Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  Lianthe had nearly reached Clara. Yet as those liquid brown eyes shifted, registering Medusa, the pink-tinged nostrils flared. A shrill whinny burst from the creature and Lianthe wheeled, so violently that Clara started backwards to avoid being knocked aside by one gleaming flank.

  “What? Lianthe, what’s the matter? What…Medusa.”

  Medusa fell to the ground, pain exploding inside her head. The snakes were hissing, jerking her this way and that as they struck the air, seeing things no one else could see, hallucinations coming out of the bright lights flashing in her mind. Their agitation intensified the pain, their agony as piercing as her own scream.

  She was being pulled down a tunnel, into a pit, a place she was sure she didn’t want to go. But it was too late, all of it happening too fast. Darkness enclosed her, and then the screams started.

  She knew who was screaming. It was her, those wailing, pleading shrieks laden with memories she’d never wanted to recall again.

  They swallowed her alive, a rat caught in a snake’s maw. She was trapped between the world of life and death.

  Darkness was the only end for her.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Come, Medusa.” The man’s eyes gleamed red, red as her own. As she reached out to him despite the vehement protest in her mind, she saw she had claws. Her tongue, dry in her mouth, was forked. Her snakes were limp, heavy weights pulling against her scalp. When she looked down, she saw Ratqueen and Tunneltrap lying on her breast. Their eyes had that odd cloudy look that all dead animals had, even humans.

  None of these things could be true. Her snakes could be neither alive nor dead, because this man had happened to her before her transformation. Yet her wings flapped helplessly on her back as if they were vestigial, no power to get her away from this memory.

  “I want to talk to the loveliest priestess ever to serve Athena,” he said smoothly, his own forked tongue flickering at her. When it slithered up the side of her face, it cut like a knife. She touched her cheek, feeling afraid as she saw blood on her fingers. “Won’t you come sit with me in the temple, away from the others?” he wheedled, the conceited light in his eye saying he knew she couldn’t refuse him.

  “No.” She was trying to back away, but her body paid her no heed. She was walking along with him in jerky frames of images, as if she was phasing in and out of the memory. Her lips were stretched in a smile that felt like an infected wound as she chattered to him about the temple routine. His red eyes watched her. Waiting.

  Lianthe galloped back to Clara, almost as fast as she’d tried to retreat from Medusa. Clara, kneeling at Medusa’s side, looked up at the unicorn. Though Lianthe could speak in images in Clara’s mind, what was there was too agitated to comprehend. But Lianthe could understand her. “Go get JP. She belongs to him. And Yvette and Charlie. Anyone who can help.”

  Lianthe’s eyes were rolling with distress. Clara put a hand on the white foreleg. She had no idea what had spooked the unicorn or had caused Medusa to collapse, but Lianthe was the one still standing, so one of the others could figure out the creature’s distress and how it connected to this. “Go now. Please.”

  The horse charged away, golden mane and tail streaming. Clara tumbled back on her backside as Medusa abruptly opened her eyes and shoved up onto her feet. She moved as swiftly as a ninja warrior, sprinting back into the trees. The glimpse Clara had of her face showed the woman’s eyes were vacant, her mouth stretched in fear. Like she was sleepwalking in a nightmare.

  Clara ran after her, but the woman was far too swift. Looking up, she saw a pair of the young dragons and whistled, drawing their attention. As they swooped down, she pointed.

  “Don’t lose sight of her. Help me—oh Goddess.”

  Medusa ran straight into a tree, which knocked her backwards to the ground, blood blooming on her forehead. Clara pounced on her, holding the young woman’s wrists as she thrashed. She gritted her teeth as she lost a grip on one of them and Medusa struck her in the face in her unconscious state. Fuck, she was strong. If the blow hadn’t been glancing, Clara was terrifyingly aware the other woman could have caused her real damage. She yelped and started back as the snake that looked covered with rough gray bark shot out at her with a hiss, warning her back.

