House of Phoenyx: House of Phoenyx book 1

by T. John Greene

  Prologue

  Zeus

  Zeus was finally going to be a father. Not in the sperm donor way as he had done in the past, but in the softball-coach, teaching his son how to play guitar way and he was going to live a long and happy life with Selena.

  Selena lay in the hospital bed covered in sweat and breathing in and out loudly as she waited for another contraction to pass. Zeus held her hand and with his other hand, he tapped the black suede ring box that was burning a hole in his pocket. That night he had planned to propose to her and finally make her his wife, but instead her water broke. He laughed to himself, released the box, and moved some of the hair sticking to her face.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. Selena was beautiful to look at, but that wasn’t what had initially attracted him to her. The first night he met her she was tending bar at a neighborhood pub down the block from his brother Don’s place and it had been love at first sight, or at least at first meet.

  “Jon, you are better than this,” Selena had been saying, removing the bottle of liquor one of the customers had just pulled from the shelf behind her from his hands.

  “Come on sis! If you don’t serve me I’ll just go some other place to drink,” Jon slurred as he wavered back and forth on the barstool.

  “And how are you going to get to another bar?” she asked, her lip turning slightly up in a smile.

  “I’ll drive,” Jon said as he stood up, leaned against the bar, and started to drunkenly go through his pockets.

  Selena jiggled the keys in front of him. “Are you looking for these?” she asked.

  Jon looked at the keys but continued to go through his pockets. Then he looked at them again and said, “Hey, you found my keys.” He reached for them but Selena held them out of his way. Lacking the coordination to keep standing, he sat back down on the stool.

  “I’m going to make you a deal,” she said, leaning over the bar to look him in the eye. “I’m going to give you these keys and another drink if you can pass one little challenge for me.”

  Jon rocked side to side on the stool. “What’s the challenge?” he slurred.

  “See my friend there?” She nodded at Zeus, acknowledging him for the first time since he had sat down. “He doesn’t think you can slam five glasses of water and eat an entire breakfast burrito in less than an hour.”

  Jon looked at Zeus, his head wavering from side to side, also acknowledging him for the first time. “But that guy doesn’t even know me,” he laughed with a bent thumb pointed in Zeus’s general direction.

  “I know,” Selena said with an over-dramatic expression on her face. “That’s what I told him, but he insisted that you wouldn’t be able to do it.”

  Jon swayed back and forth, the wheels in his brain trying to turn. Selena put her hand on his. “But I think you can,” she said encouragingly.

  Jon smiled at her, but threw a dirty look towards Zeus. “I’ll show you.”

  Before the hour was up Selena managed to get 3 glasses of water and half of a breakfast burrito into Jon before he passed out in a booth. By the time Zeus had helped her carry Jon to the apartment she rented above the bar, he had gotten to know her, and in addition to admiring the way she picked her battles, they also had many of the same interests. He went back to the bar and asked her out on a date the following night and they never spent another night apart.

  When they had found out that she was pregnant, all of their lives brightened and her brother Jon started to sober up. He and Don had become permanent fixtures in Selena and Zeus’s house. Now they were both in the waiting room pacing nervously back and forth.

  “Have I told you how much I love you yet today?” Zeus asked, watching the doctors and nurses run around in collaboration since the eighth centimeter mark had just been reached.

  Selena breathed through the pain, trying not to push, but she managed a smile. She had never known she wanted to be a mom until the day the doctor told her she was pregnant. “I love you too.”

  The doctor, who had been kneeling between Selena’s legs and had been telling her not to push, sat up in alarm. “We’ve been trying to get the baby to move but it’s still breeched. We’ll have to do a cesarean section.” He removed his gloves and put up the rail on her bed.

  Zeus ran beside Selena’s bed as they wheeled her to surgery, putting on the scrubs they had given him on his way. His heart beat fast, but he kept a calm look on his face. Selena cried out in pain again and held his hand more tightly. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay,” he said to her soothingly.

  Zeus remained behind the curtain draped over Selena’s midsection, trying to keep her conscious and preoccupied with anything but what was going on. Nurses raced around in the background following the doctor’s orders.

  “Zeus?” Selena asked, her eyelids getting heavier and harder to support.

  “You’re doing good. Stay with me,” the doctor called from the other side of the curtain. “We’re almost there.”

  Zeus kissed her forehead. “I will never love anyone as much as I love you.”

  Gurgled crying erupted in the room and Zeus stood up, wanting to get the first look at his baby boy. “It’s a

  b-” the doctor started but didn’t finish, because in his hand he held something that was much more than human. Zeus took in the baby boy. His left eye was black with stars sparkling around a moon, and his right eye was an eclipsed sun. He had black hair and black wings.

  “Is he okay?” Selena asked but before Zeus could answer, the monitors started to sound in alarm as she passed out. Another set of doctors moved in, shoving Zeus out of the way. He needed to check on Selena and he needed to get to the baby and to erase the memory of this event from the minds of the doctors and nurses.

  The doctor, having regained some sense of control, handed the baby to one of the nurses who handled him gently, either trying not to damage his wings or not wanting to hold the blasphemous child. The doctor reached back down into Selena, most of her insides now on the outside. “Wait,” the doctor said, struggling against something in her uterus. After a couple of seconds he pulled out another baby. “Twins!” he praised, handing off a normal-looking baby girl to one the nurses.

  Zeus looked down at Selena. She was still unconscious, a bag of air breathing for her. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked, torn between staying with her and going with his child. There was only one creature he knew of that was born with a moon eye and wings and that creature, his son, needed to be removed from this world and placed somewhere safe, someplace his human mother couldn’t enter.

  His mind was made up. He went to his son and took him from the nurse, then waved his hand over the room, erasing certain memories. His last act before leaving was to kiss his daughter’s foot and look back at the woman whose heart he would have to break.