by Kate Nova
Those growls in the walls … I knew it had something to do with those sounds. It wasn’t just rats. It couldn’t be.
Katie had been so friendly to me. I had to at least try to find her.
I walked into my classroom and someone hissed, “Get out, murderer. We don’t want you here.”
I glanced around to see who’d said it, but before I could take anything in, someone threw something long, black and glittering at me.
A snake.
Someone else threw another one. Snakes, more than I could count, thrown right into my face, tangling with my own snake hair, twisting around my neck.
Right in the middle of the classroom, Griffin held up one last snake, shining under the fluorescent lights. His eyes were gleeful as he aimed it at my head. “Monster,” he whispered and let the snake fly.
Griffin. He was behind this.
Where did they even get these many snakes? As far as I could tell, none of them were venomous, but I didn’t care what my own hair was made of, it was unnerving to have reptiles thrown at your face no matter who you were.
There was no professor in sight. For a moment, I decided I must have wandered into the wrong classroom, but this was my history class, exactly where I was supposed to be. These were all students who had, just last week, tolerated the strangely creepy monster-girl who sat in the desks among them—but Griffin had turned them all against me.
He didn’t even belong in this class, but it didn’t matter to them. He was their student body president and apparently, they’d follow him into any battle.
“I didn’t do anything!” I wailed. “I have no idea where Katie is—”
“Because you cut her up into pieces and flung her into the campus lake!” someone shouted.
Another snake came right at me, its scaly body wrapping over my shoulder. It coiled in terror and I let it slide down my arm.
Again, I protested, but it was pointless. They weren’t hearing anything I said and the snakes kept raining on me.
I pulled them off me as fast as I could and let them fall to the ground, writhing. Then I ran out of the room, all the way to the women’s bathroom, where I locked myself in a stall.
It was one thing to have the headmaster suspicious. My explosion in the lunchroom had given him a very good reason to keep one eye on me.
But it was another thing to have the whole school turned against me—and Griffin was pulling those strings. He and his friends would do anything to get rid of me and yet I had to find a way to befriend them and get them to spill their secrets.
Right now, however, I wanted to push them off a cliff.
How on Earth could I possibly face them and smile, knowing what they’d put me through yet again?
How could I possibly get back to class and act like everything was fine? How was I going to go through my normal day full of lectures and homework and group projects, knowing everyone hated me?
How could any of us keep going knowing Katie was somewhere, probably in trouble?
This was a fucking mess and I had no idea how to even begin untangling it.
Chapter 14
Callan
We had her.
It was too much. I was so sure she’d call it quits now. After the bullshit we gave her last week, stealing her journal, goading her into turning the food carts into stone, thus exploding them and now, blaming her for the disappearance of a student? It had to be too much.
The snakes were Griffin’s idea. Actually, most of the really awful stuff was either Griffin or Liam. I wasn’t as naturally gifted at thinking up ways to be mean as they were.
We all thought it would be enough.
But in walked Medusa this morning, right to her spot in the cafeteria, doing breakfast duty with a hairnet pulled over those snaky tendrils of hers and a glare on her face that could curdle milk.
“What?” Griffin punched his fist into the nearest wall. “How the fuck is she still here? What do we have to do, shit on her lunch?”
“Even that wouldn’t work,” Liam muttered. “She eats like a fucking bird.”
Both looked up at me and I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “You guys are the monsters. Not me.”
Griffin narrowed his eyes and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. A stupid move on his part. I’d have him flattened on his back without moving more than one arm. Maybe in his true griffin form, he’d be able to fly around my head and try to scratch my eyes out with his eagle talons, but we were humans now.
And even as a human, I was taller than he was.
“You don’t think you qualify as a beast, giant?” Griffin sneered.
No, I didn’t. I knew I wasn’t the same as the rest of them. I didn’t have feathers or fangs or wings or claws. My only sin against nature was that I was four times as big as the largest man.
When Apollo, god of the sun, had murdered my mother during an argument with my clan, I sought vengeance—and for that, I was punished.
I’d been captured by Orcus and kept on Sicidonia, the island prison where he kept the rest of the monsters who’d plagued heroes and gods alike during the golden age of our people.
But even Orcus knew I didn’t really belong.
“Zeus says you’re to stay here before you devour an entire flock of sheep or roll a boulder onto a town,” the beast keeper had said when he loosened the ropes around my wrists and ankles. I didn’t know how he’d even managed to bring me to the island. He couldn’t have lifted me himself. “But don’t you worry,” Orcus had assured me after I was settled. “I have a plan.”
A plan that was going to change everything as soon as we were back on Mount Olympus.
We just had to make it through this school year without incident and then we’d be in position.
“Why is it so important that we get rid of her, anyway?” I asked and both Griffin and Liam whipped their heads to look at me. “I just don’t see why we can’t work around her. Ignore her, even. She doesn’t seem to care about bothering us—”
“Because Orcus said if we saw the Gorgon, we had to get rid of her.” Liam was busy tattooing his knuckles with a blue pen; he’d recreated the scales which usually covered his body. Maybe he wasn’t the only one missing his natural form.
