Page 6

Chapter Six

Maeve

T he story was true.

The topaz that had been in my family for generations was the evil eye of Balor, king of the giants. My house had turned into the literal embodiment of death… a very beefy, very hot death.

What the legend had failed to mention was that it wasn’t just the eye my family possessed. It was his entire freaking body.

I’d lived inside this monster.

I’d moved from America for McCrum’s Curios. All my most precious memories were tied up in that building. My livelihood, my home. The only things I had left in this shit world, gone.

But the most fucked up part? It wasn’t really gone, because it had never really been there in the first place.

My brain was barely comprehending everything that had happened. First, I’d been assaulted by Conor. Then, the cultists had broken in. Their bullet, which had been meant for me, had broken Balor’s curse.

Now, the few possessions I had were lying out on the wet street. Gilly was missing. And the monster responsible for it all loomed over me, holding out Conor’s scorched skull like some kind twisted glimpse into my future.

“Y—You murdered him,” I said stupidly. I didn’t know what else to say.

I kept hoping this was all some dream. Maybe my drink had been spiked at the pub and I was tripping. Maybe I would wake up in my warm bed to find Gilly snuggled next to me.

Balor scoffed. “I’ve murdered countless humans, what’s one more? Aw, don’t give me that pathetic wee pout. This pox of a male used ya to get his bollocks off on the bloody shmear of yer grandfather staining the counter.”

His accent was thick and strange, only vaguely possessing licks of the modern Irish cadence I recognized.

Balor’s greenish, sausage-like fingers closed around Conor’s skull, crushing it to pieces, and he flung the bone shards against the alley wall with a growl.

It was true that Conor was a creep. Did he deserve to die? Maybe. But it wasn’t this monster’s decision to make.

My attention slipped from the monstrous man to the butchered corpses of the cultists laying out in the open beyond the mouth of the alley.

It was getting late, and the foot traffic from the pubs had died off. Morning would come soon and someone would find them.

I had no idea what this monster had in store for me, but I knew from the murderous glint in his eye that he had no intention of giving my store back. Even if he did, how would I explain the bodies? What if there were more cultists?

And Gilly was gone.

Of all my problems, this beast of a man towering over me, his intentions etched clear as day on his face, was the worst of them.

He was going to kill me. Maybe worse.

I waited for fear to set in, but it never did. Instead, nothing but cold indifference turned the blood in my veins to ice.

I glared up at Balor, his flaming hair casting his features in flickering shadows. Beneath the scars, heavy slabs of muscle and swirling smoke, he was handsome. In an unsettling sort of way.

Jesus. Why, oh why, did I have to be attracted to the monster about to kill me? I could blame it on those eyes. Beautiful, bi-colored and mean. One with a glaring green iris, the other with a flipped up eyepatch revealing the cracked topaz set in his left eye socket.

If I was being honest with myself, it was probably all those monster romance books that were to blame for my attraction to him.

I liked monsters—at least in books.

Fuck me. Why does he have to be a red-head? If Conor was any indication, red-headed men were a weakness of mine.

Though, to call Balor a red-head wasn’t exactly right. His hair was literally smoldering. Each strand was black at the roots and bright flames blazed at the ends.

He was so hot. In every sense.

My unwilling attraction just had me hating him more. This monster took the one thing from me that I had left.

I couldn’t stop churning his words over in my head. Like it or not, I am McCrum’s, girl.

I hadn’t inherited an antique shop from my grandparents. I’d inherited a monster. While he radiated smoke and violence, he still smelled like McCrum’s. Like dust and leather and home.

For a giant monster with grayish green skin and flaming hair, he even looked like McCrum’s.

With colorful scraps of fabric from pieces of furniture and tapestries making up his clothes, and gold and jewels that had sat in the store’s display for years, decorating his ears, wrists, throat and fingers.

Everything about him was a mockery of what I’d held dear. That store, the building, the apartment, all of it. It had been the only thing keeping me alive.

My precious home had transformed into something unrecognizable, something that wanted to hurt me.

Angry tears burned my eyes. “Are you going to kill me? If you are, can you get it fucking over with?”

“Oh, I’m going to kill you alright, Baeg Trua .”

Baeg Trua? I knew enough Irish to know what that meant. “Little Misfortune?”

Balor nodded, a cruel grin twisting his mouth. “Or, if ya get down to the scrap of it, little pity. Fittin’, no?”

