The Amazon and the Beast (Mythos Book 1)

by Hati Bell

  “It’s the siren song,” he explained. “The siren myth didn’t originate because sirens take pleasure in luring men to their death, at least not all of them. It’s because Neptune demands sacrifices to grant his favors. Human sacrifices.”

  “Apparently, his sacrifices have had an upgrade to mythos,” Kellsey remarked with a glance at the little girl and Zlatan.

  The kumiho finally began to move. His eyes shot wide open when he saw that he was surrounded. He pulled and tugged at the chains surrounding his limbs in a futile attempt to break them. Judging by the copper color of the chains, they were made of Hephaestus’ unbreakable steel.

  “Where’s the amazon?” Leucosia asked.

  Celest looked desperately at her sister. The girl quietly sucked her thumb, while tears rolled down her cheeks. “I couldn’t get her away from the rest. The lion didn’t let her out of his sight for a second. He looked like he wanted to eat her up.”

  Zlatan let out a harsh laugh as he popped up on his knees. “That’s because Kellsey’s ass is worth staring at, you scrawny bitch.”

  “Aw,” Kellsey said, her eyes soft.

  Leroy was less thrilled. “Maybe we should just leave him behind,” he grumbled.

  “What?”

  “I’m the only one who gets to ogle your ass.”

  She had the audacity to take a deep sigh and shake her head.

  “You’re the only one who gets to admire my bum,” she agreed when he kept looking at her tightly.

  He had to find a way to take out the sirens without Kellsey getting under the influence of their song. He didn’t have the illusion that she would wait behind the bushes while he pounced on the sirens.

  Leucosia gave Zlatan a kick. “Transform,” she said.

  “Why does she want him to change?” Kellsey asked.

  “Because we’re stronger in our mythos form.”

  “Go to Hel,” Zlatan spat in her face.

  “Don’t say her name out loud,” Leucosia hissed, her eyes frantic. “Before you know it, we’ll have that icy hag up our ass.”

  Leroy gave his amazon a pointed look.

  Kellsey let out a sigh. “She whose icy name should not be mentioned isn’t suddenly going to appear in front of us just because someone speaks her name.”

  Zlatan, however, seemed to take the warning literally, because he started yelling. “Hel! Oh, icy goddess! I worship you, Hel. Hel!”

  Leroy couldn’t blame the desperate kumiho.

  Leucosia grabbed Zlatan’s face and began to sing. The boy writhed on the ground in an attempt to escape her, but soon was mush in her hands.

  The siren loosened his chains and dropped them to the ground. “Show me your mythos nature,” she ordered.

  What happened next was something none of them had seen coming. Leroy heard Kellsey gasp for breath when Zlatan turned into a horse with a shiny black coat. The sirens stared at him, just as dumbfounded.

  “That’s no kumiho,” Leroy said dryly.

  Celest took advantage of the moment of surprise by rushing to her little sister and plastering her to her side.

  “He’s magnificent,” Kellsey whispered in awe.

  Leroy couldn’t deny that. There was something noble about a centaur in his horse form. He remembered the time when centaurs walked freely in all corners of the world. That was, of course, before the Amazon-centaur war that they had lost miserably.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled when a new earthquake followed.

  “I… want… her.”

  All eyes turned to the wall of trees they’d hidden behind. Leroy cursed and positioned himself in front of Kellsey. There was zero doubt in his mind that the ‘her’ was his amazon. How the fuck did Neptune know she was sitting here?

  His hand shot to Kellsey’s wrist, as if to reassure himself that she was still crouched next to him.

  “Bring… me… her… light.”

  The sirens slowly walked their way. Leucosia signaled towards the bushes.

  Six vampires stepped from behind rocks and trees, out of various hidden corners of the jungle. Leroy cursed. The vampires had somehow hidden their scent. They had gold rings through their lower lips, indicating that their services were sold to the highest bidder by their dhampir.

  The sirens and the group of vampires spread out. Celest remained standing frozen beside her sister.

