Page 11 of The Conquest of Medusa

Medusa stilled, closing her eyes. Clasping her hands together, she began moving her lips softly, in prayer, to the great Cetus. When she’d stayed with Cetus, it had been as a pilgrim in search of knowledge. She’d wanted the secrets of the deep so she could transform herself completely into a sea snake and go dwell in the abyss. Hopefully deep enough that even Poseidon couldn’t find her. Things hadn’t worked out with that pilgrimage, but the connection to the Great Mind was still there, so she tapped into it and opened her own mind to receive.

Cetus was there after all, under the water, and the anxiety she sensed from him was surprisingly strong.

“What do you want?”Cetus asked, his voice loud in her head. It was filling up the entire world, drowning her until she was liquid and calm, like the bottom of the quiet sea.

“Great Cetus. We’re here to ask for the life of Princess Andromeda. And also for the lives of the people of her kingdom when she leaves. They’ve done you no harm,” Medusa said, cutting to the chase.

“Ah. I knew you’d come back begging someday. Did you miss me, Medusssaa?” Cetus said, with a soft hiss that curled around her like seafoam.

“I wouldn’t call this begging. It’s an entreaty for you to do the right thing.”

A gurgling laugh poured like ink over her head and down her shoulders. Medusa shivered but held her stance, keeping her eyes closed even as she heard something slithering out of the water, then rasping over the rocks. A sinuous tentacle curled around her leg. Thank goodness for pants.

“Give up my raven-haired princess? She’s more beautiful than you ever were, even before you were a monster,” Cetus mocked.

“Careful, Cetus.”

“Enough.You and Brawn over Brains should go.I wouldn’t want to hurt an old girlfriend, but you can’t take the princess from me. I won’t hurt the other humans of her country but she stays with me.”

“You were never my boyfriend. I don’t want to hurt you either, Cetus. Don’t make me,” Medusa replied.

The snakes awoke, angry and writhing. Perseus stared at her hair, by now knowing what it meant. She fluttered her wings in warning. Before she could bend one knee to sprint and dive into the water, Perseus gripped her arm.

“Medusa,” he said, taking her face between his hands and making her turn to look at him.

She gasped. Perseus wasn’t Perseus anymore, on the surface. His sable hair was wilder around his head, the lower half of his face covered with dark bristle. Golden-brown eyes nearly glowed with power. Fangs. Claws. Muscles rippled even through the thin cloak, pulsing with something so primal it made her tremble. He gripped her caftan and pulled her closer, kissing her with passion, with such sweetness for the brief time they’d had together. That kiss felt like a farewell.

“Thank you,” he said.

Turning, he tossed the cape and took off across the rocks, diving into the water headfirst and disappearing under the surface. Medusa watched with a stone sinking in her stomach. He finally resurfaced when he was all the way across the channel and for a moment, she dared to hope that Cetus’s threats meant nothing, and he didn’t care enough to fight them after all.

She was wrong to hope. A giant greenish black hand, gnarled with barnacles and slime and tipped with black claws, shot up out of the water and lifted Perseus like a toy soldier. The look on Perseus’s face as Cetus rose out of the channel was one she’d never forget the rest of her days, should she live to see another sunrise after this: fear. A deep, wild fear laced with unadulterated horror.

Cetus towered higher than the cliffs. He possessed the powerful, muscular torso of a man but with scales like plated armor. With brutish arms and thick legs, he stood upright like a man. But that’s where the resemblance to anything remotely human ended. Red eyes glowed from a face that was a mass of writhing green-gray tentacles. When Cetus roared, the yaw of his mouth revealed fangs and row after row of tinier sharp, razorlike teeth. More tentacles wriggled from his mighty shoulders and all along his back. And the biggest tentacle of all hung from between his mighty thighs.

Lesser minds had succumbed to madness upon seeing Cetus. Medusa had to hope if Perseus managed to survive, he would retain whatever was left of his humanity after facing the sea beast up close.

Cetus squeezed and Perseus grunted, his eyes wide with pain and fury. He struggled as Cetus brought him close, slapping his face with an insolent tentacle.

“The princess is mine. You can’t have her,” Cetus snarled.

His voice was guttural, more of a rumbling waterfall than words. A tone so dark, it made one feel as though they were trapped at the very bottom of the deepest ocean trench, gasping for air that would never come.

Immobilized in Cetus’s fierce grip, Perseus’s breathless hiss of agony flayed Medusa like a lash. Shouting, shooting upward into the air, she landed on Cetus’s shoulder and ran her spear into an opening in the rigid green scales of his neck. His one weak spot that she’d discovered when Cetus was sleeping in his underwater chamber, and she’d been curled up beside him in better days.

Cetus roared in pain and swatted her off like a fly, but she came back, harder, faster, stabbing and slicing wherever she could. Perseus broke free when she attacked the hand that imprisoned him, and he ran his sword into the creature’s broad chest and rode it down, opening a deep, wide crimson trench all the way to the belly. Cetus screamed, flailing backward as a stream of gore gushed down his body, but kept swinging those arms, almost connecting with his fists. Vaguely, Medusa was aware of the wails and screams of the minions lining the shore, watching as she and Perseus bloodied their god.

Cetus fought back but he was growing tired. Vermilion bubbled and foamed from his nostrils. Perseus used his winged sandals to climb higher into the air, tossing one end of a shining silver rope he’d said was given to him by Athena. Despite being reed thin, it was unbreakable. Medusa caught the end, flying in a circle to get it around Cetus’s shoulders to tie down his arms and together they pulled and twisted until their hold on him was secure. Perseus handed her his end, then jumped back on Cetus’s head. Leaning over the ridges of Cetus’s forehead, he began prying open an enormous eyelid to force the struggling giant to look at Medusa. Cetus choked, and the gurgling sound tore at Medusa’s soul as she hovered in front of his face. Reluctant but ready to fixate him with her witch’s stare.

She didn’t want to do this. So much wisdom and history would die with Cetus, but he wouldn’t submit, dammit. He wouldn’t stop. Not until an anguished cry made all three of them freeze.

“Leave him alone!”

6

THE HERO OF THE DAY

MEDUSA

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