Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site or click on the banner above.

Chapter One

Kyra was dressed to kill. Literally.

Just beneath her short red skirt and only inches above her high-heeled boots, a small but deadly hunting knife was strapped to her thigh. A gun might have been more useful, but Kyra preferred the weapons of an older, less complicated time.

A knock came at the nightclub’s bathroom door—probably another gaggle of drunken Italian socialites—but Kyra wouldn’t be rushed. She stared at her reflection in the mirror to steel her courage. She might not be able to do much to thwart Daddy and his bloodthirsty minions, but she could do this one heroic thing for humanity. This was her destiny. She’d been born for this.

But the mirror reflected a distorted image. It was cracked, as if the thumping club music burst through the wall from the other side. Still, she could see that her plunging pearlescent halter top complemented neither her black tresses nor her ghostly pallor. No matter. Kyra never let mortals see her true form, anyway. Tonight, her prey would see her as she wished him to see her: with blue eyes and cropped platinum hair; after all, she’d studied Marco Kaisaris long enough to know his type. And she was ready. Hydras like Marco were dangerous, but surely not to someone like her. She just had to kill him. Like Theseus and Perseus of old, she had a monster to slay.

With that thought, Kyra gave the bathroom door a shove and it swung open like a gate to the underworld. She stepped into the nightclub’s press of bodies and people made way for her, as if they sensed her power. As the dance beat drummed at her pulse points, she brushed against the crowd, and it excited her because she had a nymph’s nature; she found the vitality of humans to be infectious and distracting. This was, of course, one of the many dangers of getting too close to mortals…

The club was dark but for the strobe lights that shined spots on the walls, purple as evening shade, purple as wine. The grape kaleidoscope illuminated the writhing bodies on the dance floor, flashes alternating with pitch-black. But the darkness posed no obstacle for Kyra. Like all nymphs of the underworld, she carried an internal torch. Her eyes could penetrate the darkness. She could see through a crowd, through clothes, through flesh. Her eyes could even breach the barriers around men’s souls.

And from the bar, her quarry’s soul lit up like a flare.

She knew Marco Kaisaris even though the face he wore was not his own. He was dark, brooding and slightly unkempt. He wore an expensive dress shirt open at the collar, the glimmer of a gold chain at his throat. He didn’t look like an arms dealer, but then he was almost as good at disguises as she was. He wasn’t just a mortal man, after all. He was also a hydra.

Kyra slipped into the standing-room-only space next to him at the bar, pretending to dig for money in her purse. She felt his eyes on her—an intense, wary stare. Fortuitously, a group of revelers pushed her a little closer to him. She pretended it was his fault.

“Do you mind?” she asked in Italian, grateful that the club was quieter here.

Marco shrugged, taking a swallow from his glass, which was filled with amber liquid and ice. “I was just sitting here.”

Oh. His voice. It was baritone and beguiling, with a hint of a New World accent. American or Canadian—she couldn’t be sure. Either way, it was the kind of voice that’d make a normal woman swoon and it weakened even Kyra’s immortal knees. Gods above and below, Kyra thought. What justice was there in the world that such a voice could belong to a monster?

Recovering herself, she brushed his leg, but his expression betrayed nothing. Everything about his posture was guarded. Sexy, but guarded. That’s when Kyra noticed he held a picture of an older man and was tracing the edge of it with his thumb. Naples was known for its criminal element, so the photo was probably of some contact Marco was meeting tonight. A supplier of munitions or a thug looking to buy an arsenal. Someone in Marco’s violent business. “Friend of yours?” she asked in English, motioning with her chin toward the picture.

“My father.” A look of melancholy passed over his face as he slipped the photo into his shirt pocket, but that’s all he said. He didn’t want to talk. And that was a problem because she’d planned to lure him somewhere private with the promise of a steamy encounter; she couldn’t kill him in the middle of the club with everyone watching. To make matters worse, her cell phone was vibrating. It was probably her father calling to rage at her for destroying his arsenal. Daddy thought it was Kyra’s destiny to join him, but she had no intention of being a part of her family’s legacy of war. If anything, she wanted to make up for it.

Renewing her resolve, Kyra turned the phone off and flashed Marco Kaisaris her most charming smile. “Mind if I sit here?”

Marco motioned toward the distinct lack of empty bar stools. “Sit where?”

