by Kristin Cast
“And the sheriff said about Mr. Thompson.” Hunter glossed her fingers over the image. “It’s collecting eyes.”
Mercy’s breath left her lips in short quakes. “H-how do we stop him?”
Hunter lifted the card and squinted at the single eye glaring at her from the middle of the creature’s broad forehead. That was the new question.
How on earth would Hunter and Mercy catch a Cyclops?
Twenty-two
Hunter passed the card to Mercy who flipped it over and examined its silver back. “So, that’s it? I mean, your cards told us that it’s the Cyclops, which is great, but he’s not exactly walking around like this.” She pointed to the strings of saliva dripping from the creature’s chin and the lone eye it was best known for. “Can you do your, you know”—she waved her hand in front of Hunter as if polishing glass—“tarot thing again and ask the cards to be more specific this time?”
Hunter picked at a tender piece of skin hanging from her index finger. “That’s not really how it works.” She held her palm over the charred grass. “And I used up all the magic from this site.” She plucked the card from Mercy’s grasp. “Sometimes the tarot gives veiled answers. It would sort of be cheating if the cards just came out with a big arrow that pointed directly to what we need to know. Half of the magic is how the images are interpreted.”
Mercy groaned and collapsed onto the tall grass. “It wouldn’t be cheating. It would be answering the question you asked in a clear and direct manner.” As she spoke, she held up her fawn hands. Her slender forearms had begun to freckle under the persistence of the spring sun. “When I do spellwork, I know whether it’s been successful or not. If it has, I get results. If it hasn’t … well, nothing usually happens. But that nothing always tells me something. This isn’t a nothing or a something. It’s just—”
“A star!”
“I guess it’s a start, but my point is that it could be a better one.”
“Not a start. A star.”
Mercy sat up as Hunter flipped the card around to face her. “I didn’t notice it at first, but there’s a star around his eye and another in his, um…”
Mercy squinted and tapped the Cyclops’s left pec. “Scraggly chest hair?”
“Gross, but yes.” Hunter looked at the card. “This is the answer. This is who the Cyclops is wearing.”
“A star?” Mercy’s brow remained pinched as she untangled a seedpod from her hair. “You think the Cyclops is parading around town in the skin suit of a star? No one famous has ever come to Goodeville.”
“Sure, but there are famous people here.” Hunter bit down on the rugged tip of her fingernail. Locally famous was super close to famous famous. She snapped off the point of her nail and rolled it along the tip of her tongue.
A star.
A star.
A star.
“Oh!” Mercy clapped, her green eyes widening. “What about that retired Bulls basketball guy?”
Hunter nodded, flooding with ideas of her own. “Or the news anchor who was a former Miss Illinois? Or the deejay at Em’s birthday who performs at all those clubs in Chicago? Or that eighth grader who plays those games on Twitch?”
Mercy rested her chin against her steepled fingers. “Any ideas how we figure out which person is no longer a person?”
Hunter clenched the jagged piece of nail between her teeth and ran her tongue along it. She was missing something. But what? “Let’s go home and look at the grimoires.”
“So, you’re giving in to good ol’-fashioned research?” Mercy stood and offered Hunter her hand. “Welcome to the team, H.”
Hunter gathered the cards and slipped them back into her pocket before taking her sister’s hand and hefting to her feet. “I was on the book team way before you, Mag.”
Mercy shrugged and skipped off toward the car, kicking chunks of dirt as she bubbled over about what information the grimoires possibly held.
Hunter paused at the black footprints burned into the grass. She and Mercy had gotten enough information to focus their hunt and start them down the right path, but Hunter had hoped for a bit more. She so desperately wanted to impress her sister and be the one to solve their problems.
“Oh, well.” She sighed and spit the jagged nail onto the blackened earth before jogging to catch up to Mercy.
As Hunter’s boots carried her away, a line of smoke rose from the ground, from the charred blood and dead grass and torn fingernail. The nail flamed for an instant, the same white as the full moon, before the gentle spring breeze snuffed it out and carried away the black from the burnt earth.
