“Carl!” she yelped, looking down at his broken body, sprawled and still. She tried to squirm from Khristos’s arms, but Nina was on the ground in a flash, her hair covered in dust, her clothes torn.
She hauled Carl up, pushing his face from his hair, running her fingers over his head. Standing, she draped a limp Carl over her shoulder and headed straight for the cause of all this discord and strife.
“You fucking, fucking, motherfucking, stupid, dicklick, dumb, motherfucking bitch!” she hollered in the face of the woman who’d abandoned her serpent form and returned to still one of the most beautiful women Quinn had ever seen. “I’m going to make you bleed buckets, you crazy, out-of-control, motherfucking piece of mythological shit! And when I’m done, I’m going to do it again. You fucked with my zombie! You—hurt—my—zombie—twatcicle!”
Nina jammed her face closer to the woman, who now paled. “You know what that means? You have to die, and it’s gonna hurt. Oh my God, it’s gonna hurt like nothing’s ever hurt your fucked-up, warped, pretty face before!”
Marty, in a scrap of what was left of Quinn’s sheets, and Wanda, her face dewy with sweat, rushed to the vampire, pulling her back, but Nina, who’d fought so valiantly not to swear, was clearly on the cleanse plan.
“Get the fuck off me!” she growled at her friends. “I will kill this bitch! I’ll rip her damn face off—eat my way through her delicate little intestines while she watches. Do you hear me, you batshit, boil-on-my-fucking-ass, chariot-driving olive-lover!”
“Nina!” that voice bellowed again, sharp and with a hard warning. Only this time, as though the very air in the coliseum had a rip in it, a man—an enormous man—slipped through the folds.
A beautiful, dark, enormous man dressed in a stark-white polo shirt and plaid golf pants.
Khristos’s chest heaved in relief as he cradled her close. “Zeus. Jesus Christ, damn glad you showed up, man.”
Zeus? Seriously? Zeus was in her apartment turned coliseum in lower Manhattan? Oh, this day was shiny-shiny.
Crossing his arms over his wide chest, he approached Eris with a frown that could only be described as deep disappointment. “So what do we have here?”
Eris lifted her head, her sapphire eyes flashing and wild, her creamy breasts rising and falling beneath the silky white gown she wore. “You know damn well what you have here, you scourge of the universe!”
Zeus’s chuckle vibrated the entire room as he grinned. “Are you still angry with me, Eris? Did you do all this in my honor?”
Quinn’s head ached, her hands throbbed, but not so much that she was going to miss this chance to find out why her apartment looked like a Sherman tank had driven through it. She squirmed in Khristos’s arms, using her wrists to push off his broad shoulders and forcing him to let her slide to the floor.
He kept his hands protectively at her waist as she wobbled when her knees buckled. “Quinn.” He muttered a warning in her ear. “Let Zeus handle this.”
“The hell I will. You, you crazy—although I admit, utterly gorgeous—nutbag, just hold on. Just all of you hold right the hell on!”
Zeus caught sight of Quinn and winced, his tanned face pained. He lifted her hands with gentle fingers, examining the spikes embedded in them. “Gods!” he shouted. “Are you responsible for this, Eris?”
Quinn fought a whimper when he touched them, but that wasn’t going to stop her. “You’re damn right she is. This is my apartment, for the love of Pete! I’m not going to have anywhere to live. I’ll never get my deposit back. Not to mention, I have spikes—spikes—in my hands! Cheese and rice, you people are insane! What the hell is going on?”
Zeus looked over her head to Khristos. “So this is the one?”
“She is indeed,” Khristos answered with a hint of amusement in his tone.
“Aw, Quinn. Welcome to the fold!” He gathered her up in his bulging arms, making her cry out. “So sorry! Hang tight. I’ll fix this right up.” He took her fingertips and ran his lips over them, making the spikes and gaping holes in her palms disappear. With another snap of his fingers, her knees no longer felt as though someone were driving nails through the caps.
He cocked his head, looking down at her with sparkling green eyes. “Better?”
“So much,” she uttered, then pulled her hands away, feeling guilty for admiring his beauty.
Cracking his knuckles, Zeus turned his attention back to Eris. “What is this about, Eris?”
Eris’s eyes narrowed, her luscious lips thinning. “You know what this is about, you goddess-loving lothario!”
Zeus gave them all a sheepish look before he grabbed Eris by the throat, so fast her body jerked like a limp ragdoll from the upward swing. “What does this have to do with Quinn?” he hissed in her ear.