My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy) (16 page)

I sunk into my favorite overstuffed chair. Out of habit, my toe wriggled its way into the chip in the fireplace tile beside me. It drove Felicia nuts when I did that.

Today was no different.

She snorted. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Get your money back?”

“If only I could. Get a decent pair of shoes for you. Never really wanted you, you know. Guess your real mom didn’t, either.”

You’d think after sixteen years of this, I’d be immune to it. And I was. Mostly. Didn’t mean she wasn’t a bitch, though. Some thought was tickling the back of my brain. Or was that something scratchy against my neck?

She held out her glass. “At least you make a good cocktail.”

“Make your own damn drink, Felicia. I’m not your slave.”

Felicia gave me a tipsy, mocking bow. “Forgive me, princess.”

Princess? Yeah. I’d been stolen from royalty. Kind of?

“My real mom is a queen,” I replied. “And when she finds how you’ve treated me, she’ll be pissed. Royal wrath.”

“Ooh, I’m terrified,” Felicia taunted. She swung up into a sitting position and again thrust her drink at me. “Grow up, Sophie. And get me my drink or I’ll take you away from your precious friends and stuff you in a military academy.”

Grumbling, I swung my feet onto the ground and stood. I took a couple of steps toward her to grab the stupid glass but my feet got tangled in her precious Persian rug.

“Jesus! You’re a walking suicide mission.”

Ooh! I hated that phrase. And that stupid, arrogant, sanctimonious rat bastard Kai with his all-knowing condescension who kept saying it to me. I was a goddess, damn him.

Hang on. “I’m a goddess!”

Felicia looked startled. Then she laughed so hard she belched. I almost saw fire spew out, it was so potent.

“It’s true!” I felt myself reverting to a childish status but I was so mad, it was all I could do to keep from stomping on the floor.

“Prove it,” she mocked.

“Fine,” I shot back. Except I had no idea how. I waved my hands around. That seemed like a good place to start. Good place to end too, since it didn’t do anything.

She rose and came toward me, rattling a small bottle. “Take some of my Chlorpromazine.”

“I’m not insane. I don’t need an anti-psychotic.”

Felicia stopped in front of me and opened the bottle. “One little pill, Sophie. It’ll make you feel better.” She peered intently into my eyes.

My head hurt. Maybe she was right?

“Listen to mummy,” she cooed.

Yes. My mom would make it all better. She loved me.

Felicia put a pill in the palm of my hand, then closed the bottle and handed it to me. “Take one now and as many as you like later.” She closed my hand around the bottle. “You keep it. See how much mummy trusts you?”

I was the luckiest girl in the world. I put the bottle in my pocket, but it wouldn’t fit. There was something else in there. I pulled out the chocolate candy and regarded it curiously.

“You got peanut butter in my chocolate,” I murmured dreamily.

Felicia didn’t answer. I frowned. That wasn’t right. She was supposed to answer.

“You got peanut butter in my chocolate,” I prompted again.

“Stop saying that,” she snapped.

That wasn’t the right answer. I said it again, quietly and mostly to myself. The answer pushed at my brain until I could hear Hannah saying “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” I felt the hold on my mind relax. I’d remembered who and where I was. “Nice try, Delphyne,” I taunted.

Felicia’s face contorted in rage and transformed into the enormous visage of one very pissed off dragon. Smoke puffed out of her flared nostrils. Her face was more reptilian than I’d expected, and a slightly darker purple than the scale Hannah had found. Inhuman eyes stared at me with malicious intent.

I swallowed. I think I’d liked her better as Felicia.

Delphyne’s body was behind me. She had coiled her long scaly neck around my body and Exorcist-twisted her head around to face me.

I squirmed and ducked to get out of her grasp, but she restrained me with a heavy claw on my shoulder. I tried not to look down at it, but I couldn’t help myself. Yup. Four long, lethally sharp talons curved from the gnarled claw to bite into my shoulder. I could see the blood welling through the rips they had made in my shirt.

Maybe this would be the part where she told me to go back and she’d let me live?

Delphyne opened her mouth and sprayed flames. I tore out of her grasp just in time to avoid them. Problem was, I hadn’t realized that her mouth wasn’t necessarily the most dangerous part of her.

