Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  Heat. Incense.

  “Was there sound?”

  Chanting. The priestesses were chanting, hands locked together.

  “Focus on the sensory input. Let it take you there, but know we’re here. Feel John’s hand.”

  It clasped hers where it rested tensely on her thigh. Her fingers twitched beneath his grasp and he stroked her knuckles. “Right here.”

  “What is he?” Maddock’s voice seemed to be getting farther away as she stared at the crystal and watched dancing lights within it.

  “My protector. My champion.” A light smile flirted over her lips as she remembered Clara calling him that.

  But there was more, a special weight to Maddock’s question, nudging her toward something else.

  “Yeah. You know what it is.” The wizard’s voice was quiet but resolute. “Say it, and that word, his presence, that truth, anchors you here.”

  “Master. Sir.”

  John shifted, his arm sliding around her waist. “Right here, sweetheart,” he repeated.

  “Master…”

  She opened her eyes and shuddered. She lay in the center of the circle of priestesses, and oh Goddess, she hurt. Her body was battered and torn, Ukrit’s filth still staining her inside and out. Her split lip and cheek ached where he’d hit her for trying to bite him.

  “You’re still with us, Medusa. It’s a memory. Breathe through it. This isn’t like what happened before. You’re not trapped. I can bring you back to us at any time.”

  She knew that. In that present time and place, Clara and Charlie were sitting across the picnic table from her. Their combined calming energy, as well as Charlie’s healing skills, were intended to help monitor and manage her reactions. And John had made it ominously clear to Maddock he had final and irrevocable say on if and when she’d had enough and needed to be brought back to them.

  But she was still afraid, and she didn’t know why she was afraid. Klotho and all her sisters were in a circle around Medusa, holding hands, chanting, raising the energy they would need. Her heart rose up into her throat to choke her. Klotho’s long brown hair was held back with a thin braided cord, her thin, blue-veined hands lifted, her eyes focused on the magic with which they were interacting. She’d had a sweet, thin mouth. She’d been stern, but kind. She’d been wise in the ways of knowing what she didn’t know, quick to acknowledge her mistakes. Like her poor judgment about Ukrit.

  “Klotho…” Tears clogged her throat and she looked toward her other friend, Callidora. She had dark hair, and dancing blue eyes, though they were serious now, suffering over Medusa’s pain, angry at Ukrit.

  She’d missed them so much. Goddess, it was terrible to hurt this much, the memory merging with the reality to become unbearable.

  “Sssh…help us see the ritual, Medusa. Tell us how it went. It’s a memory.”

  It didn’t matter. Enough memories crowded together could become Tartarus while one still breathed. But she shifted her attention to what Klotho was saying.

  She was exhorting Medusa to open herself up to them in all ways.

  Show us the darkness in your heart, your soul, your mind. Release anger and betrayal. These are the weapons we will use to your benefit, sister. The magic that will protect you and keep those like him from having power over you again will come from yourself. From the spirit of Athena that lies within each of us. You are your greatest weapon, your greatest protection. You will become a fortress against the world.

  Medusa threw back her head, her body contorting. She screamed at the pain as things changed, her back ripping open, something like the worst of poisons rushing through her blood. Her tongue split, blood filling her mouth.

  “She’s okay, it’s okay…”

  Someone was holding her, not letting her fall, which didn’t make sense, as she was already lying on cold stone, but it helped her claw her way back to awareness. This was memory. Only memory. John was holding her. Her Master, the man who loved her, was holding her.

  “No. I don’t want to go forward. I can’t.”

  “You can. You’re already more than halfway there. You can do it. You’re strong.”

  “I’m a monster. Please…”

  “No, you’re not. Damn it, Maddock, you bring her out now.”

  She was a monster. They didn’t know. She was sliding down into an abyss, her fingers scraping on rock. There was a murmur of conversation, some kind of struggle happening, but it was too late anyway. The shadows were lifting, curtains she wanted to keep closed forever.

