Stone Cold: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Gods & Monsters Book 1)

by Kate Nova

  A lifetime of believing that I was so monstrous, I had to be kept away from everyone else in a sea cave—more than a lifetime. Hundreds of lifetimes. I’d been cursed, then I’d been caged and forgotten.

  It would take more than just an errant compliment from some random monster to heal me so quickly.

  Griffin seemed to read this on my face, as well. “What are you so afraid of?” he whispered.

  “Not you,” I snapped, crossing my arms protectively over my chest. “Not anything. It’s pretty hard to scare the girl who has nothing to lose.”

  Death, dismemberment, mine or that of my loved ones—there wasn’t anything Orcus could dish out at me that I hadn’t already experienced and survived.

  “What are you afraid of?” I threw back at Griffin. “Afraid I’m going to ruin yours and Orcus’s big plans? Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I don’t care how; I don’t care what I have to do to bring you down, I’ll do it. I may have started out human, but I’m a monster now. And I’m going to fight like one.”

  My heart hammered against my chest. I was ready to punch, kick, grow claws, whatever it took to get Griffin out of my way so I could figure out where Natalie and the other girls were and get back to Mount Olympus.

  Mount Olympus was where my salvation lay.

  Mount Olympus was where I would find vengeance.

  But Griffin exhaled, let go of me and backed into Natalie’s room, holding the door open. “Please,” he said. “Just come in. We need to talk.”

  I stayed rooted in place. “Why should I—”

  “Because I’m not working for Orcus,” Griffin growled, then quieted his voice. “I’m here for Apollo.”

  My breath caught in my throat as I searched his face for any signs of lying. Griffin kept his gaze glued on me and his mouth solemn, letting me read him, unashamed and unafraid.

  “Orcus is up to something, something heinous,” he went on, regret coloring his tone. “And I’ve got to stop him—but I can’t do it alone. Please. I need your help.”

  Apollo.

  Griffin was working for the god of the sun.

  I had a thousand reasons not to believe him—or I thought I did. As I went through them in my mind, I dismissed all but one.

  I didn’t want to believe him, because that meant our kiss might have been real.

  It meant that we might be—

  I shook my head, clearing my mind of such thoughts.

  “Please,” he said again. “At least hear what I have to say. For Natalie’s sake.”

  Natalie. Laura. Katie. This term had already claimed three human girls, girls who’d been nothing but kind to me.

  “For them,” I finally said, my voice shaking.

  Numb with disbelief, I peeled myself from the doorway and went into the room with Griffin, who, I was supposed to believe wasn’t as monstrous as he seemed.

  Chapter 26

  Medusa

  “So …” I was hovering near Natalie’s window, afraid of touching any of her things. “Tell me everything.” She might still come back, then it would feel weird or traitorous if I’d touched anything that belonged to her.

  Griffin, on the other hand, made himself comfortable. He’d sunk to her bed, his legs propped up, his elbow pressing into her pillow, watching me walk back and forth as if the room belonged to him—but maybe this was how he always felt. Maybe he strolled around the entire world, feeling like it was at least partly his.

  Oh, how I envied him.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said after I glared at him for his silence. “There’s just … a lot—”

  “Start at the beginning,” I cut in impatiently, “and tell me everything.”

  And Griffin did. All about how he’d once been a griffin who terrorized the northern forests of Europe and loved doing it. He’d been caught by some mercenaries and forced into working as a hired beast for land wars. Ultimately, when his side lost, Ares had him condemned to the Sicidonia Island with Orcus the beast keeper, who immediately filled Griffin’s ear with his mutinous plans.

  Orcus was tired of being a slave to the gods and goddesses. They treated him like a zookeeper, expecting him to care for the discarded animals and creatures which couldn’t be easily crushed and killed like cockroaches.

  He was tired of doing thankless dirty work and had been developing a plan to make Zeus and the other gods pay.

  “And what is that plan, exactly?” I stopped pacing, leaning over him, my heart thumping. This was it—he was going to give me all the information that I needed.

  I’d been searching for this information ever since I’d arrived here.

  “He hasn’t told me,” Griffin said and I slumped in defeat.

  “What?” I groaned. “Are you serious?”

  “He’s told me little bits and pieces, but not enough for me to put it all together and stop him.” Griffin lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling and ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve been trying to get more out of him, but he won’t share any more with me. Not until phase two, he keeps saying.”

  Those dark curls … My own hand longed to touch them, but I stayed back.

  “What’s phase two?” I pressed. “And what was phase one?”

  “Phase one was getting Zeus to agree to this deal in the first place,” Griffin said, closing his eyes in frustration. “I know Orcus went up to Mount Olympus to vouch for the beasts on Sicidonia Island so we’d be allowed to return, but now, I don’t think he cared about getting us back to Mount Olympus at all. He probably could’ve talked Zeus into letting us come right up there, but that’s not what he wanted.”

  I frowned, taking all of this in. “But … wasn’t the whole point to get you into Olympus for some sort of takeover?” That’s what Athena had hinted at. That was the kind of information she’d been given and that she’d passed on to me. That’s what made sense.