Her heavy, spiked tail lashed around to fling me like a tennis ball into the stone walls. I flew backward, hitting my head against the rock, and slid to the floor, lacking the useful bouncing properties of the aforementioned ball.

Blood trickled down my scalp, but as long as I was conscious, I had to fight her.

The ground vibrated with every step of her hulking body as she made her way closer. I was amazed she wasn’t leaving cracks in the rock with each stride, as she had to weigh almost a ton. From nose tip to tail end, I guessed her to be close to ten feet long, and the top of her head stood about eight feet off the ground.

Better take my turn, and fast. I blasted her with a wave of powerful light. The knock to the melon and my awkward position meant I wasn’t in perfect form and didn’t kill her. Did leave a heck of a scorch mark across her side, though.

Delphyne hissed at me; her eyes wild. “You will not get the Oracle! She’s mine!” With one more roar of flame, she fled down a corridor, into the shadows.

Any lingering doubts I may have still been harboring about the status of her sanity were gone with that look. Beastie was mad as a hatter.

And I was starting to feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. It was all completely mad. Persephone, Delphyne, a war of the gods, betrayals, and murder. Best not to think big picture. Too overwhelming.

Immediate plan: find Theo, Hannah, and Kai, and charge to the rescue.

Unsure of where anybody was at this point, including myself, I picked a direction at random. I wasn’t entirely rash. First, I collected a handful of broken cobblestones from the floor to toss in front of me as I went. No need to be surprised by any more nasty traps.

Well, nasty physical traps. Given that last little head game trick with Felicia, it appeared there was nothing I could do about the psychological minefields.

This corridor was dark. I released my light just enough to allow a faint ball to shine in each palm. I was like the deluxe edition of a human Swiss Army knife; handy in every situation.

I kept my eyes and ears peeled for any sign of my gang.

Now that the shock had worn off, I had to admit that my encounter with Felicia, even though it had been an illusion, had really shaken me up. It was as if years of Felicia’s meanness had been distilled into two fun-filled minutes.

I shook my head. Of course. It
had
. Delphyne didn’t have some intimate and interactive acquaintance with Felicia. Everything she’d thrown at me had come from my memories. Even the Chlorpromazine. It was all drawn from my real life and woven into this tapestry of lies.

My conscious self must have been attempting to break through the illusion. Maybe the fact that I’d managed meant that I was more capable than I gave myself credit for? Maybe I hadn’t been useless, run-of-the-mill Sophie all these years; a girl who happened to luck into these powers?

What if my laying low was subconsciously part of some bigger cosmic plan? The very thing I’d needed to do—be a normal, unexceptional human—so that my powers would matter when I came into them?

I rounded a corner feeling a renewed sense of confidence.

If I’d been Einstein or Serena Williams, perhaps they wouldn’t have had such an impact. Since I would have already been exceptional, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to give my life up to fight a battle that was my backstory and not my present.

Even Felicia made a twisted kind of sense. Would I be so willing to charge in and right the wrongs if I had to worry about a loving family? Worry about them not only getting harmed, but becoming horrified by me?

How would a good mom have felt seeing her little baby become a mutated freak of nature? She might never have recovered, and that would have devastated me.

Felicia wouldn’t care. And I realized that was for the best. I was feeling good. I’d made some important realizations about myself; I hadn’t set off any more traps.

In all ways, it appeared as if I was on the right path.

Then I hit it.

No. Not a dead end.

A dead body.

12

A little carnage is a dangerous thing

ιβ
’

I screamed like the frightened little girl I’d just reverted to as reality smacked me in the face.

Pyrosim and Photokia were one thing. This was worse.

Mrs. Rivers was dead. She lay face down, but I knew it was her even as I wished upon every wish that it wasn’t. I collected myself as best I could, which meant the screaming stopped but the shaking didn’t. Then I knelt down.

My knee landed in a patch of something dark. Blood. It was blood. Another scream threatened to spew out of me like vomit. I swallowed it down and took several gulping breaths to calm myself.

Then I gingerly rolled her over.

Her neck had been slashed, leaving a red gash like a twisted parody of a smile. Tears welled in my eyes. Back out in the real world was her family, who were never going to get her back.

