Only this was a man of an age long lost. He stood before us, clad in a leather tabard with a black horse embroidered to his chest. Over his shoulders hung a thick, black cloak, the hem caked in mud. His boots, running halfway up his shins, were also caked in mud. From his hip hung a sword unlike Mnemosyne’s blade in every way possible. It was long enough that I knew, even as a vampire, I would have trouble wielding it. There were no gems or bits of silver inlay. It was a warriors sword; all business.
Tucked into his belt was a dagger long enough to be a sword in its own right. He also had a small dagger tucked into his boot leg. I wondered what other weapons were concealed in the folds of his clothing.
I forced my eyes up to see his face and felt tears burn my eyes.
Tereus had a firm jaw, covered mostly in the stubble of a time when it was difficult to shave. His muddy-brown hair was disheveled but kept short. Across the left side of his face ran a scar from his temple, down his cheek and neck, and disappearing within the collar of his tunic. Though thoroughly healed, the scar was puckered and red, as though it had not been well treated when he first received the wound.
His green eyes looked at me, sadness giving them depth.
I felt Mnemosyne’s arms tighten around my shoulder as she stared at her father.
“Well, I don’t really see what mother saw in you.”
“Where is Corrina?” asked Tereus, trying his best to ignore his own body.
I couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to be in his own body after over a century of being a cat.
“You do not get to say her name!” shrieked Mnemosyne as she jerked me off my feet and dragged me a step backwards. At the same instance the Sphinx and the three-headed monster let out a chorus of roars—and one bleat from the goat—to echo their mistress’ cry.
I winced again as I felt the blade graze across my skin. It seemed to vibrate against me, as though my blood gave it more power.
“Okay, okay. What is it you want Mnemosyne?”
Mnemosyne jerked me around again. “What? You’d give me anything to save her, a vampire whore?”
Tereus looked at me, his green eyes darkening with an emotion I didn’t understand. “Yes. I’ll do whatever you ask. Just let her go. She isn’t a part of this.” He lifted his hands, away from his sword.
“She has given you safe haven for all these years. How can you say she’s not a part of this! Besides, Sedgrave needs her, and I do as he bids.”
“I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear? I seduced your mother. I laid with her without the blessings of her family. I was wrong. But Mnemosyne, my mistake, all those centuries ago, produced you. Had it not been for my foolishness, you would never have lived.”
I knew Mnemosyne was listening to him because she had grown extremely still.
“Forgive me,” begged Tereus
Mnemosyne jerked me, nearly pulling me off my feet. “You don’t deserve forgiveness.”
This is bullshit, I thought. I acted before I thought about it, as is typical with me, and slammed my head back into her face. She staggered backwards, her blade gliding across my throat and drinking deeply.
I lurched forward, gravity doing the work for me. I had taken three uneven steps before I gained control of my body. I turned to lunge back at Mnemosyne.
I would have left her to Tereus, but he was already defending himself from the three-headed beast, who didn’t take it well that I had head-butted his mistress. I wished I could have stopped to watch him. He was a true warrior; even Nik, who had fought for his life many times, couldn’t compare. Tereus wielded his sword as though it was an extension of his arm, rather than a man-made tool.
I did my best to ignore him as I jumped toward Mnemosyne. I grabbed her hands to keep her from bring the blade down on me again. We grappled like that, our hands interlocked above our heads, for a few minutes until I drove her back against a wall. I took this opportunity to slam my knee up into her groin. Though she wasn’t a guy, it still wielded results. She grunted and doubled over. I wrenched the blade from her hands and drove it into her gut before I realized what I was doing. To be sure it was a death blow, I twisted the blade in her gut.
Mnemosyne collapsed on the floor, the decorative sword still embedded in her stomach.
I turned to see how the others were faring.
Jordan was back in the fireplace, defending himself with the shovel from the attacks of the goat. Tereus was battling the lion and snake heads all by himself, while Nik and Josh were trying to deal with the Sphinx. Periphetes had slipped off the countertop, though he was still trying to send projectiles at our enemy. His efforts were becoming downright pathetic.
