Goddess Choice

by A Lonergan

  I took a deep breath and sat on the bar stool to steady myself. I couldn’t believe I had been so dumb to eat so quickly.

  But I hadn’t been able to help it, I was just so hungry. It had been too long. I put my face in my hands and rode the waves of nausea, praying I didn’t vomit.

  A warm touch made me jump and I groaned. I hadn’t been expecting company. I glanced up at the clock on the stove, especially not at this late hour. I peeked from under my lashes at Keenan and gave a pained look. He brushed my hair from my face and continued to rub my back.

  He grabbed my small hand in his and helped me stand. He led me to the long couch in the living room and whipped a few blankets from the chest at the end of the love seat across the room.

  I didn’t waste any time sinking into the cushions. Keenan put the blankets over my legs then sat next to my head, pulling me onto his lap. My body reacted to him being so near and I felt my eyes start to drift closed. He ran his rough hands down the length of my hair as I fell into a deep sleep.

  Keenan

  Gods, she was beautiful. Her brown hair was starting to shine again now that the dirt and oil had been washed from it and it had grown considerably thin but it didn’t take away from her beauty. I smiled at the empty container on the counter; glad I had done something right. Guilt was still eating at my soul and I didn’t know how to make it right. It hadn’t been her fault and I had been in the wrong for letting her leave the room angry with me. I should have fixed it while I had the chance but maybe we had both needed the time out.

  When I suspected she had fallen asleep, I looked into the fridge to make it up to her. To make her some food to make it right, at least a little bit. But instead of staring into a full fridge, I had stared at empty shelves and disappointment.

  Had it been that long since I had gone grocery shopping? Hades, had it been that long since I had ate a decent meal?

  I scratched at the scruff on my face and thought for a minute.

  No.

  My mother had made sure I had been eating enough and feeding me, like she had after Chloe had been murdered. Anger flared to life in my chest but I tried to suppress it. Mother had questioned me about Jessa. She had asked about my intentions for her when I had popped back into the Valley to get some Fajitas from the little and only restaurant there. They made the best.

  I hadn’t known how to answer her for a moment. I had told her that I wasn’t sure. That I was just there to help but I knew it was more than that. Jessa drew me in like no one else had, not even Chloe and that thought made me sick. It had made me disgusted with myself when I had realized it. She had been the love of my life and had carried my child. She had been taken from me too soon but yet she hadn’t taken up space in my thoughts like Jessa had.

  My stomach churned at the thoughts. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t believe my thoughts and actions were betraying me but it had been years. Maybe it was time for me to move on, maybe it was okay. I deserved to be happy like anyone else, if not more.

  But then my traitor thoughts took a turn toward Crawley and I felt even sicker.

  Happy?

  I could have been happy with Jessa before I had found out Crawley was alive but now? I knew how he had felt about her, his growing feelings and here I was betraying my own brother. My mother had thought me protecting Jessa had been fine but now that Crawley was still alive, what would she think now?

  I rested my head against the couch and listened to Jessa’s even breathing. How the hell was I supposed to tell my mother? I didn’t even know how I had been about to keep it from her a few hours prior. She knew that Jessa was back but I couldn’t get the words to pass my lips and I didn’t think I would ever be able to.

  Our mother needed to see him in person to believe it and I wasn’t going to get her hopes up for nothing.

  I brushed my fingers over Jessa’s smooth skin on her shoulder and saw more scars dipping into the top of her shirt. I frowned and tried to get a better look at them. I hadn’t noticed them when she had gotten out of the shower earlier, now it was hard to notice anything else. I traced my fingertip down the length of one on her collarbone. She shuddered and scooted closer to me.

  I wound a strand of her hair around my fingers. No matter how hard I had tried to distract myself from her scars, my eyes kept going back to them. Then my eyes would jump to the gold lines on her wrists and confusion clouded my mind. I assumed they were scars too but why weren’t the ones on her chest gold as well?

  I closed my eyes against the anger. This was Apollo’s fault.

  All of it.

  My hands shook with the building rage inside of me. Jessa wasn’t going to talk about it and I wasn’t going to pry but dammit if I didn’t want to know. It was going to scratch at me and eat at my insides. Why did I need to know so badly?

  I woke up abruptly to the feeling of the earth shaking.

  No, not the earth shaking. The couch.

  Jessa was a few feet away from me but her body was seizing uncontrollably. Panic set in. I didn’t know what to do or how to help her.

  Maybe I couldn’t.

  I fished my cell phone out of my back pocket.

  “Hello?” A soft voice chimed over the speaker.

  “Mom, I need to talk to Shaskia!” I peered over my shoulder to check on Jessa, she was still shaking, her eyes closed tightly.

  I took a deep breath waiting on Shaskia to get to the phone. Why didn’t she have a cell phone yet? Most of the Valley had them, couldn’t she catch up with the times already?

  “What is it? What could be so important that you had to wake me in the middle of the night to talk on this Godsforsaken device?”

