by A C Warneke
Jenna felt the color drain from her face at the casually uttered reminder. Did she make the right choice? Pressing her hand against her stomach, she swallowed against the bile in her throat. Memories of the other life jolted through her head, leaving behind a hollow ache that she couldn’t erase. Had she chosen that life….
“You cannot second guess yourself, dear.” The gentle reprimand made Jenna jump, bringing her back to the present, to this life. Medusa’s lightly smoothed a strand of hair from Jenna’s face, pushing it behind her ear, the caress tender and… motherly. It was such a great contrast to her very youthful appearance. “The Fates are vindictive bitches and they only like to show the highlights of a possible life. There are no guarantees that you would have been any happier in that life than in this one.”
“But my children,” Jenna stammered, her eyes once again filling with tears over the life she rejected. “Jeremy….”
“Hush,” Medusa whispered, pulling Jenna into a comforting hug, stroking her hair and gently rocking her. Resting her head against Jenna’s, she murmured, “I’m very proud of you, you know. Most take the rosy path without even considering the ramifications. What made you decide to keep this life?”
Jenna didn’t know how to answer that question. Rhys was definitely a part of her decision but it wasn’t just him, her attraction to him. It was Ferris and Melanie and Vaughn and Armand. As real as the other reality felt it hadn’t been her reality and as difficult as the struggles had been in this life they were her struggles. In the end they hadn’t killed her even if she wasn’t sure they made her any stronger either. The only thing she knew was that she had depth that the other Jenna understandably lacked, a depth that came from surviving devastation.
“It was everything,” she managed to rasp. Tilting her head back with great effort, she met Medusa’s dark eyes, seeing a wealth of wisdom in the black depths. “I mean, if you had it to do all over would you?”
Medusa pressed her lips together in a thin line as she glanced at her son who still lay sleeping. “I have two sisters whom I never see, a lover that comes to my bed every five hundred years and gives me three beautiful sons before he is taken from me, my sons are always taken from me before their tenth birthdays, I have to fuck lifeless bodies as they dream about their new lives, all because I had the audacity to fall in love with a god, with Apollo.
“I don’t know if I would do it all over,” she admitted, reaching out and drawing her fingers through Rhys’s hair, lingering on his cheek. Absolute love and affection shone from her eyes as well as a terrible sadness that was at her very core. She gathered Jenna up in her arms and leaned her back against the headboard, slowly shaking her head as she held Jenna like a child. “I don’t know if I could.”
They sat in companionable silence for a long time, Jenna too stiff and sore to move. Memories from the other life were still there, still flaying her soul. She had to pray that there was another Jenna that was living that life, that there was another universe where Jeremy lived and they had two beautiful children. If there was that other life, with another Jenna and another Melanie, she could only hope that her sister didn’t make the same choice, knowing the lives it would destroy.
“Do you think there is such a thing as soul mates?” Jenna asked, awkwardly raising her hand and resting it on Rhys’s side just so she could feel him breathe. “I mean, I loved Jeremy so much and yet I am… whole with Rhys. I was drawn to Rhys even in that other life.”
Medusa’s nostrils flared slightly as she inhaled sharply and studied Jenna with her dark eyes. She caught her full, lower lip between her teeth and made a little sound as she considered her words. “In the human world there may be a strong connection between two individuals, a connection of souls that travel together,” Medusa murmured, absently stroking Jenna’s hair, her words weighed before being spoken. “But no matter how powerful or overwhelming the connection, a love match between two humans still requires work to remain strong.
“With us, those of the supernatural world, the bond is powerful, almost at a cellular level as well as spiritual. For instance, my attraction to Apollo led me to turn my back on my sacred vows, to give him my heart and my body within hours of meeting him.” She chuckled softly to herself, “Of course, it could have had something to do with the sheer magnetism of having a gorgeous god showering me with flowery words and adoring passion but I like to believe that it was more than that. It had felt like destiny.”
When Medusa’s gaze drifted away, Jenna asked, “Are supernatural beings fated to be with one person?”
