by Kate Nova
My body froze.
“It almost reads like a confession, doesn’t it?” Liam added.
Projected onto the wall like a giant movie, a poem entitled “Her Dying Breath” was scrawled for the world to see.
I wrote it for my mother.
I wrote it about her—about how it felt to see her skin turn to stone, for her eyes to go blank and lifeless.
Liam was right, it did read like a confession. The rumors already insisted I’d killed my mother. This poem would seal it as fact.
Never mind that these poems weren’t all mine. Never mind that this journal had been the last thing I had of hers.
Never mind that I hadn’t killed my mother on purpose and would give anything to have her back. Or that no amount of penance could clear my guilt.
I turned back to the three men who were currently trying to ruin me and stepped backwards.
“Everyone who’d been wondering if the rumors were true are now going to be convinced.” Griffin sneered, folding his arms and looking quite triumphant. “You still want to stick around?”
“I doubt anyone will want to share a classroom with a murderer,” Liam added with a smugness I’d only seen on his face in the water, as he was gliding through the pool as a sea monster.
“You should probably just leave.” Callan nodded. “But hey, good try with the poetry.” He offered two sarcastic claps and that did it.
My rage bubbled over.
I took one more step backwards and all three guys gave each other high-fives, thrilled they’d ruined me.
But I was motherfucking Medusa. I was a curse in a cave and I hadn’t been biding my time for thousands of years to be defeated by a few low-level beasts in human jock skins.
One more step and I was in direct sunlight. I lifted my head, glanced right at Callan and opened my eyes as wide as they’d go.
Chapter 8
Medusa
I didn’t turn anyone to stone.
Luckily.
But I did cause a different kind of disaster. The sunlight hit my eyes and I stared at the three guys who’d stolen my notebook, the men who were trying to make my life at school a living hell, but at the last second something sensible overcame me.
I realized if I blasted them into marble versions of themselves, everyone in the cafeteria would see. Everyone would know that I, Medusa, truly was a monster and everyone who already thought I was a mother-murderer would have even more cause to believe.
It wouldn’t be good for my overall plan, in other words. So, I stopped at the last second, glancing instead beyond the heads of those assholes trying to bully me and stared at the food carts.
And then the food carts exploded.
Actually, first they turned to stone, and then, as happens whenever I tried to kill anything that was already inanimate, the pressure of all that matter shifting and the change in density caused the bowls of stale apples and oranges, the trays of pancakes and bacon, the little coolers full of milk cartons which held no more milk than a medicine cup, all of it was blasted like shrapnel across the cafeteria.
And when everyone stood back up after diving under chairs and tables to protect themselves from the onslaught, the headmaster stormed around the room demanding to know who was responsible.
I was trembling already. It had been ages since I’d put my eyes to their proper use, ages since I’d turned anything to stone and I’d been so close to making marble statues out of Griffin, Liam, and that back-stabbing bastard, Callan.
But I really started shaking with rage when Griffin pointed his finger at me and said, boldly, with all the confidence of a monster, “It was Medusa. She did it.”
Then I found myself sitting in the headmaster’s office, about to be disciplined like a child. The temptation to fling the blame back onto the three assholes was strong. If I explained that Callan had stolen an extremely personal notebook and the three of them had pasted its contents all over the cafeteria to humiliate me, maybe he’d understand why I’d attacked the way I did.
Or maybe not, since first I’d have to explain to this very human exactly how I was able to turn all that food into stone in the first place.
Headmaster Armstrong leaned back in the chair behind his desk, laced his fingers across his lap and fixed me with a glare. “This is not how I like to meet new students, Medusa. I read your file.”
This meant nothing to me. The file that had been provided for human-Medusa was falsified, all made-up. I had no idea how to convincingly react to this. I decided to just return his glare defiantly.
“I know you were able to pull these kinds of shenanigans at your last school, but we won’t tolerate that here at Terras,” he went on. “Any more outbursts like this and you’ll be expelled. No questions asked.”
He paused and I lifted my eyebrows, waiting.
“He’s waiting for you to apologize,” my hair whispered into my ear and so I gritted my teeth, swallowed down my frustration and said, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” The headmaster looked me up and down. He was trying very hard to be professional, but even he couldn’t resist lingering his gaze on my long limbs, slim waist, full breasts. I cringed. Men everywhere were the same and none of them had changed for thousands of years—put a pair of tits in front of them and they melted in my hands.
“So, is that it?” I asked, letting my voice sink into that low and sultry tone which used to mean I was about to strike. “I have class.”
But the headmaster blinked and shook his head free from his temptation. “No,” he grumbled. “As punishment for destroying the food carts, you’ll be doing lunchroom duty. Report to the cafeteria half an hour before food service starts. Hair nets will be provided.”
My hair twitched with fury at the thought of being relocated to a hairnet and that same anger flooded my body. “Lunchroom duty?” I barked. “You can’t be serious?”
“For a week,” the headmaster added. “And it could be a lot worse. Damage to school property could warrant a call to security. Or even the local police.”
