by Mayburn, Ann
She didn't want to mention that she’d grown up in a dry town, a place where gods and magic were taboo. She already felt like a massive freak because her parents were atheists, but when people learned she’d lived without magic for the first eighteen years of her life they often assumed that she hated magic as well. Unfortunately she’d lost more than one friend that way, and though she could understand why she hated being judged for her parent’s decision to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. While the rest of America had embraced ancient gods and goddesses during the Religious Revolution of the 1980s, her parents had gone in the total opposite direction and refused to believe in any religion at all. While her parents belonged to a pacifist atheist community, there were some small groups of atheists that committed hate crimes against magic users, burning witches at the stake and other horrible shit like that.
Tracy shifted from one foot to another as the uncomfortable silence stretched between them, then she gave Eliana an overly bright smile. “So, you know Professor Klemenson is super hot, right? He just got his doctorate last year, and he's the youngest High Priest of Odin in the country. My roommate has a major crush on him. Young, handsome, famous, and employed. What more could a girl want?”
Thankful for the change in subject, she shared a grin with Tracy. “It's been a long time since I've found anyone super hot, let alone a professor.”
“Ain't that the truth? No offense, but you seem to date some of the biggest losers.”
With a groan Eliana slipped her schedule into her backpack. “I know, I know. They appear so normal. Then I find out they run an Internet sex website devoted to balloon porn or some crazy shit.”
The foyer was starting to clear out, and a crowd stood waiting for the elevators. She didn't need to be sexually frustrated and late for class.
“Gotta go, Tracy. Good luck with your class.”
“Try not to drool all over yourself when you see Professor Klemenson. See if you can sneak some pictures of him on your cell phone for me. I’d rather look at him than crabby old Professor Bherz, that woman’s a bitch and a half.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She gave Tracy a wave and stood in line for the elevator, making sure she wasn’t standing in direct sunlight. The last thing she wanted to do was blind someone with her backpack. Butterflies started to dance around in her stomach again as she got ready for her first religious class, ever. She just needed to make sure she didn’t mention anything about her parents or her upbringing in case the teachers were prejudice against atheists. Thankfully, with having a witch as a roommate she knew enough about magic that she should be able to fake being normal enough to not draw any attention to herself.
The bing of the elevator arriving broke her out of examining her reflection, and she shuffled in with the rest of the students. Because of her height, the world around her became a sea of chests and backs as bodies continued to pile into the elevator. The backpack of the guy in front of her had an Eye of Horus patch on it to ward off evil. He was probably a protection magic major. Next to her a girl texting on her phone had an elaborate pentacle tattooed on her wrist marking her as a witch. It seemed like everyone in this elevator had something to do with magic except for her and she felt very out of her element.
The doors to the elevator opened, and everyone filed out into the hall. Dry erasers and cleaning supplies scented the building with the aromas she had come to associate with school, mixing in with faint hints of fragrant herbs and incense. The marble floors were polished and shiny, and the walls held wooden panels with the images of what she assumed were more gods and goddesses. Undergraduate students wandered back and forth, trying to get their bearings and make it to class on time.
Butterflies flopped around in her stomach when she walked into her classroom saw the size of the lecture hall. It was as extensive as the auditorium of her small private high school, and she felt lost while she looked for a place to sit. She moved over to the side as people continued to enter the room and tried to get a grip of her nerves.
Students wandered into the raised seating and spread out in random patterns. She noticed her friend, Rachel, whom she’d met in her European history class the previous year, and waved a hand at her. Relief filled her at the sight of a familiar face. She made her way over to where Rachel sat and slid into the empty seat next to her.
“Hey, Ellie, I'm so glad you're here!” Rachel bubbled. “How is your schedule so far? This is only my second class. My first one is Spanish at 8 a.m. What in the hell was I thinking signing up for an 8 a.m. class?”
“You were thinking the 1 p.m. Spanish class would cut into your soap opera time, and the 5 p.m. class would cut into your potential dinner-date time.”
