by Nicole Thorn
I waved.
She frowned harder. “That’s not okay. The killing your friend part. Friends are a good thing. I wake up every morning thinking, Medusa, you need more friends, but I never make any.” She sighed.
“Ah!” we all said in unison, and bounced back a couple of steps.
“Anyway, what did this gorgon look like?” she asked. “What color snakes did she have? Was she tall? Pretty? Of course, she was pretty. We’re all pretty. Silly question. We’d be on the cover of every magazine if we didn’t turn people into stone every time we looked at them. Have you ever tried not looking at someone while fucking them? It’s really hard, and putting your face in the pillow gets old after a while. Just the same position over, and over, and over . . . ”
“Green,” Zander said, clearly in shock. “Her hair was green. She was taller than you. And yes, she was pretty.”
Medusa frowned. “I think I know who that is. Hold on.” She bent over the sword and whispered something to it. It sounded like a thousand snakes hissing. “Here ya go. Now it’ll only find gorgons with green snakes for hair. Though you really should be careful. If you go beheading people, you’re going to make enemies.”
I cleared my throat, curiosity getting the better of me, “Um. Do all gorgons have those contacts?”
“Heavens no. You don’t even realize what I had to do to Zeus to get these things, but on the bright side, if you do it right, Zeus will give you anything.” She shrugged. “Anyway, there’s a little gorgon encampment not too far away. I’ll show you the way, and then you can use your fancy sword to find the right one, and then behead her.”
“You’re going to let us behead one?” Kizzy asked,
“Yes. Those gorgons are all bitches,” Medusa said. With a flounce of her skirt, she moved back towards her car. “You really shouldn’t break traffic laws, by the way. They are there for a reason.” She got into her car, and started it up.
“Are we really accepting help from Medusa?” Juniper asked, in a numb voice.
“I’m not sure if we have a choice in the matter,” Jasper said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not if we don’t want to be turned into stone.”
Kizzy sighed, looking at the ground. “Let’s do this.” We all climbed into the SUV, and started driving again, following Medusa’s little car. All five of us probably could have fit in it, but it would have been uncomfortable, and Medusa would have to not be driving. Also, why the hell had she glamoured her bug to look like a cop car? Or done any of this?
We were halfway there according to Zander’s sword. He still gave directions, in case Medusa lied to us, because she was Medusa after all. “We’re getting really close,” Zander said, leaning back in his seat. “I can feel several of them roaming around. How am I supposed to kill several—?”
That was all he got out before the car slammed into something that I couldn’t see. We all flew forward. The airbags deployed, exploding in our faces. Juniper made a sound of pain, while Zander tried not to stab himself with a sword. My face smashed into the back of Juniper’s seat, and I groaned. After several seconds, we all started moving again, asking if the others were all right.
I looked out the windshield to see Medusa’s car stop. The window came down, and she stuck her head out, her glamor back in place. “Did I forget to mention the wall that keeps humans out? I’m sorry!”
“If this is how I die,” Juniper said. “I want you to know that I’m going to haunt all of you for the rest of time.”
CHAPTER TEN:
Zander the Happiness Slayer
Zander
I pulled Jasmine out of the SUV while Kizzy helped the others. I honestly didn’t care half as much about their aches. They all lived, so I could focus on Jasmine. She looked a little woozy, and her nose bled. She’d sport a couple of shiners in the morning.
“Baby?” I whispered, leaning her against the car.
Jasmine glared at me. Okay, so she was still pissed. Fair enough. I was pissed at her too. Pissed that she cared so fucking little for her own well-being. She’d rather show me she could take care of herself, than be safe. The fact was that she couldn’t fight any of the monsters that wanted to hurt us. I never said she couldn’t be useful, so that was on her. The visions could be helpful, but dangerous. Sure, I acted unreasonable, but I was in love. Who the fuck said I had to be reasonable with the girl I loved?
“Don’t ‘baby’ me, buddy,” she said with a groan. Then she wobbled, and I sat her on the ground. She put her head between her legs, and I grabbed a little pack of tissues from the car. Jasmine fought me, but I still cleaned her up. Kizzy checked on the others, but I could only give them half my awareness. Jasmine still bled, so nothing else mattered.
