Immortally Ever After

by Angie Fox

  And miss all the fun? “Get on.”

  chapter sixteen

  Even with the chimera leaning down, it was a chore to get me close to the saddle. Galen, on the other hand, straddled its massive lionlike shoulders like he was born to it. He stashed my medical bag and my gift, before I let him pull me up. Sort of.

  He had me by both arms while I tried to fling a leg over the back of the thing. Only every time I tried, the snake on the end of its tail coiled up and hissed, showing a red forked tongue and razor-sharp fangs.

  “There. You see that?” I asked, backing down.

  Galen was unimpressed. “Don’t let it know you’re scared.”

  “Too late.” I wondered if Kosta would have cleared my day trip if he’d known I’d be riding through limbo on a mythical beast who wanted to eat me.

  The lion’s head belched fire.

  Oh, that was just perfect.

  “Come on,” Galen prodded. “It’s just like riding a bike.”

  “Have you ever ridden a bike?”

  “No.”

  I shook my hands out, trying to get some circulation going.

  This was in no way like my ten-speed back home. And what if I could actually manage to climb onto a chimera? I didn’t know the way to Medusa’s—or the way back. And I’d better be home by tonight because I had a shift bright and early tomorrow—working with my roommate, so this time Rodger couldn’t cover for me.

  Merde. This was such a bad idea.

  “I’m not afraid,” I lied. I pressed my body into the rough fur on its back, muscles burning as I shoved a leg up into the air. Now or never. “I’ve always wanted to ride a three-headed monster.”

  Thank the universe Galen was as strong as he looked. Between the two of us, we managed to thrust me into the sad little saddle. I noticed, with some satisfaction, that he was breathing as hard as I was.

  His gaze flicked to the space behind me. “Down,” he ordered as the snake head hissed in my ear.

  I didn’t even want to look to see how close it was. But I could feel the lower half of it, winding against my leg.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, reins in hand. He’d positioned himself in front of my saddle, riding bareback.

  “I’m sure not getting off.” At this rate, I was tempted to attend Medusa’s shower on the back of the animal, rather than try to climb up again.

  I ventured one last glance back at my tent before bracing myself against Galen’s hard, muscled back.

  “Go!” He leaned forward, pulling me with him as the beast let out a mighty roar and took off like a shot.

  Christ Almighty—my teeth vibrated and my bones clattered together as we lurched across the desert. It was like driving eighty-five down a road full of potholes and speed bumps.

  Wind tore at my hair. Sand pelted my eyes and my face. I could barely see the blur of the desert as it streaked by.

  Galen crouched low, holding the reins steady, steering with his legs as he took the chimera left past what could have been a hell vent, or a caravan, or, cripes, I didn’t know.

  The beast’s heads lolled, tongues out like dogs on a car ride.

  I buried my face against Galen’s warm back, as I felt the chimera accelerate to an even more mind-numbing speed. I squinted, not daring to open my eyes fully against the stinging dust. The desert was a whirl of red-on-brick-on-red.

  The chimera’s muscles worked between my legs, in a full run. I didn’t know how fast we were going. Didn’t care. As long as Galen made sure we got off this thing in one piece.

  And I did trust Galen.

  The kicker was, I wasn’t even risking myself for a prophecy this time. No, I was doing it out of sheer obligation. That and the fact that I needed to see my patient. This was pioneer medicine—limbo style.

  Medusa was technically full term—only two weeks from her due date. If I’d had her in my clinic back home, she’d be making weekly visits to my office. As it stood, I hadn’t seen her in a month.

  The beast jarred, and I gripped Galen with everything I had. Its smooth gait went rocky and I slapped hard against the saddle as we slowed to a reckless hundred or so miles per hour.

  We were beyond the limbo desert, in a volcanic wasteland. I tasted fire and soot and sulfur. The beast padded over fields of rock and black ash, leaping over tendrils of red lava that oozed from the ground.

  Cinders pelted me as we took a particularly hard leap.

  What the hell?

  We dodged the spiny horns of the goat as it threw its head back and bleated out a small fireball. And there, ahead of us, I saw it—a massive stone house on a hill.

