Now, with Molly having taken Aphrodite's life as well, things would only be worse.
"They'll come after you first, of course," Eros said quietly, meeting Heph's gaze. "Make no mistake: they want her to suffer as well. But with you it's personal. They believe you forsook our mother by siding with her enemy all this time."
Heph let out a low chuckle. "That's a bit rich, don't you think?"
Eros smiled. "To anyone who's not insane, yes. But you know my brothers, better than most. They idolized our mother, as well as our father. And no matter what else happened, you were still our mother's husband. They blame you for her death."
"And what about you?" Heph asked.
"I'm here," Eros responded. "If I blamed you, I wouldn't be."
"Unless you were sent to lull me into a false sense of security."
Eros grinned. "Yeah. Because I'm so good at espionage. Remember that time my mom caught me following her when she was going to meet Ares after she promised you the two of them were finished with each other?"
Heph laughed, a deep boom that echoed off the back wall of the house. "I do. I could hear her screeching halfway across the Aether."
Eros laughed along with Heph. "It was the first time I ever saw her that mad at someone other than you." After a few moments, Eros sobered again. "How can you not hate her for the way she was with you?" he asked quietly.
"Water under the bridge, my boy," Heph answered.
"But it's not. It did things to you, to watch the woman you swore your life to betray you over and over again like that. You can't tell me it didn't."
Heph sighed. "You're right. This is your thing, isn't it? You can read my heart like a book. As could your mother. Matters of love and lust can't be hidden from either of you." He sat in silence for a few moments, looking off into the distance, memories of his anger, frustration, pain, washing over him. He shook his head. "I don't know what you want me to say. Did it twist something inside me to watch Aphrodite dance off with Ares over and over again? To watch her give birth to his children, and none of mine? Of course. At first, I raged. And then I raged in silence. And given enough time, I hated myself for even caring what she did, for not being as casual about our marriage vows as she was."
"Why weren't you?"
Heph shrugged. "When I make a promise, I try to keep it."
Eros heaved a deep sigh. "I really don't want them to hurt you."
"That makes two of us. I'll watch out for them. And when they come, I'll do my best to make sure I have the upper hand."
"Maybe you should tell the Fury about them. She can overpower them, right?"
Heph shook his head. "I'm not telling her. Not until I have to. Maybe I can fix this before it gets any worse."
Eros looked at Heph in disbelief. "These are my father's sons we're talking about. They can't be reasoned with. You know that."
Heph grinned. "Who said anything about reasoning with 'em?"
The first sign that something was seriously wrong was the construction equipment parked on Meghan's street when she turned the corner on her way home from work.
Earth-moving equipment. Bulldozers, backhoes.
The second sign was the courier waiting for her on her front walk. She got out of her truck, glancing toward the farm and noting several men standing there, one with papers in his hands. Meghan walked down the driveway, around the picket fence overflowing with hollyhocks and zinnias, and up the front cobblestone walk toward the courier.
"Meghan Greene?" the young man asked.
"Yes?" Meghan said.
The courier held out a clipboard. "I need you to sign for this, please," he said, holding up a manila envelope. Meghan glanced at it nervously, signed on the line he'd indicated. "Have a nice day," he said, handing her the letter and heading down the walk. Meghan studied the envelope in her hands, then glanced toward the farm, where the men were walking around as if they owned the place.
"Shit," she said under her breath.
She opened the envelope and read the terse document, ordering her to cease and desist from further trespassing on the lots she'd been farming on, and that, should she continue, she could be punished with fines and/or arrest. She recognized the name of the new owner of the properties, and her stomach turned. She shoved down the dread that even the memory of his name caused her.
She would not cower. Not this time.
"Son of a bitch," she muttered. She shoved the letter back into the envelope, unlocked the front door, and set the envelope and her purse on the small table. Then she walked down the block and toward the men currently taking measurements in the yards where the community farm was located. One of them, a man she knew much better than she would have liked, seemed to be overseeing the entire operation, and she walked up to him.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said mildly, more than a hint of amusement and malice tingeing his tone.
"Are you fucking serious with this?"
He smirked. "Such language. Your grandmother would be appalled."
Meghan stared up into the smug face of the man she'd spent eight years of her life with. Bryant Turow. A man who, eventually, had owned every single part of her life, taken all control from her, and made her believe she was nothing.
A man who she'd barely escaped with her sanity intact. But where he'd once inspired fear, the only thing rising in Meghan was rage.
"You can't do this," she said, forcing her voice to stay steady.
"Oh, I can. And I am. I own every single vacant lot on this street. We're going to grow Christmas trees here."
"Why are you doing this?"
His face lost all of the smugness, and he glared down at her, ice-blue eyes narrowed. "I told you once that you would never, ever be rid of me. I don't care how independent you think you are. I will always have more power than you. Always."
"Right. Which is why you needed my abilities to pull off all of your pathetic little crimes," she said, refusing to look away from his glare as she once would have, refusing to give him the satisfaction of showing fear ever, ever again.
