Chapter 21 - Bee

Life’s too short not to have at least one crazy friend.

~Austin Brite

Well, he hadn’t run out the door screaming, so that had to be a win, right? Being dumped so gracelessly onto my bed hadn’t been the best start, but as soon as Austin had finished his mini-melt down, he squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and demanded answers.

“If you try to tell me you’re a vampire, I swear to god I will lose my shit.”

I huffed out a laugh that was more incredulous disbelief than humor. Effing vampires! Why does everyone leap to a vampire first? Stupid Twilight and their stupid sparkly vampires.

“Vampires don’t exist, and it’s gods, not God.”

“What do you mean?” he asked warily.

“Just give me a second here and I’ll explain, please.” Austin nodded. “Do you want to have a seat? We could go out to the living room?”

“Nope, I’m good right here.”

Sighing, I glanced around the tiny room and wondered how on earth Mac did this with Walker. I should have spent a little more time talking to her about the moment she revealed herself.

 

How the next few minutes of my life played out would be pivotal to my future. If Austin’s mind couldn’t comprehend the enormity of my immortal life, then this blossoming thing between us would come to an abrupt halt. I’d have to get my father to wipe his memories and then I would have to walk away. And the most frightening thing about that was I would care. Things would have been a whole lot freaking easier if I had just hardened my heart and not listened to my stupid, sentimental, loved up best friend. 

“Any time now,” Austin growled out.

Was he getting pissy? With me? I crossed my arms across my chest defensively and scowled. Damn cranky potential.

“Like I’ve already told you, my real name is Hedone, but if you ever call me that I’ll encase your balls in ice. I am the only daughter to Eros and Psyche, the Greek Gods of Love and Soul, respectively.

“You don’t look Greek.”

I arched a brow. “That’s what you got from what I just told you?”

Austin seemed to shake his head and rethink his next question.

“You mean to tell me you are the daughter of a god?”

“And goddess. I myself am the goddess of pleasure and delight,” I added helpfully.

Austin opened his mouth to speak, but quickly snapped it shut. After a moments silence, he tried again, but still no words came forth. Finally, when I thought I might offer him a beer, or maybe something stronger, he spoke.

“Mac?”

“Short for Macaria, she is the alleged daughter of Hades.”

“Fucking Satan!” Austin barked out.

“Satan is a manifestation of Hades that was introduced in your traditional bible. Hades is not Satan, though. He’s actually a pretty cool dude, scary as all get out, but kind of awesome. He is king of the Underworld, which is not ‘hell,’ it’s more like his own realm, and in his realm there are some pretty terrifying places.”

Austin’s jaw dropped open and he shook his head. “I’m losing my fucking mind . . . Walker is aware of this story?”

“Yes, and it’s not a story; it’s our life. Apparently, he and Mac have an honesty clause in their relationship. He knows everything.”

“Jesus Christ,” Austin huffed out, raking a hand through his hair. Then he laughed. “I guess he doesn’t exist either?”

“Only in your Bible,” I murmured, shifting nervously. Honestly, things could be going worse.

“So, you’re what? You’re a goddess just hanging out with us mere humans? And you live . . . here?” With his arms outstretched Austin took in the small bedroom that was more bed than room. I could understand his incredulity this time.

“No.”

“Then what the hell? Explain. Why are you here? What the actual fuck, Bee?”

“Okay, just chill.” I pulled my hair from my ponytail, the tightness there giving me a headache, or perhaps it was just this conversation.

“I normally live in the immortal realm, both Mac and I do. But we come and go from the human realm often. I do actually work here with my father’s business ‘Cupids Catch’. As Eros’s child carry a bow and I shoot arrows of lust and desire into the hearts of mortals. It’s a tough gig, but somebody’s got to do it. There are some immortals who prefer to live full time in the mortal realm, but that’s a personal preference. I love my home, but my father confiscated my bow, which in essence is like taking away my powers, and grounded me here. In this . . .” I looked around my room, my lip lifting with distaste, “. . . apartment,” I spat out.

“Why were you grounded?”

