Making Monster Girls 2: For Science! Read online

  Chapter One

  The manor was silent except for the sound of the heels of my shoes clicking against the hardwood floor, but in the distance, I could make out the soft chatter of feminine voices. The house was always empty except for Daisy, Valerie, and myself, but it sounded as if there was a small party happening a few feet away from me. The monster-women didn’t know anyone, not well enough to be friends and invite them over for tea, so who could these people be?

  I stepped carefully down the hall lined with suits of armor, hurried through the archway, and then stood in the doorway into the drawing-room. I clamped my lips closed to stop a gasp from erupting up my throat, gazed around the room, and felt my head spin deliriously for a moment.

  The room beyond was filled with elegantly dressed women, their silk ball gowns brushed against the hardwood, and carpeted floors gracefully. A few of them turned, gasped, and smiled toward me, but I was totally enrapt with not only their beauty, but with their strange and unusual appearances.

  “Hello, Charles,” a woman purred as she brushed past.

  Her hair was long, forest-green, and cascaded down to the middle of her back, but that’s not what caught my attention. Her exposed skin, every inch of it was tinted a light mint color, and looked slick as if she’d just emerged from a body of water. When she turned to smile at me, her eyes were almost wholly black and royal blue, and aquamarine frills stuck out of her hair like a pair of ears. When her long hair shifted over her shoulder, I noticed that some of the length was made from deep green strips of kelp.

  “Mermaid?” I breathed.

  “Close,” the green-haired beauty giggled. “But no, water nymph. You’re the one who caught me, Charles, don’t you remember? And I’m soooo happy that you did.”

  Before I could reply that, no, I didn’t remember, the water-nymph was gone through the crowd, and I scanned the women for any familiar faces. There had to be at least thirty beautiful females in the expansive drawing-room, but none of them were women that I knew. Each monster-girl had different characteristics like a wild beast, or magical creature, and I had to wonder, how had they gotten here? Had I transformed all of them? I couldn’t for the life of me remember if I’d made this many women… I knew for sure that I’d created Valerie and Daisy, but all of these women were very real in their beautiful dresses.

  “Would you like something to eat, Charles?” a low, sensual voice asked from the left, and I turned.

  The woman offered me a plate heavy with small, square sandwiches, but I wasn’t looking at those, I was enrapt with her appearance. This woman’s skin was tinted a dark gray, almost the color of smoke, her large, wide-set eyes were the color of burnt umber, and her wildly curly hair was pitch black. A pair of black, feathered wings sprouted from behind her, and twitched slightly as she shifted in place, tilted her head, and offered me the plate again. A long-tail made entirely of hair swung out behind her, and when she stepped forward, her feet clacked pleasantly like the hooves of horses.

  “What are you?” I exhaled. “Unicorn? Hippogriff?”

  “No, silly,” the dark-haired woman chuckled. “Dark Pegasus caught in the mountains just east of Edenhart, but you call me Annis. I don’t think you’ve caught a unicorn yet, though, they are very rare. We could find a hippogriff pretty easily, but they are ill-mannered, and we’d have to train her.”

  “Never mind that,” I exhaled. “Have you seen Valerie and Daisy? Where are they? I need to speak to them.”

  “Oh?” Annis tilted her head. “You don’t know? I thought you would, they’re bringing up our newest sister. We’re all very excited to meet her, that’s why we threw this party, Charles.”

  “W-What?” I stammered. “New monster-girl? But… I haven’t planned to create a new one and… there’s so many of you…”

  I didn’t understand what was happening. It was clear to me that these women knew me, and somehow, I’d created them, but… I couldn’t remember a goddamn thing.

  “Heeeere she isssss, sisterssss!” a familiar voice cried from out in the hall.

  Valerie bounded into the room, threw herself forward, bent her knees, and rolled across the floor. The feline-woman jumped to her feet, pressed her closed fists to her hips, twisted her torso, and grinned back into the hall.

  “U-Uh, Valerie?” Daisy’s unsure voice called. “I need your help, she’s still a bit wobbly from the transformation.”

