Immortally Yours, An Urban Fantasy Romance (Monster MASH, Book 1)

by fox, angie

  "He's really cool," my roommate said, picking through the candy. "I showed him that picture of Mary Ann and he said the same thing you did."

  "She looks like Rachael Ray?" Rodger's wife was the spitting image.

  "Yep," he said, his ruddy face breaking out into a grin. "And I told him about Gabriel getting that part in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." He leaned back, his mind back at home. "Of course now Mary Ann's got to make Gabe a coat. Knowing her she'll glue it instead of sew it. Can't even sew buttons on straight. I used to sew the buttons. Did I ever tell you that?"

  "Yes, you did." About once a week.

  "Oh and I didn't even tell you this," he said, leaning forward, the chocolate forgotten. "Mary Ann is downstairs the other night and baby Kate got hold of one of her brand-new blue pumps—the ones she bought for church. Chews the heel right off. Mary Ann was fit to be tied, but I wrote her back and reminded her that the poor pup's teething." He sounded half amused, half proud. "I chewed through my dad's entire vintage baseball card collection once upon a time."

  Okay. So Galen had let Rodger talk (and talk, and talk). No harm in that. "Did he tell you what he said to me this morning?"

  "I gotta show you this new picture of Stephen," he said, digging under his bed and drawing out a shoe box. "The little guy lost another tooth." He popped the lid and began lifting pictures out.

  It was like talking to a big, hairy wall. "Rodger," I began.

  "What? He pissed you off, you pissed him off. It's not my fault you two can't get it together. Now look at this," he said, handing me a photo of a fresh-faced seven-year-old pup.

  Righteous anger tugged at me. Rodger made everything sound so simple, and it wasn't. Still, I couldn't help but grin at Stephen's lopsided smile. "This is really cute."

  "I know," he said, taking the photo back and smiling at it. "Thank god they look like their mother." He gave a small sigh.

  "Okay, so tell me about Galen," he continued, as if I were about to show him my world cruise vacation photos. "Do you want me to pass him a note in math class?"

  Har-de-har-har. "It's not like that." Not really. Yes, I wanted him, but it was ridiculous to even feel that way—as evidenced by this morning when he tried to use my attraction to him to justify his crazy theories.

  Why couldn't he just leave it alone? I wasn't against enjoying what time we had together.

  No one had ever spoken to me or touched me the way Galen did. He knew my most secret fear. He'd seen into me, for cripes sake.

  But he was obsessed with that damn prophecy. He didn't seem to care if I got drawn and quartered as long as he had a shot at stopping the war—which he didn't.

  The gods always thought they could tamper with fate, change the rules to suit them. And who paid the price? People like me.

  "He's just..." I tried to explain it to Rodger without sounding like an over-eager schoolgirl. "Galen is such a god."

  "So?" Rodger shrugged.

  "You and I were supposed to go creature fishing," I said, grasping a little. True, I hadn't wanted to see anyone this afternoon. And we hadn't actually made concrete plans so much as we'd talked about maybe going. Still, it wasn't the point. Rodger had forgotten me. In a way, he'd chosen Galen over me.

  "You don't even like sea serpents," he said, missing the point entirely.

  "They're better than you fawning all over Galen," I said, trying to get back into my book.

  "Fawning?" Rodger snarfed. "I'll tell you who's in danger of fawning."

  "You know what? Let's just drop it." I didn't need Rodger and his stale popcorn. I was happy reading. Undead and Unwed was a great book. A keeper.

  "I'm not the one sleeping with him," he said.

  "I'm not sleeping with him," I shot back, the injustice of it twisting in my gut.

  "You're crazy," Rodger said. "Any girl in this camp would kill to be in your place. In fact, there were a couple of them lined up outside his tent this afternoon."

  "Fuck off." I grabbed the box and lobbed a cherry at him.

  "Cut it out!" he said, reaching for the cherry and catching it like Hank Aaron. "You're wasting them. Besides, Galen wasn't flirting back. I'm only telling you because I know you won't ask. He wouldn't even let them in."

  I hugged the pillow to my chest. At least that was something.

  "You must be having some fun, at least," he said, popping the cherry into his mouth. "I could smell you all over him. I, for one, think it's great."

