Page 5 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

“I was still turning it over in my mind when I thought about Mount Doom, wondering if there really wasn’t a way to destroy it, or whether I was just being told there wasn’t, and then I had this idea.

What if I bought twenty pounds of gold, melted the coin into it, and then had all that gold plated onto silver pieces that looked like the coin?

Plenty of people saw it on me on the red carpet.

No doubt I’d be able to sell them all and send them out so they’re widely distributed around the planet — would that dilute it enough it was no longer sentient?

Or would there suddenly be thousands of sentient necklaces? ”

I blew out a breath. “Once there was a possibility of destroying it, there was never really a decision anymore.”

“The decision was still there,” Kirsten said quietly, and then grinned. “But you’ve got titanium morals, inconvenient as hell, but you walked away from something that mattered because it wasn’t just about what you wanted. It was about what’s right.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t look away.

“It was a real choice,” she added. “Which means the grief is real, too. Don’t sweep it away. Acknowledge it.”

That cracked something open in my chest, and my eyes watered. Fuck .

“It doesn’t matter how theoretical it was,” she went on. “You let yourself want it, and now it’s gone. A future you started to imagine and then had to burn down.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and breathed through the ache in my heart.

Kirsten gave me a small smile, a sad one. “It’s okay to grieve a version of yourself you never got to be. That’s not selfish; it’s human.” She reached across the table and touched my hand. “You’ve dealt with worse, and I feel certain you have the tools for this, but give yourself time.”

She was right. I’d had less than a day to get my hopes up. It hurt, knowing I couldn’t have kids, but no one ever promised life would be fair, and only children and idiots lament about the shit life throws at you rather than just dealing with it and moving on.

“Yeah. Okay. You’re right. A nice session with the heavy bag at the Beast Mansion, letting my inner child rail about life not being fair, and I’ll be fine. The grief is real, and you’re right about me having to acknowledge it. So thanks for that.”

I took a drink of my beer and continued the story from where I derailed it.

“Mordecai told me a sentient necklace that could read my mind and teleport would never let me do it, but then he started talking about how it’d originally been a torc, and I guess he got some ideas of his own that he didn’t share with me, and managed to keep from the necklace. ”

She nodded. “It’s apparently best I don’t know what he did, at least for now. I’m guessing he’ll tell me in Alfheim or on Olympus, eventually.”

“ Olympus .” I shook my head. “It’s almost too much. Has Freya ever come looking for her necklace?”

“No, but I ran into someone else who had it a couple of centuries, once. She’s nice, and we’re…

if not friends, friendly, at least. Acquaintances, I suppose.

You’re right, it’s way too much, there being an actual Olympus where the once-worshiped gods-of-old now live, but it’s reality.

” She tilted her head a tiny bit. “So, there’s no way for them to harvest sperm from you, if you want to father kids? ”

“I have pussy lips instead of balls, basically, and I’m not actually upset about that. I’m pretty happy having both a vaj and a dick. If I want to be a parent, I’ll adopt. I’m not interested in it right now, and maybe I’ll never be, but if I decide I want to be, I will.”

“But the loss is there.”

It was a statement, not a question, but I had to answer it, regardless.

“It is, and I’m sure it’ll come up again and catch me off guard when I least expect it, but like you said — I’ve dealt with worse, and I have the tools to deal with this.

” I blew out a breath and shook my head.

“Mordecai did the right thing. He told me I was the current chosen caretaker, so it was my call. I could’ve stopped him.

Or, I assume he’d have stopped if I’d told him to.

I got that vibe from him the whole time. ”

Hell, he’d even asked me for some silver to put into it, just to make sure the damned thing remains my fucking responsibility.

“Yeah. He has all these moral lines in the sand. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but I respect that he’s intent on doing the right thing, even when it’d be easier not to. Did you get enough sleep?”

“More than enough.” I walked my dishes to the sink, rinsed them, and put them into the dishwasher. “Does your Shīfù not know about dishwashers?”

“He lives where there isn’t electricity. He probably knows about them, but he believes in keeping life simple.”

“There’s this song Hailey wrote, and I guess she originally wrote it about how much she missed the warmth of the sun on her skin, and then she changed the wording enough so it sounded like she broke up with someone who’d been her sunshine, and she missed them.”

She turned and looked at me without comment, so I finished with my question. “I tried to write about Alfheim without naming it — just about different worlds, but I couldn’t.”

“She took an oath, like you, when she was young, so she’d know about her stepbrother and could help him if she thought he was losing control, or get herself to safety if she couldn’t help him.

When she was turned, that oath was burned off.

Or, that’s what I’m told happens. At that point, shapeshifters and vampires follow the rules because if they don’t, they’re either killed or enslaved, and it’s usually the latter.

There are much worse things than death. So, she could write the song, but she probably ran it by someone in power before she released it.

Or, maybe she didn’t, if she was certain it was safe. ”

“So, a vampire could go on TV and tell The Secret ?”

“Not a Strigorii with a good Master Vampire, because they keep track of their coterie, their people. A Lugat might be able to pull it off, but the powers that be would say it’s CGI or something, a prank.

The thing is, the process of learning control isn’t easy, and the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing I talked about is a huge deal, something every new shapeshifter or vampire has to learn the hard way.

