Deviant Dark Dryads: A Fantasy Adventure (False Icons Book 4), page 2
So cold. Then came a familiar tingle, like back when I’d fought the Hecatonstoma, a race of stupid frog people who... What the…?
All at once, the red from my vision vanished. In its place, the world around me took on various shades of icy blue. That could only mean...
“Really? Rather than deal with this situation, you’re gonna lie there soaking up that nasty nether? I swear, you make a good case for abortion.”
Nether! It was the power of Hades, exuded by creatures native to that world as well as the dead souls who called it home. Did that mean there was an incursion happening nearby?
Maybe not. This felt more like a trickle than a deluge, but my body was still able to draw in enough of the chilling energy to start numbing the pain in my body.
“Focus, child,” Holly spat. “I’d hate for you to die distracted.”
Insults... pain... sarcasm... I guess this was my life now.
On the upside, the drip of errant nether deadened the pain as I was chucked into a gurney, shattering the casts around my upper body this time. I lifted my newly freed left arm and wiggled my fingers, amazed to find that I could do both.
Shouldn’t I have more scars considering I was literally blown up?
Speaking of scars, the words carved in my arm – FALSE ICON carved in ancient Greek – began to itch and burn, like they were one of Zeus’s STDs. Along with it came a voice inside my head. A voice... or a memory?
You’re not dead, Jessie, not yet. But if you fail to learn quickly, you will die, and then there’ll be no one left to stop his plans.
And just like that it fell silent before I could figure out who or what was butt-dialing my subconscious. What the heck?
“What part of focus didn’t you understand, girl?”
Holly slapped me hard enough to ring my bell, but the freezing numbness had reached my face, meaning I felt nothing but the movement of my head rocking back. In that moment, the entire room flipped to a frigid blue hue. No, the room hadn’t turned blue. It was me. My hair erupted in fire, much as it had done before my little trip to the Underworld. Except instead of its normal red, it sizzled far more smurfaliciously as actual blue flames flickered in my periphery.
Holly backed off, the hand she’d used to strike me now smoking. I burned her. I actually burned her! Blue flames were a new slot on my wheel of seemingly random powers, but I wasn’t about to argue with it as I pushed myself to my feet.
Wait… standing? But weren’t my legs...?
Focus!
It wasn’t Holly screaming it this time, though. The voice in my head was back.
You owe me, girl. You killed one of my sacred creations and took something that didn’t belong to you. The only reason you’re still alive is because that egotistical bastard I once called husband corrupted my champions when he wasn’t busy dipping his wick in every available hole.
Husband? Was she talking about...?
He may have buggered off to some higher plane, the voice continued, but he left a hell of a mess behind. Fix it, and I might even let you keep that weapon you stole.
The weapon I...
That was it! I couldn’t help the smile that escaped my lips. “Come here, you goddamned piece of junk!”
I wasn’t sure if I said the words or thought them, but either way it worked. A moment later a chunk of wall exploded as my magical, god-forged axe Moolnir came crashing through it to land at my feet.
I had no idea how or why the mother of the gods had decided to reach out to me when she had, but I wasn’t about to look this gift horse in the mouth.
With my body numbed against the pain, my hair on fire – albeit in a different hue than I was used to – and my axe within reach, it was time to give Holly the worst Mother’s Day gift imaginable.
“See, I knew you were faking it!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.
I lifted the weapon, startled at how light it felt in my grasp – the grip bending beneath my fingers like it was... cheap plastic? I paused to take a closer look at it.
This wasn’t Moolnir. It was like those cheap barbarian props they sold at Party City around Halloween. “What the hell?”
“You’ll excuse the smoke and mirrors, Jameson, but you needed the motivation,” Holly said.
“Smoke and mirrors? So that wasn’t...?”
“Hera whispering in your mind? Seriously? What do you think?”
“But why?”
“Why? Because I only have so much fucking patience. I’ve been waiting over a week for you to realize you could absorb ambient nether to recharge your batteries, but I guess you take after your father when it comes to being a slow learner.” She raised her hand to show the burns on her palm already healing, her grin smug and her face extra punchable.
Despite being in a cast not three minutes earlier, I threw the fake Moolnir at her head. She dodged easily, but that was okay. It allowed me to step in and throw a punch at her. Before I could even come close to connecting, though, Holly caught my hand and twisted, snapping my wrist. I should’ve been screaming in pain, but the cold still overwhelmed my nerve endings.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you have more tricks up your sleeve than you realize, baby girl. Consider this the second of many lessons to come.”
“Second?”
“Oh yes. The first is, don’t fuck with mommy. You might hit hard, but she hits a lot harder.”
And with that I caught a backhand for my troubles, painless as well, but more than enough to knock my extremely confused ass out.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I can sense your annoyance, little one,” Holly said once I woke up. I was still in my hospital room, now held together via duct tape and a prayer. Plastic sheets covered the holes I’d made when Holly yeeted me through the wall, beyond which I could just make out shadowy figures moving about.
Holly gave an exaggerated wink as she noticed. “What? You didn’t think the Queen of Chaos traveled without an entourage, did you?”
