Chapter 16
The guy at the front door held the lifeless pregnant woman in his arms and growled. I knew enough about self-preservation to know that slamming the door in his face was the right move right now.
“Sorry, man. I swear to the Goddess it wasn’t me.” I closed it with a bang, then barred it, because that fucker was huge.
Erus, my other half, stood at the top of the stairs. “Who was it?”
I shrugged. “Some pregnant chick.”
He gave me a disapproving look, and despite the fact that we were Goddess-ordained soulmates, he looked at me like it might’ve been mine. I mean, we’d both been manwhores in our day—me perhaps a little more than him. But it had been a long time since those days.
“I swear, it wasn’t me.”
He huffed a disapproving sound and leaped down the stairs two at a time, as surefooted as a cat. Walking over to the door, he opened it back up.
The big guy was still holding the pregnant chick in his arms, his scowl promising murder. He looked between the two of us, as the girl muttered groggily about lions.
Erus threw me a more concerned look, because from what I could tell, she was human. There was no way she could know we were Genii, with the bodies of men and the heads of lions.
It had to be a coincidence.
The guy, though… He made me pause. He was certainly not entirely human, but I didn’t recognize him at all, so that meant he wasn’t from these parts.
“Who the fuck are you?” he spat menacingly.
Well, that’s just rude.“Uh, you knocked on our door, remember? I think the correct question is, who the fuck are you?”
Erus raised a hand to grip my arm. “My name is Erus, and this is Tryp. What can we do for you both?”
“You can put some fucking clothes on. That’d be a start,” the guy grumbled beneath his breath. “You guys are Mythics?”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. Mythics was a modern way of describing what we were. Supernaturals. Legends. Storied beings. Mythological constructs made real. Immortals. We were many things, but Mythics worked for most of us.
Erus answered. “Uh, yeah. You?”
He nodded. “I am. She is not. You don’t happen to be lion-shaped beneath that pretty fuckboy glamor?”
I grinned. “You think my glamor is pretty?” I fluttered my eyelashes at him. He gave me a glare which made me want to laugh, but would probably end with him waving that big-ass ax at me. “Yeah, we have lion heads.”
He frowned. “She can see through your glamor,” he said pensively. “She can’t see through mine.”
The girl twisted in his arms, and his eyes dropped back to her face, the concern etched there setting off worry in my own chest. Which was a novel emotion in itself. Mortals came and went, and outside of the townspeople of Amourgeles, I didn’t really give a shit.
Erus was also frowning at the girl. “Is she okay?”
The big guy shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s never passed out like this before.”
My other half was a sucker for a human in distress. He flung open the door, gesturing for the guy to carry the girl in. “Come, we’ll go and see Teron. He’ll be able to check her out.” He turned back to me. “Go get Demke and bring him to Teron’s chambers.”
Casting one more look at the two strangers, I did as Erus asked. Racing back up the stairs two at a time, I headed to the furthest wing. Demke’s rooms were slightly apart from ours; once it had befitted his station, but now? It was just because he appreciated the solitude, I think.
I ran down the long hallways until I was finally in front of the big, carved wooden door that led to his living area. It opened almost before I’d finished knocking.
“Who was at the door?”
“A pregnant girl.”
Demke tilted his head at me, his frown disapproving. “Really, Tryp?”
I threw up my hands. Why did everyone think it was my fault? “I haven’t fucked a mortal in, like, two hundred years. Give me a break. I have Erus. What do you, Milo and Teron have, hmm? Your hand? If anyone was going to knock up a human, it’s definitely one of you three.”
Demke rubbed his forehead, like he wasn’t a legit God and could actually get headaches.
“Did you send her away?” It wasn’t really a question. This was our haven, our fortress of solitude. We did not invite people in.
Except Erus.
“Uh, not really. She’s in Teron’s rooms. Or at least, she should be by now.”
Demke’s spine stiffened like he’d been electrocuted. “What? Why?” he growled.
I winced, because I was about to throw Erus under the bus and knew he wouldn’t let me forget it. “Uh, the woman fainted, and then she was kind of incoherent, and you know Erus. He’s such a softie for humans.”
Demke stepped around me and strode down the hallway. “Find Milonos and meet me in Teron’s rooms.”
“Who the fuck do you guys think I am? Hermes?” I called after him. Normally, he’d come back and punch me for even mentioning the messenger God, but clearly, the fact that there was a snake in our hen house had him preoccupied.