I didn’t even have time to join the fight before Tereus had cut off the lion and snake heads. He jumped forward, slicing downward with his sword and taking off the goat head. It landed with a splat just before Jordan’s feet.
The death of the beast drew the attention of the sphinx away from Nik and Josh, giving Josh a chance to drive his poker into the sphinx’s eyes. He must have hit the brain, because it collapsed in a heap over the back of Jordan’s couch.
Tereus turned back to me. “You okay?” he asked, as he cupped my cheek with one hand while the other pulled my collar away so that he could see the cuts on my neck.
“I’m fine,” I said as I batted his hands away. In truth, I was feeling even more drained than usual, but he didn’t need to know that. “I couldn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean to...”
Tereus looked over my shoulder and spotted Mnemosyne lying in a puddle of her own blood at the foot of her horse. Leaving me behind, Tereus rushed to her and knelt beside her, his long cloak spreading out behind him.
“You foolish girl,” he said, centuries of pain in his voice. “Did you really think Sedgrave, a warlock, would give you everything you wanted. Fulfill all your dreams? Why work with him?”
“He did give me what I wanted. He lead me to you.”
“Too foolish for your own good, just like your mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother was foolish for loving me, just as you are foolish for hating me. I deserve no such passion.”
Mnemosyne didn’t respond.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked.
“Phonoi’s punishment wasn’t enough. I had to make sure that you suffered like I did!” Mnemosyne coughed and a trickle of blood appeared on her lips.
“You really think living as a cat for over a century hasn’t been punishment enough? Me, a warrior and a man, trapped in an apartment, with no purpose in my life. You really think that wasn’t sufficient punishment? It has been a living hell. Death would have been blessing.”
“It can’t have been that bad.” Mnemosyne’s eyes flickered to where I stood. “You met a girl.”
Tereus stroked her cheek, his thumb rubbing away the drop of blood on her lip. “I did meet a girl.”
“And now I’ve taken her from you. You may have your true form back, but you’ll be alone.” Mnemosyne coughed again, more blood filling her mouth. The end was near.
As if on cue, my legs gave out and I collapsed against the opposite wall.
He was finally free of his curse. I smiled.
Tereus looked over his shoulder at me before crawling to my side and supporting my head. “No. No. Ashley. No.” He pulled me up into his arms and pressed his lips to mine. I felt his facial hair tickle my chin.
I smiled faintly up at him before coughing in unintentional mimicry of Mnemosyne.
“It’s okay. Look on the bright side, it will be easier to kill Sedgrave when I’m dead.”
I coughed again and tasted my own blood in my mouth. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the others circle around us, but in truth I only had eyes for the warrior leaning over me.
Tereus looked back at his daughter. “You could save her,” he said. “The cut is shallow. The poison in her system is limited.”
I heard Mnemosyne chuckle. “Why would I do that?”
“For
your mother. So that she doesn’t have to remember you as a murderer,” Tereus growled.
Mnemosyne didn’t respond at first. “I can’t. I don’t have the power left.”
“You would have enough if you took back the spell you used to return my true form,” said Tereus.
“No,” I said before my soft sound turned into another wracking cough. “Tereus, don’t give up your freedom. I shouldn’t be alive anyway. My ticket was up the night Isaac attacked me.”
“That’s not true,” snapped Tereus. In that instant, I saw the soldier reappear, and if I’d had any energy left, I would have been afraid.
“You would do that for her?” asked Mnemosyne.
“I would have done it for you if I could have. But you know your wound is too great to be healed. Mnemosyne, I would have loved you with all my heart had you given me the chance.”
Mnemosyne laughed again, though it sounded weak from where I lay in Tereus’ arms. “Sure you would have, father. Are you sure this is what you want?”
“No!” I said as loudly as I could. It wasn’t very impressive.
“Sssshhhh,” whispered Tereus. “I’ll still be here with you. I’ve spent a century as a cat. What’s another century? Let me do this for you.”
