CHAPTER 51

"My dad decided that he and my mom were going to set traps and try to take them out. They were kind of like the Nirumbi, only a bit bigger. The one thing they had that the Nirumbi didn't was sheer numbers. My parents killed almost a hundred of them in a week, yet they just kept coming. The yard was riddled with spears and flintknap weapons. Goblins are notoriously difficult to kill."

"I'm aware," Mike replied. "The one I live with, Tink, has had a bunch of close calls. Almost eaten by a Jabberwock once."

"A Jabberwock? Like from Wonderland?"

"That's a long story of my own, but yes." Mike grinned.

"My dad shot a goblin in the head once. Almost point blank." She tapped her forehead. "It broke the skin, but that was it. It tried to bite him, so he put the gun in its mouth and pulled the trigger. That finally did the trick. Guns didn't work very well, but my sword and the traps did. Log traps, boulder traps, you name it. Well, that, and my mom was strong enough to snap their necks if she could get her hands on one. My parents finally got desperate enough that they tried poison. They started with rat poison and worked their way up to something my dad learned about in the military. Uncle Foot was gone almost a week trying to find us a barrel of the stuff. Guess what we learned?"

"Tell me." There was excitement in his eyes.

"Goblins are immune to poison. There's actually a part of the forest we aren't supposed to go to anymore, because my parents found a way to aerosolize the stuff in the barrel. Killed a bunch of vegetation." She smiled, thinking of her parents working together. The two of them had been an amazing team, but their ruthlessness when it came to their daughter's safety had been on another level.

"So how did they do it? End the goblin wars?"

"I'm not entirely sure." Bigfoot had taken her and Eulalie to a cave hidden deep in the woods, with instructions to remain inside until he or their parents returned. "I do know that they found a way to drive the goblins back into their cave, but that's it. My parents would never tell me what happened, and we knew better than to ask. They did tell me that the goblins were gone for good, so I can only assume they killed them."

Mike frowned. "Seems a bit extreme, but the only goblin I've met is Tink. She's nothing short of amazing."

To hear him refer to a creature like a goblin as anything other than disgusting awakened all sorts of feelings inside of Velvet. Would he ever see her as something other than an eight-legged freak? She was perfectly aware that he had a touch of arachnophobia, she could smell his fear when they had first met. That scent had already disappeared, and she wondered if it had to do with the other night when he had touched her.

She thought about the strange moment they had shared. A sexual current had run through her whole body, and it had taken everything in her power to keep her hands off of him. If she hadn't heard the gargoyle's arrival, she didn't know what would have happened.

"The house sounds interesting. Dana told me about your spat with the fairy queen. And did you really tame Cerberus? How did you manage that?"

His cheeks turned red. "Quite by accident. Yuki cast the wrong spell on Cerberus and..." he waved his hands around as if trying to come up with more words, but failed. A yawn escaped his lips, and he rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, I promise that you aren't boring. Just need sleep. I'm only a weak human after all."

I don't think that, she thought. "Have a good night, then."

"You, too." He gave her a little wave and then disappeared around the corner. She waited a minute for him to come back, but it wasn't meant to be.

The tree line was almost a hundred feet from the cabin, but she reached it in moments. Hidden in the darkness of the pines, she pulled out the shot glass in her front pocket and examined it.

It was Mike's semen. Preserved for Dana as a means of keeping her sane, it contained his viable sperm. Spittle had formed in the corners of her mouth as she pried the cap off, her brain no longer in control of her limbs. She inhaled its scent, and her human eyes rolled up into her head.

Synapses that had never fired before lit up her brain, and she saw flashes of children. They were all daughters, but had Mike's hair and his goofy grin. She saw dozens of them, each one a possibility. Some were lifting giant stones while others built intricate webs. It was like standing in the middle of a storm, but each blast of lightning was illuminating the future.

"Oh gods," she muttered, then held the cup to her mouth and sucked down the contents. The cool liquid warmed her belly, and the flashes intensified. Some offspring moved with lethal grace, others struck from the shadows. His children would be powerful, their combined biology a perfect match.

Her mind focused on a little girl who looked different than the rest. Her hair was willowy and twisted about in the wind. She looked up at Velvet with deep brown eyes that were a mirror image of her own father.

She gasped, the shot glass forgotten as it fell and landed in the snow. The image was gone, and she had to see this girl again. Would her child have her father's humanity, or her mother's ruthlessness? Without hesitation, she removed the lid of the next shot glass and slammed its contents.

The images came anew, but now she saw the girl standing over a fresh kill. It was a brown bear, and she was sinking her fangs into it. Now the girl was climbing a tree without making a sound. Now she was—

Gone. Blinking rapidly, Velvet hurried to drink the next one. Several minutes passed as she contemplated this mystery child, an ethereal being that reminded her of both Mike and her father. Her heart swelled with pride to see her standing defiantly above a giant chasm with a meticulous web built beneath her.