“You said you knew who the hero was . . . or was that just a reason to see me?” I didn’t really want to accuse him of lying. I didn’t think he would have done that.
He grunted and looked away. “Yeah, I know who it is.”
“Can you tell me? Please?”
His one hand clenched into a fist, and he was silent long enough that I wondered if he hadn’t heard me. “Let me take you on a date, and I’ll tell you.”
“That’s blackmail,” I said, while a small part of me squealed eagerly.
“No, that’s a trade.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t blackmail you.”
A date. With anyone else, I’d think it was harmless. But with him, I wasn’t so sure. He had some qualities that echoed what I loved about Remo, and some qualities that outshone the vampire at the moment. I shook my head, thinking fast, trying to come up with an alternative. “How about his name for a kiss?”
He arched an eyebrow and didn’t even hesitate. “Hercules.”
Well, that about settled that. I stepped back, feeling a bit like a jerk, knowing that he was going to be pissed when he understood what I’d done. “Thank you.”
Smithy took a step toward me. “The kiss—?”
“Has already been given. A kiss you took without permission, if I may remind you.” I smiled at him, incredibly pleased with myself. His jaw dropped.
“That’s cheating.” His eyes sparkled, though, as if he wasn’t too upset.
“No, that’s using what I’ve got to win.” I threw the words over my shoulder as I walked away back across the road to the bakery. I was going to use everything I had at my disposal to win against Hera. To survive when everything was stacked against me. Smithy’s laughter floated on the air.
“We aren’t done yet, Alena. Not by a long shot.”
I waved a hand back at him, as if to shoo him away. The sound of the bike starting up and then roaring away brought me around. He was gone, his back to me as he raced down the street.
I hurried back to the bakery. The mob booed me, of course, and I took a half step in a mock threat toward them. They all fell back, except for one bold member.
A young woman not wearing a mask stepped forward. She was about my age, maybe a little younger. She wore the typical drab colors, and her hair was pulled back in a severe braid that made her look older than she really was. But unlike the others in the crowd, she didn’t hide her face.
“You aren’t going to survive this. You’re a monster, and you’re going to be punished for that. One way or another,” she said, her voice firm with her belief.
Sadness and guilt rolled through me. That had been me not so long ago. It was as if I were staring into a mirror of my past, and I didn’t like what I saw. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I turned away from her, not sure if I was apologizing to her, or to myself. That I’d let myself be taken for so long by a group that was so filled with hatred. Why couldn’t they be like other churches and just love everyone?
I sighed as I hurried around the back of the bakery and let myself in. Tad was sampling the partially mixed sponge cake. I pointed at the final ingredients, he grabbed them, and I whipped them up. This, that, the other, until I had it all put together, in a pan, and in the oven. Next was the frosting. Honey filled, that’s what I wanted. Maybe with a touch of cinnamon.
Tad cleared his throat. “I heard that Remo dumped you.”
“I heard that Dahlia dumped you,” I shot back.
“Nope, she didn’t. Told me she’d rather be kicked out than break up with me.”
I froze with the stand mixer half out of the bowl. “What?”
“Remo told her to dump me, that it would never work. She told him to . . . well, she told him off.” He winked at me. “Wouldn’t want to offend your virgin ears with the actual words she used.”
I snorted, and then my heart tugged at me. Dahlia loved Tad enough to defy Remo, but Remo didn’t care for me enough to defy those who were his superiors. I smiled at my brother, but I could feel the edges of it wobble. “I’m happy for you.”
“He’s an idiot, you know that?” Tad gave me a trademark one-armed hug that all brothers do when their sister is obviously on the verge of tears and they fear for their clothes. Like they think the tears of a sister are some sort of acid that will eat right through their shirt. Then again, for all I knew, mine might.
“That’s what I keep telling her.” Ernie flew down and wrapped his arms around my neck, squeezing me.
“You shouldn’t have done . . . what you did,” I said to Ernie, not willing to out him to my brother about the whole shooting-Smithy-with-an-arrow business. Tad didn’t always keep his mouth shut, so it was best not to give him ammo against Ernie.
