Sacrifice

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  Just like with the drawings and paintings.

  I could never get anything right when it came to her, could I?

  My admission hardens her. Or maybe it’s just her desire to further block me out. To hide whatever she feels at the knowledge of what kind of preternatural stalker I became in my search for her soul. As I watch a veil fall over her features, a new desolation begins to take hold.

  I entered this deal knowing I’d die without her. That there’s no future for us after the consequences of my mistakes.

  But it’s just occurring to me that I will become a lost soul in the underworld, another despondent wanderer of its depths, and I won’t even have the luxury of having won her forgiveness.

  Some sins are truly too horrific to be absolved.

  CHAPTER 17

  – Port Antonio, Jamaica

  MEGARA

  I hate the way he’s looking at me.

  How there’s always a plea in those bright blue peepers lately.

  Most of all, I hate how my justified anger at him is beginning to leak out of me.

  “Leak”. That’s a hilarious lie. This isn’t a tiny stream.

  It’s a full blown outflow. I’ve been phlebotomized thanks to that weapon of theirs. Haven’t just bled actual blood for these fuckers but, unbeknownst to them, they’re robbing me of the one thing I need to see Kles’ murder through.

  If I get within even an inch of forgiving him, I won’t be able to take his head with my blades.

  Starting to doubt my ability to see it through already.

  Son of a bitch.

  Thankfully, as messed up as that is, the air shifts around us, tearing my thoughts away from that fucked up reality and obligating me to deal with another.

  It starts with the rustling of the palm leaves ahead, followed by the groan of wood being forcefully moved aside. The momentum builds, the waves crashing onto our side also cresting. Then, movement along the ground. Sunlight reflecting off slithering metal.

  The creatures burst from the rainforest first and the identity of our adversary becomes obvious with one look at them.

  Giant serpents, half-technological and half-biological, their bodies composed of shiny blue and green scales, glide onto the pale sands. At least a dozen of them, with more approaching in the distance.

  Medusa.

  Thinking her name is like calling the beast herself; the huge palm trees are shoved aside by an invisible force, many of their trucks bending. She sashays into view, surrounded by her pets. I never met the old version of her in person, but the depictions abounded.

  Gone is her own snake tail and wings. It was said that the gorgon was a beautiful maiden, one of the most gorgeous of her time, and that Poseidon raped her in Athena’s temple. As was typical for those old-fashioned cunts in the Olympian pantheon, Athena blamed Medusa for the event and punished her.

  Honestly, any half-wit would know the truth: the Goddess of Wisdom and War wasn’t powerful enough to take on the God of the Sea, so she penalized the innocent party instead, turning Medusa into the hideous gorgon of myth.

  In this present time, she’s regained her sensual beauty, although aside from her form from the face down, there isn’t much “human” left in her.

  The snakes her hair consist of in this version are technological, too. Thick blue tubes that are attached to a yellow, headdress-like base, and unlike before, these snakes are tamed. Falling down her back like docile strands of her hair. That is, until one gets a peek at their heads. Two of them are draped over her shoulders and their heads are curled upward, in striking position near her breasts, mouths open in dangerous hisses.

  Her skin is a supple, shocking yellow. Her eyes, highlighted by a black mask of either skin or coal, are the same piercing blue as the bodies of those snakes. The rest of her is encased in a blue, strapless bra piece, tight abdomen bared, and her skirt lies low at the hips, the slit bearing both legs.

  She walks to the edge of the water, a female that’s definitely reclaimed a part or her sensuality, and if I wasn’t here to kill her, the nymph in me would actually be proud of the bitch.

  Panic flares for a moment, the mental warning blaring that I can’t stare into those eyes. Kles can’t, either. She’ll turn us into stone if we do—

  We already have.

  And nothing has happened. We remain flesh and blood. Mobile.

  Has the gorgon lost her most powerful trait in this incarnation?

  “If it isn’t the fallen God of Power and his filthy little whore.”

  Kles seethes with toxic animosity at my side.

