Damaged Gods (Monsters of Saint Mark's #1)

by K. C. Cross

  “No,” she says without emotion. “It’s not gonna happen. I mean, even if I did manage to figure out how to break the curse, Grant said the debt book is a trap. He says you need a spell to get out of it. And I think he’s right. I’m so in debt already, it’s such a joke. And we’ll never stop needing things. Even if it was keeping track and erasing debts, there will always be new ones. Like this gas.”

  “The Book of Debt isn’t fake, Pie. It does keep track. And it’s honest.”

  She does a half-hearted shrug. “It’s not likely, Pell.”

  “You want me to prove that true too?”

  “How?”

  “Simple.” I find myself grinning. “All you have to do is please me and watch your debt disappear in real time.” I pull into the sanctuary’s back lot, park the Jeep, and turn it off.

  And when I look at her, I realize she’s suspicious of me again, all my goodwill suddenly erased. “You want me to wash your feet, Pell? Like a fucking slave?”

  “That’s just one way.”

  “You want me to—”

  I point at her. “Do not say ‘blowjob.’ I will stop talking to you forever. I’m not a bad guy. I didn’t write that book. I didn’t make up these rules. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m stuck here, just like you.”

  She lets out a long breath. “Then how? If not feet, if not…” I caution her with my eyes. “If not that other thing, then how?”

  “You could polish my horns. No one’s done it in a very long time. They could use it.”

  She actually checks my horns for dullness and I have to cover my mouth with my fist to hide my amusement. Is she slow? Is she crazy? Is she naïve?

  Or is she just cute?

  “And this will knock a debt off?” Pie seems dubious.

  “A nice chunk,” I say. “I like the horn polish. A lot. It feels good. Like a back massage. And the debts are erased according to how much you please me.”

  “Why is it like that?”

  “Why is it like what?”

  “Why does this curse care about your… pleasure?”

  “Huh.” I think about that for a moment. I feel like I know the answer to this, but I can’t quite conjure it up. “I dunno. I can’t remember.”

  “Well, it feels like a plot device to me. It feels… fake.”

  “For fuck’s sake. None of this is fake. You’re wearing the ring. You’re trapped here. The gray mist. The apothecary. Fucking Tomas! It’s all real.”

  She exhales loudly, not looking at me, just focusing on something outside by the lake for a few moments. “Did Grant ever polish your horns?”

  “Never. I didn’t let him touch me. That’s probably why he thinks it doesn’t work. All he ever did was cook for me. And in the beginning, we used to go drinking. And he’d glamour me. He knows that worked. So all that shit he talked to you, that’s all it was. Just shit. He’s a fucking liar.”

  “I don’t know. He seems to be in control of things.”

  “In control of what?”

  She turns her head to look me in the eyes. Her eyes are a very pretty blue color. Like cornflowers. And somehow, maybe the moon is reflecting off the lake or something, but her eyes are lit up with a little glow. “He wasn’t old, Pell. He was young when I saw him in town. He looked exactly the way he did when I first saw him. Before he took the ring off. He knows things. And he’s in control of things.”

  “How?”

  Pie, of course, has no answer for me.

  “I mean… that’s not possible. He had debts. He had so much debt, Pie. It would’ve taken centuries to wipe it away.”

  “It’s an easy explanation,” Pie says. “That book is bullshit.”

  “No.” I’m shaking my head. “You saw him get old.” I look at her for confirmation and she nods. “So it’s not bullshit. The debt caught up. He got out of it. But how?”

  “I think he really does do magic, Pell. Like…” She sucks in a breath and then blows it out with her words. “Like big, bad, serious magic. He said he had a spell. He offered it to me. He told me how to make money. He said I could stay for as long as I wanted, make money on the outside, and then he could call up a new caretaker with another flyer when I was ready to leave.”

  My mouth drops open. “What did you say?”

