Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “Isn't that a bit overkill?” I asked. And illegal?

  “No worse than that God Gun you're carrying,” Lamia answered wryly. “Which, speaking of, Plutus, can you be a dear and take it from her and give it to me?”

  Lamia noticed Plutus’ hesitation and jabbed the AK-47 into my face again. “Now, Plutus. My trigger finger's really starting to itch.” She grinned down at me. “I wouldn't want it to slip and blow her face away. Like she did to Stephen's.” She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “He was such a handsome man.”

  Plutus moved over to me, and fumbled around with his hands, feeling around and trying to find the gun.

  “It's on my back,” I told him.

  He grabbed the gun from the waist of my jeans, his hands lingering a little longer on the small of my back. “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  “This is touching and all,” Lamia said with a sigh, “but I'm growing very tired of this lovey dovey crap. Give me her weapon, or I'll blow her brains out.” She cocked the AK-47 and aimed it right at my head. “As I said, I'm not afraid to come back with her in pieces.”

  Plutus handed her the gun. She inspected it briefly. “Not bad,” she murmured appreciatively. I could have charged her then to end this whole stupid situation, yet something told me that she was pretty experienced at this sort of thing. She wouldn't let me charge her. That gun was pointed right at me and she wouldn't hesitate to pull that trigger.

  She holstered the gun and I felt all sense of hope deflate.

  To my surprise, she tossed me a length of leather cord. “Tie him up,” she ordered, gesturing with the point of the gun towards Plutus. She looked exasperated, like I should have known what she was thinking.

  With the gun trained on me the entire time, I bound up Plutus' hands behind his back. I had to use my bad shoulder, which didn't want to work properly, so it took me a bit longer than she would have liked. It also hurt like a bastard.

  Lamia kept insisting that I keep tying it tighter and tighter until I was sure that he was going to lose his hands from lack of blood. I glared at her as I stepped away.

  “Such a pathetic excuse for a god,” she said snidely.

  “Don't say that!” My cheeks flared up with heat—I didn't want her to insult him like that.

  “Sorry, such a pathetic excuse for a mortal,” she corrected with a snigger.

  “Do you not have harpies to do this for you?” I blurted out.

  She grinned at me slyly. “I work alone, Callista. And I've been doing it for a lot longer than anyone else.”

  I didn't doubt that. I still glared at her and didn't say anything else.

  She tested the cord and nodded to herself, satisfied with my handiwork. She then bound my hands in front of me, disregarding the sling and my injured shoulder which made me cry out in pain. Plutus paled at that, but he didn't move, knowing that she had the gun. She kept the AK-47 on him in case he made any sudden movements. I mentally pleaded that he wouldn't, and when she roughly tested how well it was tied, I was relieved that he hadn't.

  “Now, both of you in the car, Plutus in the back, and you Callista, in the front.” She gestured to the Prelude. I was getting really tired of her ordering us around.

  I guided Plutus as best as I could with my shoulders to the back seat (which was difficult for him to sit comfortably in because his hands were behind his back) and I moved to sit in the passenger's seat.

  “Nuh uh,” Lamia said. “You're in the driver's seat.”

  Some demented part of me marveled at how thorough she was. A lot of criminals do stupid things. Not Lamia, she knew how to take care of two hostages by herself. She knew how to keep us separated, what to look out for, what not to do...in fact, I would have been impressed if not for the fact that she was pointing a gun at me.

  I moved over to the driver's seat and she got into the passenger's side. She put the key in the ignition, but didn't turn the car on. She took out her phone and thumbed in a few buttons (all the while, keeping a hawk-eye on both of us) and called someone.

  As soon as I heard his muffled voice on the other end, I froze.

  “Hello, Boss,” she purred into the receiver. “Guess who I'm looking at right now?”

  The short answer on the other line told me that they didn't have to guess. My mind reeled. What was she doing? And what could I do to get out of this? This really wasn't going to plan.