“A differing of opinions,” I brushed the question away. Somehow I just knew if I explained how I definitely refused to bring soul mates together Austin wouldn’t be impressed. I had the good sense to climb only one mountain at a time.

“Shooting people with arrows is a job?” he asked next.

“Yes, we create lust and desire in potential soul mates to help love grow.”

“You hate love,” Austin pointed out.

“True, but I also don’t really understand it.” Which was something I only grasped just now. Wow, an epiphany unlike any I had ever had before. It felt like something I needed to record in my journal, or at the very least immortalize in a selfie. I didn’t understand love; I had no freaking clue. I saw it in my mother and father, and I guess I shared it with Mac, but that was different than a soul mate bond. It was friendship at its strongest, bestiship. The love between soul mates was a powerful force I never understood because I spent all my time on the outside, reinforcing the walls that protected me from such an emotion.

Austin shook his head with frustration. “Prove it,” he said.

“Prove what?” I asked nervously, having lost my train of thought for a moment.

“Prove to me I’m not losing my mind. Prove to me my drink wasn’t spiked. Prove it,” he dared me.

There was no way I could turn down a dare. I just didn’t have it in me, and perhaps proof would help.

Stepping forward, I pointed a finger in his direction. “No freaking out, got it?”

“Can’t promise you that, Sugar,” he delivered the disappointing words with my pet name, so I couldn’t be as angry as I wanted to be. “But I’ll try.”

With a satisfied nod, I tapped into the place inside me where my powers normally churned with impatience, just begging to be used. Right now that usually overflowing ocean of power was nothing more than a meager trickle. I hated that almost empty feeling; it made me feel weak and vulnerable.  With a push, I used what power I could muster to manifest two beers.  I offered one to Austin, his alarmed gaze glued to the bottle. With much reluctance, he reached out to accept the drink, though anyone would think I was handing him the head of hydra by the look on his face.

“Thought maybe you could use that,” I murmured.

“Truth,” Austin acknowledged, twisting the top off and taking a long drink from the bottle. “What else,” he asked as I played nervously with the label on the side of my beer.

“Remember that morning you showed up to take me to the museum?”

Austin snorted. “Fucking Mac,” he sighed. “A Greek mythology exhibition. She said you would, and I quote, ‘flip the F out.’” Shaking his head, he chuckled. “Yeah, I remember that morning.”

“You thought I’d been painting or something?”  Austin nodded.

I  stretched and flexed my powers, reaching for the ebbing flow until it brushed my skin, then watched as the dust in my room collected into a soft cloud, floating higher into the air until it was hovering only a few inches from the ceiling. I really should clean this place, I thought as I began to push the dust motes around the room until they swirled and twisted like a living, breathing force.

“What’s that?” Austin asked, his voice low and wary.

“Dust,” I murmured as I added a touch of color, making the dust a vibrant blue. Lowering the lighting in the room, I pushed a little more energy into the dust, making it glow.

“Magic,” Austin breathed.

“Magic is an illusion, just a sleight of hand altering people’s perceptions. This is just . . . power, energy if you will. When I’m at full power, it’s almost limitless and all I need is to project a thought to make it work.”

Cautiously, Austin stepped away from the wall and raised his hand, watching the dust as it twisted around his fingers, lighting up his handsome features with a soft blue glow before it sped off around the room.

“It’s beautiful,” he laughed. “Fucking dust.”

I smiled. “Dust can be beautiful, too, until you accidentally drop a bucket load of it on top of you, which is why I was covered in specs of white dust that morning you took me to the Greek mythology exhibition.”

Austin grinned and shook his head.

“What can’t you do?” he finally asked, and I pushed the dust away from us and let it fall down the crack between the wall and the bed, raising the light back up as I did.

“I can’t foresee futures, but I can probe into a person’s mind to see lingering impressions from their past, like significant moments in a person’s life that is almost captured in a short video. I can’t kill with an errant thought, though sometimes wish I had the ability, especially when Mac is pushing all my buttons. I can’t cure illness and disease, but again, it’s a power I wish I had many times in my life, and I can’t give the gift of immortality.”