If the enchantment wore off, and they did remember her, they’d never get closure on her disappearance. I couldn’t carry her with me, and doubted I’d be able to get her out. Which meant that this stupid, messed up illusion was her final resting place.

She didn’t look scared. That was a blessing. In fact, she appeared furious. She’d been killed in mid-snarl, her fingers twisted into talons. The woman had obviously fought back.

Good for you, Mrs. R., I silently cheered. A flutter of gold fabric in her right hand caught my attention. Carefully, I pried it from her grasp. It was a piece from the shirt Cassie had been wearing the last day I saw her. She’d died protecting Cassie, if not Bethany, too.

“Mrs. Rivers …” I faltered. “You were a great counselor and kind person. We all really liked you.” Could I have sounded lamer? I cleared my throat. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. You should have grown old and gotten sick of us kids, not died for us.” With my left hand, I closed her eyes out of respect. “Goodbye.”

I stood there a moment, feeling useless.

I wasn’t sure what else to do. I couldn’t bury her.

But I could avenge her.

I set off.

Theo was right. Being raised human meant my alliance fell with them. Perhaps, if I’d still been Persephone, I wouldn’t have cared about Cassie. Or maybe I would have understood Delphyne’s position better. After all, she was a creature trying to fulfill her own duty; that of guardian of the Oracle. Would I have applauded and respected the extremes that Delphyne had gone to in order to accomplish what she’d been born to do?

I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I almost tumbled into a huge hole, too large to jump.

No problem. I shot a vine at a boulder on the other side in order to swing myself across. The boulder glowed so white hot, I could feel the heat suffusing into my ribbon of light.

I started to sweat as I attempted to pull my vine away. The heat flowing into my arm grew to near unbearable proportions. And it seemed that the vine had fused to the white heat of the rock. I had to disconnect from it somehow.

I felt myself getting dangerously overheated. I shot a vine from my other hand at the boulder, which intensified the heat, but allowed me to destroy the rock.

The heat disappeared, which was great, but now I had no way across the hole.

I rested a moment, wiping off the sweat the best I could. I glanced up at the ceiling. I could attempt to shoot my light up there and swing across but I wasn’t willing to risk that it had been booby-trapped in the same way. Dangling-crispy-Sophie was not how I wanted to bite it.

“Hello?” I called out. My voice sounded muffled. It was as if I’d stumbled into some kind of dead zone. It creeped me out.

I couldn’t go forward because of the hole, so I took a step back. There was a grinding noise and the walls to either side of me pushed in slightly. That couldn’t be good.

Maybe I could just run for it. I rapidly pivoted and tried to run back out the way I’d come. I bounced off an invisible shield and landed on my front, millimeters from the gaping maw.

The walls pushed in some more.

I really wished I could remember how I’d thought as Persephone. Maybe she’d have some brilliant solution to all this.

My few memories were all I knew of her. Like a movie slowly unfolding, but without any insightful voiceover to make me privy to Persephone’s views on the world. If I couldn’t get inside her head, then I only had my own experiences to guide me. Sixteen years of humanity to form my moral compass.

At that moment, lying on the edge of the precipice, I felt a clear distinction between right—saving Cassie and even Bethany—and wrong: what Delphyne had done to Mrs. R. But was that seeing the trees and not the forest? Was I getting hung up on the death of a single individual because I had a purely human emotional attachment to her? Would the traits that would win me the battle and defeat Delphyne ultimately cost me the war?

And did any of this even matter
, I wondered, as the walls closed in even further, now mere inches from either side of me. One more thrust inward and I’d be smooshed.

A sudden longing for my real mother swamped me. Forget navigating boys and cliques, I needed her to safely guide me through the minefield of my continued existence. What if I couldn’t find her? What if she didn’t want to be found?

I had to acknowledge that possibility. Either through fear of some kind of reprisal for whatever had motivated a visit to Hades, foul play already done, or simply because my plans went against everything she’d taught me, maybe Demeter was going to stay away permanently.

In which case, I was on my own. And the only thing I could be certain of, was that right here, right now, I had save my own butt so I could finish off a dragon and rescue my classmates.

I couldn’t use my goddess powers, so I had to survive this as my human self. With a touch to my pendant to center me and a deep breath, I did what humans had been doing throughout history.

I took a leap of faith.