Okay, she’d have to be a little more aggressive. “How about if I sit right here?” Before he could do a thing to stop it, Kyra slid into his lap. It was a crucial moment. There was a good chance he’d thrust her away, alarmed at her forwardness. But as the backs of her bare thighs pressed against the weave of his linen slacks, his breath caught, and it wasn’t just with surprise. He liked it.

This shouldn’t be too difficult, she thought. Her nymph’s charm made it easy to seduce mortals—even special ones like him—and she felt him respond, his breath warming her neck. Encouraged, she shifted wantonly with her hips, precisely timed with the music, careful not to let him feel the sheathed knife on her leg. He liked that, too.

She could tell because he wrapped one arm around her waist and inhaled the cheap perfume she wore. It smelled like overripe passion fruit and candy and he reacted as if she were just a confection—one little taste wouldn’t hurt. His teeth grazed her neck beneath her choker where a glowing peridot stone hung like a tiny lantern in the dead of night. She tilted her head for him and felt him go hot all over “You’re shameless,” he finally whispered, the scent of expensive alcohol on his breath.

But I’m not shameless, she thought. There were so many shameful things in this modern world and her sexuality wasn’t one of them. How was it her fault that men were so easy to arouse? “I’m shameless? What about you? You look guilty of something.”

He let the cool glass in his hand slide wetly over her shoulder. “And what do you think I’m guilty of, Angel? Give it a shot.”

Angel? Oh, she was going to enjoy killing him. “Are you telling me to guess?”

“No,” he said, his mouth finding the soft spot behind her ear. Then his voice lowered. “Unless you want me to tell you what to do.”

Her stomach fell away with arousal. Yes. Absurdly, she did want that. Just for a few minutes.  It wasn’t sex with mortals that was dangerous for nymphs, after all. Just all the emotions that came afterwards. Still, best not to let him get the upper hand. “If you tried to tell me what to do, we’d only end up engaged in a fierce battle of wills.”

She felt him smirk against her neck. “Mine is hard as iron.”

His will. He meant his will was hard as iron. Trying to steady herself, Kyra fanned her fingers over the bar. They came to rest on an unopened pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Reds. Old school. “Yours?” she asked, and when he nodded, her lips curled in mock disapproval. “Bad addiction to have.”

“I’m not addicted,” he countered, one hand stroking her arm. She loved the callused feel of his fingertips on her smooth skin. “I only smoke when I’m trying to come to terms with something. Kyra almost asked him what he was struggling with. But she didn’t dare. She shouldn’t care. Couldn’t care. It’d only make it harder for her to kill him. . “I can quit anytime,” he said.

“How about now?”

He paused, then crushed the whole pack in his fist, tossing it behind the bar like so much trash. He looked smug at her openmouthed stare of astonishment. “Like I said. Iron will.”

He might think so, but he couldn’t resist her. She was sure of it.

“A drink for the lady,” Marco said to the bartender.

“And what if I’m not a lady?” Kyra asked, with a provocative smile.

“That’s okay,” Marco murmured, his hand grasping the nape of her neck. “I don’t plan to be a gentleman tonight.”

She let him bring her back to his penthouse; even from the marbled foyer she glimpsed just how well the monster was living off his ill-gotten fortune. If he’d chosen any of the artwork here, he had exquisite taste. But this probably wasn’t his penthouse, just as the face he wore wasn’t his own. He was a hydra of a thousand faces—an impostor—which made it all the more remarkable that he didn’t seem suspicious of her; he apparently brought women home with him all the time.

No, Kyra thought. Killing him wasn’t going to be difficult at all.

The only problem was that he was an astonishingly good kisser. His mouth was on hers, dizzyingly warm. It surprised her how much she actually liked the way his stubble scratched her cheeks and the animal way he bit her lower lip every time she pulled away for breath. He wasn’t shy about touching her, and he wasn’t taking his time.

He pushed her back against the door, a rapid strike, all strength and speed. Caged in by his strong arms, she saw that his eyes were stormy with challenge. She felt her insides quicken in response. Oh, he so didn’t know who he was dealing with.

Kyra gripped a thick handful of his dark hair and when his hands snaked up under her top, thumbs brushing over her nipples, she thought he was rather daring for a creature that could be killed; he’d been wary in the bar, but now that he’d committed himself to having her, there was no hesitation in him at all.

