Nocked Asunder

by Sam Cheever

  “Dammit!” I swiped a shaky hand over my face and closed my eyes. “Think, Athena, think!”

  If I were Damian…where would I hide a key? In my jeans pocket. Damn and damn again!

  Snuggles shrieked again and I jumped, opening my eyes to glare at her. “I’m trying! And you’re not helping!”

  The Harpy glared back at me and her thick, purple-black tongue came out to swipe across her teeth.

  I frowned. “This is no time to think about eating me, Snuggles. I’m here to release you.”

  The Harpy screamed and turned her horrible face toward the stairwell. She lifted off the ground and slammed her chest against the bars.

  The entire house shook from the impact.

  “The kitchen!” She was trying to tell me the key was upstairs.

  I ran back up the stairs and started ripping out drawers, dumping them everywhere in my search for the key.

  There was an empty hook on the wall beside the door. I figured Damian had removed the key when I’d come around. To keep me from going downstairs. “Very helpful, Damian.”

  A horrible roar sounded outside, followed by some truly ear-shattering shrieks. I ran over to the open door and looked outside.

  Peter was down and there was blood everywhere.

  Damian was a madman, ripping and lunging at the tattered gorgon above him but he was covered in blood too and, even from where I stood I could see several horrible gashes in his back and shoulders.

  Another shriek from the basement gave me the impetus I needed to tear myself away from that door. If I wanted to help Damian I had to get the Harpy free.

  I finally found the key inside a small jar on top of the counter.

  I plunged down the stairwell and ran toward the cage. I was well past the point where I worried for my own safety.

  I inserted the key in the lock, my hands shaking so hard I could barely get it into the slot.

  Snuggles shrieked and threw herself at the door, knocking the key back out of the lock. “Stop it!” I shrieked at her.

  Apparently the fishwife tenor of my voice startled her because she complied.

  I managed to slide the key home again and turned it, slamming the lock open.

  With a final impatient shriek, Snuggles plowed through the door, shoving it into me and trapping me behind it against the cage.

  I opened my eyes and found her bright violet eyes and teeth, dripping with saliva, mere inches from my face. She made a strange rumbling noise and her tongue came out. I closed my eyes and prayed she’d remember Damian before she ate me.

  The thick, slimy purple thing swiped up my chin like a promise and then she turned away.

  I opened my eyes and watched her lumber toward the large window looking out over the ocean beyond. She smashed right through it and took to the air, announcing her presence with a truly horrifying scream.

  I sagged to the ground, giving myself a moment to push my heart back down into my chest and remember to breathe.

  At least I hadn’t peed myself.

  Darn close though. That was one ugly, bad-smelling pet. I scrubbed Harpy spit off my chin with my sleeve.

  I climbed to my feet and headed for the hole in the wall Snuggles had made. Climbing carefully through the jagged glass, my gaze was drawn immediately to the sky, where dual, horrific shrieks of aggression barely preceded the sound of two huge, solid bodies pounding together in midair.

  A rumble went through the ground beneath my feet at their impact, telling me more than anything how powerful the two creatures doing battle above my head really were.

  What I was witnessing was a truly epic occasion.

  But there was no time to enjoy it.

  I had to get to Damian.

  He was facedown in the sand, covered in blood.

  “Oh my gods…Damian!” I ran toward him through the dense sand, feeling it pulling on my heels, trying to drag me to a stop the whole way. The glistening sand was littered with blood, scales, hair and chunks of things better left unexplored at that moment.

  It was the sight of a mythical war.

  Unfortunately it was all too real.

  After what felt like an eternity, I reached Damian and bent over him. His back was crisscrossed with deep, bloody welts, embedded with sand and gorgon hair. But I was vastly relieved to see it rising and falling. He was still breathing. I dragged the thick curtain of his hair off his face and winced at the bloody claw tracks scoring his cheeks and forehead. “Damian?”

  His eyelids fluttered but stayed closed. “I’m just resting.”

