“Thanks, Motley.” Crixus mined his pocket and handed a cookie up to the badger.
A fine snowfall of powdered sugar dusted Vinnie’s shoulder as Moritasgus chewed noisily.
“Traitor,” she muttered.
“He bought me Italian wedding cookies,” the badger replied. “They’re so light and buttery!”
Vinnie’s chest deflated in the circle of Crixus’s arms.
“All right, gladiator. How do you plan on delivering me to Hades? I know damn well you’re not allowed to use whatever limited power you possess in the presence of humans. And if you think I am going anywhere willingly with you, you are severely deceived.”
“Your willingness is not a requirement.”
“What do you suppose would happen if I screamed?”
“I would have no choice but to materialize you straight to Hades. Somehow I think he would be willing to overlook my infraction.”
“Then why are we still here?”
“Because I want to know what Motley was talking about. What did I ever do to you?”
“I know!” The hat on Crixus’s head would have leapt, if the tendons required to do so were still intact.
“Well, let’s have it.”
“I would be happy to do so…for another cookie.”
Crixus searched his pocket but only came away with powdered sugar on his hand. “You ate the last one just now.”
“Oh dear,” Motley said. “Well, that is a shame, isn’t it?”
“No need to waste this, though.” Vinnie lowered her face and licked the sugar from his finger.
For a moment, Crixus went utterly still, unsure that what he felt could be trusted as a reliable reflection of the events. “What are you doing?”
“What can I say? I have a sweet tooth.” She slid her tongue along the crease between his thumb and palm, but it was his knees that suddenly felt lubricated and loose.
“Stop doing that,” Crixus said, with not as much force as had been in his mind when the words stopped there only briefly.
“Stop doing what?” Vinnie ground her ass against him, her hips arching upward to meet with the erection growing painful in his jeans.
“That,” he gasped.
People passed by them, taking their pictures, making their memories. Oblivious to the battle taking place between their world and a world older than comprehension.
“No,” she said. The hands Vinnie had worked behind her made a discovery. She popped the button on his jeans and worked the zipper down. “Still going commando?”
Still. This word registered in a part of Crixus’s mind that was no longer receiving the lion’s share of the blood supply.
Her fingers skimmed downward against his naked flesh, and he briefly considered killing everything with a heart beat in a two-mile radius so he could fuck her unbothered on the warm cobblestones. Hearing her scream in a place where echoes played like children on the medieval buildings would be rewarding beyond measure.
“Big boy,” Vinnie purred. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t find this refreshing.”
“She is telling the truth,” the badger said. “Most the men she is mentally comparing you to at this moment were very disappointing in length and girth.”
“Most?” Crixus asked.
“Yes, well. She was once acquainted with this hit man—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Crixus and Vinnie said in unison.
Vinnie’s grip on him tightened as she slid upward with a potter’s precision. The demigod’s fingers dug into the flesh covering her hips. He found no evidence of underwear beneath.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who prefers commando.” He brought his hand around to cup the curve of her ass.
“Why put an extra obstacle between me and what I want?”
Crixus’s head fell backward against the stone column as Vinnie’s other hand glided over the head of his sex.
“Ow!” the badger squawked. “Just because this succubus grabs the head of your mutton dagger does not mean you may neglect my presence.”
But Crixus couldn’t be bothered. His hand ached with the need to pull her skirt up her back so he could take her from behind. He could be inside her in the space it took a human to blink.
“Gladiator?” Vinnie asked, her voice heavy with sex.
“Yes.”
“Open your eyes.”
Crixus had not realized his lids had fallen closed until he lifted them and saw the sword arcing straight toward his head.
*****
Vinnie’s plan had not included collapsing into a puddle of hysterics the same second she freed herself from the demigod.
But that man…in that hat. She couldn’t contain herself, and the more she tried, the harder she laughed.
Under normal circumstances, Crixus would have made short work of the army of mimes who had converged upon him like a pack of rabid zebras. But it was proving exceptionally difficult for him to fend off the black and white-striped bodies when both of his hands were engaged in clutching the badger hat to his head.
His current strategy involved a lot of running and shin-kicking.
Vinnie had to bend at the waist and rest her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She pressed a hand against her abdominals. How long had it been since she laughed this hard? Decades? Centuries?
“That’s right,” she gasped between spasms. “You show them, gladiator.”
“Laugh it up, soul-sucker. When I get rid of these mute bastards, I’m going to finish what you started.”
“Whatever you say, Davey Crockett.”
A circle widened around him as the tourists decided what they were witnessing must be part of some elaborate show, despite Crixus’s attempts to convince them otherwise.
Somehow, the bronzed, beautiful man clutching his fur hat and screaming for help while being chased by mob of mimes failed to arouse the genuine concern required to bring him aid. The angrier he became, the more the spectators applauded.
“I’m a demigod!” Crixus having to scream this robbed the declaration of some of its cachet. “I fought in the Battle of Antioch! And Carthage!”
