“Thank you!” the voices parroted in unison.
“Well, that wasn’t so hard,” Adonis said after they had departed.
Marvin seemed to swell, his fur standing on end as his nose twitched double-time. “Not so hard? Not so hard?” he said. “Being the Easter Bunny is a sacred responsibility. It requires an expert understanding of life, nature, and the balance of the universe. You think you can slap on a suit and toss out some candy and you’re done?”
“A sacred responsibility?” I prodded. “I thought it was a joke. You said so yourself during our session yesterday.”
Marvin picked fur from his vest. “That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be executed with the utmost care and sensitivity.”
“And what do you suppose would happen if any of your attempts had been successful?” I pointed out.
He thought about this for a moment. “Zeus would have to find someone else to take over for me. Train them how to do what I do.”
“What if they don’t want to do what you do? What if they bring all new ideas and methods to the position? What if they decide your way of operating things was outmoded and old?”
“Well, I…they couldn’t…they wouldn’t—” he sputtered.
“I’m not trying to make light of your situation,” I reassured him. “And I’m sure in all your years, you must have thought this through before. But if you have any hesitation, even the tiniest second thought, you should at least pause to give it a little room. Think about it. You bit my ass when I almost sat on you yesterday. Something inside you wants to live.”
His sigh was heavy enough to unstitch some tension yet coiled inside my breast. “I don’t think I can. There’s nothing left for me in this world. Nothing new or exciting or even surprising.”
“You may be right,” I agreed. “I won’t argue with that, and I can’t promise anything. But what would you lose by letting me try? If it doesn’t work, you can go right back to hunting for death, same as always. Aren’t you at least willing to entertain the possibility that you could be happy again?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“We can start there. Can you hold off on the suicide attempts at least until we’ve had a chance to chat a little further?”
“I s’pose.”
“All very touching,” Crixus interrupted, looking to me. “But I think we better get moving before our friend wakes up.” His sapphire eyes flicked toward the bathroom where one denuded would-be Easter Bunny was presumably tucked away in one of the stalls.
I opened my purse for Marvin to hop in, then turned to Crixus. “Lead the way,” I said.
At the end of the hall, we merged with the stream of bodies making their way toward the food court. People moved through and around us, pushing strollers, walking hand-in-hand, sharing pretzels and weekend plans.
With a demigod on my left, an immortal man in a rabbit costume on my right, and the Easter Bunny in my purse, I felt as removed from this normal scene as if I had been beamed down from another planet.
Never again would I be able to engage in a simple afternoon of shopping with a friend, living comfortably in the illusion that I knew the world and the creatures in it. That I understood the forces supporting this precarious dance and could walk up and down its corridors confidently, knowing my place.
“You never knew those things anyway,” Crixus said, filtering through my thoughts like a sieve. “You only thought you did.”
“Get out of my head,” I ordered.
“Get into my bed,” he replied.
“Even now, that’s all you can think about?” I accused him.
“No,” he said. “I’m also thinking about how to keep you alive.”
“Only so he can nail you.” Adonis’s voice was muffled through the layers of cotton batting and fur and had a strange hollow quality I attributed to the oversized head encircling his own like an astronaut’s helmet.
“Is that true?” I asked Crixus.
“Of course it is,” Adonis answered. “Every super on this planet knows he—”
“One more word, and I will rip your head off and personally hold you down while every soccer mom in this place violates you. Do you understand me?” Some unspoken knowledge crackled between them, filling the space I occupied with a sense of foreboding.
“I would like to understand,” I said, jogging a little to keep pace with their lengthening strides. “What is Adonis talking about?”
“Nothing vital to your survival,” Crixus answered.
“And apparently detrimental to mine,” Adonis added.
“Do you know anything about this?” I questioned the bunny in my purse.
His quick glance at Crixus was not lost on me. “Not a thing,” he said.
“Crixus, if you want my continued help with your assignments, you had better start talking. And fast.”
