1. Medusa

M y heart was pounding in my ears and black spots were invading my vision. It had been thousands of years since Athena cursed me and I'd barely come to terms with being a Gorgon. There wasn't much I could do about it and Hephaestus's inventions made my life easier, but if Athena ever wanted to make my life difficult, she could just break my glasses.

It was like all the panic attacks and shit I dealt with back then came flooding back since it was like being cursed all over again because it wasn't the same fucking curse I expected.

And I half thought Athena was lying to Dionysus to fuck with me. The furies were ancient. Much older than any of the gods I knew, and I was pretty sure they were gods themselves. There were different stories about how they came to be and they preferred not clearing them up.

Some people said they were the daughter of Nyx, who even Zeus was afraid of, and others said they sprang up from the blood when Kronos castrated his father. Either way, their origin story was probably more fucked up than mine and not even Athena could make me a god.

I was bordering on another panic attack when Cas scooped me up and deposited me in his lap. He wrapped those giant arms around me and squeezed me. I hadn't known him long, but he just had this way of making me feel safe.

"Breathe. Name three things you see."

"Persephone finally got the pink streaks in her hair she's been wanting and it looks badass. I'm pretty sure Benji found that painting of Gary from SpongeBob doing unspeakable things to Pikachu on some weird corner of the internet and made all of you display it in the living room instead of his bedroom. I'm guessing Pax put the painting of the naked witch dancing under the full moon, hoping to draw people's eyes away from Benji's painting."

"I commissioned that painting like an adult," Benji said.

"So did I, and I didn't have to pay the artist extra because I got weird with cartoon characters," Pax said dryly.

"You pitch a tantrum any time your shows have a crossover episode and rant about how it's morally reprehensible like when food touches on your plate, yet you commissioned this and insisted on hanging it in the living room," Cas said.

"I'm complicated, fuckers," Benji said, flipping them off with both hands.

I started giggling. Dionysus was just watching this go down. The Fates were older than the gods, so he wouldn't question them being my mates, but he was going to observe how they reacted during my panic attacks to make sure they deserved being paired with me. And honestly, they were pretty good at pulling me out of one.

"Did the furies say anything to you about me?"

The furies agreed to work for Hades in the Underworld. Persephone hung out with them sometimes, but other times, she found them a little too intense.

"You don't want to piss off those three asking questions," Hades said. "They don't want the truth about them to come out because any story someone might come up with is probably scarier."

"Honestly, I've gotten drunk with the three of them and I still don't know if they are actually gods or three curses that were so terrible, they became personified like one of the legends. I think if they knew you were one of them, they would have adopted you and helped you, but I don't think anyone knew until Athena finally blabbed. We all thought you were a Gorgon," Persephone said.

I still thought I was. I'd never met the furies, but I had tried to befriend the other Gorgons. Turning people to stone was kind of a Gorgon thing. The furies played more in mental torture and trapping people in their worst nightmare or other nasty surprises. I couldn't do any of that. If I could, there were some choice fake nuns and priests back in New Eden Asylum I would have unleashed that on and used it to get us all out of there.

"Athena is fucking with you. She's lying because she knows you'll come back and tell me," I argued.

"She could be," Jezebel shrugged. "Your story doesn't make her look good. It didn't really stand up to the modern world. People are reclaiming their sexual assaults by getting Medusa tattoos. Poseidon looks bad in that story, but so does she for how she reacted."

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. If I had to end up in the basement of a Coalition facility, I couldn't have been stuck next door to a better person. She had my back, just like my other best friend, Persephone, always did.

"I've always said she was a bitch for that, even to her face, but you don't know Athena. She doesn't care what other people think of her. She never has. Athena is very intelligent and bad at peopling. She's brilliant and warm one on one, but she thinks logically explaining a situation should make you feel better when emotions often make no sense. Athena has also been adamant about telling the truth, even when it would be more kind to fib.

"Hera once asked Zeus if he thought she could stand to lose a little weight when Athena was in the room. Everyone knows better, even if it's not fucking Hera asking. Athena seriously told her she could probably lay off the ambrosia a little," Persephone said.

I had opinions about Hera, too. I'd never met her and she'd never done a damned thing to me, but she went after Dionysus with a vengeance for something that wasn't even his fault, so I didn't much care for her. I wasn't trying to start shit with her, either.

"If Nyx might be the mother of the furies, couldn't one of the gods just ask her?" Cas asked.

That would have been perfectly logical if Nyx wasn't ancient, insanely powerful, and the majority of the gods weren't scared of her. Dionysus would go if I asked, but I wouldn't. He'd been hurt by the gods enough. Hades just cocked an eyebrow at Cas.