  I hold up a hand to stop whatever retort he’s about to throw at her. “I am what I am.” And it’s important that I start accepting that. There’s no reversing my species, aside from death, and as messed up as my life has been, I’m not really suicidal.

  Too late I realize that in my quest to be the uber-empowered, feminist, non-slut shaming immortal female, I’ve owned up to that entire statement. Not just the “filthy little whore” part, but the part about being his.

  Where is the lie, though? my inner cockwhore—AKA: the fucking succubus—demands.

  Why the hell is that thing so fixated on . . . on . . . it’s as if it wants to be his.

  Medusa turns her head in an eerie fashion to face Kles, a hatred as ancient as time warping her features. “You, as much as any of them, resemble him the most. Only the Sun God, with his fair coloring, ever beat you at that.”

  Apollo.

  The prisoner currently languishing in his desolate fate.

  As for the main reason for her ill will, that isn’t hard to guess. “You fucking sons of Zeus always come for me. You think you can take my head, as your brother Perseus once did, when you’ve already lost your own, Herakles. I know what you truly are, what you’ve always been, and it’s time for you to own that. You were never glorious, ‘God of Power’, you were everything but. I won’t allow you to escape that anymore. Even if I’m dead by the end of today, I will take your vanity and false glory with me before it’s over. You will finally know your truth: you’ve always been one of us monsters. Possibly the worst one of us all.”

  She’s trying to work another mindfuck on us, Kles especially. Enough of this shit. My weapons might be missing, and I can recall them or my armor to me no matter how many attempts I make, but I still possess two perfectly able hands.

  I’ll just rip the bitch’s head off her shoulders the old-fashioned way.

  With the thought to flash to her, I fling myself off the cliff, expecting my body to break apart into atoms—

  “Meg!” Kles yells as I tumble straight to the awaiting waves below.

  The turbulent, clear waters are surprisingly chilly for the temperature of this place, an effect I suspect she’s also now controlling.

  I push past the heaving pressure of the roiling ocean and swim toward the surface—I break through in less than a second! So my super-speed, as the humans would call it, is intact. It’s just my ability to dematerialize she’s stolen. They’re using similar weapons against us. It was the same with Hydra.

  A body hits the water near me; Kles, and he breaks the surface even quicker than I did, his glare narrowed on Medusa. The black marking along his jaw with its gold flecks shimmers beneath his wet scruff and he looks just like the monster she claimed he is.

  No. It’s not a claim. It’s time he and I admit that in this she isn’t lying; whatever lurks in him isn’t honorable and lovable. It’s brutal and untamed.

  The distraction with his face costs me. Unknown to me, one of those bionic anacondas glides into the water and comes up beneath me. I feel it’s massive length wrap around me thigh . . . a twitch it’s body and every bone from my femur down shatters.

  I’m pulled under with a short shout.

  Thank the gods us immortals don’t really need to breathe. It’s more a reflex for us than a biological imperative.

  The water remains translucent enough for me to see the technology-enhanced horror dragging m
e to the seabed.

  Above me, Kles dives after us, expression murderous. He doesn’t make it far; another of Medusa’s pets coils around his midsection and squeezes.

  The sickening crunch of his rib cage cracking somehow reaches me through the waves.

  A yell ripples out of his mouth and bubbles through the water, too, but it’s more an exclamation of rage than pain. I see his irises fracture, the glaze of that separate being overcoming them—

  He’s tugged through the water toward the shore.

  Kles fights to get back to me the entire way, his insane muscles bulging, veins thrumming along his neck. He manages to break free from the one that had him, shredding it apart in a bloody, wire-sparking, electrical display.

  Two more besiege him instantly and the last I see of him before he’s yanked out of the water, he’s screaming my name, one marked hand stretched to me.

  And, then, a final, disbelief inducing glimpse . . .

  The gold flecks within his black markings exploding into living light, tendrils of it trailing along his face, like they’re forming some kind of mask.

  A lion’s face?