  But if Orcus was trying to get the beasts all back down here to Earth all along …

  Griffin glanced up at me from the bed and the anguish in his eyes, filled with the same sort of confusion and loss I felt, made my heart pitter-patter.

  “But you’re working with Apollo,” I said, trying to keep focused on the task at hand. “Surely he has some idea about what Orcus is up to?”

  “If he knew the whole plot,” Griffin countered with a frown, “then he wouldn’t be using a lowly griffin to spy on the beast keeper, would he?”

  I leaned against the wall, letting myself have this one contact with something of Natalie’s—the wall technically belonged to the school, after all—and thought about this.

  Griffin looked so forlorn, so surprisingly down. I wasn’t used to seeing him like this. He was student body president. He was captain of the football team. Those were titles that were obviously arranged for him by Orcus and I didn’t know what kind of mind warp had been done on the rest of the student body to make them believe that they’d actually voted him in, but they loved him. He was king of the school, their prince, their beloved. Yet here, instead of being the bright-eyed, confident popular guy, he looked defeated.

  Worried.

  Maybe even a little bit unsure of himself.

  I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have to go up against something as insane as a human college on earth and not even be allowed to keep your own body. Griffin wasn’t human. He was usually a majestic lion creature with an eagle’s head and wings. He could fly, jump, and destroy.

  But here, in this college, he had to be human.

  Splendor forced to reside in a human body, which he thought of as weak.

  The one he’d been put into was muscle and strength and pure sex appeal, obviously designed to draw the college girls in—

  And then Orcus would take them and do whatever he was doing.

  “I don’t know how to find out what he’s up to. He’s moving into phase two of his plan and I don’t even know what it is.”

  He stared back up at the ceiling, looking utterly lost, bu
t when he glanced back at me there was a question in those eyes.

  A plea for help.

  “Those girls,” he said, swallowing hard. “First Katie, then Laura, and now Natalie … I don’t know where he’s taken them. But we have to find them.”

  “I know,” I shot back. “I’m not the one who—” But I realized I had no idea what he was responsible for. Maybe he’d been trying to search for the girls all along.

  Maybe between his awful threats and his outright violent behavior towards me, he’d been trying to get them back.

  And what had I done?

  Sure, I’d snuck around the auditorium, hoping to see a glimpse of a clue. But I’d been so concerned with my own problems.

  Problems which were greatly caused by Griffin, Liam and Callan, yes. But I had a chance to look for these girls now and save them from whatever fate Orcus was leading them towards. I wouldn’t let them be pawns in his game.

  “We’re going to find them,” I said, my teeth gritted, feeling much less confident than I was trying to come across as. “And we’re going to bring Orcus down. Especially now that I know where he’s been hiding.”

  Griffin’s eyes widened in shock. “You know?” he gasped.

  “Know that the beloved Headmaster Armstrong is really the beast keeper in disguise? Yeah, I know. Bastard peeled his face off when he locked me up earlier. Of course, I recognized his eyes moments before the big reveal,” I scoffed and paced to the window. “Did he come here to keep you three in line?”

  “I have no idea. We didn’t even know he was here until recently. And there are definitely more than three, I mean four monsters here. I don’t even know how many because he didn’t tell us all about each other. It’s like he only revealed bits of his plan to each person. None of us have the whole picture.” Griffin growled in frustration.

  “Well, he’s going to pay,” I vowed.

  Yet another name to add to my list of men to retaliate against for their wrongs—but for now, Griffin and I needed to get to that masquerade.

  Griffin stood up just as I sank down in defeat.

  “Shit,” I said, “I was going to ask Natalie if she had something I could borrow for the masquerade. I can’t go like this. Orcus will recognize me in an instant.”

  Griffin considered me, his eyes following the curves of my body from head to toe and I felt a rush of heat. He had a familiar monstrous look on his very human face, almost like he was a predator getting ready to pounce. He strode over to Natalie’s closet and opened it.

  “Maybe there’s something in here you could wear.”

  “Don’t!” I started. “You can’t go through her things. She’s not here!” Hopefully she’s still alive, I thought to myself, but either way, I didn’t feel good about rummaging through someone else’s private belongings.

  But Griffin reached into the back of the closet and pulled out a huge, bright white, poufy and frilly dress with lacey sleeves and a train.

  “What the hell is that?” It looked like a wedding dress.

  Griffin took it out of the closet and held it up by its hanger. A matching white mask unfurled with long, streaming ribbons to tie it to a head and I giggled. It was over the top,

  But Griffin slipped it off the hanger and tried to hand it to me. “Here,” he said. “Put it on.”

  “I can’t wear that!” I balked. “It’s so, so frilly!”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Griffin countered. “You’re trying to blend in and you need a costume. Do you have another idea? Because I certainly don’t.”

  “But … I’ll look ridiculous,” I started and then realized he was right. It didn’t matter, and besides, when did I start caring so much about how I looked? I ripped the dress from him and narrowed my eyes. “Could you leave, please, while I get changed?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Griffin chuckled, but he turned his back as I stripped down before pulling the abysmal waste of white tulle onto my body. It was surprisingly light, considering how many yards of fabric it carried but it was anything but loose.

