Making Monster Girls 3: For Science! Page 18

  “No, no, no,” I shook my head. “She couldn’t have… Why did she take it from him? Why wasn’t her own drink good enough for her?”

  I lifted my eyes back toward Edony, the blonde stared down at the flute in her hands with disgust, smacked her lips, gasped at the bitter taste, and then slammed the glass down on a nearby table. The Duchess’ lips opened, she spoke in a hushed frenzy, her eyes widened, she slapped her hands over her mouth, but her hands shook as she continued to speak in a rush. I wasn’t sure what she said to Lucien, but the scientist’s eyes bulged out of their sockets, the sip of champagne he held in his mouth spewed out onto the floor, his mouth opened, and words I couldn’t hear poured out.

  “My goodness,” Valerie gasped. “They’re just over there telling each other their deepest and darkest secrets! Phooey, why couldn’t we have chosen a spot a bit closer? I want to hear all of the juicy gossip.”

  “You really like gossip that much?” Rian asked.

  “Of course, I do!” the feline-woman cried. “I may not be an aristocratic lady in society, but I like hearing everyone’s juicy secrets. Oh, can you imagine the secrets that Edony has to tell? They’re probably so, so good!”

  “I have to go now,” I breathed. “I’m… I’m just going to have to take Edony with us…”

  “That’s a good idea, Charles,” Daisy agreed. “I’m not sure why we didn’t think of it earlier. You’ll get more information out of Edony than anyone, and having them together… they’ll tell you their whole plan. You have to know that Edony is keeping something from Lucien. She did the exact same thing with you, and she has to be leaving out key information on his side.”

  “Good luck, Charles,” the feline-woman urged. “You can do it, we believe in you!”

  “What Valerie said, Charles,” Daisy sighed. “But please, be safe. If anything dangerous happens, and we’re not around…”

  “I’ll be safe, I promise,” I grunted.

  “Now, hurry back to us.” Rian giggled.

  “Alright,” I breathed. “Enjoy the rest of the party while I’m gone. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  I smiled at each of my women, nodded once, turned on my heels, and maneuvered my way through the crowd. No one seemed to notice me as I brushed past, and I wanted to keep it that way. If someone saw me sneaking away with Lucien and Edony in tow, it’d all be over. I kept my head low as I approached the two figures on the other side of the room, but I swept my eyes toward the crowd on each side of me. No one seemed to notice, I was nothing more than a useless, stupid, passing consort, and for the moment, I wanted to keep it that way.

  In a way, it made me feel powerful. I’d mastered the ability to take and spare people’s lives, but in front of the aristocrats, I was utterly invisible. I could slip past them with none of them noticing, curl through the shadows shifting on the floorboards, sneak silently around corners, and disappear off into the night without a single peep.

  Deeper in the throng, I spied Josephine, Kelara, and a few other aristocrats I didn’t recognize. The strange turban-wearing woman clung onto the blonde, Josephine pulled away with a scoff, but Kelara clamped down on her arm a second time. I felt sorry for the heiress, but there was nothing I could do for her right now, I had other important things I needed to attend to.

  I exited the crowd, glanced over my shoulders, straightened up a little bit, and then raised my chin. My eyes connected immediately with Edony’s violet gaze, but the color in her eyes seemed softer as if the truth serum had soothed her vicious personality somehow. Just as suddenly, her expression hardened, her eyes narrowed on my features, her lips began to move, and the Duchess clamped her hands down over her mouth out of desperation. Muffled words fought against her fingers, her eyes widened, and I spied tears forming in the corners of her eyes from the strain of fighting to keep all of her words in.

  “Charles,” Edony gulped, gasped loudly, retched, and then covered her mouth again with her hands. “Raaaaybuuuurn.”

  Both Lucien and Edony seemed a little dazed, though still cognitive, and that relieved me a bit. Despite that, Edony seemed a bit more alert than Lucien, the poor man was slumped against the wall, his eyes half-closed, a string of long sentences slurring from his swollen lips. I wouldn’t have to drag them both out of the ballroom completely unconscious, I came around the Duchess and Lucien, rested my palms against the middle of their backs, and then steered them toward the door.

