“No mother?” he asked, seeming to have completely forgotten about his app and the subsequent research.
“Nope. I mean, of course, there’d been an egg and a uterus at some point. But the second I was fully formed and not leeching off her system, she got rid of me.”
“So you’re adopted?” he asked, seeming to almost stumble over that word as if it was a new vocabulary word for him.
“No. My father is my biological father. He wasn’t with my mom. Not in the committed sort of way, anyway. She called him from the hospital after having me, basically telling him to come get me, or she was signing me over to the state to put into foster care or whatever they do.”
“Cold,” he said, shaking his head.
“I guess. Maybe. She was really ambitious and one whoopsie would have ruined all her plans. I actually kind of give her a lot of credit for knowing what she wanted out of life, even if that wasn’t me.”
“That’s a very mature way of looking at it.”
“It probably helped that my dad never had any bitterness about it,” I said, taking another sip of my coffee. “That is one fun aspect for your app,” I said, realizing I’d just spilled my whole story to a relative stranger who likely had no interest in it.
I wasn’t great with social interactions. I either shared too little, and came off as standoffish and superior. Or I shared too much and came off odd and awkward.
“What is?”
“Crazy family dynamics,” I told him. “I mean, the light stuff. If this is geared toward teens or anyone younger, you might want to leave out all the incest.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. So, if the gods were about to make a big… show of power, what do you think that would be?”
“A show of power? Uhm, that’s an odd question. I mean, their subjects would already know what they were capable of.”
“Say they didn’t. Or that they don’t worship the gods properly.”
“That would be a big no-no. The gods, for all their supposed virtues, had pretty fragile egos. They were quick to take out their tempers on their people. Which is why there were so many temples and offerings for the gods.”
“What if, say, the gods all took a long nap,” he said, leaning forward to wrap his hands around his coffee cup, like he was seeking the small bit of warmth the travel mug provided.
“A nap?”
“Yeah. Say they all decided they were a bit worn out from all the ruling and worshipping and fucking,” he said, and I swear that last word sent an odd thrill of excitement to my core.
“Okay…” I said, not really able to think of anything save for the strange pulsing sensation between my thighs.
“And then several hundreds or thousands of years pass. Eventually, the humans who once worshipped them, start to think they were all just stories.”
“Alright,” I said, a small smile tugging at my lips because I was actually liking where he was going with this.
“In their absence, other gods rise up and gain the largest followings.”
“Of course,” I agreed. If there was one consistency with human nature, it was a belief in something ‘other than ourselves.’
“Then, one day, they’re rested. They’re ready to wake up. When they do, not only have humans evolved a lot, but they don’t believe in them anymore.”
“This is really interesting,” I told him truthfully. I wasn’t an app person myself, but I would so be into this as a story in a novel.
“What would these old gods do in that situation?”
“That is quite a backstory,” I told him. “Well, I guess they would… find ways to make themselves known.”
“How so?”
“Well, I think you can imagine that each god, especially the more powerful gods, would show themselves in stereotypical ways. Zeus might start with sudden, violent storms. Lots of lightning.
“Ares might have the humans starting sudden and bloody wars between seemingly peaceful allies.
“As for Poseidon, you can expect ships to sink or strange water phenomena. Hurricanes, tsunamis, that sort of thing.”
“Anyone else?”
“Well, I think you can imagine that gods like Aphrodite would bring about a lot of, well…”
“Fucking,” he supplied, and the way that word just rolled off his tongue? Yeah, it was doing things to me. Things I hadn’t felt in a good, long while.
“Yes, that,” I said, reaching up toward the delicate little necklace I always wore, that had been given to me by my father when I graduated university, something that I was so used to, I never even felt it, but it suddenly seemed like it was choking me.
“What else?” he asked, and it took me a second to think past the strange surge of desire building in my system and get back to the subject at hand.
What the hell was wrong with me?
I’d been learning about the myths, and all the raunchy tales found within, since I was a little girl. I’d never been turned on thinking about them before.
Which meant the only reason I was at that moment was because of a certain disarmingly handsome man sitting close to me.
“Ah, well, I think some good things could happen, actually.”
“How so?”
“Well, you have the gods who are the more vengeful sort. But you also have gods who might show themselves by sharing their gifts with the world once again. You could see a Renaissance of music and art thanks to Apollo. Or more happy domestic lives thanks to Hera and Hestia. Dionysus could bring about a lot of fun parties and overindulgence.”
“Okay. That’s good,” he said, then shook his head. “For balance. For the app story,” he said, the words strange, tight, not sounding genuine.
Or maybe I was too clouded by the strange desire in my system to think straight, clouding my judgment.
“Yeah, it’s always good to balance the doom-and-gloom with something more positive,” I agreed, taking another sip of the coffee.
There was a long pause, Bael looking off at the case of books for a long second. When he spoke, his attention was on those same books until they shifted to me.
And I swear the impact of the intensity in them made me sit up straighter in my seat.
“What about Hades?” he asked.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bael
I didn’t give a shit about what happened to the humans.
That was not something the other guys in the club would want to hear.
But I believed that was only because that after being trapped on the human plane for hundreds of years had softened them to the human race.
I still saw them for what they were at their core.
Selfish.
Rotten.
Wicked.
Evil.
That was how I’d always known them.
That was why it had been so easy to do my job down in Hell, punishing them for all of their sins.
In my experience, the only time they felt even the slightest bit guilty for the shit they’d done when they were alive was when they were being held accountable for it in the afterlife.
And if your “goodness” in life was dependent upon the punishment you might receive in death, then you just weren’t a fucking good person, period.