Austin thought on that for a moment, and I lowered myself to the bed and sat crossed legged, shoving a pillow between my legs so that I wasn’t flashing my pretty black panties. Eventually, Austin sat, too, though he was careful not to sit too close, which hurt. I rubbed the ache in my chest and reminded myself that he was still here, and that was a good sign.

“You can make people fall in love, with your bow and arrow,” he thought out loud.

“No, that’s not how it works,” I was quick to correct him. “The arrows I shoot create the spark, they create desire, and when fired into potential soul mates, that’s all that is needed to bring two people together.”

Austin nodded. “So you can create happily ever after.”

“No, that’s not entirely correct, either. Once the arrow brings soul mates together, the rest is up to them. They can work at making their bond stay true and on course, or they can let it wither. You would be surprised by how many prefer to just let it die.”

Austin watched me carefully and those intense eyes seemed to peel back my layers, trying to take a peek at the stranger that lay beneath my skin. Gods, he’d likely hate the bitter being that lurked beneath the pretty veneer. Ruthless, angry, sarcastic, vengeful, it seemed as if my life thus far had been lived with so much hate.

“You’re immortal, you live forever?” he continued with the questions, thankfully leaving the topic of love and soul mates behind.

“I can be killed, beheading is the most effective way.”

“No beheading,” Austin murmured, taking another pull from his beer.

“Preferably not.”

He went quiet for such a long time, I began to fidget and squirm. Surely he must’ve had more questions than that.

“So, if we were to date, and that’s one massive if, because I have to be honest with you, Bee, this is one great, big, giant mind-fuck right now . . . but, if we were to date, you would live forever, young and hot, and I would grow old and get saggy and . . . old.”

“We are already dating,” I corrected Austin who simply raised a brow. “We are potential soul mates, my father pointed you out, and as much as I tried to deny the attraction, I couldn’t. If we keep moving forward, our bond would grow, but like any relationship, it will take work to make sure that bond stays healthy. Kind of like cultivating a crop, it needs constant attention and work. You are human and I am immortal, we have different expectations from life because in your world your life has an expiration date. It makes our thought process different, and as a rule, humans tend to be fickle about love and race through it as fast as possible, trying to gather all those firsts and experience everything as if tomorrow might be their last day, which is always possible. But because of all that rushing, the relationship often burns out. If we were to work out, though, as my soul mate, my father can gift you immortality so that you may stay by my side for eternity . . . or . . .” The thought of what I was about to say next actually made me feel ill.

“Or what?” Austin prompted.

“Or . . . I can always give away my immortality, become human, and grow old, hopefully with you.”

Give away my immortality? It felt wrong and went against everything I believed in, but what if the alternative was to walk away from Austin? Could I do it? Our relationship was too new to truly know, but already our bond had begun to develop.

Austin ran a hand down his face, exhaustion seeming to settle heavy on his shoulders.

“This is a lot to take in,” he confessed.

“It’s not a bad as me confessing that I have man junk, though, right?”

Austin laughed. “I’ve got nothing against man junk, I love my man junk, but yeah, I was really hoping you were born with girl bits.”

We both sat in silence for a few moments longer, Austin seemingly lost in the fragments of the mental bomb I had dumped on him, and me completely and utterly confused about my feelings, which was nothing new. My heart yearned for his acceptance, but with that acceptance came so many more frightening choices. If Austin decided to call it quits now, it would make things so much easier. However, if I were to be honest, I hated the easy path, it was boring. That was one of my father’s favorite quotes, “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” For not the first time a spark of anger lit at my father. He’d been the one to start this horrifying chain of events; he was so not getting a Father’s Day gift this year. Unable to stand the silence any longer, I started humming the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Sound of Silence. Austin’s lips curved into a delicious smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“What’s this?” Austin asked, his hand opening to reveal a palm sized faux diamond. The faux diamond coochie tickler Mac had brought me.

My mouth dropped open but nothing came out and I watched in abject horror as Austin’s brow furrowed and he carefully flicked the switch that turned it on. A low buzz filled the room.

“Cat toy,” I squeezed out my tight throat, my cheeks heating with mortification.