I hated being in this human body. I was used to being able to smell the clouds, see across entire cities with one glimpse, walk among mountains. But here on Earth, I was cut down to half my usual size. And even though I was still head and shoulders above everyone else, the shift was enough to throw me off guard.
“Yeah, but I don’t see why—” I started.
Both Griffin and Liam looked at me again like I was a dimwit.
“The Gorgon is dangerous,” he said. “Orcus thinks she’s plotting something that’ll ruin all our plans and he says she’s gotta go, so she’ll go. We’ll get rid of her one way or another. We just have to work harder.”
“All right,” I said, lifting my hands up in innocence.
After a moment Griffin added, “Don’t let your dick pull you into her orbit. That goes for both of you.”
Liam sputtered, like he was insulted by the very suggestion, but we all knew what Griffin was referring to.
I personally had seen both of them ogling her from head to toe and her mouth had shown up in my dreams already—pursed, her lips wrapped around my—
“She’s a predator,” Griffin went on. “Cursed by the gods to be everything a man wants from the neck down. But from the neck up, she’s nothing but a monster. So stay back. Keep your heads about you. And let’s meet after class today to figure out what we can try next.”
Liam nodded in agreement. “We tried embarrassing her. Maybe next we should try just straight-up pissing her off.”
I thought again of her eyes in the cafeteria, the way they’d glowed green as emeralds when the sunlight hit them. The intensity and the pure rage in them as she turned the food carts into stone. We’d already pissed her off, I realized. The girl was just much more resilient than any of u
s were planning on.
“There she is,” Griffin mumbled and we all watched the snake-eyed girl bring out a fresh tray of cinnamon rolls from the kitchen and lay them on the counter. She was in another classic human-looking outfit today—tight jeans and a long-sleeved, black t-shirt. An insult of a gross stained apron was tied to her front, but even the apron couldn’t hide the curves of her body.
Her hips jutted out like a guitar and as she bent over to get a rag from beneath the counter, I tracked the way her ass rounded itself out in those jeans.
The perfect predator, indeed. No man could resist … and then it would be too late.
Griffin caught me staring. “The journal was your idea and it didn’t work. You’re up again.”
“What?”
He aimed me right at Medusa’s food cart. “Go over there and see if you can make her cry. Go on. Since you’re so interested in her ass right now.”
“Maybe you can get her to fuck you then leave halfway through the deed for another girl,” Liam added with a chortle.
A cruel suggestion and one I hoped I didn’t have to resort to. I knew that once I stripped Medusa down and got her on my cock, I wouldn’t be able to stop. My giant’s hands on her hips, leaning up to kiss her breasts, those lips of hers on mine …
My cock twitched a little as I strolled across the cafeteria to her food cart, but I tried my best to ignore it.
She’s killed men, I reminded myself. She’s a murderer and a destroyer. She killed her own mother. She’s dangerous and the other guys are right. The sooner we can be rid of her, the better.
Before she takes us out herself.
She stretched her arms up and over her head. I followed the line of her breasts, imagining cupping them and pressing my chest against hers. I nearly slapped myself.
No man could resist her—but I would have to find a way.
Medusa had busied herself with her work, lost in her own little world, ignoring all the students who whispered amongst themselves as they came to get their cinnamon rolls from her food cart. But it was always impossible to ignore me. She spotted my shadow first, and though other women her size would look at me and be startled, she just glared even harder.
“What do you want?” she asked after a moment. “Rolls are right here.”
I shook my head. I should’ve said something quippy about how I didn’t want any cinnamon rolls that were touched by snake germs, or something like that—Griffin and Liam were always best at the little mean comments. They could make them fly out like darts and they always hit their targets.
But I was terrible at coming up with rude things to say on the fly.
And it was especially difficult when Medusa was glancing up at me with those eyes. Yes, they were snake’s eyes. And yes, they were deadly weapons when she wanted to employ them—but they were also surprisingly mesmerizing.
As was the rest of her face.
I know she was cursed to be uglier than any human alive, but there was something kind of fascinating about it.
There was no one else like her, that was certain.
Why wasn’t she barking at me? I realized after a few moments that I’d been nervous to come over here not just because she was a woman with the ability to turn a man to stone, but because not so long ago, we’d humiliated her in this very cafeteria.
Just yesterday, I stood up in the auditorium and basically accused her, in front of the entire school, of kidnapping or killing that girl Katie. Yet Medusa wasn’t throwing daggers at me. She wasn’t snapping at me or insulting me or doing anything that, frankly, she would be completely justified in doing.
She was just watching me, patient, cautious, curious.
“The, um, cinnamon rolls look good,” I said, just to break the silence, even though I knew she hadn’t made them herself.
“Thanks, but I didn’t have anything to do with baking them,” she muttered darkly, her gaze drifting up to meet mine again. “Just like I didn’t have anything to do with Katie disappearing.”
