Page 26 of The Goddess is Fierce
Drake was going to stay, so I tried traveling back to his home to get some of his things and anything of his parents that he could remember them by. His parents had been renting a two-bedroom house in a very small town in the middle of nowhere. I had the extreme displeasure of meeting their landlord.
They had only been dead a day, but he had hired people to trash their stuff and put it on the curb. Normally, I wouldn’t have been above going through it for a baby, but this shit-stain slumlord dumped their belongings before a really bad thunderstorm. Everything was ruined. I was only able to salvage one photo for Drake and nothing else.
The slumlord was more worried about getting blood off the walls and having to disclose the murder to renters and if he ever sold than what happened to the baby or that anyone would be coming for their things. I yelled at him until I felt better and then I snapped my fingers and collapsed the house. He was seriously slacking on upkeep and I found him rude.
Acts of God weren’t covered by insurance. Fuck him. If he had waited, I might have had more to give a kid who wasn’t going to remember his parents. I wanted more than anything for this box to have something for Drake. I didn’t care if the box contained a big neon sign with the murderer's name on it as long as it had something to help Drake, too.
Blood locks were a complicated bit of spell work and machinery. I watched the gears whirr as Drake’s blood activated it. Drake’s hand wasn’t turning black, and he wasn’t crying out in pain, so this was a good sign.
Fuck me. The box sprung open. Drake’s mom left a box under the floorboard at the Academy of the Profane. She protected the shit out of this box. When she was a student, Lindsay hadn’t published the spell she stole from Minerva. The only person who could have opened that box would have been one of her descendants. Maybe she somehow knew Drake was going to end up here with help.
Drake pulled a very expensive camera and a golden arrow out of the box. I remembered Church Senior telling me a student gotshot with an arrow. I had dismissed it because I thought it was a student playing a prank. The student was only injured, and no one died after that. A god wouldn’t have missed. But that was definitely a divine arrow.
“The wounds in the witch’s necks that we couldn’t figure out could be arrows,” Church said. “It doesn’t fit with vampires or shifters, but it could be an arrow.”
West gasped.
“Did fucking Cupid go feral?”
I grabbed West and planted a kiss on his lips because he figured a good bit of this out again. He was beatingmeon getting the right answer first and I wasmucholder than he was.
“You’re a genius, West!”
West touched his lips and looked stunned.
“Maybe itisweird to kiss your straight friends, even if you don’t use tongue.”
I had no idea what that meant, but West had just narrowed down the killer, so I just winked at him.
“I’m not straight. A lot of gods are associated with arrows, but their arrows are all distinctive to them. Cupid is part of a bigger group. Before the Romans adopted those gods and changed their names, he was part of Aphrodite’s retinue and there were seven Erotes associated with different emotions. There were seven of them with the Romans, too, and they wereallcalled Cupids.
“The group was called Cupids but there was also a god called Cupid. He was by far the most popular and went by Eros among the Greeks. It wasn’t just his emotion that made him so popular. His origin story got a little muddy where everyone thought he was Aphrodite and Ares's kid, but he thought that was hilarious and never bothered clearing it up.
“Sex is a primordial force. It creates life and we couldn’t have made the universe or anything that lives there without it. Ourcreations wouldn’t have been able to populate and grow. And it’s just fun. Eros is a primordial like me. He thinks it’s amusing to play among gods and mortals.”
“It’s fucked-up sex is killing people like that. That could ruin a whole moon orgy,” West moaned.
I smiled. West couldn’t be smarter than me all the time.
“Eros isn’t doing this. He loves mortals. Eros isn’t in the Aether like some of the other primordials. There are always going to be people on every realm who worship sex above everything else, even other gods. Eros issomewheresoaking that up. He’d know more about the other Erotes and which one might have done this.”
“Aphrodite introduced me to a ton of people when I was in Olympus looking for my husband. I remember Eros because he was the only one I actually decided to sleep with. Ibarelyremember the other Erotes, just that they were half feral andreallyhorny."
"One of them remembers you," Oscar said. “He’s been leaving you his trophies.”
“And I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I spent most of my time in Olympus with Aphrodite. She doesn’t have all the same domains as me, but we have some in common. When I was looking for my husband among other gods, I went straight to the love and fertility gods because we always connected better.
“She introduced me to her kids, and she had a lot of them. I had a lot of respect for Aphrodite and considered her a friend by the time I left. I wouldn’t have slept with, or disrespectedanyof her kids when I was letting them down because I genuinely like Aphrodite. The only reason I messed around with Eros was because she said he wasn’t hers and you’ve met him, Azren. Can you blame me?”
No, I absolutely did not. Eros was created to appeal to everyone. He waseveryone’stype, and he smelled amazing. Idon’t think anyone who had met Eros would have blamed Freya. But clearly, one of the Erotes remembered this situation much differently and had a bone to pick with Freya.
That still didn’t answerwhythey were killing witches or even how they were doing it. I didn’t know much about the Erotes. The only one I’d met was Eros. I knew they all handled different emotions related to love and sex and some protected certain kinds of love.
“What does it mean that my mom had an Erotes’s arrow?” Drake demanded. “Or that she left what looks like a very expensive camera behind?”
“I’m guessing there’s film in that camera with a photo of the god who fired the arrow, but it’s not like they could have arrested him or called Azren then, so I don’t get why he went after your parents,” George said.
Ishouldhave dug into them more. They weren’t major gods in that whole arcana. I had a role in every god family, but sometimes, I could be completelyhands offbecause of the death mythology in that culture. I thought Zeus was a crude man who needed to stop raping women and Hera needed to be beating his ass over that instead of his victims and their kids. I mostly avoided that entire family and let Hades handle all that.
