Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  The flesh-colored sparkling garment with thin straps and a low back to accommodate her wings had fit her like a second skin from neck to ankles, making Medusa wonder what Charlie would call an exact fit. The bodysuit was comfortable and pretty, its sequins flashing as she turned in a circle under the backstage lights.

  John was working one of the exit points, but when he saw her, his eyes drank in the way she looked. He gestured, a wordless command to have her turn and show him the garment from every angle. Since he couldn’t leave his post, she came to him.

  “Got to love a circus,” he murmured. He lifted his gaze to her face, to her hair, which she’d brushed out so it swirled in silken waves around the now-awake snakes. They were weaving through the tresses, this time in curiosity, not agitation, trying to follow all the activity going on behind the scenes. “So you’re going to do it, snake-girl?”

  “I think so. I’d like to try.” She’d been a nightmare, a monster for so long. The thought made her stomach flip flop, but John kissed her with firm, heated lips, centering her.

  “Like I said, the kids are going to love you.”

  A trio of dwarves were passing by. As if picking up on her hesitation, or maybe John had thrown him a significant look, Dom-to-Dom, Gundar stopped and gave her his sexy smile, tossing back a lock of his thick, handsome mane of hair. He was in a green velvet doublet with gold trim, matching hose and shiny black boots. “Coming with us, Medusa?”

  He extended a broad hand, and she let hers be clasped. His hand might be smaller, but his grip was as strong as John’s. When he tugged her along in their wake, she tossed one last look over her shoulder at John. She wondered if this sudden wave of nerves was what Clara had called stage fright. John Pierce winked and pinched her buttock with the benefit of his long arm, making her yelp and narrow her gaze at him, a distraction that took her out under the lights.

  She was moving forward with a parade of other players. Some of those things Clara had described were already happening. Caleb had four small children balanced on his shoulders and one on his raised leg as their parents surrounded him, perhaps concerned about any of them falling. Medusa had seen his lightning-quick reflexes; plus, he had the balance of an anvil. None of them would come to harm.

  The laconic Marcellus was a particular surprise, but even from her time and place in the world she knew the reputation of angels. If he would unbend for anyone else other than Clara, it would be children. He was in the center ring, Yvette correctly understanding he would be so popular it would be best to let the children come to him in controlled groups from the beginning, rather than have him in the Promenade.

  As the serious angel knelt among them, the children were touching and petting his wings, talking to him in animated, childish voices. Their innocent enthusiasm made Medusa smile, even as her stomach clutched anew, the result of imagining herself in the same situation.

  What was she thinking? She was no angel. Gundar had released her hand, leaving her presumably at ease strolling among the ranks of other players. Instead she was giving serious thought to bolting out the nearest back door, especially when a piercing shriek made her heart jump.

  “She has snakes in her hair!”

  Usually her anxiety would communicate itself to her snakes, but they surprised her. Ratqueen sent her a wave of reassurance, reinforced by the other four, helping her to look toward that high-pitched voice rather than retreating in haste.

  It belonged to a young boy. He was pointing at her, and hanging over the side of the rail. He gestured at her wildly. “Please, please, please come over here. Pleeease!”

  Other children around him took up the cry. She tried to move that way, but her feet were stuck as if she’d turned them to stone herself. The din around her became a muted roar. She didn’t see children or an assembled crowd. She saw a montage of horrified looks as she turned every child to stone, no matter Yvette’s protective spells. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.

  An arm slid around her waist, a broad chest against her shoulder blades. John dipped his head and kissed her temple. “I’m right here, sweetheart. I’m with you.”

  She took a steadying breath, gripping his hand on her hip bone with tight fingers. Somehow her feet were moving again. Maybe because he’d given her a little nudge, but she wasn’t balking anymore. As she drew close to the short wall that separated the seats from the rings, she saw the boy’s mother was holding him about the waist too, presumably so he wouldn’t fling himself at her.

  “Hey, little man.” John inserted himself partly between her and the boy, as well as the other children suddenly crowding around to see her better. She could understand why Marcellus had known he would excel at security. “She might let you touch the snakes, but everyone has to calm down so they don’t get startled. She’s a little new to this, too, and she’s shy. Can you settle down for me?”

  It was miraculous, how his slightly stern, firm tone worked. It worked on her all the time, in an entirely different way. The wry thought bolstered her courage. The children in this section became mouse quiet, all wide, staring eyes as she drew closer. It had been so long since she’d been near a child, been able to look at one without fear of causing harm… A tight achy feeling in her throat warned her it was best not to think about those things right now. John’s hand gripped her own, another reassuring pressure.

  She drew on memories prior to her island, far more positive ones, before Ukrit. Well-to-do female children had sometimes been brought to the temple to meet with the priestesses for instruction before they participated in public rituals. Klotho often had her and Callidora talk to such visitors because they related so well to the young ones…probably because they’d not been much older than children themselves.

  “Hello,” she ventured, and smiled, jumping only a little when a chorus of “Hellos” rebounded back. John grinned at her. “Um, this is Ratqueen,” she said, reaching up and inviting the large white snake to extend herself to rest on the top of Medusa’s hand. “She’s in charge of all the rest.”

