And well he should. A primal god, her father was known to rip the fun body parts off men he didn’t like. Which was why she’d asked him to come. With her father present, she was hoping Apollo would be on his best behavior.
Bathymaas took her bow and jerked her chin toward their targets at the end of the field. “Three shots.”
Apollo made no move to conjure his weapon. Instead, he pursed his lips. “Perhaps we should make this more interesting.”
She narrowed her eyes on him suspiciously. “How so?”
“As you said, we’re both gods of archery. How about we shoot at my sister’s golden hinds?”
Artemis gasped. “Apollo, you can’t! They were gifts to me and I need them to pull my chariot.”
Apollo gave her a withering glare. “You only need four of them and you have five. I say we take one and release it in a herd of other deer and let them run. Whoever shoots the golden hind in the heart wins.”
Artemis curled her lip. “I vote I challenge Bathymaas and we shoot at you, brother dearest.”
Set and Bathymaas laughed.
Apollo not so much.
Turning his back to his sister, he faced Bathymaas. “Are you up to the challenge?”
“Where are these hinds?”
“In Artemis’s meadow.”
Bathymaas frowned at the obvious trick. Should her father step one foot on Olympus, the other Greek gods would call out for a supreme war. “You’d allow us to venture to Olympus?”
“I can have one of the hinds put here if you’d rather.”
“Of course, I’d rather.”
Without reacting to her tone, he glanced over to Artemis. “Go fetch the first hind you see and mix it with a herd here. Then let us know when you release them.”
“I hate you,” Artemis snarled under her breath before she went to comply.
Bathymaas lowered her bow as Artemis vanished. While they waited for Artemis’s return, she couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in her stomach.
Something awful was going to happen. She could feel it.
But before she had time to fully examine that sensation, Artemis returned. “I have a buck mixed in with the others. Say the word and they’re released.”
Apollo finally manifested his bow. He glanced to Bathymaas. “Ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
“Release the deer!” Apollo called out.
Bathymaas nocked her arrow and waited.
After a few seconds, the deer herd ran through the trees in front of them.
Apollo shot a heartbeat before she did. His arrow went into the flanks of the hind. Hers went straight to its heart.
Relieved it was over and she’d won, Bathymaas started to smirk, until the hind began to change form. Her breath caught in her throat.
No!
Dropping her bow, she teleported to Aricles. Naked, he lay on the grass with Apollo’s arrow embedded in his thigh.
And hers in his heart.
“Ari,” she sobbed, sinking to her knees. She pulled him into her arms. “How?”
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His breathing came in short, ragged breaths. “I was… with Galen…”
Bathymaas screamed out for her aunt to come help her.
Ma’at appeared instantly then froze. “What is this?”
“Apollo… he transformed Ari into a hind and I shot him.”
Her eyes filled with tears, Ma’at knelt by her side. “Child, you know I can’t heal your arrow wounds. No one can.”
Utter despair claimed her as she stared into the pain-filled eyes of her husband. “Ari… I didn’t know it was you.”
“Shh,” he breathed, reaching up to cup her cheek. “Don’t cry, Bathia. You are my heart and I will always be with you. If it takes me ten thousand lifetimes, I will find my way back to you, I promise.” As he went to smile, he expelled a single breath and his hand fell from her face.
The light faded from his eyes and as it did so her amulet that he wore around his neck broke into two halves.
Screaming in utter anguish, she cradled him to her chest and rocked his body as grief tore her apart. Someone, she assumed Ma’at, placed a comforting hand to her shoulder.
“Rezar! Stop it!”
She looked up at Ma’at’s cry to realize that it was Artemis by her side, and her aunt was trying to keep her father from killing Apollo and Leto.
Tears glittered in the Greek goddess’s green eyes. “I didn’t know, Bathymaas. I’m so sorry. He was grazing outside my temple. I just assumed he was one of mine. I had no idea my mother had done this to him and to you. I swear it.” The agony in her voice attested to the truth of her words.
But it changed nothing.
Aricles was dead.
By her own hand, and by Apollo’s and Leto’s treachery. And as she sat there with his body in her arms, a frightening cold filled her. It chilled every part of her being and stilled her beating heart.
She’d been conceived as a goddess of justice. But this wasn’t just.
It wasn’t right.
And her husband’s wrongful death would not go unavenged.
Kissing his cold lips, Bathymaas laid him on the ground and covered his body with her cloak.
Artemis gasped and shrank away from her as she rose to her feet and turned toward Apollo and his mother.
For this, there would be hell to pay.
And hers would be the hand that gathered the payment.
Epilogue
January 3, 12,247 BC
Set held his infant daughter in his hands as his heart broke all over again. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he met Ma’at’s gaze and saw his own sorrow mirrored in her eyes. After the death of her husband, Bathymaas had gone on a bloodthirsty rampage that had almost cost the Olympian pantheon all their lives. But since Apollo’s life was tied to the sun, they couldn’t allow her to kill him, or else the entire world would have ended. But her rage had been such that no amount of logic could keep her from her vengeance.