  “Val… Daisy,” I breathed, crossed the room toward the feline-woman, and reached out for her shoulder. “Valerie… what’s going on?”

  “Charles!” the ash-blonde woman shouted. “We were looking for you! Are you ready? It’s time for the biiiig reveal we’ve all been waiting for!”

  “Aren’t you excited?” a third familiar voice asked from behind me.

  A big hand rested on my shoulder, gripped me once, and then I slowly turned to take in the towering man behind me. His face was unfamiliar, I’d never seen him in my life but that voice… I’d heard it nearly every day of my life since I’d moved into the manor.

  “…A.B.?” I grunted.

  “Charles!” the man boomed. “You’ve finally shown up to your own party! Were you hiding in the back? There’s no need to be shy around these women, you created them, after all, and they love you more than anything.”

  The man was a giant, his dark, dirty-blond hair brushed at the ceiling, and when he smiled, there was a slight gap between his front teeth. His shoulders were broad, his arms bulging with muscles, and when he took a step forward, the floorboards creaked angrily under his feet, but that voice… there was no mistaking it. It sounded a bit different because I didn’t hear it directly inside my brain, but it could be none other than the brain that resided in a tank in my laboratory.

  What was happening? Had I finally gone mad as all the aristocrats had predicted?

  “Valerie!” Daisy whinnied. “I need your help, please! She’s heavy!”

  “Sorry!” the blonde giggled. “I’m coming!”

  Valerie turned a corner, disappeared from view, grunted, and then shuffled back toward the doorway. My eyes widened in surprise, I gulped, clenched my fists, and took a step backward as an oppressive aura washed over me.

  Daisy and Valerie held a tall woman between them, I couldn’t see the third woman’s face since her long, snow-white hair obscured it, but her presence felt so eerily familiar to me. Neon blue electricity jumped from her pale, milky flesh and bit at the air, but it didn’t seem to harm Valerie or Daisy.

  “Here she is!” Valerie sang. “We’ve finally brought her home, after so much time! Isn’t she beautiful?”

  The monster-woman surrounding me burst into applause, and the female held between the cat-girl and brunette, groaned softly, rolled back her head, and breathed heavily. I still couldn’t see her face even though it should’ve been in full view, it was obscured by some type of haze, a blur that started at her chin and ended at her hairline.

  Pointed ears like a wolf poked out of her colorless hair, laid flat against her head, and then rose into the air. The fur covering them was streaked white and blue, like the color of the electricity lifting off of her exposed flesh. A snowy white tail, thick at the middle and thinner at the tip, brushed at the floors, raised for a moment, and then dropped tiredly.

  Her power was immense, I felt it physically snap through the air like a strong current, and as the two women brought the blond forward, it overcame me like a massive wave.

  “She even named herself!” Daisy grinned. “We brought her out of Charles’ machine, did the examination, and she remembered part of her past life!”

  “What is it?” a monster-girl from behind me cried.

  “She said that she want
ed to keep her name from when she was a human,” Valerie nodded. “So, everyone, Charles, meet Edony!”

  Edony.

  The name echoed in my head for a moment, bouncing off the walls of my brain, and when it finally settled in, the realization hit me. The Duchess, Edony, I’d finally transformed her into a monster-girl just as I had planned.

  The woman held between Daisy and Valerie rolled her head forward, opened her eyes, blinked once, and then settled her violet gaze on my shocked face.

  I roared forward with a gasping breath, blinked once, and then turned my head as I realized I wasn’t in the drawing-room anymore. I was nestled in the blankets of my bed upstairs in the comfort of my manor. The two monster-women I’d just seen laid on each side of me.

  A dream?

  Was it all a dream? I hadn’t created all of those monster-women? It was almost a relief, but… all of them had been so beautiful and were made from so many fantastic beasts. It almost made me excited for the future… or would this be my future? I already knew that I intended to turn the Duchess into a monster-girl, but I didn’t know precisely when or how, and I wouldn’t let it happen until I had a full house of other creations wandering around.