  I laughed, bending over him and enjoying the feel of his expanding lungs against my chest.

  He groaned and flipped over onto his back. His chest looked even worse than his back. His eyes came open and he looked overhead, where the sounds of battle were still going strong. “You let Snuggles out.”

  I nodded.

  “She didn’t eat you.”

  I shook my head.

  He sighed. “That’s good. Thanks.”

  Suddenly he jerked and turned his head toward the spot in the sand where Peter lay. His brother was motionless. Simone had draped herself over Peter’s body and was totally silent, her beautiful dark gray eyes focused on us without expression.

  It was a truly horrifying sight.

  Damian jerked to his feet and ran over to his brother. Shoving Simone aside none too gently, he felt for a pulse on Peter’s neck. His eyes flew to the sky and he let out a whistle like I’d never heard before. It hurt my eardrums and made the air around us throb.

  Facing each other in midair, claws slashing and wings pounding in an effort to gain the upper hand, the two monsters hovered far above us. At the sound of Damian’s whistle, Snuggles jammed her huge, clawed feet into Medusa’s belly and shoved hard with her powerful back legs, sending the gorgon flying through the air away from her. Without missing a beat, she dived toward us.

  I looked at Damian. He stood with his blood-coated sword and chain and was waiting for the Harpy. Snuggles didn’t land. She flew by close enough that Damian could grab her hair and flip himself onto her back.

  Almost before Medusa could right herself to renew her attack, they were headed toward her again and Damian had blood in his eye.

  I turned to look at Peter and Simone was draped over him again, this time soft sobs emerged from under the multi-hued curtain of her hair.

  A cold wave of dread swept through me. Peter was dead.

  And Damian was wild with grief.

  This could not end well.

  A bloodcurdling roar filled the sky above my head. My gaze jerked skyward just in time to see Damian and the Harpy meet Medusa.

  Snuggles swiped her claws across Medusa’s middle, drawing a scream from the gorgon and bringing a quick, retaliatory response.

  Medusa swept one powerful wing toward Damian, hitting him hard in an attempt to unseat him from the Harpy.

  I thought at first that it had worked. He left Snuggles’ back in forward flight that carried him right into Medusa’s deadly embrace.

  Like a large spider, Damian wrapped his arms and legs around her thick body and slashed his sword toward her face, cutting a deep gash down the right side of her face. He plunged his hand into the gash and Medusa threw her head back on a scream of agony, lashing out at Damian with her claws.

  But he was already gone. With a backward flip, Damian launched himself into midair and tumbled toward the sand below.

  I screamed but Snuggles dived quickly, catching him before he landed and swooping close to the ground so he could jump off.

  He ran immediately toward his brother and knelt beside him. Damian flipped Peter over and slathered his chest with the blood coating his hand. A heartbeat later Peter’s chest heaved and he gasped, surging into a seated position and looking perplexed.

  Damian slapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome back!”

  Peter blinked. Simone flung herself at him, taking him back down to the sand.

  A horrendous shrieking noise erup
ted above our heads and we all looked up. Snuggles and Medusa crashed together, claws ripping and flailing frantically.

  Snuggles opened a wide track of claw marks down Medusa’s scaled chest and fastened her jagged maw around the gorgon’s thick neck.

  Medusa wrapped her thick arms around the Harpy and whipped her tail hard, sending them plunging and spinning across the sky.

  They rolled by, just over our heads, heading directly toward Damian’s house.

  Sparks flew into the sky. The air around the house wavered and the two monsters disappeared, apparently sucked right into the magic force field Damian had in place around the house.

  The beach was totally silent for several beats. We all stared at the spot where they’d disappeared and tried to assimilate what had happened.

  I blinked a few times and then turned to Damian. “Where’d they go?”

  He looked at Peter.

  Peter sighed and pushed himself painfully to his feet. “I guess we’re back to Olympus then.”

  Damian grinned.

  I frowned. “But I thought you said Medusa couldn’t breach the magic you had around the house?”