  “Oh, you'd like to talk to her?” she asked. She chuckled maliciously, looking at me directly in the eye. “Here she is.” She extended her arm, putting the speaker under my ear.

  On the other side was a voice I had hoped never to hear again.

  “Saunders, Saunders,” he chided. “So good to hear that you're doing well. Did you miss me?”

  “Hi, Stephen,” I sighed. I sounded a bit more defeated than I wanted to.

  He laughed into the phone, loudly, like I had told the best joke in the world. I pulled my head away slightly, but Lamia's murderous glare made me put my head back to the phone. “Oh don't be that way, Saunders,” he said. “Not after all we've been through.”

  “Yeah, shooting off someone's face tends to create a connection between two people,” I said sarcastically.

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed. “Yes, it does. Which is why you—and my brother—will be seeing me really soon.” He wasn't laughing. His voice dropped into that lower, warning octave. My skin turned cold at the sound. I'd heard this tone, in person a few times and a few times when he was being interviewed on TV. His voice went like this when he was about to rip someone a new one. He had used it to condemn my investigation of him. It had been used to make his opposition cry, quite literally, on national television.

  I rose to the bait this time to humor him.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I'm on my way to see you as we speak,” he explained. “You will pay for what you did to my face.”

  I couldn't help it then. The vehemence in his voice made me turn my head away from the speaker. Lamia took this as her cue to take the phone back. After listening to it for a few seconds, she must have gotten her orders, because she said, “Will do, sir,” then she hung up with a chuckle and turned to me. “You certainly don't rank highly on his list, do you, Callista?” she sneered, shaking her head. “And you—” she said, raising her voice and looking back at Plutus, “—luckily, your days as a mortal are numbered. Be thankful, Plutus. Being mortal sucks.”

  He didn't say anything. I wanted to assure him in some way, to tell him that everything was going to be all right. I wanted to be assured myself, though if Tisiphone didn't come through, then we would have a bad time, really soon.

  I was doubting myself. I was doubting everything. Whose idea was this whole thing again?

  Lamia turned on the engine and it roared to life. “Drive,” she ordered.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “I'll let you know. Just drive.”

  It was hard to drive with a bad shoulder, especially with my hands tied together. I couldn't signal. It took me a few times to get used to shifting. I had to take both hands off the wheel shift and quickly put them back on the wheel to avoid crashing. Not to mention my shoulder was screaming in protest every time I moved it.

  I really hated Lamia for that.

  She directed me through traffic and through winding roads to an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn.

  “An abandoned warehouse?” I guffawed. “Really? How predictable.”

  She glared at me. “Just be glad we're not going somewhere else.”

  Oh yes. I'd been a homicide detective for a few years now—I knew what other kinds of places we could be going. While taking a page from a bad action movie, an abandoned warehouse was a great location for murders. It was secluded, no one could hear us, and it would be a while before anyone noticed the funny business that happened there.

  I didn't want to think about what would happen if the gods didn't come to our rescue, but reality was staring at me in the face as I look
ed at the hulk of the building.

  I pulled up right into the warehouse through a loading bay. It wasn't completely abandoned. I recognized some chicken-looking people—harpies, I now realized—sitting there, waiting for us to arrive. They pulled down the metal roll door behind us. Lamia got out of the car, leaving Plutus and I alone momentarily.

  “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes, I'm fine,” I answered back softly.

  “You've been breathing heavily for the entire time. Like you're in pain.”

  “It’s my shoulder.” I wanted to rub it, to rub some life back into it, but my hands were tied together and right now, it felt like I needed to let it rest. “It's...really bad at the moment.”

  “It's not too late for you to get out of this. I'm the one Stephen really wants.”

  I sighed resignedly. “You didn't hear what Stephen said to me. We're both in this.”

  “Tisiphone had better come through for us,” he said, an edge to his voice.

  I didn't say anything. I didn't want to hope.

  During the silence, a harpy came to Plutus' door and started helping him out of the car. Meanwhile, Lamia came around the driver's side. “All right,” she growled. “Out.” She roughly grabbed my bad shoulder to haul me out and I screamed out in pain, doubling over with it, it hurt so badly.

