Page 3 of Beggars, Sin, and Wine

Sheriff Riddle was very much human and all he’d ever done to Benji was give him a warning once about parking his motorcycle in a loading zone. Benji knew damned well he wasn’t supposed to park there, but he was hunting Pokémon and said it was an emergency. Benji had been pranking him since and Riddle was basically a saint because he hadn’t thrown Benji in jail once.

Reminding Benji of all the times he got away with sticking it to the Sheriff would distract him long enough for us to coax him out of the corner.

“Why don’t you come get in bed and tell us all about the times you got Sheriff Riddle that you haven’t told us about?” I said.

Because I knew there were other pranks Benji was keeping a secret. He wasn’t telling us, even though he wanted to, because if Riddle found out about it, Benji would end up in jail that time.

“Can I have Bepo?”

I sighed. My polar bear was a fierce, magnificent creature. I could kill a man with one swipe of my paws. Benji got obsessed with this anime with a polar bear and started calling my bear by the same name. I should fucking hate it, but my bear preened every time Benji uttered that name. And he was definitely doing it now that Benji needed him.

This wasn’t an odd request. Benji asked to cuddle with my bear when he was upset because it made him feel safe. Pax was already making a nest on the floor with blankets and pillows to soothe his wolf. There was just enough room on Benji’s floor for Pax and Benji to snuggle with a polar bear, and honestly, I liked it, too.

I pulled my clothes off and folded them neatly in the corner. I let the shift take me. We had arranged Benji’s room, so we had the space to do this since he needed it a lot when we first found him. Benji was now a complete badass and could take care of himself. It was just this one night, or if there was the possibility of him going in deep water, that he got like this.

I shifted and arranged myself on the nest of blankets and pillows on the floor. Benji snuggled into my side and then Pax spooned Benji. I could tell Benji was starting to calm. He usually did if we could get him out of the corner and snuggle him.

“Okay, so don’t be mad…”

Ididn’t know how long I’d been in a padded cell in the basement of New Eden Asylum. I didn’t even remember how I got here. I could guess. It always came down to Athena. She couldn’t just curse me for having the audacity to get raped in her temple because she was feuding with Poseidon. No, Athena couldn’t let me just fuck off and deal with the curse on my own terms.

I wasn’t bothering anyone. I mostly just wanted to be left alone and never have to deal with men again. But Zeus couldn’t keep it in his pants and his offspring had something to prove, so they came after me like I was the bad guy in this situation.

I’d been just a harmless green witch who tried to become a priestess to a god I felt an affinity with and got turned into a monster. Which I still didn’t get to this day because Athena had always been a fair god. She was meticulous and brilliant. She never did anything unless it was part of a bigger plan.

Except turning my hair into snakes and making my gaze fatal. Thanks for that.

I ended up getting help from a different god. Hephaestus felt bad for me and I couldn’t do a damned thing looking him in the eye because he was a god. He made me these magical glasses. It made my snakes look like braids and my gaze non-lethal. I could live a mostly normal life.

Except every time I’d get settled somewhere, Athena would eventually show up and break my glasses. Which I also didn’t understand because she wasn’t petty. She told us grudges were for the weak-minded. Athena told all her priestesses to get our revenge or not, but don’t dwell on something and let it dictate your life when there were better things you could be doing.

I guess she was also a big ol’ hypocrite.

Upending my life when she broke my glasses and my neighbors realized their neighbor was that Medusa used to be hard, but it got dangerous after the angels came down and got the fanatics to form the Coalition. I was a green witch and now a Gorgon, so I’d be hard to catch, but it wouldn’t be impossible if someone were behind me where I couldn’t see them.

Obviously, as I was now here.

There were no windows down here and they never turned out the lights. My concept of time was completely gone. I had no idea how long I’d been here. I couldn’t even count on three square meals as a time-telling method. I usually only got one, and that was if they remembered.

Fuckers forgot tonight.

Sister Mary Eugene hated me, so she only brought me moldy bread and hard bologna with enough frequency that I didn’t die of starvation. See, Sister Mary Eugene was super into the work they were doing here, even if she wasn’t even a real fucking nun. She dressed the part and demanded the title, but the church excommunicated those folks a while ago and got really mad if you even suggested they were working together.

They’d been trying to do some serious damage control that they ever did work together. Maybe it was all fake and to save face, but I was probably the only person here who could taunt Sister Mary Eugene about her fake nun status.

That wasn’t the only reason she hated me. Everything about this place was designed to dampen a supernatural’s magic. It was trickier for hybrids, curses, and the god touched. I couldn’t access my green witch magic at all, but my gaze was still fatal.

I walked over to the side wall. There was a grate that allowed me to talk to the woman in the next cell. She’d been here longer than I had and Jezebel was the only thing keeping me sane. She was down here with all the dangerous folks because they couldn’t really get near her either.

Jezebel was a succubus siren hybrid. Her succubus mojo was dead, which she constantly told me was unfair, but a lot of her magic was in her vocal chords. It was dampened, but not completely gone. She couldn’t tell them to open the doors and let us out, but she had prevented them from experimenting on her this entire time.

I plopped on the hard floor. I knew she was awake. She always was. It was hard trying to sleep in here because of the lights.

“You could have used that siren juujuu to get her to remember to feed me,” I sighed.

“Doesn’t work like that, sweetness. I can get her to like me, but not you. You aren’t a siren. She’d probably like you better if you stopped calling her a fake nun and asking her if she’s got a red lacy thong underneath that habit.”

“You were the one that put that visual in my head. Thanks for that, by the way.”

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