I sat back in my chair, reflecting on his words. The last thing I needed was more eyes on me. I had to slip through this school undetected and finish out each term of classes, flying as far under the radar as possible. The last thing I wanted was for any of the humans to find out who I really was—that I wasn’t just a terrible human who’d transferred from school to school with, apparently, a record that followed me, but that I was an actual monster.
So again, I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming and nodded my compliance. I’d survive the Headmaster Armstrong’s ridiculous punishment. After all, I’d survived much worse.
“Don’t let anything like this happen again.” Then he excused me and I quickly left his office without saying another word.
My best bet was to obey this moronic headmaster, continue with my studies, keep my head down and endure whatever Griffin and his friends threw at me until I had completed my mission.
I was Medusa, after all.
I was the one monster who hadn’t earned a spot in a nice, comfortable cave on the island shore of Sicidonia where I would’ve been able to see the horizon, to see the waves rolling in.
No, I was the monster who Orcus had to put far, far away. He’d tried to bury me.
And even so, I was here. I was here and I was going to earn back what was rightfully mine—divinity and a place on Mount Olympus.
Whoever was responsible for releasing me from my miserable situation wouldn’t be disappointed. Students who spotted me darted out of my way, reminding me of little schools of fish who hid behind rocks when a shark passed through.
Let them be afraid. They should stay out of my way.
They had every right to be afraid—good instincts, little humans. Stay away from the witch with the snake eyes.
And as for the three other monsters in this school who, so far, had targeted me with the kind of concentration I’d expect from predators in the wild?
I could
handle them.
I’d handled worse than them in my time and I’d survived.
True, no one had ever stolen my mother’s notebook, spread it around and mocked it. That notebook had been the only thing I had of my mother. My final relic. I’d held onto it the way a dying animal clung to water. Without it, how would I survive?
I would survive, I told myself, over and over.
Focus. Fly under the radar.
No more attempting to befriend humans. Katie and Laura would have to keep their distance, if they knew what was best for them. And if they insisted on their overbearing friendliness, I’d scare them away.
As for Griffin, Liam and Callan, well … If we were back on Sicidonia Island, they’d be stone figures by now, pressed down into the sandy shore.
But this was different. This was a human-based school.
And if I wanted to get back to Mount Olympus where I rightfully belonged, I had to ignore them, no matter how brutal their bullying got, and stay focused on the task at hand.
I strolled past the auditorium in the student center, seething with rage as I recalled meeting Callan last night, his sleight of hand as he stole my mother’s notebook from under my nose. I could rip his head off for this, but I wouldn’t.
I’d stay calm and make it through the school year and once I was on Mount Olympus, I’d let Zeus take care of these monsters.
Speaking of monsters …
I pressed my ear to the wall of the auditorium. I could hear it again, a faint scratching, a strange shuffling. Last night, the noises had been paired with a growling, something fearsome.
But today, it sounded like rats.
I could deal with rats.
Just like I could deal with anything else Griffin, Liam, and Callan threw at me. I just needed to remember that I was far more monstrous than the three of them combined.
Man-killer.
Mother-murderer.
Medusa, cold and snakelike. Evil.
And soon, Medusa, goddess on high, a queen on Olympus.
“Don’t forget it,” my hair hissed collectively to me and with a nod, I walked away from the strange noises of the auditorium and back into the human world, determined to stay focused.
Chapter 9
Liam
I’ll never forget how she looked in the cafeteria—her eyes blazing, her snake hair twitching like rattlers, her scales shining.
Medusa was a legend, the kind you hoped you never had to confront. And after seeing her in the water, so graceful, so elegant for a monster, I’d written her off as a legend only. The kind of story told to scare unworthy men and arouse wrath in scorned women. The kind of legend to frighten children.
But earlier, in the cafeteria, I saw a glimpse of that legend. Her eyes had sparked with fury and her creamy skin was flushed with passion. I couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to invoke a different kind of passion in her—one that involved using my lips and my hands, rather than words.
And finally, I saw what everyone had been whispering about all those years.
Medusa looked primed to kill.
And as I stared into her deep green eyes, I stared down my own death.
She would’ve killed me, if she hadn’t shifted at the last second and directed her gaze to the food carts instead. The explosion frightened all the human students. Griffin, Callan and I played our part well, ducking behind our chairs, pretending the little chunks of stone fruit and glass could actually damage us—but as soon as the headmaster hauled Medusa away to punish her for the ruckus, I turned to Griffin.
“We’re in way over our heads,” I told him.
Griffin sneered. “Maybe you are, crustacean,” he snapped. “But she doesn’t frighten me.”
Liar. Griffin was overwhelmed by how dangerous Medusa was—when Orcus assured us we wouldn’t have to deal with the famed Gorgon, I’d seen the relief on his face. Hell, I’d felt it too. The last thing I wanted to fight when I was clawing for a chance at Mount Olympus was someone who could merely blink and turn me, and all my glittering scales, into stone.
Turns out we’d underestimated the beast.