Vinnie whistled and the sea of painted faces turned in her direction. “Cinquecento euro e un pompino per l'uomo che ottiene il suo cappello.”
Five hundred euro and a blowjob to the man who gets his hat.
“Bitch!” the demigod shouted.
It was the last word he managed before his howls of rage were muffled by a pile of bodies. First the mimes, then men from the crowd, then the women attempting to drag their men out of the heap.
Despite the growing ache in her stomach and the lingering weakness in her limbs, Vinnie felt something like delight. The memory of his body pressed against her back. His cock stiff as her spine, silky in her hands. The feeling of arms around her, holding her against her will. His arrogance and ignorance.
Nothing in her memory had ever been so enraging.
Or erotic.
Never, in all her long years, had she been overpowered. Not once. Not by anyone.
When her painted savior had arrived, souvenir sword in hand, Vinnie’s first thought had been to incinerate him on the spot.
She had wanted Crixus to take her. In front of all those people whose faces she would have liked to fill with shock when she finally broke him and he drove into her with mindless abandon.
As they made the world their own.
But it was an idle fantasy. The kind of thing she had learned long ago not to think about. This world wasn’t for her. It never had been. Only stubborn pride and a damnable need to keep drawing breath kept her here. She could still amuse herself.
She had not yet become bored and sadistic the way she had seen so many before her go. Tired of this planet and the life forms they shared it with. Frustrated that they were not given to rule creatures they considered nothing more than playmates and playthings even on the best of days.
Vinnie had never found them to be either.
Her never-ending str
ing of companions could sate the hunger, but not the ache. The bone-ache of loneliness she had never really learned to live with. She was a permanent fixture in this temporary world.
She had been old long before the buildings in this vast stone courtyard rose to the sky. Crixus had felt more solid than any of it. More solid than the brick streets beneath her sandals. More real than the marble columns or concrete walls. More alive than the thousands of bodies milling around her in mindless pursuit of their brief lives.
For this, she hated him twice as much. Not for robbing her of her lifeblood, or for the threats he made or his insistence on delivering her to imprisonment or torment, but for being there and making her believe.
He had awakened something long dormant. Something she had burned, and buried, and killed and culled in a thousand different ways. He had made her feel seen, and known.
Just as he had the first time.
This made his current undoing all the more delicious.
A triumphant shout arose from the pile of bodies as a hand held the badger hat aloft like a revolutionary’s flag.
“Ce l’ho! Ce l’ho!’
I have it! I have it!
Not one of the mimes, of course, who even in the course of this fray had only mouthed strong words.
Other hands snatched the hat and the phrase was repeated by a different voice, who also failed to keep hold of the prize for long. This part of the game was immaterial to Vinnie, who only waited for any part of the demigod’s body to become visible.
It wasn’t long before a brawl broke out and people scattered in all directions.
She locked eyes with Crixus across the chaotic sea, and gave him a little finger wave.
Taking a cue from her silent, striped allies, she said not a word this time. Only smiled, and scattered his atoms on the summer air. For extra effect, she conjured an explosion of gold glitter confetti, hoping at least some of it would cling to the demigod when he reassembled himself in Hell.
She curtsied to the crowd, now rabid with excitement at what they considered to be the grand finale to a damn good show.
Vinnie couldn’t bring herself to disagree.
Chapter Seven
As one who couldn’t die, Crixus hadn’t given much thought to what his personal vision of Hell might look like until he awoke and found himself in it.
Glitter all over his body and a shrill female voice puncturing his eardrum.
He recognized the voice as Calliope’s long before he could bring himself to meet her eyes, glowing like pale blue chips of ice in a face made red by rage. Sweat plastered her blond ringlets to her cheeks.
Muses almost never sweat.
Grabbing someone by the throat and pounding their head against the floor was also unprecedented for the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry as far as Crixus knew.
“Use your words,” he grunted as his skull connected with the floor of Hades’s office. “You’re supposed to be good with them, aren’t you?”
“I’ll tear that flippant tongue from your mouth, you useless swine! How could you lose Moritasgus! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Having ideas would be easier without your claws choking off the blood flow to my brain.”
“I’m surprised you have any left to supply that meager instrument in your head with as much attention as you pay to the meat in your pants.”
“Children.” Hades’s voice was the auditory equivalent of flicking the light off to get the room’s attention. “Perhaps our energies could be better spent devising a solution to the quandary we find ourselves in.”
“He’s the problem,” Calliope accused. “I provided him with the perfect tool and the perfect opportunity to take this whore out once and for all, and instead, he lets her rob him of his sense and his gift.”
“Have you ever had your fingers chewed off by a mime?” Crixus peeled the muse’s hands from his neck and met her glare with one of his own.
“The mimes wouldn’t have been an issue if you had been concentrating on the task at hand instead of allowing Lavinia to play with your…porridge gun.”
“Porridge gun? Maybe you’d be better off leaving the poets to Lavinia after all.”