  Damian shrugged. “I guess Snuggles carried her through. In any event, there’s now a very pissed-off gorgon and a very cranky Harpy loose on Olympus. And if I know Zeus he’ll be sending a lightning bolt to fry my ass if they wreck anything important.”

  Peter stood unsteadily on the beach, Simone draped along his side. “Remind me not to stand too close to you.”

  Damian sneered. “Har! Let’s go.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Oh no you don’t. Not without me.”

  He pulled me into his arms and lowered his lips to mine. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  And we were off.

  Chapter Twelve

  Life-Changing Moments

  We landed in the golden streets of Olympus, not too far from the Garden of Life and the Building of Judgment, where all the laws were made on Olympus and the gods held court.

  The streets were paved in gold brick and shone in a warm, midafternoon sun, seen now through a thick filter of dust that clung to the air above them. It looked as if a tornado had buzzed through. Debris from splintered carts and broken buildings littered the street. Signs hung at odd angles from their posts. Lamps lay shattered on the ground, fallen from their twisted poles. And, here and there, gods and goddesses were scraping themselves off the dusty ground and trying to pull and tuck their silken robes back into order.

  Damian grabbed the arm of a passing page, whose white tunic was splotched with something brown and gooey that didn’t smell very good. “Which way did they go?”

  The page turned wide, brown eyes up to Damian and gulped. The small boy couldn’t have been more than eight years old and was scrawny and knobble-kneed as you’d expect from a child of his age.

  His chin-length blond hair had probably been tidily arranged under a gold leaf headpiece when he’d left his quarters that morning but now the gold leaves were clamped under his ears and the band stuck out beyond his scrawny neck. His gold tresses stuck up all over his head and sported vegetation, feathers and mud.

  He looked like he’d been pounded into the ground with a feather mattress.

  He opened his mouth but nothing came out. Instead he pointed a filthy finger down the street, toward open country and the mountain’s peak in the distance.

  Damian looked at Peter. “She’s taking her toward the compound. That’s good.”

  In the distance a fountain of dirt shot into the sky and two huge figures, still locked in mortal combat, lifted into the sky.

  Something screamed and a chariot came barreling down the street toward us. The two white horses pulling the gold-trimmed chariot were wild-eyed, their nostrils flared in alarm.

  The young couple standing inside were pale and so rigid with fear they looked as if they’d already been turned to stone. Damian stepped in front of the chariot, holding his sword out before his body and murmuring something I couldn’t quite hear.

  The two young people blinked and the young man pulled the reins hard, stopping the horses in a swirl of dust and flying debris just inches from the spot where Damian stood.

  Demon magic.

  Cool beans.

  Peter and Damian climbed into the chariot. They “helped” the young couple out and Damian offered me a hand. “Coming?”

  Simone took to the air and flew toward the distant peak of Mount Olympus.

  I climbed up and Damian tucked me in front of him, so that I was braced by the chariot in front and his hard body in back.

  I was in a happy place.

  That is, until he took the reins and whipped them, sending the white horses flying at breakneck speed down the street.

  I clutched the rounded edge of the chariot before me and turned my head. “Aren’t we going the wrong wa-wa…wait a minute!”

  The horses lifted off the ground and headed toward the clouds. We climbed on an almost vertical slope and began to roll into a steep turn. I gasped and Damian wrapped an arm around my waist, holding me tightly against his body.

  I could feel how much he liked me through the soft denim of his jeans. “Just try to breathe, Athena. You’re fine.”

  “Oh…my…gods!” I looked down and the town of Olympus looked like something a five-year-old would play with. The young page we’d been talking to was a small speck on the ground, waving at us as we headed off after the dueling monsters.

  I looked at the horses’ flailing legs and saw that small, white wings had sprouted from their heels.

  Damian handed the reins to Peter and wrapped his other arm around me, grinding his hard cock into my nearly naked buttocks which, thanks to Simone’s slut skirt, were pretty much exposed to the world. I glanced at Peter but he had his gaze determinedly fixed on the sky ahead.