The heat of him delighted her. The roughness of his touch. The bestial sounds he made, as if he meant to devour her. Kyra’s heartbeat crashed in her ears, as if the thumping roar of the club music had followed them here. She told herself it was just the allure of his mortal energy, the dangerous deception of a man’s desire. But had it felt this good the last time she’d taken a mortal lover?

Maybe Marco was different. The clues in the file she’d stolen led her to believe that in addition to being an arms trafficker, Marco Kaisaris was a war-forged hydra, a mortal man, a monster that could be killed. Now she wondered if he was actually some shape-shifting trickster god, which would excuse her attraction to him and relieve her of guilt for what she was about to do. Stabbing an immortal, after all, wouldn’t cause any lasting harm.

His scent—somewhere between man and musk—drove her crazy. Meanwhile, his kisses had become frenzied as if pleasure was such a fleeting thing in his world he had to consume it before anyone took it away from him. As Marco nipped at her neck, his mouth moving over the luminous gemstone she wore, her own gasps cut through the stillness of the penthouse apartment. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was rocking her world.

But Kyra prided herself on not being one of those silly nymphs who dallied with mortal men and fell helplessly under their spell. She’d taken plenty of lovers and cast them aside when she was done. After all, she was built for carnal passions, for stolen pleasures in the dark. So, it wasn’t Marco’s all-consuming sexual prowess that was giving her second thoughts about killing him. It was what she saw inside him, beyond the surface. A looming shape of almost unfathomable grief. Beyond the veils of darkness in which he wrapped himself, she glimpsed a forlorn desperation to know and be known, to understand and be understood.

This, she hadn’t expected. Sincerity, pain, need. His vulnerability was subtle but potent sex magic. It made her curious about him; there was a longing in her to let her eyes open wide and illuminate everything inside him she could see. Unfortunately, that would drive him mad, and that was one thing Kyra would never do to a mortal again. Besides, there’d been a reason she’d tracked him down for months, a reason she’d slipped into his lap tonight, and it wasn’t to satisfy her curiosity or to enjoy herself with a sexy stranger.

Like her father, Marco Kaisaris made a profit selling weapons. He was a merchant of death. The underworld was filled with victims of the bullets Marco sold. No matter what her lust-soaked mind wanted to see inside him, he was an evil man and if she wanted to make up for all the pain and chaos her father had caused in the world, Kyra had no choice but to kill him.

The hydra had to be the reason Kyra still had her powers while so many of the old immortals had lost theirs. This was her destiny. Still, it was with true regret that she realized Marco’s groping fingers would soon discover her hidden knife. With a long-suffering sigh, Kyra stopped him. Marco pulled back, a slow and frustrated tilt to his lips. “Am I going too fast?”

Gods above and below, his voice just wrecked her. The heat of it seared a path from her belly down to the quivering place between her legs. Oh, how she wanted him to touch her. But when he tried to put his hand under her skirt again, she didn’t let him. “Wait. I’ve got something for you.”

She turned slightly and, with one hand, secretly unsheathed the knife beneath her skirt. The motion between her legs must have looked particularly obscene, because Marco’s eyes narrowed with desire. “Don’t be a tease, Angel.”

“Oh, I’m no angel and I never tease.” With that, Kyra thrust the sharpened blade at his chest, aiming directly for the heart. But something went horribly wrong. She’d prepared herself for the blood, the resistance of blade against bone and the death grimace. What she hadn’t counted on was Marco being nearly as fast as she was. Kyra knew that Marco had military training. Still, she could hardly believe how deftly he blocked the blow with his hand. The knife slashed open his palm from fingers to wrist and red blood sprayed the carpeted floor.

His expression twisted in surprise at her betrayal, and he used his uninjured hand to grab her wrist. He slammed it against the wall so hard she thought the bones in her hand might have shattered. “Drop the knife,” Marco growled, all sincerity and need now replaced with the hard features of a furious and injured man.

There was nothing for Kyra to do but struggle. He couldn’t kill her with that knife, but he could hurt her. Even for an immortal, pain was pain. Suffering was suffering. And Kyra was afraid of it even though she didn’t have to fear for her life. So she brought her knee up hard into his stomach.

He grunted with the impact, but didn’t let go of her wrist. Instead, he used his leverage to flip her to the ground. She thudded to the carpet, her body splaying awkwardly. And before she could scramble to her feet, he threw himself on her, forcing the air from her lungs. He had her wrist in his grasp, twisting it to the breaking point.

