by Noah Layton
‘These are magnificent…’ She said, running her hands across a line of t-shirts. ‘Are they expensive?’
‘These? Not really…’ James replied, checking the price tag. ‘We need to get you something along these lines.’
‘What do you think?’
They picked out stacks of clothes, neither James nor Elena knowing how to size up the clothes without her trying them on. Finally heading to the changing rooms, James waited just outside as she made her way in.
James waited for her, wondering what kind of insane combination she would come out wearing, but after a few minutes she returned wearing slim low-heel black boots, skinny jeans, a deliberately faded band t-shirt and a black leather jacket.
‘So…?’ She asked. ‘What do you think?’
‘Damn…’ He commented, looking her up and down, ‘You look… Really good.’
They rang it up at the counter, where Elena snuggled up to James’s arm like they had been together for years. He tried not to show any reaction to her.
After exiting the department store she linked her arm into his as they headed towards the museum.
‘This how you acted with other guys?’
‘Only with my master.’
‘Your… Master?’
‘Alerian, of course. I’m also doing it to tease you… Or perhaps please you. I know that you would like to fuck me.’
Somewhere nearby a car horn honked and James jumped slightly, a small part of it stemming from what Elena had come out with. It was as casual as if she was telling him her favourite food.
James searched desperately for a decent rebuke to her statement that would help him come across as anything more than a horny college guy, but he drew a blank completely.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said in a genuinely reassuring voice, ‘that’s the way the vast majority of men feel about me when they look at me.’
‘If a man likes women and looks at a girl like you, he’s decided in less than three seconds that he wants to fuck you. Believe me. How the hell do you know that anyway?’
‘Firstly I’m thousands of years old. I know the nature of men. Secondly, I know what men desire.’
‘… You’re serious? You can tell what men want most, just by looking at them?’
‘Most of the time, although it depends on the mind of the man. If they’re strong-willed then it is a supreme difficulty for me, sometimes impossible. But if they are easily-swayed and gullible, then I can literally see right through them.’
‘Okay…’ James said, steadily getting used to the feeling of Elena’s firm, warm body against his side. ‘What about that guy?’
He pointed to a sharply-dressed businessman across the street – suit, tie and briefcase, complete with supercuts haircut. He was pacing quickly, looking on the verge of yelling down the phone that he was speaking into.
‘Long lost love,’ she said. ‘A girl from his hometown who he was never good enough for, and he carries the thought with him every day, that hopefully he will have enough money to win her back.’
‘Real-life Gatsby,’ James smiled, shaking his head. ‘He looks pretty strong-willed in my eyes, though. I picked him because I thought you wouldn’t be able to figure it out.’
‘He looks strong-willed, and he might be in his day-to-day dealings. But all of that is a mask for the damaged, wounded pride that lurks deep within him.’
‘That’s… Probably the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
Elena laughed, patting him on the arm. ‘With the powers you’ll soon gain you’ll experience things much worse than that, believe me.’
In his first year in the city James had had a girlfriend who he had met at a party. She was hotter than he could even believe, and for the first few weeks he wondered why the hell a girl who looked like her had even taken an interest in him. That question was promptly answered when she had gone berserk at a party one night, smashing up bottles and flipping tables.
Watching from behind and mentally wondering what would be the safest way to break up with her without getting stabbed to death, James had realised that every cliched warning about hot girls occasionally being total psychos was true. That said, the same could be said for everybody – the problem was that hot girls always got brought up in the same vein as crazy, because when people first met them they always judged what was on the surface, and the contrast between crazy beauty and insanity couldn’t be bigger.
When it came in the same package, it always came as a shock.
Even now, though, as they approached the NYC Historic Museum, James couldn’t help but already feel torn. The girl – no, demon-goddess, or goddess, or whatever she referred to herself as – next to him was driving him crazy with a primal lust that he was trying to quash down into his subconscious, and it was difficult to ignore.
‘This is it.’
The building had seen better days, likely because the contents had fallen by the wayside in terms of societal interests. It was the same with books versus on-demand TV; the latter was just so much more interesting than reading a 300-page manuscript, and getting wasted in a bar was so much more fun to most people than staring at tools from lost villages that had existed 500 years ago.
Chipped concrete steps led up to a small walkway where a reception hall awaited in the old sizeable building. James dropped off a few dollars into the donation box and headed inside with Elena next to him.
‘The axe of Xudon,’ James repeated, looking at a map of the building inside the entrance that was stationed on a large tilted tablet. ‘What period would it be from?’
‘The 7th century. That was an interesting time to be in your world.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a long story, although things became very dark. It was nothing out of the ordinary, though. My kind were brought into existence thousands of years ago, and we exist in the same form that we did upon our first arrival onto this plain of existence. We have seen almost everything there is to see.’
‘… Right,’ James said slowly, ‘That’s still gonna take some time to wrap my head around.’
‘When you live as long as my kind does you begin to think in different ways. Do not worry, it will come to you eventually.’