“Doctor, now isn’t the time or the place for this conversation.”
“And when is? After I get pulled apart by two female deities warring over the immortal I…uh, unintentionally coupled with?”
“You call it unintentional. I call it destiny,” Adonis said. “The fates brought us together.”
“My name isn’t fate, Romeo.” Crixus grabbed one the head’s long, pink ears and gave it a tug. “And if I have to pry you apart with a crowbar, believe me, I will.”
“There is no together,” I said. “Everyone seems to be overlooking this one very important fact. ”
“How can you ignore what we experienced?” the giant pink rabbit asked, the frozen face failing to mirror the earnest pleading in the voice emitting from behind two oversized front teeth.
“Adonis, please try to understand,” I beseeched him. “You told me about the effect you have on women. I did you a grave disservice by thinking I was different.”
“But you are different,” he insisted. “What I felt with you is different. You healed me.”
“No, I really didn’t. Your physical reaction to me could be attributed to a number of different factors.”
“You can say that as many times as you want, my love. It won’t change the way I feel about you.”
“Please stop saying that.” I ducked back behind Crixus, who shouldered his way through a choked passage between a fountain and an indoor playground where little bodies hurtled around like a visual illustration of the chaos principle.
“There you are!” A beefy hand shot out and grabbed Adonis by the sleeve. The hand, as it turned out, was attached to the hairy arm of a mall employee with a clipboard and a nametag designating him as Event Staff. “You were supposed to be back from your break fifteen minutes ago. All these people have waiting for half an hour.”
We looked over to the winding line of parents bouncing chubby-fisted babies on their hips in the impatient posture of the soon-to-be shrieked deaf. Mothers chased toddlers as they alternately took off toward unseen shiny objects and attempted to dive headfirst into the nearby fountain. At the top of the platform trailing the writhing mass of energy and annoyance was a giant Easter egg hiding a gilded throne.
“What happened to the costume?” the man holding the straining sleeve of Adonis’s costume asked. “I thought you said you were a medium.”
“Looked bigger on the hanger,” Adonis shrugged.
“Just do me a favor and get your tail in the chair. This crowd is turning ugly.”
“Bunny!” one voice sang out.
“Bunny!” another voice echoed.
The cry rippled through the crowd, doubling back upon itself until it became a two-syllable chant: “Bun-ny! Bun-ny! Bun-ny!”
“It may be time to make a hasty exit,” I whispered to Crixus. “Too much longer, and Adonis will get torn limb from limb.”
A white blur shot from my purse, rocketing toward the waiting hands and feet of the fidgeting masses.
“Marvin, no!” I shouted, taking off after him. “No more attempts! We agreed!”
“Just let me die!” the retreating tail insisted.
“The
bunny talked! It’s the real Easter Bunny!” a nearby girl squealed, taking off to follow Marvin.
Such was the pebble foretelling the avalanche. The line of people hemorrhaged in a rush of bodies, Marvin disappearing into them as completely as a raindrop in a river.
I fought my way into the fray, searching for a telltale flash of white fur.
“Son of a bitch!” I heard Crixus grumble. “Matilda, get out of there!”
“I got him I got him!”
I glanced up in time to see Marvin disappear beneath the body of a grade-schooler whose proportions mirrored those of a less-buoyant dirigible.
“Yes!” I heard Marvin squeak. “Oh gods, it hurts so good!”
“Get off of the rabbit!” My hand closed over one chubby ankle as my feet were knocked out from under me.
Pain shot up through my legs as my knees were crushed to the tile by the impact of a body landing on mine. I looked back to see a head of overprocessed orange hair roughly the same shape and size as that on the shoulders pinning Marvin to the ground.
“You turn loose of my son!” she insisted.
“Tell your son to turn loose of my rabbit!”
“If he’s your rabbit, you shoulda kept better control of him!”
“I could say the same for your offspring.” I worked at the damp, chubby fingers wrapped around Marvin’s neck.