“I did what I thought was best. Smithy would be good for you in a lot of ways, and you are obviously good for him. I haven’t seen him give a shit about the world in a long time,” Ernie said, then patted me on top of my head.
I pulled back. “Enough of my love life or lack thereof. I have a hero to deal with.”
“Who?” Tad and Ernie asked in unison.
I drew a big breath as I measured some honey into the filling. “Hercules.”
Ernie let out a low whistle. “Now that is surprising. He hates Hera. Evil-stepmother syndrome and all that. You know, she used to make him . . . never mind.”
That perked me up. “Make him what?” If I had some ammo, maybe I could convince him that I wasn’t the bad guy.
The cherub frowned and scrunched up his nose. “It was a long time ago; I’m not sure it even matters anymore.”
“Tell me. Please. It could help me figure out how to survive.” I put my hands together, literally begging.
Ernie seemed to waver, then he finally nodded. “Well, she was jealous of the bond between him and his father, mostly because Herc’s mom was human, you know? So Hera used to call him names, made him look stupid. Told him he was no good, that he was weaker than the other demigods. It went on for years and years. Every time he completed a quest or something, she talked it down. Told him it was something a simple human could have done. But she always made sure Zeus didn’t see it. So it was Hercules’s word against Hera’s. And to keep the peace, Zeus always sided with his wife.”
“She gave him a complex, you mean.” Tad snorted. “He’s a fool, then, if he really believed her words.”
Hercules had a complex of not being good enough? That was something I understood all too well. I wanted to cringe from Tad’s assessment, because it could just as easily be applied to me. Though I’d grown and moved past that kind of thinking for the most part, I understood it. And why it was such a hard cycle to break. When someone you loved or respected told you that you were weak, it tended to stick more than the words of some stranger.
“So how would she have gotten him to help her?” Tad asked. “I mean, I wouldn’t help someone who treated me like dog shit. Would you?” He looked at me, and I had to look away. The silence in the room grew to an uncomfortable level. I took a breath and pushed the words out.
“Yeah, I would. Just to show them that I was worthwhile. I mean, I did for years with Mom.” The words were soft, and Tad stepped over to me and slung both arms around me—a real hug, if you could believe it.
“You aren’t like that now,” he said.
“But I was. I . . . I would do anything to prove to Mom that I was good enough. Don’t you remember? How she pushed me and was always telling me I could be better if only I’d tried?”
“Yeah, you more than me. I never understood why. And Dad never stood up for us. Like his silence was his way of agreeing with her.” He gave me a last squeeze and then let me go. I hated that he’d said that. I’d always wanted to believe that Dad wasn’t the same as Mom, that his silence was his way of defying her. Yet . . . I could see that Tad was right. Dad could have stood up for us, but he hadn’t. He’d let Mom bully us—mostly me, really—into a place of no self-worth. So maybe it wasn’t all her fault.
Ernie shrugged. “Like I
said, Hercules has always been trying to show her he was good enough. I’d be surprised if that ever changed. She probably told him that if he could do this one last deed, she’d finally believe he was a hero.”
Tad stuck a finger into the filling and paused with it halfway to his mouth, a grin spreading over his lips. “I’m not going to end up puking my guts out, am I?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing he was trying to lighten the mood. The problem was, I couldn’t afford to be light about anything. Not when I had people out for my head yet again.
“Ernie”—I glanced at him, then took the mixing bowl from Tad—“Hercules is going to be working with the Hydra; that’s what Merlin told me. The Hydra is the added insurance when it comes to taking me out.”
The three of us stood there, silent.
“So . . . nothing I can add to that.” Tad drew the last word out. “But are you going to Mom and Dad’s anniversary dinner?”
I blinked several times at the sudden subject change. “Yeah, I’m making the cake, apparently.”
“Awesome. No more venom, right?”
