Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Batty comes towards us, his face making an unfriendly expression. “Who the hell are you?” he demands.
The man-boys are suddenly shaking. I’ve still got them both by the hand. We all realize this in the same moment, and they start struggling to get free.
But Batty seizes their hands, twirls them around, pushes them to the ground, and kneels on their backs. Then he leans his face down between them and growls, “If you move, I will dismember you.”
They squeak and squawk, but having subdued them, Batty has refocused his attention to me. “What just happened?”
I point up the hill. “You shall call me queen.”
“Callistina, I don’t have time for your queen bullshit. Where did these people come from?”
My smile is sweet and my face is serene when I say, “You shall call me queen.”
I expect the man-boys to give up this information, but they are in hysterics. Praying to their god, and begging for mercy, and all the other usual things that come spilling out of mouths when monsters grab humans and subdue them on the ground.
“Let’s take them to Eros,” Batty sighs. “He’ll know what to do.”
Which was the plan all along.
So I smile at Batty, like it was his idea, and say, “You shall call me queen.”
CHAPTER NINE - EROS
“Hate is my soulmate, despair is my friend.
The fog is my solace, the darkness my end.
No love for me, this curse is eternal.
Hell is my home, my existence infernal.
“The road is long, and lonely, and sad.
The spaces between drive me wild and mad.
No reward is forthcoming, no prize in the win.
For there is no winning when you’re neck-deep in sin.
“The gate is too narrow, too slim, too strait.
I’ll never pass through, it is far too late.
I’ll wander all lost and heavy with weight.
Hate is my soulmate, my soulmate is hate.”
I’m looking at myself in the mirror as I say these words. It’s an old spelling, one cast on me by Pressia lifetimes ago. Well, what she did with this spell was quite clever, actually. Because she never said these words to me, she compelled me to say them to myself.
I was born with a curse of sorts—the god of love, who could not use his power on himself. Who could not compel another to love him. Or hate him, for that matter.
Now, on the surface, this is a very good thing. If my power could be used against me that would be a terrible weakness. One could, theoretically, steal my bow and arrow and just shoot the fuck out of me. Confuse me all up with feelings. Hate, love, what’s the difference? They are both bad because they are both overpowering.
It would’ve made me terribly weak if I were susceptible to this emotional handicap.
But what Pressia’s spell did, in all actuality, was remove love and hate from my whole existence. I could sleep with anyone I wanted. Woman, man—didn’t matter, they all wanted me. And back in the beginning I didn’t understand the depth of Pressia’s insidiousness. Of what she really took from me that day.
She turned me in, is what she did. Sold me out. Ratted. Snitched. Betrayed me to the gods and goddesses. All of them. Not just one or two. No. All four of the succession pantheons were hunting me at the time and Pressia told them how to find me.
But just before I was caught, she compelled me to recite this spelling.
Hate is my soulmate. My soulmate is hate.
That… that was what burned me. Still burns me. She not only gave me up, she was playing me. The whole time, she was playing me.
Knowing what I do now, it makes a lot of sense. See, she can see through time while I cannot. So for me, what was happening was linear. I hadn’t crossed her. I was just minding my own business.
But to her, I had already kidnapped Pie, ruined Pressia’s wedding to Pell because of Pie’s disappearance, and was already living in this godforsaken town. The ball and chain was in full effect.
When Pressia cursed me and turned me over to the gods I had already ruined everything.
And the funny thing is, I thought—all these years while I was biding my time in this foggy town—I thought that I was getting better. That I had matured. Grown into myself, as they say.
But the way I see it now, from the perspective of a man on the other side of time who can look back at his mistakes, I didn’t get better. I got worse.
Which really surprises me because I really thought myself innocent.
But my timeline is not looking good. It’s pointing to the fact that I’ve been an evil son of a bitch since I was born and I will remain that way forever.
I mean—I have to stop and laugh here—if a god cannot change his ways over the course of thousands of years, what hope, ya know? What hope is there?