  "You'd be the only one," I said, wishing Galen could have kept his opinions to himself this morning.

  "Do I need to help you two along? Maybe draw you some diagrams?"

  I prepared to toss another cherry. "Hey, cut it out. I told Jeffe he could have some."

  The box tipped off my lap.

  "Real smooth. Thanks, Petra."

  He peeked under the overturned box. The cherries had smashed into the canvas floor of the tent, leaving a sticky mess.

  "Oh well. Kind of reminds me of home." He scooped up the crushed candies, using the mangled box as a trash can. "At least this gives me an excuse to go back to Galen's. I'm going to have to give Jeffe the entire box of turtles now," he muttered under his breath.

  "What's Jeffe doing over there?" I could see Galen making friends with Rodger, because who wouldn't. But the sphinx? The last time Jeffe noticed Galen was when he was pulling a special op sneak-back-into-bed mission. That couldn't have gone over well.

  Rodger fished an Orange Crush out of his medical coat pocket.

  I gasped. "I love orange soda."

  "I know," Rodger said, holding it out of my reach. "That's why I snagged you the last one."

  "Great. One day with a hutch of his own and Galen is more popular than me."

  "No offense, but when has it ever been your goal in life to be popular?"

  "Good point." I'd just wanted Galen to miss me a little this afternoon.

  Rodger went to the counter between his bunk and Marius's. "You got a bottle opener?" he asked, rifling through the picture frames, action figures, and other assorted junk on his half.

  "I haven't even seen a bottle in seven years," I said, getting up to help find something, anything, to pry off that lid.

  I hadn't had an Orange Crush since my dad and I went to Cooter Brown's Oyster Bar about a week before the new god army showed up at my door. I rummaged through Marius's dresser drawer, and mine.

  In fact, it was getting dark in here. I fished out a book of matches and lit the lanterns above each of our beds.

  While the light was nice, I didn't see anything that would help us pry open the bottle. "Maybe we can bang it against the edge of the dresser," I suggested. I may have seen that in a movie once.

  "No way." Rodger frowned. "I'm not going to break it. Galen probably has an opener."

  "Like we need him." Maybe we could use surgical pliers.

  "I don't know what's making you both so miserable," Rodger began.

  "He's miserable?" I asked hopefully.

  "Well, not exactly miserable, but. I don't know. Why don't you go over and talk to him? Galen's a good guy."

  Of that I had no doubt. But he could come over here, too.

  Rodger turned, his jacket sleeve knocking Marius's obnoxious Roman fertility statue off its display base. "Whoops."

  I tried to reach around him and missed. "You'd better not crack the penis off again." We were out of superglue.

  Rodger returned the well-endowed figurine to its base. "He's fine." The statue wobbled but held as he took another go at the soda. "Hey, look. Twist top."

  Rodger twisted and the bottle fizzed open.

  "Lovely," I grumbled, but I didn't turn him down when he offered me the first swig.

  It was sweet and bubbly and amazing, just like I remembered from when I was a kid. I closed my eyes and leaned against the counter to take another long, sweet drink.

  Heaven.

  "Galen's got Jeffe playing a Trivial Pursuit world championship," Rodger said.

 
; I opened my eyes to find my werewolf buddy lounging on the sleeping vampire's footlocker.

  "I don't believe it," I said, handing him the bottle.

  "Well, it's not really the world championship," he said, eyeing the Orange Crush. I'd drunk about half of it. "They just call it that for fun."

  I'd treated plenty of demi-gods and I knew they were the type of guys to party large and surround themselves with big groups of friends, but Galen was a warrior, a decorated commander, and a general expert at killing things. Jeffe was scared of spiders, couldn't start a conversation without it turning into an interrogation, and spent most of his time doing crossword puzzles and collecting stamps.

  Rodger shrugged. "Galen asks him questions. You should see Jeffe go. He's really good at geography. Fills his entire plastic pie up with blue pieces."

  "So Galen is letting him cheat." It figured. Galen wanted me to break the rules, too.

  "They're having fun." Rodger laughed. "You should try it sometime."

  "Hey," I said, reaching for the bottle. "I'm fun."

