Not a problem. Instead, I blasted wave after wave of green light at the dragon from my eyes and palms. I could have just destroyed her with my full-body shockwave but since that would have taken out my friends, too, I was limited to single blast combat.
The waves flew from my eyes and my palms, rippling outward like a sonic blast of slaughter. Delphyne was taking some hard hits. In her pain, she howled high notes I wouldn’t have thought audible to the human ear.
But my barrage barely slowed her down. She barreled toward me, talons out, spewing fire, focused in her madness.
I narrowly ducked a swiping talon to my face. Why was this hulking creature so much harder to kill than the regular minions that kept after me? She must have been higher up on the Greek mythology food chain than those peons, and thus imbued with more power, because I wasn’t even causing one teeny scale to turn white with age.
Lucky me.
I reached the narrow bridge. I could cross it, but Theo and Hannah didn’t need my help tying Cassie up. She wasn’t fighting them, merely continuing to chant.
Since Delphyne was more than willing to travel to me, I convinced myself there was no need to traverse something I’d probably trip off of anyway.
I had no idea where Kai had disappeared to. I tried to look for him between blasting and dodging but couldn’t get a sense of his location.
Suddenly, something slithered onto my neck. I screamed and swatted at myself, hard. Bethany’s python fell to the ground. I dove away from a particularly nasty roar of fire by Delphyne, who was bent on round thirty-six in the “kill Sophie, extreme fighting championships.” I blasted the damn snake to bits.
“Rosie!” My head was yanked back by my hair as Bethany wailed on me for killing her pet.
“You insane bitch! Let go.” I want some applause at this point for not just killing her outright and putting me out of my misery. I was still trying to honor Hannah’s stupid rules about protecting humans. Or Bethany.
“When are you going to learn you can’t compete?” Bethany glared into my eyes and I realized that Delphyne was not the only insane creature on the block. “I am the human incarnation of Beauty in the universe and all are drawn to me.”
Then she decked me with a pretty beautiful right cross. As I stumbled back from the punch, she grabbed me and dragged me toward the bridge.
“Hannah!” I shouted. “Can I break the damn rule now?”
I saw her look between Bethany and me and hesitate.
Screw that. Shooting a ribbon of light from my palm, I wrapped it around Bethany’s ankle and yanked her upside down so that we were face-to-face in a weird parody of the Spiderman kissing scene. Her arm with the tattoo dangled limply by her ear. This close up, I could see there was a small figure of a dragon woven amongst the laurel leaves which ran around her forearm. I guessed the tattoo was how Delphyne had given Bethany her mojo. Maybe I could amputate her arm some day. That would be fun.
“Listen up, skankass,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Delphyne land and raise her tail for a slashing of vicious proportions.
I’d fallen back into that same eerily calm center I’d been in when fighting the Infernorators and Gold Crushers. Or maybe I was just giddy at having Bethany where I wanted her.
Anyway, as Delphyne’s tail whipped toward me, I jumped it like a skipping rope, then snapped my Bethany whip out to conk Delphyne in the head.
Bethany yelped. Delphyne roared and rose up on her hind legs. Gulp. She was really tall. I blasted the rock at her feet, causing it to crumble and Delphyne to fall backward. Her fire arced, useless, toward the sky. That ought to buy me some time.
Bethany screamed.
“Shut it,” I snarled, as I swung her back for the rest of our quality time.
“Or what?” She postured. “I’m gonna tell Principal Doucette and you’re going to be so expelled.”
I blasted Delphyne with my right hand, knocking the dragon even back further, almost to the lip of the rock. “Quiet, wannabe. Beauty fades but awesome goddess powers rock forever.” I shook the still upside-down-and-reddening Bethany to make my point.
She spewed out a bunch more meanness, invoking all sorts of colorful slurs on my person, personality, and descendants.
Okay. So done with her. I tossed her to the side where she fell in a crumpled heap and finally, blessedly, stayed silent.
Delphyne didn’t like that, either, because she renewed her attacks on me. I gave her everything I had.
“Aim for the eyes!” Hannah reminded me.
Score one eye and two. Delphyne screeched in pain.
Her loss, my gain. New and improved blind Delphyne had a much tougher time sensing me. “Good tip!” I yelled back.
For a such a big mother (and even blind), she was pretty good at dodging my hits. Even so, she should have been down and out by this point.
Exhaustion overwhelmed me and I got clumsy. Delphyne caught the right side of my body with her flames. I hit the deck, a Kindergarten chant ringing in my mind. Stop, drop and roll.
One more weak blast shot out of me. Uh-oh. Was the chamber empty? Seemed so. I was out. I lay on my back, spent.
Kai landed hard on his feet beside me.
“First off, stop doing that,” I mumbled, pain fogging my brain. “And B, where the hell have you … ?”
Words failed me as I stared at Kai’s true form. He towered above me, eighteen feet tall.
My jaw fell open as I craned my neck up to catch him in his unbridled splendor. Before me, truly was a god. Power and arrogance emanated from him. And gorgeousness. Definitely gorgeousness.