Twenty-three
Polyphemus sat in Sheriff Dearborn’s car on a dirt road that dead ended at Goode Lake. The body he’d unzipped and removed from Dearborn’s spirit had guided him here, though he wasn’t sure why. His only guess was that the skin he wore still searched for its true owner like a lost lamb searched for its shepherd.
He removed his sunglasses and squinted out at the water through his one good eye. “Back to this, now.” He wiggled his calloused fingers in front of his other eye. Nothing. Not even a shadow. It had completely clouded over, gone blind. “Always back to this … Cyclops.” Self-pity hardened in his stomach like a pound of gold. It was a useless, ineffective emotion, but he couldn’t break free of its chains.
Goode Lake’s crystal blue skin shivered with each gust of wind. He rolled his window down and hung his arm out. He knew the sun was warm just as he knew the water was wet, but he couldn’t feel its pleasant rays. He only felt the sticky heat of his true form inside, pressed against the slopes and ridges of this human skin.
He flipped his hand over and cupped the sunlight in his palm. He couldn’t stay in this world without nesting inside of a human form, but oh how sweet it would be to feel the sun against his own skin. Tartarus, the Greek Underworld from which he escaped, had no sun. It had no aquamarine lakes or sandy beaches. Tartarus was dark, cold, barren.
Polyphemus ran his tongue along his bottom lip and pressed his teeth against the wet flesh.
He had promised himself that this would be his last escape. Curse or not, he couldn’t live as the monster these killings were turning him into. When Sheriff Dearborn’s body failed and its time in this world ended, so would Polyphemus’s. If this small town didn’t hold the cure, this was it for him, his last hurrah before he was sucked back into darkness. He might as well live a little.
He turned off the car and opened the door. It swung open without a sound and he closed it just as quietly. He squinted back toward the road and the trees that encircled the lake as he crept toward the shoreline. He didn’t want to be seen, or rather, he didn’t want Frank Dearborn to be spotted. The townspeople liked Dearborn, needed him. But no one had ever needed Polyphemus. He paused and frowned at the thought. There it was again. The self-pity that kept him jailed just as well as Tartarus had. But he had escaped the hell of Tartarus, and he had done it more than once.
Polyphemus untied his boots and struggled to kick them off as he fumbled with the buttons of Dearborn’s long-sleeved khaki shirt. The last time he’d felt this level of excitement, he’d been traveling to meet her. But that had been before she’d broken his heart and before she’d doomed him with this curse. His hands fell by his sides as a gust tented the open shirt. That was also the last time he’d been in the water.
“Nomia.” He twirled the name around his tongue before it slid past his lips. Only briefly had he wondered why such a beautiful creature wanted him. He had assuaged his fears and padded his ego by saying that she was attracted to his greatness and the power that came with being a son of Poseidon. After all, Nomia was a water nymph and he had been a prince of the seas.
His jaw ticked and he stared down at his bare feet slowly sinking into the sand.
No, he wasn’t a prince of the seas. Nomia had reminded him of that.
* * *
“You thought I could love you?” She crouched atop the large boulder that jutted from the center of the la
goon like a tooth. Her waves of moss green hair lapped against her bare breasts as she threw back her head and laughed. One by one, Nomia’s sisters rose from the depths of the lagoon. They encircled Polyphemus, their blue eyes sparkling as they fed from his anguish. “You are a bastard, Polyphemus. Denied by your father and unloved by his wife.” She brushed back her hair and her iridescent skin glimmered in the sunlight. “I would never love you. As Amphitrite has proven, no woman could.”
“Curse him, sister!” the nymphs chanted as one as they tightened their circle around him.
“He dared to make you his!” Their webbed hands and feet churned the cobalt depths and pinned Polyphemus in place.
“Now make him ours!” Water sloshed against his shoulders as the nymphs wrung out the space separating them from him.
