“Are you okay?” he asked, when I didn’t show any signs of moving.
I looked back to see the lion’s head snarling at me. “Oh, sure. I’m fine. Peachy.”
As long as he got me the hell out of here.
The chimera hissed, growled, and—for lack of a better word—bleated at us as Galen led me to a staircase cut into the rock.
The cliff face towered above us. It was impossible to know how many steps it held, but I didn’t care. It was becoming increasingly evident that chimeras didn’t take the stairs and that was fine by me.
Galen and I tackled them together, side by side. By the time we were halfway up, I was wheezing and convinced my legs would fall off. Galen was, at least, sweating.
It was humid here, most likely from the lake. Still, I hadn’t felt humidity since I’d left New Orleans. It hadn’t been something I’d missed.
At the top, I gasped for breath as I followed Galen down a winding trail littered with fallen columns and statues of fallen soldiers. Only on second look, I could tell that they hadn’t always been statues. Damn. I stopped in front of a young man dressed as a gladiator. He held a long, oblong shield and an infantry sword. His eyes were frozen in terror.
I inspected his face. Part of his chin had chipped away, as well as an ear. That didn’t bother me near as much as the weathering on his neck. I could treat flesh-to-stone injuries if they were fresh. He’d been turned too long for me to do any good.
My fingers lingered on his rain-stained cheek. “Why?” I said to myself, to him, to the whole bloody universe.
Galen stood close behind me. I could feel him. “He was the enemy.”
“I’m trying really hard to understand that.” I wiped the sweat from my chin, leaving the soldier.
We passed at least a dozen more like him on the steamy, twisted path that led to Medusa’s lair. I stepped over blackened gouges in the earth, places where the trail itself had been ripped away.
So much death. So much anger.
And for what?
We reached the courtyard and found it scattered with even more crumbling bodies of the dead. Spindly silver artemisias sprouted from the cracks and in between fallen columns, their branches reaching toward the pink and gray sky.
The winds blew harsh up here, buffeting an arrangement of pink balloons, tied to a long-abandoned sword cleaved into the stone porch.
“Hello, hello!” a voice echoed from inside.
Galen drew his sword as a skinny little man in a toga two sizes too big scurried out of the house and down the battle-stained stairs. “Please,” he squeaked, when he got a look at Galen. “Doctor.” He nodded to me. “Er … friend.” He bowed with trepidation toward Galen. “If you will come inside. No battles today.” He wagged a finger with forced cheerfulness.
Galen sheathed his sword as the jumpy servant led us down a long hallway of pink and green marble. Our footsteps echoed as we passed more stony dead. Only these heroes were missing heads, limbs, and other vital body parts.
I gripped my medical bag and kept moving. There was nothing I could do for them.
“Here you are.” He led us through a pair of large bronze doors and into a sunny room that could have belonged in any upscale villa. The marble floor gleamed. The walls were hung with paintings and tapestries, and a strange gorgon slithered beside the gift table.
She was thinner than Medusa, with a mass of red snakes tangling at her shoulders.
“Stheno?” I guessed, taking the safe bet. Stheno was the oldest and most powerful of the three sisters.
Her lips turned up at the corners as she slithered to me. “You must be the doctor,” she said. I handed Galen my medical case and allowed Stheno to grip my hands in hers. Her touch was papery and cold. I tried not to react as her wan smile turned to a hiss at the poor servant.
“The human should have introduced us,” she snarled. “It’s impossible to attract good live help these days.”
“Maybe if you give him time,” I said, not quite sure what else to say.
She growled under her breath. “He’s a temp,” she said, ignoring Galen as she led me to an arched doorway. I glanced back to see him depositing my wrapped crystal on the gift table.
“Back in the day,” Stheno said, dragging me along, “entire families served. Now everyone worries. Will my child fall into the poison lake? Will they be devoured by the flesh-eating crabs on the shore? Will I be struck in a lighting storm?” She leaned chummy close. “Used to be you had so many children that if one went missing, you chalked it up to fate.”
Sure. Right. “So you live here with Medusa?” I asked, changing the subject as she led us through a portrait hall. It was a veritable who’s who of sea monsters and the damned.
“I help out in the spring and summer, when the gorgon killers get their big ideas.” She snorted.