Any lingering illusion I’d had about the jerk being human disappeared. This was the Kai of my memories.
Delphyne was charging straight for us in a roar of teeth, tail, and insanity.
Kai looked down at me with what I swore was tenderness. Before I could make sure, it had been replaced with pure savagery.
I saw him raise his hands for the final attack.
No way. “I told you. She’s mine,” I snapped, as I sucked up every bit of energy in me and fired it outward from my palms at Delphyne a single blinding detonation.
I felled her in mid-charge. Her body twisted up into a gross arthritic knobbiness as her scales turned white. She spasmed violently on the ground.
Yay. Dragon down. But so was I. There was no way I was getting to my feet on my own power. Hating to ask, I rolled my eyes and stuck out my hand.
Kai was instantly at my side. With one massive hand, he carefully helped me up. “You are so stubborn. Couldn’t let me take her, could you?”
Determined to stand on my own, I tugged my hand free. My knees buckled. I dragged my sorry self over to a large rock and propped myself against it.
Once I’d positioned myself in a suitably “I’m just lounging, not actually using the stone to keep myself upright” manner, I felt free to respond to Kai’s accusations of stubbornness. A quality I may have been on a first name basis with, but still.
“We discussed this. You were on box duty.” Wearily, I raised my head to look at him, then blushed furiously as I realized that I was staring up at his groin.
Kai laughed. “Interesting possibilities,” he murmured, which came out more like a rumble that bounced off the cliff walls.
“Such a dog,” Hannah said, since she’d have had to be deaf not to hear his last comment. She and Theo had arrived with Cassie, hands and legs tied up in the scarves, strung between them. Hannah had the head, Theo the feet. Thankfully, Cassie had stopped chanting.
“You okay?” I asked Hannah.
“Except for my head trying to self-destruct. You were very impressive. Nice to see you showing some initiative.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Good move finding the chalice,” Theo sai
d to Kai.
I glanced between the two. “Huh?”
“Delphyne was getting some extra help strength-wise. She must have known you’d be coming for her. So she got a chalice of power. Once Kai destroyed it—”
We lurched sideways, fighting for balance as Delphyne, still down but not out, whacked her tail several times against the ground, triggering a small earthquake.
“Delphyne was more vulnerable,” I finished, once the rocks had calmed. “So I could take her down.”
“You shot the killing blow,” Kai conceded. He looked back at Delphyne thrashing on the ground. “Almost killing. Theo, we need the chain. She’s fighting hard. It’s the last vestiges of her amped-up power. We won’t be able to cut off her head otherwise.”
Theo hesitated, then placed Cassie’s legs on the ground, so that only Hannah was holding her body.
He pulled the chain out and cautiously approached Delphyne. With a swift flick of the wrist, he snapped the chain around her legs, binding them to her tail as if it was a fifth leg.
Delphyne roared in fury but held still.
Kai pulled a blade from his belt. He offered it to me, but I shook my head, still catching my breath on my rock. An eighteen-foot god would have better luck with decapitation than I would. “I’m good. Go for it.”
He studied her neck, trying, I guessed, to determine the best site for the kill. As he considered, he twirled the knife in a weird pattern between his fingers. Neat trick.
“Save the foreplay for some other time,” Theo admonished. “Cut off her head and shove it in the box already.”
Kai gave him a mocking bow. He raised his hand and in a slashing motion, brought the knife cleanly through Delphyne’s neck.
Her high-pitched death wail ended abruptly, leaving a deafening silence as her head rolled toward my feet. I jumped out of the way.
Kai bent and wiped the blade clean on the ground before returning it to his belt.
Theo motioned to Kai. “Box.”
Kai tossed it and Theo opened it using some kind of pressure. The box unfolded itself to a size more capable of containing the head. Kai placed it inside and the box resealed itself.
A loud rumbling issued from deep within the cliffs. Boulder sized pieces began to fall. Now that Delphyne was dead, the maze was unravelling.
“Get Bethany,” Hannah ordered.
We were definitely going to have to work on Hannah’s attitude adjustment where Bethany was concerned. “How do we move the head?” I yelled in a panic. That box had to be really heavy.
“Kai will have to carry it,” Theo said, ducking falling rocks as he and Hannah rebalanced Cassie. I looked over to Kai for confirmation, but couldn’t see him. How did one misplace an enormous male?
“Kai?” I jumped out of the way as a nasty big rock crashed down beside me.
Theo turned around and swore with a fury I’d never heard before.
“What?” I asked helplessly.
“He’s gone.”
“He must be around here somewhere. Why would he leave us?”
Theo pointed at Delphyne, dead and headless on the ground, but no longer bound. “Because he wanted my chain.”
I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Kai had left, taking the chain with him.
Hannah shifted Cassie’s weight and fixed me with a grim look. “We’ve been played.”
There was no time to get answers for the tons of questions rattling around in my brain. Delphyne’s fun house was unravelling, and fast.
I yanked Bethany to her feet none-too-gently.
Then I looked at the massive cliffs that were rapidly collapsing. “How am I supposed to get hold of those things long enough to propel us back up? Our way out is on top.” Panic laced my voice.