  He’s gone too fast and I’m once again paying for being distracted by him. The anaconda slams me into the ocean floor, holding me there as another two begin to swim at me.

  I might be immortal, but these bastards have the strength to do to me what I’m planning to do to Medusa.

  One of them wraps around my neck and I can kiss my head’s attachment to my body goodbye.

  Then stop getting preoccupied with Kles! Good advice.

  I lift my good leg and kick at the head of the serpent around my thigh. The very top of its head floats away in the water, bits of titanium and chunks of meat. It retaliates by squeezing harder and I’m pretty sure my bones are nothing but dust beneath the surface of my skin.

  Ignoring the brutality of that agony, I kick at its head again and again.

  Again and again.

  The other two are nearer. Dangerously close. My only hope is to swim away from their grip with only one good leg.

  Kles is the God of Power. A pillar of physical strength from the day of his birth. If he couldn’t overcome the two that took him from the water, I don’t stand a bloody chance.

  A final kick with every ounce of my immortality and survival instinct behind it.

  Success. Finally. The headless snake falls limp around my destroyed leg and I wiggle out from under its large, heavy weight in the nick of time. Using mostly my arms, I peddle through the water as fast as I can.

  The two snakes are on my heels, literally, their snapping mouths big enough to swallow my entire leg whole if they choose. Veering sharply to my left, I swim even faster, cutting through the water at top speed. The depth begins to lessen as I get within reach of the shore—only to be cut off by one of them, it’s thick body shimmering in the water as it blocks my path.

  There’s a ripple in the ocean at my back; the power of the other one causing its own waves as it approaches me.

  I’m cornered from the front and the back.

  They’re not letting me out of here unless I take them out.

  So be it.

  I shoot to the left, eyes darting the underwater landscape. If I can get rid of one, I’ll be able to handle the other much easier. Even with my useless bum leg trailing after me while I swim. Spotting the edge of a reef, I aim for it. Last minute, I zig zag as best as I can, praying these creatures don’t share a mind with Medusa the way the humans did with Hydra. I accidentally inhale water and although it can’t kill me, my lungs burn from the strain.

  With just a single working leg and my lungs on fire, the maneuver is hard, yet as I get close to the reef I switch directions once more.

  It works.

  One of the snakes slam into it at top speed, face flattened by its surface.

  That’s all I need.

  Spinning in the water, I prepare to take the remaining snake on. Not that I get my chance. A boulder that size of a mini-mountain comes crashing into the water, flattening it against the sea bed.

  Kles.

  It was him.

  He’s up there, holding his own against Medusa, and watching my back despite whatever he’s dealing with.

  Damn him, but it’s endearing.

  I’m so fucked.

  I make it to the surface again, coughing up the water I inhaled, only to find a scene that leaves me flabbergasted.

  Kles is surrounded by the torn apart corpses of the other snakes, their electrical wiring sparking in mesmerizing displays.

  Not nearly as mesmerizing as him though.

  A tornado of white, gold, and now black surrounds his form—his aura, as changed as his skin is, stained by obsidian.

  He’s a violent statue in the midst of it, face covered by that golden mask that manifested in the water. It’s a fiendish representation of a lion, the mouth open in a roar that bears his upper face. The upper jaw of it covers the top of his head and the lower jaw from his mouth downward.

  Where is Medusa? I search her out, only to find her on the sand, mumbling to herself in the fanatical way Scylla and Charybdis did while I turned their desires against him.

  “Hate them. Every single one of them. Users. Abusers.” Neurotic with grief, she whirls on Kles, a finger pointed accusingly at him. “You’re one of them! Filthy. All of you. You only destroy every female that is unfortunate enough to cross your path. Squalid. Loathsome. VILE!”

  The most infamous male-hater in history in her full, psychotic glory.

  Kles steps over the mangled snakes, bearing down on her in his own demented majesty. When he speaks, not only are there two entities speaking from his throat again, above his own voice, but the new one that’s showed up recently is louder than the force of Power. “You made a promise, Medusa. It’s time to keep it. Make him face it. Tell him what I am. What I always was.”