  Plutus didn't take my scream very well. He tackled the harpy next to him and made his way over to me. Lamia silenced him quickly by hitting him in the face with the butt of her rifle. I cried out, from worry about him. He collapsed to the floor, blood spewing from his smashed nose.

  Lamia huffed angrily. “Pathetic,” she muttered, before pushing me to walk.

  “Callista?” Plutus asked behind me. His voice sounded muffled, like she had broken his nose.

  “I'm all right,” I said. “Are you?”

  A harpy hauled him to his feet. “Fuck you!” he yelled to the birdman, who responded with an indignant chirrup. The harpy looked like he was about to retaliate when Lamia stopped him.

  “Kevin,” she barked, “bring him here and let him be. He's trying to piss you off.”

  Kevin, the harpy, glared at him and brought him along. The other harpies gave the four of us wide berth, both curious and afraid of us.

  We ended up in a large room full of old crates and plastic wrapping. I wondered briefly who would leave those boxes behind. Then I realized that it had nothing to do with what was happening now and that I shouldn't be worried about it. A catwalk encircled the top of the room with a set of rusted stairs leading up to it.

  It looked like a meat packing plant, it felt like something you'd see in a horror movie.

  “Are we waiting for Stephen here then?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Lamia smiled at me. “Get comfortable.”

  Apparently, to her, “getting comfortable” meant tying the both of us to chairs, once again, without regard for my shoulder, which was in absolute agony by this time. It really was going to be screwed up for the rest of my life. However short that was going to be.

  She placed our chairs back-to-back. I couldn't see Plutus unless I turned my head painfully to the side, but I could feel him behind me. My right hand nudged his hands, trying to comfort him.

  Stay safe.

  The harpies chattered around us. It surprised me that they weren't even speaking English. If someone was really paying attention to them, their cover would be blown. Or they'd be thrown into an insane asylum.

  Normal people don't really pay attention to anything, do they?

  Lamia, however, was watching us like a hawk. Her AK-47 lay across her lap, at hand if she needed it. We were bound so tightly to our chairs, we couldn't have moved even if we wanted.

  “Why are you doing this?” I found myself asking her.

  “For money,” she answered. “Highest bidder wins.”

  “Why did you become a bounty hunter?”

  She raised her eyebrows, surprised that I'd even ask. She uncrossed her legs and sat forward, looking at me like I was some sort of weird alien creature she had never seen before. I imagined that she didn't hear that too often.

  “Why do you ask?” She sounded weary, her Australian accent getting stronger.

  I shrugged with my right shoulder. Truth was, I didn't know why I asked. Then again, I was curious. How did someone get so far deep down the rabbit hole they ended up like her?

  “I was a queen once,” she said slowly, contemplatively. “The queen of Libya.”

  I blinked, thinking of Gaddafi and the recent events that happened there.

  “Ancient Libya,” she snapped, agitation flashing in her eyes. “Quite a bit different than modern Libya.” I could feel the disdain emanating from her. “I was beautiful.” She elegantly extended her slender arm out, as if to make her point. I agreed, even now, she was beautiful. In an I'll-kill-you-if-you-blink-wrong sort of way, but still beautiful. “I had seven children. Seven beautiful, lovely children that I loved with all my heart. When my husband died, I was looking for a suitor, for someone to help me lead my people to prosperity. All of the men loved me and vied for my hand in marriage, even...” Her voice trailed off, as if it was painful for her. “Even...”

  “Zeus,” Plutus completed for her. He nearly spat out the words, showing his love for his uncle.

  “Zeus?” I repeated incredulously.

  She grimaced at Plutus at the mention of the King of the Gods' name. “Yes,” she said defensively. “And I loved him back.” She stopped speaking, letting us digest that. “And someone wasn't happy about our love.”

  I only had to guess. “Hera?”

  “Heh,” Plutus sighed. I could almost feel his smug smile behind me. He knew his aunt pretty well. All I knew was that she was a jealous sort of woman.