Calliope’s eyes darkened with anger as Crixus felt a charge building in the air around him. The books threatened to leap from their shelves while the painting frames rattled against the walls.
“Enough.” Hades’s command rolled through the office like thunder. The quiet that followed left Crixus uneasy, as silences often did. “Calliope, Lavinia is a succubus, which classifies her as a demon within our realm. As Lord of the Underworld, demons and how they shall be dealt with is strictly a matter for my decision. I have given this task to Crixus and determined the price and parameters.”
Hades opened his desk drawer and produced the document Crixus had signed. It unfurled across the desk’s surface like something much heavier than the paper it was written on.
“If he fails to complete his assignment, someone dear to him will die. And not pleasantly. I am certain he would not allow his libido, legendary though it is, to get in the way of his responsibilities.”
Crixus wasn’t certain if this was a vote of confidence, or a reminder. Either way, his next action became clear in his mind. “Are we finished here?”
Hades looked at him through eyes both deep and wise, rose from his seat, and walked over to an antique buffet table covered in flickering candles. From the polished surface, he lifted a gilded box and handed it to Crixus.
“You might want to take this, gladiator.”
The lid was heavy in the demigod’s hands and gave way with a creak of hinges. He saw the contents and didn’t know whether to smile or vomit. It was the badger hat, only bearing a fresh set of tire tracks and with empty black sockets where its diamond eyes used to be.
“Moritasgus!” Calliope cried. “How did you get him back?”
“Believe me,” Hades said, appropriating Crixus’s earlier statement. “You don’t want to know.”
*****
The beams climbing the columns of the Temple of Saturn from the floodlights below gave Rome the appearance of burning in perpetuity.
Sitting high above the old Roman Forum on the Palatine Hill, Vinnie could choose to see the city this way, or as it had been in its glory. She could envision the vegetable vendors with their bounty of produce, smell the spice agents, feel the silks and rough cloth, the entire place a feast for her senses. In her mind, steam still curled from pots of mulled wine made long before humans figured out brewing an acidic beverage in a lead vessel might not be the best idea.
Her gaze strayed over the Umbilicus Urbis Romae, the navel of the city, the point from which and to which all roads in the Roman Empire were measured. She much preferred contemplating this belly button, having none of her own to speak of.
Unlike the demigod, she had not been born of woman. Hadn’t been born at all, really. She had always just been. Never a child. Never anything other than what she was.
The existential questions of Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? constantly brooded over by humans had nothing to do with her. She, and her life’s purpose, had always been present, had always been clear. What’s for breakfast? was more Vinnie’s speed. Or who, for that matter.
Answer: no one. Not if Crixus continued to chase off even the chance of an appetizer. The hunger had long since ceased to be a sweet ache in her gut. It had teeth now. It gnawed. It ate her hollow.
She could sit here on stones still warm from the sun and let it finish her. The heat spreading into the soles of her bare feet was waning now. Maybe she would wane with it. She took no pride in leeching what little nourishment she could get from the ruins—the architectural equivalent of boiled soup bones.
“I always liked this spot.”
Vinnie didn’t have the energy to be startled, a fact for which she was grateful. It would have pleased Crixus to see her jump, to know he’d successfully snuck up on her. By her count, he’d
had entirely too much pleasure already.
“I liked it better when you weren’t in it,” she said.
The gladiator seated himself next to her without being invited, his long legs stretching out in their faded jeans, his worn motorcycle boots extending far past her own feet. He leaned back on one elbow, the curve of his bicep as prominent in her peripheral vision as the outline of that wretched badger hat perched on the demigod’s golden head.
Only the subtle twinkle of glitter still stuck to Crixus’s skin teased a smirk to Vinnie’s lips.
“Mimes?” The demigod floated the word over to her like an icebreaker at a cocktail party.
Vinnie shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“But what I don’t understand is why the mimes were necessary. I thought we were having a civilized conversation.”
“You call holding me against my will civilized?”
“Compared to what you’ve inflicted on me over the last twenty-four hours, you bet your ass it is. And that’s saying nothing about what happened to poor, poor Moritasgus.”
“Mmmph!” the hat squeaked.
Vinnie looked over to see that a silver band of duct tape had been wrapped around the badger’s maw. She raised an eyebrow at Crixus.
“I ran out of cookies.”
“You could always take the hat off,” Vinnie suggested.
“I have a feeling that would not end well for me.”
“Well what do you know?” Vinnie aimed a smile at him. “It can be taught. Now if you could learn how to stay dead or fuck off, we’d really have something here.”
Crixus grinned back at her, all teeth and megawatt charm. “Or you could quit playing this bitchy little game and tell me why you’re pissed at me.”
What little energy Vinnie had left condensed into a flame in her chest. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. She snapped it shut before one of the passing moths could swoop in and further shit on her evaporating dignity.
The demigod took her silence as a sign of encouragement and rattled on. “Whatever it was, can’t we put it behind us and talk about this like mature immortals?”
Romancing the Paranormal Page 123