  That third persona is fully in the driver’s seat, leading Kles straight toward that brick wall at a thousand miles per hour. No breaks and no sympathy. It wants to be known, acknowledged. It’s whispers trickle into my awareness, along with Medusa’s irrational desire to see all males descended from Zeus eradicated.

  Power is demanding Kles finish off Medusa.

  And Kles? He’s frantic to regain control and halt the train wreck about to forever change his life.

  There’s fear tinging his motives and it’s that apprehension that gets to me. “Kles! Listen to me. Stop!”

  “He knows what you are!” Medusa tears at the snakes draped from her hair until their blood is dripping down her shoulders. “He’s always known, scared little boy!”

  “Say it. Say it aloud so that he knows. So he can no longer run. Make him believe.”

  “No, damn you!” I fumble to my feet, off-balance on a pathetic level from my ruined leg. My intentions to reach them and interrupt this are fine and dandy—not to mention confusing as hell—but getting to them on time without the ability to flash isn’t possible. I limp and scream Kles’ name again.

  “You are, and always were, Madness! Sheer fucking Madness. From the moment of your doomed birth, it was in you! Power might be yours thanks to Zeus, Herakles, yet it was a facade meant to hide what you really are! You are the embodiment of what’s wrong with every one of us. Every twisted being in the universe.” Medusa laughs maniacally, flooded with the very essence she claims Kles is the personification of.

  Madness.

  By the gods, but it makes a grotesque, perfect sense.

  Kles isn’t just the God of Power . . . he’s also the God of Madness.

  Every single whispered tale of his atrocities always hinted at it. His ability to pick up on the weaknesses in a being’s brain that threatens their sanity was a glaring clue.

  In a crazy, cosmic sense, anyone can see the truth: Madness and Power go hand in hand. Two sides of a ghoulish coin.

  It’s a cataclysmic, grim truth, and Kles breaks free from Madness’ hold as it sinks in for him what he truly is.
“No!” Cupping his head above that helmet, he bends over, shaking it back and forth. Trying to dislodge his reality. Somehow erase it from existence.

  Losing focus, I trip to my knees at the very edge of the shore thanks to my destroyed leg. The ends of the waves lap at my legs. I barely feel it, dominated by another shocking fact.

  I’m heartbroken.

  My chest is bleeding with grief for my greatest enemy.

  The catalyst that brought about the undoing of my life.

  “Fine!” He drops his hands and pivots to snarl at her. “Then you can fucking choke on it. Choke on your own insanity.” Aiming his hand at her, he curls his fingers into a fist in a deliberate, prolonged move.

  I thought the scream of Scylla and Charybdis when I unleashed whatever I did against them was appalling; Medusa’s shatters my eardrums as soon as it starts. Cupping my bleeding ears, I yell from this added pain and double over.

  Kles somehow hears me and rushes for me.

  Medusa continues screaming, tears of blood marring her face. I can’t begin to guess what she’s experiencing after Kles’ onslaught, but whatever it is leaves her clawing at her own face.

  The remaining, uninjured snakes on her head also turn against her, biting into her cheeks.

  “No. No. NO.”

  Can’t hear her, but her lips continue moving in that mantra.

  Kles’ boots hit the water, coming closer to me, as Medusa’s breakdown reaches a peak. She throws out a hand, mouth open—

  Water.

  A wall of unrelenting water.

  A vacuum—no, a cyclone that sucks me backward.

  Not just me. Kles is dragged in with me, both of us swallowed by one of the mightiest forces in all of creation.

  The ocean itself.

  CHAPTER 18

  MEGARA

  His hand wraps around my arm. Water pummels us from every direction. Kles tucks me against his chest, refusing to let me go. He twists to try and shield me as we’re rammed into a rock wall. The reverberations register—we’re sucked back into the undercurrent. Spiraling. Gagging on salt water.