  Clara wished she had some of the powers the others possessed, super strength or speed. Medusa could kill her in this state, that was obvious. She was even now trying to scramble back to her feet, despite being dazed by hitting the tree. The boundary to their camp wasn’t far away and Medusa was swift. If she stepped outside it, her eyes would become lethal again.

  Clara still wasn’t used to calling him for help. But now she opened her mind. Marcellus, help. I’m over at—

  He landed next to her with a gust of wind strong enough to blow her hair back and ripple her skirt across the ground. His dark eyes took in everything at a glance, though she was already babbling.

  “I can’t calm her. When you try to hold her, the snakes attack. Lianthe went to get JP and Charlie. We need to calm her without holding her down, and I don’t know how to do it. Can you do it?”

  He knelt next to Medusa, still trying to stagger to her feet. His face was always so stern and impassive. He didn’t smile or laugh as often as Clara wanted him to do, but she knew compassion ran deep in him, connected to the Goddess Herself. Showing no fear of the dancing and striking snakes, he laid his hand on Medusa’s heart, his other over her forehead, and he spoke in a language Clara didn’t know. Slowly, she sank to her knees on the ground, and toppled to her side, Marcellus easing her down. The snakes went down with her, coiling in uneasy figure eights around her head. They watched the angel suspiciously, their tongues flickering.

  Medusa was still twitching, her eyes moving rapidly under her lids. As she drew up into a protective fetal position, she started whimpering, tiny, half whispered pleas that tore Clara’s heart out. There were no words, but it was as if she was being harmed, and pleading for it to stop.

  From the harsh look around Marcellus’s mouth, she thought that was a pretty good assessment. His expression also told her he couldn’t pull Medusa out of wherever she was. Knowing she was in no outward physical danger was small comfort.

  “Can you tell where she is?” she asked Marcellus.

  He raised somber eyes to her. “In a very bad place. She needs JP.”

  “Take her to him. Go. I’ll follow.”

  He touched Clara’s face, his thumb passing over the mark Medusa’s fist had left. It was a light gesture that tingled across her lips and straight down into her heart.

  “You are always finding trouble,” he said.

  “Lucky I have the best guardian angel my student insurance plan can afford.”

  His lips twisted and he tsked. Scooping Medusa up, he shot back into the sky.

  When Ukrit was done, he left her. Just left her, there by the statue. She stared up at Athena through eyes clotted with tears. Her clothes were in tatters. Her body hurt in a million terrible ways. She’d fought. Why had she fought? He was a god, wasn’t he? Or fueled by the power of a god. So had she now incurred the wrath of both Athena and Poseidon?

  She was in such pain she was weeping without a conscious decision to cry. She wanted that dream back, the dream of the unicorn. It eluded her, but she tried to create it from the other times she’d dreamed of the fantasy. They were on a beautiful island, with a waterfall, and goats, and blue sky. The unicorn would lay down when the afternoon heat came and Medusa would lie against her, listening to her breath. She would scratch the unicorn’s forehead around the horn, because it was itchy there. She’d run her fingers through the silken mane and tail.

  Sometimes, at a distance, she’d see a man walking along the beach, in strange, snug blue pants. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and she liked the look of him. Her unicorn would watch with her, and would nudge her, as if encouraging her to go see him. But there was something sad in the unicorn’s gaze. Medusa was afraid if she walked toward the man, when she looked back, the u
nicorn would be gone forever.

  But now she was. Medusa finally knew why the unicorn had left her dreams, never to return. The unicorn only bonded with the innocent, and Ukrit had ripped that bond to shreds, taking the dreams of the innocent from her forever…

  JP was already headed out with Lianthe, him at a dead run, her at a fast clip, when he saw Marcellus winging down toward them, Medusa in his arms.

  “Put her down here,” Yvette said, clearing off one of the scattered picnic tables. A mat was unrolled on the surface by Charlie, who’d appeared with her bag of herbs and healing aids. “What happened?” John demanded.

  Lianthe whickered unhappily and the vampire turned her gaze to her. Yvette’s brow creased. “She’s too agitated. Charlie?”