  “Stop your tirade right this second, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.” I let out a huff of air. “Jessa is back but something isn’t right. She isn’t okay. She-”

  “Stop tripping over your words and spit them out.” Shaskia snapped.

  “She’s seizing. She hasn’t stopped. I don’t know what I am supposed to do.”

  “Don’t do anything.” She said.

  “What?” I asked, incredulous.

  “You heard me,” She let out a strange noise and I heard shuffling on the other end of the line. “If this is how Apollo is taking her, you won’t be able to stop him. Don’t touch her body, there’s a chance that you could be pulled into what ever trap he has her in this time.”

  “But-” I started.

  “Do not but me, Keenan. I will be there in a moment, do not move her. Do not touch her. Don’t do anything.” Shaskia’s voice was harsh over the phone and I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Be here in a moment? It wasn’t possible.

  The air shimmered around the back door and Shaskia fell through it. She gave me an ugly look before rushing to Jessa’s side. Shaskia’s hair was in a wild braid that stretched down her back and she was wearing jeans with a button down shirt. She knelt down next to Jessa and closed her eyes, almost reverently.

  “This isn’t Apollo’s work, I’m not sure whose work it is.” Shaskia’s eyes briefly met mine before they filled with tears. She went to touch the scar I had noticed while she was sleeping on me but pulled her hand back at the last moment. “She doesn’t look like my Jessa anymore, what happened to her?” She turned accusing eyes on me. Where there had been pain, it was now replaced with anger.

  “She just got back yesterday, I haven’t had the time to even ask her but she was in Apollo’s prison. She let that information go.”

  “You are kidding, right?” She stood to her full height and came at me. “You lost her to Apollo’s prison? She was supposed to be safe with you and she wasn’t! How in Hades did you let this happen?” She glanced back at Jessa’s now still form on the couch and stopped her advancement on me. She rushed back to Jessa’s side and pulled her small frail hand to her face. She placed a kiss on her palm before she narrowed her eyes.

  “More. She has more scars like these?” She picked up Jessa’s hand and let the light bounce o
ff the gold on her wrist.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I felt like an imbecile because I couldn’t give her more answers. I wished that I could give her more.

  “I need you to lift her body so I can remove her shirt.” I nodded my head and did what she said.

  Shaskia pulled Jessa’s shirt over her head while I held onto her shoulders. I was nervous she was going to start seizing again and didn’t want to hold onto her for too long. I couldn’t help her if I was pulled into whatever she was experiencing. I laid her back down as soon as her shirt was free from her arms and took a step back. Not before I got a good look at all the damage done to her in Apollo’s prison.

  “No.” My voice came out in a whisper.

  Small scars crisscrossed their way across her chest and stomach. Shaskia’s eyes were huge as she covered her mouth.

  A gold gagged scar stretched across the bottom of her stomach, it was about six inches long. But that wasn’t what Shaskia was staring at. She was staring at the scars around it. It looked like something or someone had tried to cut the gold scar out. The deep rivets around it had my stomach rolling and my eyes filling with tears.

  I turned around and faced the wall. My fist lashed out and connected with the wooden paneling. I didn’t feel the pain or the splinters biting into my knuckles. I just stared at the blood dripping from my skin and felt nothing.

  Nothing but rage.

  I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and see the rest of the damage. I could hear Shaskia crying softly and that was enough for me. Shaskia was one of the strongest women I had ever met and to have her breaking down like this was tearing me apart.

  I pushed myself up the steps and into my bedroom, on autopilot. I had to turn it off. I had to turn my thoughts off or they would consume me and I would hunt the prison down. It didn’t matter how I found it or how I got there but I would go to any and all lengths to avenge her. Crawley’s face flashed across my mind and I knew that he would want a hand in whatever revenge I could come up with. I pushed myself to leave my bedroom but I didn’t know how I did it. I was hardly there. My rage was pushing my consciousness away.

  I stared at the small closet door in Jessa’s bedroom. It wasn’t just any closet. I pulled the door open and stared into the water looking substance that coated everything. It was a lot like the other doors in the house that let back to the real world but this one was different. It had been what Chloe had used to travel. It had been her escape hatch. I had never used it because I knew how powerful it had been. But at this point, I didn’t think I had another choice. This portal wouldn’t move the house. This portal would just move me and throw me wherever in the universe I needed to go.

  I was almost certain it could even bring me to the Underworld if that was where I needed to go. I had been trying to figure out this portal for months, trying to read anything and everything I could get my hands on that had to do with traveling and portals.

  I hadn’t been able to find anything on this. Hecate was the only one that would be able to help me with this and I didn’t want to take a trip to the Underworld to find her. I didn’t even know for certain if that was where she lived. She had free reign from Hades to come and go as she pleased.

  I scrubbed my hand down my face and looked around the small room. My anger had started to go down and I knew that I couldn’t go through the portal without being prepared. I closed the door and took a step back. I folded my legs under me and put my face in my hands.