“Drop your weapon!” Marco shouted like the soldier he’d once been. But Kyra bucked under him, clenching her free hand into a fist and punching him in the jaw.

Marco rocked back from the blow. “Bitch!”

Then he backhanded her in retaliation. Kyra tasted blood in her mouth—her own, she hoped. The sting of his slap had made the entire right side of her cheek red-hot. In thousands of years, few mortals had ever dared to strike her, and those who had tried paid for it with their lives. All the forces of the underworld bubbled up inside her. She was the daughter of Ares and rage was overtaking her, boiling out of control. She remembered the armory she’d blown up, where her father’s guard had confused her with a human and tried to rape her; she’d shown him with fatal accuracy how mistaken he was. Now she’d show Marco Kaisaris!

As she pulled herself up like a specter from a grave, Marco recoiled. “What—what the hell are you?” he stammered, staring, his tone more loathing than fear. In their struggle, she’d become so enraged that she’d stopped projecting the shape she wanted him to see. He saw her real face now, the depthless blackness of her nymph’s eyes, and he seemed as horrified as if he’d glimpsed three-headed Cerberus.

Taking advantage of his surprise, Kyra rolled to her feet with the grace of a cat and crouched on tiptoe behind a desk for cover, realizing that her high-heeled boots may not have been the ideal choice for an assassination. “The real question, Marco Kaisaris, is, what are you?”

At hearing his real name, Marco’s expression turned murderous. Later, she’d have to admit that he frightened her. He was stronger and faster than she’d anticipated and now this entire mission had gone awry. She could try to fade—try to disappear before his very eyes—but her concentration was broken. Perhaps she ought to escape and try again another day. As these thoughts raced through Kyra’s mind, Marco rushed toward her. She lifted the knife—this time in self-defense—and he flipped the elegant desk behind which she’d sought refuge as easily as if it were dollhouse furniture. Papers and knickknacks exploded through the air and the desktop slammed her, knocking her back where she smashed her head on the wall and slumped to the floor.

Kyra lay there for a moment, stunned. Had she blacked out? Scrambling out of the wreckage of the desk, she realized that the penthouse was quiet.

Damn it to Hades! The door was open and Marco Kaisaris was gone.

She wondered why he hadn’t tried to kill her when he’d had the chance, but then she felt the sickening burn. She was smeared with Marco’s blood and it stung like fire. Every moment was ever-deepening agony. Rushing to the bathroom, she hurriedly scrubbed her arms clean. Too little, too late. The hydra’s blood wasn’t just burning her, it was also seeping into her skin and making her sick. Waves of nausea flowed over her; she sank to her knees and tried not to retch.

If she’d been a mortal, the poison of is blood might have been enough to kill her. As it was, the world started to spin before her eyes. So, she hadn’t been wrong about him, then. Marco Kaisaris was no trickster god. His blood wasn’t divine ichor. His wounds hadn’t closed up on their own. And even from the bathroom she could see that where his blood had pooled on the penthouse floor was now a sizzling mess, as if someone had poured acid on the carpet. His blood was poison. Deadly poison. There could be no doubt now that he was a hydra and needed to be stopped.

If only she could get up from the floor.

She’d cut him deep. Crouched in an alleyway, Marco tore his shirt off and wrapped it around the wound like a makeshift bandage.With his uninjured hand, he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone to call an ambulance. The woman in his penthouse would need one. Yeah, she’d tried to kill him, but she had no idea who she was dealing with. By now, his blood would be soaking into her skin and eating her alive. He wasn’t sure what the hospital could do for her, but he wasn’t eager for another dead body on his conscience.

“Si prega di identificare se stessi,” the dispatcher squawked into the phone.

Identify himself? Under other circumstances, the question might have made Marco laugh. Who exactly was he? He wasn’t the guy who rented the penthouse. He wasn’t the guy he looked like now. He wasn’t a soldier anymore and he wasn’t even the do-gooder son of a Greek immigrant—not according to his father or his sister. “I’m nobody,” Marco said, then hung up.

The blood coursing from the cut on his hand had soaked through his wrapped shirt and dripped down his battle-hardened stomach in a deadly scarlet rivulet. Every time a drop of it spattered on the ground, it hissed and sizzled where it fell. Marco hated to leave his blood anywhere, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. His breathing was still erratic—partly from the pain of his wound and partly from the shock of what he’d just seen. What the hell had he just seen? An angel, a demon or some creature with powers like his own?