  “Serves me right for laughing at Goofy,” Kellsey mumbled.

  “You’re not gonna end up like Goofy.”

  “You can’t know that. Sometimes cartoons happen. And sometimes people want to be a cartoon character. Or a Barbie. I’ve seen this picture of a woman walking around like a real-life Barbie.”

  He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation right now. “You’re not gonna become a Barbie.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Are you telling me I don’t have a waist as thin as a wasp’s?” She batted her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion.

  “You’re perfect just the way you are, babe,” he whispered and he felt his lips twitch when she smiled. The little minx was baiting him.

  The sirens had neared them, singing. The vampires followed them at a safe distance with drawn knives. It wouldn’t be long till the singing would reach them.

  “Leucosia is mine,” Kellsey said. Her eyes were fixed on the siren that held Zlatan in her power.

  “You’ve got three seconds before her singing gets you into her power. I’ll take out the other one and intercept Celest.”

  She frowned. “And what about you?”

  “A siren’s song has no effect on me.” It was the only remotely positive side-effect of his curse. “Hera wanted to ensure that I wouldn’t get out of the curse through a spell.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?” Kellsey asked.

  “Yeah. I tested it.” He changed his hands into claws and positioned himself to the left.

  “How did you do that?”

  “With a nymph. Men aren’t just attracted by their beauty, but also by their magic. That’s the real reason why men go bonkers and give everything they possess to a nymph.”

  “Oh. How could I forget your precious nymph.” Her voice had a sharp edge to it this time. He suppressed a laugh.

  He signaled to the right and jumped up. They ran towards the sirens and the group of vampires. He took out the first siren while she was still singing. Two vampires jumped into his path and he had just decapitated one when he heard Kellsey cry out.

  He spun around. Two dead vampires lay at her feet, but she was surrounded by the sirens. Kellsey heavily resisted their singing, but slowly sank to her knees until her golden eyes turned into a milky white.

  When Leucosia drew a knife on Kellsey, he saw red and his lion clawed his way out. A second later he pounced upon the sirens.

  ***

  KELLSEY

  Kellsey blinked her eyes as she slowly woke up. It felt as though her back lay against a furnace.

  She turned her head and looked into a pair of velvety brown eyes and a bloody muzzle. Leroy gave her face a long lick. She patted him reassuringly on his flank, wondering why he remained a lion.

  Zlatan sat a few feet farther away, on a rock. He looked miserable. Celest and her sister sat next to him.

  “Finally. You’re awake,” Zlatan said, while looking around nervously.

  “What happened?” she asked as she got up.

  “I almost ended up as chow for a god, that’s what happened,” Zlatan said, his voice full of disgust. “I’m so done being a guide.”

  Kellsey looked around. There were puddles of blood and body parts scattered everywhere. “What happened after I was out?” she clarified.

  Zlatan shot Celest an acid look. “Leroy went batshit crazy when Leucosia drew a knife to you. Then, limbs were flying everywhere. He dragged the dead vamps and sirens to the crater. The earthquakes then stopped. Apparently, Neptune is sated.” His lip curled up in a snarl. “Your lion growled when Celest wanted to split. He also looked threatening
when I wanted to take off.”

  Then she remembered the miracle of the night. Zlatan was a centaur, which made him almost as rare as a unicorn.

  Kellsey jumped to her feet and stood before the siren. “There’s no magic pond with healing waters, is there?”

  “No, not anymore,” Celest cautiously confessed. “Neptune has drained the powers of the pond. There’s nothing left of it.”

  It felt like someone sucked all the air out of her lungs. Just breathe, she told herself. Breathe in and out. They would find another way to cure Leroy. There were more roads that led to Rome. She only wished they were easier to find, like with Google Maps.

  “Wait a minute,” Zlatan sputtered. “Where have I been taking hikers to all this….” He shot to his feet and buried his hands in his hair. “You sick bitch! All those people I led up the mountain….”

  “They were captured and sacrificed after you brought them back from the trip,” Celest admitted. “That’s why you didn’t immediately end up in the volcano yourself. You were the perfect supplier.”