“We all good?” Medusa asked as she scurried over to us. She shot the group an apologetic look. “I really should have told you about that.”
“You think?” I asked with a sigh, looking up at her.
I couldn’t register the fact that it was THE Medusa that helped us out. I’d heard every version of her story, and they all saddened me. A beautiful maiden whose only sin was being a temptation for a selfish bastard of a god. Poseidon chased poor Medusa into Athena’s temple, where she sought help from the goddess. But Athena didn’t save her from her attacker. Instead, she punished Medusa for ‘desecrating’ her temple. Then she turned the girl into a monster, trying to destroy her beauty.
I stood Jasmine on her feet, and she let go of me the second she could. She didn’t want to be near me, and I couldn’t fix it. Another thing that would remain broken. But hey, she’d probably drink herself stupid when we got back home, and then forget she got pissed at me for caring. How dare I, really?
I turned my head to the back of the SUV. Kizzy had opened the trunk, and she got things out. She pulled my shield, and set it against the car before grabbing her bow. Kizzy strung it across her chest, and the quiver hung off her hip. I had to watch Jasper admire my sister as she put her arm strap on. Kizzy looked a little cold, and a little excited. Jasper cocked his head, examining my sister.
I cleared my throat, and he didn’t notice, so I did it again. The man blinked and then scratched the side of his head. “Let me help you with that,” he said to Kizzy as she tried adjusting her arm guard. And she let him . . . just let him touch her arm . . . Grr.
I went to get my sword and shield, and I felt like an insane person as well as the coolest person in the world. I hoped my mom wouldn’t want this stuff back, because it would be a fight. A bad one, where I had to bribe and beg a goddess. I would do whatever I had to do to keep this damn thing. Plus . . . Jasmine enjoyed it.
It had to be wrong, but I felt a little flutter in her when she looked at me. This damn empathy thing tipped me off to everything. Like the love between Kizzy and Jasper. The only reason I didn’t kill him for touching her was because I felt exactly how much he cared about Kizzy. Nothing about it felt small or temporary for him, so how could I be upset he was with her.
With Jasmine . . . I felt her like vibrations in my body. They told me which room in the house she occupied, and I could run my fingers over the cracks in her aura. I felt when she wasn’t sober, and I felt when she wished she weren’t. I felt the occasions she would look at me with lust. Just lust. I’d felt plenty of people feel that for me. I didn’t care for it, and I didn’t want lust from her. She could keep it. I didn’t want to be any more than sex to her, and the idea of that jabbed in my heart.
I admired my sword as a distraction, checking the balance again as I tried to see how I could do in a fight while I held my shield. It came to me far easier than I thought it would, and it made me eager for some fighting. Like an old-school war or something. I could slaughter a bunch of baddies with what I had here.
“I can get you kids in,” Medusa told us, her hands on her hips. “If you wanna go with them.”
I cut off Kizzy before she could get out more than a letter. “No. They’re staying here. Can you watch them?”
Medusa was nodding wh
en Jasmine got in my face, all the fury in the world in those mismatched eyes of hers. “You have got to be fucking kidding me! You think we’re little babies that need to be watched!” She took a step forward, and I moved back. I had a sword, but she was still the most terrifying thing here. “How dare you! How dare you take it upon yourself to treat me with kid gloves! I got along just fine before you and I will after you!”
Oh, I see.
I smiled. “Yeah, you got along just fine. Being an alcoholic at twenty-one is just wonderful. Something to be so proud of. You’re right. How fucking dare I give a damn about your suicide attempts? Here.” I thrust the sword at her and she flinched. “Take it. Take it and go get yourself killed. Go in there, little human, and face a monster. You can see the future, so obviously you’re big and bad, huh?” The hurt in her eyes stung mine, but I shoved it aside. That, and the look on her face. Like I hit her and kept going. And I did keep going. “Go on.” I grinned. “Be brave! Ignore that the reason Kizzy and I do all the fighting is because we’re half god. Clearly you don’t understand anyway. Do you know what a god is? Do you understand what you’ve stumbled into with your visions?”