"We're not talking about powers anymore, sweetheart. I have the only power that really matters." Then he grinned. "I bought the block behind yours, too. Your little do-gooder experiment is finished."
"There are other blocks."
"I'll find them. And I'll take them from you. I'll find a way to get your house, too. May as well start packing now."
"You are completely pathetic, you know that? We have stalker laws here."
His cold, hard smile seemed plastered onto his face. "Try and prove it, Meg. I'm a respected, connected business man. You're nothing. A waitress with no family, no money, nothing other than this shitty little house in an even shittier neighborhood. You lived like a queen—"
"A queen? Seriously?" she said in disbelief, well aware that she was practically shouting. Bryant looked around, and she knew he was double checking to make sure no one was listening. It was what he did. In spite of his cockiness over his power and money, what mattered most to Bryant was looking respectable. "I spent eight years as your plaything, your tool. Your fortune exists because of the shit you tricked me into doing."
"You're going to want to shut up now," Bryant threatened, taking a small step toward her, his posture one she knew well.
Except that times were different now.
"Yeah? You're going to want to back away now," Meghan told him, crossing her arms.
He took another step.
Meghan called up her earth magic, and roots of the nearby trees rose from the soil and tangled around Bryant's feet, ankles, calves at her command. A moment of focus, and the roots started pulling down.
"You wouldn't dare," he sneered. She had the roots pull harder, and soon Bryant's feet and ankles were beneath the soil.
"All of my problems could just... disappear," she whispered, keeping her eyes on his, getting more than a little satisfaction from watching him struggling, sweating, the smug expression now completely gone from his face.
&nb
sp; "There are witnesses here. They'll see this eventually," he said.
"You mean those guys over there? The ones that just drove off in their truck? And your bulldozer drivers are all the way down the street, listening to the Tigers game. They won't see a thing."
"Let me go, you psychotic bitch or I swear to god I'll—"
"You'll what?" she asked softly, a tiny smile on her lips. "You have nothing left to threaten me with, Bryant. You took everything I had before, and now you're doing it again."
She took a deep breath. No matter how badly she wanted to hurt him, no matter how much he deserved it, hurting or killing him went against everything she believed in. And she was trying really, really hard to get some sense of honor back. Ironic that at the moment that was the only thing saving the man who'd helped her lose her honor in the first place.
She focused, connected to the trees, their roots. Slowly but surely, Bryant's entire body returned to the soil's surface, and the roots loosened themselves from his ankles and calves, then sank back into the soil.
"I knew you didn't have the guts," he sneered, pulling at the cuffs of his shirt.
"Oh, I have the guts. I just don't believe in profaning my gifts by using them on someone like you," she said.
"Whatever. Stay off of my property, or I'll have your ass arrested. I will be seeing you around." And with that he stalked off, climbed into his white Jaguar, and squealed away. She watched him go, taking deep breaths, the remnants of her fear hitting her, the stress of being so close to him nearly making her sick to her stomach.
And then she heard the bulldozers' engines start.
He wasn't giving her a chance to postpone, to save what little she could. How very, very like him.
Meghan shook her head and walked over to the first bulldozer driver.
"Ma'am, we need you out of the way," he said when he saw her approaching.
"I know. I was just wondering if I could harvest whatever's in there before you destroy it," she said, looking up at him.
"We were told to bulldoze it immediately," he said, shaking his head.
"It'll only take a few minutes. I have people depending on this food. I'd like to get as much of it out as I can."
"I'm sorry." He looked around. "Look. If it was just me, I'd let you go in and get it done. But these bastards will run to our boss and tell him, and then I'm out of a job and I have kids to support."
"Your boss is Bryant, I'm guessing," she said, knowing it was a lost cause. He wasn't wrong. Bryant would fire him without a second thought if he heard of the man disobeying him.
"Yea, ma'am," he said, looking uncomfortable. "I'm really sorry. This seems like a nice place."
Meghan just nodded and stepped away from the bulldozers. She walked back toward her yard, stood on her tiny back porch, and watched as the men readied the bulldozers to sweep across the beds.
"Help me, Gaia," she murmured. And she focused, and her powers rose. And when the bulldozers rolled onto the soil, she felt it.
Anyone watching would have said that the treads must have fallen into a sinkhole, the way the bulldozer ended up mired deep in the soil. The backhoes treads seemed to have gotten caught in some monstrous roots, so utterly tangled that there was no possibility of either backing up or moving forward. After a couple of frustrating hours of trying to free their equipment, the men got into their pickup trucks and left.
It wouldn't buy her forever, but it would buy her some time for now, Meghan thought to herself as she let her magic settle again. She grabbed the big red tote she used for harvesting and took it out to the beds. As she worked, her neighbors stated filtering into the garden as well.
"This sucks, Meghan," the young woman from down the street said. Meghan nodded. "We'll get it all harvested, as much as is ready. Lucky for us their machines ran into trouble," she said, heading down the row to pick pole beans.
"Yep. Lucky," Meghan murmured.
Within a couple of hours, the sky was dark and Meghan and her neighbors had finished harvesting every possible morsel from the garden. Meghan left the four huge boxes of food they'd harvested with the pastor and his wife, who promised they'd distribute it to whoever needed it.