One thing was clear: his enemies had obviously tracked him here and sent the woman to assassinate him. This identity—this borrowed face he wore—was thoroughly compromised now. He’d have to change his appearance and there was no time to wait for a more private moment. Pulling himself deeper into the shadows, Marco braced against the brick wall and steeled himself for the transformation.

He closed his eyes and remembered the face a blond-haired, blue-eyed Russian smuggler who’d once tried to steal a shipment of shoulder-mounted rockets from him. Marco had long since dispatched the Russian to hell, but he’d wounded Marco in the struggle—which meant that now Marco had a useful but grisly souvenir; he could assume the face and identity of his old enemy. It was his curse; he could take on the form of anyone who wounded him. A power he could neither explain nor fully comprehend. Perhaps it was a madness—inherited from his mother. Whatever it was, he couldn’t stop himself from quivering with disgust at the slow creep of flesh as his face began to transform. Marco didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that his eyes were now blue, and his hair like yellow straw. Except for the wound on his hand, his enemies wouldn’t know him.

No one would.

POISONED KISSES is available for pre-order.

Links to other Excerpt Monday writers: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

Prologue

Ares climbed over the rubble of his burned-out armory, his mood black as the soot-covered remains. So much waste, he thought, kicking aside scorched artillery crates. All harmless shrapnel now. So many mortars and shells reduced to ash…so many bullets warped from the heat, deprived of their savage destiny on the battlefield. Magnificent guns destroyed without ever finding their way into the hands of even one ferocious warrior. It was a travesty. And the broad-shouldered god decided that someone should have to pay.

“Who did this?” he roared, discovering one of his vultures hovered over a dead body. At his approach, she left off tearing at the corpse’s gory innards and flapped her wings. With a rush of wind that spiraled the dust and autumn leaves around her, she rose into the form of a willowy redhead and licked the blood from her scarlet lips.

“The guards say it was a woman who blew up the armory,” his vulture explained, shoving the gutted corpse onto its back. His belt was unfastened, his pants unzipped, as if he’d died while taking a piss. “This one caught her and decided to have a little fun…”

“It doesn’t look as if he had a chance to enjoy himself.” Ares noted the dead man’s face, stiffened in shock, as if he couldn’t fathom what had happened to him. But Ares knew what had happened. Kyra had happened.

His daughter was lethal with a blade and knew how to defend herself. She was also a rebellious child with a knack for finding new and unique ways to annoy him. “What about the file on the hydra?”

His redheaded minion twitched. “It’s gone. Kyra must have taken it.”

Ares liked the look of fear in his vulture’s expression and was hungry to take out his frustrations on her. There could be pleasure in it—for him, at least. He reached for that fiery hair, yanking his vulture’s head to the side so that her throat was exposed. “And where is my daughter now?”

“I—I don’t know,” the vulture stammered. “They shot her, but she escaped.”

Bullets wouldn’t stop Kyra. As a nymph of the underworld, she crossed the thresholds of life and death at will. What’s more, she was immortal. He’d seen to that. There wasn’t a wound she could suffer that wouldn’t heal. She could appear to mortals in her own guise, or fade into the mists like an apparition. The fact that she’d let his guards see her meant that she’d wanted him to know she was responsible for this.

The unmitigated gall of the thing! For Kyra to destroy his weapons was almost too much to bear. And to add to that insult, she’d taken the file on the newest hydra—a man that Ares intended to add to his monstrous menagerie. Admittedly, the war god admired Kyra’s audacity. After all these years, most of the forgotten ancient immortals slunk away like beaten dogs to live mundane modern lives, but his daughter was still certain she was fated to do something glorious. And he couldn’t fault her for it, even if it drove her to test him like this.

Ares was an indulgent patriarch, after all. Unlike his own wine-soaked lecher of a father—Ares encouraged the fierce nature of his descendants. He’d even made war with them at his side. Oh, how mortals had trembled when Ares rode into battle with his twin sons, Phobos and Deimos, at the reigns of his chariot! How the mortals had screamed in terror when he unleashed his monsters. Fire-breathing horses, hydras, chimeras and minotaurs…Oh, how he missed those days.

