AMERICAN HAREM STORY: Thaddeus

Thad had been awake for two days, but his excitement kept him alert. The prototype was set up and ready to run. The machine was a bulky mess of metal and cables and took up a sizable area of the warehouse his associate Othello had purchased through a shell company. He had stolen and spent millions of dollars to cobble this contraption of magic and science, and if it worked, a decade of research would come to fruition. 

It was essentially an unlimited clean energy device. If you drew from a magical source like a Bind, it could generate massive amounts of power. He aimed to revolutionize the modern world and to taper off oil reliance. The transition wouldn’t be easy, and he anticipated a lot of pushback from corporations and their government puppets, but he was sure that if the public knew about free energy, he’d gain massive public support and be able to push his ideas forward.

He checked his watch. Thirty six minutes until the full moon. He had to perform a ritual at the same time he powered the machine to get it to work.

As he went through the final checks, he tried to ignore the sobbing blonde girl strapped within the heart of the machine. Her eyes were red from crying and wore only a thin hospital gown. There was dried blood on her wrists and the straps from a more violent struggle earlier. This may have tugged at Thad’s heart strings if she was a real person.

In reality, she was a bound unicorn, a being not of our physical plane. Although Thad had four Binds of his own, this one belonged to his cousin. Their bloodline allowed them the ability to use sealing magic, which would bind supernatural entities into the physical form of an attractive young woman. Thad had been disowned by the family, after being accused of “misusing” the power.

“Please…” The girl whimpered. Her human name was Eunice, but Thad had never bothered to use it before. “Please don’t do this.” She pleaded.

Thad lowered the clipboard and sighed. He laid a hand on her bare arm for a false sense of comfort. “Dear. I don’t know where Phoebe put the duct tape, but Cloe does have a needle and thread, and she will absolutely sew your mouth shut.”

“Rude.” Eunice changed her tone to snarky rather quickly. This was one of the reasons Thad never trusted the Binds, they always had ulterior motives, no matter how vulnerable they seemed. Logically, he knew she must be distressed, but it was likely undercut by her healing factor. 

Binds always retained faint echoes of their original power. Since Eunice was once a unicorn, it allowed her human body to heal from any injury. This little tidbit made Eunice the perfect test subject for the machine.

“If you let me go, I’ll-” Eunice started.

“Phoebe! Duct tape!” Thad called out before Eunice could finish.

Phoebe was on one of the leather couches set up in the northeast corner of the room. Phoebe lay on one to herself, engrossed in her smartphone. The sisters, Cloe and Lacy, were on another couch, with Cloe on her Nintendo Switch, and Lacy sleeping on Cloe’s lap.

“I can’t find it!” Phoebe said, not bothering to look up from her screen. Lacy startled awake for a moment when she heard Phoebe, but fell back asleep.

“Then look!” Thad yelled.

“I am looking!” Phoebe outright lied as she remained seated.

Thad would have to punish her later. She knew he was too busy to inflict any meaningful pain at the moment. Although he could exercise full control of their movement and actions, he preferred to use intimidation to keep them in line. It expended less energy. Resistance was futile, they couldn’t run away without him being able to sense it. As a side effect of “communion”, he had an invisible radar to his Binds at all times.

Phoebe was a former deity known as Phobos, the god of fear. She fed on negative emotions, and didn’t discriminate against fellow Binds. Screams made the fear sweeter, or so Phoebe said, so Thad knew she deliberately hid the tape to listen.

Phoebe held special contempt for Thad, not only because she was a former god bound to the servitude of a human, but also for the sex change that came with the binding process. She felt especially humiliated, whereas the other three, the Fates, were female to begin with. They mostly kept their mouths shut and were content to give him hateful looks.

Thad heard his Ring doorbell notification go off on his phone, and he pulled it out to check. He expected it to be Othello, but was met with the sight of his cousin Brad and two women. Thad glared at the black woman on the left who seemed to be picking the lock. He recognized her, Nancy, the Bind who murdered his father. The sealing anchor passed to Brad when Thad’s father died, as a contingency to prevent Nancy's escape.  

“Not good.” Thad mumbled. Brad was a nice kid, but he was blind to the greater good. He could only see the trees, not the forest. He knew his cousin would mess this up if given the chance, and ruin years of hard work.

He wasn’t about to take any risks. “Girls. Come.” Thad instructed his three free Binds. The tattoos on his right arm glowed momentarily as he ordered the girls. He let them feel the power of his psychic leash without fully controlling them.

He’d have to perform a quick communion. His girls stood and came over to him as quickly as they could. They knew that if they hesitated for too long, he’d force them to move anyway, and then punish them afterwards.

Thad put his clipboard down, pulled a scalpel from his pocket, and found a nearby half-full day-old cup-of-ramen. He dumped the noodles onto the floor and moved to meet the three women. They obediently held their right arms out. Thad took the safety cap off a scalpel and cut into a vein on Pheobe’s arm to let a few ounces spill into the dirty cup. When he was done, Phoebe clutched the still dripping wound, and looked around from a bandage of some sort. Thad ignored her and moved to Cloe to do the same, sliced a vein, and attempted to get roughly the same amount of blood into the cup. 

Lacy was different. For her, he pricked her middle finger and squeezed out a single drop of blood. Too much of hers disoriented him.

“Girls, kennel up.” Thad said. He ignored the glares as they went to one of the cages that lined the north wall. The confinement was a precaution, mainly for when Thad slept and didn’t have conscious control of the girls. They had every reason to murder him, and he wasn’t going to let them have any chance while he was distracted to aid the enemy.

Thad held his breath, gulped down the warm fluid, and tapped the bottom of the cup to get as much as he could into his mouth. He resisted the urge to vomit as the power tingled throughout his body.