  Zlatan sank down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Kellsey couldn’t blame him. He had, after all, just found out that he’d led dozens of people to their deaths.

  “I don’t like you,” Kellsey said and she looked at the child in Celest’s lap. “But I do understand you, ’cause I would do anything for my family. So, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to swear an oath on Neptune that you’ll never reveal Zlatan’s true nature.” She ignored Zlatan’s astonished look. It would take some time before he would trust an amazon.

  Celest looked at her suspiciously. “And then what happens?”

  “Then I let you leave,” Kellsey said. When she looked into the innocent eyes of the child she rattled off Qasim’s email address. “My brother can arrange shelter for you.” Celest’s days in a clan were over. She was a nomad now, at the mercy of the elements.

  Celest uttered her oath, grabbed her sister and took off. Kellsey suspected that there was a portal nearby. Fortunately, she had a personal djinn taxi at her beck and call.

  “Do you think Q can also arrange a place for me?” Zlatan asked hesitantly.

  The poor laddie looked so lost that she wanted to give him a hug. However, the growl emanating from the lion at her feet stopped her from doing so. Yet she didn’t have the heart to just leave Zlatan behind in the middle of the jungle. He looked like she’d felt in Edinburgh until she had met Jolene. “My brother’s looking for a bartender,” she said.

  Zlatan smiled tentatively. “When can I start?”

  15

  KELLSEY

  The two weeks since their jungle adventure had been both the best and worst weeks of Kellsey’s life. They were the best because Leroy and she were finally together. They were the worst because their only hope of a cure was gone.

  Although Leroy assured her that everything would turn out okay, the guilt she carried felt like a festering wound. Not only was she the reason that Leroy would die, but because of her Liam now had the same curse hovering over him. She feared that Leroy was starting to lose hope, even though he tried to not show it. Every day he returned from his blood test and Qasim told him once again that he hadn’t found a cure yet.

  It was a hard pill to swallow that there was nothing she could do to help him. Aside from that, she also had a skeleton in the closet in the form of an alchemist whom she’d accidentally hit with an arrow. The effect of Cupid’s arrow would be over by now, but she hadn’t heard from Macan since and she was worried. So it was time to take a break and get some air.

  She walked into Seven and sat at her regular table near the bar. Kartal and Levi were already there.

  She waved to Zlatan, who stood behind the bar. Liam was perched on a bar stool in front of him, with a beer in his hand. Those two had quickly become friends. She wondered if they both instinctively felt that they were dealing with an almost-extinct mythos race.

  Zlatan’s hair changed color with the color effects of the flat-screen TV behind him. The walls of Seven were plastered with posters of rock legends, but on the wall behind the bar there was a place reserved for guitar legends. After Kartal and Qasim had endlessly bickered about the best rock guitarist ever, they had finally chosen a top three they both could live with.

  “How’s your new bartender working out?” Kellsey asked Kartal.

  “He actually shows up on time. That alone makes him worth his weight in gold,” Kartal said dryly.

  “See, I told ya to give him a chance,” she said, pleased. It had taken some persuasion on her part to get Kartal to hire a ‘kumiho.’”

  “He doesn’t look like a kumiho,” Levi said, pensive.

  “He’s probably a hybrid,” Kartal said. “It doesn’t matter. He starts working on time and hasn’t asked for a vacation yet. Which means I finally have time to work on my babies again.” There were two things Kartal was proud of: his pub and his motorcycle collection.

  Kellsey wisely kept her mouth shut. Since Zlatan lived on their territory now, she could hardly hide his true nature from her brothers. She just hadn’t found the right time to tell them yet. Was not telling something the same as hiding something? One look into Levi’s narrowed eyes, and she decided it wasn’t.

  “Kells, what kind of mythos is Zlatan?” Levi asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking innocent.

  Levi put his arms on the table and rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. “What I mean is that you’ve never told us. Zlatan claims he’s a kumiho, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

  She swirled the straw in her drink.