‘If I live long enough to experience it.’
Brushing off the statement, Elena examined the map.
‘Here,’ she said, pointing at a section marked 5th-9th century. ‘This would be the most likely location.’
James had more questions than he could count that he wanted to ask Elena – about the past, about her experiences, about the secrets of the world that people had fought over for thousands of years. She had probably experienced it all and been around for it all.
But for the minute, something kept him quiet. He was in the moment, more concerned with looking after himself and making sure that he didn’t slip up in the presence of a literal goddess who could probably do things that she wasn’t even letting on to.
‘Please don’t do anything weird,’ James emphasised as they moved past a tired looking security guard that marked the threshold between two sections of the museum. ‘If anything gives someone official the reason to stop and search us it’d get a little awkward if they found out that you had, y’know, wings.’
‘I understand,’ Elena said. ‘I know the customs of your world, James, so please don’t worry about that.’
‘That’s not my worry,’ he replied. ‘My worry is that you know the customs and you’ll just go ahead and do it anyway.’
She stopped for a moment looking at him in admiration.
‘What?’ James asked, tilting his head to the side as he stared back at her doubtfully.
‘Nothing,’ she smiled, ‘I was just thinking about something else. Don’t worry about it… Come on.’
James led them on to the pre-millennia section of the museum, a darkened and dusty area that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in as long as the age of the objects that were held there. Wilted pieces of card sat before a
n array of ancient objects in glass boxes.
And then, like all forgotten objects, they found it. The axe of Xudon was sitting in its own display case, unlike many of the other objects in this section of the museum, but its presentation suggested that it had the same two things in common with almost every other ancient artefact in the place; disregard and disrepair.
It was rusted and chipped, caked in what looked like perpetually frozen black mud.
The card was right there in front of it, giving them a sensible, pointed label.
‘Are you sure this is the right weapon to take down a freaking monster?’ James asked. ‘I mean, I don’t know much about slaying these things but I’m pretty sure we’re going to need something with a little more firepower than that.’
‘This is it…’ Elena said with captivation, gazing through the glass. ‘Like all things it begins to rot with lack of use, and this has not been put to use for centuries by the looks of it.’
‘I’d say longer than centuries,’ James replied sceptically. ‘Well, at least we know it’s here. Although I don’t know what else we can do about it, seeing as its locked in a glass box. Isn’t there another way that we can-’
SMASH.
James didn’t have time to finish his sentence. He was too busy watching Elena as she pounded her fist through the glass box, smashing it completely on one side before reaching in and grasping the axe in a firm grip and pulling it free.
Despite the disrepair that the museum had fallen into, it was still a government building, and alarms started blaring immediately.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ James yelled over the alarms, feeling his heart race and his stomach pang with dread.
‘Look, I apologise for lying to you,’ Elena said casually, weighing the feeling of the axe in her hand, ‘but there isn’t another way. This is one of many keys to our success if we should have any hope of stopping Ascevious.’
‘Maybe, but you can’t just steal the fucking thing, never mind from a government building. It’s a felony. We could both go to prison.’
‘There’s no way that I’m going back into a cage. 80 years was long enough.’
‘Well, that’s what’s about to happen. That’s what that loud-ass ringing sound is. Men with guns are about to show up and shoot us if we don’t do exactly what they say.’
Elena shot James a look, raising her eyebrow expertly.
‘Men?’ She repeated.
‘With guns,’ James replied, looking around frantically as he heard shouts and hard footsteps from the end of the hall that led straight to them.
I could just leave her here, James thought, his heart pounding hard in his chest. Or better yet claim that the entire thing was her fault, which it technically was. My testimony of being in the wrong place at the wrong time would be much better than a girl who claimed that she was a goddess.
‘Hold this,’ Elena said, throwing the axe lightly towards James. The thing looked like it weighed a hundred pounds considering the size, and he scrambled to grasp it. To his surprise he caught it effortlessly, commanding the weight of the weapon with ease.
But now it was in his hands, and the plan to blow off Elena as the real criminal here was gone.
Shit.
‘Don’t move!’
One of the three security guards, complete with navy-colored uniforms, caps and handguns, shouted it from the entrance of the hallway. They faced down with James and Elena, guns raised, James still holding the axe.
‘You, put down the weapon!’ Another guard shouted.
‘Don’t,’ Elena said to him quickly. ‘With the lack of use you could damage it.’
‘If I don’t they’re gonna shoot me in the fucking face,’ James said out of the corner of his mouth.
How the hell did I get myself into this mess?
A moment away from dropping the axe, James watched in bafflement as Elena began to saunter forward, one smooth step at a time, one foot in front of the other as her behind swayed back and forth.
‘Ma’am, don’t take another step,’ one of the guards ordered.
‘Oh, come now gentlemen,’ she said, her voice sounding absurdly smooth in James’s mind. It was enticing just to listen to her, so much so that he forgot for a moment about the axe. ‘Take off your hats and spend a little time with me…’
Her voice seemed to echo through the room, as if there were two of her speaking at the exact same time.