“Perhaps. There are creatures whose instinct for their mate is so strong that it over rides all thought, all reason,” she laughed lightly, her fingers rhythmically brushing through Jenna’s short locks. “Shifters are notorious for their single-minded obsession for their mates. They crash through all acceptable behaviors of propriety to claim what is theirs and it’s really quite fascinating.” She let out a long sigh and Jenna could sense Medusa’s smile, “I have always felt sorry for the human that was marked for a shifter, or really, any of the supernatural beasties out there. The rules are so different between the two worlds and humans are so fragile. They don’t stand a chance of resisting, even when the attraction goes against everything they believe.”
Jenna couldn’t help but smile a little at that herself as her hand slowly moved over Rhys’s side, needing to touch him, to make sure he didn’t vanish if she removed her hand. “Were you human? I mean, before the curse?”
Her tinkling laughter filled the air, “Not at all. My sisters and I are the product of the unholy union between Aphrodite and Hephaestus. We were shipped off to this island, hidden away from the world and our origins wiped from the records”
“But I thought the Gorgons came before the Greek gods?” Jenna murmured.
Medusa waved her hand through the air, “Dita preferred not to be reminded of her time with Heph so she kind of influenced the story tellers to write the myths her way. It’s easy to pass off the lie as truth when you write the story and Dita can be very convincing in the story telling. The historians altered the time line a little and we were effectively disowned.
“All of the tales of my sisters and I being the product of primordial sea gods are balderdash,” she continued. “A simple lie to hide the truth and after so many years the lie has become reality.”
“Wow.” Jenna knew how inadequate her response was but she couldn’t come up with anything better to say to such an incredible revelations. It all made perfectly horrible sense and her heart ached for the tragically beautiful Medusa.
“Dita is jealous of any female whose beauty rivals her own and my sisters and I are exceptionally beautiful in our human forms.” Medusa chuckled softly, “Yet she is also very vain and couldn’t have daughters that change into such hideous beasts, now, could she? She created this temple and deposited the three of us here so very long ago."
“That’s horrible,” Jenna whispered, hearing the barely there bitterness that laced Medusa’s voice even after so many, many years. She tried to move but her body was still so very lethargic and she wondered how long it was going to take before she was fully recovered, when she could return home and embrace her daughter, her sister. Softly, she asked, “What happened to your sisters?”
“After my… indiscretion they got to move to Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods and their offspring. The curse of transformation was lifted from them and they became the beloved granddaughters of Zeus,” she paused, swallowing thickly. “It was part of my punishment to remain behind. They stripped me of my ability to shift at will and they took my children. And since I gave myself to the golden Apollo, perhaps my greatest sin in the eyes of the other gods, I was punished with a near insatiable sex drive. The gods can be quite cruel.”
“It sounds lonely.”
She let out a miserable laugh, “After thousands of years one gets used to it. Plus, I have my imps and my companions and I can see everything that is happening in the world, so there
is that. All of my needs are provided for and I have found a measure of contentment.”
“Do the imps really provide that much company?”
“They can be naughty but they make me laugh,” Medusa chuckled sadly. “And they don’t judge me when I have sex with what basically amounts to a living corpse. Because they are fully grown within a few days of their birth they are fully aware of my needs and they do not judge.”
“I don’t think your sons judge you….”
“Of course, my imps shouldn’t laugh about that since they are the product of those unions,” Medusa said, ignoring Jenna’s assertion. Jenna’s eyes dipped to Medusa’s flat stomach, unmarred by stretch marks and she wondered briefly about her pregnancies and births. Medusa’s fingers smoothed over her stomach and laughed, obviously aware of Jenna’s thoughts, “It is part of being me: mystical pregnancies. I experience everything but my body remains unmarked and within two weeks of birthing an imp the urge to fuck begins anew.
“I always resist the need to fuck when a man becomes ensnared,” Medusa murmured, confessing her pain. “But my skin begins to crawl and I burn up from the inside out. And still I resist even as my sex swells until it cracks and bleeds, until my breasts harden and pulse with boiling lava, until my thighs run with blood and I crave the relief of taking a man into my body, even a man that is no longer a part of this world, whose body slowly turns to stone as he lives in another reality.
