Page 43 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
“Oh, that was my cousin, Rodney. I was talking about my other cousin, Dante. My mom has ten siblings, so I have a lot of cousins. Rodney is the only one who ended up fucked in the head and you can’t tell by looking at him or by how he’s dressed. I think you have to have super senses like a succubus or a fury.”
“Ido.I can smell it in their blood, but I have to be close with so many people here. I can admit when I’m wrong. I guess the backwards capisn’tscience.”
“So, we need drinks,” Persephone said. “I like the pink fruity shit because it gets you drunk faster and tastes good. Medusa is a margarita girl. I feel like we need to make this a regular thing, so I need to learn what you drink.”
“I am also a pink fruity drink girl,” Jezebel said.
“Whisky,” Kat said. “Something tells me this place doesn’t have the good stuff.”
Probably not.
“Um, I don’t know. They took me right before my twenty-first birthday, so I’ve never been able to buy it myself. I’ve only been able to drink what was available at parties. I know I don’t like beer or vodka.”
“We have a project,” Megaera announced. “Go grab a table and we’ll get drinks. Before we start punishing the wicked, wehaveto find out Calamity’s signature drink.”
We managed to get to our table with minimal groping from the frat boys. One tried to grab Persephone’s ass. Big mistake. Her husband was the God of the Underworld and he got the shades of the best warriors to teach her to fight. I also felt badfor the guy when she whirled around and twisted his hand back. She had god strength, so he fell to his knees and looked a little panicked.
“Boy, didyoutry to grab the wrong ass, Milton.”
“My name is Dillon,” he stammered.
“I don’t care. Your name is Milton now. Listen, Milton, we’re going to have a chat about boundaries. Girls don’t like it when you grab their ass. At no point do we say, yes, I’m going to fuck that guy. Most of us don’t say anything because we’re worried you’re going to murder us for asking us not to touch you, but I’m not most people.”
One of his friends stepped forward and Kat blocked him. Kat was long and lean. She definitely looked like you didn’t want to fuck with her even if you didn’t know she was an original vampire. I cracked up laughing because this giant man took one look at Kat and just left his friend with Persephone. I saw Calamity wriggle her nose, so I was sure after Persephone was done ruining his day, some demon-related fuckery was going to follow.
Jezebel was humming something and if the furies joined in, too, I might kind of feel bad for this guy. I mean, not really. He needed to learn to keep his hands to himself and he groped the God of Rebirth and her very powerful friends.
“Fuck you, Eddie!” he shrieked at his friend. “Bros before hos. I’m getting you kicked out of the fraternity.”
“I think Eddie understands you stepped in some big shit, bro. What did we learn here today?”
“Blondes with pink highlights are fucking crazy?”
Jezebel started humming louder and got right in his face.
“Blondes have nothing on redheads. I think the point my bestie is trying to make is that you were eventually going to grab the ass of someone who fought back. You might have just gotten slapped or gotten a drink thrown in your face, but you happenedto grabherass. Weallhave various stories where someone violated our consent, and we learned to fight back. So, I suggest you leave this bar with your buddies and think twice about touching a woman without her consent because we aren’t trying to get violent tonight. We’retryingto enjoy a girls’ night out.”
He scurried away, and we managed to get our table. We were laughing because Jezebel was right. He really chose to grope the wrong person. As soon as we sat down, I turned to Jezebel and Calamity because I wasdyingto know.
“Okay, I knowbothof you did something. Spill.”
“Benji and me are completely different types of demons, but finding out it was him that kept Hannibal out of the basement and why gave me a little inspiration.”
“Girl, I love you so much. I sirened him to get stabbing pain in his left testicle every time he thinks about doing anything without a woman’s consent. It’ll eventually wear off, but hopefully, he learns his lesson.”
Alecto and Megaera had come back with our drinks while Jezebel and Calamity were talking about what they did to the ass groper. They had a wide array of cocktails and shots for Calamity since she already knew she didn’t like beer.
“Everyone, drink up. The ass groper was fun, but there are people here with much worse intentions. The men and the women. We have to teach Medusa to sense that kind of thing and the different levels of fury,” Tisiphone said.
“Furies trap people in their own worst nightmare. We turn their fears against them, but we were really pissed for a while and if people are really awful, we like to play with our food first. You can give them nightmares with a side of sleep paralysis or daytime hallucinations. You don’thaveto trap them in their worst torment until their body shuts down. We save that for the really bad ones nowadays,” Tisiphone said.
“There are four people in this bar with bad intentions. Not all of them are men. You’re still a green witch who has mastered that, so I think I know how to teach you. You know how you dig deep to feel that spark of life when you’re dealing with the earth? You can do that with evil. Reach out with the same senses until you can feel it and then latch onto it. Instead of making it grow, you can sense the intention,” Alecto said.
I tried that. I could feel roots underneath the bar and some poor half-dead plant behind the bar. Being a green witch was second nature by now. But evil? I’d been running from that my entire life. I knew what it felt like. Hannibal had been radiating with it. I never wanted to get near it.
Was that what I’d been feeling this entire time? My fury magic was letting me know and instead of digging in and exploring it, I ran from it. Witches were pretty good at intuition. I thought that was what it was the whole time. I was pretty young when Poseidon raped me. I thought it was just something that kicked in after him.
There was a low, pulsing menace in here. It wasn’t a lot, and it didn’t trigger my fight or flight. I reached out to it and my mind just started filling with images. I’d done it!