  Dang. I squinted. The thing looked more like a rotting temple. It sat in the middle of a large lake. Galen shifted and I struggled to catch an unobstructed view around him, watching as the mist rose off the water.

  We rocked from side to side as the beast padded toward the lake. It made no move to let us dismount and I wasn’t about to piss it off, so I hung on. Still, it had to know the water was poison.

  The chimera stopped at the water’s edge. The shore was crusted with sulfur. Bones lay tangled in the sand. The creature bent its lion’s head to sniff at the bubbling water and I almost felt sorry for it.

  I’d feel even sorrier for us if it keeled over and dumped us in.

  “Steady,” Galen said under his breath, sounding more confident than I felt as the creature took one step back, then another.

  “You don’t think it’s going to—” I ended on a shriek as the beast drove forward.

  I almost jumped off, would have if Galen hadn’t held tight to the hands I had wrapped around him.

  We hurtled over the massive lake of fire, on the back of a suicidal beast, and came down teeth-rattling hard on the other side.

  My head pounded, my vision swam. I swallowed, trying to make my throat work, and when I recovered enough, I saw all three heads watching us.

  “That’s our sign,” Galen said, sliding off the beast. I was less graceful as I half dismounted, half fell into his arms.

  I held him tight, my knees useless, grateful to be here and alive and in one piece. I braced my hands against his chest and noticed he was wearing armor.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, when I didn’t show any signs of moving.

  I looked back to see the lion’s head snarling at me. “Oh, sure. I’m fine. Peachy.”

  As long as he got me the hell out of here.

  The chimera hissed, growled, and—for lack of a better word—bleated at us as Galen led me to a staircase cut into the rock.

  The cliff face towered above us. It was impossible to know how many steps it held, but I didn’t care. It was becoming increasingly evident that chimeras didn’t take the stairs and that was fine by me.

  Galen and I tackled them together, side by side. By the time we were halfway up, I was wheezing and convinced my legs would fall off. Galen was, at least, sweating.

  It was humid here, most likely from the lake. Still, I hadn’t felt humidity since I’d left New Orleans. It hadn’t been something I’d missed.

  At the top, I gasped for breath as I followed Galen down a winding trail littered with fallen columns and statues of fallen soldiers. Only on second look, I could tell that they hadn’t always been statues. Damn. I stopped in front of a young man dressed as a gladiator. He held a long, oblong shield and an infantry sword. His eyes were frozen in terror.

  I inspected his face. Part of his chin had chipped away, as well as an ear. That didn’t bother me near as much as the weathering on his neck. I could treat flesh-to-stone injuries if they were fresh. He’d been turned too long for me to do any good.

  My fingers lingered on his rain-stained cheek. “Why?” I said to myself, to him, to the whole bloody universe.

  Galen stood close behind me. I could feel him. “He was the enemy.”

  “I’m trying really hard to understand that.” I wiped the sweat from my chin, leaving the soldier.

  We passed at least a dozen more like him on the
steamy, twisted path that led to Medusa’s lair. I stepped over blackened gouges in the earth, places where the trail itself had been ripped away.

  So much death. So much anger.

  And for what?

  We reached the courtyard and found it scattered with even more crumbling bodies of the dead. Spindly silver artemisias sprouted from the cracks and in between fallen columns, their branches reaching toward the pink and gray sky.

  The winds blew harsh up here, buffeting an arrangement of pink balloons, tied to a long-abandoned sword cleaved into the stone porch.

  “Hello, hello!” a voice echoed from inside.

  Galen drew his sword as a skinny little man in a toga two sizes too big scurried out of the house and down the battle-stained stairs. “Please,” he squeaked, when he got a look at Galen. “Doctor.” He nodded to me. “Er … friend.” He bowed with trepidation toward Galen. “If you will come inside. No battles today.” He wagged a finger with forced cheerfulness.

  Galen sheathed his sword as the jumpy servant led us down a long hallway of pink and green marble. Our footsteps echoed as we passed more stony dead. Only these heroes were missing heads, limbs, and other vital body parts.