  “What are the others’ names?”

  “Does it hurt when they tug on you, like someone pulling your hair?”

  “Have they ever bitten you?”

  She had to smile at the second question, since it paraphrased John’s own when he’d met her. Gaining more confidence, she answered their questions. Ratqueen was the first to indulge their desire to touch, accepting a variety of single fingertip touches and a few brave strokes. The other snakes came down soon after that, Treebark typically being the most cautious, staying at her throat and allowing the occasional finger touch but mostly peering at the children from the cover of her hair.

  The children were oohing and ahhing as she bent so they could feel where the snakes’ bodies seamlessly attached to her skull. They watched every move the snakes made with avid appreciation as the animals coiled around both of Medusa’s arms and overlapped one another.

  When Earthson lifted his body, trying to investigate the sparkles in one little girl’s tiara, she put out her finger and drew back with a giggle when he flicked his tongue against it.

  “That’s their way of smelling you,” John told her. “But it’s also a very special thing that usually only works when a snake is with a person and that person says it’s okay. Snakes are like any wild creatures. They’re best observed and respected from a distance. Right?”

  The children nodded vigorously and dutifully parroted the things they’d been told about respecting wildlife. All except one boy, too currently enthralled with Ratqueen’s decision to wrap around his small wrist to say anything. Medusa noticed his mother looked fascinated but wary, too. “Are they defanged?” she asked over her son’s head.

  As Medusa puzzled over the word, Ratqueen deciphered it, with a great deal of indignation. Medusa sent her a soothing thought and answered the woman’s question. “No. But they will not bite the children.”

  “Are they poisonous?”

  “Only two of them have venom, but it is usually
used to incapacitate prey, not to bite.”

  “How is that possible?” One father drew his child back from closer proximity with the snakes. “How do they know the difference?”

  Medusa considered the answer. John’s world had a different view of reality from hers, and even hers had trouble believing some of the things she now knew to be true about magic. Then she thought about what Gundar had said. People from the mundane world believed any answer was part of “the act,” not a truth that would challenge their understanding of reality.

  “I think in the wild, they wouldn’t,” she said slowly. “If they saw something as a threat, they’d use the poison to be sure they were protecting themselves as much as needed. But they are connected to me. We share minds, so they use the information they find in my head to help guide them. And I am able to do the same. Their language is more feeling than words, but those feelings are usually clear.”

  More necks were craning, people trying to get closer. John gestured to her to move down into the three ring area. The Promenade had finished, and many audience members were headed that way or grouped in the stands around troupe members like herself who’d become an informal focus. The Promenade was morphing into a gregarious social event.

  John’s firm hand was on her elbow, keeping her close to his side as he eased her into the left hand ring. It allowed more people access to her, for now they were gathered in a circle around her. Yet he stayed at her shoulder, her back, sheltering her. She noticed that several additional security team members had approached, a similar set up to those casually flanking other popular members of the troupe, to help with crowd control if needed.

  Surprisingly, she found she was starting to relax. The children’s eyes were bright and shining, their smiles and curiosity infectious.

  “The ticket price is twenty-five dollars and a child,” Yvette had told her, earlier in the week. “No adult is allowed to come without a child. It puts them in the right mindset to see what we have to offer.”

  Medusa could see the reasoning, watching adults pulled from ruminations of “how it’s done” by the tug of a young hand, a happy exclamation to go here, go there, look at that—and be immersed in the fantasy.

  A half-dozen children had been placed in the coveted grandstand area, because they were all in wheelchairs. One of them approached her, pushed by a woman who must be his mother. The boy was twisted in such a contorted way Medusa realized his spine was deformed, his head at a permanently cocked angle, his shoulders hunched under his ears.

  “I’m Vinnie. When I get old enough, I’m going to join the Circus,” he informed her as she stopped in front of his chair. “I’ll be the snake charming hunchback.”

  “We need one of those,” Medusa said, without missing a beat. “Lady Yvette would love to have you.” As she knelt in front of him, she sent a silent request to her snakes. His smile would have made angels weep as all five of them slithered onto his arms, his lap and around his shoulders. Medusa leaned forward to rest her elbows on his chair, to give them as much range as they needed. He touched all of them and asked a million questions. The children who had moved with her clustered around the boy and her, but showed a kind sensitivity, not crowding against his chair. As they overcame their shyness about the boy’s differences, they threw in questions of their own, and she saw the boy brighten as much from being treated as part of the group as having the chance to touch her snakes.

  Vinnie reached out and touched her face. “Why are you crying?”

  “It’s been a long time since people looked at me and liked me for who I am,” she said simply. “I’d forgotten how nice it feels.”

  “There’s nothing better,” he said, the full knowledge of it in his blue eyes as he slanted a meaningful glance around him at the other kids. “I think you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.” His gaze slid behind her and up. “Is that your boyfriend?”

  She didn’t have to look, because John was a warm heat flanking her. She wasn’t familiar with the term the boy used, but she picked up the gist of it. She expected it didn’t mean the same thing as Master, but it was in a similar category. She wasn’t sure if Vinnie would understand the implications of Master.

