I didn’t slow down but shoulder-checked her as I went by. She flipped right over backward and landed with an explosion of air as she belly flopped on the hard floor.
Mouth flapping wide like a fish out of water, she finally sucked in a breath only to let out a wail. “Assault! She assaulted me and I peed myself!”
A sharp tang of urine flooded the air, giving credence to her claim along with the puddle that slowly spread around her ponderous body.
Zeus, mighty god of thunder, was the Blue Box Store manager. His voice boomed over the PA system.
“Cleanup in aisle seven.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth, but the shriek of laughter escaped me anyway as I spun and ran out of the store. There was only one place I wanted to be, and I couldn’t stop myself. Couldn’t keep my feet from taking me to the home I’d shared with Roger. The place I’d felt the safest since my earliest memories.
We didn’t live that far from the Blue Box, a scarce fifteen-minute drive, down to Galer Street in the Queen Anne neighborhood. But that was driving and I was on foot. I didn’t slow, though, as if running would take me away from the craziness my life had become.
The first hill was no problem as adrenaline pushed me up it in record time. The second hill was tougher and the third I walked up, panting and sweating despite the chilly weather.
I reached the top of the third hill and stood there, staring at my house. My grandparents’ home. The place I’d thought I’d live until I died. Which in a way, I had. Only I wasn’t truly dead. Even if I had a large stamp of Deceased on my birth certificate.
“Don’t get melodramatic,” I scolded myself. “You don’t know what’s on your birth certificate now. Could say Monster for all you know.” My pep talk didn’t help any.
Parked in the driveway of our house was a black sports car with glittering silver paw prints all over it. I made myself walk up to the car and peer in. The interior was filled with fast-food bags, wrappers, and empty pop cans.
“Disgusting,” I said, as though my being a monster were any less disgusting than the car filled with garbage.
Why had I come here? Not just because it was my safe place, not if I was being honest with myself. A small part of me wanted to be held, to have someone tell me it would be okay. Roger had always been good at telling me what I wanted to hear.
I stepped away from the car and headed for the front door. The house was old, a hundred years and counting. Three stories, it towered over the other homes in the neighborhood, and yet I’d never felt like it was ostentatious. It needed some love; the shingle roof needed to be replaced, and the windows needed to be swapped out for double pane. Lots of love, sure, but I’d been willing to give it what it needed. To take the time . . .
The window that looked out over the front yard was our bedroom, and the light was on, and it was only then that my heartbeat slowed enough that I could hear Barry Manilow playing. Loud enough that the words were audible.
That was Roger’s lovemaking album. The music he’d told me put him in the mood only for my kisses, and never for anyone else.
Something in me snapped. Roger was never going to hold me again. And I didn’t want him to. He was a dirty donkey’s butthole.
I opened the front door and headed straight for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, I passed the second level and kept moving on to the third. The bedroom was actually the entire third floor, and while it was smaller than the second floor, it was still a thousand square feet.
One feature I’d never minded before, though, was now a real problem. The top level was an open floor plan, and there was no door on the bedroom. I stood on the steps a few feet below the landing, the music a low, mindless tune I’d always hated. Always. Why hadn’t I told Roger I’d hated it?
Because he’d told me how much he’d loved it and I’d wanted him to be happy. I’d always been trying to make him happy. To prove I was worth his love, to prove I was worth being his wife.
I squared my shoulders and took a step. A female giggle rippled through the air, and I made myself keep moving. Kept walking up the final few steps. The view didn’t make sense at first, as there was just a humping, bumping black blanket on the bed.
“Roger, you are frisky tonight. Naughty Chihuahua,” she—I assumed Barbie—yipped out at him. As if she were the Chihuahua.
He growled and snapped his teeth. I rolled my eyes, put my hands on my hips, and broke up their party. “I hardly would call him naughty. More like dumb. Or useless. Maybe lazy, that’s another good word for Roger.”
They spun, the two of them sitting up in bed like pop-up dolls.
