Beggars, Sin, and Wine, page 6
Benji was panting, but he eventually calmed down. He was the youngest of us, but he’d been wanting to meet our mate the longest. Then, he grinned.
“Oh, I like her. She smells like wildflowers and she’s so mad. She won’t tell me her name, but she says we have to leave her. I’m definitely not doing that.”
“Yeah, none of us are. Cas isn’t awake yet, but he’s not going to agree either.”
There was a hard knock on the door and Hannibal came in. Benji was in a good mood considering where we were, but I wasn’t expecting him to fall out laughing.
“Smurf priest,” he gasped.
Damn it, Benji. I started choking trying not to laugh. How was I supposed to talk to this man knowing he turned himself blue? It was different when I didn’t know.
“Do the new intakes need to go to the basement? This one seems deranged,” Hannibal growled.
“I’ve been looking at their files,” I said, tapping my lap. “I haven’t been to see the other one, but he’s a bear shifter. This one is a simple wolf. You have to give them a little grace when they are first waking up because the drugs mess with their minds.”
“I’ll leave you to it. I have a special case in the basement that has all my attention.”
Benji barely contained his snarl and so did I. We both knew that special case was our mate. Still, I had this position for a reason.
“If you’re using starvation therapy, we used that, too. We found it to be ineffective and usually fatal if they go too long without food. Either for them or for us.”
“Hrmph. I’ll consider it,” Hannibal said, stalking out.
Benji leaned forward.
“I don’t even know what she looks like, but I can’t wait to meet her. And you. Think we can roleplay you as the sexy Irish priest when we get out of here? I’ve been bad, Father.”
“I love you, Benji, but I think Father Nathan has opinions about me using his frock like that.”
“I don’t think the good Father kink shames like that.”
“Let me go check on Cas. I can apparently release the two of you and we can get to work in twelve hours.”
“I got dibs on killing the Smurf priest.”
“Thank you for putting that visual in my head.”
“What? The fucker is blue from drinking all that colloidal silver so he could join the Coalition and hurt us. Everyone should know that even if they can’t see him.”
“Rest, Benji. Reach out to our mate and let her know we’re here for her. Don’t tell her the plan in case they torture it out of her. Keep her safe.”
“It’s my goal in life now.”
It was. Stopping the Coalition would probably be the most important thing we’d ever done in our life, but now that we knew our mate was here?
This was life or death.
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.
Icalled dibs, so that blue dude hurting our mate was mine. I was going to fuck with his head a bit and then when all the wards were down, I was going to show him what happened when you pissed off a demon and a wolf. Demons mostly minded our business unless you fucked with us. Hurt our mate? Oh, man, I was going to make sure everything he’d done to my mate and every other supernatural came back on him tenfold.
Giving her the ass end of the bread was intentional. Some people liked it, but there was no accounting for taste. She needed protein, vegetables, and fruit. We stuck my beautiful, three layered birthday cake in the freezer because of this job so I could have more of it when we got back. I’d totally share my cake with her.
And if she liked cats, I’d figure out which one of my degenerates should move in. I’d named them all after famous demons. I needed something to do decades ago, so I built a shed for them. Over the years, I installed electricity, air conditioning, a bunch of yurts, and a giant TV that played nothing but bird videos. Just because cats committed all these unspeakable crimes and would probably commit more if they had thumbs didn’t mean they should suffer. Most of that was just how they were made.
Beelzebub seemed unhappy with his shed and yurt. He’d been trying to break into the house. Beelzebub had these massive Cheeto trouble puffs when he showed up. It almost seemed a shame to have them cut off, but I didn’t need him side-eyeing any of the ladies I hadn’t gotten spayed yet and I definitely didn’t want him pissing on Pax’s tomato plants.
Cas cooked them down into sauce and then canned it. Sometimes, they’d make pizza…without bacon. Bacon on pizza was morally reprehensible. It was too close to breakfast pizza, which was a full on abomination. So was cheeseburger pizza. Some things were illogical, but humans did it anyway and called demons evil. A demon wouldn’t be caught dead eating eggs on pizza, so fuck you all.
Pax finally came to unstrap me from the bed. I was shocked I managed to stay strapped in this long without having a flashback of my first time here and losing my shit. I knew it was because of her. There wasn’t much else I knew about her, but I knew this.
We weren’t fully connected yet because we hadn’t claimed each other, but I could still feel her. Her presence in the back of my mind soothed me and when it got to be too much, just hearing her voice did the rest.
And I didn’t need her to baby me and tell me it was going to be okay. I was too old for that. She was going through her own trauma. I felt better just trying to make her laugh and let her know it would be over soon.
I popped up as soon as Pax undid my restraints. Damn. I forgot these bitches didn’t believe in bed sores. My ass was asleep.
“Why do you think the princess doesn’t want to be rescued from the tower?” Pax asked.
“Bro, you need to spend more time on A03. The princess and the dragon are working together. Peach and Bowser were scamming Mario and Luigi. She was never kidnapped. Oh, you mean our mate? This place fucks with your head. They might have gaslit her into thinking she’s evil.”
Cas came limping into my room. He shot me a look.
“I can’t remember what happened after you jumped out of the SUV, but I strained my hamstring and took a Taser to the ass.”
