Trey struggled not to throw up.
Myra had elected to stay inside and out of sight during the confrontation with Jake. She was not yet ready to reveal herself to the older McAllister boy for some reason. After Jake and his girl left, Trey and Jolene came back inside. Myra had been very pleased with the way the whole thing had played out. And she had chosen to show her pleasure by dragging Jolene into one of the tiny home’s two bedrooms. Trey had retreated to the kitchen at the sound of the first orgasmic squeals.
And now here they were again. Utterly shameless. Making no attempt to disguise what they had been doing. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Jolene finished off the beer and tossed the crumpled can into the overflowing sink. Then she sidled up next to Myra and slipped an arm around the girl’s waist. Keeping her eyes on Trey, Myra smiled and leaned into the embrace. Jolene slipped a thumb beneath the band of Myra’s thong and gave it a snap. “Mmm…your girl’s primo stuff, boy. Knows her way around a woman’s body better than any man I ever knew, that’s for goddamn sure. If I’d known that, I never would’ve given you so much fuckin’ grief about her.”
“She’s not my girl.”
Jolene ran a finger along the delicate line of Myra’s jaw and made a purring sound. “You mean I can have this fine piece all to myself?”
“Be my guest.”
Jolene made that purring sound again and said, “Oh, I think I will.”
Trey stared at his hands and tried to make his mind a blank while they noisily made out for several minutes. But the effort was doomed. There was too much to think about. Too many awful things had happened. And there was the prospect of a near future awash in blood and violence to consider. So his mind wandered. He thought about Lamia. He understood in a general way her need to harvest souls and replenish her energy for another long stretch of years. And to some degree he understood some of the machinations necessary to put all the right pieces in place and arrange a successful harvest. He was less sure about why she did so many other things that seemed unnecessary. All the random murder and mind games. And she had some kind of fixation on Jake. Some kind of connection she refused to clarify. Trey didn’t have much left that mattered to him, but his brother did matter. He wished he could talk to him, convince him to head out of town, to run like a mad bastard, and keep running until he was hundreds or thousands of miles away.
He felt like crying now.
Because he knew it wasn’t possible. He knew that Jake was just as doomed as he was.
“You’re right about that.”
Trey flinched. He looked up and saw that Jolene had left the kitchen. Myra had moved closer to him while his mind was elsewhere. She stared down at him, her dark eyes cold as ever but also amused. “You can’t warn him. And he won’t escape. He was always meant to be here at harvest time.”
“Why?”
She shook her head ruefully. “You know better, darling. I don’t like to reveal all my secrets at once. Why ease your mind when it’s so much more fun to watch you writhe in torment?”
“You’re evil.”
“Well, fucking duh, Trey.” She laughed and her modest breasts jiggled in a way he would have found thrilling only a short time ago. “As for the rest of it…the seeming lack of a method to my madness…let’s just say that most of it is fun and games.”
Trey shuddered. “Murder. Torture. Fucked-up head games. Those are fun and games?”
She shrugged. “I’m old beyond your ability to comprehend, little worm.” She smiled and stroked his cheek with the back of a soft hand. “I get bored. Even a goddess, an immortal, can get bored. Maybe even especially a goddess. So many years, Trey. Endless. The centuries. Millennia. I have to amuse myself somehow.”
“You’re not a goddess.”
She lifted her chin, tilted her head. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. This goddess bullshit…it’s just your way of fooling your followers into believing you’re more important than you are.” There was contempt in his tone now. He knew he was pushing it, that he risked invoking her wrath in a big way, but he was powerless to keep this inside. It wouldn’t matter anyway-she would just look inside his head and know what he was thinking. “No, the truth is you’re just some kind of fucking demon. Satan kicked you out of hell or something.”
Her hand moved from his cheek to his neck, encircled it.
She applied pressure.
His eyes bugged out and he couldn’t breathe.
Then she released him and smiled again. “No. That would be too easy. I want you around to see everyone and everything you care about go down in flames.”
Trey touched his tender throat and smiled weakly. “Okay. But I’m right. I know I am.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. And Satan? Please. Just an idea. And I was a player long before it was even conceived. And goddess or not, I am immortal. Perpetual. I’ll survive the end of the world. Doesn’t that make you feel small?”
Trey didn’t have an answer for that.
Myra smiled. “Not that it matters. I’m almost done with you anyway. With both of you.”
“What does that mean?”
She touched a hand to his forehead. He felt her invading his mind again.
She said, “Forget.”
There was a fuzzy moment. Trey shook his head and looked up at her. “What…”
He frowned.
Something had happened, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It was probably just another symptom of his exhaustion.
“I’m back!” Jolene threw an arm around Myra and laid a loud, wet smack on her cheek. “Did you miss me?”
Myra smiled. “Of course.”
Jolene had returned with a largish Tupperware container. Trey frowned at the dark shape visible through its opaque side.
It was…moving.
Jolene caught his puzzled look and cackled. “Oh! That’s right. You don’t know about your daddy yet. Check this shit out, boy.”
She disengaged herself from Myra and peeled back the container’s purple top. Trey peeked inside and let out a gasp.
“Holy…”
His head swam.
He thought he might faint.
“That…it’s not…it can’t…”
Jolene loosed another burst of mad laughter. “That’s what I thought, baby, but I was fuckin’ wrong. Myra did it for me. A special gift.” She beamed at Myra. The girl’s eyes shone with amusement. “And I fetched him now ’cause I figured out what I want to do with him.” She giggled. “You’re gonna love this shit. It’s perfect.”
She hurried across the kitchen and popped the open container in the microwave. A series of beeps followed as she set the timer, followed by the hum of the machine working. Several seconds later there was a loud PLOP! And something wet splashed against the microwave’s little window.
There was a good deal of feminine laughter then.
Trey shoved himself away from the kitchen table, put his head between his knees, and heaved.
This elicited more laughter.
And then he did faint.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The first thing Jordan thought as she began to wake up was that she was hungover. Her mouth was dry. She felt thickheaded, engulfed in a mental fuzz obscuring memories of the night before. An ache throbbed somewhere behind her eyes. Her stomach fluttered. A taste of bile at the back of her throat hinted at a big meal her digestive system wanted no part of, probably something fried and drowned in grease.
Must have really tied one on.
She’d probably gone out to the Grill again. Their whole menu was chock-full of things the food nazis would scream about. Loaded with fat and deep fried to hell and back. She had to stop eating there. Had to change her habits while she was still young and thin. And…
Wait.
She still wasn’t fully awake. But she was close enough now to find certain things curious, verging on alarming. She became aware of various aches throughout her body. Then she felt the hardness beneath her. She wasn’t in a bed. She stretched and groaned. Her foot kicked something hard that skittered away. Maybe she’d crashed for the night on the floor for some reason. Too drunk to make it the bed or sofa, maybe. She rolled onto her back and groaned again. A frown twitched at the corners of her mouth.