  The metamorphosis had been painful, but it was also a release. Like a newborn bird breaking free of an egg, a slave throwing off chains, a babe fighting into the world from a dead mother’s womb. Exhilaration filled her. Power. She could destroy the world if she wished. They’d given her a weapon. They’d made her into one.

  She put her hands down on the stone and saw the claws scrape over it, leaving thin white marks. Something slithered over her shoulders, but it felt like the touch of a flame that did not burn. She turned her head and came face to face with a large white snake. It should have made her rear back, but it didn’t. Her head was covered with snakes, her mind filled with their voices. She put her hands upon them and they wound over her forearms. She was the snake goddess. They’d made her into one. Pushing up off the stone, she stood up to embrace her sisters, to let them feel this power and pleasure. She would protect all of them. No one would ever try to hurt any of them again.

  “No, no, no…”

  Klotho hadn’t known how it would manifest. She’d told Medusa that, hadn’t she? The moment Medusa raised her deadly gaze, she caught Klotho and Callidora directly in its path. Callidora managed one short, cut-off shriek before the gray patina ran over her skin, locking her into a position of agonized fear.

  Medusa stumbled forward. “No. Callidora.”

  The others hadn’t known what to do. Two pounced on her from behind, exhorting her to be still while they tried to put a blindfold on her. The snakes went berserk, striking, their rage and lack of comprehension fueling her own. They were trying to bind her. Why…what did it mean?

  She spun around and three more died. It was Doris, the most elderly and practical of the temple, who at last understood what needed to be done.

  “Release her.” The priestess’s aged voice barked out the command. Though Medusa heard the horrified tremor in it, Doris had enough authority to cut through the panic. “Everyone, turn around and face outward from our circle. Do not look at her. Close your eyes. Do it now. Medusa, lower your gaze, my child. Do not look upon your sisters.”

  Medusa collapsed in the circle, numb, crying. She could not help but stare at five women who were now stone. It would not matter if she looked at the others, for they had their backs to her, shaking in fear, or crying from the same loss she was.

  “No. Please. Doris. What have I done…I…help me…”

  Doris’s tone filled with indescribable sorrow. “Klotho would have done better to take your life, as you begged her to do. But now we must abide by what we have done.”

  “No. Undo it, please. Or kill me now…”

  “It is black magic, and magic that draws upon your own soul, child. There is no undoing it except from the mystery of your own self. And I will not take your life. There has been enough death here today.”

  “Please.” She crawled across the circle, clung to Doris’s robes and exhorted her for help. When Doris refused, she did the same to the others and felt her heart crack as some fled the chamber, too afraid of her to even bear her touch. “Please.”

  “Cease, child.” Doris spoke in a terrible, harsh voice, the voice she used to chastise the younger acolytes. Later, Medusa would remember hearing the tears behind it. But now the priestess proved her bravery and her resolve to protect them all.

  “What has manifested from inside you will make you feared. Ukrit will not pursue you, unless he is a fool. You are free of him. Take whatever food and supplies you think you will need from our stores. Head for the
uninhabited islands and make yourself a life there. Goddess go with you, Medusa, and come to no more harm under Her care.”

  No. Medusa wanted to die. If they would not do it, she would. She would kill herself before Callidora and Klotho, let them know she had avenged the deaths she had wrought with her consent to this, with her foolishness. The gods had meant for her to go to Ukrit and, in her pride and fear, she’d defied them.

  Wiping at her streaming eyes, she scrambled to her feet and stumbled over to the altar where the ritual knife for cutting herbs had been laid. It was consecrated. She would be ruining it, but she’d ruined everything else.

  “No.”

  Doris’s arms wrapped around her from behind, surprisingly strong, though the elderly priestess’s voice broke with pain. “No, child. No. Take your ease. Listen to me. I will make it all right. Trust me.”