“Only if you keep asking if there’s no venom in it.” I slammed a hand on the counter, and a crack opened up in the marble. Dang it, now I had that to add to my list of problems. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just ignore what’s going on around me. I can’t pretend it isn’t happening, Tad.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I’m just trying to protect you.”
I stared hard at him, thinking over his words, about his forced happy face. “Dahlia did break it off with you, didn’t she?”
He closed his eyes and slowly nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you to worry about me, because that’s how you are . . .”
It was my turn to wrap him in a hug. He pressed his eyes against my shoulder, and his tears wet my skin. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wishing I could take the hurt away from him.
“We both fell for the wrong person,” he mumbled. “I knew redheads were trouble.”
I laughed, but it was anything but mean spirited. “Maybe we should have listened to everyone and stayed away from the vampires.”
Ernie snorted. “Well, that goes without saying.”
Except what do you do when the vampires won’t stay away from you? Especially the bad ones?
I was about to find out.
A crash from the front of the shop startled all three of us. We turned and stared at the door between the front and back. “Maybe something fell off a shelf?” Tad offered. I seriously doubted it was anything as simple as that.
I ran toward the crash and slid to a stop as a torch was thrown through what had been my beautifully painted plate-glass window at the front of the shop.
“Go back over the Wall, freak!” someone shouted from outside.
“Die!”
“Burn in hell!”
Apparently the Firstamentalists had gotten bored with waiting on me to leave. I grabbed the torch before it could catch on anything and threw it back out at them. “Tad, call the police.”
“Why don’t you just eat them?” he grumped. “No bodies and no weapon, so it’s not murder, you know.”
I glared over my shoulder at him. “That only proves they are right about the whole monster business.” I should have expected this escalation of things with the Firstamentalists. There was no way they were going to just leave me alone. I knew that. I just didn’t think it would happen so fast.
I also did not expect the vampires that slid between the Firstamentalists and into my shop. Santos stood out above the rest both in height and attitude. I’d know him ten miles off to be fair, though. His bone structure and build were so much like Remo’s, it amazed me that I hadn’t figured out the family connection between them on my own. He smiled, flashing a glimmer of fangs, then wiggled his fingers in hello.
“I’m not with Remo,” I said. “He dumped me, so you can just take your fight to him and leave me out of it.”
Santos laughed and murmured something I couldn’t quite hear, but the effect was immediately obvious. The crowd surged forward, egged on by his words, their hatred ready for any fuel to burn brighter. He grinned. “How are you going to get away this time, Alena? Humans you don’t want to hurt, while facing vampires that have no problem killing anything that moves?”
The Firstamentalists pushed their way into my bakery, kicking and punching the display cases, ransacking as they went. I stood there, and they flowed around me, ignoring me while they went wild with whatever suggestion Santos had given them.
He stood on the other side of the broken plate glass. “You killed my people, you trespassed on my territory, you tried to charm me. You realize I cannot let you live now. No matter your beauty.”
I smirked at him, anger making me stronger than I would have been normally. “I didn’t try to charm you, dingle nuts. You were out like a light being flicked off. You were easy to take.”
His face darkened, but I didn’t care. He wanted to fight? I’d darn well give him a fight. I crossed my arms and stared at him while Tad yelled at the Firstamentalists to back off, to get out. I knew that the bakery could be fixed. But I had to deal with Santos before I did anything else. If he teamed up with Hercules and the Hydra, I wasn’t sure I could pull that fight out of the bag and come out the winner.
Time to put on my big-girl panties and take this one head-on. “Tad, stay back.”
“Not this time, sis,” he said, a long, low hiss sliding out of him on the last s of sis. I glanced back in time to see him shift, something I’d never seen him do before.
His scales were silvery blue, and patterned so close together it was difficult to discern one color from the other. Unlike my diamond-shaped head when I was in my Drakaina form, his head was long and narrow, with elongated oval eyes that flickered red, and a long red tongue that shot out from between a mouthful of teeth. Not exactly a typical snake, then, at all. He whipped his tail around, stopping a man from going into the back of the bakery.
