by Joey W. Hill
The move had been deliberate. It wasn’t a sudden act of panic, the response of a cornered wild animal.
It was clear she was warming to the idea of having him around, and maybe the realization had spooked her. So maybe she wanted to drive him away. Or see what it would take to drive him away.
He thought of the note of despair in her voice earlier. Maybe driving him away helped her avoid whatever that feeling was about. Having him here was stirring up bad stuff for her, and she was using pain to break something loose. It just happened to be his pain.
Ironically that kind of bad stuff got worked out when a person wasn’t always having to deal with it alone. Though he knew how hard that was, too. He and guys like him reacted to PTSD shrinks like peasants did to plague boils. For a long time, he’d joked that he’d cut out the middle man and leapfrogged right past PTSD into being a psychopath. “Just a little benefit of my training.”
The last time he’d made that smart-assed comment, he’d been sprawled out on the crappy rooftop of Lot’s crappy apartment building. JP had his feet in a hot pink kiddie pool bright enough to be used for target practice by the pilots at the nearby Jacksonville military base.
Lot was in a lounger, his mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, his body deceptively relaxed in nothing but a pair of Hawaiian swim shorts.
“What we do isn’t okay,” he’d said, a more serious response than JP had expected. “Not in the slightest. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be done, because humans are the most fucked up idea for a species any god has every created.”
JP returned to the present. Medusa injuring him as a way to determine what would drive him away felt like the right track, but not quite there. Maybe she was testing him. Gauging how much of her shit he would take before he would retaliate, and how he would retaliate.
He considered that one carefully. As pleasurable as he’d found his fantasy of giving her a good switching, he knew it wasn’t solely his own desires that had brought it to mind. To some people, it was unfathomable that a victim of sexual abuse might crave not only submission, but sometimes hardcore levels of pain and punishment.
Monica had been his first. She’d approached him, as if she’d sensed what he could give her even before he did. Though she was in professional therapy, she made her first, significant step toward healing when he’d switched her ass while she repeated, “It wasn’t my fault” until they were both satisfied she meant it. Probably because she went from issuing it as a plea, to screaming it in a rage. And then the tears had come. He’d held her until she’d cried herself into exhaustion.
But that was Monica. He didn’t try to make a woman fit what he wanted from her to the point he ignored her true motives or interests. However, the more he thought about it, the more he believed that was a component of why Medusa had done this. One he couldn’t overlook, unless he wanted to set a dangerous precedent. He believed he was willing to sacrifice pretty much everything for her; else he wouldn’t be here. But he wasn’t going to let her kick him around anytime the mood struck her.
While confronting it head-on might get him even more seriously injured, when had self-preservation ever stopped him? He bared his teeth in a grim smile and started thinking of how to put in motion a retaliation that would benefit them both.
Even after taking some ibuprofen, he slept fitfully, and when he woke well after sunrise, his upper torso had the flexibility of sheetrock. Today was not going to be the day to enact his plan, so he’d put it on account.
She’d taken away the breakfast she’d brought him. Was it a message to go away? Or maybe she thought he’d leave as a result of her actions and she saw no reason to waste the provisions. Shading his eyes, he looked up at the section of forest where her home was nestled. At this distance, he didn’t think there was any chance they could meet one another’s eyes. Even if so, he didn’t expect she had that kind of range. Otherwise she could take care of intruders without ever leaving her nest.
The wind was up, concealing the balcony, though he could see hints of the stone and wooden framework as the trees blew back and forth.
Fine, then. He’d spent the first few days closer to the shoreline to be sure she could see his whereabouts at night, but it was time to make himself more of a shelter where he could leave his pack items secured. He liked the beach, so he investigated the tree line and found a tightly clustered grouping of foliage where he could carve out a lean-to. While he had to move slowly, he made decent progress through the morning, using more of the boat wreckage to form the frame and then lacing branches over and around it, creating a shallow cave.
Making a box was easy, for he had some nails with him. Maddock had said the pack could be re-supplied when needed with any essentials that could fit inside it. JP would write out his list in a small notebook Maddock had supplied him—with the dark admonition not to crease any pages, suggesting it wasn’t merely just a fifty-cent notebook he’d acquired at a dollar store. Then JP would put it in the correct pocket, and press the snap closed. Which would activate things on Maddock’s side and send the contents of that note like an email message, though it could take a little more time to get there.
Using the same portal technology he used to transport a live human being, Maddock would dump those supplies back into the pack. Very Harry Potter, to his way of thinking. However, since John was pretty resourceful, the plan was to do that as little as possible. Mindful of the liberties they were already taking with timelines, they didn’t want to bring too many items from the future to her island.
The small notebook hadn’t raised any questions with Medusa and she hadn’t retained it, however, so there was no barrier from that side of things if JP thought of other things from his world she might enjoy.
JP unpacked his belongings into the finished wooden box, arranging them for easy access. Lifting a small container, he considered the contents, rocking in their saline solution. Maybe it was time to use the contacts Maddock had devised. The wizard believed they would shield JP from the effects of her eyes, while still allowing him to look upon her and retain his sight. He could have been wearing them all along, but he’d wanted her to know for sure she had the advantage for their first couple days. Now he expected she was more worried about unexpectedly catching him in an unfortunate glance.
