Chapter 2

Ididn’t know how long I’d been in a padded cell in the basement of New Eden Asylum. I didn’t even remember how I got here. I could guess. It always came down to Athena. She couldn’t just curse me for having the audacity to get raped in her temple because she was feuding with Poseidon. No, Athena couldn’t let me just fuck off and deal with the curse on my own terms.

I wasn’t bothering anyone. I mostly just wanted to be left alone and never have to deal with men again. But Zeus couldn’t keep it in his pants and his offspring had something to prove, so they came after me like I was the bad guy in this situation.

I’d been just a harmless green witch who tried to become a priestess to a god I felt an affinity with and got turned into a monster. Which I still didn’t get to this day because Athena had always been a fair god. She was meticulous and brilliant. She never did anything unless it was part of a bigger plan.

Except turning my hair into snakes and making my gaze fatal. Thanks for that.

I ended up getting help from a different god. Hephaestus felt bad for me and I couldn’t do a damned thing looking him in the eye because he was a god. He made me these magical glasses. It made my snakes look like braids and my gaze non-lethal. I could live a mostly normal life.

Except every time I’d get settled somewhere, Athena would eventually show up and break my glasses. Which I also didn’t understand because she wasn’t petty. She told us grudges were for the weak-minded. Athena told all her priestesses to get our revenge or not, but don’t dwell on something and let it dictate your life when there were better things you could be doing.

I guess she was also a big ol’ hypocrite.

Upending my life when she broke my glasses and my neighbors realized their neighbor was that Medusa used to be hard, but it got dangerous after the angels came down and got the fanatics to form the Coalition. I was a green witch and now a Gorgon, so I’d be hard to catch, but it wouldn’t be impossible if someone were behind me where I couldn’t see them.

Obviously, as I was now here.

There were no windows down here and they never turned out the lights. My concept of time was completely gone. I had no idea how long I’d been here. I couldn’t even count on three square meals as a time-telling method. I usually only got one, and that was if they remembered.

Fuckers forgot tonight.

Sister Mary Eugene hated me, so she only brought me moldy bread and hard bologna with enough frequency that I didn’t die of starvation. See, Sister Mary Eugene was super into the work they were doing here, even if she wasn’t even a real fucking nun. She dressed the part and demanded the title, but the church excommunicated those folks a while ago and got really mad if you even suggested they were working together.

They’d been trying to do some serious damage control that they ever did work together. Maybe it was all fake and to save face, but I was probably the only person here who could taunt Sister Mary Eugene about her fake nun status.

That wasn’t the only reason she hated me. Everything about this place was designed to dampen a supernatural’s magic. It was trickier for hybrids, curses, and the god touched. I couldn’t access my green witch magic at all, but my gaze was still fatal.

I walked over to the side wall. There was a grate that allowed me to talk to the woman in the next cell. She’d been here longer than I had and Jezebel was the only thing keeping me sane. She was down here with all the dangerous folks because they couldn’t really get near her either.

Jezebel was a succubus siren hybrid. Her succubus mojo was dead, which she constantly told me was unfair, but a lot of her magic was in her vocal chords. It was dampened, but not completely gone. She couldn’t tell them to open the doors and let us out, but she had prevented them from experimenting on her this entire time.

I plopped on the hard floor. I knew she was awake. She always was. It was hard trying to sleep in here because of the lights.

“You could have used that siren juujuu to get her to remember to feed me,” I sighed.

“Doesn’t work like that, sweetness. I can get her to like me, but not you. You aren’t a siren. She’d probably like you better if you stopped calling her a fake nun and asking her if she’s got a red lacy thong underneath that habit.”

“You were the one that put that visual in my head. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Sorry, not sorry. Respectfully. If I have to be nice to her, you should have to suffer, too.”

“I am! She’s only bringing me food once a day, and she manages to forget a lot. I’m trying to get her pissed enough to open my door. I need her feeling righteous enough to forget that it’s instant stone if she comes in here and makes eye contact with me. I could steal her key and get us all out of here.”

“Won’t work, baby girl. I’ve got a window and you don’t. You need her alive to get out of here because the lock is biometric.”

“Fuck! How can they even afford that? I thought the church and the government cut off their funding?”

“Duh. Donations from people who don’t believe we were born like this and demons possess people instead of just being a nuisance most of the time.

“Thanks, I hate it. I wish your vocal cords were as functional as my eyes are.”

“It’s fucking weird. Something in here isn’t just disrupting our powers. Everything about me is meant to lure people in. If my looks and pheromones don’t do it, my voice will. I’m not complaining because I’m not trying to get mutilated like the vampire on the other side of me, but it’s almost like it’s opposite day with my magic and I’m repelling people.

“Remember that kid the good sister let down here with lunch one day? You couldn’t see him, but he was probably barely nineteen. His balls hadn’t dropped yet, and he was trying to grow facial hair and failing. I should have been able to seduce that kid into letting us all out without even flashing a little side boob and without any magic, and it was like something about me was repelling him.”

“You know, I don’t even know what you look like and you’re the only thing keeping me sane in here?” I said.

“Oh, my goddess, you just brought up my favorite topic. Picture how utterly gorgeous the child of a siren and an incubus would be and just know I’m a million times prettier than that.”

My stomach turned in on itself and rumbled. Jezebel could hear it in her cell. I’d mostly gotten used to one meal a day and being hungry, but Sister Mary Eugene was a sadist and she didn’t feed me yesterday, either.

“You know if this grate was bigger, I’d slip you food, right?” Jezebel said.

“I know. If I could use this stupid curse Athena gave me to get us all out of here, I’d do that, too.”

“Girl, I know. But you’ve got cursed vision and I’ve got semifunctional Siren vocal cords, so we’ll eventually figure a way out of here.”

I hoped so. Because there were people I had been counting on to get me out of here that hadn’t shown up yet. I knew they were probably looking, but I didn’t know if I could hold on much longer.