“Roger, who is that?” Barbie said. I had to give her credit. Her hair was perfect, and from the shape of her chest under the sheet, her boobs weren’t half bad either. Power, though, Zeus said I had power.
A siren, was I? Well, let’s just see what that got me.
I flipped my hair back over my shoulders and took a step closer. “Roger. Who. Am. I?”
He stared at me, looked me up and down, and in slow increments his mouth dropped. “Alena?”
I smiled, feeling a strange sense of confidence roll through me. Roger swallowed hard and slid to the edge of the bed as if he would come to me. I held a hand up. “You stay there.”
“That’s your wife? Her pictures don’t look like that. And isn’t she supposed to be dead? How are we going to have the money if she isn’t dead?”
“Excellent question, Barbie.” I paced in front of the bed. “I mean, really, he’s not all that good in bed, so the money is very important, isn’t it? How much did he promise you for your business venture exactly?”
“I am an excellent lover,” Roger spluttered. “Caring, considerate—”
“You couldn’t find the G-spot in an alphabet.” I snapped my fingers, waving a hand in the air. “Seriously, how often do you fake it, Babs? Ten out of ten? I know I did.”
Her lips tightened, and I wasn’t sure if it was laughter or anger holding them shut. Roger spluttered and spit but couldn’t manage a single word.
“Here’s the thing.” I paused and pointed at Roger, feeling the strength of my words grow with each syllable. “He’s not going to have any money when I’m done with him. This is my house. The inheritance is mine. The bakery is mine, and that fat-nosed Colleen isn’t going to have a single sugar cube from it. Got that? He’s going to have his stinking little brown Fiesta hatchback, a bag of clothes, and if he’s lucky”—I approached them—“his little girlfriend.” I snapped my fingers at her and she flinched. Roger, though, hadn’t taken his eyes from me.
“Alena, I’ve never seen you like this. If I’d known you’d be like this, I never would have looked for someone else. I didn’t know you were going to survive.” He crawled across the bed to me and I stepped back.
“Are you for real?” I said at the same time Barbie slapped his butt hard enough to make him jump and his drooping man bits wobble and deflate.
“Ouch!”
“I’ll do more than ‘ouch’ you, you asshole. You said you loved me, that you never loved her but married her because she was a good girl and would do what she was told. That you always wanted me more.” She pouted at him while not so subtly pushing her chest out.
But his eyes swept back to me, a bright, hot lust raging in them. “Alena, we can work this out. I know we can. Every couple has a bump in the road, and this is ours. Give me a second chance. Please, baby.”
My heart leapt, and for just a second I thought about it. A second. No more than that, because what happened next hit me like a blow to the belly.
My eyes locked with hers, and the smug curl of her lips told me the truth of her and Roger, even though I still had to ask.
“You were with him before I was sick, weren’t you?”
She smirked and ran a hand over her chest. “You don’t actually think you were satisfying him, do you? Miss Missionary.”
I drew in a slow breath, anger kindling along my synapses as I swung my gaze to my h
usband.
“Roger, not for anything in the world would I go back to you. Not for money, fame, fortune. Nothing. I will never come back to you.” I turned, paused, and looked over my shoulder. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. And Barbie?”
I locked eyes with the blond bombshell one last time. “Good luck on teaching him how to pleasure a woman. You know what they say about teaching stupid dogs new tricks. Impossible.”
His mouth dropped open and she glared at me. “Maybe all he needed was someone worth pleasuring. Maybe a little brown church mouse wasn’t all that fun to play with.”
Oh, she did not go there. I spun on a heel and faced her. “Do I look like a little brown church mouse to you?”
She stood up on the bed, buck naked, and put her hands on her hips. “I think you wouldn’t know what fun was if it snuck up and bit you on the ass. Roger is better off with me. As is the money, because I’ll at least do something interesting with it.”
Gobsmacked was the only word I had to identify the emotions running through me. A small part of me wanted to strangle her.
Okay, a large part.