  Lucien and Edony complied, their feet moving sluggishly, and I kept my eyes trained toward the crowd of aristocrats just in case they saw us. No one seemed to be paying much attention, not to the Duchess, at least, this wasn’t her party, after all. Yes, the Duchess was the most important person in the city, but this was the first social outing of the fall season, and the other aristocrats were distracted with the sudden appearance of the strange and unusual Kelara.

  The faster I pushed, the more muffled words exploded out of the cracks of Edony’s fingers. I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say, and I could only make out a few of the words, but it was clear to me that my truth serum had worked wonderfully. Once we reached the doors, I glanced over my shoulder once more, gripped the handle, ripped it open, and pushed the two of them out into the empty hall.

  My breaths came out in loud gasps, my heart hammered in my chest, sweat beaded on my forehead, but I’d never felt so exhilarated in my life. I was pulling all of this off right under the noses of a bunch of powerful and threatening aristocrats. Not only that, but I essentially tranquilized the most dangerous one of all, the Duchess. The blonde aristocrat glanced over her shoulder at me, her violet eyes were hazy as if she’d been up for a very long time, but her movements were still alert as ever.

  “This way,” I urged, replaced my hands on their backs, and pushed them toward the end of the hall. “We’re almost there.”

  Lucien’s slow-moving lips snapped to life, his head turned in my direction, and his eyes stabbed into mine.

  “I respect you as a scientist!” the blond man shouted. “You are brilliant! I can’t fathom how you took on a task like this! You are more talented and handsome than I will ever be! I look up to you! Your hair looks very nice pushed back like that! But it looks nice the way you had it the other day, too! I debated on growing my hair out like yours because I admire you so much!”

  “S… Sh… Shut… u-up… Lu… Lucien…” Edony forced out through her clenched teeth.

  I paused for a moment, blinked, and then pushed forward with a loud peal of laughter. I’d accidentally fed both of them truth serum, but I certainly hadn’t expected to hear that from the scientist. Though I was a bit concerned that Edony was able to speak something that wasn’t the truth, I was sure that the full force of the truth serum would kick in soon because she’d taken a bigger drink than the scientist.

  I found a room at the end of the wall, whipped open the door, and pushed both of them in. I closed the door behind me with a click, leaned against it for a second, took a deep breath, chuckled softly, and then raised my eyes to the Duchess and Lucien.

  “W-W… Wuh… Why?” the blonde gasped. “A-Are y-you d-d-doing this? H-How?”

  “Well, you see,” I chuckled. “I heard from our little friend here that you’re working on something new, and I want to know what it is…”

  “Wh-Why… d-d-do yuh-you… c-care?” Edony hissed.

  “Never mind that,” I snickered, since I knew I just had to keep asking them and the potion would do its job. “What are you building? A machine like mine? Lucien already gave me a hint that you weren’t making super-soldiers anymore. Something to do with embryos. So, what is it?”

  Edony looked on the verge of vomiting, her face tinted green, but she somehow kept her lips firmly clamped together.

  “The augmentation stones wouldn’t work!” Lucien blurted out. “So, I built a machine like yours, but every male patient died a horrible death inside of it! I accidentally used a female patient! It was sent to me by mistake, but that prisoner also died a ho
rrific death in the compartment!”

  So, it was my blood that made the experiment work, or maybe it was the animal combined with my blood.

  “Well?” I grunted. “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “We haven’t started work on the next project!” the scientist shouted. “But we have the blueprints and all of the inner-workings fleshed out!”

  “Go on,” I urged. “Tell me more.”

  “Embryos,” Edony finally spoke. “If we can’t create super-soldiers from my machine, we’ll create them while they’re still embryos.”

  “What…?” I grunted. “You’re going to… what? How?”