Polyphemus blinked the water from the single eye pressed into the center of his forehead. His eye was the same deep brown as Nomia’s, the only difference between her and her sisters. “Nomia, we’re alike, you and I.” He tore his hand free from the current pressing against him and patted his eyelid. “We match, remember?” His chin trembled as he stared up at the woman he loved more than he loved himself.
Nomia’s talons snapped as she dug her fingers into the rock. “When I look into your eye, I see everything I hate about myself.”
A howl of laughter erupted around Polyphemus. Had he not been held up by the nymphs’ power, he would have sunk to the bottom of the lagoon.
“Sisters!” Nomia shouted. “Make him yours!”
Claws sliced his flesh as the nymphs pulled him beneath the water. Ribbons of blood twisted around him as he thrashed and reached for the surface. It was no use. This was their domain. And Nomia was right about his father. The great king Poseidon would never come to Polyphemus’s aid.
His chest burned as he reached for the sunlight that splintered against the water’s surface. His fingers broke through, then his palm, his wrist. He was almost there, almost out, almost free to take another breath—
A nymph caught his foot. She stabbed his leg with broken talons as she climbed him like a rock. Brown eyes met his when the top of his head split the water’s surface.
“Nomia…” Her name escaped his lips on bubbles of air.
A smile lifted her full cheeks and she pressed her lips against his. She cupped his face in her hands and pressed her warm tongue between his lips.
Polyphemus welcomed the kiss. It was proof that she loved him. That she was sorry.
More webbed hands were on his feet, his legs, yanking him back down. Pain flashed against his cheeks as Nomia dug in her nails. A grin stretched her lips taut against his as she sucked air from his lungs. She pulled her mouth from his and water filled his chest. Nomia pressed against him as he convulsed. The lagoon darkened around him as Nomia whispered a curse against his ear.
How delicious life would be
If only it could make you see
The hunger for what it truly is,
A way to set you free.
Now carry on with your cursed life,
And cut their eyes out, these orbs are so rife
With magic, but only one pair of these
Has what it takes to end your strife.
One of the buttons smacked him in the face when a sharp gust pulled up his shirt. He smoothed down the fabric and took a deep breath. He wasn’t drowning. He was here, at the edge of Goode Lake, sunk to his ankles in the sand. He shook his feet free, shrugged off the button-down, and stripped out of the undershirt and his pants. It was time to make new memories to take back with him to Tartarus. He shook his head. No, this time he would find a way to break free from his curse.
Polyphemus waded into the lake. He couldn’t feel the cool water against his skin, not in the same way he could in his true skin, but the sound was enough to make goose bumps rise from Dearborn’s arms. His heartbeat sped up and he dug his toes into the silt to keep from running back to shore. He wouldn’t let Nomia continue to control him. He balled his hands and fell back. Goode Lake enveloped him. His chest shuddered as he sank deeper and watched the sunlight blur against the water’s surface.
He couldn’t end the curse by dying in another realm. He’d learned that time and time again. There was no quicker path back to the torment of Tartarus. And the number of humans kept growing. He couldn’t kill them all. Nor did he want to. What he needed was an oracle, a vessel through which he could speak to the gods.
He tucked his feet under him and pushed himself back above water. He took a breath and ran his hands down his cheeks, pausing where he knew the scars lingered just beneath Frank Dearborn’s skin.
“This world doesn’t have an oracle.” He shook water from his ear. Droplets rained into the lake as he set his hands on his hips and stared out at the water. “But it does have magic. The gate to Tartarus proves that.”
He stiffened with realization. “This world would be overrun by vengeful, evil creatures if it wasn’t being protected.” He ran his hands through his hair as excitement crackled beneath his skin. He’d been so busy following the curse’s instruction, he’d never stopped to look at this world.
He ran to his clothes. Water splashed with each hurried step.
No, the humans didn’t have an oracle, but to protect this world, to protect this town, they must have a witch.
