Chapter 1
As Ender Imorus stared down at Maris Rubin, his rage simmered inside, yet the feeling was so familiar that it was easy to hold back his Gorgon.
Not even a single scale had popped through the surface of his skin.
He'd had too much practice to lose it that easily.
No, when Ender shifted, it was always on purpose, or for a very good reason—like when he was in the mood for scaring someone shitless.
Staring at the fucker for barely a moment more, Ender kicked the chair that the Cryptid was strapped down in. It jolted, but didn’t move from the spot it was bolted down to, as Maris jerked back to consciousness.
The Cryptid stared wide-eyed at him, his heart going from relaxed to racing a marathon in barely a second, but the man remained quiet.
“Welcome back to the waking world, Maris. We were beginning to worry there, you were out for quite a while, wasn’t he, Toddles?” His gaze flicked up to Soren Odette, his second in command and older brother, who was standing only a few feet behind the man.
The Harpy’s expression was neutral, as Soren slowly drawled, “Nine hours and fifty-eight minutes, to be exact.”
Ender tipped up his cowboy hat with a chuckle. “Well, shit, we should have waited an extra two minutes and made it even!” The smirk on his face was wide now, as he met Maris’ gaze again. “Oh well. I’m curious, Maris, how much did they pay you?”
Maris swallowed. “I-I d-don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You hear that, Toddles, the man doesn’t know?!”
His brother just sighed, but then, the Harpy wasn’t a big fan of games.
“Unfortunately for you, Maris, fakin’ innocence ain’t gonna cut it.” His smirk turned vicious. “Because we all know what you did. You know what you did, and more importantly, I know what you did. So why don’t we cut the bullshit, and you answer my damn question?”
Not that he needed an answer. Ender knew well enough how much Maris was paid. In his mind, it was a pathetic pittance compared with the lives he’d been willing to sacrifice for it.
“Forgive me!” the Cryptid blurted out. “It was a mistake! I’ll make it up to you!”
He tsked. “See, that’s the crux of the issue here, boy. You think this was a simple mistake. That it’s something that can be made up.”
“It was! It can be fixed!”
“Oh, it was already ‘fixed’. But it doesn’t change the fact that you sold a couple of the individuals our organization was helping to fucking traffickers.”
“He was working with humans! Don’t you see, I just did what should have been done! We aren’t supposed to help them! He’s a traitor to our kind! He wasn’t even fully a Cryptid himself!”
See, that was the problem with having an organization that only recruited Cryptids with a slightly anti-human message.
It just attracted a lot of fucking bigots.
Ender may be anti-government, and have a strong distrust and dislike for most humans, but he did not in fact hate them, or believe that they all deserved to be trafficked, just because others were doing it to Cryptids.
The fact was, many of those doing the trafficking were Cryptids themselves.
Also, Ender had an equal dislike and distrust for his fellow Cryptids, so…
“Well, ain't that just the cherry on top of this shit pie of a situation. I thought it was greed, but now I get to wonder whether you damaged our reputation over that, or some stupid, ass backwards opinions about Cryptids and humans interloping.
“One would think protecting a family—his wife being human or not, his parents not both being Cryptid or not—would be an easy fucking thing to understand, Maris.”
“I…I’m sorry, I’ll do better! I didn’t mean to—”
“What?! You mean you didn’t mean to put our whole fucking reputation in jeopardy, creating doubt as to whether people could trust us to not fucking sell them to one of the many damn governments we are working against?!” Ender hissed.
The man turned white, a bead of sweat dripping down as he swore, “I didn’t! I SWEAR, I’D NEVER DO THAT! It wasn’t to them!”
“Who the fuck did you think you sold them to, Maris?! They were in hiding, on the run with their child, trying to escape from being forcefully experimented on by the US government, who were using the justification of preventing extinction of a species to do it! You think the traffickers didn’t realize what you so willingly put within their grasp?