He intended to relive them with Kyra at his side. If only she’d accept her true destiny. Instead, she was in open rebellion against him. Did she think he could be stopped by blowing up his munitions? If so, she was wrong. Lesser gods might fade away, but the forces of war remained eternal. No one sacrificed at Zeus’ temples anymore. The science of spindly weathermen had reduced the once fearsome sky god into an old man who spent his days in a taverna complaining about the loss of Greek culture to the European Union. Exhaustion, science and some of the newer gods of peace and goodwill had crowded the old gods off the world’s stage. Even crafty Hecate had been relegated to a fortune-telling gypsy!

But Ares was different. It had been a long time since anyone had seen him as the Greek god of bloodlust, glowering from beneath his plumed helmet, but men still worshipped him, whether they knew it or not, because war was different, too.

The new gods didn’t glorify it, and science only made it more deadly; it bankrupted the victors as well as the vanquished. War was a senselessness mankind could not explain. Warriors no longer called for Ares by name, but they still made bloody sacrifices. And whereas Zeus once ruled the gods of Olympus, Ares meant to rule now.

So how was he to deal with Kyra’s rebellion? Perhaps it was a phase that would pass. After all, his daughter was born to viciousness. Kyra claimed to abhor war, but the wreck she’d made of his armory only proved that she was bred for destruction.

The sooner he forced her to accept it, the better.

Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just a writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

As Stephanie Draven, I write dark paranormal romances. But my alter ego writes a lot of stuff, including this disturbing tale that was just published in Dark Valentine Magazine. And it starts out like this:

THE THRESHING FLOOR

There is a goddess in my bathtub. She eyes me as I heave into the toilet bowl, but makes no move to help me. While I retch, she just stares at me in all her splendorous glory, soaking in a bath filled with floating dates and flower petals. She’s holding a sheaf of wheat in one hand, and she smiles like some benevolent mother, which makes me angry. I’ve heard that drunks hallucinate mice and pink elephants—not fertility goddesses. But I’m not drunk.

I’m pregnant.

Rising silently from the tub in a cloak of Tyrian purple, her face half in shadow, hair gleaming like moonlight, the goddess drapes a garland around my neck. Maybe she has confused me with one of her kind. I used to feel like a goddess—I sure fucked him like one. I still remember the worshipful way his fingers met the lace band of my thigh-high stockings. It always made him groan. Then I’d whisper sexy things in his ear to make him twitch. Once, I tied his arms to the headboard and rode him until he called out my name like a prayer…

Then he dumped me for the virgin in his philosophy class. She’s his goddess now.

And this stranger in the bathroom is mine.

“Do you see her?” I ask, as the goddess floats through our kitchenette, leaving fruit on the countertop. Pomegranates, apples, figs…

“Who?” My roommate eyes me warily. She picks up one of the apples, and bites into it. “You mean Annie? I see her in church, sure, but that doesn’t mean that we’re friends. Frankly, I don’t know what he sees in her.”

But I’m not talking about Annie. I’m talking about my divine apparition and her sheaf of wheat. But my roommate said, “You need to get over him. He’s not worth it. Besides, once you go off to Oxford, you’ll never see him again.”

I’m not going to Oxford, and I’m not going to get over him. I’m pregnant and now everything has changed for me. But my roommate doesn’t know that. Only the goddess knows, and I don’t even know her name.

#

I have confessions to make, facts to weigh, plans to reconsider, and decisions to reach, but curled up on the futon with my laptop on my knees, I am researching fertility goddesses. Native American Mother Corn. The Aztec Xochiquetzal. Celtic Epona. Greek Demeter. Roman Ops. Phrygian Cybele. Egyptian Isis. Indian Shiva. The list is endless. Some fat, some thin, some fierce, some kind, but all revered. And each one seems to hold some mystery behind her smile. So which one is mine?

#

I ask him to meet me on the library’s fifth floor, in the stacks. He knows the place. It’s where it all happened the first time. Late-night studying for a class project amidst the musty scent of archaic books lent a sacredness to what had been only a flirtation. I decide that if he is really in love with Annie, he won’t come. He’ll tell me to say whatever I have to say on the phone. But he shows up at the appointed time, his body humming with sexual tension.

I can tell that he wants me the moment he sees me, and yet he says, “This is a bad idea…” That doesn’t mean he won’t do it. It just means that he’s convinced himself it’s a sin. And I’m the temptation. The one with the apple, luring him away from God’s grace. When we first kissed here in this room, he said that I wasn’t like any other girl he’d ever known, and when his lips found mine it felt like some kind of salvation. Today though, he looks like one of the damned.