“How about you turn loose of my doctor?”
The weight on my legs vanished as Crixus’s worn motorcycle boots shuffled into view. A pair of pink oversized paws shoved beneath Junior and came out with Marvin, less one prosthetic foot, clutched tight.
“Gotcha,” Adonis said.
I scrambled to my feet and tucked Marvin back into my bag before zipping it closed.
“Thieves!” Junior’s mom accused, flagging down a security guard at the edge of the horde. “They’re stealing my baby’s rabbit!”
“Time to get out of here,” Crixus said.
“We can’t materialize in front of everyone,” Adonis insisted.
“Run!” I shrieked.
Shouts echoed through the atrium as we tore through the mall toward the nearest exit, the crowd at our heels.
Air sawed in and out of my lungs as I tried to keep the galloping pace set by Crixus and Adonis. “Where are we going?”
We shoved through the glass doors and barreled out into the sunlight. “Over there!” Crixus said, jerking his head toward a legion of milling bodies in the church parking lot across the street.
“Oh shit,” I puffed.
“What now?” Crixus asked.
“That’s the Women’s Rotary Club!”
“And?”
“And they’re holding their Women in the Workforce event! I was supposed to make a donation.”
“Consider this a donation of your time. And whatever you do,” he said, tossing a glance over his shoulder Adonis, “keep that head on!”
“I’m a giant pink rabbit!” Adonis retorted. “How in Hades am I supposed to blend in?”
The only answer came in the form of squealing tires. A minivan barreled toward us, screeching to a stop just in time to avoid sending the bake sale table into orbit. Mary Ellen Mayes, door-to-door judgment peddler and elder statesman of the Women’s Rotary Club, marched toward the vehicle, ready, it seemed, to pull the driver out by his ear and deliver a lecture capable of peeling flesh from bone.
She was nearly knocked to the rear end of her coordinated sportswear separates when the driver’s side door exploded open, ejecting Liam into the parking lot.
Even amid the swirling chaos, lust knifed through me at the sight of him—his body a long predatory line clothed in death-black.
His dark hair, glossy as raven’s feathers, absorbed rather than reflected the morning sun, his brutal features a symphony of the shadows that seemed to define his every aspect. Full lips pressed into a humorless line, he scanned the crowd behind sunglasses concealing ash-colored eyes. Eyes I knew would darken to the color of wet stone when his blood was up.
“Who is that?” I heard Adonis shout over the din.
“The hit man,” Crixus answered.
These three words produced another rush of pleasure through the flesh Liam had been the first to explore. Flesh that still bore the molten memories he had scorched into my skin with the same hands that brushed his coat to confirm the comfort of the weapon secreted beneath.
The fluidly confident movements of his body tightened as he spotted us within the crowd.
“You might want to hide,” I advised Adonis. “He may or may not want to hurt you.”
“A decision he would regret for the brief remainder of his mortal life,” Adonis said.
“Not likely,” Crixus replied, tugging the giant rabbit back toward the crush of bodies. “This one isn’t like the others.”
“I’ll say,” I sighed.
The world around me went as silent as a soundproof recording studio; Crixus’s voice was all that remained in my head. When this is over, I’m going to wipe those words from your lips with my cock. You’ll beg to suck me long before I’m finished with you.
Wet heat pooled between my legs, turning my knees to jelly just as Liam pushed his way over to me. “Nice wheels,” I said, grasping at anything that might wrest his attention from the retreating rabbit.
His words were bullets, abrupt and brutal. “It’s a rental. Where is he?”
“Where’s who?”
Liam snatched the sunglasses from his face and I was treated to the full force of his burning gaze. “Adonis.”
“Psst!” a voice said. I looked down to see Marvin’s head poking from a hole in the side of my purse. “What’s your going rate to take someone out?”
“No,” I said to Marvin. “You are not going to hire him to kill you. And did you really just chew a hole in my Burberry purse?”
