Page 55 of The Goddess is Fierce
Ooh, and he had an ego about it. He was doing the whole ‘unhand me, you cretins’ thing while the campus ghosts just wailed on him.
“That’s enough. I have questions and then I’ll get rid of him,” Azren said.
Bethany straightened up and smoothed out her dress. Usually, she was the picture of a perfectly groomed Puritan, but she got a little messed up this time.
“Do you see now why we couldn’t help you so until the Fates got involved?” Bethany asked. “His power is an abomination, and he’s petty. We tried to get involved the first time he showed up, and he threatened to hunt down all of our descendants and wipe our lines off this realm. He’d do it. He can make gods his puppets. We left hints until the stars were aligned just right for his downfall. I know we frustrated you, but if you had acted before tonight, it would have been a disaster.”
“You didn’thaveto haunt my dick when I got frustrated about it,” Church sulked.
Bethany huffed and kicked Hedylogus for good measure. At least she wasn’t kicking Church again.
“Yes, I did. We might not be your professors, but we aren’t sending you out into the world as spoiled children who think you can be rude because you didn’t get your way.”
Church looked like he was going to argue, but Azren had this God of Death thing going on that was both sexy and scary, so when they held up their hand, we all shut the fuck up. Azren leaned down and got right up in Hedylogus’s face.
“I know Freya better than you ever will. She only would have disrespected you ifyouwere an ass to her. We figured out an Erotes was doing this, and she remembered meeting you all when she was looking for her husband. She would have remembered having a bad experience with a god in Olympus. Especially one she’d just met and wasn’texpectingto have a shitty experience with. So, you’re going to tell the class why youthinkyou were disrespected and that set you off on this whole nonsense of butchering innocent witches,” Azren purred.
“Seriously,” Freya said. “I met a lot of gods when I was looking for my husband. There were several I knew to avoid when I went to certain realms because I knew they weren’t going to take no for an answer and shit was going to go down. I didn’t have that experience in Olympus. It was pleasant. Aphroditeshowed me around, I met several gods, realized my husband wasn’t there, and left. And youshouldn’thave known anything about me being on this realm as a mortal. No one knew about that.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Hedylogus sneered.
West bounded over.
“Come on, dude. Your power is words. You workedreallyhard at that. Like,weall hate you, but props to the superpowers, even if you found the worst ways to abuse them. Youknowyou wanna villain monologue. Every bad guy wants to do the villain monologue. Give us that tragic backstory. I doubt it’s going to turn intothatkind of romance book, but you pissed off the God of Death and you might want a little sympathy from them.”
Hedylogus just scowled at West, but West wasn’t my only chaotic boyfriend. Ren decided to jump into the fray. Theonlytime I wanted to get double teamed by West and Ren was sexually. They might not be gods or been immune to him when he was alive like Oscar was, but I had no doubt they could get his ghost villain monologuing in no time.
“Iknewthere was a reason we should have gone into Shrieking Woods with Azren and George. You could shapeshift into an Unseelie and explain away your aura with a tragic backstory about the Fae Court, but you can’t hide your scent from shifters. All that time making yourself that powerful and butchering all those witches and you got killed bymyboyfriend. Suck on that, little bitch. Thousands of years old and all that fucking power and you handled rejection like some twenty-year-old human incel.”
“Fuck you!” Hedylogus roared. “It’s not that simple!”
“Girl, tell us how it is because this is all kinds of fucked-up,” Ren said.
“I met Freya when she was in Olympus. She was one of the few gods outside of the family who met me, found out my power,anddidn’tmake fun of me. Freya was sweet to me. We had a connection. My brothers left Olympus to spread love, but I left to prove those assholes wrong. Some of them were bullies. If you haven’t met them, then you’ve probably read about them.
“I figured out shapeshifting and mostly traveled around trying to figure my magic out. I didn’t want to go home until I was strong enough to make themallpay. I was shapeshifted in Europe hundreds of years ago. I was trying to drink at a pub and mind my own business. The gods had mostly left this realm at that point. I hadn’t run into one in a very long time.
“I saw a flash of golden aura in the alley and peeked my head out. I saw Freya and another god I hadn’t met yet shapeshift and come into the pub. I walked over to say hi. I told you who I was, andyou didn’t remember me.I tried to remind you and tell you about the connection we had and the fucking God of Death said I was making you uncomfortable and I should leave. I wasn’t rude. Youbothdisrespected me.
“So, I went into the alley and shapeshifted again. Everyone in that pub was so unimportant to the two of you that you didn’t even notice me take the table right next to you. I overheardeverythingabout your little plot to be mortal because of the massacre in the New World.
“Of course, I didn’t think there was much I could do about it if I wanted revenge for how you both dismissed me like that. We can’t sniff each other out when we’re shapeshifted, so there was no way in Tartarus I could figure out who you were going to be as a witch.
“And then you made itsoeasy. News of a gifted spirit witch who tamedthatmany ghosts and set up a legacy that big reached me where I was living. Theonlyway a mortal could have come up with that idea was if they had been inspired by a god. Iknewit was you and that you’d be back. I just had no way of knowing when.
“I snuck around and eventually learned about the caretaker in Shrieking Woods. I’d hang around trying to figure out if you were there right under my nose while pretending to be the caretaker. Then, the broken god would show up. I figured you two knew each other, and he was seeking you out, even if he can’t remember shit.
“That was when I started hunting. I wasn’t indiscriminate about it. I gathered information on the witches and compared it to what I knew about Beatrix Halliwell and when we met. If I didn’tthinkthey were you, I left them alone. I only killed them if I was ninety percent sure. It was a fuck you tobothof you for how you treated me.”
I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t much formeto say. I wasn’t alive then, but Hedylogus was probably one of the most toxic gods I’d ever heard about. Yeah, there were others with egos that big and some of them had stories and legends attached to them about punishing mortals.Mostof them hadn’t. They had their creations spread all these stories they did for fear and adoration. The rare few that started getting shitty with mortals were probably all in little jars somewhere in the Netherworld.
None of us spoke. We all just looked to Azren and Freya. Most of my dads were here and so were Odin and Baldur. They weren’t commenting either. I knew Freya and Azren had their own version of what went down in that pub and it was probably quite reasonable. Even if it wasn’t, it was no excuse for what he did. Matilda and I told guys they were being creepy and to go away all the time. We weren’t disrespecting them. We were telling them the truth, and they needed to hear it.
“You fucking idiot,” Freya snarled. “You neveroncekilled me. The only reason Baldur showed up when you did was because he was being drawn to the closest god to seek help. He didn’t even know that’s what he was doing. You butchered abunch of innocent witches because you approached me over two thousand years after we met, wearing an entirely different face and aura and expected me to recognize you.”
Azren was absolutely dripping with disdain, which was saying something because I’d watched them handle Kaylee, Lindsey, and Paris with an utterly serene resting bitch face.
“No one was disrespecting you, you turnip. You were getting agitated and causing a scene in a pub full of humans when it was popular to burn witchesandheretics. Those humans think there is only one god. They weren’t going to have a come to Jesus moment if some random guy in a pub was ranting about how he and two other people were gods.