“Liam?” The nerd who I paid to help me make this whole “successful human student” façade work waved his hand in front of my face. I grabbed his wrist and squeezed, just a little reminder of who was stronger than who, making him drop the packet of papers he clutched in his hand. I wouldn’t have even looked in his direction, but he was the smartest kid in several of my classes. And he was a genius hacker. Thanks to my money and his skills, I didn’t have to waste my time studying to pass my classes. I could care less about my grades. I was here for one reason and one reason only and it had nothing to do with academics. Still, passing exams meant I could stay off the professor’s radar.
“What do you want, worm?” I snapped. I hated that he’d caught me in a thoughtful daze. Part of my survival at school revolved around the rest of the student body believing I was utterly thoughtless. Shallow. A mere jock and nothing else.
It was daring enough for me to even go into the library. I only came in here because it was dimly lit, cool and as dark as the bottom of the sea. I didn’t pay any attention to the books, though their multicolored spines were like the glow of a coral reef on the ocean’s floor.
It was a comforting place to be, in other words. Maybe as comforting as the giant pool on the other side of the campus. But I couldn’t spend every single moment in the water, much as I wanted to.
“I said have everything h-here that you need?” The poor guy was shaking.
For a moment, I had a flashback of my life as a sea monster, back before I was caught and contained by Orcus—swimming along the breaks of the sea, destroying greedy pirates who were unlucky enough to fall from their ships during squalls. My pulse quickened.
It felt like an eternity since I could be so free, unleashing all my power onto whatever prey happened to be in my way. And here was this gawky, short, incapable kid, sweating bullets to even be talking to me. I almost felt bad for the dude. “Thanks.” I practically threw the hundred-dollar bill at him—what humans wouldn’t do to make a few bucks—and he scurried off.
I took a seat at the closest table and slammed my textbooks down. Time to copy a few paragraphs from the book for an essay that was due, changing a few words here or there so none of the teachers would be the wiser—as if any of these burnt-out professors would actually notice.
I looked up as a nerdy kid moved out of an aisle and there, standing between the shelves, was the Gorgon herself.
Medusa, the girl with snakes for hair.
It was kind of unbelievable how many humans just accepted her as one of them. To me, it was obvious she was a monster just like us. But a little bit of makeup on her scales, a bit of cooperation from her hair and the humans were willing to see her as one of them. Humans, would believe anything.
Especially now, as she stood in the flickering lights of the library, her eyes gleaming.
Those eyes.
Only hours earlier, she’d toasted three entire food carts with them. What would happen to me if she was to look at me just right?
How would it feel to become stone?
I hastily shoved the exam into my backpack before she could catch a glimpse of what I’d just paid for.
“So.” She closed her book and slid it back on the shelf, then took a sliding step towards me. “Looks like you have an interesting arrangement going on with that kid.” It was fascinating to watch her move—if you saw her from the waist up, you’d think she was gliding on a snake’s tail with no feet at all.
Of course, if you only saw her from the neck down, you’d think she was Aphrodite.
Poor Medusa. Constantly being sized up like this in order to be humanized—which just proved she wasn’t human, would never be human.
She was pure monster.
“Yeah,” I said to her point, which was an obvious one. “Isn’t that something? He’s quite the Wyvern, isn’t he? Bursting with school pride. Always willi
ng to go above and beyond for his fellow students.”
Medusa narrowed her eyes at me and though I could feel the warmth radiating off her scales, her eyes filled me with a sickening chill. “I wonder if the headmaster would want to hear about that,” she mused. “I’m sure he’d be particularly interested to hear how much the kid charges for test answers. I’m pretty curious myself. Though, I have a little more self-respect than to cheat my way through human school.”
Gods, if only she was anything but the monster I knew her to be, if her face wasn’t the hideously cursed one Athena had given her as punishment all those years ago, if she wasn’t a stone-cold man-killer. There was something sexual which oozed from this creature, something irresistible. No wonder she was able to lure men to her temple and kill them before she was caught and imprisoned in her sea cave.
Except for the face, she was the ideal woman.
And even the face was … well, it was interesting, to be sure.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“Go ahead,” I challenged, leaning back in my chair, trying my hardest to look casual and not like my heart was pounding in the presence of this perfect apex predator. “Tell the headmaster what you think you saw here today. But do you really think he’ll believe you? You, the one who tried to blow up the lunchroom?”
Aha. That did it. Medusa stopped moving towards me and smoothed back her hair. “Who knows,” she replied coyly. “So very bold of you guys to plaster my dead mother’s poems all over the cafeteria. Very touching.” She glanced down at the floor and sighed deeply. “I knew monsters were heartless, but you guys must have actual portals to Hades deep within your chests.”
Don’t, I instructed myself. Don’t let her get to you. She was trying to incite guilt, remorse. But she was more monstrous than any of us. What we did with the journal was justified—anything to get rid of her.
“Our pleasure.” I managed not to choke on the words, pushing the image of a devastated Medusa holding the soggy remnants of her deceased mother’s journal and watching it crumble into pulp. “It was meant to be a hint, you know, that you should leave school. Was it enough, or do we need to do something more?”