“You zipped me in,” he said. “I panicked.”
“Where are the kids?” I asked, glancing toward the minivan.
“Watching a DVD.”
“That’s against the law, you know. Leaving children unattended in a car. As a mental health professional, I am bound by law to call CPS when—”
“You have the Easter Bunny in your purse and a blackmailer taking pictures of you from behind the bush over there. How I’m keeping my nieces and nephews occupied right now is the least of your worries.”
“What? Where?” An oily head disappeared behind a hedgerow next to the church’s red brick wall just as I glanced toward the building. “That sonova—”
“Oh snap,” Marvin muttered. “They’re here.”
“They who?”
No sooner had the question left my lips than I saw the feminine figures making their way toward us. On the left, a tall, leather catsuit-wearing supermodel who looked like she had stepped right out of a high-priced S&M parlor in her knee-high four-inch stiletto boots. In her black-gloved hand she held the studded leash of an animal that looked more science experiment than dog, the golden retriever head poking from its ill-fitting sweater all that resembled anything canine. Additional head-sized lumps moved beneath the singed fabric on either side of the golden retriever’s neck.
Cerberus, and by association, Persephone.
To the monster’s right, a petite honey blonde vixen in a flowing sundress à la Marilyn Monroe moved across the parking lot like sex on strappy sandals. Her body was one endless curve, inviting every eye to caress the mounds of her swaying breasts, the smooth column of her neck, the ripe crimson flower of her lips.
Aphrodite.
Persephone’s ruby-lacquered lips formed the words “Sic, Cerberus.” The leash fell from her hand, giving the hellhound his freedom.
I ducked behind Liam. “Hide me!”
“From who?”
“Aphrodite and Persephone,” Marvin answered. “They want to kill Matilda because she fucked Adonis.”
The muscles of Liam’s back tightened beneath my hands.
“And where is he now?” Liam asked.
Liam pulled opened the flap of his jacket to reveal the firearm snug within its holster beneath his arm. “This is a Smith and Wesson 1191. It will blow your head to confetti without so much as a whisper.”
“Over there!” Marvin shouted. “The guy in the pink bunny suit!”
Liam shrugged me off as easily as a spring jacket and cut through the crowd like a dark blade.
The hole in my purse gave way entirely as Marvin shot out, a yellow-white blur bounding toward the Cerberus’s ravening maw seconds before the monster leapt for me.
Unable to stop either Liam or Marvin, I did the only thing I could think of. “Crixus!” I screamed.
He turned just as Liam’s hands closed over the long, pink ears of Adonis’s costume.
“Turn around, you miserable fuck,” Liam snarled. “I want to see the face I’m going to pound into pulp.”
“Liam, no!”
One jerk, and the rabbit head pulled free, revealing Adonis’s face to the world.
*****
A hush fell over the crowd, all motion ceasing for one breathless moment as the universe rearranged itself around a new axis.
I was only one in the mass of bodies, all writhing to get at the pink fur-wrapped Adonis, whose brief scream split the air before he was sucked down into the pile.
And then I was climbing. My hands sinking into wrinkled skin, flesh, and the cotton candy coiffeurs of the assorted company who had previously been engaged in setting up the various tables and booths for the event’s kick-off later this evening.
Gnarled hands grasped at my clothing, their fat veins slithering beneath the thin skin under my palm as I peeled them away.
“Someone stop that hussy!” a warbly voice shouted. “If she gets at him, there won’t be any left for the rest of us!”
Bodies closed in around me, pushing me downward to the asphalt, the world becoming a forest of blue-veined ankles, aluminum walkers, and rubber-tipped canes. Familiar black boots came into view, and light broke through the canopy of floral print fabric. Strong hands seized my shoulders and I was hauled upward, sliding against the length of Crixus’s body.
“Do you see what I see, ladies?” a sugary, stutter-step voice asked. “Looks like the door prizes are being handed out early.”
Unhoppy: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #3 Page 8