More of a roll, really. I tumbled off the edge of the hole into the great unknown as the walls above me ground together.

Falling down the rabbit hole, or in this case, dragon hole, did nothing to stifle my anger at the entire situation. Luckily, I landed without too much incident or damage to my person, jumped to my feet, and strode off.

Hannah, Theo, and Kai almost collided with me as they rounded a corner. I didn’t even pause, cold fury driving me.

Theo and Hannah hurriedly stepped back, out of my way. Kai merely raised an eyebrow at the naked thirst for revenge written on my face, then fell into silent step beside me.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked softly.

“Mrs. Rivers is dead.” Behind me I heard Theo spit out a colorful curse. “Now Delphyne has to die.”

Kai touched a fingertip to the back of my head. It came away bloodied. His eyes darkened. “So she does,” he agreed.

One more sharp turn left and we hit the center of the maze. My breath caught at the sight before me.

If I’d been asked what the center would look like, I would have guessed it was some kind of cavern, with various pathways branching off of it.

Instead, I found myself in the middle of a ravine. Hot sunshine blazed out of a cloudless, sea-blue sky. Unlike our ravine out back of Hope Park, this one was not trees and dirt, but rock formations. Enormous golden rock cliffs scaled away on either side. A lush, olive green foliage covered their upper third.

Below my feet was more rock, sculpted by eons of wind into small stone dunes.

“I never thought to see this again,” Theo breathed. There was a catch in his voice.

“Where are we?” Hannah whispered in awe.

“The Ravine of Phaedriades,” Theo said.

Uh, Dorothy, that didn’t sound like we were in Kansas anymore. “We’re in Greece?”

“Of a sorts,” Kai explained. “We’re in ancient Greece. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.”

Delphyne. “She willed all this into existence?” I asked in amazement.

“One determined dragon.” Theo adjusted his hold on his chain for a better grasp. “She’s this way.” He led us off.

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s where the Sibylline Rock was. Where the Oracle sat.”

The stone ground was so uneven, that I had to watch my footing carefully. It would suck to get this far only to make easy snacking because I twisted my ankle.

Theo shot his arm out to stop us. He pressed us back behind a boulder and tilted his head down and to the right. “Look, but don’t be seen,” he whispered to me.

I peered over to where he’d indicated and exhaled in relief.

Cassie was alive.

Far below us lay a wide, flat section of rock, with a fissure grooved deep into it. Straddling the void was a stone slab, resembling a sacrificial table.

“Scootch” Hannah hissed. She jostled me over so she could see as well.

Cassie stood on the slab garbed in a white flowing robe, arms outstretched to the sky, head thrown back, chanting. We were still too far to hear what she said, but she radiated power.

“Cassandra reborn,” Kai said.

A ring of unfamiliar trees formed a semi-circle behind her. Even though I’d never seen them before, I knew instantly what they were; could almost hear the song of their life calling sweetly to me, Persephone, their Goddess of Spring.

“Laurus Nobilis,” I said, remembering. Even though they could reach almost sixty feet tall, these were maybe half that. Impressive nonetheless. Small, pale yellow-green flowers bloomed in pairs beside each leaf.

My hands itched to touch them. I sharply reminded myself there would be plenty of time for that. First, Cassie.

Delphyne lay at Cassie’s feet, her heavy head resting on her front claws. Her eyes scanned this way and that, but as of yet, had not detected us up high. Every few seconds, her tail twitched violently. I shuddered, remembering my last encounter with that particular part of her anatomy. I had no desire to reacquaint myself with it.

Considering this was Hannah’s first glimpse of a dragon, she was being weirdly quiet. I glanced over at her. She had her head in her hands.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying not to sound scared.

“My head,” she moaned. “It’s killing me.”

Theo stroked her back. “Take a deep breath, Saul. I think it’s the disconnect of your memory loss and the visual proof of Cassie’s existence. Your brain doesn’t know how to handle it.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Hannah raised her eyes to mine. “I suck it up and we deal.”

“We’ll have to climb down. There’s a path.” Theo had assessed our options.

“Are you nuts?” I asked. “I’m not a goat. Kai can jump us down.”

Kai shook his head. “Not without attracting a lot of attention, I can’t. I’m not dad with his invisibility cap.”