Fuckers. My plan was brilliant and I couldn’t really remember it either. I was planning on masturbating to those memories and now I couldn’t. I winked at Cas.
“Want me to kiss it and make it all better?”
“Nope,” Pax said, popping the P. “These people already hate you because you’re supernatural. You aren’t together like that. You were just friends when you got taken. I’m your guide to being cured. We planned this. Now, let’s make a big show of you two being so docile and harmless, it makes sense I’ve named you my assistants.”
Pretending to be tame was so vanilla. I didn’t know if these people were supposed to be following that no sex rule since they got excommunicated, but I knew some of them weren’t. I caught some of them in corners when I was a kid. Some of their treatment included rape.
I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to traumatize her further, but my mate said the blue guy hadn’t laid a hand on her. That was a good thing. I mean, I was still going rip out his intestines and squeeze them down his throat like some fucked-up shit sausage, but I didn’t have to make him atone for that.
Cas and I pretended to be meek and tame as we acted like we were helping Pax. Pax was self-sufficient and the only reason he even needed us was because he mostly saw by magic now, but he couldn’t read signs on doors unless they were lighted or there was braille. These fuckers hadn’t bothered with any type of accommodations when they heard they were getting a blind priest.
Which was another reason I was going to make that blue fucker pay.
Something was very wrong here, and it all led back to those three chuckle fucks who hired us to break into New Eden Asylum. Seers were pretty rare. Real seers, that is. The real seers weren’t exactly offering their visions to anyone.
Most people didn’t really want the truth when they asked about the future, which was what a genuine seer was going to give you. They wanted pretty lies that made them sleep better at night. Some seers had been persecuted when their visions did exactly what they were foretold to because some asshole didn’t like it.
Everyone knew who Cassandra was. Apollo had a crush, so he tried to get her to love him by gifting her the ability to see the future. His gift came attached with strings and when she still didn’t want him, he cursed her so no one would believe her if she shared what she saw.
The fact that those three wankers did and were immune to silver had the hair on my bear’s back raising. What were they? They showed us the drawing of the sigil we needed to break. It wasn’t in a language I knew.
They didn’t seem to want to give us the name of the witch we were supposed to rescue. They said in the end, it really wasn’t important because the end goal was to get everyone out. Which I got but I wouldn’t be that cavalier about my mate. And if our mate and his were the same woman, he could have said something. Because the only reason I took this job was Benji and Pax. I wanted to say no.
We were pretending to guide Pax all over the building. This place smelled like fear and sadness. My bear didn’t like it. There were random supernaturals in a break room but they had to be miserable. They only played one type of movie in there.
They all would have been able to tell Pax, Benji, and I were like them. I just hoped they’d keep their fucking mouth shut while we worked. I tried to give them a look, so they knew we were on their side. Benji gave a sly wink to a few. They seemed to get it.
We found the basement door and there were little altars everywhere burning incense. This wasn’t even the good incense. After Father Nathan and Pax became friends, one of the things they bonded over was incense. Yeah, a priest and a warlock didn’t have a ton of shit in common, but good incense was one of them. New Eden burned this vile shit that gave me a headache.
We also found the kitchen. We knew where everything we needed to make the black salt was, but we didn’t know where the ventilation system was that was disbursing the angel tears.
I hadn’t met Hannibal yet, but he was running this place. Benji told me he was blue with shady eyes and I knew my boyfriend was barely going to be able to contain himself about that man. Which was going to be difficult because we all needed to be on our best behavior to pull this off.
Speak of the devil. A sweaty priest who was definitely blue came ambling toward us. Benji was barely going to be able to contain himself. I could feel my bear rumbling around in my chest. I couldn’t shift, but we both knew this man had been starving our mate. I really wanted to punch him in the face. He had a very punchable face. Maybe it wasn’t Benji I needed to worry about.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.
Hannibal had this weasley voice, and it sounded like he was out of breath just from walking up the basement stairs.
“Ah, these two are different,” Pax said. “They aren’t repeating that nonsense that they were born like this. They know they have a demon in them and they want it out. They’ve figured out how to put it to sleep. I’ve named them my assistants to show me around and help me figure out how to do the same with everyone here. We might be able to finally cure them.”
I could see every single supernatural in our vicinity trying not to laugh. That was utter horseshit, and they knew we knew that. They were trying to figure out what we were up to.
“How?” Hannibal demanded.
We had this whole speech prepared about breathing exercises, but we also had Benji with us. And Benji just found out his mate was here. He decided to go rogue.
“Butter, garlic, and hard cheese. The demons don’t like it. You know those rumors about vampires and garlic? It’s more of a holy trinity thing like onions, celery, and bell peppers in Louisiana. You can feel it, you know. The demon? We’re constantly fighting with it.
“I managed to wrestle mine into a deep sleep when I was first possessed. I was fighting keeping him at bay when I was cooking. That was when I figured it out. My friend was possessed at the same time. I helped him by knocking him out with a baseball bat and getting some of it into him. He was right as rain when he woke up.”
I held my breath. That was ridiculous as fuck. I was pretty sure Benji was just trying to gaslight this man into feeding our mate better. If she didn’t get at least a full meal, Benji was trying to negotiate garlic toast. Every single supernatural around us was leaning in and trying not to laugh because that was probably even dumber than all of us being possessed by demons and Hannibal looked like he was buying it.