Uniting for the first time in history, the gods and Chthonians had all gathered to lay a death sentence on her. Something Set couldn’t allow. Desperate, he’d gone to his sister, who’d conceived the plan to have Bathymaas reborn with half a heart and with no memory of her precious Aricles.
Now she slept again in his arms, tiny and defenseless.
“Will you ever let me hold my daughter?”
He glanced up at Symfora’s request. She lay on the bed where she’d delivered his daughter to him just a few minutes ago. The Atlantean goddess of sorrow and woe, she’d been the perfect mother for his child. If anyone would understand his daughter’s pain, it was Symfora.
Kissing his daughter on the brow, he carried her back to Symfora and placed her in her mother’s arms. “She is beauty incarnate.”
“As is her father.” Symfora cradled her with the love he wanted his girl to know. “So what are we to call her?”
“Bet’anya.”
Symfora arched a brow at that. “House of Misery?”
“She is to be your goddess of misery and wrath, is she not?”
“Indeed.” She glanced down at her daughter and offered a rare smile. “But I shall call you Bethany, little one.”
Set cringed at the name that was almost identical to Aricles’s nickname for her. Symfora could use it if she chose to, but he would never call her by the name her husband had given her. She would always be his precious Bet.
He took her small, fragile hand into his. I hope I haven’t harmed you, daughter. Because of the Source powers they’d used for her birth, Bet only had half her heart.
The other half lay with her Aricles and wouldn’t return to her until he did.
You better find her, you bastard.
Otherwise, Set would rain a wrath down on this world that would make Bathymaas’s seem merciful. But in his heart, he knew true love when he saw it.
Come what may, Aricles would find and reunite with his Bathymaas. And no matter what powers sought to divide t
hem, Set held no doubt that they would one day be together again…
Read more about Bathymaas and Aricles in Styxx.
PHANTOM LOVER
1
“Men are the scourge of the universe. I say we line them all up along the highway and then mow them down with big trucks.” Chrissy paused as her light blue eyes widened with a new thought. “No, wait. Steamrollers! Yeah, let’s steamroll them all until they’re nothing more than slimy wet spots on the road.”
Arching a brow at the rancor, Erin McDaniels looked up from her desk to see her co-worker Chrissy Phelps gripping the edge of Erin’s tan cubicle wall. The large brunette’s eyes were flashing mad and Chrissy had the look of a woman one step away from the edge.
“Having trouble with the boyfriend again, eh, Chrissy?”
“Actually, it’s my younger brother who has me ticked, but since you brought up the boyfriend thing, take my advice: Be the black widow. Find a guy, have fun with him, then eviscerate him in the morning before he can brag about it to his friends.”
“Okay,” Erin said stretching the word out. “I think someone needs a time-out.”
“Someone needs a two-month vacation in the Bahamas without her boyfriend along.” Chrissy’s eyes brightened. “Oooh, hey, sex camp. Yeah. That’s the ticket. We need to start a sex camp where women can tell their hubbies they’re going to a fat farm and instead of the boot camp diet with Nazi dieticians, they go to the beach and have hot men treat them like goddesses!”
Erin laughed.
“No, I’m serious. We’d be rich.”
Erin laughed even harder. “You’d better get back to work before Lord King Bad Mood catches you over here again.”
“Yeah, I know. See, proves my point. All men should be shot.”
Erin was still laughing as Chrissy returned to her desk. Two seconds later, Chrissy was back, peeking over the cube wall again. “Hey, are you still having those nightmares?”
Erin’s humor fled as she remembered the horrendous nightmare she’d had last night where she’d been cornered in a dark cave by an unseen force that seemed to want to feed off her terror. For the last three weeks she’d barely slept a wink. Her exhaustion was getting so bad that she was even having dizzy spells.
“Yes,” Erin said.
“Did that medicine the doctor gave you help?”
“No. If anything, I think it made the dreams worse.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry.”
Erin was, too. She’d hoped for at least one good night’s sleep. But that no longer seemed possible.
Their boss’s door opened.
Chrissy dodged off as their rotund, militant boss left his office in a huff and headed toward the coffeepot with his extra large coffee mug in hand. Oh, yeah, like that man needed any more caffeine to add to his jittery crankiness.
Erin sighed as John filled his mug to the brim and her thoughts turned back to her nightmares.
Honestly, she no longer knew what to do about them. They were just so bizarre, and every night the dreams seemed to worsen. At the rate she was going, she figured she’d be a raving lunatic by the end of the month.
Rubbing her eyes, she focused on her computer screen. She had to get her marketing report in by Friday, but all she really wanted to do was sleep.
In the back of her mind she kept seeing that huge, snarling monster that came for her. Hearing him call her name as he reached his taloned hand out, trying to claim her. Like some bad horror movie, the scenes kept haunting her, whispering through her thoughts during any unguarded moment.
Shaking her head, she dispelled the images and focused on her computer screen. But as she read, Erin felt her eyelids getting heavy again. She blinked fast and widened her eyes in an effort to stay awake.
Marketing report, marketing report…
Oh, yeah, like that was a good way to stay awake. Why not down a couple of sleeping pills and drink a glass of warm milk while she was at it?