Polyphemus’s hands shook as he tugged on his pants and brushed the sand from his undershirt. He could find Goodeville’s witch. Like he’d watched death darken a person’s eyes, he could also see within them the fire of life, and magic’s flame blazed bright. He threw his shirt over his head and stuffed his sandy feet into his boots. He covered his mouth as a wet cough shook his barrel chest. He stilled and swallowed against the tickle building in his throat. It was starting again. His stomach lurched as he suppressed another cough.
Polyphemus needed to find the witch and he needed to find her fast.
Twenty-four
“A Cyclops?” Xena’s heart-shaped face screwed up in a grimace of disgust. She shook herself as if she could rid her body of the memory of the name. “That is why the eyes of the victims were missing. Polyphemus is compelled to gather them.” The cat person had been sitting on the arm of the couch, but she slid off it to curl up on the cushions as she wrapped a chenille throw around herself like she suddenly felt a chill. “It’s really rather horrible.”
“Wait, compelled? Why?” Hunter asked as she sat beside Xena, redoing her ponytail.
“And who’s Polyphemus?” Mercy said as she rejoined her family in the living room. She carried a tray that held three mugs of steaming hot chocolate and her cell phone. Em hadn’t called or responded to the last four texts she’d sent, but Mercy wanted to be sure her phone stayed close to her for when her best friend was finally able to reach out.
“Polyphemus is a Cyclops,” Xena answered matter-of-factly and then said no more while she batted at the fringed edge of the throw.
“Xena, we need more information than that,” said Hunter.
The cat person looked up at the twins and sighed. “I forget how inadequate the modern public education system has become. The Cyclopes were a race of barbaric giants who terrorized ancient Greece. Polyphemus was the most human of them. I do not recall exactly how his heart was broken, but it had something to do with a nymph.” Xena smoothed back her hair. “Such flighty little things. Anyway, his heart was broken and I believe he did something stupid—he was, after all, a male.”
The girls nodded in mutual female understanding.
Xena finished, “And he was cursed to seek that which he was lacking until he found that which could not be discovered—meaning the second eye he was born without.” She shrugged. “Or something like that. But you need not pity him. Even though he was the most human of the Cyclopes he was still a hideous, barbaric beast, and I do believe Polyphemus eats the eyeballs after he, well, harvests them.”
“Huh. That’s interesting,” said Hunter.
“Interesting? It’s disgusting and cre
epy, but less creepy than what happened out there by that tree today. Xena, you should’ve been there.” Mercy offered the mugs of steaming cocoa to Hunter and Xena, who took them gratefully. “It made my skin crawl when the cards revealed the footprints of the killer.” She shivered. “They appeared exactly where I was standing!”
“Thank you, kitten.” Xena blew quickly across the steaming top of the cocoa. “Being able to eat, or drink, chocolate is one of my favorite things about being a person,” she said.
In spite of the seriousness of everything they’d discovered that evening, Mercy couldn’t help asking, “What else do you like about being a person?”
The tip of Xena’s pink tongue touched the creamy cocoa. She frowned at it and blew a few breaths across it again before answering. “Well, I like my hair. It is spectacular, though that is no surprise. I have always had a lush, magnificent coat. I also do enjoy a little cannabis, especially at bedtime.”
“Isn’t your bedtime anytime you want to nap?” Hunter asked as she peeked up at Xena over the top of her mug of liquid chocolate and coconut cream.
“Well, yes, of course, kitten. I also am surprised by how very much I like to take a lovely bath. It almost makes up for how very much I dislike clothes. They are so restrictive, so binding, so not like fur. Well, except for my Abigail’s bathrobe.” Xena lifted her arm and sniffed at the fluffy, well-worn robe. “It makes me feel as if my dear girl is hugging me.”
“That’s really nice, Xena.” Mercy curled her feet up under her and made herself comfortable in the space between her sister and Xena before she carefully blew on her own steaming chocolate.
The three of them sipped their drinks silently for a few minutes, each lost in her own thoughts, until Hunter spoke up.
“So, how do we kill the Cyclops?”
Xena tossed back her magnificent hair and said, “Killing the body it is inhabiting will be easy.”