Rachel snickered. “Speaking of dating potential, have you seen the new professor? He's super hot. Like oh ‘my god take me now you sexy beast’ hot”
“So I heard,” Eliana replied in a dry voice.
The door at the front of the room opened, and two men entered, as different as night and day. One was an older gentleman with a ring of silver hair wearing a wrinkled green suit and a mustard yellow tie. Then man that came in behind him was so handsome he made Eliana’s mouth dry and her panties wet. Her friends hadn’t been lying, he was amazing. Tall, with deliciously broad shoulders beneath his black suit jacket, he moved with an easy grace and confidence seemed to fill the air around him. Thick reddish-brown hair curled over his forehead, and his teeth were toothpaste-commercial white. His black pants clung to a perfect butt that made her hands itch to touch him as he walked past, talking with the older professor, then giving a husky laugh that made her heart go pitter patter.
There was a noticeable sigh among the female students and a disgruntled rumbling mutter from the males.
As the two men put their briefcases on the table, they smiled and continued talking in hushed voices. The younger professor paused and tilted his head as if he’d heard something, then turned to look at the students. He scanned the class while the older professor continued to unpacked his laptop and set up the projector, unaware his partner was no longer paying attention to him. While he looked over the crowd she couldn’t help, but devour the perfect angle of his square jaw, the shadow beneath his high cheekbones, and how perfectly shaped his lips were. Lips made for kissing, for licking, for sucking on as she plunged her fingers into his thick red brown hair to hold him closer so she could devour him.
Her breath caught in her throat as Rachel leaned over and whispered, “Oh my god, is he for real? No way he's the professor. He must be a model who got lost on his way to a photo shoot. Maybe I can get after-school special tutoring with him. Oh, teach me professor, teach me!”
“Shut up, he's going to hear you,” she hissed, trying to hide her laugh even as her hormones were running rampant through her body. Turning to get a better look at him, she found Professor Klemenson staring at her and her pussy contracted with a hard clench of need. A burst of heat radiated through her body, making her nipples hard enough to ache. Green eyes, the green of pine trees, locked with hers and held her captive for what seemed like an eternity. She had a brief impression of firm lips and arched brows, but it was the eyes that captured her. Amazing…she’d never seen anyone as hot as he was in real life.
Deep and heated, his gaze traced her mouth, and she could feel his touch like a phantom press of flesh stroking over her mouth. She licked her lips and heat flared in his eyes before his gaze dropped lower, and the ethereal touch traveled on, moving down her neck like the stroke of a finger, pausing at the junction of her neck and shoulder to place a gentle bite. She barely choked back a moan as the delicious sensation of kisses feathering over her neck drove her arousal higher. Her breath came out in a soft hiss when his gaze returned to hers.
Hunger, heat, and need all swirled in those green depths.
Abruptly, Professor Klemenson looked away, and she could hear and function again.
“Wow, he was totally staring at you!” Rachel said in awe.<
br />
Eliana ducked her head in the pretense of getting something out of her backpack when in reality she was almost shaking with desire. A deep ache radiated from her pussy, and her pulse pounded in her throat. She would have happily thrown herself on Professor Klemenson's desk and yanked down his pants right now if she wasn’t in a crowded classroom. Trying to gather her wits and figure out what the hell was going on, she shook her head. “No, he wasn't.”
“Yeah, he was.”
“Maybe he heard you being a pervert,” Eliana offered and gave her friend a big, false smile.
“I wish. Hey, Professor Klemenson,” her friend whispered, “if you can hear me right now, Eliana wants to ride your baloney pony.”
“Shut up,” she whispered back, trying to contain her laughter as Rachel made exaggerated expressions of sexual bliss.
They hushed their giggles as Professor Ventan, the senior professor, cleared his throat then began his lecture.