  Charlie turned to the unicorn, but she wasn’t the only one who knew all languages, and Marcellus could apparently decipher them quicker. “Medusa had a dream bond with Lianthe,” he said brusquely. “Before she was raped and transformed.”

  “Damn it,” Yvette swore.

  “What?” John looked between them. He slid a hip onto the table so he could cradle Medusa’s upper body in his arms. She calmed somewhat at his touch, but she was still twitching and making a terrible repetitive keening noise, like a wounded animal. “Someone fucking tell me something. What the hell is going on?”

  Yvette answered him while the unicorn stood at her side, looking as miserable as if her horn had been taken. “In your world, unicorns are no longer safe. You know this. But they still draw spiritual nourishment from bonds with the pure. So rather than venturing out into reality, they dwell in places like this and bond through dreaming. When the girl they choose grows up and lies with a man, they disappear from her dreams, a fond memory.”

  Yvette paused, her lips tightening. “If ever the unicorn should encounter the woman again, whether in dream or reality, in that first moment of eye contact she will relive the memory of her lost innocence in a way that is enhanced threefold. For most, that is a lovely or at worst poignant experience, innocence giving way to mature love, a natural part of the life cycle, the transition to womanhood. It’s a gift the unicorn can give to her, but over which the unicorn has no control.” Yvette took a breath. “But if the first sex is violent, a violation…”

  John had already guessed where the explanation was going. A fervent curse slipped from his lips. “So she’s reliving it, three times as bad as it was. As if it wasn’t bad enough.”

  “There is no waking her until it is done,” Charlie said, grief in her countenance as she put her hand on Medusa’s brow. “All that can be done is what you are doing, John. Stay with her. Keep holding her. Some part of her may absorb your presence. While it won’t stop the dream, it may make it more bearable.”

  “What if it twists what we have, makes it part of the nightmare?”

  Medusa made a sharper noise of pain, and he cradled her even more gently, while still trying to hold her closer. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I’m here. I’m here. Please…” Fucking God, he’d never felt so helpless, even when she’d been pulled away from him in the portal transition. But her fingers caught his shirt, held on tight, and he put his forehead against hers. The snakes bobbed and weaved around his head, as if exhorting him to fix this. That didn’t make him feel any better.

  “No. What is between you…” As he lifted his head in response to her words, he saw Charlie was studying him, telling him she was looking at the pattern of lights that both he and Medusa were emitting. “It is pure and cannot be twisted. If it can break through and help, it will, but it will not harm.”

  The healer turned her attention to the unicorn and laid her hand on the gleaming white shoulder. “Lianthe wishes to tell you how very sorry she is. She did not know Medusa was here. The chances that she would meet one face-to-face with whom she’d bonded…

  “Are astronomical,” Clara finished, putting another comforting palm on the other side of Lianthe’s neck. “Because obviously a dream bond isn’t limited by time. She had no reason to think Medusa would show up here, in this exact time and place. It’s okay, Lianthe. It will be okay. John will take care of her. She has faith in John. She’ll pull through it and be okay.”

  John took hollow reassurance from Clara’s declaration. He wanted to ask her if she was using her clairvoyance or speaking from her heart, but the answer to that was on the young woman’s distraught face.

  When Medusa whimpered again, he felt as if his chest was being crushed by a cruel god. It wasn’t far from the truth. He couldn’t look at the unicorn right now. It wasn’t because he blamed her. It was because of what she represented, a time before Medusa had to face all this shit. Something should have protected her. He should have been with her, now, then, always. What he could have done, he had no damn idea, but he had to be pissed at someone. Himself was his best choice. “Once she lives through the dream once, will it happen again?” he asked Charlie roughly.

  Charlie paused, digesting whatever Lianthe communicated to her. “No. After the initial contact, there is no danger of it.”

  John took a breath. “So she could come and see Lianthe afterward?”

  “Yes.” Yvette studied Medusa’s unconscious form, sympathy in the tight set of her mouth. “You think she would want to do so?”