I knew I was treading on dangerous territory, but, “If you ever decide on mercy, I can treat their injuries.”
“Not when we knock the heads off.”
I stood dumb for a moment.
“Come,” she said, turning me into a room with a very pregnant Medusa. She lay on a couch of pink velvet, her stomach much more distended than when I’d seen her last.
She was flanked by a third gorgon, who must be her other sister. The rest of the intimate room was crowded with a gaggle of fearsome women with sharp teeth and claws. They sat uncomfortably in a semicircle of metal folding chairs. Roundly, I was introduced to Ekhidna (the Viper), Skylla (the Crab), Ladon (the Dragon), and Graia (the Gray).
I’d never keep all their names straight. So I just smiled and accepted a cup of punch.
The viper lurched, her entire body seemed to coil as she sat ramrod straight. “What is this?” she hissed.
I followed her gaze and found Galen in the doorway, looking delicious as usual.
“He’s mine,” I said, without hesitation.
“Too bad,” muttered the gray woman.
Medusa’s younger sister caressed her punch cup. “Of course if she dies, he’s mine,” she mused, to the titters of her cousins.
Medusa knocked the punch out of her sister’s hand, spilling it like blood, the cup skittering across the marble floor. “Do not kill her,” she thundered. “She’s my OB.”
The sister scowled, then brightened. “Perhaps after the baby?”
I found a chair far, far away, next to the crab monster, who sat like a large lump of clay. I liked her for that.
“Now that we’re all here, let’s play a game.” Stheno glided over to a table laden with small prizes. “Ekhidna gave me the idea for this one.”
The viper woman grinned as Stheno held aloft an apothecary jar. “Guess how many teeth are in the jar!”
Oh, my Lord. They were human teeth!
“I got them from the one who knocked you up!” Stheno tittered.
Medusa gasped. “You took Helio’s teeth?”
“Ha!” The crab lady nudged me, her fish breath singed the air. “I knew it was her bodyguard.”
“Relax,” Stheno said, “I didn’t take his teeth.” She rattled the jar. “I just found these around the house.”
I swallowed hard, determined to make it through this, confident that Galen lingered nearby.
The winner of guess-the-teeth was gifted with a lovely necklace made of spiders.
“They’re alive!” The gray woman clapped her hands as Stheno fitted her with the prize.
“I hope,” Stheno replied, trying to get the clasp to work. “You didn’t close the box too tight, did you?” she asked Medusa’s other sister.
She hadn’t. I saw one of the legs twitch.
This was one shower where I was determined to lose big.
I didn’t have to try hard. The next game was guess-the-food, where three smidges of baby food were presented on a tray and we had to decide what was what. I guessed peas, carrots, and beets. I should have known Medusa would go organic with ground eel, lamb’s brain, and ox blood.
It’s not like I could have used the prize: papyrus note cards with poison ink.
The sun was setting outside the window. I had to get out of here. Not only for my own preservation but for the fact that I had to work tomorrow and it was a long chimera ride home.
Only I had to give Medusa her checkup. She looked like she was feeling good, and she’d certainly been hitting the snack table hard. They were both good signs, but certainly not in any way a replacement for proper prenatal care.
“Gift time!” Stheno announced as Galen wheeled in a cart of presents.
“Where have you been?” I mouthed to him.
While the sisters ogled his ass, he made his way behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder. His breath felt warm against my ear. “The Fates are here.”
I stiffened. I figured they might be real, just like all of the other mythical creatures I’d encountered down here. Still, I never thought I’d be meeting the Fates.
We looked to the doorway and there stood an old woman, with two more behind her.
“Aunt Klotho.” Medusa tried to turn around, her stomach impeding her.
My fingers tightened on my chair. “Aunt?”
“Friends of Medusa’s mother,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Can you believe it?”
Yes. No. He’d had a few minutes to get used to it. Me? I was staring for all I was worth.
Klotho was the spinner of the thread of life, if you believed in that sort of thing. I didn’t. Still, I could feel her power touch the room as she stepped over the threshold.
Klotho was followed by Lakhesis, who measured the thread of life, and Atropos, who cut it.
And, no, I wasn’t that smart to tell the difference on sight. But Klotho held a spinner, Lakhesis walked with a staff, and Atropos carried a pair of very sharp scissors.