Her heart still thumped as she replayed the eternity that Professor Klemenson held her in his gaze. Of its own accord, her hand stole up and traced the path of those imagined fingers, her body tightening in need. Rachel grumbled and read the syllabus and test schedule while the rest of the class did the same. Eliana jerked her mind back to the present with a hot blush heating her cheeks and tried to return her attention to the material they were going over.
The rest of class was spent fighting a losing battle to keep her mind on the lecture and off the man who had devastated her with a glance.
****
New York City still hummed with energy despite the late evening hour as an elegant woman knelt next to a pile of dirty blankets and wet cardboard in an out of the way alley. Glancing up, Linda scanned the shadows then looked over her shoulder to check the street behind her, hidden from view by a pair of huge garbage bins. She was alone with the homeless man and she let out a silent sigh of relief. Finding a victim had been especially hard tonight and she’d wasted hours walking through dirty alleys trying to find a sacrifice. Normally she didn’t like to hunt so close to home, but she needed a victim for the spell and she needed one now.
With a swift jerk, she jabbed the sleeping man with a potion-filled syringe. He woke up with a muffled shout and tried to fight the influence of the drugs, but all he could do was breathe as his eyes rolled in panic. Linda watched him as a soft rain began to fall, tapping her fingernails on her knee. After a few moments she decided the potion had taken effect and smiled. From within her black vinyl trench coat, she pulled out a fillet knife and kissed the blade.
Working swiftly, she jerked the stained shirt and grungy jacket the man wore open, revealing his pale and sunken belly. He made a high, whimpering sound, like a scared rabbit, and she drank down his terror with a delicious shiver. She loved that, loved the fear in her victim’s eyes, loved seeing the hopelessness fill them as they realized they were looking at their death. Closing her eyes, she opened her mind and soul to her goddess of war and destruction, Eris. She pushed back the sleeves of her coat, and a soft chant fell from her cosmetically enhanced lips while she began to methodically butcher the man alive.
After peeling his skin back, then cutting through the thin layer of fat and the muscle of his abdominals, she plunged her hand inside warm cavity of his stomach and began to pull out his intestines, slowly running over each rubbery inch while continuing the chant. This careful evisceration continued for a long time while she read the future in his entrails. Silent tears of agony ran through the stubble on the man's cheeks and she had to keep herself from being distracted by the urge to luxuriate in his suffering.
Suddenly she read something, a prophecy that struck fear through her and she dropped his intestines with a startled yelp. Linda stood and washed her hands in a puddle alongside the edge of the building, then wiped them off on the man's jacket while she tried to make sense of what she’d just learned. Distracted, she scanned the alley while she jerked a pink crystal-studded cell phone from her pocket and began to pace.
The clicking of heels echoed on wet concrete as she paced and tapped out a number from memory. “Identification, please,” a soothing computerized voice intoned on the other end of the line.
“I am an instrument of Eris, a silent carrier of her destruction, a poisoned blade in the dark,” the woman said in a soft, sweet voice as she watched rainwater collect in the blank eyes of the corpse.
After a short pause, the machine answered, “Identification accepted. Please continue Dark Oracle Linda.”
There was a click, and Linda began to speak into the phone. “My Brothers and Sisters, I have foreseen a woman of remarkable power coming into her time of Choice. If she fulfills her destiny, she's going to be a tremendous pain in the ass. We must concentrate on her and find out who she is. Focus your scrying on places within a 200-mile radius of New York City.”
She paused and twisted her lips into a small pout as she noticed a chip in her glossy pink nail polish. “Oh, and one more thing—her weakness is love. Find her, but do not kill her, and my goddess will reward you.”
Linda checked her boots for blood and removed a travel pack of baby wipes from her pocket. She made fussy little sounds as she cleaned the viscera from around her nails. Tossing the raincoat and used wipes into a nearby trash bin, she fluffed her blond hair and strolled out of the alley into her waiting limo.
Word of her prediction would spread through the servants of destruction.