“Is that what you are?” I asked, my voice surprisingly strong considering the past few weeks. I looked down to see I was now wearing a clean hospital gown with little dinosaurs on it. The skin of my arms and legs looked both normal and healthy – with nary a blemish to be seen, other than my False Icon scar.
I turned ever so slightly to notice a braid of bright red snaking past my shoulder, with the occasional sparkle crackling along its length. It was nuts. Not only did I feel fine, but it seemed my powers returned as well. Only the itching on my arm and chest remained as a reminder that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“I’m a lot of things, to a lot of beings,” Holly explained between taking sips from what looked like a beverage from my favorite bubble tea shop in Worcester. She motioned to the nightstand, where a second cup awaited – full of a pink, milky drink and glistening tapioca pearls. “For instance, I’m the person who knows strawberry is your favorite.”
“I’m not big on red drinks these days.” I lifted my gown to peer beneath it, finding a new scar over my heart in addition to the X-shaped one that had been there before.
“Yeah, I guess nothing compares to a big ole slurp of divine dick blood, eh? Still, if you hadn’t been thirsty for what Uranus had on tap, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d just be a pile of chunks on a barroom floor, having ended your life tragically close to how you entered it. That’s where you got your name by the way, Jameson.”
“My name is Jessie,” I growled, finally able to take in this woman with clear eyes. She lounged in her seat, a sea of red curls surrounding her freckled face. Other than her hair color, though, I couldn’t see a trace of myself in her pasty, busty, and exceptionally European-looking figure. Holly smirked, showing off a slight gap in her teeth.
“I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. You see, Jameson, I’m not really your mother. But at the same time, I am.”
What the heck is she talking about? I raised a hand to rub my eyes but found I couldn’t move it that far.
No doubt seeing the panic on my face, Holly said. “Relax. You’re not paralyzed or anything. It’s just a little something to keep you from misbehaving again.”
She snapped her fingers and a shadowy chain appeared around my right wrist, snaking down from it to a bolt on the floor. She had me trapped... for now.
“Here, I’ll show you. If you’re quick, you might even get a chance to say hi to mommy.” She slurped down the rest of her drink, the sound echoing in the now eerily still room. There came a flicker, a slight shift in the light.
Holly’s skin began to darken, and her features expanded and contracted with each breath we both took. I blinked and suddenly a woman with jet-black hair lounged before me, her nose and facial features a dead ringer for my own. Her dark leather ensemble harkened back to Dís-One in his human form, causing my heart to pound.
This new form of Holly’s stretched her arms overhead, showing off a perfect six-pack, and tattoos wrapping around her midsection. She held out her hands to show her knuckles adorned with an ever so polite “Fuck” and “Off” lettered across the back of each. Then, for just a single moment, her whole expression softened as she stared at me in my bed.
Two words echoed in my mind. I’m sorry.
Holly’s form shimmered again, back to the figure I’d become familiar with. “Well, there you go. That particularly rebellious lunch from about 900 BC is your actual egg donor. I don’t let her out much anymore. She makes... questionable life choices.”
“What? Are you saying you... devoured my mother?”
“No. I devoured the woman who would have been your mother, had you been born three millennia earlier. Oh, by the way, I’d avoid doing one of those 23 and Me things if the opportunity presents itself. Not sure how they’d handle finding out you’re mostly Olmec.”
“Olmec?”
“But anyway, you get the drift. I am your mother, but the me you’re currently talking to also isn’t. Simple, no?”
“No, not at all!”
Holly gave a bored yawn. “Look I know you have a million questions, but it’s too complicated to explain, your brain is too unevolved, and you know what? I’m getting hungry again.” Her eyes glowed bright red and claws extended from her fingertips. “So, I think there’s only one thing left to do, little one.”
“And what’s that?” I asked tentatively.
I expected another throttling, maybe worse, but instead, she produced a cell phone. “Make a reservation for two, of course.”
Chapter Three: Brunch with the Devil
It’s almost funny how so many important events seemed to fall into my lap as of late. Here I sat, with the world falling apart around me, while this woman stared at me with utter contempt. “You need to make a choice – whether you like it or not.”
“It’s just too much,” I choked out at last. The sheer weight of everything punched me in the gut – my injuries, the loss of Dís-One, Wyatt out there somewhere while his other half was obsessed with hunting us. For once I wished for a lifeline, so I could call someone, anyone and ask what I should do.
Niko, you out there, bud?
Crickets.
“Seriously, you need to make a choice because if I have to tell that goddamn waitress that you need another minute one more time, I am drinking her soul along with the rest of this bloody Mary, young lady.”
And that brought me to the here and now – seated at a trendy gastropub with the monster who claimed to be my mother.
Barely an hour ago I’d been lying at death’s door, and yet here I was debating between eggs benedict on brioche toast and a kale salad with fried tofu – all to ensure the wait staff didn’t die a gruesome death. Weird how so much of my life seemed to hinge on breakfast.
“Why are we doing this?”
“It’s called brunch and it’s what mothers and daughters are supposed to do,” she snapped as her eyes momentarily glowed as red as her hair. “Now order something before I...”