There it was—a confrontation. And yet it was still pretty benign. She would’ve been totally right to scream at me, but she didn’t.
It was almost like … she was trying to be friendly? Was I imagining this?
“I was just reporting what I saw,” I answered and a flash of rage glowed in her emerald eyes. She didn’t believe me for one second, but instead of calling me on it, she took in a deep breath.
“Yes, well. That’s the responsible thing to do, I suppose.”
I was right. She was trying to be friendly. Or, if not friendly, then at least friendly enough to keep the peace.
Behind me somewhere, Griffin and Liam were watching, waiting for me to make a jab at her that was shocking and hurtful enough to get a reaction out of her—
But I decided to try to get a reaction a different way.
“Listen,” I said and I leaned over the food cart, so it was clear this was just for her own ears. “I’m really sorry about the journal.”
Her eyes widened.
“I had no idea it would get ruined.” That was the truth. When Griffin told me to keep my eyes out for a way to sabotage the Gorgon and I’d brought out the journal I’d stolen, I thought for sure we’d just leave it on the cafeteria table so she could recover it.
I hadn’t meant for it to be destroyed.
Medusa studied me for a moment, then looked away. But not before I saw the deep sadness in her eyes. For a moment, I felt my chest tighten.
“Yeah, well. That’s what I get for bringing my dead mother’s journal with me to school, you know?” Her voice was soft but clear, like a whispered secret meant only for me.
Dead mother—the statement hit me in the stomach and hollowed me out.
“It was hers, not mine,” Medusa explained, seeing the look of confusion on my face. “And it was the last thing I had of hers. Thanks to you and your friends, all I have left of my mother now are memories.”
All I have left are memories …
I was struck by the image of my own mother, thirty feet tall, the most well-loved giantess in my land, struck in the head by catapults’ stones in a land war which took her life.
The last time I saw her, she was sinking into the sea, the waves rushing up around her and then she was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again, only this time I meant it. This time, I understood the damage we’d done. “I really am.”
There was a struggle happening within Medusa right now. Part of her looked positively murderous, like she wanted to slash at me with her spatula.
But the other part of her looked grateful. Grateful to finally have me understand the gravity of what we’d done with the journal and this was the part of her that won.
“It’s fine.” She sniffed, then looked past me at the guy who suddenly appeared behind me in line. The message was received: conversation with Callan was over.
I shuffled back to where Griffin and Liam were waiting and when they probed me for details about our exchange, I shrugged.
“I told her if she didn’t leave school, I’d put scorpions in her bed.”
A weak threat—even Griffin thought so, I could tell. But he stared at our target across the cafeteria, shaking his head.
“We’ll find something to get her with,” he murmured. “And then she’ll be out of our way and Orcus can get on with his plans.”
Yes, Orcus, the plans, the takeover of Mount Olympus—but nothing right now seemed as important as making sure Medusa never looked at me with those lost, hurt eyes ever again.
Chapter 15
Medusa
Well, fuck.
That sucked.
I was decent to Callan when he came through my line and it was all I could do to not grab the tray of cinnamon rolls and bounce it off his giant head.
But somehow, I kept my cool.
And honestly, it was so much harder than I’d been expecting, partly because Callan hadn’t been nasty to me at all. Insults, I could dodge. I could easily put up a
wall of silence, pretending I didn’t hear the horrible things they were all justified in saying—but friendliness? Decency? Callan had actually smiled at me and he’d apologized.
Of course, I had no reason to believe he was sincere. For all I knew, he was sent over to set me up for their next attack, get me all soft and disarmed with an apology, a charming smile … and then they’d launch their next cruelty at me like they’d thrown snakes at my head.
Whatever.
I’d be ready for them.
Somehow, I’d managed to keep it together. Somehow, I’d managed to not rip his head off.
I’d kept the door open for more friendliness in the future—so I could press Callan for the information I needed.
It was the end of the day. Classes were finished and I had a stack of homework a mile high to complete this week. But I decided to go the long way back to my dorm, through the student center, so I can walk past the auditorium.
I hadn’t stopped thinking about Katie. At first I’d thought maybe this whole thing was orchestrated to set me up as the fall-guy. Callan had been pretty quick to leap up and sell me out to the headmaster. But once I realized everyone in the school was genuinely concerned about her, I let myself be concerned too.
What had happened to her? I pondered the possibilities as I strolled down the student center’s long hallway towards the auditorium.
Did she go back home to her family for an emergency? I was sure the school had already contacted them to see if that was where she’d gone to, but if not, that was a possibility.
Had she been in trouble herself? I knew that even the innocent-looking ones were sometimes mixed up in the worst kinds of things.
But even if Katie was secretly involved in something dangerous, she didn’t deserve to completely vanish without a trace. And if there was anything I could do to help, any clues that the administration had missed, well … I wanted to find them.
It wasn’t at all what I was supposed to be spending my time on while here at school, but I couldn’t help it. I really didn’t think I could just forget about Katie. Not after she’d been so nice to me.