Her dreams were twisted and broken like they usually were; knarled and warped until it was impossible to know what was real and what wasn’t. But then she loved dreaming and if she could she would prefer to just sleep and never wake up but that just wasn’t an option. In this place she was in control, always in control and no one could take that control away from her because unlike other people she did control her subconscious in this space. In this space she was Goddess.
In this place she dreamed that she was normal, just like everyone else and just another face in the crowd. Completely oblivious to the world that she’d fallen into and no one knew just what she was except some faces. Some faces looked at her with recognition and somehow she knew their names from just their faces without ever having met them before in the world of the waking. She knew a few intimately in that world, friends and companions, and then there was Nikki.
She liked Nikki Bastian a lot more than the other faces that she saw in this world, to say that Nikki was her favorite was like saying that stupid questions were annoying, redundant and pointless because it was the truth. She’d spoken to Nikki in that other world and learned more about her through genuine listening than through other less conventional means.
However, unlike humans she knew exactly what dreaming was, the subconscious mind was interconnected with the other worlds that existed parallel to one another because no matter how one looked at a plane the same thing interconnected them. A power that was primal and feral, dangerous and wild, beautiful and magnificent, the power that sustained existence that people tried to pass off as God. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t but she did know that it was pure energy that it was possible to tap it was where all magic originated and was life itself not magic?
When someone dreamed they were actually subconsciously moving a copy of themselves how they were or as they wished to be to another world and interacting there. Some worlds were horrible, some beautiful and some so the same that someone wasn’t aware that it was a different place at all. That was the magic of dreaming, you never remembered how you got there you simply were and only when you wake up do you realize that something was wrong in the first place.
Those aware of this exchange could tap it and use it to their own advantage, people like her used it to converse with others from other worlds unless you got stuck in The In-Between. The In-Between was a horrible grey desert with absolutely nothing; room temperature, thick dry mist or fog always obscured anything within three meters of your current location with no sun or moon or stars or even clouds. It was an endless grey where occasional skeletons could be found of those who were consumed because unlike in other dreams if you died here you would be honestly and truly dead.
At the heart of The In-Between lay The Labyrinth and in the enormous worlds long maze lay every creature of evil and every monster imaginable; they said just thinking of some creature could make it manifest and turn it into a flesh eater. The entrances of The Labyrinth always changed, openings and exits always forming and reforming in odd places at random angles and changes. It was like being in that movie The Cube different parts of The Labyrinth changed at random intervals and unless you had been trapped within for centuries you wouldn’t know how to navigate this space.
She knew how to navigate this space, the energy changed and wavered near exits and monsters changing walls different colors to anyone who could see auras and that happened to be her gift. She’d visited The Labyrinth and The In-Between many a time in the past and never had she been compelled to journey to the heart of that world. Never had she been tempted to do what so many had tried in the past, to move towards the seductive lure of power within because deep in her heart she knew that somewhere within lay her death. Even if she avoided the monsters and demons inside whatever lay at the heart would be the end.
But she’d been dreaming recently of The Labyrinth and she knew it was just a dream, images through another’s mind because she was an observer sitting above the person she could never see clearly. Some of the creatures could see her and would look at her and move to attack her but their claws or teeth or hands or weapons would pass through her like fog.
It was one night such as this that she saw the Minotaur, she’d known that they existed and were different from bull shifters but she had never seen one. He emerged from the smoke like the demon he was appearing to be darkness grafted together that had had life breathed into it.
Heavily muscled and obviously strong he stood at least eight and a half feet tall with shoulders broader than most compact cars widths. Hulking and powerful he slammed a hand larger than her face into the grey slate wall and it crumbled under the impact, he turned that odd mix of human and bull face to her and fixed pure jet eyes on her flickering the dull blue torch light from one of the sconces that lit the network up.
His mouth opened and she saw the three rows of shark-like teeth in his mouth and the blood still staining them from his last victim. It was only then that she saw the heaviness the fur of his face, the ebony fur drenched in blood all the way down the sinew of his chest and torso, down his thighs bigger around than her entire body, down to stain the floor beneath heavy cloven hooves.
She briefly registered that he was wearing a loin cloth and nothing else before her eyes snapped up to the dangerous half of him, as she snapped back to attention he whipped a hand out and with a speed and grace that shouldn’t exist in a creature so big he’d seized her around the waist and jerked her to his chest.