  I gripped my medical bag and kept moving. There was nothing I could do for them.

  “Here you are.” He led us through a pair of large bronze doors and into a sunny room that could have belonged in any upscale villa. The marble floor gleamed. The walls were hung with paintings and tapestries, and a strange gorgon slithered beside the gift table.

  She was thinner than Medusa, with a mass of red snakes tangling at her shoulders.

  “Stheno?” I guessed, taking the safe bet. Stheno was the oldest and most powerful of the three sisters.

  Her lips turned up at the corners as she slithered to me. “You must be the doctor,” she said. I handed Galen my medical case and allowed Stheno to grip my hands in hers. Her touch was papery and cold. I tried not to react as her wan smile turned to a hiss at the poor servant.

  “The human should have introduced us,” she snarled. “It’s impossible to attract good live help these days.”

  “Maybe if you give him time,” I said, not quite sure what else to say.

  She growled under her breath. “He’s a temp,” she said, ignoring Galen as she led me to an arched doorway. I glanced back to see him depositing my wrapped crystal on the gift table.

  “Back in the day,” Stheno said, dragging me along, “entire families served. Now everyone worries. Will my child fall into the poison lake? Will they be devoured by the flesh-eating crabs on the shore? Will I be struck in a lighting storm?” She leaned chummy close. “Used to be you had so many children that if one went missing, you chalked it up to fate.”

  Sure. Right. “So you live here with Medusa?” I asked, changing the subject as she led us through a portrait hall. It was a veritable who’s who of sea monsters and the damned.

  “I help out in the spring and summer, when the gorgon killers get their big ideas.” She snorted.

  I knew I was treading on dangerous territory, but, “If you ever decide on mercy, I can treat their injuries.”

  “Not when we knock the heads off.”

  I stood dumb for a moment.

  “Come,” she said, turning me into a room with a very pregnant Medusa. She lay on a couch of pink velvet, her stomach much more distended than when I’d seen her last.

  She was flanked by a third gorgon, who must be her other sister. The rest of the intimate room was crowded with a gaggle of fearsome women with sharp teeth and claws. They sat uncomfortably in a semicircle of metal folding chairs. Roundly, I was introduced to Ekhidna (the Viper), Skylla (the Crab), Ladon (the Dragon), and Graia (the Gray).

  I’d never keep all their names straight. So I just smiled and accepted a cup of punch.

  The viper lurched, her entire body seemed to coil as she sat ramrod straight. “What is this?” she hissed.

  I followed her gaze and found Galen in the doorway, looking delicious as usual.

  “He’s mine,” I said, without hesitation.

  “Too bad,” muttered the gray woman.

  Medusa’s younger sister caressed her punch cup. “Of course if she dies, he’s mine,” she mused, to the titters of her cousins.

  Medusa knocked the punch out of her sister’s hand, spilling it like blood, the cup skittering across the marble floor. “Do not kill her,” she thundered. “She’s my OB.”

  The sister scowled, then brightened. “Perhaps after the baby?”

  I found a chair far, far away, next to the crab monster, who sat like a large lump of clay. I liked her for that.

  “Now that we’re all here, let’s play a game.” Stheno glided over to a table laden with small prizes. “Ekhidna gave me the idea for this one.”

  The viper woman grinned as Stheno held aloft an apothecary jar. “Guess how many teeth are in the jar!”

  Oh, my Lord. They were human teeth!

  “I got them from the one who knocked you up!” Stheno tittered.

  Medusa gasped. “You took Helio’s teeth?”

  “Ha!” The crab lady nudged me, her fish breath singed the air. “I knew it was her bodyguard.”

  “Relax,” Stheno said, “I didn’t take his teeth.” She rattled the jar. “I just found these around the house.”

  I swallowed hard, determined to make it through this, confident that Galen lingered nearby.

  The winner of guess-the-teeth was gifted with a lovely necklace made of spiders.

  “They’re alive!” The gray woman clapped her hands as Stheno fitted her with the prize.