  He handed it to me. "So how much fun did you have with Galen this morning? I could smell you in his bedroom. And the bed was rumpled."

  He left the bed rumpled? I wondered, with hope. Maybe he couldn't bear to straighten the blankets. Maybe he missed me.

  Maybe he was being a man and didn't even notice that beds have sheets.

  "What is with you two?" Rodger mused with a smile.

  Marius rattled in his footlocker. Rodger jumped.

  Saved by the bell.

  The suns were almost completely down now. "You'd better get up before Sleeping Beauty gets pissed," I said.

  "I'm out of here." Rodger stood, leaving me the bottle. "Oh hey." He grabbed a stack of note cards off my nightstand. "Four by six. These are perfect." He banged them against his hand. "You have any more?"

  "Sure." Tons. I used them as reminder notes. "Why do you want my note cards all of a sudden?"

  "We ran out of the ones Shirley gave us from supply," Rodger said, cramming them into the pocket of his scrub pants. He shrugged off his white medical coat and tossed it on top of the table he shared with Marius. "Jeffe is off to night. I'm going. So that's three of us. We don't want to run out of cards."

  "At Galen's," I said, a dull thud forming in my chest. I was afraid to ask. "Doing what?"

  It was like they were having a big party and I couldn't go without losing face. I was taking a stand against Galen, and he needed to know that.

  Rodger dug through the chest of drawers next to his bed. "Galen has this theory. Says you're nothing without hope. Which makes sense, you know?" He pulled out one of the ponchos his wife had knitted. "Anyhow, Hume has been feeling down in the dumps."

  "Nurse Hume?" He was more than depressed. He was a walking ghost.

  "Yep." Rodger began pulling the poncho over his head. "So Galen gets to talking to him in the mess hall today—"

  Wait. I couldn't hang out with Galen, but Nurse Hume could? "What? Is he having dinner parties now?"

  "No," Rodger said slowly. "Just dinner in the mess hall." He shrugged. "Galen likes to be social. You should come to breakfast with us tomorrow."

  My head was starting to hurt. If I went, I couldn't ignore him. And Galen would probably twist it and think he'd won.

  If I holed up here, I'd just be wondering what they were doing. "I don't suppose I could ask you to stay away from Galen?"

  "What—are you telling me who I can spend time with?"

  "Wouldn't think of it." It would never work anyway.

  "You should come with us," he said, as if that were the issue. "It's fun." Rodger found his fishing cap. "Like in the mess tent, Galen is talking to Hume and learns the guy had one bright moment in his whole miserable life down here."

  "I shudder to think." Hume had been a ghost of a person for as long as I'd known him.

  He slapped his hands together. "About fifteen years ago, he won a year's subscription to Reader's Digest."

  I stared at Rodger.

  "He entered their monthly joke contest and he won."

  My fingers played along my soda bottle as I tried to process what Rodger was getting at. "Hume isn't funny."

  "That's what you think," Rodger said.

  Of all the... "You think so, too."

  Rodger shook his head. "Doesn't matter what I think. You should have been there. Hume lit up like I've never seen him. So Galen decides to get Hume some hope."

  "It doesn't work that way." You couldn't go out and get hope, like you'd pick it up at the store or something.

  "Yes, it can," he insisted. "Ha!" He spotted another stack of note cards and reached under my bed to get them.

  Amazing. I hadn't seen Rodger this gleeful since his last letter from home.

  He waggled the cards. "We're helping Hume win the Dr Pepper sweepstakes," he said. "Enter as often as you like. No purchase necessary. Every postcard could be your ticket to fabulous prizes."

  "Okay, fine." I stood. "This I have to see. And I'm going to make it very clear to Galen that I am not there to see him."

  "Whatever you say." Rodger was already ahead of me and out the door.

  There was no reason to stay behind. Galen couldn't get to me if I didn't let him.

  Besides, Marius's footlocker was rattling again and he wasn't going to be happy to see Rodger had used his cuff links to fix a rip in the screen door.

  We picked up a couple of torches from the path outside our tent and headed for Galen's place.

  I was not giving in, I was not crawling back, and I didn't want anything from him.

  Maybe this wasn't such a great idea.

  My feet felt like lead. Rodger was practically skipping.