  “Yes,” she said. John gripped her shoulder, a warm acknowledgement.

  “Does he like you for who you are?” His eyes slid over the snakes and her wings.

  “Yes.”

  The boy’s lips pursed. “My mom’s like that. She loves me and gets me. There’s nothing better than that, either. You looked awesome flying. Do you take people for rides, like he does?”

  She turned to see Marcellus returning from a flight around the tent. He wore a harness much like she’d rigged for John when they visited the topmost peak of her island, so the children he took around the tent could feel like they were flying in the tandem set up. He seemed like he had quite a few more waiting for the opportunity, so her gaze shifted to Merc.

  He was hanging upside down like a bat from one of the clown props and rocking back and forth. She noticed he had a similar harness on him, so he could offer the same flying option if requested. It was probably the odd energy around him that kept children clustering around Marcellus and giving him a wider berth. She wondered if that made him feel like she and Vinnie did, isolated from a group.

  Don’t humanize him. She heard John’s warning again. But Clara had said Merc would give rides to the kids, so Yvette did trust him for that.

  “He’s set up for carrying someone. Would you like to go with him?” At the boy’s nod, she smiled. “Hold on a minute. We’ll see if we can’t arrange a flying demonstration.”

  Merc’s eyes fixed on her like a hawk on a mouse as she gestured to him. She ignored it, as well as the wave of pheromones that preceded him as he strode in their direction. She could tell it touched all the adults around them, because of the nervous shifts from the women, their eye rolls toward one another, and the visible concern of the men. It echoed John’s, voiced perhaps a little more emphatically in her ear now.

  “If he touches you, I will take his arm off at the shoulder,” he muttered.

  “It’s fine. He’s fine. He just lost control. He’s okay now.” She could tell, because his eyes didn’t have that odd silver glow to them, and the energy around him was… Calm wasn’t the right word, but during rehearsals, she had learned to tell when he was on a more even keel. That awareness was how she’d so quickly detected it when he wasn’t tonight.

  She wasn’t sure if she could say the same for her Master, but he seemed to rein back his desire to do violence, perhaps thinking of the impact on the children.

  “Merc, can you give Vinnie a flight?” she asked quickly as he approached, just in case John changed his mind about that.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The mother had missed the thread of the conversation between her son and Medusa until now. “His spine, I’m not sure…”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom. He has a harness, and it’s a short flight.”

  “Merc can take him on a flight without harm,” Medusa assured them. He was more than strong enough. And as Merc’s gaze shifted to the boy, she saw an intriguing softening there, which became more apparent at the cries of me, too, me, too the children around Vinnie started to voice. Merc gave them an indulgent smile that changed his face, making him look almost approachable.

  “Let me take care of Vinnie first and then we’ll see,” he said.

  John helped lift Vinnie with his mother’s help and strapped him into the tandem set up. He was the right one to help with that, because with Vinnie’s twisted body, some adjustments needed to be made to support joints and torso in places where they weren’t normally located. He secured some additional rope from nearby rigging and made that happen. Merc stood patiently, supporting Vinnie and talking to the boy, explaining some of the mechanics of flying and his adventures in flight that had the other children pressing forward asking more questions.

  It was like seeing a whole different person emerge from the dark quagmire of Mer
c’s usual personality. With the children, he was patient and verbal, putting parents more at ease with the odd energy vibrating off of him…as long as he didn’t look at them directly. She was helping John, Merc and Vinnie as needed, yet whenever Merc met her gaze, she would fumble or stammer in a way that had John giving her an unreadable look and making her blush.

  It’s not my fault, it’s how he is, she wanted to defend herself. But Merc’s knowing, small smile didn’t help matters.

  John stepped back, drawing Medusa with him with a firm hand to her elbow.

  “You’re all set.”

  Medusa touched the mother’s arm reassuringly. “He’ll be safe. Merc will take very good care of him.”

  “Not too safe.” Merc grinned down at Vinnie. “Else it wouldn’t be fun.”

  He launched them into the air. Though Medusa wouldn’t have suggested it if she hadn’t been sure that Yvette trusted him for this, she still felt her heart leap in her throat as he shot toward the top of the tent and did a spiral maneuver. Vinnie’s arms were out like wings, spinning with him, and they heard his whoop of joy. Glancing at the mother, Medusa saw her eyes glisten.

  “I wish they allowed camera phones in here,” she said. “I would love to video this for his father.”

  “The expression on his face will tell the whole story,” John assured her. “And you’ll tell him all about it.”

  “I know you probably can’t tell me, but how do the wings work?” Vinnie’s mother asked. “I’ve thought of all sorts of mechanical possibilities, but there’s no evidence of it anywhere, and he just moves…as if the wings are part of him.”

  “He’s part angel,” Medusa said matter-of-factly. “That’s all you need to know.”

  The mother continued to watch her son’s flight, though her lips twisted. “He may be part angel, but with that stare of his, he’s also part something that is so not angel.”

  “Yeah, we’re neutering him with a pair of pliers,” John said under his breath. “Right after this show.”