  Kartal seemed to sense some trouble now as well, because he looked from the bar to her. “Kells….”

  “I couldn’t just leave him behind,” she whispered.

  “Tell me he’s not a fugitive,” Levi said.

  “He’s not a fugitive,” she muttered. “Technically. You know how I feel about reins.”

  Levi let out a string of swear words under his breath.

  “No one has to know,” Kartal said, as if speaking to himself. “I can still work on my bikes.”

  “You can’t bring home every wandering… kumiho, Kells,” Levi started.

  “Zlatan wasn’t wandering,” she whispered angrily. “He tried to get by in a world that gave up on his race a long time ago.”

  She was still put out that her brothers had stopped her from freeing the centaur from Satiros’ auction. Leroy was even worse. He had coaxed an oath on Onuris from her that she wouldn’t undertake anything before letting him know first. It had been difficult to refuse him when she lay on top of him, completely sated. Her lion had his own sneaky ways to manipulate her. In return, he’d promised to take a piercing wherever she wanted. She was seriously thinking about choosing his crown jewels.

  “We’ve talked about this. Every war has a winner and a loser….” Levi stopped mid-sentence. Kellsey followed his gaze to the pub’s entrance.

  “Jolene?” She blinked her eyes.

  In the middle of Seven’s doorstep, stood Jolene “Merlot” Wylde, her half-British friend who didn’t appreciate her given name. She thought it was a cosmic joke that her American father had named her after a country song. Jo was wearing a wrinkled wedding gown, complete with a long veil wrapped around her arm. Mascara had run down her cheeks and her fingers were white-knuckled from clutching the bridal bouquet.

  “I sense a disturbance in the Force,” Kartal drawled.

  “This isn’t the time to quote Obi-Wan,” Kellsey hissed, while watching in horror how Jo walked into the murky pub. A few warlocks near the entrance took notice of her, but left her alone. No one would approach a human out of themselves.

  Kellsey was still feverishly trying to think of a way to prevent the clash of her two worlds when Jo’s eyes found her.

  “I couldn’t go through with it, Kells,” she said through a sob as she flew at her.

  Kellsey got up and braced herself when Jo collapsed into her arms. “
Couldn’t go through with what?” she asked, which of course was a stupid question since she was holding a runaway bride.

  “With the wedding,” Jo confirmed miserably. Her eyes misted and Kellsey could see her biting back her tears. That was the Jolene Wylde she knew. She didn’t let go in public.

  “We’re gonna need more alcohol,” Kellsey uttered.

  “I could use a merlot,” Jo said softly.

  Kartal blinked and got up. “A merlot. Right.”

  “I also need someone carrying my suitcase inside.” Jo looked at Levi and waved her hand to the door.

  Levi stiffened and Kellsey heaved an internal sigh. Jo was raised with a small army of servants and had been shipped off to a Swiss boarding school by her parents. She’d probably never carried her own suitcases a day in her life; that is, up until today. It was a miracle that she wasn’t a spoiled snob. Though, at first glance, she could appear like one.

  “How did you find the pub?” she asked, when Jo had finally released her. The pub was hidden by a spell to ward off humans. If any of them even made it this far into their territory, they walked past the pub.

  Jo dropped into the chair next to Kellsey. “The cab driver kicked me out of the taxi when he found out I didn’t have any money on me. So, I had to walk quite a while to the address you’d given me. I saw lights burning here and remembered that you’d told me that your brother has a pub.” Her eyes went over the red sign which held the Seven Commandments. It went from “No harpies” to “No hydras”.”

  The last commandment was put there just for her. They were never gonna let her live down the incident with Hermy.

  “How peculiar,” Jolene said. It seemed as if only now she noticed in what kind of weird place she’d ended up in.

  “So, what else have you been up to?” Kellsey asked, to draw the attention back to Jolene.

  She thought about how she could politely send Jo on her merry way, when Kartal stood before them, two drinks in his hands. “A merlot for the bride and a kick in da nuts,” he said.