The rest was just confused, and that part won out this time. “Our whole life together was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Roger shook his head, but I saw it in his eyes a split second before he lowered them. The truth. I was just a stepping-stone for him.
I snorted softly. “You two have fun. I’m taking you for everything you’ve got and then some. Rog.”
I turned again and headed down the stairs, making myself not hurry. Forcing my feet to go at a sedate pace. I refused to run from the two of them.
But maybe if I’d hurried, I would have made it out before the bad guys found me.
Okay, I was assuming they were bad guys. But really, good guys don’t burst into a house wielding large weapons.
Nor do they normally look like bulls from the waist down.
I swallowed hard. Here we go again.
CHAPTER 9
“I think you have the wrong house!” Roger yelled from the top of the stairs. “We gave at the office.”
I twisted around to glare at him, wondering what I’d ever seen in him. Spineless twit. No wonder he couldn’t even manage a cash register.
“You the Drakaina?” a deep voice asked.
The question turned me back to face the things in the lower foyer. Men from the waist up, bulls from the waist down, which included hairy legs, cloven hooves, and oversized bull bits. Each of them had a strap across his chest with an emblem engraved in gold. One that looked suspiciously like Achilles’s chiseled jaw.
“What’s a Drakaina?” Barbie whispered, and the Bull Boy at the front pointed his sword at her.
“Back away, puny human. The Drakaina is a dangerous beast full of poison.”
“Actually, poison is not quite right. Venom would be correct if you’re referring to my fangs.” I took a breath and backed up a step.
Bull Boy raised an eyebrow at me. “You the Drakaina?”
I shrugged as a niggling fear began to gnaw at the base of my neck. Achilles had sent his goons after me. I went with coy. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?” He pointed his sword at me.
“She’s a human, not some draco thing,” Roger said, though his words wavered at the end. “Right, Alena?”
Bull Boy grinned up at me. “That’s her. Alena. Boss said it was her name.”
He took a step, his large hooves tromping onto the bottom stair. The wood groaned and I lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t think that was a good idea.”
“Drakaina, we’re taking you to Achilles.”
I glared at him. “What is it with all the men in my life trying to make me do what they want?”
Barbie snickered. “Because you haven’t learned yet to make them do what you want them to. Idiot.”
I didn’t want to think she had a point. But maybe she did.
Bull Boy let out a snort, leaned forward to step up . . . and went straight through the stairs, the old wood busting out underneath him with a monstrous screech of breaking lumber and rusted nails letting loose all at once. His hands flung up as he went down, and he bellowed as the house seemingly swallowed him whole. The remaining six Bull Boys stared at the hole, their hooves shuffling on the wooden floor. Their furry legs twitched as they backed away from the pitch-black hole.
“You’d better leave. I can’t guarantee the rest of you will make it out alive.” I took a step forward. They backed up farther, their eyes trained on my every move.
They were afraid of me.
A wild urge gripped me, a power like I’d never known. Not magic, but the realization that just by existing, I frightened them. Gathering myself, I leapt the rest of the way down the stairs and over the hole the lead bull had opened up in the floor. I landed in a crouch on the main floor. Achilles’s goons scattered to one side, the clatter of the hooves filling the air.
“Holy shit, she is a supernatural,” Roger breathed.
The bulls snorted, shaking their heads and holding their weapons out in front of them, though they were far less certain without their leader. Like a real herd of bovines, they weren’t about to step away from the group and face me on their own. I grabbed the front door, opened it, and moved to step through. Hanging beside me on the wall key ring was a set of keys with the name Barbie in bright-pink crystals. I scooped them up along with my set of keys from Vanilla and Honey. No way was Colleen getting her hands on these.
“Alena, you can’t leave us here with these things!” Roger yelled. I glanced up at him, the dark sheet he held to his waist highlighting how pale his skin was.
Barbie glared at me. “Don’t you dare touch my baby!”
I didn’t think she meant Roger. My husband took a step and I pointed a finger at him, freezing him as if that were a new power of mine.