Chapter
Eliana stumbled back to her dorm in a daze. The paper she’d received from Professor Klemenson smelled like his delicious cologne, amber and cedar, similar to the woods in autumn. He’d caught her sniffing it in class and given her an odd look. Professor Klemenson probably thought she was some kind of weirdo ink huffer in addition to her embarrassing staring match with him earlier.
Cheeks burning with a blush at the memory of her spazzed-out hormonal reaction, she let herself into her room. Stuffing the key card into her jacket pocket, she kicked the door shut behind her and went through the small foyer. She toed off her shoes and put them into the small closet to the left of the foyer then entered her shared bedroom to dump off her stuff. The bedroom itself was tiny, and every available inch of space was crammed with books and knickknacks. Her dorm was actually a two-bedroom suite with a shared bathroom, but she and her roommate had converted one of the bedrooms into a small lounge area. After tossing her backpack on her computer chair, she stretched out and looked around the room with a smile. The space was an eclectic mix of tastes and Eliana loved it.
A large dream catcher hung over the window, the little crystals attached to its web throwing rainbows on the walls. Impressionist posters and pictures of her family decorated the walls on her side of the room. On her roommate Chrissy's side, there were posters of shirtless soccer stars along with spell and hex charts. A bundle of fresh herbs sat on Chrissy’s desk next to a big white marble mortar and pestle. From the lounge area in the next room came the sound of music and Chrissy singing along to the song.
Eliana yelled in the direction of the open door, “Hey, Chrissy, I'm leaving for work soon. Do you need anything while I'm out?”
“No,” Chrissy yelled back, “not unless you can buy us beer for the party on floor five tomorrow night.”
“I wish. I look so young they would card me for Kool-Aid.” She popped her head into the doorway of the other room. Chrissy sat on the couch in front of their small TV with a tray of herbs on her lap. The room was decorated in classic “poor college student” style: hand-me-down furniture, mismatched throw pillows, and a huge fuzzy white beanbag. She sat in a ray of sunlight that made her wild blond curls flare in a halo around her face and brought out the green in her hazel eyes. Her pretty looks combined with her lean soccer player’s body gave her the appearance of a model, and Eliana had been intimidated by her friend’s beauty when they first met, but Chrissy was as down to earth as could be and they’d instantly clicked. She’d missed Chrissy immensely over summer break and realized wi
th a start that her dorm and friend felt more like home than her family.
With a frown Chrissy began to sort through the bundle of herbs. “Can you believe this shit? First day of class and my herbologist professor gives us a giant plastic baggie full of mixed plants and wants them all separated and labeled by tomorrow.”
“That sucks.”
“Yep.” Chrissy sighed and held up a green twig with dark leaves up to the light. “As if that wasn’t hard enough, she put some kind of spell on them so I can’t identify them by smell. What an evil bitch.”
Eliana laughed. “I'm off to work. Can you help me study when I get back?”
Chrissy nodded as she arranged herbs in front of her and began to tape them to a graph. “Sure, good luck with your first day on the job.”
Seven hours later after a long day at a local greenhouse and craft store where she worked, Eliana drove through the parking lot of her dorm. It required extra time to hunt for a spot large enough to accommodate her old Cadillac, Big Fran. On the dash of the enormous car, a pink Grateful Dead bear wobbled back and forth in a hula girl skirt. It seemed as though no one was leaving the dorms any time soon, and she had to venture farther and farther out to find a parking space.
At first, her new job hadn’t been so bad. She was to run the register and help the customers. The owners were gracious, and the employees, most of them college students, were friendly. The only problem she had was the head cashier, Linda, had given her major attitude the moment she walked through the door.
Linda was an older woman with dyed red hair and an offensive attitude. She favored too-tight T-shirts and jeans that gave her a muffin top. Her permanent expression seemed to be either disgust or contempt. No matter how polite Eliana was to her, the head cashier gave her the stink-eye and ignored all of her questions. Working at the outside cash register, and away from Linda, was a relief.