Eyes widening in horror that this creature could touch her and that she was so close to a Minotaur she prayed to the Goddess that this wouldn’t be her end staring into those eyes. He hefted her closer to him and moved her up until she was eye level with one of his massive horns. As black as the rest of him and as polished as silver they were drenched in blood and gore that was now running from the non-stick surface of his horns down the back of his head and to the floor. The elegant curve of his thorns twisted into a wicked point and she judged that the horn must’ve been bigger around than her thigh and she would’ve judged more but a roar sounded from somewhere deeper.
The Minotaur whipped his head around and then forward before throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and running away from the sound. His feet clattered loudly on the ground and he built up such a speed that she was dizzy and nauseous from it; she closed her eyes tight and clenched her teeth in an effort to calm her stomach from the grey and blue and black swirls of color that she could see even through closed eye lids. The bulk of his shoulder pressed hard enough into the space just below her ribs that it ached and with every step he took pain exploded just there radiating from the contact point through her abs and legs.
If he ever let her down she wouldn’t be able to run away from him and maybe that was the point; the roar sounded closer now so close that it rang in her mind making it go perfectly blank at the sensation so she didn’t notice until it had already happened that the Minotaur had set her down on her feet with the care one would set down a child. He pushed her further down the corridor gently and gave her a look that said obviously. “You need to leave, now.”
The noise from her alarm clock snapped her backwards into her bed and she’d woken up that morning with a groan of pain. Scrambling to turn the evil little machine off she slammed her hand down hard on the ‘off’ button and ripped her shirt up over her body to examine the sharp stinging sensation.
Sure enough, an enormous bruise had formed from where she’d been thrown over the Minotaur’s shoulder and evident finger prints from where he’d picked her up from around the waist and evidently put down. ‘Shit’ she’d cursed and lay back in bed wondering how she’d explain a skateboarding accident that would cover this.
The second time she saw the Minotaur he appeared to be even bigger and bloodier but this time she could make out the darkness welling from places beneath the fur. He’d fought with something, something dangerous and seemed to have only just managed to battle it back.
Once again he reached down with a brutal hand to snatch her up with a quick strength she knew was positively gentle compared to what he could do. There was no doubt in her mind that if he wanted to he could crush her pelvis with his bare hand and there wouldn’t be a damned thing she could do about it. Even if her powers worked in The Labyrinth there was no guarantee that they would work on him or that they would do damage or if they would only succeed in pissing him off.
Minotaurs were well known for their strength, intelligence, and quick temper; you did not piss of a Minotaur if you didn’t want to die a brutal and bloody death at the horns and teeth of this monster. And it didn’t help that they were flesh eaters and they didn’t care if their meat was still kicking when they started taking bites out of it.
“What do you want?” she asked cautiously, she knew that Minotaurs could speak and understand speech but if he understood English wasn’t clear for all she knew he only spoke Ancient Greek or something.
“You.” His voice was a low snarly roaring sound that was disconcerting. You didn’t expect for something so big with horns and a mouth shaped like that with that many teeth to be able to speak and to here it speak almost hurt her ears being so closer. She flinched at the noise and his voice dropped in volume. “I want you.”
“Why do you want me?” she asked startled. “If you don’t mind me asking.” She quickly amended hoping to stay on its good side very few monsters, because that was what a Minotaur was a monster by its very classification, talked to its food before it ate it. They tended to get attached to things that they spoke to.
She touched the bigger man and frowned softly at the softness of his fur as he spoke again. “Because you are salvation little one.” His other hand slid up her back and tore away her shirt to trace a shape between her shoulder blades, the almost feather light touch sent shivers up and down her spine and forced an involuntary shudder from her. “You can free me from this hell but it wants to get out.”
The walls trembled and he set her down bringing what was left of her shirt to his nose to inhale deeply her scent, the roar came and the closeness of it rocked the stones around her. Clamping both hands over her ears in an attempt to protect her hearing the teenager stumbled sideways and collided with the wall and instead of meeting solid resistance she fell through and was followed quite suddenly by the Minotaur.
The daunting corridor vanished into the light fog and she realized that they were near an edge, an edge of The In-Between and that meant that she was letting this monster out into the real world. If he were to take her outside like this- the hand came down and she shrieked, batting him away.
“No, you mustn’t.” she protested loudly as a combination of distress and fear shattered her glamour into a thousand different pieces that were visible to the supernatural as they hit the ground and disappeared like paper into fire. Pure white hair fell into her face as she grabbed at it, the instant kick back of both her greatest ability blowing to a thousand white hot pieces and the fact that she was so near an exit.