“Now, then, the sun will be up soon,” Medusa said cheerfully, the abrupt change in subject and tone disconcerting. Carefully, she laid Jenna down next to Rhys on the bed and stood up, smiling down at the pair of them, unable to hide the wistfulness in her dark eyes. “I don’t believe this bed will hold two gargoyles.”
Slowly, painfully, Jenna reached out her hand towards the tragic woman, grateful when Medusa took the offered hand in her own, “Thank you for telling me all of this.”
Medusa stared down at Jenna with a lost look in her eyes and when she spoke her voice was low, filled with sorrow and resignation, “I want someone to know I was here, that I existed. Now, get some rest.”
Bending down, she placed a soft kiss on Jenna’s forehead, turning away but not before Jenna saw the tears in her eyes. “I’ll see you when the sun goes down.”
“Wait!” Jenna cried out. When Medusa stilled but didn’t turn around, she said, “Couldn’t we talk some more after you change?”
“I don’t want you to see me as I am when I am a stone beast. It’s not pretty,” Medusa said softly. Turning her head to the side, letting Jenna see that the change was already taking place as the color leeched from Medusa’s face, the woman blew out a sad laugh, “Even after all of this time it seems that I still have some vanity left.”
Jenna glanced down at Rhys and found his eyes open and watching her. The color was already draining from his face and when he spoke his voice was rough, “Mother likes you.”
With a smile, she laid down in his arms, feeling his body shifting and growing around her. Resting her hand on his chest as it expanded and hardened to stone, she whispered, “She’s amazing.”
He wrapped his large stone body around her as his eyes slid close, his wings enfolding their bodies until they were cocooned together. “It’s good to have you back in my arms. Have your muscles relaxed any?”
“A little,” she admitted, tilting her head back to see his face, loving the stone monkey. Her emotions were still too close to the surface, though. Between her experiences in the other reality and Medusa’s heart wrenching confessions, Jenna felt ready to break. As long as she had Rhys to hold on to until she could get her world back in order she would be all right. As long as she didn’t think about it until after she could take a few days to process it, she would get through. Reaching up, she cupped his rocky jaw, “I’m a little scared of what’s going to happen when I’m recovered and my normal functions return. I can envision such horrible things.”
Rhys chuckled, squeezing her tighter until her human body was flushed against his stone body and letting out a contented sigh and yawning until his jaw cracked, “I’m just grateful you’re back.”
Despite her body’s inability to move very far or very fast, and despite her effort to shut it up, her brain was racing with a million thoughts, a million memories of two lifetimes. It was going to take time to sort through her feelings and the only person she could talk to about them was ashamed of her gargoyle form. How was she going to get through the day with so much weighing so heavily on her soul and no outlet? It was too much to keep bottled in.
“Rhys,” she whispered, pushing weakly against his stone chest. He mumbled something but remained steadfastly asleep. “Rhys, I need to make a phone call.”
A scraggly, gray-green arm reached between one of the spaces that wasn’t covered by Rhys’s body or wings. In its long, skeletal fingers was a phone, “Here, call.”
Jenna recoiled against the scratchy, inhuman voice. As she stared past the arm, she saw a pair of large gooey-green eyes staring at her from a face with too many teeth. Too many sharp teeth. It shook the phone a little, snarling, “Call.”
Slowly, she took the proffered phone, keeping her eyes on the creatures. “Th… thank you.”
“We’re sorry,” it said, its eyes remorseful. “But it worked out. So, all good, yeah?”
“Um, yeah?” Jenna managed, not sure what worked out or what she was agreeing to. The creature grinned and its eyes gleamed before it released the phone and disappeared. With a shaking hand, she dialed Melanie’s phone number and listened as it rang, snuggling closer to her gargoyle.
“Hello?” Melanie answered groggily.