He comes close to me. I smell his cologne, see his pulse beat just below the open collar of his shirt where the little cross he wears swings back and forth like a pendulum at his throat. He thinks I’ve asked him here for an illicit encounter. Something dark and furtive that he can feel guilty about until the next time. He’d always insisted that he hadn’t meant to cheat on her. As if I was the interloper. The siren seductress. As if I had somehow come between two innocent people in love, when the truth was, he’d belonged to me first. He’d loved me first. I’m his mistress of the night, and he’s waiting for me to seduce him. Instead, I tell him that I’m pregnant. He is silent. He walks away. Slams his hand into a row of books that avalanche onto the floor. “How the fuck?”

We used protection. It didn’t happen in the back of a car, and it wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment hook-up in my dorm room. He’d taken the time to rent a motel room and put on a condom. Somehow, I’m knocked up anyway. Like it’s fated. Like his body made all the promises to me that he couldn’t bring himself to speak aloud. Like it was some part of the design of the universe that there should always be a connection between his skin and mine. Or maybe I’m just that fucking fertile, like my secret goddess and her fucking sheaf of wheat. Maybe she thought I called upon her to bless me with a child, like all those women in ancient days.

But I hadn’t ever uttered that prayer, had I?

He’s pacing now. “This is bullshit. Why can’t you accept that I’m with Annie now? Do I have to tell you that I don’t love you anymore? Is that what it’s going to take?”

It’s bracing, like ice water to the face. I don’t want to cry. When I cry, he shuts down. Like the time he confessed everything we’d ever done together to his priest, like it was a sin. I need him to talk to me like he used to, when I used to listen to him practice the guitar and saw talent there when no one else did. When I helped him with his homework and laughed at his stupid animated television shows as if they weren’t infantile crap. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I think he means that he is shocked. But then I realize he means it. He doesn’t believe me. And then I am the one who is shocked.

He’s been inside of me. He’s put his hands where no one has ever touched me before or since. He’s heard me scream, the rawness of my orgasms leaving me vulnerable in his arms. He knows me. He’s learned my secrets in hushed whispers against the pillows and tasted my tears. How is it possible that he doesn’t believe me?

When he storms out, I start putting the books back on the shelf. The biggest one has a red, leather- bound cover with gold lettering, and it has fallen open to an engra ved dra wing of the goddess. I recognize her immediately. The crescent moon, the sheaves of wheat, the fruit and cornucopias. Her face is somehow placid, grief-stricken, and triumphant all at once. She is named Tanit, and I only wonder why, of all the ancient goddesses in these books, the mis- tress of the Carthaginians should come to me.

Some say her name means She Who Weeps. Others say it is the name of a monstrous sea serpent. The scholars debate her nature. How can a benevolent mother goddess demand human sacrifice?

I slam the book shut when I see the little urns of ash at her feet.

==== The Rest of the Story Can Be Read Here ===

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I wasn’t going to post any more of RITES OF PASSAGE but since I’ve had special requests, I’ve skipped forward a bit from Part I and Part II and Part III. This month’s snippet is from the scene in which our “hero” finds out that he’s about to be the fall guy…

Taleo was an expert when it came to beauty, and the Ista Aldrik women were all beautiful. Every, single, untouchable one of them. Petrina’s lush lips. Gellina’s auburn tresses. Junia’s ice-blue eyes. Aldrissa’s enticing curves. Even little Fidelia’s impish ears had their charm. Yes, the queen’s nieces were as lovely and unique as snowflakes, but they all had one Ista Aldrik trait in common—an unflinching ability to poison your tea and smile at you across the table as you drank it.

“I’m not thirsty,” Taleo said. “But thank you for the invitation. I’ve been riding for days and I’m no fit company for noblewomen.”

The queen swirled a jeweled spoon in a golden cup. “At least allow us to offer refreshments to your entourage.”

“I came alone,” Taleo said.

That got their attention. Six pairs of lovely eyes now fell upon him. It was the icy-eyed niece who spoke first. “My lord, do you mean to say that you rode over brigand-infested roads, by yourself, all the way from Anarinuell?”

Taleo nodded to the bevy of ambitious nieces. “Had bandits been bold enough to take me hostage, I’d have returned with useful knowledge of their whereabouts and habits.” In truth, Taleo would never allow himself to be captured alive by such men, but he watched closely for the ladies’ reactions.