  I couldn’t take the chance of Apollo finding me. I couldn’t afford for him to take me away too. Jessa needed me, Crawley needed me and I needed to be more level headed about all of this. They needed me to be.

  I pushed myself off of the floor and finally looked down at my knuckles. They were healed. I gulped.

  “Do not fret, Beloved. Take a breath, you are strong and can overcome anything. Don’t forget that you were trained as a warrior too.”

  The soft voice wrapped around my body, almost in a sensual way and I shuddered before something hit me.

  “Chloe?” My voice shook and so did my legs and I took a step closer to the closed closet door.

  “Yes, Beloved.” She whispered.

  “How- how is this possible?”

  “You opened the door to my portal, didn’t you?” Her voice wrapped around me and it was like magic. It was like I could feel her again. I closed my eyes imagining her big green eyes and bright smile.

  “But- but I didn’t use it.” I stammered.

  “What were you thinking about?” She said.

  “Hecate and the Underworld.” My voice sounded a little more confident.

  “Well, you silly goose, that’s why. You have linked me here.” She giggled.

  I got lost in the sound of her voice. I was getting high off it. I pushed myself closer to the door. Maybe, maybe, it would let me see her. I needed to see her. I grasped the door knob in my hand and took a deep breath. I needed to see her, I needed to feel her, I needed her. Everything else faded away while I thought about just how much I missed her.

  Desperate.

  I was desperate and couldn’t control the way my body was reacting.

  “You could see me. Just jump, Keenan. We could be a family again. You could raise your son with me. We would be the family we were always supposed to be.”

  Her words ripped me from the trance I was in. She had been pregnant with a little girl. My little girl. I looked up at the last minute just as a graying, decaying hand reached through the portal. It grabbed a hold of my hair and pulled me to it. I slammed the door closed on it and my hair. A scream pierced through the room, I had to cover my ears. Pain wracked through my skull before the sounded faded to nothing.

  I stared at the door in horror.

  What had I done?

  I let out a breath of air and could see it in front of me. The window on the back wall was covered in frost and knew I had messed up big. I scurried to the bedroom door, tripping over my feet as I went. Shaskia was waiting in the hall with a look of horror on her face.

  “What did you do?” Her eyes were narrowed into slits.

  “Nothing that I can’t fix,” I hoped.

  “That didn’t sound like something you can fix. I feel the Underworld. Do not try to summon Hecate. You will be sorely disappointed.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “I would do no such thing.” I stated.

  “I am not an idiot. I see the singeing on your hair. I know you did something. I smell the rot too.” She sniffed the air for emphasis.

  I had almost forgotten about my hair. I rushed to my bedroom in haste, not worrying with Shaskia or where she went. I didn’t care. I needed to get rid of the smell that was sticking to me and my hair. I slammed my bathroom door open and threw the drawers open until I found what I was looking for.

  Clippers.

  I went to town on my long hair, not worrying with it anymore. I was almost relieved to see the locks littering the tile. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, literally.

  When I looked in the mirror I didn’t recognize myself anymore. My hair was shorter and I almost looked like Crawley.

  Almost.

  Shaskia was leaning in the doorway watching me with disapproval on her face. “Your mother will be sad.”

  “I don’t know why. It was my hair, not hers.” I ducked my eyes to the ground at the bitter sound in my voice.

  Where had that come from?

  “She isn’t going to tell you this and it isn’t my place to but you need to know. Your mother kept your hair long for a reason. Because of your father.”

  “My father has short hair.” I ran my fingers through the shorter locks.

  “He’s not your real father. He’s Crawley’s father.”

  “Excuse me?” There was no way this was how she was telling me this.

  “I don’t know much about your father. Apparently he died a long time ago. I think he died when you were a baby. He had long hair, similar to how yours was. He was born a warrior
in his village.” She leaned against the wall.

  “Village?” I asked, cautiously.

  “Like I said, I don’t know much about your real father but long hair was the custom in his village. It meant strength to his people.” She shrugged up one of her shoulders.

  I clenched my fists at my sides and tried to push my traitor thoughts away. I had a right to be angry but at the same time, my mother did everything for a reason. She had lost her first husband or lover or whatever and buried the pain deep. I understood, I had done the same with Chloe. I had buried my pain so deep I didn’t recognize myself when I reacted to her voice. I gulped thickly and tried to look anywhere but at Shaskia and the words she was spewing.

  I bit my lip and pushed past the woman that I had always known and trusted.

  Chapter 7

  Jessa

  I couldn’t believe I was back here. Back in this stupid prison world. It was dark and I knew that I was laying down just like the last time. It just seemed too similar to be a coincidence. I pushed myself into a sitting position and squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again.

  Still darkness.

  “Apollo?” My voice sounded small and scared. I didn’t want to sound like that. I pushed my voice out again but this time I tried it with malice. “Apollo, what do you want now?!”

  Much better.

  “It isn’t Apollo that brought you here.” The voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Then who are you?” I asked with sass.

  “I’m offended you don’t remember me.”

  Then it clicked. “Artemis?”