  “We’ll harvest viable embryos from the Duchess, use a specialized mechanical enhancer, a few potions an on-hand alchemist made for us, change the embryos until we get the desired result, and then grow them rapidly in a giant incubator. It sounds complicated, it is, but we’ve written down all the steps, built all of the machines, and all we have to do now is extract the eggs from the Duchess.”

  “Are you insane?” I bellowed. “Are you absolutely, utterly insane? Edony, tell me this is a lie? This is… it’s inhumane! How could you do this with a clear conscience? You’re taking what would be your children, morphing them into monsters, and then making them… for what? What are you going to use them for? I still don’t know the answer to that. I have an idea, but I want to hear you say it.”

  “I want to kill the Queen!” Edony snarled, threw back her head, and roared angrily. “I want to take back what my family deserved in the beginning! She stole this land from us! I want it back, no, I need it back! Every step I take, every new path in a different direction for the betterment of Edenhart, the Queen is always standing in my way! Preventing me from making Edenhart a better place! First, it was the city’s council, she hoarded over that, then it was the government of the city, and finally, it was the city’s constables! What will it be next? Will she eliminate my position entirely? My family built this goddamn town, hell, my family built half of the capital! I deserve some respect… I… I deserve more power!”

  “So, what?” I growled. “You’re going to create these grotesque monster-children, take over the capital, kill the Queen, and then what?”

  “I will become Queen!” the Duchess screamed. “I will have the power that my family has strived for for thousands of years! We deserved it, no, I deserve it!”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” I muttered. “But this… this is a new and disgusting low for you, Edony. The death of male prisoners was one thing, but to use your own embryos for monstrous beings? Why would you be that desperate?”

  Edony’s eyes watered for a second as if she were on the verge of tears, her clenched fists shook, but her gaze never left mine for a second.

  “Our experiments could’ve worked, Charles,” Edony breathed. “They could’ve. You are a genius. Think of what we could do together?”

  It was evident in her eyes that she wholly believed that statement to be true, even though I knew it wasn’t. I’d spent hours making modifications to my machine, killed hundreds of men in the compartment, and never saw any results.

  “Edony, you didn’t see how many dead bodies I had piled up in my laboratory,” I uttered. “Your machine would’ve never worked, I understand that you want this done, but your desperation has blinded you to the fact that there’s no way that it could be done. Not only that but the task you’ve given Lucien… not only is it sickening, but it’s also probably impossible. I’m sure even if you were able to make the modifications to the embryos, I doubt they would survive past the second trimester, especially if you’re growing them at such a rapid rate.”

  “We’ve figured that out, too!” Lucien screeched. “We create something like a synthetic umbilical cord, feed them nutrients, more of the potions, and other things to keep them healthy until the moment they’re ‘born.’”

  “Charles, it could’ve worked,” the blonde aristocrat pleaded. “I only needed more time… with you.”

  “What?” I growled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t understand how deeply you hurt me,” Edony bleated. “We worked so closely together, spent hours poring over your notes and sketches of the machine. How could you give all of that up? All of our precious memories together?”

  “Edony,” I grunted. “What the hell are you talking about? Precious memories? Half the time, you were threatening me with death.”

  “Charles, you don’t understand,” the Duchess sobbed. “I was on the verge of confessing. Even though I was wildly angry with you for not finishing my project on time, I was so, so close.”

  “Confession?” I stated. “Tell me what you mean, Edony. Exactly what you mean.”

  “Love, Charles,” Edony wept. “It’s disgusting and revolting, even now as the words slip past my lips, I feel sick. Over time, I began to develop… strange sensations in my lower belly when you were around. There’d be an awful fluttering in my heart, my head gets all dizzy, and… and I get this almost painful, throbbing desire in my loins.”

  “What?” I rumbled. “You… You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious, Charles,” Edony bleated. “Despite my hatred for men and their vile sex, I fell… head over heels in love with you.”

  “What...” I grunted. “Edony, that can’t be… I know you, and you hate men. You have your entire life. There is no way possible that you feel those things for me. I can’t believe it...”

