! I’m surprised that none of you noticed that I wasn’t there, but I was there! I also snuck around the manor, and no one noticed me, so I think my camouflage is getting better!”

  “Hopefully, you won’t need it tonight,” I chuckled dryly. “But if we do, then the rest of us are out of luck. Alright, we’re approaching town now. You two back there, hunker down, and cover yourselves with that spare tarp in case we come across anyone.”

  “Yes, Charles,” Valerie chirped, grabbed the tarp, wiggled down in the bottom of the wagon, and tucked herself underneath it.

  “As you wish, Charles,” Rian whispered.

  “Alright, here we go,” I breathed. “Ready, Daisy?”

  “Yes,” the brunette nodded. “If we encounter anyone in the dormitory, I’m sure to make mincemeat of them.”

  “Maybe not mincemeat but definitely enough to make it look like a wild animal broke in and attacked them.” I nodded. “The Constable’s dormitory should be up ahead, around the corner, the third building to the left.”

  Daisy clamped her lips closed, nodded once, and then formed her tiny hands into fists in her lap. I could tell that the bear-girl was anxious, since we’d thought we’d covered our tracks the night we’d murdered the warden, but apparently, we hadn’t done a good enough job.

  I, on the other hand, felt great, and I was almost certain that we weren’t going to get caught. I wasn’t sure why I felt that way, maybe it was because over the past few weeks, a change had come over me, and I felt like an entirely different man.

  When I’d created Valerie by accident, I was timid and soft-spoken, but now with my third monster-girl here, I felt totally different. I was a strong-willed man with mates I wanted to protect, and I was never going to let anyone stand in my way again. I’d been pushed around enough, by the Duchess, by Delphine, and by so many other women before then.

  It ended now.

  Any who stood in my way would either die, or join me as a monster-girl, and if that meant I had to turn every female in the world into one of my creations, so be it.

  “Here it is,” I whispered. “We’ll go around the back where all of the stables are, we’ll park inside in an empty stall, cover the wagon with a tarp, and then sneak inside. Did everyone hear me?”

  “Gotcha.” Valerie murmured.

  “Roger,” Rian muttered.

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” A.B. chuckled.

  I leaned my head back and examined the outside of the constable’s dormitory as we passed by. The enormous building was three stories high, with small, white windows every few paces. Only four or five windows in the entire complex had burning candles in the windows, and I sighed out of relief. If we managed to sneak past those doors, we’d find the Chief Constable’s room fairly easily… if we could figure out exactly where it was. I guided our wagon off of the main street, down a darkened back alley, and toward the stables. A few horses neighed in the distance, but there seemed to be no one around this late at night.

  Once we were inside of the empty stable, I tied off the reins, took A.B.’s apparatus from Daisy’s hands, strapped it onto my back, and then helped the bear-girl down. I glanced around the stable for a second, took a mental note that most of the horse’s stalls were empty, which meant that most of the constables were out on patrol.

  “How many constables does Edenhart have?” Rian asked, tossed off the tarp, and hopped off the back of the wagon. “From looking at the stables, there has to be at least more than twenty.”

  “No, we don’t have that many,” I shook my head. “When Edenhart was built, it was supposed to be much larger than it is. They were prepared for a city at least three or four times larger than it is now. So, this building can accommodate at least one-hundred and fifty constables, but I think we have twenty at best. Most of the time, we barely have that, I think the lowest amount of constables we had at one time was ten, and they were desperately searching for people to join the force.”

  “Do you think the Queen sent more over with Ortensia?” Daisy asked.

  “I believe so,” I breathed. “I’ve seen them out and about during the day on their patrols. They were women I’d never seen before in the city, so they have to have come from the capital.”

  “Why does the Queen have such a sudden interest in Edenhart?” Daisy tapped her chin. “From what you’ve told us, the Queen never really got involved with Edony’s affairs in the past, why is she doing so now?”

  “I have no idea,” I uttered. “It must have to do with the rivalry between the two of them… but that makes me wonder, why do the Queen and Edony hate each other so much? There has to be some reason…”

  “We won’t find out unless we force the Duchess to tell us,” Valerie sighed. “And Edony would never tell us willingly.”

  “Alright, let’s head inside…” I stated. “Valerie, why don’t you go inside first? Use your power, scope out the floor, and make sure no one is out and about.”

  “I’m on it!” the feline-woman giggled, winked at me, and then phased out of view.

  The only tell-tale sign that Valerie was even there was the tiny shift of gravel beneath her feet, other than that, the cat-girl was completely undetectable to the human eye. Daisy, Rian, and I hid in the shadows as the door into the dormitory creaked open, held there for a second, and then slid shut with a soft groan.

  We waited, and the seconds ticked by longer than I would’ve liked. I already knew that Valerie was invisible, and no one would see her, but that didn’t stop me from worrying that she’d been caught. But right as my anxiety reached a peak, the door to the dormitory creaked open, Valerie leaned out, waved, and whispered.

  “Come on!” the feline-woman mouthed. “The coast is clear, no one is awake! I peeked through all the keyholes, they have candles burning, but they’re all tucked away in their beds, snoring logs!”

  “Thank science,” I chuckled, turned back toward the wagon, and grabbed the tarp-covered body. “Let’s get this inside before anyone wakes up, hears us, and comes out to investigate.”

  “Let me get that, Charles,” Daisy smiled.

  “No, it’s okay, I got--” I started, but the brunette stepped forward, grabbed the corpse, and lifted it off the wagon as if it weighed nothing.

  Daisy hiked it up, rested the body against her shoulder, adjusted it once, and then assuredly stepped toward the dormitory. The beautiful bear-girl only turned back once, smiled at me, and then jerked her hea
d toward the building.

  “Come on,” Daisy giggled. “We have to hurry before anyone comes back.”

  “You must love strong-women, Charles,” the red-skinned imp-woman laughed. “Shall I carry you, too?”

  Rian nudged my shoulder, chuckled softly, and then moved toward me as if to sweep me off my feet. I scuttled out of reach, placed my hand on her shoulder, laughed, and then shook my head.

  “I may love strong women,” I tittered. “But I’m no damsel, and I’m certainly not in distress, so no thank you, I can walk myself.”

  “You can carry me if you want, Rian,” A.B. bleated. “I love it when strong women carry me.”

  “I think you’re fine where you are for now, A.B.,” Rian snorted. “You begged for Charles to carry you, so that’s where you’ll stay.”

  “Goddamnit.” The brain grumbled.

  “Shouldn’t have complained so much, buddy,” I snickered. “Then maybe someone else other than me would be carrying you.”

  “I hear you, I hear you,” A.B. mumbled. “Maybe one of them will carry me on the way home, but who knows… a brain can dream, can’t he?”

  “You’ll have to ask one of them,” I breathed. “Alright, time to keep quiet, we’re going in.”

  “Well, I don’t have to,” A.B. tutted. “The only people who can hear me are you, Valerie, Daisy, and Rian, so I can talk as much as I want, and none of the constables will hear me.”

  “But for the sake of our concentration--” I sniggered, but A.B. cut me off.

  “Alright, alright,” the brain griped. “I’ll keep my trap shut while you guys take care of the important business.”

  Rian and I hurried toward the open door and the other two monster-girls. We all slipped inside together, and I examined the large room beyond. We stood in what seemed to be a massive common room with enormous couches, rows, and rows of bookshelves, and a huge crackling fireplace. To our left was an open doorway, and when I peeked inside, I saw a spacious kitchen and a long table with countless, empty chairs.

  “Look at this,” Valerie ushered me over. “It looks to be a floorplan of some sort, there are names on each of the rooms.”