He put them on, blinked and set the case back in the box. Maddock was 99.9% sure they worked. Well, if the opportunity presented itself, JP would seal up that last little gap. Or widen it to 100%, in entirely the opposite direction.
When his stomach started growling, he finished up his nesting and went fishing. Fish were plentiful in the ocean and the freshwater sites. After frying up a couple over a small fire, he ate them and followed it up with a dessert of some small melons he found in the forest. He was pretty certain they weren’t poisonous, thanks to his survival training, and they had a sweet, cantaloupe-like taste.
Now that he’d set aside the problem for a couple hours, he looked at it again to ensure he wasn’t making the wrong assumptions. He could be arrogant, but he wasn’t clueless. As a special ops guy, he wasn’t wired to think of failure. At least not in those terms. If a mission failed, it was only after every other option had been exhausted, and he’d retreat merely to figure out a better way to achieve the objective.
A woman’s heart wasn’t the same as a mission—though winning it might take even more effort than penetrating the Taliban—so he had to set aside some of that thinking and examine her reactions thus far as objectively as possible. But he trusted his gut. As he kept thinking about her and everything that had occurred over the past day, he became more certain that she wanted him here. She was just afraid of it going sour.
“That’s the risk of any relationship, sweetheart,” he muttered. “They can always tank. But you don’t strike me as a coward. Just tired of the bullshit and of being hurt. I hate that you’ve had to deal with that, but I don’t think you’ve given up trying. Hell, you’ve never been given the chance to try, not really.”
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nbsp; He didn’t beat a point to death when there wasn’t any further intel to change the current analysis. That resolved, he finished his meal, cleaned up and went exploring. When he crossed paths with the goat herd, he discovered one had birthed a kid since he’d seen them last. Watching the new baby cavort around his mother and figure out his world was a balm to the parts of his mind that remained agitated about Medusa’s actions and unhappy about her absence. The mom didn’t seem to mind when the babe settled in his lap and let him stroke the floppy oblong ears.
After that, he visited Medusa’s garden sites, and harvested off some of the vegetables and fruits that were ripe, using the new buckets. He left them tucked into the garden shed so she could retrieve and take them up to her home.
Mid-afternoon, he found another smaller waterfall and pool area combination at a lower elevation. He was sitting by the fall with his eyes closed, letting the mist cool him, when he sensed her near. As she landed behind him, he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch as she traced the cloth wrapped around his torso, across his back. “This is twisted,” she said quietly. “I’ll fix it.”
“Knock yourself out.” When she draped the blindfold on his shoulder, he reached up and set it aside. “No. I’ll keep my eyes closed. Or you close yours.”
Her fingertips rested on his shoulder. “All right,” she said at last. “Keep yours closed.”
He could explain the contacts to her, but he had a feeling until he proved they could work, she’d be too afraid of them not working to permit him to use them. A chicken or egg dilemma.
But if she learned by accident he had a way of neutralizing the danger of her gaze, that wouldn’t go well, either. Which meant he needed to tell her. But before he did, he decided to try a small test of his own. When she bent over his front and unwrapped the bandage, he cracked his eyes to look.
He wondered if she heard his heart skip a beat, or his breath catch in his throat. It wasn’t her looks that caused that reaction as much as his first chance to gaze upon her face.
She was beautiful.
Maddock believed it took her direct stare to turn someone to stone. Since JP was wearing the contacts, he couldn’t test that. Her eyes, what he could see of them peripherally, were so crimson red they seemed to glow like jewels. Her features matched her wrists. Her delicate chin and sloping cheekbones were as finely formed as dainty blown glass figurines. Her lips, pursed with her concentration on his bandage, were full and soft-looking. Her glossy black hair that tumbled down her back had hundreds of silky ringlets marked by threads of copper, bronze and gold.
The magic had to have done that, because no woman’s hair had that many colors without the help of a bottle, and he was pretty sure there was no drugstore around here. He realized the hues matched some of her snakes, giving them further camouflage.
Two black ones were coiled on one shoulder, twined together and draped down over her biceps, heads resting on the inside of her elbow. They had to be Tunneltrap and Waterlight. Her arm had a toned muscularity that confirmed her training. Without her magic, she wouldn’t be stronger than him, but, depending on her fight training and how well she used advantages like her wings, she could be faster and more agile. They’d be well matched. That would be useful for his future plan to address the four stripes on his torso.
Two more snakes curled around her head, forming a living circlet that kept her hair out of her eyes. Ratqueen was as she’d been described, bone-white with reddish eyes, an albino. She was twice the thickness of the black ones, whereas the one nestled in her coils was slim as a pencil, with brown, black and gold markings. He was twined around the white snake like the color on a candy cane. Medusa had said Earthson was the smallest, so JP deduced that was him.
The fifth nestled in a curtain of hair against her neck, his squat diamond head resting on her collar bone. JP had been right. Treebark, so named because of his spiky skin, was a bush viper. Deadly poisonous.