  “I hope,” Stheno replied, trying to get the clasp to work. “You didn’t close the box too tight, did you?” she asked Medusa’s other sister.

  She hadn’t. I saw one of the legs twitch.

  This was one shower where I was determined to lose big.

  I didn’t have to try hard. The next game was guess-the-food, where three smidges of baby food were presented on a tray and we had to decide what was what. I guessed peas, carrots, and beets. I should have known Medusa would go organic with ground eel, lamb’s brain, and ox blood.

  It’s not like I could have used the prize: papyrus note cards with poison ink.

  The sun was setting outside the window. I had to get out of here. Not only for my own preservation but for the fact that I had to work tomorrow and it was a long chimera ride home.

  Only I had to give Medusa her checkup. She looked like she was feeling good, and she’d certainly been hitting the snack table hard. They were both good signs, but certainly not in any way a replacement for proper prenatal care.

  “Gift time!” Stheno announced as Galen wheeled in a cart of presents.

  “Where have you been?” I mouthed to him.

  While the sisters ogled his ass, he made his way behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder. His breath felt warm against my ear. “The Fates are here.”

  I stiffened. I figured they might be real, just like all of the other mythical creatures I’d encountered down here. Still, I never thought I’d be meeting the Fates.

  We looked to the doorway and there stood an old woman, with two more behind her.

  “Aunt Klotho.” Medusa tried to turn around, her stomach impeding her.

  My fingers tightened on my chair. “Aunt?”

  “Friends of Medusa’s mother,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Can you believe it?”

  Yes. No. He’d had a few minutes to get used to it. Me? I was staring for all I was worth.

  Klotho was the spinner of the thread of life, if you believed in that sort of thing. I didn’t. Still, I could feel her power touch the room as she stepped over the threshold.

  Klotho was followed by Lakhesis, who measured the thread of life, and Atropos, who cut it.

  And, no, I wasn’t that smart to tell the difference on sight. But Klotho held a spinner, Lakhesis walked with a staff, and Atropos carried a pair of very sharp scissors.

  They assembled behind me
, cackling when I offered them my chair.

  “We are old, but we are strong.” Atropos nudged me with her scissors. “It does no good to buy us off.”

  It hadn’t been what I’d been doing, but I didn’t argue. Even if I didn’t quite believe in the Fates, I wasn’t about to tempt them.

  I could feel their weight behind me as Medusa opened her first gift. It was from her older sister. I’d never seen Medusa squeal, and I never wanted to see it again.

  “It’s the death shroud of Theseus!” She clutched it to her chest. “Does this mean you finally killed him?”

  “He attacked us!” Stheno protested.

  Silly man.

  Galen kept his hand on the hilt of his sword as Medusa reached for a trembling box. A flat, black nose sniffed from one of the airholes.

  “It’s from us!” one of the monstrous sisters announced.

  I braced myself as Medusa unwrapped a brown bat the size of a dog. “An Olitiau!”

  As her doctor, I should protest the hairy, fang-toothed creature. It was the worst baby gift ever. That thing looked like it could eat the baby.

  Crab lady nudged me. “Every little girl needs a pet.”

  “And this”—Medusa’s baby sister lifted a crown out of a gift bag—“I made myself.”

  It was a knobby white headdress of sorts. One thing was certain, the youngest gorgon was not very good at crafts.

  Medusa placed it on her head uncertainly.

  Her sister clapped her hands together. “It’s the bones of your enemies!”

  The women let out a collective, “Ahhh…”

  “You.” Medusa nudged her. “This must have taken ages to make.”

  “I’ve been collecting them for years,” she admitted, twirling a red snake around her finger. “The little nameplates on the back of each bone mark whom it’s from.”

  A teary-eyed Medusa reached for my gift. Nerves tickled my stomach. I hadn’t shopped for anything truly memorable. Although I was really glad I hadn’t been able to get anything from Babies “R” Us.

  Medusa unwrapped my gift and studied it for a moment. “A crystal,” she said, unimpressed until a thought came to her and lit her up from the inside. “It’s baby-sized! She can use it to smash the skulls of her enemies!”