Page 51 of The Goddess is Fierce
I rolled my eyes. Freya knew damned well she was gorgeous. When Loki and I chose to shapeshift into women, at least parts of us were stolen from Freya. The woman knew this, too. But we all swore to kiss her ass for a bit.
“The Erotes were all born gods. Eros and Aphrodite were companions. He was there for her birth and helped with her children. Eros was the one who helped her kids figure out theirmagic. Eros and Aphrodite realized all the brothers had domain over feelings.
“Eros was a bit of a trickster. Aphrodite said he liked to crash Dionysus’s parties and shoot magical arrows at people and turn it into an orgy. Dionysus wasn’t complaining, and neither was anyone at the party. Their magic works by speaking at people, but sometimes Eros wanted to get someone randy in a way they couldn’t blame it on another person manipulating them, so he came up with the bow and arrow thing.
“He taught the Erotes this. They were created to dogoodthings, but sometimes, they needed to give feelings a little nudge without someone saying another person had been manipulated. The bows aresupposedto shoot invisible manifestations of their magic with a little bit of their essence at a person. It’s not supposed toharmthem. They won’t even notice. It usually just amplifies any feelings they might have.”
Except for Hedylogus. He could give someone the ability to find the words they needed to get what they wanted, but he had perverted that into some kind of abomination.
“The arrows take an immense amount of concentration. When Eros was first teaching them, they kept manifesting actual arrows that could hurt someone instead of magical arrows. They can’t sense essences like you can, but it became clear the little Erotes kids were missing a part of them trying to figure out the arrows. They brought them to Hephaestus to destroy them and make them whole again. Hephaestus taught them all how to do it when they were old enough just in case they got distracted and accidentally created one away from Olympus. There used to be blacksmith forges in every village, so destroying it wouldn’t have been hard.”
If Hedylogus had been trained to destroy those arrows by Eros, that would explain why he hunted Drake’s parents down and murdered them. He hadn’t tried that hard to find it outsideof murdering them. Hedylogus hadn’t gone after her roommate or searched her dorm.
“My parents died over the arrow we have and George’s uncle and cousin say it’s important. He’s not creating them by accident anymore. He’s using the magical ones to getsomethingfrom those witches. Hedylogus is getting them alone and their covens are noticing. He’s given them poorly planned-out lies the coven sees right through. He wants something from those witches and when he can’t get it orthinkshe’s got it, he’s manifesting real arrows and murdering them,” Drake said.
Drake had a damned good point I hadn’t considered. He wasn’t just picking independent study witches. Hedylogus was looking for something. He was talking to the witches first because he was trying to find something out. I was fairly certain he’d approached several witches and narrowed it down to a few. He probably spoke to some and only decided to focus on certain witches.
I also knew one other thing for sure. Hedylogus hadn’t just figured out how to expand his powers into taking away free will. I was pretty sure he’d mastered shapeshifting, too.
He could literally be anyone on campus.
drake
. . .
Iwas a mess of emotions. I was pretty sure we had the name of the god who killed my parents. How it went down was pissing me off even more. He didn’thaveto manifest an arrow my mom would have found and tried to keep safe. He could have just shot a harmless, invisible arrow and they didn’t have to die.
Unless he was intending to shoot something magical, got distracted, and manifested a real arrow. Even then, I didn’t give a shit. If he hadn’t been on campus in the first place,noneof this would have happened. I didn’t care.
I didn’t give a shit if the other gods were mean to him or told him that his magic was shitty. From what it sounded like, his mom and his siblings had his back and tried to support him. He hadn’t even gone home to talk to his mom in ages. Ketura was the only mother I knew thanks to this fucker. I called her every day from the Academy of the Profane. She knew about my love life and dodgeball practice. It seemed like Aphrodite loved her kids. He couldn’t even be bothered to go visit her because he was too busy killing witches.