  “I told him to shove it up his ass. Sorta. But I’m not interested in getting rich off this curse. That’s such a bad idea. And I don’t want to leave. Not yet. And anyway, we already know where another caretaker is. Russ Roth is my ticket out if I ever do want to go.”

  I knew Grant was powerful, of course. He’s been very busy in that apothecary for decades. And the greenhouse is—I point at Pie. “At some point, sooner rather than later, remind me to show you the greenhouse. Maybe he fucked that all up too, but I doubt it. He didn’t know when you would come. I mean, did he know you were coming?”

  “No. He was surprised. And all the way across the sanctuary. He was so out of breath when he finally found me in that front hall, he could barely talk.”

  “Right. That’s good. If he didn’t know you were coming, then the greenhouse is safe.”

  “What’s the big deal with the greenhouse? You got tomatoes out there or something?”

  This girl. I swear. Is she slow? Is she crazy? Is she naïve?

  She is just cute.

  “The herbs. We need them to restock the apothecary. We’ll have to go through it and get rid of all the plants he harvested. It’s gonna be a mess, but it’s gotta be done. The magic is important. We can look at that tomorrow. Tonight”—I point at her—“I’m gonna prove that the Book of Debt is real and you are in control of it.”

  Pie shrugs, flips the door handle, and gets out. “OK. Prove that I can work this debt off just by making you happy.”

  I get out too and wave her forward towards the gate, smiling to myself. Because this is gonna be fun, I think. We walk through and I head towards the path instead of turning towards the cottage. Pie balks, stopping in place. “What’s wrong now?” I sigh.

  She looks up the hill towards the cathedral, then back at me. “I don’t want to walk past those tombs. Can’t we do it down here?”

  I nod in the other direction. “All the stuff is up there. The tombs can’t hurt you.”

  She tsks her tongue and shakes her head. “I don’t believe that for a second. There are monsters inside them. And I’m pretty sure that those statues outside are just a glimpse of what’s waiting inside the tombs. I can’t really see them in there, but I feel them moving around. They make shadows. And they could just slide out and take me as I’m walking.”

  “They can’t, Pie. That door you see, it’s not really there. It’s just an illusion.”

  She is shaking her head now before I’m even done talking. “Oh, no, it’s not. I can feel them.” She gazes up the hill where the tombs pack the lawn shoulder to shoulder. “And there are so many of them.” Pie looks up at me, eyes wide and questioning. “Why are there so many of them?”

  “It’s continuously being populated. Like the upstairs of the cathedral.”

  She looks around, trying this explanation on for size. “But where do they come from? I mean, if it’s continuous, then where do these monsters start? Like… if this is their end, where is the beginning?”

  “Huh. I guess I never thought about that.”

  “How could you not think about that?”

  “In my defense, Pie, I’ve been here for a long fucking time. When I first got here, it was just me and Tarq. And Tomas, of course. He was already here though. And he doesn’t live in a tomb, he’s… never mind. My point is, these tombs all came later. Little bits at a time. One here, two there. And then, before I knew it, the place was full.”

  “And you never bothered to wonder where they were coming from?”

  “Well.” I let out a long exhale. “I just figured the curse was making the rounds.”

  “Making the rounds?”

  “Yeah. Like… um. You know. There’s a lot of fuck
ing monsters out there, all over the earth, and it just takes time to find them all to pack them up in tombs.” She actually stops walking to look at me. “What?” I ask.

  She just shakes her head. “I don’t know what I think about that.”

  “About what?”

  “Are you clueless, ignorant, or just… Zen?”

  I laugh, point at her. “Not sure what the Zen thing is, but I choose that one. The others are most certainly undesirable. Anyway,” I add, before she can think up more questions about that line of thinking, “you can’t get in the tomb, this is my point. Only I can enter the tombs. But here’s the catch on my side, I can’t see the doors.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. It’s a paradox. I can enter, but can’t see the doors. You can see the doors, but you can’t enter. And none of them can come out. Trust me. I’ve been here two thousand years and not a single monster has found their way out of those tombs. So when you walk alongside me up this path, you can’t even see the doors. No shadows at all.”