They assembled behind me, cackling when I offered them my chair.
“We are old, but we are strong.” Atropos nudged me with her scissors. “It does no good to buy us off.”
It hadn’t been what I’d been doing, but I didn’t argue. Even if I didn’t quite believe in the Fates, I wasn’t about to tempt them.
I could feel their weight behind me as Medusa opened her first gift. It was from her older sister. I’d never seen Medusa squeal, and I never wanted to see it again.
“It’s the death shroud of Theseus!” She clutched it to her chest. “Does this mean you finally killed him?”
“He attacked us!” Stheno protested.
Silly man.
Galen kept his hand on the hilt of his sword as Medusa reached for a trembling box. A flat, black nose sniffed from one of the airholes.
“It’s from us!” one of the monstrous sisters announced.
I braced myself as Medusa unwrapped a brown bat the size of a dog. “An Olitiau!”
As her doctor, I should protest the hairy, fang-toothed creature. It was the worst baby gift ever. That thing looked like it could eat the baby.
Crab lady nudged me. “Every little girl needs a pet.”
“And this”—Medusa’s baby sister lifted a crown out of a gift bag—“I made myself.”
It was a knobby white headdress of sorts. One thing was certain, the youngest gorgon was not very good at crafts.
Medusa placed it on her head uncertainly.
Her sister clapped her hands together. “It’s the bones of your enemies!”
The women let out a collective, “Ahhh…”
“You.” Medusa nudged her. “This must have taken ages to make.”
“I’ve been collecting them for years,” she admitted, twirling a red snake around her finger. “The little nameplates on the back of each bone mark whom it’s from.”
A teary-eyed Medusa reached for my gift. Nerves tickled my stomach. I hadn’t shopped for anything truly memorable. Although I was really glad I hadn’t been able to get anything from Babies “R” Us.
Medusa unwrapped my gift and studied it for a moment. “A crystal,” she said, unimpressed until a thought came to her and lit her up from the inside. “It’s baby-sized! She can use it to smash the skulls of her enemies!”
The other ladies voiced their approval while I fought the urge to slide boneless onto the marble floor.
Now if only I could get her away for a quick exam, I’d be able to get out of here.
“Wait,” Atropos said behind me, as if she knew what I’d been thinking. “We have a gift.”
Everyone turned to the Moirae sisters.
Klotho gave a beneficent smile. “We are so proud of you. And we know you will make a wonderful mother. You will be fierce and loyal. Loving and strong. Ask what you would like for your daughter, and we will give it.”
The room hushed.
“Ask for revenge,” Stheno urged.
“Or the destruction of your daughter’s enemies,” said the gray woman.
“She doesn’t have any enemies,” I protested. Medusa’s daughter hadn’t even been born yet.
“Right,” Medusa said. “Maybe I can ask for some enemies for her.”
No. Wrong. Geez, these people! I had to get out of here before I clocked them over the head. “Let her make a difference in the world.”
They looked at me like I was sporting five heads and a unicycle.
Oh, come on. “Let her be someone who impacts the world for good.” It’s what I had always wanted to do. And now, I might never get my wish. But this kid could. “Let her be the one who changes lives for the better.”
Medusa frowned. “And this will make her happy?”
I sighed, losing some of my steam. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted,” I told her.
She gave a sly grin, turning to the Fates. “I want my daughter to make a difference. Change lives. I want her to be epic!”
The Fates nodded, while Medusa’s relatives grumbled.
I only hoped Klotho and company would work for the good. Medusa had left that part out. I doubted she’d include it even if I reminded her.
But it was refreshment time and everyone was hungry. While the guests crowded around a table laden with olives, cheeses, and cake, I managed a word with Medusa.
She wore her crown of bones and clutched her belly with grim determination. “I feel like a kraken,” she grumbled. “I want this baby out of me now.”
“Your daughter will come when she’s ready,” I assured her.
“I’m not sleeping. I can barely eat. Nothing else will fit inside me.” She caught Atropos by the sleeve of her long dress. “You. You control fate. Get this baby out of me.”
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned, noticing Galen in conversation with Klotho and Lakhesis. He’d better be charming the Fates. “Come,” I said to Medusa, “is there somewhere private we can go? I’ll give you an exam and let you know how close you are.”