Page 31 of Midlife Demigod Unexpected

The next day was the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the pub. It was a wonderful feeling. A lot of people in the town had come out and I remembered how much I had become a pillar of the community in many ways. I didn’t think of myself as such, but as a business owner in a small town and the owner of a place where everybody came at some point or another probably every month, I knew a lot of people.

What shocked me the most was that all the building materials were stacked and ready to start building.

“The materials are all here?” I asked. “Azalea was telling the truth.”

“How do you think I did it?” Hilda retorted. “Magic isn’t only to be used to fight demons; you know. It can be used to make life pretty easy.”

“Well, I can’t thank you enough,” I said to Hilda, a wealth of affection flooding my heart for her. She had gone through so much shit to raise a child on her own after having her memory wiped about a one-night stand. I wasn’t mad at my father. He was doing whatever he had to do and if he hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t exist. At the same time, I had to recognize my mom had been through a lot and she was still helping me. It must’ve been a disappointment, thinking I didn’t have any magic, and now none of us even knew what kind of magic I had. I had finally been able to control the glow on my hand, so it didn’t show as I stood at the front of the crowd next to Sheriff Tom ready to announce the construction.

The debris had already been cleared out by the bulldozer and the ground had been flattened so the team could start the actual construction today. It was incredible they had done all this so quickly and easily. Sheriff Tom had spoken to his friends at the city and pushed the permit through and made it easy. The county didn’t pay a lot of attention to a small place like Cougar Creek.

I accepted all the warm wishes of the attendees and then, feeling exhausted, I headed down to the Witch’s Brew with Jag, Mae, Jane, Kartika, and Trina. Bianca and Chloe went to the sheriff’s office to do some work. The rest of us were going to take a minute to drink tea and try to figure out a plan of attack. The reality was none of us had any idea what needed to be done to save the cemetery.

We pulled out a napkin at the café and started drawing on it. I drew a circle with five points on it. In the middle I wrote High Priestess. Then around the edges I wrote Dark Fae, Light Fae, Shifter, Vampire, and Demigod. I stared at it bemused.

“A High Priestess, Dark Fae, Light Fae, Shifter, Vampire, and Demigod walked into a pub…” Kartika giggled.

I rolled my eyes. “Only, the pub was burnt down by a demon.”

“It wasn’t a demon. It was a cambion,” Jag said. “Don’t confuse the two. It would be like confusing a demigod with a god.”

“I wish we had some god powers at the moment,” I said. “Toern is watching the dogs right now but when we’re done with tea we can go and take a look at his memories of the earliest coven and see what they were like.”

“It’s getting pretty bad up there at the cemetery,” Jane said. “We’re going to have to do something soon. Do we even have any ideas of what we could do?”

“Well, the problem is it needs to be opened,” Mae said. “That’s the obvious thing. The River Styx is clogged up.”

“Maybe it could be opened somewhere else?” I asked. “Or maybe it can be opened up a little bit?”

“So, what, we only have a little zombie action?” Bianca asked with a laugh.

“You know what they say, once you have one zombie you’ve got a ton of zombies,” Kartika commented.

“Surely the souls of the dead need another portal to the underworld, right? They’re being stopped here, so they must be being jammed going into the underworld. Why don’t we try to get Thrain up here so we can have a word with him? Maybe if we got Thrain and Styx to talk, they would solve the problem together and they could leave our portal out of it.” Jane presented the solution with hope.

“It doesn’t solve the problem,” Jag said. “Styx and Morel want to destroy the demigod world and New Attica. That’s what we’re up against,” Jag said.

“We’re trying to fight this with negotiations,” I said.

“The whole point I think he’s trying to make,” Trina said. “Is that we’re a little past the negotiation phase.”

“If we are past negotiations and the river needs to come through the portal, then we should open the portal,” I said.

Everybody at the table gasped. “Are you insane?” Trina asked.

“It would put zombies all over Cougar Creek.” Bianca pointed out.

“Think about it. It’s kind of an isolated area,” I said. “If we could control the reach to this community, we could stop it from spreading.”

“It would still kill hundreds of people,” Jane said.

“Not if we did it right. Not if we used all of our combined powers to contain the zombies as the river went through and then figured out a second hole for it to go through at the other end so it went back to Undirheim. I mean, we need Thrain involved here, but I think we can make this work.”

“It’s too big of a risk,” Mae said. “Even with the combined powers of the six of us, I don’t think controlling the River Styx and stopping zombies is part of the deal. We basically have to shut this thing down and keep the cemetery closed.”

I looked at her with consternation, feeling a little bit of irritation. “The only problem with that plan is that we’ve been trying to fight and keep the river closed and every step we make it’s getting worse. Now we’ve got zombies walking around inside a warded cemetery. At any moment they could break out. Then we’re going to become zombie hunters. Wasn’t what I had in mind for spring break.”

“Well, there are two things we’re not taking into consideration with any of these plans,” Kartika said. “Helen didn’t come to us alone. She came to us with a golden egg and a sword.”

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