  Everything around tilted and twisted and I struggled to stay on my feet. What in the hell was she spewing? She was in love with me?

  It couldn’t be true… but I had to believe it. The Duchess drank the truth serum just as Lucien did, and there was no possible way she could be lying. Even if she were lying, Edony would never come up with something like that to shock me… It had to be what she truly felt in her heart… She loved me.

  “It’s true, Charles,” the Duchess blurted. “I never thought it could happen, but slowly over time I began to see you in a different light and.. And… I l-l-love you.”

  I stared at her earnestly, examined her tear-stained face, and then sighed out of exasperation. I couldn’t believe it and yet it had to be true, there was no way to deny it anymore. I had to admit, this revelation would open up a few doors for me in the future. Maybe this was the reason that Edony never killed me? She’d always threatened me and avoided hurting me, and she had seemed to be obsessed with me.

  Perhaps it did make a sort of sense.

  Edony’s mouth snapped closed, tears streamed down her cheeks, and she looked even closer to vomiting than she did before.

  I couldn’t deal with the Duchess’ love confession right now. I had more important things I needed to take care of first before I processed what she’d just told me.

  “Edony…” I muttered. “I can’t… How do you expect me to respond to that? It’s so utterly shocking and… unexpected. I never would’ve thought you felt that way… I mean, you tried to evict me from my home, put me in jail, and kill me.”

  “That doesn’t matter now,” the Duchess whimpered. “We can start new! We can wipe the slate clean for both of us!”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I don’t think I can do that… You know what? That’s not what’s important right now.”

  “What is important?” Lucien asked.

  I smirked, lifted my right hand into the arm, curled it into a fist, and then bared down on the both of them.

  “You know, Lucien, for a scientist, you don’t know a lot about politics and rulers,” I scoffed. “Because what your Mistress just did is a crime against her country, a crime punishable by death.”

  “W-What?” the blond man gasped. “How?”

  “Did you not hear me?” I chuckled.. “The Duchess has actively plotted to kill the Queen. She still is to this day. Do you know what that is? That’s treason… As I said, a crime punishable by death… if the word gets back to the Queen and her courts.”

  Chapter Fourtee
n

  Edony’s mouth dropped open and a soft gasp whistled up her throat like a death rattle. Her eyes widened, but just as suddenly, her lips smashed together, her gaze hardened, and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Lucien’s face went deathly pale, his already hazy eyes glossed over even more and shined in the overhead lights. It was clear that he hadn’t realized what they were doing was treason, and if someone found out, he could be prosecuted as an accessory.

  “Isn’t it funny?” I chuckled. “You were always the one hounding me. Constantly breathing down my neck, a real monkey on my back, and yet, here we are… I want to ask; How could you trust Lucien not to tell anyone though? He may be under your patronage, but he still has that information, and if he really wanted to, he could run to the Queen and snitch. How are you keeping this information safe with Lucien?”

  Edony’s lips twisted, her face turned a sickly green, but not a word escaped her lips. I glanced over at Lucien, and the poor man looked as if he were about to burst a blood vessel. His eyes bulged out, the veins in them were bloodshot, and his puffed cheeks flamed scarlet. The scientist grunted, groaned, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “I’m monitored twenty-four seven,” Lucien screamed. “There are strange metal contraptions in my room that I didn’t build. I think they’re listening devices or some sort of mechanical recorder. If I leave the duchy, people follow me, not just servants, but other aristocrats. I tried to confront them, but when I searched for them, they disappeared through the crowd! But that was just the beginning when the Duchess first hired me! Now, I’m locked in my room at eight P.M. sharp, I’m only let out to go to the bathroom, to dinner, or the laboratory, and even then, I’m locked in those rooms, too. The Duchess forced me to craft a tracking device, so she knows where I am at all times.”

  The blond man bent down, lifted his pant leg, and showed me a small, black metal box strapped around his ankle by a steel bracelet. A metal lock jangled from the end, and as I intensely stared at it, a red illumination blinked from inside of it with a soft, almost inaudible beep.