“We have to try,” Theo urged. “Fast.”
I tried to run and take Bethany with me, but she dug in her heels and fought me with all she had. Enough of her.
“You want to die here? Fine!” Exasperated, I let her go.
She immediately bolted back toward the narrow stone bridge. “Hey! Get back here.”
“Follow her!” Theo roared over the now deafening noise of an avalanche of stone.
I hesitated for a millisecond and he shoved me. Dodging the deadly debris as best I could, and shooting what I hoped were preemptive blasts upward to break up the larger pieces, I took off running, not allowing myself to think what would happen if the bridge crumbled beneath me as we practically flew over it.
“Bethany has awesome survival skills,” Theo yelled, “She wouldn’t have gone this way if there wasn’t a reason.”
He and Hannah sprinted along, holding a once again chanting Cassie. Hopefully she’d remember some of what she was saying later, because I didn’t exactly have pen and paper to write it down.
We’d cleared the stand of laurel trees by this point, only to find a cave opening in the rock face behind them.
We dashed inside. Bethany stopped by a rock at the back of the cave and murmured some words.
A portal glowed.
Of course. If I was a crazed not-so-mythical beast kidnapping and killing to further my obsession with fulfilling my duties, I’d have built a back door into my madhouse as well.
Without thinking, I shot a ribbon of light from my right hand to grab onto Theo, Hannah, and Cassie, and with my left, sent my light straight across the cave to grab Bethany’s ankle as she stepped through.
Momentum pulled us forward, but not fast enough. The portal was rapidly closing and we were nowhere near close enough to get through it.
So I did the only thing I could. With a snap of my wrist, I sent everyone else flying through the portal. They made it through as the portal winked out, leaving me behind in the cave.
Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the next thing that happened hadn’t been that this entire reality with me in it, ceased to exist.
13
Like father, like son-of-a-bitch
ιγ’
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t cease to exist. Artistic license and all that. Sheesh. Give a girl a break.
Delphyne’s alternative “reality,” however, did totally blink out of space and time. Luckily, that was a fraction of a second after I got out. When I finally had the chance to look back, I figured that the extreme amount of energy that Delphyne had put into the labyrinth in the first place, took a certain amount of time to break down. Lingering echoes of her will.
Here’s how my escape played out. Right as the portal closed, the bottom dropped out of the cave and dumped me in the spring below.
Stinky water filled my eyes, nose, and mouth. I couldn’t breath; I couldn’t tell which way was up.
I was convinced I was going to die as I was buffeted every which way by torrents of H2O. No longer a gentle (albeit odiferous) body of water, the currents now swelled violently, threatening to drown all in one final act of reclamation.
Mr. Locke’s favorite phrase from Romeo and Juliet sprung to mind; “good night, good night/parting is such sweet sorrow.”
What an absolute crock. Parting may have been sweet, but dying was messy, thrashing, choking misery. Also, my life didn’t flash before my eyes. (How ironic would that have been to finally see my life, in all its Persephone entirety, right as I bit it?)
Instead, a pale hand waved in front of my face. Death wears blue nail polish? I thought. Then died.
Fine. Fainted. Next time you’re drowning and black out, tell me you didn’t think you were dead.
I came to blinking at a viciously bright white light. Not sure if I was in Heaven, Olympus, or an entirely different afterlife, I tried to be clever about getting my bearings.
I always liked stories in which people played dead to fool their captors. Granted, I thought I was dead, but
I figured the principal held true for a subtle sussing out.
“Finally,” a female groused. “Like I’ve been sitting here for a gazillion and two hours.”
That voice. What could I have possibly done to deserve to spend eternity with Nysa? I opened my eyes.
There she was, half out of the water, filing her nails. “You gonna get up already, lazy bones?”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows in surprise. I was in the creek back at Hope Park. Aware that I was laying in less than two feet of water, I tried to reconcile how Nysa could be half emerged from the creek. While she was definitely standing, unless she’d suddenly gotten a ridiculously short pair of legs, I had no clue where the rest of her was. “I’m not dead?”
Nysa laughed. A beautiful sound reminiscent of perfectly crafted wind chimes. Hell, she could have sounded like a donkey braying and I would have found it lovely at this point. “Big silly. I don’t hang with dead guys. Icky!”
I heaved myself out of the water. “You saved me. Thank you.” My appreciation was enthusiastic.
She shrugged and bit off a hangnail. All class, that girl.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Prometheus. He sent out a super signal.”
“But I wasn’t even in this world.”
“No matter,” she replied. “If it has water, I can get to it.”
“I could kiss you.”
She blushed, gazed down as if embarrassed, waved a hand at me, then with a flip, dove into the water and disappeared.
Ohmigod. Nysa had a crush on me. Persephone. That’s why she was always around. She didn’t want to be me, she wanted to do me.
A weird thought but flattering nonetheless. I had a moment of feeling bad that I didn’t reciprocate. Liking someone who didn’t like you, sucked.
Take me, for instance, and the stupid male who had betrayed me and left me to die. I was still harshly crushing on him. How pathetic was that?
My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy) Page 20
