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Chapter Two

Balor

I knew who she was the moment the shop bell rang and she stepped inside. Maeve McCrum, the last surviving descendant of the monster hunters who cursed me.

She should have stayed in America. Because someday, somehow, I’d find a way to break my curse, and when I did, I’d kill her.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been trapped in this blasted form.

After the first few centuries, the years melded together.

But I heard everything. Each tick of the grandfather clock in the corner, taunting me with the passing seconds.

The hum of the human machines on the road outside.

The skitter of the mice inside the walls. Every jingle of the shop bell.

That fecking bell. It’s ring wormed into my thoughts, my nightmares. It wasn’t just the bell. This place, this curse, it was more than a prison. It was ball blistering torture .

I’d end the bloodline that did this to me.

Poor little Maeve McCrum. She was the last of her kind, meaning she was the only one left to be punished.

I almost pitied the mortal female. Unlike the rest of her kin, she had no knowledge of what her family had done to me. She wasn’t privy to the dark secret her precious home held.

Maeve’s ancestors had stolen everything from me. They knew the truth of what I was, the curse that bled me of my magic. None of them tried to set me free. Why would they? I was the battery that fueled their livelihoods, and kept them warm through the centuries, fed through the famines.

Deloras and Liam McCrum were lucky that it was Otherworld cultists that broke in and killed them. They’d died at gunpoint, quick and clean.

I wouldn’t have been so merciful.

It wasn’t the first time cultists had broken into the store in search of my eye, though it had been decades. They’d be back. They always came back.

Chances were good they’d kill the girl this time, too. The thought filled me with fire. Her life was mine to snuff.

Fantasies of her death danced in my mind. I’d take my time stripping her flesh from her bones, working to the music of her screams. Then I’d set the mess I made of her aflame and inhale the smoke like fine tobacco or Blackweed.

My dark thoughts melted into the black of my brain when the painting lifted off my eye.

The last time I’d seen Deloras and Liam’s granddaughter, she was barely more than a girl. Now, she had to be in her late twenties.

Fire and fury. She was beautiful, with hair as pale as wheat and eyes as blue as sapphires.

And she was so fecking wee . In my true size, she’d fit in my palm.

Just a twitch of my fingers and her bones would break like dry twigs.

She had a round face, with full-pouty lips that begged to be kissed.

I imagined them red and blistered from the heat of my own skin.

I loathed humans. There was something about them that turned my insides molten. Maeve was no exception, but there was something different about the fire she stirred inside me. The urge to play with her before ending her life spread through me like wildfire.

The girl was so short she had to grab a chair to lift up the painting hiding my eye. Just like when she was younger, and would sneak peeks at the stone when she thought no one was looking.

Back then, Maeve had taken in the topaz with wonder. Now she eyed it with weary suspicion. Even if her human rationale told her not to believe in the legend of Balor, there was no denying the malevolent energy pouring off my gem in powerful waves.

When she placed the canvas back over my eye, I tried to shout at her.

Not that damn painting. If it weren’t for the curse draining every last drop of my magic, I could ignite it in a blink.

Without my magic, I was blinded. I could still hear her though, tromping up the stairs to the apartment above to unpack her luggage.

In the past, the noises in the shop and upstairs didn’t intrigue me. I’d sink into the back of my mind, think about the old days. My home in Tír na nóg, the uprising. How I’d nearly won, and taken Ireland for the Fomorians.

So it was strange that I found Maeve’s sounds interesting enough to keep my ears perked. Even just her unpacking, and her mutterings. Ordering food to the door. Her footsteps. Her sniffles—she’d been crying again.

Some hours later, she’d finished her food and, by the creak of springs, went to bed. But she didn’t go to sleep.

There was the sound of rustling fabric, followed by faint and breathy huffs.

“Fuck,” she moaned as she touched herself. She didn’t bother being quiet; she didn’t think anyone but Gilly could hear her.