  Lamia was nodding vigorously. “She wasn't happy that her husband was sleeping around with someone else—a mortal, even if she was the queen of Libya.” She sneered. “What a bitch. I should have killed her when I had the chance.”

  “Hera never likes catching Zeus in the act of adultery,” Plutus agreed.

  “Why does she stay with him?” I asked.

  Lamia laughed. “She's the goddess of marriage and family,” she explained. “Don't you think that would kind of ruin her reputation? Even though she ruined mine. When she found out about Zeus and me, she killed my babies, and she cursed me to be a monster and to kill other babies.”

  “A monster?”

  Lamia rolled her head. I thought I had pissed her off or something, then I realized that her legs were shimmering. The harpies in the room noticed the change in the air and screeched unhappily. They disappeared into the shadows, afraid of what was happening.

  “Chickens don't like wolves and they don't like foxes,” she said. She laughed, dark tendrils of power threatening to consume me. “But you know what they don't especially like? Snakes.”

  Her pant legs burst, practically exploding as each leg inside rapidly expanded. I watched in horror as she leered toward us, now about seven feet tall, with the lower half of her body transformed into a serpent's tail. She laughed again, showing snake fangs in her mouth.

  “You see what I've become, Callista?” she asked. Her fangs impeded her speech slightly, enough to make me wince. “I'm a monster. A child-eating demon that no one loves. What else did I have to do with an eternity? I decided to become a bounty hunter for the children of foes.” She gestured to Plutus. “Like your lover boy over there.”

  “But why?” I pleaded. “Why are you doing this, Lamia? You're just a pawn in Hera's plan.”

  She sneered. “I am not.”

  “But you are,” I insisted. I was ignoring the little voice in the back of my head that was begging me to stop. Something in me snapped and I wanted to reach Lamia, to make her realize that what she was doing was wrong. She was threatening Plutus' life and mine and I wanted to hurt her, even though I was the one who was strapped to a chair. “You're just a pathetic person who's letting her cur
se destroy people's lives.”

  “Shut your mouth,” she warned dangerously.

  “You're worthless!” I shouted at her. “You're-”

  I didn't get any further. She came over and backhanded me so hard, I fell, still strapped to my chair, landing on my bad shoulder. I heard a crack somewhere, although I wasn't sure of what it was, and Plutus screaming my name as I blacked out.

  I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

  27

  I woke up in the Underworld and scrambled to my feet.

  “Tisiphone!” I yelled, fully expecting my friend to be here. “Tisiphone!”

  For a few horrible moments, I thought she wasn't going to be around. I didn't know the rules of my presence here, so if she wasn't here, I was going to try and find a way to reach Hades. Otherwise the worst was going to happen to us.

  “What?” Tisiphone asked, entering the courtyard. She was rubbing her eyes like she had just woken up. “Usually you hate waking up here.”

  “Have you gotten through to Zeus or Hades?” I asked, wasting no time with our usual bickering. We didn't have time to play around, not with Stephen on the way and a murderous Lamia staring down at Plutus.

  Tisiphone's face, though, said it all.

  “You didn't,” I said softly.

  “Callie, I tried...I tried so hard...”

  “Do you realize that there's a bitch who has Plutus and me tied up in an abandoned warehouse with Stephen Cross on his way over, as we speak, to come kill us both?” I started pacing.

  She looked genuinely heartbroken. “Callie...”

  “Oh, fuck you, Tisiphone!” I cried, too angry to calm down. I mean, our lives were on the line here and she couldn't come through? “FUCK!” I shouted up at the heavens, although I wasn't sure where heaven was compared to here. I didn't care—I wanted someone to hear me.

  In fact, I was going to try a different tactic. “Hera!” I screamed. “Hera, you bitch!” I knew that gods and goddesses could appear and disappear anywhere they wanted. And I was going to try to piss one off enough to show herself. “Hera, you'd better show up. I have one of your husband's old lovers trying to kill me, and it's all your damn fault!”