Who the fuck even knew where Milo was? I headed down to the kitchen first. It was after lunch, so that meant it was drinking time for one of my oldest friends. He’d been slowly getting more and more listless for the last two hundred years, and I knew I was losing my friend to the ennui. He’d be two bottles of rakí deep by now, but hopefully, the draw of the unknown might give him some relief from the boredom of time.
He wasn’t in the kitchen, but when I skidded to a stop in the courtyard, there was no gratification in knowing I’d been correct about him drinking. I stopped in front of him, my eyebrows raised.
“Finish your drink, Milo. We’ve got drama.”
He raised a single brow. “Oh?”
“Yes. Strangers in the compound.”
He stretched out his long legs. “Not for the first time, Tryp. Are you being dramatic?”
I leaned forward until I was close enough to breathe in the fumes of alcohol on his breath. He must’ve started a little early today. “One of them is a pregnant female who fainted at the door.”
He reared back, his brow furrowing. “What?”
Oh, I had him. I had him so good. “Yep. Big belly like this and just fell over like a sack of shit, right there at the base of the stairs.”
That was all Milo needed. He was on his feet, stepping around me and charging down the hallway like, well, a bull. Or a Minotaur, anyway. I danced along behind him, and despite the unknown, despite the fact that the guy with her was some kind of Mythic not from our Pantheon, this was the most excitement we’d seen in a century, maybe longer.
He got all the way to the front wall before he realized he hadn’t actually asked me where the strangers were now. He whirled back around, and I smirked at him.
“Well?”
“They’re all in Teron’s rooms. Erus wanted to get her checked out.”
He snorted an annoyed sound as he spun on his heel and walked down another hall in the maze of rooms that made up our compound.
When I got to Teron’s room, the large Gryphon was standing with his hands raised, and the girl was lying on his bed, still seemingly out of it. The big guy was blocking Teron, and if I hadn’t realized he was a God before, I knew it now. He’d grown even taller, his body covered in runes, and his big ax glowing. Definitely an enchanted weapon.
Demke looked like he was one threatening swing away from throwing the guy back into the great abyss, but Erus and Teron stood between the two Gods. Demke wouldn’t do anything that might hurt them, even as collateral.
Still, I edged around them all to stand beside Erus, subtly putting my body between the guy and my other half. Despite what Milo said, I wasn’t prone to dramatics, so when I said Erus was my soulmate, I literally meant it. We were two halves of a single soul. Not two souls meant to be together, or anything so romantic. There literally could not be an Erus without me, and vice versa.
But over the years—thousands of them, in fact—I’d come to love him so much that if we had to die, I would want to go first, because the pain of losing him would be unimaginable. Even if it was for mere seconds before I followed him into the great abyss.
The big guy seemed to take in the presence of Milo, who easily rivaled him in size, and gritted his teeth. Teron, ever the level-headed one, waved Milo back. “Stay there please, Milonos.” He didn’t take his eyes from the guy. “I want to help. If I can just examine the girl, we can figure out if she needs to go to a human hospital. There may be issues with the child.”
“Children,” the big guy grunted, like it pained him, and Teron’s face got even more concerned. Even I knew enough about human medicine to know that multiple births were more dangerous for the mothers. “Fine, but they all have to leave.” He waved his ax at us all standing around like spectators at a tennis match.
Demke shook his head immediately, which I knew he would. There was no way he was leaving Teron alone, unprotected, with an unknown Mythic. Especially one with a weapon. “No.”
Teron threw him an exasperated look over his shoulder, but Demke’s expression never changed. They had one of those silent conversations, and eventually, Demke relented. I could tell, because his upper lip twitched infinitesimally.
“Milonos will stay,” Demke ordered. “If you make a move to hurt Teron, Milo will break you like your bones were made from chalk.”
I didn’t want to contradict our leader in front of strangers, but given the look of the big guy, if it came down to it, I wasn’t sure Milo could take him quite so easily.
The dude with the ax frowned harder, but when the girl moaned once more, muttering gibberish, he gave a tight nod. Demke tilted his chin at us silently, and Erus and I moved as one toward the door. Once he was away from the eyes of strangers, I could see all the questions race across our very own God’s face—the same questions I had.
I didn’t know who the girl was, or why she was here, but I had a feeling they were going to shake things up, and honestly, I couldn’t wait.