“Go to . . . hell, Roger.” The word quivered on my lips, but I said it. His jaw dropped and I slammed the door behind me.
I strode out to the shiny black sports car, opened the door, pushed the junk off the seat and out onto the ground, and slid in. Key in ignition, I revved the engine, shifted into reverse, and hit the gas pedal. The tires peeled in the loose gravel, spitting rocks everywhere. The sound of pebbles hitting the sides of the car gave me a wicked sense of satisfaction. Spinning out onto the road, I shifted into gear and hit the gas again. From the side mirror, a rampant group of bull men chased down the road behind me. They gave up when I hit the on-ramp to the highway and opened the sports car up.
The car was light to the touch and responded quickly. It didn’t take long for me to recognize the direction I took. Vanilla and Honey was on the outskirts of downtown, close enough to get good traffic, but not so close that the rent was impossible.
Tears trickled down my cheeks as I thought about the last twenty-four hours, my life, the last few weeks, and the realization that nothing prior to my being sick had been what I’d thought. Nothing in my life had prepared me for what I’d gone through and what I’d learned about those people I thought were on my side. I sniffed several times. “What the heck happened to me?” Not that I expected an answer. So when I got one, to say I was surprised was an understatement.
“Well, this is what happens when you get mixed up with gods and goddesses. Or in your case, when your family gets mixed up.”
I jerked the car to the side of the road and threw it into park. Beside me in the passenger seat floated a mostly naked cherub who sported a pair of cream-colored wings and a barely-there loincloth made of pale-pink satin.
“Umm, excuse me?” I had to be seeing things. Naked cherubs didn’t just appear in the air. They were in frescoes and paintings, not real life. He tugged at his loincloth, scratching at his crotch.
“I said this is what your family gets. For meddling.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Wait, are you . . . Cupid?”
“I am not!” He floated up to the ceiling of the car, his face pinking up to match his loincloth. “That miserabl
e interloper has nothing on me.” The color in his face bled down his neck to his chest.
“Sorry, I’m not up on my mythological . . . deities.” I sniffed back the last of my tears. “Who are you, then, and why are you in my car?”
“Not really your car now, is it?” He grinned, and the red faded from his skin. “Name is Eros. But you can call me Ernie. I like it better. More new-age sounding.”
“Ernie. Okay, so . . .” Wrapping my brain around this newest addition to my life was a struggle. “What are you doing here, Ernie?”
“Well, the boss felt like a shit, being as he used to knock boots with your granny and all, and since it’s kind of his fault you ended up like you are, he wanted me to bring you a message and tell you to meet him at the club tonight and he’d tell you everything he could.” He drew in a deep breath, his chest swelling. That was a lot of words in a single sentence for such a little guy.
I narrowed my eyes. “So what you’re saying is my yaya gave Zeus what for and he’s trying to make nice now.”
Ernie grinned and gave me a big wink with one baby blue. “You betcha. I always liked Flora. She didn’t put up with the boss’s nonsense like the other priestesses. I don’t put up with it either.” He let out a sigh and floated to the seat. “Where are you going?”
“To my bakery,” I said without thinking. He lit up like a Christmas tree with ten times too many lights.
“I love sweets.”
I put a hand on the stick shift and then glanced at him, my mind working. I couldn’t afford to let the opportunity slide by, which meant I had to embrace the weirdness 100 percent.
“I’ll give you all the sweets you want . . . if you answer some questions for me.”
“Sure thing, toots.” Ernie settled into the seat and grinned up at me. “What do you want to know?”
I pulled back into traffic and picked through all the questions I had.
“Tell me about what I am.”
“Ahh. A Drakaina. Interesting choice of monster for Merlin to make you. I heard what you said to the Bull Boys; you’re right about the venom-versus-poison thing. Venom in the fangs, but you are not poisonous. Your venom will kill anyone, including heroes. Including gods and goddesses.” He shifted in his seat. “It’s why Zeus fell over trying to get back from you when you showed off your fangs.”
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