  I felt naked. Exposed. I felt like the contrast between my face and this fluffy, pretty costume would break the world apart, but I had to do this in order to get into that party unnoticed. That’s all that mattered.

  “All right,” I muttered. “You can turn around.” I pulled my snake hair up into a twist and tied the mask around my head.

  Griffin faced me again and was quiet as he took it all in.

  “You look …” he replied, and then crossed over to me, my nerves prickling in my stomach as he closed the distance between us. He leaned down and softly kissed my cheek. “I don’t give a damn what you say. You’re beautiful.”

  And then he straightened, clearly remembering the task at hand. “Orcus is expecting me at the Halloween party. He wanted me to guard one of the doors that leads to the auditorium. I don’t know why, but he’ll be suspicious if I don’t show up for my post.”

  I somehow remembered to nod. “I’ll meet you there,” I breathed and then Griffin was gone.

  I counted to a thousand before I left, waiting for my heart to slow down so I could think clearly about all I had to do.

  But it never did.

  Chapter 27

  Medusa

  The sun had just started to set when I left for the party. I kept to the outside, walking among the shadows, moving beneath the trees.

  The last thing I wanted was attention drawn to me, so, I forced myself to take my time, making every step deliberate and light on the pathway, despite the swell of panic in my chest that told me to hurry up.

  It was shaping up to be a beautiful night—but I couldn’t focus on that. I had to be aware of my surroundings and I had to make sure I completed my task. Get into the party, find out wherever Orcus had taken the girls and get them back safely.

  But my mind was whirling. The faces of the three missing girls surfaced occasionally, making my heart pang, thinking of their confused friends and their grieving families and the overall sense of unease that their vanishing had caused in the rest of the student body. But three other faces popped up in my thoughts much more aggressively.

  Griffin, Liam, Callan.

  Three guys who were still an enigma to me.

  Griffin had at least confided in me—explained to me where he was coming from and the knowledge that he was a spy for Apollo made sense the more I thought about it. But it still didn’t explain why he’d been so cruel to me. And then I thought about that evening in the student center when we’d kissed, the passion with which he’d held me, the feeling of his tongue grazing my lips …

  But that night at Eric’s party, when Griffin had held me over the edge of the roof … I’d never forget the rage on his face, the ice in his eyes.

  I guess even after we’d kissed, Griffin still couldn’t wait to get rid of the Gorgon any way he could.

  Liam, though … Liam had been the one to stop Griffin. I had no idea if he was a spy for Apollo as well. Griffin hadn’t said, and I’d been too bewildered to ask. But something about seeing me dangling over the roof, moments from my death … it had gotten to him. Even if he was working for Orcus, there was obviously a part of him that had felt guilty about possibly having my blood on his hands.

  Maybe it was due to that time in the library, when I’d spotted him paying some student for help with his exams. I couldn’t forget the way he’d looked at me, like he didn’t know if he wanted to kiss me or kill me.

  And Callan … He’d been the only one of the three who’d apologized for hurting me after he’d ruined my mother’s journal. He’d been the only one who’d warned me against danger instead of turning me to face it. I still didn’t know if he was working directly for Orcus or if he, like Griffin, had a secret task from one of the gods. But I thought about the way he’d kissed me outside the pool party and part of my brain thought it wasn’t possible. There was no way someone who’d kissed me so passionately could possibly want me dead. How could that be?

  There was stil
l so much to figure out about them, but first things first, I had to get into the Halloween party and find the missing girls.

  And I wouldn’t let anyone distract me.

  I stopped just before the double doors which led into the student center.

  I'd have to move swiftly and keep my head down. I lifted the hem of my dress, took a deep breath and started walking towards the entrance—

  “Well, there you are.” The voice that stopped me halfway through the doors to the student center made my stomach jolt.

  Orcus.

  He walked towards the doorway with open arms, wearing a gray suit and that headmaster mask which made it impossible to detect him as a fraud.

  “Miss Larson,” he said with a smile, nodding at me. “Welcome to the party.”

  Miss Larson … I thought quickly. There was a girl named Emily Larson who was friends with Natalie—that must be who he was referring to.

  That must be who he thought I was.

  “Thanks,” I replied, keeping my eyes averted.

  I held my breath as he inspected my mask and I tried to resist the urge to step back. Would he know it was me? Would he recognize the reptilian coldness in my eyes? “Natalie wasn’t in her room when I went to meet her. Do you know if she’s here?”

  He nodded. “Yes, she came early to help the committee decorate. In fact, she was working on a special room for tonight, a sort of haunted house attraction for the party.”

  Clearly he was lying. She hadn’t come to decorate; he’d lured her here somehow and used her for whatever phase of his awful plan he was in now.

  “Oh, awesome. I’ll have to check it out. Where is it?”

  Orcus smiled and there was a greedy shine to his eyes that looked positively villainous. How could any of these humans not notice it? How did any of them honestly trust him as their headmaster? “There’s a door behind the auditorium. It’ll lead you downstairs to the haunted room.”

  I had to make my way back there and investigate.

  “Thanks.”

  I gathered my skirt and set off down the hall, my legs anxious to get me to the auditorium so I could find those missing girls. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.