For years, I’d tuned out the McCrums—their fights, their boring small talk with customers, their rutting. I didn’t listen to any of it. I didn’t care about their lives. Only their deaths interested me.

Maeve, at least this older more damaged version of her, was different.

I strained the only sense they hadn’t taken from me, eating up the filthy noises bleeding through the floorboards.

Her heated moans, the obscene little squelches as her fingers slipped inside her dripping mound, the rustle of fabric as her toes curled into the sheets.

A dangerous cocktail of hunger and frustration burned through me as I listened to Maeve pleasure herself. By her quiet sobs, she wasn’t having any fun. She was probably rubbing one out in hopes it would help her sleep.

Ages had passed since I’d buried myself between the thighs of a woman. Even if by some dark miracle the curse broke, I could never bed another woman again. Monsters and fairies and other magical beings were long extinct. What was left? Human women? Too small. Too flammable.

I couldn’t touch humans without killing them.

My size alone would be too much.

Maeve would never survive me.

But that didn’t stop my imagination from going wild.

If these were the old days, I’d transform into my true shape—the building would be destroyed and perhaps I’d pluck Maeve's lifeless body from the wreckage and wave her around for all of Ireland to see while I smashed my way across the country, crushing and burning everything in my wake.

These days I’d have more finesse.

I’d shift to the smallest form I could manage, about eight feet, walk upstairs as quietly as I could manage. I’d wait until she was asleep. I imagined finding her naked, pale flesh wrapped in my firelight as I approached.

I’d climb into her bed. Roll her onto her back. Mount her. I’d lick her lips and watch the moisture sizzle away from my heat on the next beat. Then I’d push myself inside to wake her up.

Would she scream at the intrusion? Would she fight back? Or would she be soft and pliable, my little misfortune, accepting of her ill luck?

In reality, she’d do nothing but burn. To mortals, my touch meant death. Still, it was a nice little fantasy, imagining how much of my cock she could take before she broke…

The filthy thought had me growling and the entire building groaned. Maeve’s moan turned to a gasp as I jerked her from her bliss.

“Old creepy house,” the girl grumbled after a moment. “Always fucking groaning like it’s alive.”

If it wasn’t for this spell keeping me to this goblinshite of a form, I’d be grinning like a devil. If only you knew just how alive your precious shop is, wee one .

Days passed and my interest in Maeve McCrum began to gnaw at my gut, as if I’d swallowed a rabid pixie. Her sapphire eyes were permanently burned into my mind, and I caught myself hoping she’d peek beneath my painting again, just so I could have another look at her.

As the days passed, my curiosity for the little lass with golden curls turned feral.

I hung onto her every breath, every inconsequential noise. Her phone calls with the utility companies and movers, her takeout orders. Something called kung pow pork was her favorite and, for some stupid fecking reason, I found that compelling.

Even the ridiculous baby talk she used on Gilly drew me in.

Then she started talking to me . “Bye, Gilly-Billy!” she cooed to the chubby calico perched on an old hope chest pushed beneath a window. “Bye, Balor!”

If I had a heart, it might have skipped a beat. Did this human call me by name? Did she… No. She knew the legend, but she didn’t know the dark secret of her precious store. Most of the McCrum’s hadn’t, at least not the full extent of it. That had been lost generations ago.

How long had it been since someone had spoken to me? Hundreds of years. I knew mortals were precious about their possessions and named them, sentient or not.

As the days passed, and her loneliness seemed to deepen, our one-way conversations became more complex. She’d muse about old memories, and ask me questions about the shop books as she went through old records.

She’d tell me goodbye whenever she stepped out to pick up her takeout or groceries. When she came back, the bell jingled with her return, and I caught myself hating that bell a little less.

And just like that, my curiosity for Maeve McCrum morphed into a ravenous obsession that was spreading as quickly as a medieval disease.

“Gilly, which sweater should I wear for tonight?” Maeve’s soft footsteps padded down the stairs. The cat meowed from where she sat on the shop counter and Maeve heaved a sigh. “You’re no help.”