  Damian’s lips found the side of my neck and his tongue slid out to forge a heated trail down my throat. “Relax, Athena…” His hands slid up my thighs, quickly breaching the worthless skirt and creeping easily beneath the flimsy silk of my panties.

  I gasped and reached for his hand, covering it with my own and glancing again at Peter.

  Though his face was a mask, determinedly blank, I could have sworn his lips were tucked up just a bit in the corner.

  “Damian!” I whispered, outraged and more than a little alarmed by how much I wanted him to continue doing what he’d been doing.

  He laughed and slid the errant digit into my pussy and then dragged it back out, running it over the throbbing nub of my clit. I moaned softly and laid my head back on his shoulder. Then I caught myself and wrenched his finger from my soaking crotch. “Stop it!”

  He bit my shoulder. “War makes a warrior very hard.”

  I sucked in a breath and turned in his arms, wrapping my arms around his neck. “It has that same effect on warrior-ettes too, it seems.”

  He captured my lips on a husky laugh and pulled me up against his body, grinding himself firmly against me.

  “You might want to table that for a while, kids. We have company.”

  The words barely cleared Peter’s mouth before something massive swept past with an enraged screech. Snuggles’ powerful wings flapped hard in an effort to stop the backward impetus of her flight and her thick claws grasped the air with complete futility.

  She hurtled toward the ground, apparently unable to stop herself from falling. It looked like she held one wing at an odd angle.

  Medusa hung in the air before the horses, her hissing, swirling hair roiling violently around an even more repulsive face. Her massive wings throbbed in the air, holding her upright as she assessed her prey and sent the capricious equines into spasms of hysteria. The horses reared and lunged, upsetting the balance of the chariot and sending us plunging toward the ground in a stomach-clamping maneuver that fortunately didn’t give me time to shriek like a girl and embarrass myself.

  Medusa plunged after us.

  Peter leapt from the chariot, landing on
the back of one of the horses and reaching back with his sword to cut the tether holding the horse to the rig. He swooped upward and away, toward Medusa.

  Damian wrapped an arm around me and leapt onto the other horse. I screamed, clutching him around the neck as we landed hard and, as a result of my panicked scrabbling for purchase, we nearly slid over the horse and off the other side.

  Damian struggled to keep us upright and on the horse and almost didn’t clear his sword in time to cut the tether. We managed to swoop away mere seconds before the chariot crashed into the rocky ground of Mount Olympus’ highest peak.

  Simone and Peter surrounded Medusa. She flailed with her claws and pummeled them with her wings and tail but they danced away too fast for her to catch.

  Her thick, green body ran with blood. Her beard was matted with dried black blood and her claws were thick with it. She seemed to be losing focus, her swiping attacks becoming more wild and less effective and her reactions to Simone and Peter’s deadly attacks was noticeably slower.

  Simone had a long, thin sword in her hand and was having great success finding openings in Medusa’s defense to slice her thick skin over and over again. The cuts were small and shallow but in the numbers Simone was delivering them, just as deadly to the gorgon in the long run as a full-out body thrust to the heart.

  The gorgon’s wings were tattered. While they still held her in the air, she would occasionally drop several feet as if her wings were having trouble holding her up.

  We hung in the air a moment. Damian watched the battle before us and then turned to me with an assessing look. I returned his stare, wondering what he was thinking. With a sigh, he jerked the reins of the horse away from the scene, back in the direction of the town.

  I frowned. Surely he wasn’t running away and leaving Peter and Simone to handle Medusa alone.

  But up ahead, on the ground, Snuggles was pulling herself upright and testing her wings. Damian dived toward her. The Harpy looked up and screeched as we approached.

  He dropped the horse gently to the ground and the wings on its feet disappeared. We dismounted and Damian slapped her on the rump, sending her on her way.

  I watched the beautiful animal run for freedom and suddenly wished I could go with her.