But it was time now. It was the night of our first dodgeball game and we were going to catch this fucker. We were going to have to turn the other cheek about a lot of shit to catch this guy and that wasn’t the supernatural way. We knew the other team was going to be cheating. They were going to hurt one of our best players. Thing was, we didn’t knowwho.We had a lot of people on our team who could be playing pro right now instead of going to college.
Oscar would be playing pro, but he had that accident. I found out Michael had offers, too, but he wanted to go to college. Innis turned down pro offers because he initially planned to go to the school we were playing against to be with his boyfriend, but his boyfriend cheated on him, so he said fuck that and came to the Academy of the Profane. We’d be playing against Innis’s ex and he had an axe to grind because he thought Innis should have forgiven him.
Dexter was like the fucking Spanish Inquisition. No one expected him. He looked like a small pixie boy with a green mohawk and pretty wings. The only explanation I had for him moving that fast was pixie magic because it was insane. He was that fast whether he was in the air or using his legs. It was a little unfair to the rest of us.
George was a powerhouse just using witch magic and plain old skills she had practiced in her front yard instead of godmagic. I was no slouch on the goal. The rest of our team was pretty amazing, too. We’d been trying to drum up support for our team by posting videos of practice that didn’t give away any of our plays. The other teams would have good reason to be afraid of us, but which one of us they would try to take out was anyone’s guess. We didn’t really have a star player. We were a cohesive unit, and we wereallvital.
We were dressed and on the field. The stadium was packed. I could see my people in the stands. Ren, Church, and West were sitting with George’s massive family. Azren had joined them with Odin, Baldur, and Freya. Ketura knew about the game and she wasn’t going to miss it, even if it wasn’t on the Netherworld. She’d been to every single one of my dodgeball games and that wasn’t going to change now that I was on a different realm. She was here, too.
They were all decked out in shirts with various names on them and holding signs. Except West. West had his naked thing with dodgeball games. He was in his trench coat again with some strategically placed girls sitting around him hoping something was going to happen on the field that blew the trench coat up and gave them a show.
I don’t think anyone else on the team knew Zion and the other coach had some kind of feud going on. I don’t think any of us that knew about it gave a shit what it was about. Zion Skinner constantly told us we stunk and various other insults, but we knew he gave a shit probably a lot more than some of our other professors. The people whodidn’tknow what was at stake with this game wanted to win for Zion.
Zion was about to give us a pep talk before the game and honestly, he could say anything.
“Listen, you little shits smell horrendous and you’re going to be even more offensive after the game, but you’re all talented as hell at dodgeball and you can win this. And I mean all of you,not just our god and angel. You’re all badasses and if you get the slightest bit of ego on my field because I told you that, I’m going to make you run laps until your buttholes fall off.
“They tried to cheat and get George kicked off the team, but it didn’t work. That means they are going to bring it onto the field. I know their coach. If they can’t win on their own skills, they are going to try to get someone out of the game through injury or they are going to make it seem like one ofyouis doing that, so the referee kicks you out. It’s fucking dodgeball, so you have to be doing something pretty extreme to get kicked out of a game. It wouldn’t shock me if they attack each other to blame it on us.
“Youwill notstoop to their level. We aren’t them. I didn’t just pick you for my team because you’re good at dodgeball. You all have good heads on your shoulders, even though you are idiot kids who smell terrible. Now, go out there and win this fucking game.”
Zion Skinner told us we were morons with offensive body odor because he cared about us. It was how he showed affection. We had him pegged because we were also taking his magical combat class. My group also knew all the things hedidn’tadvertise. Like, he fought like hell to keep George on the team because he knew she needed the outlet and not because she was our team witch. He befriended Sol when he was just that guy in maintenance that made everyone uncomfortable.
“Let’s win this shit!” Michael roared.
We were dodgeball players, and this was a game. So, even if a lot of us were dating each other, we punched each other on the arm or swatted them on the ass. Except for Michael and Dexter and Innis and his boyfriend. They had a pretty graphic make-out session.