“No!” I cried.
He kissed me again, and I felt a smile pull on my suddenly dry lips.
“You always were a horny, old man.”
“At least I got to kiss you.” Tereus lowered me to the ground and crouched next to me. “Okay Mnemosyne, take the magic. Heal her.”
And she did.
A second later I was as good as new, Mnemosyne lay dead, and Tereus was back in his cat form. I gathered him up in my arms and cried into his fur.
He purred.
Finally, I looked up at the winged horse who continued to stand in Jordan’s entryway.
“Can you deliver a message?” I barely choked the words out past my tears.
The horse ducked his head.
“Tell Hemera what happened here. Tell her how Mnemosyne let a grudge ruin more than one life.”
The horse bowed his head again before backing out of the destroyed apartment and taking wing.
I turned to Nik, Tereus still clutched to my chest and tears still streaming down my face. “Call the seethe. We have a mess to clean up.”
Continue reading for the next book…
That Sucked
Chapter One
Miss Hawn,
I have just finished reading your most recent work and am astounded! I loved your old books, but these new books are just asto…
Seriously? I thought as I pulled the lid of my laptop down in a vicious swing, nearly breaking the thin, sleek device. I had purchased the new laptop with my first royalty check from my book “Sucked In.” (Josh named it. Blame him.) The sudden transformation in my writing had resulted in a decent, steady income. I wasn’t on the New York Times Best Seller’s list, but I was able to live on the money, especially now that I didn’t have to pay rent. I hadn’t bothered finding a new place after my old apartment burned down. My little cupboard of a bedroom in the bowels of the seethe was sufficient.
“Something wrong?” asked a voice from the foot of my bed.
I looked up from the closed laptop and stared at Tereus, my cursed-fae cat. A little over a hundred years ago, Tereus had been stupid enough to seduce a woman with family connections. The woman’s brother had proceeded to curse Tereus, taking away his fae body and replacing it with the body of a Scottish-Fold cat. I would never tell Tereus this, but he was probably the cutest cat I had ever seen, his little ears tucked down, disappearing into his fluffy gray fur.
“Nothing,” I said a moment too late.
“Not buying it.”
“That’s nice,” I grumbled.
Tereus climbed to his feet and carefully made his way up my leg, over my computer, and up onto my chest so that he could sniff my nose, walking as though the mattress was lava. Despite his best efforts, Tereus occasionally did something just like a regular cat.
He went from sniffing my face to poking his wet, cold nose into my ear, occasionally flicking his rough tongue into the narrow hole. I tried to push him away, but he quickly returned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked repeatedly as he worked to annoy me to death.
“Nothing. Just leave it.”
“Nope,” said my cat as he tried to nuzzle his way into the neckline of my t-shirt.
I pushed him away again. He tumbled down to my lap, climbed back to his feet, and immediately returned to pestering me.
“Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll tell you. I just got an email from a fan.”
“Didn’t like the book?”
“No. They loved it,” I sighed.
Tereus stared at me in the way cats often do. “I don’t get it.”
I let out a gusty sigh. I needed to talk to someone, but didn’t have a lot of options ever since Chloe, my only girlfriend died. A wave of guilt washed over me. She had been dead nearly two months, and I had yet to avenge her. Instead, I hid in my room and wrote stupid vampire books. I had to deal with this, and fast if I wanted her murderers dead before my own demise.
I had an egg timer on my life.
Until I got my revenge, Tereus would have to do as a sounding board.
“You know the others think I’m connected to Sedgrave, right?” I asked.
Shortly after being turned into a vampire, I’d been sacrificed in a ritual used to raise an ancient warlock. Everyone had expected me to die, but I hadn’t. Instead, it appeared my continued existence was fueling his whole being-alive-centuries-after-his-birth thing. I was his battery, so to speak. It explained why all I ever wanted to do was sleep, and why when Nik had stabbed him, I had suddenly sprouted a puncture wound.
The real issue was he needed to die. He was too powerful to be left to his own devices. But, considering our current relationship, that would mean I would die too, or so we thought. I didn’t exactly relish that idea.