Earthson looked like some kind of asp, a breed of snake which was also poisonous, but the two black snakes weren’t, and he still thought Ratqueen was probably a constrictor, though apparently not a danger to her mistress. From what he could see in his brief glance, the snakes had enough length to give them an advantageous range as weapons in her defense. He could confirm that himself, remembering those first few moments on the beach, when one had struck at his face.
He hadn’t expected the snakes to be different species, since most Medusa artwork suggested a homogenous group, but he doubted she sat for many portraits. What was curious was that the bush viper and black snakes weren’t native to her part of the world. The vagaries of magic.
At last he could see her claws. The talons grew out of her knuckles as he’d deduced and created a close arch over her fingers. They were ivory-colored, with symbols scratched into them. Had she done that, or was it part of the curse upon her?
When she’d first been transformed, he expected she’d had a lot of mishaps, learning how to coordinate their fixed position with the movements of her fingers, but she wasn’t having any difficulties now. Fascinated, he saw she employed them like a backup set of fixed fingers, lifting and adjusting the bandage as her actual fingers beneath the claws’ curved arch smoothed the skin around the stapled wounds. His muscles flexed under her touch, an involuntary reaction. She had a dusting of freckles on her forearms.
His gaze moved to her clothes. Her short skirt was a natural linen color, belted with an embroidered sash. The laced shirt was like a short halter top, pretty much what he’d deduced she was wearing. Very Gabrielle from Xena: Warrior Princess. It worked well on her. Gabrielle had been more his type, with her fiery spirit and submissive personality. He could certainly conjure some creative visions of team-topping Medusa with the tough and beautiful Lucy Lawless.
Her clothing were practical choices, likely made in consideration of the warm climate, her altered form, and the labor she did here to care for herself. He doubted she gave much thought to the dictates anymore on modesty imposed on ancient Athens women. Those requirements would have had her wearing a far longer and more concealing garment in front of a man not of her family.
He didn’t sense she thought of her outfit as provocative, though. Which was intriguing, since his lady exuded Xena’s overwhelming sensual nature, in a temptingly innocent way. Was it part of the curse, to lure her enemies to her? She didn’t have the sexual experience to have that aura emanating around her, but it sure as hell was distracting. When she walked, he expected her body moved and swayed in just the right ways. His palms itched to cradle her curves.
The bandage wasn’t twisted enough to need to be unwrapped, but he realized she’d wanted to see how he’d tended to himself. She’d caused the wounds, so that might seem confusing, to alternate harm with care, but not to him. It made him even more certain it was a test, on two levels. She was issuing a challenge to what it was about him making her antsy at a subconscious level. She’d also tested him because it was a necessary step toward one you weren’t sure was ally or enemy.
She looked as if she wanted to touch the staples but, perhaps thinking the wounds were sensitive, she stopped short and put the bandage back in place. Then her eyes lifted and met his directly.
They were a snake’s eyes, with the slit pupil that gave them a dangerous, flat look, unless one looked closer and saw so much more, the swirl of emotions trapped under that predator’s unwavering stare.
Less than a blink of impression, and it hit him like a bolt in the chest. He’d been so caught up in looking at her that he hadn’t shut his eyes fast enough, and now there was no turning back.
She hissed in alarm, revealing fangs and a forked tongue. He grunted in pain. In her panic, she’d slapped her palms against his four stapled wounds to shove away from him and launch herself into the air.
“Medusa, stop.” He felt like he’d been stabbed four times in the chest. “Don’t go. Wait. I’m wearing contacts…a magic covering over my eyes, of sorts. I’m fine. You looked at me and I was fine.”
She’d already disappeared back in the trees. “Put on the blindfold. Right now. Do it. Or into the sea you go.”
He could chide her that that threat was getting a little old, but right now might not be the time to test his Dread Pirate Roberts theory.
“Okay. It’s on.” He managed the lacings, though his torso grumbled when the movement pulled at his abused and torn flesh. “Look. See?”
“You should not have done that. Why did you do that? You could have… Damn you.”
The raw words spiked through his heart. She was furious, freaked out. Afraid. He regretted that, even if he couldn’t regret the one stolen glance.
“It takes a second for my curse to take effect,” she said. “If you’d looked at me longer…”
“The contacts would still work.”
“I don’t care. You don’t…you should have asked first.”
He would have banked money on her taking off, but she hadn’t yet, so he went with bald honesty. “Yes. I should have. I’m sorry. I wanted to see you. I was impatient.”
“I wasn’t prepared for you…to see me. To know what I look like.”
That stopped him in his tracks. He’d assumed her only worry was turning him to stone, causing harm to another. He hadn’t thought about that side of things. While it was good to know it mattered to her, what he thought when he looked upon her, he could reassure her on that issue.
“You’re a beautiful woman.”
The noise that came from her was ugly, harsh. “You mock me.”
“Why would I do that, my lady? You are beautiful.”
“Then you are one of those wrong-minded individuals with unnatural desires for deformity.”