Hooked [Complete]

42. A Good Barkeep

Author's Note: Thank the gods its Friday, because Hearne needs a drink badly in this chapter...

Song for this Chapter: Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix. There is no better song for Cernunnos in this moment. I can imagine it playing in Malone's while he's sitting at the bar, trying to talk himself out of shooting his old lady, like Joe in the song....

Tom, the proprietor of Malone's, polished a glass and silently sat it in front of Hearne, along with a full bottle of single malt. Hearne poured a shot and toasted him. Tom nodded and walked away.

That was the mark of a good barkeep, Hearne noted. One that could tell just by looking at a man, whether he wanted to talk about his sorrows, or whether he just wanted to drown them. He opened his throat to the burn of the liquor.

Truthfully, he wasn't really here to get drunk. He couldn't. In an hour, he had a meeting with the Board of Trustees about the future of the Festivals at Sabit.  The Board was set to vote on the fate of the festival program.

Hearne's bid to renew a pagan spirit in the mountains would be seriously dampened without the festivals. In fact, he'd been counting on building upon them, not seeing the festivals wither. So this was an important meeting. He couldn't afford to show up drunk.

But he needed a drink badly. He needed to calm himself.

He needed to stop himself from killing the man that was going down on his wife in the room right above where he sat.

Truthfully, he was more angry at Cerridwen, than Faraday.

She was a real piece of work, forcing him to immediately watch the very kind of thing he had begged her to spare him from. She had barely wasted a minute after learning he was sleeping with Dru. Severed or not, the way her reciprocation was so immediate—it was a goddamn betrayal. He built her a fucking house, and she pretended to love it and went back to that bare room and stuffed Faraday's face between her legs.

He had only checked in on her with his god's eye because he wanted to see her still smiling over the house, and instead he saw her naked and screaming  Sean's name.

He snapped. Bloodlust filled his soul. He became the beast of so long ago. He wanted to taste Faraday's marrow.

He remade himself in front of Malone's, not caring who saw him appear,  fully intending to walk up the stairs to Carrie's room, bust open the door, and snap Faraday's neck before Carrie, still in the throes of her pleasure, could move to stop him. He'd throw the lad's broken corpse out the front window before she even rose from the bed. He'd gut the kill later, at his leisure.

With Faraday out of the way, he could decide what to do with Carrie. Perhaps he'd choke her...just until she realized how truly disappointed he was. Then he'd turn her over and beat her ass a little. It would only hurt her pride; after all she was unbreakable.

After he beat her, he would have sex with her. He doubted she would struggle against it much past the initial breach. He knew her. Faraday's tongue was just foreplay. She'd still be yearning for the full fucking. So Hearne would just take her by force and within sixty seconds she'd realized how much she had been wanting him to do that very thing for the last twenty-two hundred years, and all this divorce bullshit would be over.

He'd put his hand on the door to the walk-up, and then he muttered every curse word he knew, before swinging through the door to Malone's instead.

His revenge fantasies were just that—fantasies. He'd never raised his hand to his goddess, never taken her by force. Stag, he'd never wanted to, not once in twelve-thousand years. He didn't want to now. If he walked up those stairs, he could easily kill the lad, but there would be no hate-fucking of his Goddess. He could never hurt her like that, no matter how much she hurt him.