James was captivated by her, but he was still aware of the catastrophe of a situation that he was in.
But the security guards didn’t seem to be.
Steadily they lowered their weapons, not out of intention but as if they had forgotten completely about why they were here, what was going on, and who they even were. The guns fell from their hands to the floor, James wincing every time one struck the ground loudly, hoping they wouldn’t go off.
Within seconds they had moved forward to meet Elena, standing before her and gazing into her eyes unblinkingly, stunted like meerkats gazing at a full moon.
They remained before her like disciples, staring up at her longingly until she turned to look over her shoulder at James.
Her usually amber-colored eyes had turned a bright red, and a fanged smile rushed across her face.
James’s eyes went wide with fear as Elena returned her view to the men, moving insanely quickly. She struck them all sharply, sending them flying back across the floor, two against the walls and one straight down the hallway. All of them slumped down upon the floor, before Elena released a pleasured, contented sigh.
‘What the hell was that?’ James said, moving forward steadily, now taking an interest in holding on to the axe.
‘A titbit of seduction,’ Elena said casually, much like many of the things she came out with.
He had even more questions, but the alarms were still ringing. Rushing forward and taking Elena by the hand, they took off for the exit.
Chapter Nine
Kiss Me
Escaping the museum hadn’t been an easy task; even with the downed security guards, the place was still being traversed by employees. The front door lost its place as an option, and instead James and Elena resorted to breaking through a maintenance door that led through and past janitors’ closets and storage rooms before they finally emerged into an alleyway by the side of the building.
Wrapping the axe up in a garbage bag that had been lying around in the alleyway, he and his goddess companion had taken the backstreets through the city before getting back to his apartment, hearing the nearby sirens after just a block of running.
Finally arriving back at his apartment and locking the door behind him, James set the axe down on his coffee table while Elena returned to the bags of candy that she had been making her way through.
‘What the hell was that?’ He asked loudly.
‘Like I said, I am sincerely sorry.’
‘You’re a goddess from another dimension. Sorry doesn’t mean anything when it comes out of your mouth.’
‘Perhaps. But we’re safe and we have the weapon, don’t we?’
‘And what’s probably going to be a police investigation on our asses shortly. Jesus, there’ll be security footage somewhere in there too, if not inside then in a street… And what happened with the guards? What did you do to them?’
‘I’m a goddess. Most people don’t believe in us, but they know what our abilities are. I’ll bet you do, too.’
‘You seduced them, didn’t you?’ James said slowly. ‘That’s why they dropped their guns. You made them…’
‘I made them fall in love with me for a few brief moments. What I said about seeing into the souls of those who are weak-willed is also true for our ability to entice the minds of desirous men. If they are willing enough to set aside the moment in order to have a woman, then they often tend to do so.’
‘You mean… If they want to have sex with you?’
‘Fuck me, you mean?’
‘That too, if you wanna put it that way.�
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‘Precisely.’
‘And seeing as most men spent the vast majority of their days thinking about sex,’ James continued, ‘It probably doesn’t need to be said that that little… Spell, I guess we would call it? That spell works on most men.’
‘The weak-willed ones, yes.’
James thought for a moment, baffled at the sheer power of what she could do.
‘Wait,’ he continued. ‘Did… Did you do that to me? Is that how you got me to do all of this?’
‘No. All of this you did of your own free will. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t try to do it to you when I was first unleashed from the gemstone. It just didn’t work, which I’ve never had happen before.’
‘I thought you said it only worked against weak-willed people.’
‘It does, but I’ve never met a man with a will strong enough to resist the charm of a goddess. Unless they’re not interested in women, of course.’
‘I can’t believe you tried to seduce me… No, wait, I can, because you’ve double-crossed me on everything that we’ve done so far.’
‘Do you still have the gem that I instructed you to bring?’
James fished about in the pocket of his jeans and found the bright green stone, holding it in the palm of his hand and examining its fractured shape. A large crack ran down the centre of the stone from where she had escaped.
‘When I was trapped within the stone I was not alone. Within this cage I was in the presence of one of Ascevious’s minions, a creature known as embris. I managed to contain him to a forest within the stone while hiding in my domain.’
‘Wait, a forest? What’s even inside these items, these… Wait… I’ve still got one in my trash.’
James moved to the kitchen, tapping open the lid of the trash can and looking amongst the festering garbage reluctantly before reaching in and fishing around inside.
After a few grim seconds of searching, he felt the cold touch of steel against his fingertips.
‘There.’
After washing his hands and the locket James returned to the couch and sat down next to Elena, displaying the two items in his hands. Without any hesitation she shuffled closer to him, snuggling up to his side. The fact that she was a goddess was completely inconsequential to James – he didn’t know if that was down to the things that now resided within him, but he found her hotter than any other girl he had met in his life.