The curvaceous Lady Aldrissa sputtered, walking to the balcony window and pulling back the crimson draperies as if to see if Taleo were lying. Below, he knew she’d see only ocean, sand, and his horse. “What utter foolishness!”

The rest of the queen’s nieces looked equally uninspired. But just as Taleo was beginning to think that acts of reckless bravery no longer impressed noblewomen, the queen said, “It sounds like a marvelous adventure. Sit and tell us about your journey.”

Taleo dusted himself off and took a seat at a respectable distance. He smelled of horse and needed a shave. He’d have liked to have been better groomed for this appearance, but circumstances were not entirely in his control. Which he hated. “Before I do, I wonder if you might explain why you’ve summoned me for this prestigious post when you’ve so many nieces, each eager to prove herself. Are none of them up to this task?”

“How dare you question our competence?” Lady Aldrissa demanded.

So things were going to go badly.

He’d ridden all this way to be bullied and lied to by the royal family and there was nothing he could do about it. But just then, Taleo’s luck turned. With the unraveling of a lock of fair hair, the power shifted.

Taleo’s eyes dropped to the floor and he held his silence.

“Look at me when I speak to you,” Aldrissa said.

“My lady, I cannot,” Taleo said.

“Why not?” Her tone was imperious and infuriated.

“Because you’re missing a hairpin.”

This sent the ladies all atwitter. A female soldier could be forgiven for an errant strand of hair. A common maiden in the fields wouldn’t be expected to account for her hairpins. But these were Ista Aldriks, each one vying to be the most proper and most obvious heir to the throne. One niece hissed, “Loose hair, loose woman!”

Lady Aldrissa rose quickly. “Thank you for your courtly behavior, my lord. Please forgive my misconduct.”

“It’s forgiven and already forgotten,” he said, keeping his eyes averted until she had left the room.

The missing hairpin had put the ladies on the defensive. The queen even opened the balcony windows as if to air out the stink of impropriety. When she did, Taleo tasted the ocean salt on the breeze and it made him uncomfortable. The crash of the waves below the bluff made him think of the nights he spent as a slave, listening to those waves, wishing to drown.

“Very well, then my lord. We will be frank,” the queen finally said. “The matter we want you to deal with is one that the Ista Aldrik family cannot personally touch. Our problem is a rabble-rousing priest.”

Taleo was intrigued. “A priest from which temple?”

“He doesn’t say,” the queen answered. “He tells the people to look into his eyes and they’ll know which deity he serves.”

“So they look into his eyes and see what they want to see?”

“And they believe. He gives sermons that ignite all the old, silly superstitions about twins.”

Now didn’t seem like the best time to inform his sovereign that Taleo didn’t find anything silly or superstitious about the loathing of twins. Admittedly, Taleo was no theologian; he didn’t know if twins shared a soul, if one twin was soulless, or if each twin harbored within its breast a depraved half-soul. But he did know that twins historically brought ruin to families and that was enough evidence for him.

“Are you worried for your sons, Clan Leader?” Taleo asked.

“Of course,” she said. “This priest is convincing the people to adopt the old ways. Parents of twins are told to leave one infant on the cliffs. If they don’t, the villagers break into homes and kill both babes in their cradles.”

“But your twin princes are no defenseless babes in the cradle,” Taleo said. “They’re grown warriors.”

“My sons will one day be called upon to follow in their father’s footsteps and rule the Republic. I’ll not have their futures jeopardized because of this bigotry.”

“Just how influential is this priest?” Taleo asked.

“His influence grows every day. If his sermons become a popular movement my sons will be seen as monsters.”

“So you want me to arrest him?” Taleo asked.

“Heavens no! No official action should be taken against him lest we give his followers a rallying cause.”

Taleo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Then you want me to…” Was there a delicate word for it? “You want me to kill him?”

“And make him a martyr? I should think not. No, he must be destroyed. You must follow him, learn everything about him, and find a way to bring him to such disgrace that his words will never carry any weight at all.”

It was now clear to Taleo why he had been appointed. The Ista Aldriks didn’t want to be thought of as impious twin-lovers nor repressors of religion, nor even the brilliant political schemers they actually were. The task and the taint would fall to him, a lord of a distinguished, but minor house. If it all went bad, they would blame it on him. And Taleo supposed, in the scheme of things, that is what lords of minor noble houses were good for.