“Yes,” purred Tereus, happy that I was finally opening up.
“Eventually, Mikhail is going to get all the mystical community on the same page, and they’re going to kill him, meaning I’m gonna die. I guess fan-mail doesn’t excite me when I know I won’t even be able to finish writing the series.”
“We don’t know for sure if you’ll die when he does. After all, they all said you would die if they did the ritual, and that didn’t happen. Nothing with these old-timers is ever what they seem.”
“That’s hardly reassuring,” I said. I let us sit in silence for a long moment before speaking again. “The truth is I’m scared shitless. The last couple months of just waiting to see what will happen has been a torment. I try not to think about it, but I fail quite often. I know I’ve complained a lot since being turned, but in reality, I’ve grown kinda accustomed to this new life. Not really ready to die…for real.”
“No one is ever ready to die.”
“Says the immortal.”
“I’m not immortal. I just age very, very, very slowly. Besides, I wouldn’t call this living,” he added, flicking his cat tail in anger.
“Right,” I murmured, for lack of anything else to say.
“Have you talked with Nik or Josh about this?”
I shrugged. “Every time I try, they get all… mushy. It’s hard to have a serious talk with them about anything when all they wanted to do is cuddle and watch ‘Sleepless in Seattle’.”
Tereus gave the cat version of a nod. “It does seem you’ve amassed a rather large fan club here within the seethe.”
I rolled my eyes. “Even Mikhail is nice to me now.”
I shouldn’t be complaining about the primus of my seethe being nice to me. Especially if I compare it to the times he’d threatened to kill me for disobeying him. Mikhail didn’t act like Nik and Josh—always hitting on me—but rather like a very affectionate older brother who just might put me in a headlock and give me noogie if I annoyed him too much.
&nbs
p; “Heaven forbid!” said Tereus in a voice that suggested he wasn’t too broken up about my sudden change in status; the change meant I spent more time hiding in my room with him. “As much as I like having you around, I wonder if you wouldn’t be better off mixing with the others a little more. Keep your mind off things.”
“The thing is, when I’m with them they’re always trying to reassure me, telling me how they’re gonna figure out a way to fix this.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked my cat.
“It’s annoying. Besides, if I start believing them, it will just be that much more of a letdown when we fail. And we will fail. We’ve done nothing but fail,” I sighed, tears pressing against my eyes.
Tereus climbed back up my chest and stuck his nose in my ear.
“Stop that!” I snapped, suddenly distracted from my pity-party.
“What! Before I was a cat, women used to love it when I did that.”
“Ha! Sure they did.”
“When I get my body back, I’ll prove it to you.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Tell you what, we actually manage to get your fae body back, I’ll let you prove it.”
I have to admit, I said it having no real hope of living long enough to fulfill my promise to Tereus and search the wide world for a way to free him from the curse.
Tereus’ purr increased as he settled down on my chest. I petted him, trying to remind him that he was still a cat. I’m not sure how well it worked.
Before the conversation could continue, a gentle rap interrupted our quiet moment of introspection.
“Yes,” I grumbled.
The door creaked open and Josh poked his head in.
“Sorry to bug you,” he said, a bright smile lighting up his green eyes. “But Mikhail wants you in the main hall.”
I nudged Tereus off my chest and climbed to my feet. “What does he need me for?”
“I think he just got back from meeting with the fae and all them. Might have an update.”
I nodded and followed Josh out of my room and up toward the main hall. We lesser vampires resided on the third level of our bunker home. The top was for common rooms, Mikhail’s office, and a few suites for the upper echelon, like Nik. The level below that was for vampires who had been in the seethe longer than myself. On the rare occasion that one of those vamps kicked it, their room would be taken by the oldest vamp in the lowest level. It would be decades, maybe even centuries before I got out of my dumpy little closet of a room. It didn’t really bother me. Half my brain insisted I would be dead in a matter of days anyway.
The Series that Just Plain Sucks: The Complete Trilogy Page 49