Theo gave me a gentle prod. “Get moving.”

Fine. I resigned myself to taking the scenic route and hoped the path wasn’t too narrow.

It wasn’t. Because it wasn’t a path. “You want me to scale the rock face?” I asked in disbelief as we moved into position.

“More like rappel,” Theo encouraged. “It’s like this. You do your brilliant light trick and lower us all down.”

“I’m going to fight a dragon. Do I have to deal with heights, too?”

Theo looked at me sternly. “Get over it.”

I wanted to tell Theo that I hated his stupid self.

Except how could I get mad at the guy who’d given up everything to keep me alive and save humanity?

I scowled and stomped off.

Theo followed me. “You’re so pissed right now. But you feel guilty so you’re keeping quiet.”

Argh! He knew me too well.

He broke into a grin. “Your eye is twitching.”

I slapped a hand over my eye, which was, in fact, twitching. “You done?”

Theo chuckled. “Magoo, it was my decision to save you and pay the price. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He shrugged. “Unless you screw up. Then I’m going to make you feel soooo bad.”

“I hate you.”

He smiled. “Feel better?”

I grinned back at him. “Yes.”

We returned to Kai and Hannah.

I looked down and groaned. “I’m gonna throw up.” It was too far.

Kai stifled a laugh at my discomfort.

I shot him a “not funny” glare. “You think it’s so easy? You do it.”

“I don’t do ribbons. Kai smash with destructive beams.”

Muttering what part of him I wanted to smash, I snaked out the light of my right hand to wrap around Theo and Kai, binding them close together in a very homoerotic Greek hug.

Man, were they annoyed, but I had to get my kicks where I could.

“I don’t want to know what you have planned for me,” Hannah muttered, massaging her temple.

“Baby,” I flirted, “we’re going to be closer than we’ve ever been.”

With the light from my left hand, I bound Hannah to me. Now that we were all trussed up together, I wrapped the ends of both ribbons snugly around a large rock at the lip of the cliff.

“It’s not a present, Martha Stewart,” Kai growled. “Get on with it.”

The four of us shuffled awkwardly to the edge. Hannah, Kai, and Theo because that’s the only way they could walk given their bindings and me because, well, I was scared out of my tree.

“The first step is the hardest,” Hannah said brightly.

“Then it’s all downhill,” Theo added.

“Couple of real weisenheimers you—” The rest of my sentence turned into a smothered shriek as Kai jerked hard to the side to unbalance me and cause me to tumble off the rock.

When my terror had abated to mere mind-numbing fear, I managed to stop our fall so we could sway in mid-air while I hyperventilated.

“Now would be a good time to close your eyes and not look,” Theo said. “Just lower us down.”

Slowly, I let out my light, jerking us down the rock face. It didn’t matter that we careened into outcropping brambles and random foliage. Nothing was going to keep me from my plodding journey to reach the ground.

I almost kissed the rock once my feet landed safely on terra firma.

“Damn girl,” Theo groused, rubbing his neck. “I’ve seen smoother plane crashes.”

Kai touched a scratch mark on his arm that was bleeding from a branch. “Next time I’m risking the jump.”

So, no thanks there. At least Hannah patted my arm supportively.

Now at the bottom of the ravine, the four of us crept along the rock wall until we could peer around it for a closer view of Cassie.

We were in hearing range now. I strained my ears to catch what Cassie was saying.

“
One to overthrow. One to face the dark. One to lose it all
.”

Just once, I’d like that girl to say something like “one to have a nice day,” or to spew winning lottery numbers.

Separating us from her rock was a small body of water. I couldn’t see it since that would involve breaking cover to edge toward the lip of the rocky ground I stood on and peer down, but I could hear it babbling below us. A narrow, precarious rock bridge connected our rock formation to theirs.

“That thing looks like it’ll crash into the creek if we even step foot on it,” I said quietly.

“Not creek. Castalian Spring,” Theo corrected.

“Whatever. We better cross it one at a time, and quickly.”

“Not so fast, Speedy Gonzales,” Hannah said. “Smell that?”

I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of a sweet smelling gas.

“The Oracle didn’t just predict the future because she was psychic,” she explained. “She was high.” She nodded toward the spring. “Full of Ethylene. A narcotic.”