!” he roared, before forcing his shoulders to relax, and calmly saying, “Well, I’d bore you with the details of the government facility we broke them out of, but I think I’ve wasted enough time here as it is.
Now, since you won’t answer my question, let me ask a different one.
Do you know what Gorgon venom does to the body? ”
Maris whimpered, his eyes widening, but he said nothing.
“Well, it’s not a poison in the traditional sense, and frankly, no lab has ever been able to figure out what exactly it is. But what they do know is that it spreads quickly. Yet, I imagine, not quickly enough for the ones who find themselves injected with it.
“You see, slowly and painfully, it will turn every single cell into stone. Those cells, as they change and continue to vibrate, begin to crack and break apart. So much so that by the end you will be nothing but dust. The full process usually takes a total of fifteen horrifying minutes. Though, within seconds, you won’t be able to do much besides writhe in pain and scream. ”
“NO! PLEASE, PLEASE, ENDER, GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE!” the man screamed as he struggled to break free. And Maris continued to scream while Ender gripped the Cryptid’s hair and yanked his head back, arching his neck.
“There are no second chances for traitors!” Ender hissed, his fangs dropping as he struck forward, much as a snake would, his cowboy hat slipping back off his head to hang around his neck. Maris bellowed when the sharp points sank into his throat.
The small fangs retracted just as quickly as they had dropped, the last remnants of his venom leaving an unpleasant, bitter, burnt taste in his mouth.
With the task done, Ender released his hold on the Cryptid, and wiped his hand off on his blue jeans in disgust, while the man continued to struggle. Maris’ screams swiftly turned from being laced with fear to being filled with agony as Ender’s venom spread.
The first thing to change was his skin. The suntanned color changed to the marbled gray of stone, with small cracks forming rapidly, the transformation coming too fast for them to even bleed.
“Pathetic fucking traitor,” he hissed with a glare. Ender kicked the man’s chair again, before righting his hat and turning to leave, saying loudly as he did, “Clean up the mess once he’s done.”
Soren grunted in response, not moving from his spot.
Ender sighed as he scanned his thumb to open the door. Walking through it after it slid upward, it closed and locked automatically behind him. He clucked his tongue in discontent.
What an un-fucking-pleasant way to start the day. As if he didn’t have other shit to do. And now that he thought about it, the other shit also happened to be unpleasant. Specifically, the drugs he needed to pick up to prevent his ass from not losing his ever-loving shit on his people next month.
He’d have their own pharmacy keep the shit in stock, but unfortunately, the shelf life was shit. At least it was when it pertained to any drug that was going to be taken by a Gorgon. Fresh was always better. Yeah, today was just going to be absolute dogshit.
Ender sighed again as he thought about what he needed to do.
“Disguise…” He needed to get changed and throw on a disguise, because his ass was going out, and Ender was a wanted fucking man. Having to wear a disguise to pick up a prescription… Oh, the joys of running an illegal rebel group!
Sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor of his bedroom, Cyrus’ hold on his knees tightened, as he continued to stare into the dark silvery surface of the large antique wooden mirror that floated up against his wall.
The surface was smooth, yet nothing reflected back, as if it swallowed up the light.
But then it was a scrying mirror, made to search out and perfectly display the threads of fate.
Except…it wasn’t working. Cyrus saw glowing lines of various shades and tones of green, and he could even wade through them to find new ones, but he couldn’t see what he wanted—no, what he needed to see.
“Just give me something!?” Cyrus hissed to no one as he strained his eyes, his mind, his body, and his powers, to see more than what the threads wanted, or were willing, to tell him.
As he continued to look, but only managed to catch glimpses of what had been supposed to happen, sweat trickled down his cheek one drop at a time, his shirt already soaked through.
Cyrus flinched back when once again a shot rang out in his mind. A bone-deep ache of terror slid through him as he watched the light dim from Killian’s eyes. His jaw clenched, and his fangs scraped against each other as that particular vision disappeared.