He crouched to my eye level, the joints in his knees cracking from the shifting brunt of his muscular form. “Yer so small and pitiful. I could crush yer bones by breathing on ye too hard.”

The rage boiling beneath my skin had me lifting my chin. “That’s rich. What are you, eight feet tops? Aren’t you supposed to be king of the giants or some shit?”

“Yer looking at my weakest form.” There was an electric hatred in his bi-colored glare that ignited my veins. “Look me in my evil eye, wee one.”

I don’t know what compelled me to do what he said, but I did. There had always been something hypnotic about that topaz. With its cracked surface, it leaked glittering magical energy that whirled around him like glowing ash.

“I am going to kill ya. It’s nothin’ personal. But yer family held me prisoner for centuries. Using the giant king’s magic for something as lowly as that damn shop. I vowed a long time ago that I’d end yer bloodline as revenge.”

“So get it fucking over with then,” I hissed.

The giant’s green eye narrowed into a smoldering slit. “Oh, no, wee one. I’m going to savor this. But, I will give ya this… I’ll let ya pick how I do it.”

“Pick, why?”

“You kept me company in those final days of my curse, and you took care of Gilly.”

Gilly? Why would an evil monster like him care about an old shop cat?

“And you gave me the first look I’ve had at a woman in ages…”

I blinked. What was he talking about?

Oh fuck.

I’d been half out of my mind with grief, talking to the topaz and pretending he was a real person. I’d jokingly asked it for fashion advice, pretending Balor really was looking back at me. Only it wasn’t a joke. I had stood up on that chair in nothing but thin cotton panties.

“So, my beautiful wee Maeve gets to pick how she dies. Option one…” He held up a thick finger. “I kill you with a single look, like I did to this one.”

He nudged a fragment of Conor’s skull with the toe of his boot. “A single touch will do it too. I can’t touch humans without burnin’ them.”

“B–burn?” I swallowed.

“Oh, Aye. It will hurt like the Hells.” Balor’s grin stretched to his gold-cuffed ears.

“The most pain you can imagine, all yer nerves screamin’ at once.

Your eyes will melt in yer head, yer skin will blister and every beat that wee heart makes will be more excruciatin’ until the last. It won’t take long, but it will feel like an eternity. ”

All the oxygen in my lungs vanished. “What’s option two?”

“I could grow into my true form. So tall I’d tower over this entire city.”

“So what? You’ll grind up my bones into jam or whatever giants get off on?”

The giant’s lips thinned, unamused. “Yer Maeve McCrum. Last of the bloodline who destroyed my life. Ya need a more original death than that. Do ya have any idea how big I can get?”

Balor leaned toward me, and the warmth of his fire had me shrinking against the blessedly cool alley wall. “My cock alone could crush you, that’s how big I can get. I’ll place you in a big tub, so I can hold ya in my hand. Then I’ll pleasure myself until yer swimmin’ in me.”

All I could do was gape at the monster in horror. I could barely believe my ears.

“It’s been so long since I’ve got off, ye see. I’ll fill the tub fast. You’ll drown, but it will be less painful than burnin’ ya alive. And far more entertainin’ fer me.”

My thoughts stalled out as I made the mistake of imagining it.

This monster was set on killing me. My options? Being burned alive, or him shifting into his giant form and drowning me in cum. I had to give him creative points for that last one.

“So.” He cracked his knuckles. “What will it be?”

There’d been dark parts of my life where I’d thought about dying. Giving in. But something had snapped inside me. I wasn’t going to surrender to this beast, and I wouldn’t go down without a fight, especially if those were the only two options he was giving me.

Knowing it was probably about as useful as my grandfather’s revolver, I lifted the cultist’s gun anyway and fired at the monster. The bullet didn’t even pierce his chest; instead it clattered to the ground.

He snarled, slapping the weapon from my hand. It skated out of sight beneath one of Mrs. O’Neill’s trash cans down the alley.

I spat in his non-magical eye. He seemed more surprised by the load of saliva in his eye than the bullet bouncing against his chest.

A gut-grating growl slithered from his clenched teeth. “You’re going to regret that, girl.”

Before I could fully process what was happening, I was already on my feet, bolting down the alley as fast as my little legs would carry me.

A roar split the night.

I couldn’t let him catch me… Even though there was a small, totally fucked part of me I couldn’t explain, that hoped he would.