If he carried her out of this place she would die, both the part of her mind that lingered here and her physical body in her bed at home. Her back arched as pain exploded up and down her spine doubling her over in the sand, her attempts to avoid the Minotaur’s grasp had taken her closer to the exit. Her hands moved from her ears to her head as she reared back onto her knees and scream as what felt like a star going supernova in her head ate the world and everything in it.
Officer Novek was a member of the PART (Preternatural Attack and Response Team) and a proud member as well, born and raised wiccan he’d actually held some magical ability which in turn was the reason that he even made it on the exclusive team. He was the only true human on the team when he thought about it everyone else was either a shifter or some other kind of creature stronger and faster than he was. So when he was called out to check on a tip given by a good citizen that a gang of shifters was planning to start a party in one of the warehouses across town he was given the go ahead.
He couldn’t have known that the rudimentary call wasn’t something anyone could’ve expected.
Unlike other police officers the secretary was the only member of PART that worked when there wasn’t a job to be done, they weren’t a normal police force so they didn’t follow normal rules. He ran his fingers through his short sandy brown goatee and sighed turning rich chocolate eyes on his wife as he finished strapping on what looked like a SWAT Raid Suit on.
“Baby,” he said softly as he crossed the small nursery that his wife had been in skimming a How-To book on taking care of infants, she looked up at him and smiled softly as he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss on her cheek, “I’ll be seeing the both of you soon.” His hand trailed affectionately over her distended belly full with her pregnancy before turning and heading outside to the waiting van.
She ran around yet another crate cursing herself for coming down to this party anyway and felt hot breath on her neck accompanied by a reverberating bellow, she froze, the other party goers froze, and the police froze. The people in the court yard started backing up, pointing and screaming, the gang that had hosted the party had turned their guns on whatever the hell it was.
The bellow came again, louder this time and the gang members started backing up, what in the name of hell could make a shape shifter back up. Unfortunately enough she didn’t get a chance to see what it was but the brutal hand that came down to grab her about the neck and hoist her into the air told her more than enough even if she didn’t see the beast before an enormous mouth grabbed around her waist and shark like teeth ripped her in half.
Novek’s eyes bugged in his belief as he stared at the colossal Minotaur; it was all of eight feet tall, bipedal, broad shouldered, heavy muscled and black as pitch from tip to tail. The eyes were black on black, above an ebony furred face, curving horns as thick around as he was rose above its skull arcing into wicked points. It took a step forward with heavy cloven hooves and roared again.
He prayed silently to the goddess as the beast lowered its head to charge and steadied himself for his death.
“Wednesday on the South Side a local gang of shape shifters throws a party that ends in tragedy. What started as a simple party thrown in a privately owned and regulated warehouse turned to horror when a member of a shifter hate organization calls in illegal activity and a gun fight starts in a court yard. The surviving party goers say that the night got even worse when a Minotaur showed up…”
How could people even stand to watch the news, it was depressing. Almost depressing as the fact that she couldn’t go anywhere and touch anyone without risk of getting to know someone a little too well by just touching them… that was a bad idea. “You haven’t been sleeping,” it wasn’t a question it was as statement like ‘the sky is blue’. “And you haven’t been eating either.”
Although she didn’t know how she managed it but she bit her tongue to keep from smarting off to her mother, it was never a good thing. She had been sleeping but she woke up just as tired as she’d been before she’d fallen asleep so to defeat the pointlessness she just kept her mouth shut. After all that had never gotten her into trouble before now, why should it backfire this time?
She hated how astute that her mother was sometimes and wished that sometimes the older woman would turn a blind eye on her. But then she was the middle child, the only one without a twin, and the only girl that the millennia old faerie had produced so all the hoping and praying in the world wasn’t going to get that to happen. Also, she was the only person in the house that wasn’t freakishly tall… and the only person in the house save her mother that had any skill with glamour.
To most of the world she was an average sized high school girl weirdo who didn’t really fit in with everyone and whom the world thought was Epileptic and prone to seizures at times. She was the kid who had crystalline eyes that changed colors depending on the light, had a tendency to whisper to keep quiet, hide behind her two older brothers and who was defended constantly by her younger brothers for some unknown reason.
That wasn’t the truth, the truth was that she was… more not human than not normal but that wasn’t something that was easily explained to the general populace so… she was just that kid.
“Neither have you.” She shot back at her mother, far too irritated with the tall woman to let on, “But then you’re a six foot five faerie of the Unseelie Court, you don’t have to eat or sleep.”
“Vivian, I-“ she started but was promptly cut off by her daughter.
“I’ve got to go. See you later mom.”