Others flickered in. He saw collars, chains, and oddly, many blurred faces, which was something he’d never experienced before while trying to read the threads, but could only mean he was not meant to know who they were.
And Cyrus supposed he wasn’t. Because NONE of what he had managed to claw out told him WHERE and WHEN Killian was supposed to be grabbed!
And the Siren would be grabbed. Kidnapped, in fact.
That he knew for certain. He may have saved Killian, but he hadn’t changed that destiny.
It had been months—three fucking months—and he was no closer to knowing the bare basic fucking details about what had been about to happen, let alone what was now going to happen due to his interference, because the threads would not tell him!
He knew nothing. Cyrus had frankly never known so much yet so little about what was going to happen, and he honestly felt lost. Well, no, he felt like screaming, but he was also definitely feeling lost as all fuck.
Cyrus flinched when the door to his bedroom opened.
He quickly forced a smile on his face on spotting Killian.
The smile became real as he examined the Siren, who, past the thankfully glowing and intact threads, was a breathtaking sight to behold.
Though, he supposed, the man had always taken his breath away, regardless of what he was wearing, and had from the first moment he met him. But today, Killian was dressed up.
Golden jewelry dangled from his ears, and matching delicate chains wrapped around his neck and wrists.
The Siren was wearing a pure white, sleeveless, over the chest corset, that ruffled over his pecs, and left his swan-like neck, collarbone, and shoulders completely bare, leaving so much pale pearlescent skin out in the open.
Paired with the corset was a long, form-fitting pencil skirt in gray, with a slit that stopped halfway up his thigh, just high enough for Cyrus to wonder what exactly Killian was, or wasn’t, wearing underneath.
The man currently had no shoes on, but Cyrus would bet there was a pair of heels lying about near his front door.
Killian had left his long, waist-length, wavy, natural ombré hair, which went from dark-teal on top and faded to a purple-gray at the tips, completely down.
It flowed around the man’s shoulders and heart-shaped face, seeming to lovingly brush against the Siren’s sharp jaw.
A jaw that ended in a softly rounded chin.
It was only when Cyrus’ eyes turned to his Baby’s features that he noticed his Siren was not smiling back.
His bottom lip plush, and his cupid's bow prominent, Killian’s lips were unfortunately curved down into a frown.
The man’s slightly upturned nose was also wrinkled, and his large glowing blue eyes, which were lined above in black and had a dusting of eyeshadow on them, were narrowed just slightly in worry.
“Cyrus, are you sure everything is okay?”
Cyrus cleared his throat as the threads dropped away, and he proceeded to lie. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you seem oddly committed to trying to see whatever the fuck you have been trying to see for the last few months, and it’s making me think the end of the world is coming, and that you are hiding it from me while you try to figure out how to fucking fix it?
” Killian chimed sweetly, his voice dripping with enough warning that his hackles rose.
“Nonsense. Everything is fine,” he said with a laugh, barely stopping his wince on hearing how sharp his words and laughter sounded.
“Yeah, that was super convincing,” Killian deadpanned. The Siren’s gaze flicked over him. “Planning to take me out on a date in your sweat-drenched sweats?”
Fuck, right, their date! Cyrus looked down, wincing at how his clothes were plastered to his body. “Let me...go get changed.”
Pushing to his feet, he found his legs slightly shaky, but managed to hide it as he moved closer to Killian and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead, giving one of the man’s hands a squeeze as he lied again. “I promise, everything is fine.”
Killian tugged his hand free, wrinkling his nose while he rubbed at his forehead, holding the hand Cyrus had touched out away from his outfit. “You really just sweated through everything, didn’t you?”
Cyrus chuckled. Ah, his Baby was displeased with him. “Go relax in the living room. I’ll grab a quick shower and get ready. I’ll be fast, promise.”
“Whatever. I’ll wait, I suppose,” Killian said snidely, before leaving with a huff.
As soon as the door shut behind the Siren, Cyrus sagged. Groaning, he rubbed his face. “Fuck…”