The Firstamentalists screamed as he rose up, hissing at them, herding them out. He darted from side to side, his speed far outmatching their attempts to dodge around him. He tipped his head and winked at me. I could almost hear him say, “I got this, sis.”
No matter that it freaked me out that he was putting himself in harm’s way; he was helping. With Tad dealing with the Firstamentalists, I turned my attention back to the vampires.
“You want a piece of me?” I said, and crooked a finger at Santos. “Then come and get me, doofus.”
He snarled and leapt forward, sailing over the broken glass and landing in a crouch within the bakery, about ten feet in front of me. “That will be your last mistake, inviting me in, snake girl.”
“I think the mistake will be yours, you bloodsucking leech.” The voice that came out of my mouth was not really mine, but I recognized it. The voice belonged to the Drakaina, the monster that was very much a part of me and yet still somehow separate. When she spoke up, my voice deepened and turned all husky and dangerous. I liked it.
Santos snarled and jumped straight at me. I held my ground, bracing my legs. He slammed into me and twisted hard to one side, taking us both to the floor. Tad shot forward, his head coming within striking distance of Santos.
“No, I will deal with this!” I wrestled with Santos on the floor, rolling across the shards of broken glass and not feeling it. My human skin was pierced, but the snakeskin under it was hard as diamonds and didn’t give an inch. There was the small matter of the wound on my neck.
His eyes shot to it. “Bleeding already?”
Fear lanced my heart. If he got his mouth on my neck and took even a drop of blood, I wasn’t so sure the outcome of the fight would be in my favor. Around us, the vampires circled and Tad kept them off me. His bite inflicted huge gaping wounds where he literally tore flesh from their bodies. Their screams shattered the night air.
I couldn’t focus on them, though. I had to keep my attention on Santos, or I wasn’t going to c
ome out of this in one piece. I jerked to the side and rolled with the vampire, my skirt getting bunched up around my hips as we fought. He wasn’t trying to punch me, which I didn’t understand at first. He grabbed one of my hands and yanked it up over my head. Then he grabbed the other and did the same. I could have pulled away; I could feel that he wasn’t nearly as strong as I was. But I wanted—no, needed—him close, even if it brought him into proximity of my neck wound. I was going to have to be fast about this. A long, drawn-out fight with Santos was not going to end well.
“You aren’t so tough.” He breathed out, staring into my eyes, and for a moment I saw Remo in him, a sight that shook me. “You know I’m not the only vampire hunting for you now? You will never escape us. You’re going to die begging for mercy.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying, right before I kill them,” I pointed out. He laughed and shot forward, his mouth open wide and his fangs bared. I turned so he would bite into the side of my neck that was not wounded.
Santos bit at me, and I let him. He gnawed on my neck, fighting to get through the snakeskin, something I knew was impossible, even with his deadly fangs. So while it was uncomfortable, I didn’t fight him on that. Instead, I freed one hand from his and wrapped it around his neck, holding him close, but more than that keeping him off my wounded side.
His vampires circled around us, rooting for him, but not daring to get too close with Tad stretched out in his naga form. Every time that they took a half step forward, he hissed and bared his bloodstained teeth.
So they settled for some weird version of catcalling.
“Get her, boss!”
“Drink her down!”
“Save some for us!”
I lay there while he bit at me, and thought about how much hurt the vampire on top of me had caused. Santos had helped Theseus, he’d stolen my friends from me, and he was a huge part of the reason Beth had died. I thought about how he had hurt Remo over the years, and even if I didn’t know the details, that didn’t matter. Santos had bitten off more than he could chew this time.
My fangs lowered from the roof of my mouth. There was no decision left, really, barely any thought, even. It was pure instinct to strike back and hurt him for all the pain he’d caused. I hit him hard and fast, and my fangs buried into the top of his shoulder. Two pulses of venom flowed from me into him.
Hisses and Honey (The Venom Trilogy Book 3) Page 5