My Ex From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy, #1)

A dead minion tells no tales (Part 3)

Looking back, I'm amazed I wasn't killed. I was hideously outnumbered and for every being I'd taken out, ten more had shown up to take its place.

I closed my eyes as fire and lightning engulfed me. I could feel my skin sizzle as I spasmed violently from the electricity arcing over my body.

Something seized my shirt front. Dazed, my eyes struggled open to find a scarred Gold Crusher holding me in his grasp. He smiled, revealing his snaggle teeth. All I could think was "I guess Zeus doesn't provide dental care."

Both the Crusher's eyes and his thunderbolt tattoo glowed with an otherworldly eeriness. He flew up in the air, my body clutched firmly to him like a child with his favorite teddy. No one was getting me away from him.

Whoops. Spoke too soon. A lone Infernorator swooped down upon us and used his flaming tentacle to knock the Crusher sideways so hard, my teeth rattled.

The two foes attacked each other. Fire met lightning and the sky exploded in red and gold, as they made their hatred plain.

I wasn't sure who I wanted to win. I guess the Photokia. Better the devil already holding you and all that.

I got my wish soon enough. My captor hurtled his fiery foe into a Sitka spruce with enough force to cause an impressive Underworldy fireball.

My hero.

Problem was, then his attention turned back to the prize in his hand. Me.

"Pretty," he leered, reaching for my pendant.

Over my dead body was he getting it. I reached far inside myself, beyond the pain, beyond the exhaustion. I was ending this now.

Something in the recesses of my brain that pre-dated my human consciousness stirred. A primeval force that had been sleeping, waiting for the command to "awake."

I hesitated. I knew instinctively that tapping into that force meant there was no going back. I could never hide behind human ignorance again. To drink from this source was to fully commit; to my goddess nature, to the war, and to my birthright.

I chose.

Finally.

The dental nightmare squeezing me placed one hand on my pendant. "Wonder what Zeus will give me for this?" he laughed, oozing foul breath.

Bzzz. So sorry. The correct answer was "What righteous babe is about to blow you to smithereens?"

Fully, irreversibly, finally, totally me. I closed my eyes, then girlfriend gave 'er. Light blasted out from my entire body. The world around me trembled with the muted boom of my all-encompassing shockwave.

My eyes cracked open. Dazzling blue. The sky was clear. My enemies gone.

Any leaves that had been clinging to their branches were now on the ground, dead.

I knew that they wouldn't be enough to cushion me.

Because I was falling. And so tired. My human tupperware exterior could still get cracked. Needed to remember that for next time.

I hurtled downward. My hands burned like a mother, and after that hailstorm of electric shocks, my head felt like it was only semi-attached. A rib or two might have been broken as well. On a scale of one to ten, I'd cranked the pain to eleven.

The ground rushed toward me and I remembered enough about physics to know that when I landed, it was going to hurt. A lot. Theo's comment about how sometimes death was a blessing popped into my head. Now might be one of those times.

This was it. Five, four, three, two ... I heard the ground beneath me rumble as if something had landed on it, hard. Was it me?

"Like I said," Kai's voice rumbled against my chest as he caught me safe in his arms, "a walking suicide mission."

My brain, barely working at all by this point, couldn't even form the words to ask where he'd come from. The only way down to this spot was from the top of the ravine. I looked up at it, confused.

Kai must have read my thoughts because he grinned and said "I like to jump." Then he proved that point with a running leap, soaring up the fifty feet to the top of the ravine.

That got my attention. I processed it.

Then I blacked out.

When I came to, I was back in my bed. Hannah was bundled in her bathrobe, hovering over me, terrified. I tried to smile reassuringly. Instead I blacked out again.

The second time I came to, Kai was sitting on the edge of my bed, frowning. "Some death wish you've got."

I rolled over, too tired to engage. "Some bedside manner. Go away. I want Hannah."

"She had to go to class."

"Don't you?" I asked, not really caring.

"Why? Because if I flunk out I can't get into university and make something of myself?"

Good point. "How long was I out?"

"A day."

Tentatively, I took stock of my condition. Toes wiggling. Check. Neck moving. Check. Arms?

I lifted my hands. They peeked out from under my too-long pajama sleeves, bandaged in heavy gauze. I panicked as I realized that part of my head was bandaged as well. I had to get to a mirror and see if I was hideously deformed by burns.

I struggled to sit up.

"Where do you think you're going?" Kai asked.

"Mirror." I needed all my energy to prop myself up.

Kai gently pushed me back down. "No," he said.

I fought him as best I could. "Let me up."

"As imperious as always," he muttered, keeping me firmly in place.

That surprised me. "I would have thought I was a lovely goddess. Everyone likes Spring."

"Yeah," he said, in voice that sounded oddly sarcastic, "you were a real doll."

I closed my eyes. "I'm going to make children cry now, aren't I?"

He laughed. A rich belly laugh. I refused to think about what the sound did to me. I was hurt, not aroused. If I reminded myself of that about fifty thousand times, I might believe it.

My eyes snapped open. "Do I amuse you?"

"Annoy, actually, but I'm trying to focus on the positive." He shot me an angelic smile.

"Are you going to help me up?"

"No. You have a broken rib, your hands are badly burned, and your head was singed."

"Not my face?"

"Nope. You lost some hair. It'll grow back, and the burns on your scalp will heal. Theo doctored you. Meantime, you stay put."

"You like the fact that I'm stuck here at your mercy. You like the indignity of it."

"It's an added bonus. Yeah."