Chapter 13

Fuck me. There were three of them here now. This should have been the happiest day of my life. I’d waited for it long enough. Athena took that from me with this curse. I’d only talked to them a little. I didn’t even know what they looked like. I’d only found one of my mates and I couldn’t hurt him. I had to be happy with that.

It hurt like fuck to tell them not to come down here. They seemed intent on breaking out of here and taking me with them, but I knew that talk. We all thought like that at first. We were going to be the one that broke out and stopped these people. Jezebel and I thought that, too. I still had my curse and Jezebel kind of sort of had her magic and we couldn’t do a damned thing.

I mean, I killed a fake nun, and I was helpless against that gas.

Hannibal finally decided to feed me. It was different from the two pieces of white bread with one slice of bologna in the middle. He just gave me bread. It was the butt ends of it and this was the cheapest stuff the grocery store offered. He’d also let it go stale.

The blue bastard expected me to fall over myself thanking him for it. Because I saw his hand again and it was definitely blue. I never really got a full view of anyone in here, but I’d never seen a blue person before. I’d seen blackout tattoos but something told me this wasn’t a tattoo.

I sat in the corner with my two stale pieces of bread and tried to make them last. My brain was buzzing because I could feel my three mates above me and I wanted to go to them. It was miserable because I’d kill them on sight.

“Hey, love. Did the Smurf priest finally feed you?”

I tried not to laugh. That was the wolf-shadow-demon hybrid. He felt like chaos personified, but he called to me. He hadn’t been here long at all, but there was something about him that was damaged just like I was. I was trying to avoid talking to him, but I couldn’t help it.

“Smurf priest?”

“You haven’t noticed the bitch is blue?”

“I’ve only seen his hand.”

“Good. But yeah, there are a bunch of Smurf nuns and priests running around. You haven’t told me if they fed you. Pax tried to make it happen.”

Pax. I loved this name. Pax was the only name I knew. I wanted to ask the rest of them, but then I’d have to tell them mine. I was kind of famous and these guys weren’t humans. They could very well figure out I was that Medusa. This could go several ways. They could think I was a monster like countless others had and try to kill me. They could think I was tainted because of what Poseidon had done to me, which happened before. Or they could not give a shit about any of that, try to come to me anyway, and I would kill them.

“He gave me stale bread, but just the ends.”

“That’s the second worst way to be presented with an ass.”

Should I even ask? Yeah, I was gonna.

“What’s the first? Aren’t you part wolf?”

“Yeah. And very bisexual. There’s a right and wrong way to present the ass end to anyone. That part of the bread loaf no one wants is one of them and the other is fucking cats. They just wave their butthole in your face like it’s a fucking present when you didn’t even ask for butthole. It’s morally reprehensible. I love all critters but cats are morally reprehensible. I still take care of the ferals in our village because they can’t help being degenerates and they are kind of cute.”

“I rather like cats.”

“I’ll buy you one that is extra degenerate and walks around naked when we get out of here. Unless you want to adopt, not shop. Then, we’ll go to the shelter or you can domesticate one of my nicer ferals.”

Ah, fuck. I actually really liked the hybrid. I usually took it as a red flag when guys didn’t like cats because cats were majorly about consent and would just bite and scratch if you bothered them when they didn’t want it. The hybrid had this whole speech prepared about not liking cats, but it sounded like he actually really liked cats.

Most people who hated cats tried to get rid of feral colonies instead of taking care of them. And he seemed to know a lot about the ferals if he knew which one could be domesticated and come inside.

This was going to kill me, but it had to be done. He didn’t deserve to be stone and I couldn’t bear it to have him turn on me when he found out who I was if he didn’t.

“If you manage to get out of here, you run and don’t look back. Forget I’m here. It’s too dangerous to try to bring me.”

“Ah, love, I can’t say much, but we have a plan. We aren’t just getting you out. We’re getting everyone out. Can’t you feel it in the air that some shit is about to go down here?”

“Some of the wards are down.”

“Shh. You don’t know a fucking thing about that. If everyone else here knows what’s good for them, they don’t either. The three of us want to be an open book, even though we know you’ve got some secrets and need to trust us first. That’s the one thing we can’t talk to you about. I’m Benji, by the way. The big cuddly bear daddy is Caspian, but we call him Cas. Pax is trying to get you more food, but we can’t tell you how. So, tell us what you want when you are ready because we’ve got secrets, too.”

How on earth did Pax get Hannibal to agree to feed me? Hannibal hated us. He fully believed we were minions of his boogeyman. Hannibal didn’t believe anything out of our mouths because he thought we were infected by evil and it wasn’t us talking.

But that was something they couldn’t tell me just as much as I was terrified to tell them my name.

“I get it. And I’m serious. If you break out, don’t come find me.”

It broke me to say it, but the alternative was worse. Fuck Athena.