  Galen was trying to change things around here. And I was happy to see some of it. I was. But he needed to know when to quit.

  The night was growing colder by the minute. I didn't think I'd ever get used to the chill of limbo after dark. We didn't pass many people as we made our trek back. No doubt most were in their hutches staying warm. I walked with nervous anticipation swirling in my belly. Rodger whistled the theme song from The Price Is Right.

  Light glowed from inside the immense red tent. The flaps hung closed. "Yo, Galen," Rodger called.

  I wasn't that polite. Heart hammering, I flung the flap back.

  Galen stood just inside, looking breathtakingly gorgeous in those damn midnight-black combat fatigues. He trained his eyes on me the same way he had right before he went down on me in the minefield. It made me feel exposed, naked, and sexy as hell.

  I broke contact. Think of something else. Like Jeffe on the floor next to Galen. The sphinx bent over stacks of note cards, his tail curling around a cardboard box filled with even more cards in neat, rubber-band-bound stacks.

  Galen moved toward me with all the grace of a predator. He knew I'd be back. His manner said it all. I silently cursed myself for making it so easy for him.

  He scooped a bowl off the edge of the couch as he approached.

  "Blueberry?" he asked, lifting the bowl to me like he was offering the apple from the forbidden tree.

  Oh yeah. He was good. And judging from that sexy grin, he didn't doubt my answer.

  "I didn't come here for treats," I said, realizing too late that I hadn't quite turned him down in the way I'd hoped.

  He fixed those damn blue eyes on me and the raw hunger I saw in them sent needles of anticipation down my spine. "I'm glad you came," he whispered, closing the distance between us.

  I remembered exactly how it felt to be in his bed together and so did he.

  "I missed you," he said. He looked like he could eat me alive.

  His breathing grew heavy as he slid a ripe blueberry between my lips.

  It was luscious and sweet. Perfect. I hadn't even known I wanted it. Now I could hardly think of anything else.

  But even as I savored it, I knew it was trap. I raised my eyes to his. "You always get your way, don't you?"

  "Not always," he
said slowly. His lips curved in the barest hint of a smile. "But I sure as hell try."

  I'll bet. I trailed a finger down his battle fatigues. "You think you're so smart."

  "He's very smart," said Jeffe, almost giddy.

  My stomach quivered. I'd forgotten about the sphinx. And about Rodger.

  "Get a room," my buddy whispered not so quietly in my ear as he slid past me. "How's it going, slick?" Rodger asked the sphinx, strolling over.

  So much for showing Galen he wasn't all that and a box of crackers.

  I tilted my head to the side. "I'm not here for what you think I'm here for," I said, wincing inside as I said it. Color me smooth.

  No question Galen had me rattled, but did he honestly think I was going to hand my life over to him just because we'd connected on a soul level? Or because of the chemistry between us?

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Then why are you back?"

  "Okay, how can I say this?" I wondered aloud, my face warming. God, what would it be like to touch him again? To be alone in that bedroom again? To have one more chance?

  It didn't matter. That wasn't the point. I was here to tell him to stay out of my business. I paused to gather my wits. "I know we've shared some things. And I like you. I do. But I don't like it when you push me. I'm not going to put up with it—anytime, anywhere, and especially not in bed."

  That hadn't come off as steely as I'd wanted, but damn it, he was way too close and way too large and way too male for me to keep my focus.

  "Fine." He gritted his jaw. "I think I can handle that."

  "Really?" I asked, wary. Maybe we had a shot at this yet.

  I wanted to believe he meant it.

  "I won't push," he said. "You'll see soon enough that the first prophecy has come true."

  And just that quick, hope crashed and burned. "I should leave," I said, turning to go.

  "Wait." He touched my arm. "Stay. I want you here. We all do."

  "What? So I can watch Jeffe address postcards?" I asked.

  Jeffe's head cocked up at the sound of his name. "See how I write. Are they not beautiful?" Bold geometric designs edged the cards. He'd drawn scarabs, lotus flowers, and, of course, the occasional guard sphinx. "You don't just want to write a name. You want to draw symbols for good luck and prosperity."

  Rodger stood over the sphinx. "I think you've got something there."