  “What’s wrong?” Valerie mumbled, kept her eyes closed, rolled over, and snuggled closer to me. “You were twitching in your sleep, did you have a bad dream?”

  “No.” I murmured. “I wouldn’t call it a bad dream… but it was definitely startling.”

  “I was dreaming about those elderflower crumpets,” Daisy sighed as she laid her head on my chest and fluttered her eyes open. “Drizzled in thick honey, slathered in honey… with honey-comb pressed in between them.”

  The bear-girl licked her lips, smacked them, grinned, and then gazed up into my face. I gazed between the two of them as each woman pressed themselves closer into my sides and felt warmth swell in my heart.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” the ash-blonde cat-girl asked. “Maybe it’ll help you think clearer about it.”

  “The house was filled with monster-girls,” I chuckled.

  “Isn’t that what we want, though?” the feline-woman asked as she sat up.

  “Yes, but this was different.” I exhaled. “A.B. was there too, but he had a body. I should’ve realized it was a dream then, I never knew what he looked like when he had one.”

  “But were we there, too?” Daisy muttered.

  “Yes,” I exhaled. “You two were bringing in our newest monster-girl.”

  “Oooooo,” the cat-girl simpered. “This is exciting! What was she like? Was she pretty? What kind of creature did we use for her?”

  “I’m not sure,” I breathed, threw off the blankets, stood, and crossed the room toward my dresser. “Maybe some type of wolf… but with electricity or electricity is part of her power… but if it were her power, it wouldn’t have manifested yet.”

  “A wolf… with electricity…” Valerie repeated. “I’m sad that we had to make a wolf because dogs are mean to cats, but I’m sure if she’s my sister, she won’t be mean to Daisy or me.”

  Valerie tapped her chin, leaped up on top of my four-poster bed, laid out across the heavy beam, and twitched her tail languidly.

  “Hmmmm,” Daisy murmured. “Maybe a raiju?”

  “A what?” I questioned over my shoulder, pulled on a neatly pressed white shirt, and buttoned up the front. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “A raiju is a type of wolf that harnesses the power of electricity,” the brunette explained.

  Daisy slowly scooted herself to the edge of the bed, hung her legs off the side, dropped to the floor, and then searched underneath for a moment.

  “I love your tail, Daisy,” the ash-blonde woman giggled from her position. “It doesn’t even look like a tail, it’s just like an itty-bitty tuft of fur right above your panties. So cute!”

  “My tail is vestigial,” the bear-girl answered from underneath the bed frame.

  “It’s what?” The feline woman wrinkled her nose.

  “Vestigial,” I reiterated. “Forming a tiny remnant of something that was once much larger or more noticeable.”

  “Bears used to have longer tails hundreds of years ago,” the brunette went on. “But over time, we no longer needed it, and bears’ bodies changed.”

  “Very good, Daisy,” I chuckled. “But how do you know all of this? What are you doing underneath the bed?”

  “I learned it from these,” the bear-girl lifted up three books from underneath the bed, tossed them onto the comforter, and then slid up next to them. “Chronicle of Beasts, Land Animals and Their Anatomy, and finally, Edenhart’s Creatures, Fauna, and Flora. I found them in one of the rooms, it looks to be something like a library. I hope you don’t mind that I took them, Charles, I figured that if we’re going to go looking for beasts, I should know a little about them before we capture them.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” I nodded. “And I don’t mind that you took them, everything in the manor is yours to use.”

  “Even you, Chaaaarles?” Valerie purred, stroked my shoulder with her tail, giggled, and jumped down from the four-poster.

  “Uhm, well, yes,” I coughed. “But that’s beside the point. You can have or use everything in the manor that you want.”

  I slipped into a dark pair of trousers, zipped and buttoned them, and then came to stand in front of one of the windows. The sun shone over the manor, and in the distance, I could just make out the tops of the houses below in Edenhart. The town was so close, and yet, so far away, which was one of the many appeals of the manor. I was close enough to the city to ride in, get my supplies, and hurry back, but far enough away that I didn’t have neighbors or other aristocrats nearby.