  She looks up the path again and her shoulders relax. “Oh. OK, then. But”—she turns back to me—“how do you get inside your tomb?”

  “Well, that one’s mine and I can see the opening.”

  “So I can’t ever go into your tomb?”

  “Why the hell would you want to go in there?”

  “I dunno. To see where you live.”

  I spread my arms wide to encompass the entire sanctuary. “I live here. You can see all of it.”

  “So your tomb though.” She is not letting this go. “It’s like your bedroom? Your private chambers or whatever?”

  “Sure. It’s like my bedroom, I guess. But it’s not a bedroom. It’s the woods.”

  “What? How is that possible?”

  “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

  “No. How is your tomb the woods?”

  “It’s like the cathedral. It’s different on the inside than it is on the out.”

  “Like my cottage.”

  “No. Not really. That’s like… I don’t know. Personal design preferences or whatever. My tomb is more like the hallways up the staircases.”

  “What hallways? I need to hear all about this. Like… right this very moment.”

  “You’d rather hear about my tomb than know that the Book of Debt is real?”

  She smirks up at me. “You just want me to polish your horns, don’t you?”

  “I mean…” I begin. She laughs. “I can lie and say no. But. Yeah. It feels good. It’s been a long time since I had a horn polish.”

  And even in the dim moonlight filtered through the tops of trees, I can see her blush.

  Is she slow? Stupid? Naïve?

  No.

  She is just cute.

  I wave my hand towards the path. “Shall we?”

  I take her back to the steam cave where we left the Book of Debt. I open it up to her page.

  Pages. She’s got quite a few of them already.

  This makes her deflate a little, but I’m ready. “Look.” I flip to the first page of the book and point to all the ways she can work off her debt. Of course, her eyes only see the sex. And she’s about to start pointing that out when I smack her finger away and show her the only one that matters tonight. “Right there. ‘Polish horns.’”

  She leans down to get a better look at the elaborate calligraphy. “One thousand? Is that in dollars?”

  “Dollars,” I confirm.

  “How come it’s dollars? Shouldn’t it be in… drachma or something?”

  “You’re definitely not stupid.”

  “What?” Her eyes narrow.

  “You’re close. The drachma? But that’s Greek. In Rome we called them aurei or denarii. It’s actually pretty complicated. But we’re not in Rome, so we don’t do things like the Romans. We’re in PA, and we do dollars.”

  “Hmm. OK, then. I’ll take a horn polish for one thousand, Alex.”

  “Who’s Alex?”

  She smiles, pats my chest like I’m simple. “It’s not important. Let’s do this.”

  And do I detect a little excitement in her voice?

  I do believe I do.

  I grab a wooden box off a nearby ledge and set it on a stone table just to the left of a configuration of rocks that allows me to sit and lean forward, resting my head on a smooth, flat stone to give her total access to my horns. I take out a pot of polish, remove the lid, and give it a smell.

  “Mmm. That kind of smells good.”

  “Sandalwood oil,” I say. “It’s old. But the paste is infused with magic, so it’s fine. One day though, you should learn to make your own batch of horn polish. It’s better that way. It will leave your imprint on me.” She goes still at this, maybe thinking too hard about that and what it might mean. So I change the subject. “Just dip your fingers in, get a little bit of paste, and then rub it into my horns.”

  She nods to herself, like she’s having a whole internal conversation, then sucks in a deep breath and dips her fingers into the jar.

  I lean forward on the stone, my chest pressing against the smooth rock, my face resting on my hands. And I close my eyes and almost moan when her gentle hands begin massaging the oil into my horns.

  It’s not as tame an act as I let on. My horns are twisted and hard like bone, but just picturing her hands as they slide around the curve of them turns me on a little.