“Melanie!” Jenna cried, tears welling in her eyes for some strange reason. “God, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Jenna?” her sister murmured, the confusion apparent in her tired voice. There was some bumping noises and she murmured an apology to Vaughn, before she asked in a somewhat panicked voice, “Why are you calling so late? Are you all right? Is something wrong?”
Jenna laughed, “I’ve just had a really weird night is all.”
“Who is it?” Vaughn’s roughened voice asked.
“Wait, why are you sleeping?” Jenna asked, realizing it was only 1 or 2 in the morning. With Vaughn back, Melanie should be wide awake and having sex with her mate.
Melanie was quiet for a long moment, “Um, it’s the strangest thing, Jen, I have been so exhausted. I can sleep all day and it’s not enough. I would swear that I was coming down with something but Omari tells me that I should be the healthiest I’ve ever been.”
“I know about what you did, Lenni,” Jenna breathed, cupping the phone as if it were Melanie. Anger suddenly flared up in her belly and she ground out, “How could you do that? Don’t you know you could have died? What were you thinking?”
“Ah, Jenna, I didn’t know the risk,” she admitted. Jenna could picture her snuggled up against Vaughn, a sleepy smile on her face. The image juxtaposed with a similar scene of Armand bursting into the room with murder in his green eyes and she shuddered involuntarily. “Omari handed me the vial and told me that if I drank it it would help get Vaughn back and that was all that mattered.”
“You’ve got the Devil’s own luck, Lenni,” Jenna sighed, trying to banish the image of Vaughn and Armand pummeling one another, of Melanie breaking Armand’s heart. She squeezed her eyes to shut out the memory, pressing her forehead against Rhys’s chest. She was back in her world and Melanie was with Vaughn, she had always been with Vaughn. “Maybe the exhaustion is your body adjusting to whatever the blood did to you.”
“Probably,” her sister agreed. “Tell me about your trip, Jen, what’s Medusa like? Is she anything like the myths? What have you been doing that you haven’t been able to talk to us when Rhys called?”
Relaxing against the hot and hard stone body of Rhys, Jenna got into the conversation, studiously avoiding any mention of alternate realities and being asleep for nearly a month. That was a conversation to
have face to face, if it was to be had at all. For now, she was content relaxing against Rhys’s stone body and listening to her sister talk. It was exactly what she needed.
Melanie told a few stories about Ferris, how the little girl followed Armand around and talked his ear off, how he occasionally replied, which only encouraged Ferris to talk more. Apparently, her daughter decided Armand didn’t smile enough and so made it her mission to make him smile more frequently, telling him silly jokes and sharing her favorite toys with him. Melanie wasn’t sure if it was working but Armand didn’t run off as hastily as he used to when Ferris showed up.
“Poor Armand,” Jenna chuckled, her heart tightening in her chest as she pictured the gorgeous, stoic man. Closing her eyes, she rubbed her cheek against Rhys’s sculpted chest, taking comfort in the warm stone, the faint beat of his heart deep within his hard chest.
“Poor Armand is right but not for that reason,” Melanie snickered. “He got a little drunk the other night and had a momentary lapse of judgment and he slept with a succubus.”
“He slept with Toulia?” After what she had witnessed in the alternate reality between Armand and Melanie, Jenna wasn’t entirely surprised Armand did something so foolish. She could almost bet that Armand slept with Toulia shortly after Vaughn returned to Melanie. She could only hope that there was someone out there for Armand because he had so much passion within him, buried deep inside and desperate to escape.
“How do you know Toulia?”
“I met her once in an elevator,” Jenna explained.
“She declares he is the best lover she’s ever had and has become even more persistent,” Melanie informed her. “Poor Armand has taken to hiding out on the roof whenever she’s around.”
After talking for an hour, tears were streaming down Jenna’s face as laughter made her stomach ache in the most pleasurable way. As she was saying her goodbyes, a tide of longing washed over her and she knew that she had to tell Melanie something. Softly, Jenna murmured, “You were meant for Vaughn, Lenni, you’ve always been meant for Vaughn.”