There were two types of communion, blood and sex. Blood was more potent, but only lasted a few minutes. Sex made the abilities last longer, up to a day, but they were only a fraction of the blood’s power.

He would only need a few minutes. He had the power of revered Greek deities on his side. His cousin had a mishmash of random magical beings, never used communion, and had his Binds fight for him. There was an adorable sense of naivete in Brad’s method. Instead of drawing on their power directly, Brad loosed his Bind’s sealings to give them their power back. The drawback to this method was, they could easily overpower and kill the Sealer, like what happened with his father and Nancy. 

Thad double checked the cages which held his Binds were locked. Phoebe and Cloe did their best to tend to their wounds, and Lacy went back to sleep on the floor. Thad came to the final cage which held his last Bind, Attie. He kept her permanently physically bound, blindfolded, and gagged. She lay on a stained mattress in a dirty straight jacket. Her legs had been sewn together, like an attempt to make a mermaid. The stitches were red and inflamed from infection. He unlocked the cage and entered. She smelled like sweat and urine. He had the other girls take physical care of Attie and clean her cell, which doubled as an in-their-face example of what happened to Binds who “displeased” him.

He took a vial off his keychain and used his scalpel to make a small cut on a clean part of her leg. She moaned in discomfort as he squeezed a few drops of blood into the metal vial and screwed the lid back on. This blood was only to be used in an emergency.

He shut Attie’s cage, and heard the double doors from the lobby open on the east side of the warehouse. As Bind blood surged through his body, he projected his aura like a dark miasma towards the intruders. Ideally he would intimidate them into surrender. Brad shirked, and stopped at the entrance, but his Binds were either immune, or ignored it.

“Bradley, I am incredibly busy right now, and I need you to not interrupt.” Thad said.

“Thaddeus, this is ridiculous. Please let us have Eunice back.” Nancy tried to negotiate.

Thad dashed towards Nancy with intent to kill. He cleared the distance in a second, with his right palm outstretched to slam into her face, but was intercepted by Lily.

A black wing that felt like leather and smoke absorbed his impact. Lilith was in her nude, unbound form, with black wings, horns which spiraled around her head like a crown, and a long serpentine tail. She’d grown about two feet taller and her breasts were visibly larger.

Brad had to be insane. There was no way he’d be able to seal Lilith again. Even if they had a deal to stop Thad, what stopped her from killing Brad out of spite? He’d have to stop her if only to save his dumbass cousin. 

Before claw-like nails raked his torso, he leaned out of the way from where they would have hit him, and caught the back of her wrist after it passed. He yanked her towards him, and slammed his free palm into her nose. Black blood dribbled from her nose as she stumbled backwards, stunned.

“Bradley, unbind me!” Nancy yelled behind Thad.

Thad kept up his offensive against Lilith, and pummeled her with superhuman strength. If she got any sort of chance to retaliate, she’d kill him. Lilith was a demon who hated men with an unfathomable passion.

“Bradley, they’ll die!” Nancy lied. Thad had no intention to kill anyone, he only needed to subdue them.

Thad managed to beat Lilith to the ground, and stood on her back to keep her down. “Brad- don’t-” Thad said with effort. He was tired despite Cloe’s blood. He needed to finish this. He bent down to grip Lilith by her wings, and tore them out in a spray of blood. Lilith screamed in pain as Thad let the wings fall to the ground. He turned to face Nancy and Brad and saw the glow of the tattoo on Brad’s arm. The idiot was going to unbind her.

Nancy stiffened and her dark skin crystallized. Fingers broke through the chest cavity and pried open an exit for her unbound form to emerge.

Thad got off of Lilith and reached into his pockets to find the vial of Attie’s blood and pulled it out as fast as he could. He unscrewed the lid and downed the bitter blood as the horrific human/spider form of Anansi emerged from the cocoon that used to be Nancy. Her new form was her human torso on a giant hairy spider’s thorax. 

“I don’t need to kill you Thaddeus, I only need to break your little machine.” Anansi threatened. “Hand over Eunice, and we’ll leave.”

Thad wasn’t about to listen to her. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

“Lame!” Brad yelled from the doorway.

“And I am so sorry for that Thaddeus. I know you have no reason to forgive or trust me-”

“No. I really don’t.” Thad dashed forward. She tried to dodge, but he managed to brush Anansi’s skin with his fingertips. He slammed into the wall of the warehouse to stop his momentum. The blood of his Binds were wearing off, but he managed to do what he needed. He heard Nancy collapse behind him.

He laughed as he slid to the ground with his back against the wall. He was tired. Attie’s blood gave him the ability to cause instant death to whoever he touched. 

“Nancy? Nancy!?” Brad finally ran into the room himself and knelt next to the giant dead bug. He cradled her head in his lap. This sickened Thad.

“Oh my god, she was a monster, Bradley! How are you this- this- sympathetic and still alive!?”

“I- she was my friend.” Brad muttered.

“She murdered my father, OUR family. If that was your friend, you’re a soft-brained moron.” Thad picked himself up off the ground and brushed off his clothes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I am very busy right now.”

Thad walked back towards the cages. Brad’s Binds were incapacitated, so all Thad needed to do was use his own Binds to clean up and clear out the riff raff.

Before he reached Phoebe’s cell, he was violently thrown forward. His forehead smacked into the metal bars, and he fell backwards hard onto his back. He was dazed and the wind was knocked out of him. He looked up with double vision to see Brad loom over him, black blood smeared on his cousin’s lips and chin.

“Ow.” Thad said when he managed to breathe. In hindsight, perhaps it had been unwise to underestimate his cousin.