Meghan headed home, glancing at the farm. She knew it would be gone tomorrow. She had to work, and Bryant wouldn't waste any time. It had been a good thing, for a little while at least.
She let herself into the house and sat on the soft, faded sofa in her living room. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn't. Bryant was not wringing another single tear from her.
She would find a way to make him pay.
And then she'd start over, yet again.
Chapter Four
Meghan barely slept, trying to come up with ways to save the plots of land that had come, over the past couple of years, to mean so much to a small group of people she now considered friends. In the end, she had to face the fact that Bryant had done everything to the letter. She'd never owned those lots to start with, and the paperwork that had accompanied her cease and desist notice had clearly shown Bryant as the rightful owner of the lots surrounding her house and yard. Even if she did have the money to hire lawyers, he was in the right.
If she had the money to hire lawyers, she would have considered hiring a hit man instead. How hard could it be to find one? She wondered idly as she drove to work. She'd taken a last glance at the picked-over garden beds, knowing it would be her last. She had a ten hour shift ahead of her, since she had agreed to take part of another waitress's shift. She needed the money. Always.
She pulled into the parking lot at the diner and started her day, greeting the cook and the other waitress, filling salt, pepper, ketchup, and mustard dispensers. They could count on steady traffic from late morning through early afternoon, thanks to all of the factories nearby and the constant stream of cars driving by on Eight Mile.
Meghan forced herself to focus on work. Thinking about what was probably happening near her house now was pointless. And, to be honest, she was tired. Tired of Bryant and his plots, tired of fighting him. She'd been a fool to think she'd won. She was free now, but she'd never be entirely rid of him. She knew that now.
If only she'd had the strength to do what she should have done the day before, when she'd had him at her mercy.
The first half of the day flew by without incident, and she was coming off of her break when she felt a familiar swirling, twisting of power nearby. She turned, and the dark-eyed man (god?) from the day before, Hephaestus, stood there with a woman Meghan recognized immediately as the Angel.
Where the hell had they come from? They were a good twelve feet away from the door, as if they'd appeared out of nowhere.
"—have got to be fuckin' kidding me, Queenie."
"I don't see what you're freaking out about. I'm hungry. Let's eat," the Angel said, and her voice was quiet, a hint of humor there.
Meghan heard Hephaestus grumble something as he followed the Angel to a table in her section. She sighed and grabbed her order pad.
"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked as she approached the table. She made a point NOT to look at the hulking, powerful man sitting on the left side of the table, looking instead at the tiny woman on the right, who was smiling.
"I'll have a Coke, please," she said.
"Same," Hephaestus said, looking out the window. "Thanks."
As she walked away, Meghan heard Hephaestus saying something in a low tone, barely decipherable.
"I can't fuckin' believe you brought us here. I said Burger King," Heph hissed at Molly.
Molly laughed. "Was that her? That was her, wasn't it?"
Hephaestus growled. "Your husband has a big mouth."
"She's gorgeous. No wonder you're blushing."
"I am not blushing," Heph said. He looked away again as Meghan approached the table.
Damn. She looked better than she had the day before. He'd convinced himself that she couldn't possibly be as gorgeous, as luscious as he'd believed her to be. In fact, she was better; all
soft curves and creamy skin and the scent of flowers and sunshine. He practically groaned when she set his drink down and her scent wafted over him.
"Are you ready to order?" Meghan asked.
"I'll have two baskets of sliders," Molly said. "Fries too, please."
Meghan nodded. "And you?"
"One basket of sliders. And fries," Heph added as an afterthought, realizing how hungry he was.
"Not three baskets?" Meghan asked him, and he glanced up at her.
Holy hell was she gorgeous.
"Not today," he forced himself to say, meeting her amber eyes for just a moment before looking away.
"He'll end up eating half of mine, anyway," Molly said, and Meghan walked away.
"She seems nice," Molly said, and Heph glanced at his friend to see her watching Meghan retreating, as if she was studying her.
"She's cute. That's all."
"Uh huh. You're around all kinds of cute, beautiful, gorgeous women and I've never seen you like this. Not even when Rayna was coming on to you that time."
"Rayna was NOT coming on to me. She was probably looking for a snack."
"And a little something else," Molly murmured with a smile.
"Is this how it is now? You're going to be one of those annoying as hell married people who insists on trying to set your friends up, too?"
"I'm not setting you up. I'm eating lunch," Molly said, and he shook his head. After a few moments, Molly asked "do you want to know what she was feeling?"
"What the hell is it with you telepath, empath types? No, I don't fuckin' want to know what she was feeling. Or thinking, or anything else."
"Liar," Molly said with a laugh.
"Stay out of her thoughts," Heph said. "For me. All right?" He knew that asking Molly to stay out of Meghan's emotions was pointless. Molly couldn't help feeling the emotions of those around her, and it was more of a burden than anything else for his friend. But reading minds takes effort, and he knew she could avoid doing it if she wanted to.
Earth Bound: A Hidden Novella Page 3