  She began chanting, a gentle singsong. It sounded merely like a healing lullaby she used in the infirmary, for Doris helped care for the sick. But then the words changed, became something more than song. Clouds invaded Medusa’s mind. She struggled against them, but they promised peace from this raging pain.

  “You will forget for a while,” Doris said as she concluded the spell. Medusa slumped in her arms, barely conscious. Doris’s voice started to drift away, but Medusa heard her final words. “It is what Klotho would want. She loved you as a daughter.

  “Remember nothing of this moment, Medusa. Not until your heart is strong enough to bear it.”

  “3…2…1.”

  Medusa surfaced. She couldn’t breathe, hunched over her knotted fists, pressed against her heart.

  “JP…” Maddock’s voice.

  “Don’t talk to me right now,” John grated. “Just get the hell away. I told you this wasn’t a good time to do this.”

  “Would there ever have been a good time for her to face something like that?”

  “No. But not right after she’d re-experienced her rape would have been a fucking few steps better. You don’t want to be here right now.”

  His rage was palpable, raw, and it stirred her own, though she had no target for it except herself. She would have preferred to experience the rape again. At least the only victim of that tragedy had been herself. She was weeping.

  Now she knew why she never thought about the ritual, and, the few brief times she had, so many of the details had been cloaked by this fog. When she recalled Klotho, Callidora and the others, it was always well clear of the memory of that night. If she tried to think of them, then something would distract her, or…she would hear that lullaby in her mind and forget.

  She’d killed her best friend and the woman who’d raised her. Doris was wrong. That knowledge could never be bearable. John couldn’t possibly love her anymore after hearing that. No one could, especially herself.

  Yet no one was pulling away from her. Charlie’s hands were on her, stroking. Clara was murmuring something soothing. And John held her still, his arms strong and sure.

  “They were my friends. My family.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t your fault. Klotho wouldn’t have done it if she’d known. It was no one’s fault but that bastard’s.”

  So why did it feel even worse than when she’d purposefully taken life, and she found that awful beyond description? She wanted a way to go back and undo it, not be what she’d become that day. She’d killed on the island, but the first lives she’d taken had been the people closest to her. And the spell had come from what lay in her own heart and soul.

  “And the magic he used. Don’t forget that, Medusa.” She must have spoken aloud, because John answered her. “They made the magic out of what you were feeling that night and his magic. It’s that combination that creates the darkness and rage you fight. But it’s also where your courage and compassion come from, your will to fight that darkness. It’s okay. It hurts to lose people you love. Just let it out.”

  “It’s not okay. It can never be okay.”

  But the tragedy and miracle of life was that it could. Even after something like that, life could go on. She cried hard, holding onto his shirt front and wetting it. She cried until she made herself sick, and he held her hair and snakes away from her face as she vomited into the grass. After that, she rose, and made it several trembling steps before she fell to her knees and decided she didn’t want to get up again.

  John gathered her in his arms and carried her to a nearby tree, a beautiful oak with a graceful canopy, and a pattern in the bark that looked like a sorrowful, wizened face. She supposed that spirit had seen all sorts of tragedy. Hers was nothing special. Probably obscenely mundane.

  As John sat down under the tree, holding her cradled in his lap, Charlie came to them and knelt. She began to put her hands on Medusa and Medusa knocked her touch away. When Charlie drew back, startled at the hiss, Medusa understood why. The snakes hadn’t made that noise. She had.

  “I do not want to feel better.”

  Her wrists were caught in one very strong hand as another clasped her chin, pulling up her face to meet a pair of implacable gray eyes. “Tough,” John Pierce said. “Because I’m not going to let you punish yourself for this. Ukrit killed them, Medusa. Not you.”

  “It was my eyes. Mine. I…oh Goddess, why…”

  “Sshh.” He folded her in his arms as she began to weep again. He must have gestured to Charlie, for the healer’s hands were on her once more, and a feeling of peace started to flow within her. In her current state, it initially felt like an invasion, a handful of daisies thrown on a field soaked in blood, but the petals did not stain. The flowers took root, and began to spread out over that field, nourished on the blood, changing it into something else.

