Damaged Gods

My mouth just drops open. “Where did it go? The door? Where did it go? How do I get back!”

I’m panicking. It’s not a good look for me.

“Calm down, calm down. You came from the tomb, right?”

I nod. Swallow.

“It’s there. But it’s glamoured. You’re one of them? The monsters?”

“No! Do I look like a monster?” And that’s when I look down and realize I am. My hooves! My fur! My… no pants or shirt. I quickly rearrange my hair to make double sure this well-spoken mobster can’t get a peek at my nipples. Then I reach up, and sure enough, there they are. My horns. “Shit,” I say.

“It’s OK,” Luciano says. “We see lots of confused people come through the tombs. They get over it after their first time, but I’ve never seen you here before, have I? Because you, my dear”—he takes both of my hands, then steps back so he can see all of me at once—“you are ravishing!”

But now he’s patting my shoulder and I realize that these words are platitudes. And we’re walking, so he’s trying to get me out of here without any more fanfare. No one seems to be paying attention to us, even though my hooves are clip-clopping across the black marble floors. And it echoes.

“Tarq is this way, Pie.” I can hear the smile when he says my name. “Let’s get the two of you reunited so you can stop feeling so unsettled.”

He’s got manners, I’ll give him that. And I do feel better having him take care of things. That realization isn’t very empowering. But. Whatever. I’m losing it. Like seriously losing it. And if I have to work out a single detail about this trip into the tomb that is not a tomb, I might not recover.

Luciano ushers me through a door, then down a hallway, then through another door, a room, another hallway and I lose track. I suddenly wonder if this place is the twenty-first-century version of the Labyrinth and I’m about to meet the urban Minotaur.

We stop in front of a glass-walled office and there he is. Right on the other side.

And he looks like the urban Minotaur. He is sleek, jet-black fur. Glossy hooves. Brown skin. Long, silky black hair flowing over his hard, muscular shoulders and tied loosely at the nape of his neck. And his horns. Cheese and fucking rice, those horns. They are the horns you picture when you think monster. Nothing like the ones on my head. They scream power. And they are sharp and polished. His horns look like obsidian. Smooth and lustrous. Like this man gets a hornjob daily.

He’s in profile when we walk up to the glass door and pause, but his mouth is moving like he’s in the middle of a conversation. I can’t hear a word. The glass is thick. His office looks like any billionaire’s corner glass office. Massive wooden desk. A view to die for—and how did we get up in the air? I don’t know. We didn’t go up any stairs or take any elevators, but we are like a hundred stories up. Large birds are floating past, circling out over an ocean like we’re in New York. But none of the buildings are the iconic ones even poor people like me could recognize.

This is not New York.

There are no billionaire monster CEO’s in New York.

Well. They are all probably monsters. But not in the literal sense.

Tarq turns, sees us, then smiles. And good fucking God. That smile is… wow. Even his sharp fangs are sexy.

I don’t know what to make of this guy. He’s nothing like Pell. And while I can appreciate this stunning, god-like, A-type personality, corporate-raider monster that is Tarq—this dude’s attention scares the shit out of me and we haven’t even spoken yet.

Nope. I like my Pell. I like him shaggy. I like his tousled fur, and his striped hooves, and his glowing horns that don’t look like they were made to knock giants into another universe. Pell’s horns are just… nice. He’s just nice. This guy?

He’s still smiling at me.

I need to leave. He’s going to eat me. Or attack me. Or something worse.

But then he’s walking towards us and a glass door that was not there a moment ago is now opening right in front of my face.

“Sorry to bother you, Tarq,” Luciano says. “This is Pie Vita. She came through the tomb a few minutes ago.”

Tarq looks me up and down slowly. Like, I’m talking his eyes take their sweet-ass time traveling down my body to the tips of my hooves, and then back up—briefly resting on my mostly hidden breasts—before they find my face again. “Of course she did. Pie. Vita.” He says my name like it is two words. And his voice is deep and… wow. There’s a vibration there. It’s distracting. “I have been wondering when you’d show up.”