“Zander,” my sister barked. I looked over to catch the anger in her eyes. “I get that you’re freaked out, but you need to cool it.”
“Cool it?!” I snapped, and her eyes went big.
Jasper reacted then. The quiet boy who would rather blend in, I seemed to wake him up. “Don’t yell at her,” he said, too calm for how angry I felt. “We understand perfectly what it means to be a demigod, Zander.”
Why the fuck did he get to be so calm when I had gotten so worked up? Why did he stand there, using a reasonable tone?
“You do!” I yelled. “But your sister doesn’t seem to.”
He still seemed too fucking calm. “Yes, she does, and you know she does. Being cruel isn’t going to make things different. We know what we are, and we want to help. It’s not a death wish. It’s love.”
Love . . . What did he know about this? Jasmine did reckless things, and that was why she did this. Juniper went along with what her siblings did, and Jasper did this for Kizzy. They all had reasons for their choices, some good and some bad.
It would all end the same.
“I . . . ” I started, looking back at the girl I loved. Everything about my voice sounded broken and calm. “Jasmine.” I took her hand, and stuck my sword in the ground so I could take her other one. “I don’t want this to end with me holding your dead body. I can see it,” I said quietly. “I can see it as clearly as you can see what you see. Me on the ground, broken with you, limp in my arms. Too cold and too still. And I can see . . . ” I looked to Jasper and my sister. “I can see Kizzy, and I can hear how she would sound crying over him. I can feel it like it’s happening right now. Juniper . . . ” I turned to see the girl with no one to mourn her like Jasper and Jasmine would be mourned. We loved her, but no one loved her in the way someone loved each of her siblings. “I don’t want to lose any of you, but I know that there’s no way around it. You’ll all die one day, and it feels like you’re racing to it, Jasmine.”
She squeezed my hands and made her face go blank. “Zander, I know you’re scared, but you can’t stop us from dying. I won’t let you lock me away in a room for my whole life. My choices are mine to make.”
I let go of her then, feeling too frustrated to keep going. “Let ‘em in,” I said to Medusa with a sigh. I pulled my sword from the ground and gripped it in my hand as Jasmine got some distance from me. I thought they all needed it, given how they looked at me like I was the unstable one. How could any of them think that?
“Give me a minute,” Medusa said, turning to the invisible wall. I ignored her to close up the SUV.
Kizzy got her bow and an arrow all readied, and Jasper did that admiring thing again. I bitterly ignored his affections, because it started to hurt me. It wasn’t just lust he looked at her with. Lust took up such a small part of his feelings for her. He wanted Kizzy for a lot more than sex. So, he looked at her in a way that I knew Jasmine wouldn’t ever look at me. He wanted a real future with Kizzy, and he would get it. I wouldn’t get anything from Jasmine but a broken heart.
When the barrier came down, we all stepped past it. My sword hummed with the power I wanted to unleash on that monster. For almost taking Jasmine from me. For making me feel all this anger toward her. For daring take something away from these people I loved. For being something I could kill when I really needed to kill something.
It would be a long walk, so we started, being led by Medusa. I still couldn’t believe we walked alongside the famous gorgon. She acted . . . nothing like I thought she would. She didn’t seem bitter or hateful. She actually seemed nice, other than the whole prank thing . . . At least she had a good time.
Everyone in my company ignored me. They seemed to take my outburst personally, and Kizzy kept looking at me like I stole all the cookies before dinner. I thought she wanted to slap me.
We found ourselves out in the boonies not too long after we left the SUV and the bug. We weren’t too far out, but I didn’t know where that bitch had holed up. She could have hidden in the trees or a cave for all I knew.
Mountains limited where we could go, so we had about another half a mile before we got stuck. She had to be around here somewhere. Lurking and licking her wounds. I couldn’t wait to take out all my fury on her. Slice her to pieces with my sword . . .