  “No…” she whispered.

  “Your elder priestess knew what she was doing, Medusa,” Charlie said, a disembodied voice at the perimeter of her consciousness. “While she cloaked your mind, she left your deepest consciousness aware of what had happened, so it could grieve, and come to grips with it. That darkness you feel, that rage, it was fed by some of it, but now you can lessen it with your awareness. Let the gateway open fully. You have been grieving this for a long time, so once that awareness settles in, you will be able to bear it. I promise. John Pierce is here with you. He will let you bear nothing alone.”

  Charlie’s healing energy was filling her. Medusa drifted under those strong, female hands, while still cradled in John’s powerful arms. She didn’t want to feel better. She didn’t. But as the tears fell and watered that field of daisies, they expanded even into the areas where they’d not yet covered. Years of daisies, growing up among the blood, symbols of time healing the wounds of grief.

  And the pain lessened. Not in a way that negated the horror of it happening, or her fervent wish that it could be undone, but in the way that happened because life persevered. Time grew scars over wounds that seemed mortal when first inflicted.

  The pressure on her heart eased as she relented and that part of her soul opened even further. She saw and felt the truth Charlie had. The undeserved gift Doris had given her was time for the heart and soul to handle the knowledge while the mind stayed in the dark.

  Until now, when she faced it while held securely in the arms of one who understood, who loved her.

  Because John Pierce did understand. She remembered how he’d told her about the family he’d had to kill, the pregnant woman. The four-year-old who’d died in his arms. And she’d suspected that for every terrible story he was telling her, there were more. He’d had to accept the blood he couldn’t ever wash off his hands. In the dream she’d had of him, weeks before he arrived, she’d known it then.

  The set of his mouth told her he preferred to be kind, yet the lines around it and his eyes said he had to be cruel and unyielding far more often, and it had taken its toll.

  When she lifted her face from his chest, she saw the anguish in his expression. It was as if he’d suffered every moment of that terrible night with her, and maybe he had. He’d looked this
way when she woke from the unfortunate incident with Lianthe. It was as Charlie said. He would let her bear nothing alone.

  “It will get better,” he said quietly. “You don’t believe it right now, but it will.”

  She heard Charlie’s dulcet voice murmuring something and then John had a warm washcloth he used on her face to clean the tears away. She would have done it herself, but as he cradled her in one arm and used his other hand to wipe her eyes and lips, her nose, she could only hold onto the front of his shirt and look at him, caring for her like a cherished babe. His feelings for her had not changed, unless one counted them intensifying. She was not alone in this.

  She felt broken, yet also mended. She cleared a raspy throat. “Did Maddock get what he needed?”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  She pressed her forehead into his chest, loving him for his anger, but loving him even more for what she knew was beneath it. She waited him out and he sighed. “Yeah, he said he did.”

  “Can I… I’d like to hear what he thinks, if he has any new ideas.” She wanted to be strong for John Pierce, show that she could handle this. She wanted him to look less anguished. “Is he still here?”

  “I think he slunk behind one of the wagons,” John said between his teeth. “Charlie, is he still here?”

  “He is. I’ll go and get him.”

  As the healer went to do that, Medusa struggled to sit up. Registering her need to be under her own power now, John didn’t carry her, but he did support her as they moved slowly back to the picnic table. After he helped her sit down, he slid in next to her, keeping a bracing arm behind her so she was in the shelter of his body. Clara was sitting on the bench on the opposite side, studying Medusa with a troubled face.

  “I wrote down most of the detail for Maddock,” she said carefully. “He seemed to be making additional notes in the margins while you were recuperating, so I think it did trigger an idea or two for him.”

  “Yeah, probably a new way to turn someone else into a guinea pig for his fucking endless search for knowledge.”