"You know how everyone is terrified of the shadow demon half of your hybrid friend? Those powers were modeled after just a tiny portion of Nyx's magic."

"Nyx is my ancient granny?" Benji asked. "We have so many creation myths, and then you've got the humans who think they know where we came from."

I'd already heard this story, but I was pretty sure my mate and my friends were about to blow everyone's minds with the truth about where we all came from. I know I needed to sit with it for a while when I first heard it because I was ready to dedicate my life to becoming a priestess of Athena until everything went to shit.

Dionysus sat back and smirked. They were all less mirthful when they told me this story. My friends were all gods, but every last one of them had been hurt by other gods, so they loved unraveling the mystique of them.

"Nyx didn't create you. Humans did," Dionysus said.

"You take that back!" Benji gasped. "Humans aren't capable of this much fabulousness."

"You'd think that, but I'm amazing and they created the gods, too," Hades said. "They created nearly every supernatural being in existence, even gods."

"How is that possible? They don't have magic. They are afraid of it," Pax said.

"What is magic but intention and what is intention but belief?" Hephaestus said. "If enough people believe in something, sometimes hocus pocus happens and gods and supernatural beings get created. Kat's people were probably dealing with a wild animal, but made up a wild tale about a creature with superhuman speed and strength that fed off blood to get stronger at the same time another village across the world was doing the same thing because no one knew better. Hence, vampires."

"Shadow demons are related to Nyx," Hades said. "She's the God of Night. She can travel anywhere there is a sliver of shadows, kill you, and get out of there without a trace. Sound familiar? The Cult of Nyx actualized the shadow demons because they thought they were her minions. They called them something else, of course."

"Well, Granny Nyx sounds like a total badass, but I'm not a minion. I don't even like that movie."

"Shifters came about because someone usually had a predator terrorizing their camp. The animal was smarter than it should be, so stories got started about how they were a man during the day and an animal at night. They killed countless innocents because of it.

"Witches were healers and scientists. They've been around for ages. Someone used herbs to save a life and people thought it was magic. Eventually, people got magic. Sirens and sea monsters were people trying to explain what they saw when people took to the seas. Eventually, those became real, too," Persephone said.

"I'm also half succubus," Jezebel said. "I'm guessing that's an interesting origin story."

"Oh, yes," Persephone laughed. "It's rooted in ye olden time misogyny. Back in the day, men could cheat with whomever they wanted, and it was expected. Women were executed or disfigured if they were caught.

"So, a few enterprising women who weren't afraid of their sexuality and didn't want to deal with their husbands and his lack of knowledge on how to please a woman started making up tales of it being a demon if they were ever caught. It wasn't their fault, and they weren't cheating, see? It was the devil sending them demons to corrupt them.

"The menfolk and the church believed this so hard, the incubi came to be. They were sure there were female versions, too, and the priests were particularly afraid of them. They thought about them so much, eventually the succubae happened, too."

"I love that," Jezebel laughed.

Benji let out a horrified gasp, so we all turned to look at him.

"So, if the Pastafarians get serious, we're all going to have to deal with Flying Spaghetti Monster? Because that sounds horrifying. Imagine the sound of spaghetti noodles trying to walk. It's morally reprehensible."

"Oh, Flying Spaghetti Monster actualized in a Porta potty at Jazz Fest in New Orleans about two decades ago. He's the first god to pop up in thousands of years, so a few of us showed up to greet him. We walked him through shapeshifting so he can fit in here.

"The younger gods are a weird sort. Flying Spaghetti Monster was a mopey fuck who said he never asked to be born. He's a total anarchist and has been singing lead in a punk band for the past fifteen years," Dionysus said.

"Which one?" Pax demanded.

"I'll never tell."

"I'll bet it's Meatball Hellscape, that band you made me poof you to, and someone punched me in the face for stepping on their foot," Benji said.

"I'll neither confirm nor deny that Meatball Hellscape has a divine lead singer, but you've seen them in concert."

"Badass," Pax said.

"I will admit he's sexy as fuck, knowing he's flying spaghetti under the skin suit."

"How does that help Medusa?" Cas asked. "We don't know if Athena lied, how to teach her to be a fury, and even if we could, Hannibal starved her, and she can't do anything like this. Her gaze is fatal, but I won't risk it."

Dionysus stood, and I knew that look on his face. He was about to fuck shit up. Everyone thought he was this easygoing party god, but he remembered all the fucked-up shit he did when Hera cursed him. He was about to bring the mad, cursed god back out.

"I know exactly how to fix this," he said, disappearing.

And that worried me.