Austin glanced at me from over the top of the pretty stimulator and gave me a look which suggested he didn’t at all believe me. With a little push of my powers, the diamond fell from his hand and straight down the gap between the bed and the wall, finding a new home with the dust I so enjoyed playing with. It continued to buzz for a moment longer before I used my waning power to shut the damn thing off.

“Interesting,” Austin murmured, watching me carefully.

“Not really, pretty boring actually, I don’t even know how it got in here.”

“Ah-huh,” Austin said with a knowing smirk. “You know, I should probably go.” He added.

And just like that, my embarrassment disappeared. My heart plummeted from the heights that one, single kiss had taken me to, and now I was falling, the ground was screaming back at me, mocking me, threatening me with the painful end all these falls into love promised. 

“I just need some time to process this, can you give me that?” The screeching fall towards the ground slowed. “After all, it’s not like you don’t have plenty of it,” Austin added with a smug smile.

Time, I thought, mulling it over. I wasn’t exactly known for my patience, and I’d been fighting for Austin’s attention for weeks, and now he wanted to put time between us?

“I can give you time,” I said with a completely fake smile.

I was pretty sure I couldn’t do this without going all stalker on his ass. Maybe Mac could lock me in the apartment again. Maybe I could occupy myself with trying to get my bow back. I could prove to my father that I had given love a go. I’d been on my best behavior, even Mac had been good. Hell yeah, I was going to get my bow back.

Austin stood and moved towards the doorway, and I was quick to follow.  Jumping down from the bed and out into the short hallway, he turned to look over his shoulder.

“How did you even get that bed in there?” he asked.

I raised a brow as if to say “really?”

“Fuck, right . . . goddess.” He paused and looked longingly over my facial features. “It shouldn’t really surprise me. I mean, you look like a goddess.”

He had that look, the one of heated promise, the one he spared me between sweet kisses at Purgatory; however, this time he took a step away from me, rather than pressing me into a wall and kissing the heck out of me.

At the living room, Krueger jumped down from the empty sectional and began rubbing himself on Austin’s legs.

“Cat’s got good taste,” he said as he leaned down to pat Krueger’s head.

I rolled my eyes. “Cat’s an effing pyscho.” Which probably made me a touch cray cray, since I wanted to rub myself all over Austin, too.

“Just give me a few days,” Austin said as he reached the door.

A few days? It was going to feel like a millennia. Yet it was the right thing to do; we both needed this ‘time.’  Time to sift through those tricky darn emotions; time to think about our futures; time to get my freaking bow back.

I pulled the front door open and Austin walked through it, pausing right by my side.

“I like you, Sugar,” he confessed. He leaned over and pressed his warm, full lips to mine. My eyelids fluttered shut and my thighs clenched together. Much to my disappointment, there was no pressing of tongues, but there did seem to be a promise in this kiss. Or maybe that was just my lust molecules firing.

“Talk soon,” he whispered before heading for the stairwell that would lead him away. He didn’t even look back. Was I that easy to dismiss? Maybe I should have offered to trace him home, and yet something told me Austin had had enough surprises tonight.

I closed the door and turned to leaned against it. I wanted to follow him so bad. I wanted to chase him down and jump his body like a lunatic. I wanted him to hold me like he had done in the club tonight, with his entire body surrounding mine, heating me, making me feel protected and cherished in a way I never had before. He liked me. Gods, that made me giddy, and I wanted to dance around the apartment like a fool and sing foolish songs. Yet the whole ‘time’ thing put a dampener on my mood.

Rather than succumbing to pre-emptive childish swooning, I went to my bedroom and proceeded to climb into my ugly, comfy pajamas before tucking myself under the sheets of my bed. I should shower, but I just wanted to sleep and forget, so I used my muted powers to clean myself and wipe away the makeup. Maybe I could sleep the next three days away, avoiding all the turmoil and anxiety I was bound to be consumed with. The thought of three days straight in the same clothes wasn’t appealing, though. Mac had done it before and didn’t seem to be worse for wear, but I didn’t have the same lack of hygiene morals as my bestie did.

Closing my eyes, I forced myself to relax, and just as I began to dip into the world of sleep, I sent off a quick message to my father asking for my effing bow back!