What she needed was more caffeine, and since she couldn’t stand coffee, she’d have to go to the Coke machine. Maybe the walk down the hall would help revive her, too.
She slid her chair back and opened her desk drawer to get her change, then rose to her feet.
As soon as she was upright, a strange buzzing began in her head. The world tilted.
And in one heartbeat everything went black and her body froze…
Erin felt herself falling down a deep, dark hole. All around her, winds rushed and howled in her ears, sounding like huge, frightening beasts trying to shred her.
They were hungry. They were desperate, and they wanted her.
They whispered her name on breaths of fire. Told her they waited only for her.
Not again! She couldn’t take any more of this horrible nightmare.
Wake up, wake up!
But she couldn’t.
Erin reached out to grab anything in the darkness to stop herself from falling. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing to save her.
“Help!” she screamed, knowing it was futile but needing to try.
Still, she fell.
She didn’t stop falling until she reached the cavern she knew all too well. Dark and dank, it smelled of rotting decay. She heard the hissing and screams, the absolute agony of souls in torment.
Run away!
Her heart pounded as she stumbled in the dark, over the rough floor that seemed to grab on to her feet with rocky fingers as she tried to find an exit. She struggled to see, but the oppressive darkness wouldn’t let her. All it did was stab at her eyes like tiny needles.
She reached out with her hands and touched a slimy wall that slithered and moved under her fingers. Disgusting though it was, at least it gave her some support, something tangible that might lead her home.
And she had to find a way home. The frightened voice in her head told her that if she didn’t get out of this now, she’d never be able to escape it.
Panicked, she saw a dim light flickering up ahead. She ran toward it as fast as her legs would carry her.
The light. It would save her. She was sure of it.
She ran into a large cave where the light was shining over the veined and broken walls that oozed some kind of gelatinous muck. The smell of sulphur burned her nose and the screams grew louder.
Erin skidded to a halt. If she had been terrified before, it was nothing compared to what she felt now.
The dragonlike monster, with shimmery blood red scales and jet-black wings, rose up in front of her, snarling. His long teeth snapped as he eyed her hungrily.
He moved closer to her, lulling her with his eerie silver-blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to see more than just her physical self. It was as if they saw all the way into her mind, her soul.
And she knew the beast wanted her. That he longed to possess her with a fevered madness.
Oh God, this was it. The beast was here to take her. To consume her.
There was no escape.
Erin stumbled back, toward the entrance. She wouldn’t just lie down and die. It wasn’t in her. She was a fighter. And she would fight until the last breath left her body.
Turning around, she ran to the opening, but before she could escape, it closed up, sealing her in.
“You’re not going to leave me so soon, Erin,” the scaly dragon lisped, his talons scraping the floor as he drew closer. “I need the light inside you. Your thoughts. Your feelings. Your goodness. Come to me, and let me feel the warmth of you wash over me.”
He lunged for her.
Erin closed her eyes and imagined a sword in her hands to fight him.
She got a tree limb. Not her weapon of choice, but it was better than nothing. She swung it at him, catching him hard across the face.
Laughing, he shook his scaly head as if he didn’t feel the blow at all. “Such spirit. Such intelligence and ingenuity. And you wonder why I want you so. Show me more, Erin. Show me what else you can come up with.”
She forced him to step back while she wielded her tree limb
. It was a stupid weapon, but it was all she had for the moment.
As if growing bored, the dragon jerked the limb from her hands. “I want your mind, Erin. I want to feel your fear of me.”
He moved even closer.
Before the beast could reach her, a bright light flashed between them, stinging her eyes even more. It grew in intensity until it appeared brighter than the sun. When it finally faded, it revealed another monster.
Erin swallowed in terror. Why couldn’t she control this dream? Ever since she’d been a child, she’d been able to wish herself out of bad dreams. But for some reason, she had no control in these nightmares.
It was as if something other than her was directing them. As if she were nothing more than a marionette whose strings were being pulled by the monster.
The newest monster appeared in the form of a giant snake. Only in place of a head, she had a woman’s upper body. Her scaly green complexion looked craggy, and her bluish eyes glowed.
The she-snake slithered toward her, smiling a fanged smile as she raked her eerie gaze over Erin’s body. “What a tasty little morsel she is.”
“She is mine!” the dragon roared. “I will not share her.”
The she-snake licked her lips as her long tail slithered across the floor. “She is strong enough for us both.” Then she turned toward the dragon, her hideous face a mask of rage. “Besides, I saw her first and well you know it. You found her through me and I won’t let you have her.”
The dragon attacked the snake.
Terrified beyond belief, Erin took advantage of their combat to pick up a rock and pound at the cave’s opening. “Let me out,” she demanded between clenched teeth.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the wall opening and her running through it.
It got her nowhere. Not until the tail of the dragon whipped around trying to sting the snake. The snake ducked, as did Erin, and in one resounding crash, the tail splintered the wall.
Trembling, Erin ran out into the darkness again. The screaming howls intensified.
“Please,” she begged out loud, “please wake up! C’mon, Erin, you can do it.” She pinched herself and slapped her own face as she ran, and did everything she could think of to make herself come out of this nightmare.
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