My memories flickered to the last time I felt anger deep like this. This was nothing compared to the day I found out Kizzy had been . . . that that happened to her. Because unlike this, that hadn’t been a maybe or an almost. That had been years of torture and violation while I was too stupid to notice. I should have . . . I should have felt something wrong with her. I hadn’t understood all of my abilities yet. I’d only been a kid, but I still should have been able to look into the eyes of my sister, and see that she was not okay. I failed her, and I failed Jasmine. At least I fixed some of the problems when I found out about Kizzy. I had to watch Jasmine drown and I couldn’t so much as get a stick to her so I could pull her to the shore.
But I felt this need to destroy something, and leave it in pieces. I didn’t want to stop until I found myself covered in blood. I wanted to see a broken body at my feet, and I wanted to feel the gorgon’s terror when she realized she would lose.
I took a sharp turn to the right when the sword told me which way we needed to go. No one asked questions, but they all followed me. When we got so close that I couldn’t feel anything but the weapon, I stopped and faced the people with me.
“We’re close,” I said. “You all need to make sure you don’t look into her eyes. You’ll have a split second before you start turning to stone.”
Medusa took a look around the trees before she saw me again. “You sure you’ve got this?”
I lifted my shield up. “Reflective.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Perseus thought that would work on him too.”
“Did it?” my sister asked.
Medusa gestured to her head. “Does it look like it did? No, it didn’t. He didn’t kill me. He just told everyone he did. Douchebag . . . ” She huffed and crossed her arms.
“Um . . . ” Jasmine started, making a face. “What?”
Medusa groaned and dropped her hands. “Well the little punk came by to try and kill me. I was minding my own business, just hanging out with the animal statues I accidentally made.” She looked like she felt guilty as she picked at her nails. “They shouldn’t have come by . . . I was trying to get away from people so I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I even met this really sweet blind boy . . . ” she trailed off, and lost the smile on her face when she mentioned him. “Anyway, Perseus thought he would come and take care of the monster in town.” Medusa rolled her eyes. “He broke a bunch of my stuff while cowering in fear. I wanted him out, so I told him that as long as he left, he could tell people whatever he wanted. He could be the big badass who killed Medusa. So, he to
ok off, and killed one of the sleeping gorgons he found not too far from me. He used her head, and told people it was me. I didn’t care that he lied, because if people thought I was dead, I would get left alone. It worked out. He got his fawning bitches, and I got to be alone.”
Jasmine’s eyes went too wide, and her ears drooped. “That. Is. SO. SAD!”
Medusa shrugged it off. “It’s fine. We have work to do,” she said passively. “Come on.”
We started back on our walk, and I kept my shield high for protection. My eyes focused on the reflections in the back, and I looked for movement. Anything could be the gorgon about to attack. I wouldn’t fail again today.
Kizzy kept her bow ready, and she looked down at the arrow she had halfway pulled back. “Hey, guys . . . ”
“Yeah?” Jasper said.
She stopped moving, and smiled. “Which direction, Zander?” She pulled her arrow back tight, aiming at the sky.
I chuckled. “Little to the left, according to Mr. Pointy.”
My sister turned her arrow to the left, and she let it fly. It moved like a bullet cutting through the sky. It flew, and then changed sharply to the left again before it vanished into the trees. I listened out for a sound of pain, but heard nothing.
“X marks the spot,” Kizzy said with a smirk.
We headed in that direction until we saw the blood trail on the ground. The arrow always found its target, and the sword told me we were much closer now. In fact, it told me the gorgon should have been in sight by now.
I heard something akin to cracking, and my eyes turned up to the branch the sound came from. The poor chipmunk just sat there. His eyes had turned to stone by the time I looked at him, and it grew with every second I stared.
I looked to my shield and saw the distorted image of the thing behind me. The woman looked stunning to say the least. Tall, with long legs and smooth curves. A fucking knockout, really. Until you got to the head. Her snakes hissed like mad, and her dark eyes filled with hatred and intent. Could have something to do with the fact that a broken arrow stuck in her side.
