CHAPTER#50

"Mike." Naia was by his side, her hand on his wrist. "Get her in the water."

Beth's eyes were focused on Mike, her hands clenching and unclenching. She stepped into the fountain, moving toward Mike and Naia. Tiny spheres of water rose into the air, circling the homunculus like angry birds. Beth swatted them away, causing large chunks of flesh to vanish into the magical swirling orbs.

"Hold on to me," Naia said, throwing her arms around Mike. Already, he could feel the swirling current on his legs, threatening to suck him under. He held her tightly, the waters of the fountain churning around them, forming a large vortex. Beth's body thinned away, the water quickly sucking away her sandy exterior. She fell apart like a sand castle blasted by ocean waves, vanishing beneath the surface. The brackish water swirled violently around them, Beth's hands attempting several times to reform at the edges of the fountain only to be swept up once more.

"What are you doing?" Mike asked, his shoes and socks ripped free of his feet.

"Getting rid of the trash," Naia said, her eyes flashing. A large watery orb began to form at the fountain's edge, the spinning waters pulling the contents of the fountain into the air. A set of hands tried to form again, emerging briefly from the sphere, but they were quickly sucked back in. A large, sandy face formed inside of the water, opening its sandy maw to scream silently at them.

"Holy shit," Mike said, watching the sphere float out over the back porch. A thin stream of water blasted itself into one of the nearby drains, and the high-pressure water forced the remains of the homunculus into the small vent in the ground. The drain backed up, the sand trying once more to form a human, but Naia was ready. She forced even more water down the drain, emptying her fountain and getting rid of the homunculus.

"That should buy us plenty of time," Naia told him, staring at the drain. Zel reappeared, holding a large potted plant she had grabbed from the side of the house. She set it carefully over the drain, plugging it from above.

"Is it gone?" Mike asked.

"Nope. It's in the sewer system now. Will probably clog up a waste treatment plant before coming back later." Naia let out a sigh. "It was the only thing I could think of doing."

"Well, it was better than anything I had planned." He kissed her lightly on the lips. "Thanks for saving me."

Naia beamed. "Of course, lover. But the question you should be asking yourself right now is this: if someone made a homunculus that looks like Beth, what happened to Beth?"

The implication hit Mike in the chest like a truck, and he opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by the sound of screeching tires and splintering wood.

-

The stolen car slid sideways on the street, and Beth let out another scream, clutching the door handle for dear life. The ride to Mike's house from Beth's apartment had been an utter nightmare, with Lily dodging through traffic, taking a side street to avoid a cop that Beth never saw, all the while filling Beth in on a tale that was too fantastical to make any sort of sense.

Apparently, monsters were real, and lived among mankind. That much she got, and for whatever reason, Mike's home was full of them. Beth had been inside the home dozens of times over the last year, and had never once spotted any sign of life. Every neuron in her brain told her to run from Lily the first chance she got, to flee the city and seek refuge somewhere where Lily, Mike, or even the Historical Preservation Society could never find her.

However, she had just escaped a mirror world, watched Lily grow a tail to shatter a window, and was currently screaming at the top of her lungs as Lily forced the car to slide sideways through an intersection, traffic narrowly missing them on both sides. One of the side mirrors was gone when Lily straightened the vehicle out, shards of metal and plastic dangling from the car door.

"How?" It was all Beth could say, her heart beating so fast that she had one hand firmly planted on her own sternum. She was riding a rollercoaster of adrenaline, and her brain was officially numb.

"I have supernatural reflexes," Lily answered with a smirk, taking the car onto the sidewalk and through a park. It was early enough that they crossed the large field with no trouble, the tires screeching when they met back up with pavement on the other side. Beth could see the long trail of mud streaked on the road behind them.

They were in the old part of town, steadily climbing the hill to where the Radley house awaited them. She could see its familiar turrets, make out the large stone walls at the end of the street. The neighbors rarely asked questions about the house, and it suddenly occurred to Beth that it was strange that they had never once dropped by, even out of curiosity. She knew she would have.

"Almost there," Lily told her, yanking the wheel and making the car drift. The stone lions on top of the entryway stared stoically at the sky, and Lily pushed the pedal to the metal, the tires of the car screeching as they jumped the curb and climbed the sidewalk.

"There's a driveway!" Beth yelled, suddenly aware of the two figures standing in front of the house. A black woman in a white outfit and Sebastien, the Society's attorney. The black woman turned to look at them, mouth open in surprise. The woman ran across the yard, something long and thick trailing behind her, taking refuge behind some bushes. Sebastien, however, tried to limp out of the way before Lily adjusted the car's trajectory, slamming the car into the man and sending him flying. Patches of dirt and grass flew into the air as the car spun out of control, slamming into the front porch. Beth's face met the airbag that had deployed, and her entire world was suddenly a narrow tunnel of black.