After a beat of silence came the sound of scraping wood as Maeve slid a chair across the floor.

The painting lifted, and there she was.

With where she was standing, a beam of light cutting between the window tapestries lit up her pale curls like a crown on her head. Her deep blue eyes sparkled and something nearing a smile lurked at the corner of her pert lips.

“Let’s pretend you’re in there for a second, Balor. Help a girl out. Which one should I wear? This one is more green, but this is one of the new merch sweaters I ordered for the shop.”

She had a sweater clutched in each hand, one was green and the other purple, with the shop’s shamrock logo at its center.

My attention was immediately ripped from the sweaters when I realized that Maeve was completely topless. No trousers on, either. The only garment covering her was a pair of cotton panties with fabric so thin I could make out the well-groomed strip of blonde hair thatching her mound.

Her milk pale skin practically glowed in the sunlight. How could a mortal female be so fecking beautiful? If I didn’t know for a fact that the magic in her bloodline had died centuries ago, I would have thought she was using it to entrance me.

If it wasn’t for the curse, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reaching for her.

I imagined her subtle curves covered in huge handprints, her flesh angry and blistered from my heat.

Her nipples were a rosy pink, and it must have been chilly in the shop with the way they hardened.

I didn’t have a body yet, somehow, I felt my cock thickening. I ached to bury myself inside her, regardless of how much it hurt her.

Surely her screams would be just as delicious as the rest of her.

Maeve pretended to have a conversation with me that I hardly paid attention to. Until “Saint Patrick’s Day” dropped from her perfect lips.

Feck. Was it Saint Patrick’s Day already?

The holiday put a rancid taste in my mouth, always had.

It celebrated Saint Patrick, the patron saint who brought Christianity to Ireland, driving out those who worshipped the old gods.

And how did the humans observe the death of paganism in Ireland?

With parades and shamrocks and wearing green.

The beer was the only tolerable part about the whole thing.

And why fecking leprechauns? Not as though the cunning wee bastards ever did humanity a single good turn.

Maeve replaced the painting back over my eye before padding upstairs to finish dressing. “Going to the pub for a drink. Don’t wait up,” she said several minutes later, coming back down the stairs. “Bye Gilly! Bye Balor!”

The front door closed, the chime of the bell announcing her exit, and I was left with my thoughts.

What were the odds of me ever being free again?

What would I even do? Destroy everything the McCrum’s had held dear—except for Gilly.

The cat had kept me company in my loneliest hours.

But what next? My kind were gone. I was the last of the fomorians.

I was prepared to die there on that bloody moor alongside my warriors, as any king worthy of his crown would.

Instead, I was taken prisoner. Reduced to this.

Pining for a girl that I vowed to kill. And a fecking mortal at that. Humans used to be nothing but worms to squash beneath my feet. I used to be a titan of a male, whose mere footsteps would make all of Ireland quake. Now I didn’t even have bullocks to scratch.

The sun set and the hours wore on. When the bell sounded, I thought Maeve had come home.

But no. Something was wrong.

The door had been forced in and heavy footsteps, belonging to men and not a five-foot-tall woman, clambered into my shop.

Gilly hissed at the intruders and bolted into hiding. Good. Being imprisoned in this shameful form was bad enough, but if those bastards hurt my cat—

“Tear the place apart. This time we’re not leaving without the evil eye.”

Rage had me tensing, and the entire building quaked.

“Wha–Earthquake?”

“No. It’s the fomorian king’s wrath. He doesn’t want us finding the eye. Hurry.”

These weren’t mere robbers, but cultists looking for my eye. With it, they’d have the power to travel to Tír na nóg—The Otherworld.

These were the same people who’d broken in and killed Maeve’s grandparents when they’d refused to give up the stone’s location.

They’d robbed me of their deaths. There was nothing I could do to stop them then, and if Maeve came home before they found what they were after, I’d be powerless to stop them from hurting her too.

As much as I wanted her dead, a possessive fire flared through me.

Maeve McCrum belonged to me.