  “I know it. She remembered those dreams when things were at the roughest for her. They helped.” Medusa would want him to say this, he knew. Would want him to help relieve the agony in the unicorn’s eyes. Since he couldn’t do a damn thing for Medusa except helplessly hold her, it was something.

  Lianthe looked somewhat bolstered by that news, though Clara kept stroking her mane. “She says she’d like that,” Charlie said.

  “Take Medusa to my quarters,” Yvette said brusquely, though she swept John with a look of approval. “Once there, everyone should clear out except Marcellus, who should please stay just outside until it is over, in case JP has need of anything. JP, my living space is yours as long as she needs it. You’ll find it more comfortable, and the spells on it are strong and may also help pull her from her dreams sooner.”

  “If anyone can do that, it is you,” Charlie told him, reaching out to put a small but reassuring hand on his forearm. “There are things that only love can heal.”

  “Okay.” In a crisis, John was about action, not talk. As he lifted Medusa in his arms, his mind was already working on ways to bring her out of that fucking nightmare she shouldn’t be having to endure again.

  Sooner rather than later. Or it was going to destroy him as much as it could her.

  Ukrit had come back. Oh Goddess, why had he come back? The first time, he’d left her there, bloody and broken, and that was the end of it. She’d never thought she’d consider that a blessing, but when he came back to do it all over again, she knew she’d choose the reality over this nightmare, which seemed endless.

  And she couldn’t move, she couldn’t get away. She screamed at herself to fight, to resist, yet her body refused to do anything but lie limply, be his victim. Her tears and cries to stop, please stop were the only resistance she offered. She hated that worst of all. She hated the way his brutality made her his possession.

  I do not belong to you. She knew who held her heart and soul, and she would not suffer Ukrit’s trespass upon his territory any more than he would if he were here now. And oh Goddess, she wanted him here now. She shattered, splitting into pieces. She left that broken girl on the ground and stepped outside herself. She tore herself loose from the bindings of mind and soul, from her past and origins. She stood raw and exposed, a newborn created out of blood and necessity.

  There were ceremonial blades embedded in the stone below the sculpture of Athena. She hadn’t remembered them there before, but John had told her the story of the boy king and the sword in the stone. As Ukrit thrust into that poor girl, she ripped one free, never doubting her ability to do it, and plunged the blade into his back. Pulled it out, took a two-fisted hold on the hilt and began to swing it like an ax. To
hack, to maim, to destroy and kill. Nothing had ever felt so good. Nothing would ever feel as good as taking life, exercising that ultimate power as a defiance against ever being weak, or the target of cruelty or ignorance.

  But as she hacked and blood sprayed and flesh came loose, the scene changed. The temple vanished. She stood on her beach, sword in hand. Looking down at herself, she saw she was covered in blood. Pulling off the ruined tunic, she threw it from her and stood in the sunlight, breathing hard. She was home. It was okay. It was okay.

  A movement caught her attention. The man, walking along the beach. He stopped, looked her way and raised a hand. As he came toward her, she retrieved the sword and stood ready to use it. When he was close enough, he looked at the sword.

  “It worked,” he said. “You freed yourself.”

  Fastening steady eyes on her, he shed his own clothes. As he pulled off the shirt that clung to his powerful upper body, he gave her an inviting look and walked into the waves, letting the surf wash over him. She saw a tattoo on his back, in brilliant colors of green, black and red. A tattoo of her face, the snakes curled around it in a way that looked fantastic and appealing, not monstrous. Yet her gaze was captured not so much by that as by the ripple of muscle along his back, the shift of his buttocks, the lengths of his muscled thighs. She saw marks upon him, scars of his battles.

  He moved out waist deep and ducked under, coming back up to smooth wet-slick hair to his skull. As he turned to her, his gray eyes like a storm, like the bark of a tree, like the color of sand in the dawn light, met hers. Her body had responded when she looked at his. But when she looked into his eyes, deeper things responded to what she saw there. Her resolve trembled through her arm, through her grip.