Chapter Twenty-Four

After a little while of just sitting there letting whatever little sunlight that could escape through the leaves hit our skin, making our skin feel nice, and warm, and tingly, and all together, just perfect, we decided that we should probably get on with trying to find the horse, because that is what we came here to do anyway.
Once we stood up, though, there was a pair of unsettling black eyes staring us right in the face. The little odd and funny detective hat stood on its head without falling, and its dazzling white coat made everything else around it seem dull.
We didn’t dare move. We stayed perfectly still, as to not scare it away.
And just as suddenly as this one appeared, a whole gang of perfectly beautiful white horses came from the surrounding foliage and bushes, all wearing their own silly little hat. One of them, for example, was wearing a beanie, and the other one was wearing a red hunting hat. There was one that wore a paper bag on its head, and there was even one that had a cardboard box.
“All right… what the bloody hell is going on?” Luke asked.
The horse right in the front, the one we were chasing for so long, the one with the silly and odd and funny little detective has opened its mouth, and to the giant shock of both me and Luke… it spoke.
“We have finally found you, Lucas Francium,” it said.
I looked up at look in horror, who seemed to have an expression of equal shock on his face.
“It took you long enough to come to our home dimension,” the horse spoke again.
“Okay… in all my years of research, I have never heard of a talking horse before,” Luke said.
The horse then whinnied and stuck its front legs up in the air, shaking its head back and forth to cause the silly and funny and odd little detective hat on its head to fall over.
If possible, I was even more stunned. I swore every loudly at the sight.
A cone shaped, spiraled horn stuck up perfectly from the white horse’s head.
“Ah,” Luke said. “I am so stupid. I see now.”
“Um… Luke?” I said very quietly.
“Yes, Caitlin?”
“Are those… unicorns?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah. Those are unicorns.”
“And, um… unicorns exist?”
“Yeah. They are just more intelligent and more, how do I say this?, genetically different from the average horses you see in your own dimension. But whenever I have ever come to this specific dimension, I have never seen a single unicorn around here.”
“We hide in secret, Lucas Francium,” the unicorn said again. “We are not seen until we want to be seen.”
“Oh, yeah?” Luke said. He seemd to be pretty confident, but then I realized that his voice was trembling just a little bit. “And why have you decided to show yourselves this time, huh?”
The band of unicorns began to laugh.
“You will find out soon enough, Lucas Francium.”
“Um… Luke?” I asked quietly.
“Yes, Caitlin?”
“Why are we afraid of unicorns?” I asked.
“Because, Caitlin,” Lucas said to me so quietly to make sure I was the only one who could hear him, “unicorns… are not friendly like everyone in your dimension thinks they are.”
“They aren’t? How come?”
“They just aren’t. I hate to beak all your little childhood dreams and all, but unicorns are actually very evil. They love violence, and they kill for fun.”
“They kill people?”
“Yeah. They stab them in the heart with their horn.”
“And they kill people like this for fun?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that’s what unicorns like to do. That’s how they get their food, you see. They stab their prey, and then eat the flesh.”
“I thought unicorns were vegetarian?”
“It seems like your unicorn stereotypes were wrong.”
“Well, well, isn’t this nice,” said a female voice.
A woman with long, curly dark brown hair came in front of the head unicorn. She was wearing a long, flowing red gown, and her make up seemed heavy but not over done, she seemed slender but not too skinny, her eyes were very round, but not too large. She looked like the perfect woman, which fit in perfectly in this perfect dimension. She was so perfect, that she made the perfectly perfect white unicorns look blase next to her.
Luke’s eyes widened again.
“What’s going on?”
“Well,” Luke said in a whisper again. “It seems like we’ve found our culprit.”
“Who is she?”
Lucas continued like he didn’t hear my question. “She’s been ordering the unicorns to kill. Remember we went to your brother’s funeral in that one dimension with the church?”
I nodded.
“Do you remember how he died?”
“Stabbed… in the heart… with something cone-shaped and spiral-y,” I said, only understanding the full meaning of it after I had completed the sentence.
“That is correct,” he said. “It seems… like she’s been after us for a while now.”
“Yes, but who is she?” I repeated.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Luke,” she said. “Is ignoring me and talking to your new girl any way to treat a former lover?”
“You are not my former lover,” Luke said sternly.
“Yeah, and I am not his new girl,” I said.
The woman turned to look at me. “She is absolutely lovely, Luke. Where are you taking her? Dumping her off in a river or something? Does your leaving of a woman get progressively worse the more you sleep with?”
“I have not slept with him!” I snapped.
“And quite charming, too,” the perfect woman said, turning back to Luke. “Now, baby, why don’t you just come back into my arms, and you can come back to my place. I’ll make you some of that chocolate cake that you loved. The one I made for my birthday, the one I know you still think is the best. Maybe that, a cup of tea, and we can catch up. You tell me how your… dimension thing is going, and I’ll tell you all about…” she lifted her hand up, and with two fingers, stroked the maine of the unicorn she was leaning against. “…I’ll tell you all about my new pets.”
“Oh, that is so likely, Valerie,” Luke said, the sarcasm in his voice being plainly apparent. “You have set these beasts to kill people, people I know that you hand picked to murder, and you are going to tell me why right now.”
“Now, now, love,” Valerie said, taking a few steps forward. “I wouldn’t be too hasty about matters like this. Especially since I am the one with the power right now. Honestly, dear, it’s amazing that I am still letting you talk. I should be the ones asking the questions, you see.”
“What is going on?” I asked Luke.
“Oh, your new slut wants to know what’s going on?” Valerie asked. “Well, dearie, let me tell you the story. The story of Lucas Francium: Keeper of Dimensions.”