Prime (Book 1 of the Godling Trilogy)

15- Lea Reclin: Matador Extraordinaire

I'll be the first to admit it; I'm not good at being the damsel in distress. We've seen examples of this a lot recently; usually it's me who is near demise when my prince charming comes to save me. In my case, prince charming is usually a pretty blonde girl but that doesn't matter. I'm used to being the one that saves people; the one that wins the game and takes the prize. Now I felt like a blundering idiot who had to rely on other people to get me through a fight. Come to think of it, in the past four encounters with an enemy I've either run away or gotten my ass kicked until one of my friends stepped in. It was pathetic. How was I supposed to lead this quest if I could hardly even stay alive?

I grumbled to myself as we began the walk back to our FedEx truck. Bash and Ava had deliberated and decided we would be staying at a hotel in Oakland for the night and then would enter San Francisco in the morning.

I still didn't completely know what Bash meant when he said the city was 'infested' but I had a pretty good guess and I wasn't ready to find out until morning light.

We found a small motel just off the freeway and we purchased four double queen rooms with Deedee's credit card. Apparently, Aphrodite had given the card to her as a gift on Deedee's sixteenth birthday and it was inscribed with 'for Shopping Sprees!'. I wasn't sure how much money was on there, but it must have been a lot because Deedee didn't eve flinch like I did when the desk attendant at the motel told us the price.

The girls automatically paired off as per usual, Deedee with Sara and Ava with Cloe. However, this time I was not left alone, Gwen and I agreed on sharing a room and we made a deal that I wouldn't complain about her heavy breathing while she sleeps if she didn't mind me staying up really late to watch Friends reruns on the cable television in our room.

West and Bash decided to take a room together because not only does Louis stay up really late tinkering with metal but he also snores abnormally loud according to Bash.

We unpacked quickly, and by that I mean we threw our duffel bags on the floor and collapsed onto our queen sized beds. Cloe and Ava had an adjoining room to Gwen and I's so we opened up the door in between and all sat down on the beds to watch ABC family movies. Ava ordered in pizza and Cloe combed through my hair while humming a Jason Mraz song. She managed to get every clump of tried blood out of my hair without tugging painfully on my scalp even once. If that's not a divine skill, I don't know what is.

After three slices of meat lover's pizza and lots of groaning over cliché movie endings I drifted off to sleep with my head in Cloe's lap.

I woke up to be tucked in bed with no trace of Ava or Cloe. All the pizza boxes were gone, the TV was off and Gwen was sleeping soundly in the bed opposite mine. Sunlight filtered through the grossly colored red and brown plaid curtains. I lay in bed for about an hour, just watching the dust particles in the air dance through the light, illuminating like snowflakes of sun. 

I considered what it'd be like if I didn't have people like Cloe in my life, the motherly figure that loves you regardless of what you do and say. She was so warm and welcoming, she felt like a sister to me and I'd only known her for six days now. It took less than a week for me to make these people my family, which I guess technically they were in very distant ways. I knew that without them I'd already be dead, this quest wouldn't have been possible if I went alone.

I picked up the small silver disk from my bedside table, there were a few small beams pointing in the direction of San Francisco, but the largest one, the one that I guessed indicated Nyx, had disappeared.

I groaned loudly to wake Gwen, but she merely stirred a little, "Gwen, Gwen," I said groggily, my voice still stagnant with sleep.

She turned over to look at me, her eyeliner was smudged and her eyes half open but she managed a small, "What?"