  It’s a lot like a handjob, actually.

  “They’re hot,” she whispers.

  “Mmmm.”

  “How come they’re hot?”

  “I’m made of fire,” I mumble.

  “What?”

  “Pie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I enjoy it, at least?”

  “Sorr-ree. Jeez.”

  I pick up my head and look her in the eye. “I know it’s weird and you’re uncomfortable, but I don’t care. It feels good and I want to enjoy it. It’s been a long time. And I’ve never had a woman in here with me. This is… quite nice.”

  She frowns a little, but nods. “OK. I’ll shut up.”

  I feel a little bad for being so blunt. And now I can’t enjoy it because I feel bad. “Fuck it. If you need to talk your way through it, then fine. Talk. It will still feel good.”

  “Never mind,” she says. “We both want to get the maximum benefit out of this, right?”

  I put my head back down without answering her and she resumes her massage.

  Maybe this is just a transaction for her, but that’s not how it is for me.

  I am starting to enjoy Pie Vita and the debt is a reassurance to me.

  I don’t know how Grant got out of his debt and got his youthful body back, but Pie isn’t anything like Grant.

  There is no way she will break this curse and that means I could get stuck here with her forever.

  I’m perfectly OK with that.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - PIE

  Polishing horns is very much, almost totally—I mean, let’s just be honest here, it’s exactly like giving a handjob.

  I can only chuckle internally about this because… yeah. He got me.

  And he’s enjoying the hell out of his “horn massage.” He’s even groaning a little.

  And reluctantly I admit, that sound he makes, it’s provocative. I can’t deny it. It’s like a rumble. Something low, and deep, and threatening. Like a growl, but quiet.

  Anyway. I just polish away as he relaxes. And… I might be studying the muscles on his back just a little. They are hard and tense. He’s got so many of them. I’m not sure if this is normal, but his back is like a topography of sexiness.

  Holy shit. I think that fucking cupid charm is still working or something.

  The moment I think that, the evening comes rushing back at me. And the whole shitshow with Grant aside, I don’t want to think about that disastrous ‘date’ with Sheriff Russ Roth ever again. Did I climb in his lap?

  Stop it. Pack that up and put it away, Pie. Just… chill. And think about the glorious mon
ster in your hands at the moment.

  Fuck. I need to find an antidote for this stupid spell. Obviously, it’s still working. Because glorious monster?

  No.

  A sharp pain shoots through my hands and I pull away, gasping. “What the hell was that?”

  Pell sits up a little so he can look over his shoulder at me. His eyes are droopy and seductive.

  See? There it is again! That stupid love spell!

  “What’s the problem?” Pell’s voice is husky. Like he just woke up. Or just had sex.

  “Your horns. They’re so hot now, I can’t touch them.”

  He frowns and looks put out about this. Then he nods his head to the little wooden box where he got the sandalwood oil from. “In that box there’s another paste. Try that one.” Then he drops his head down and just… assumes I will do that, I guess.

  I find three containers inside the box. I lift the lid off of each one and smell them. They are not rancid. In fact, one of them smells like lilacs. I like that one. But there’s another one that smells like eucalyptus and makes the tips of my fingers feel like ice, and I assume that’s the one he was referring to. So I place that one on the stone table and start working it into his horns.

  And sure enough, it does make the heat bearable. And even though the palms of my hands are bright red, they don’t hurt. In fact, they begin to tingle and then I sort of start to get into what I’m doing just a little more.

  His horns fall back over his shoulder blades in two twists. And my hands slide around these twists easily. The part where his horns meet the side of his head are very thick, and that girth continues until the first twist, then they taper around another twist until they come to a dull point at the end.

  There are little chips in the bone or whatever. Like he hasn’t been taking care of these horns. So I pay extra attention to those parts. And they glow a little. The way they did earlier when he was sleeping on my couch.