“Before you what? Walk out on me for another twenty years? Or are we talking about ripping out my heart again while I try to figure out what you’ve done with my boyfriend?”
She took another sip of her drink and then scrunched up her face disapprovingly. “Oh yeah, I meant to talk to you about that. I’m afraid I don’t approve of that boy at all.”
Before I could respond, the aforementioned goddamned waitress chose that moment to return. Just like all the other normies in the room, she didn’t notice the shadowy chains tethering three of my limbs to the pissed-off redhead in the room, nor did she notice the claws extending from my captor’s fingers as she lifted her menu. “Two... chicken and waffles.”
“One, this isn’t IHOP,” I said, doing everything I could not to scream. “And two, I don’t even like waffles.”
My mother blinked a few times before opting to ignore me. “Oh, and kindly get my daughter one of those pomegranate Bellinis. She’s going through a rough breakup.”
I could only sit there dumbstruck as the woman who’d been conspicuously absent throughout every trial in my life pretended to care. Sure, she batted her eyelashes and smiled like the sweetest cougar on the planet, but I could feel the darkness oozing from every freckled pore.
“What are you?” I asked the moment our server strutted away. “And don’t start in with that ‘I’m your mother’ crap again. I’m talking about the whole Chaos Queen part.”
“Queen of Chaos,” she replied. “We ancient entities are particular about our titles.”
“Whatever. Just show me your real face.”
“My real face?” The air shimmered and the pasty ginger in a way-too-short mini dress was once again replaced by the woman who looked like me – except this time she wore an ugly blouse and mom jeans. “Fine. Is this better?”
I quickly scanned the room. No one seemed to notice the full-body transformation in their midst.
“No? Good, because if I have to stay in this outfit a second longer someone is going to fucking die. Ooh, I know!” She snickered and shimmered again. This time I found myself sitting across from what could only be described as a were-otter sporting a leather bustier. “How ‘bout dis... yessss?”
“I’m serious!”
“So am I,” she hissed. “All of these are me.”
“Okay, fine. Just stop it.”
“Oh, very well.” She flipped back to her original redheaded Amazon form. “You’re no fun, just like your father.”
How did I even tackle that subject? Between my head swirling, my chest pounding, and the spectral chains holding me down, I didn’t know where to begin. Here was a woman with potentially all the answers I could ever want, and my old nemesis – tongue-tied Jessie – decided that this was the moment to take over.
Maybe it was for the best since I doubted I’d get anything approaching a straight answer. If only Wyatt was here. He’d know what to do with this...?
“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?”
At least I didn’t have to carry the conversation, because apparently, dear old Mom’s favorite thing in the whole wide world was the sound of her own voice.
“And before you ask, no tricks. Mothers simply know these sorts of things. Listen, child, I know you won’t believe this, but it’s better if you don’t know where the hick is. It gives us a chance to work on your breakup speech. Trust me. You don’t want to do it over text. That’s just tacky.”
“I am not dumping Wyatt! I haven’t even... well... you know with him yet, at least not that I remember. Not to mention...”
“That’s sweet... in a pathetic sort of way.” Holly leaned across the table and smiled. “Still, that’s a good thing. You see, it’s not just that he’s beneath you. He’s also... how do I put this delicately... a bit on the old side.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not at all. That whole pedo-vamp thing might be considered romantic in the movies, but in real life... kinda creepy.”
That had to be the pot calling the kettle black.
I needed to get out of here, but how? I debated trying to get my hair to light up. There was also the possibility of calling for Moolnir, the real one this time, but a quick glance at a couple pushing a stroller down the sidewalk made me pause. She’s keeping me in a crowd.
Not that I was even remotely certain I could take her.
Just then, I spied a plushie poking out from under the sunshade of the stroller, reminding me Wyatt wasn’t the only one relying on me. Oh no!
How could I have forgotten about him?!
I turned back to Holly in panic. “I need to get back to James!”
She raised an eyebrow.
“He’s...”
“I know who he is.” She scrunched up her face again. “Relax. He’ll be fine.”
“Don’t tell me to relax!” Oh my God! I realized I had no idea how long it had been since I’d left him. I knew it was over a week but...
For the first time since abducting me, the stranger proclaiming to be my mother looked genuinely miffed. “Really, Jameson? Do you think so little of me that I’d leave my only grandchild unattended?”
What?! “Where is he?”
“Safe.”
My hair flared up, cracking the bond on my wrist, and letting me lean forward to within punching range. “What... have... you... done to...?”
She snapped her fingers, and the shadowy chains redoubled their grip. “Settle down. If you must know, this isn’t my first rodeo. I have eyes everywhere. Hell, I can be anywhere or anyone.” She flickered for a moment, and I saw hundreds of faces pass before my eyes – teachers, neighbors, even my old guidance counselor, before she eventually settled on a copy of Boo in her human form.
No! It can’t be. “Wait, you aren’t trying to tell me you’re...”
She threw me a wink before resuming her redheaded bombshell look. “Psych! Gotta keep you on your toes now, don’t I?”
I held my tongue as the waitress returned and set my drink in front of me, feeling my hair fizzle as quickly as it had flared – all of it unseen by those around us. This must be some kind of spell or something.