  If I squinted against the bright morning sun, I could make out the looming shape of the Duchess’ duchy. The house was massive, so there was no missing it, but I couldn’t make out any of the details or even the long, tree-lined drive. All these thoughts brought me back to one thing… the Duchess.

  When she threatened me in the jail cell, it hadn’t been like all the other times before. When she’d contracted me for the project, her intimidations seemed almost half-hearted and flat, except for the few times that she’d gripped me with the hook of her vile cane. Before she’d never activated her power in front of me as a form of intimidation, she’d merely used her words, but this time… it’d been so much different.

  I’d felt the surge of her power through the air, felt it bite at the exposed parts of my skin, and I didn’t even want to begin to imagine what it’d feel like to receive the full brunt of her attack. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been delighted, on the verge of parading me out to my death, and then it all came crashing down once the constables informed her they’d found the bodies of the Warden and Delphine.

  “What’s wrong?” Daisy asked, pressed a hand to my shoulder, and turned me toward the two of them. “You looked pained, what were you thinking about just now?”

  “The Duchess,” I sighed. “The last time I saw her, she was on the verge of killing me.”

  “She can’t do that.” Valerie shook her head. “You’re innocent. She can’t kill you unless she wants to go directly against the constables and their laws.”

  “The Duchess can do whatever she wants, just as before,” I stated. “The constables can’t do much when the Chief Constable came directly from the capital and backs everything Edony says.”

  “We could just--” The ash-blonde woman started, but I cut her off with a shake of my head and a chuckle.

  “We can’t kill both of them,” I snorted. “That’s out of the question. I tentatively agreed to the Duchess because she’s our biggest threat, and she could kill me in hundreds of different ways, but we can’t kill the Chief Constable, too. Ortensia is linked to the capital and, therefore, linked to the Queen herself, she’s almost as important as Edony.”

  “It’s just a suggestion,” the feline-woman giggled. “It would solve a lot of our problems, no Du
chess or Chief Constable, two new sisters, and no more death threats!”

  “Yes, that’s true,” I nodded. “But it’d also cause more issues for us. For one, if both of them go missing, who are they going to blame for their disappearances? The man who wronged the Duchess, was jailed shortly after for the murder of Delphine Vallantine, and then was released to the displeasure of Edony. Me… it’s me, I’m the one they’ll immediately pin it on.”

  “You’re right, Charles.” Valerie said. “But we could plan it out, you know? Stagger them, so no one will suspect that it’s you? Come up with plots as we did with Delphine and the Warden?”

  “Let’s stick with the Duchess for now, alright?” I smiled, offered the two of them my hands, and then brought them out of the room.

  The three of us tramped down the stairs, and Daisy was the first to break away from our group. The brunette turned at the last second, hurried down the hall of suits of armor, and raced into the kitchen.

  “Must be hungry,” Valerie giggled. “I might grab something to eat, too.”

  “Okay,” I smiled. “I’m going to go down to my laboratory. A.B.’s been in the cleansing tank for long enough, I’m going to transfer him back to his jar and then maybe work on my machine for a bit longer.”

  “Alright, Charles,” the feline-woman grinned. “We’ll be down once we have something to eat.”

  “Take your time,” I nodded, gripped the handle in my palm, and opened the door.

  I stepped down the first few stairs, breathed in the fresh, late summer air, leaned my head back, and exhaled softly. It was a beautiful day, and once I finished placing A.B. into his tank, I entertained the idea of taking the girls out for a picnic deep in the woods.

  My boots crunched down on the gravel, I turned toward the stairs at the side of the house, and then stopped at a familiar sound. The blaring alarm from down in the laboratory… someone had entered onto my property once again. I grunted under my breath, came around to the steps, gazed down toward the open gate, and then curled my hands into tight fists at my sides.

  The first carriage was none other than the Duchess’, there was no way to miss it, and the second, a much larger, dark brown carriage which I didn’t recognize. They raced up the drive and only stopped when they parked directly in front of the stairs.