It’s rare for them to dare even contemplate telling.

It happens, I’m told. Sometimes you hear of someone who’s enslaved by the ruling council in charge of keeping The Secret . ”

“Would Julian be able to help me write something? I mean, I’d want to run it by Marco before I did anything with it, but I think I can write it so it’ll be fine for the masses.”

“Talk to Marco first. I don’t believe Julian will be able to help you without running it by Marco, so you may as well start at the top.”

“Will wrote about unicorns, and they’re real.”

“But he didn’t know they were real when he wrote about them.”

“So he couldn’t write about them now?”

“Not if he knew they were real and covered by the oath.”

“Well, that bites.” While I was asking questions, I figured maybe Kirsten might have some insight about something I’d wondered. “Do you think humans respond to the name of our band?”

“Mythic Beast?”

I nodded. “We all tossed names in during a brainstorming session. Hailey came up with Mythic Beast, and we all liked it. Now, we know she’s basically a beast from mythology, but…

” I tried to narrow in on the question. “Micca says when she was human, there was a snake shifter she avoided at all costs, even though she didn’t know at the time what she was.

She says some humans know on a visceral level that she’s dangerous, now that she’s a bear.

The same with her and the snake shifter — she knew there was danger even if she didn’t know what or why. ”

“Ah, I see what you’re saying. It’s possible you’ve had werewolves, vampires, and other beings at your concerts who have no idea Hailey isn’t human.

So many people, so many smells — plus they don’t get that close to her.

I doubt most of the supernatural world knows what she is, much less the humans. ”

“I’m not sure sex with a human will ever be enough again, now that I’ve been with a vampire.”

Kirsten gave a soft laugh. “After being with a lion and an ancient-freaking-god for so long, I’m probably in the same boat.

They know when something is working or not without me having to spell it out, and they’ve both had centuries of practice.

I mean, Nathan isn’t anywhere near as old as Mordecai, but still, lions fuck a lot, so it’s possible… ”

She rolled her eyes. “No, scratch that. Ares is known for fucking everyone he came across who interested him. Shit, do you know how many kids he has? Because I don’t think even he could give you an accurate count.”

I tried to picture Mordecai in battle armor, blood on his hands, seducing a pretty maiden in a gauzy dress.

Somehow, the image didn’t fit the man who’d handed me a bowl of lasagna an hour earlier, but he’d told me he was no longer the same man he’d been back then, whenever that statue was made, anyway.

I tried to remember who his kids are, but couldn’t.

“Are they all still alive? Like, you have hundreds or thousands of stepkids?”

She shook her head. “A lot are, but most of the ones he had with human women weren’t immortal, so they lived and died a natural death, but in some cases, he’s kept up with the family line so he knows how his dozens-of-times-great grandkids are. Not all — just a few.”

Her expression softened. “Phobos still lives with him. I used to have a dog, a Newfoundland, and I took him with me to Olympus for a visit. Phobos fell in love with him and wanted to keep my dog. Mordecai had to go find him a Newfie puppy.”

I blinked. “Wait. Your stepson is Phobos. The literal god of fear.”

“Yep.”

I shook my head, but it didn’t help. “It just keeps getting more and more surreal.”

And it did. Not in a whimsical way, either, but in that slow, creeping awareness that this was my life now.

That I might be part of this family someday.

Julian’s people. Now that I’d tasted something impossible —ageless, telepathic, wildly attuned to my body — I could never go back to fumbling hands and polite questions, men who didn’t know when they spanked too hard — or worse, not hard enough.

Men who wouldn’t know much of anything unless I told them.

And Julian had clearly spoiled me, just knowing what worked and didn’t.

Kirsten nodded and responded to my statement about it being surreal, but it took me a minute to catch up, to remember our conversation.

“It does. Thankfully, most of his kids are off on their own. He brought one of his daughters in to help guard Lauren a while back, and she’s still living with Lauren, still guarding her.

I haven’t mentioned to them that they are stepsisters because it’s just weird, right?

Ellania was an Amazon General. Like, the race of Amazon women who were known to be warriors.

” She sat back. “Technically, Mordecai and I aren’t married, so I guess they aren’t actually stepsisters, but still, our relationship is solid and long-term, so it’s the same. ”

“Julian says he’ll live until someone kills him, but he isn’t immortal, just long-lived. Since you’re using the word immortal with Mordecai and the other gods, does that mean they can’t be killed?”

“Yes, but there’s kind of a loophole. As long as at least an iota over fifty percent of their body is in the same basic place, it’ll reform.

So, if you cut their head off, a new head will grow back.

If you put them in a woodchipper, all the pieces will come back together and reform.

But , if you can act fast enough, and separate all the pieces so you get a third of them here, a third way far away, and another third even farther away, they can’t reform.

You have to be careful with it, though. The pieces will try to find each other, so even if you put them on different continents, if the rivers wash the pieces into the ocean, they’ll eventually find each other. ”

Mathematically, it made sense, so there was no way two or more of a god would grow back.

“Your Shīfù, he’s one of them, isn’t he?”

She tilted her head and looked at me a few seconds before she grinned. “You’re smart. Mordecai obviously didn’t want to talk about anyone’s status when he introduced you, but he had to know you’d figure at least a little of it out.”

“I kind of figured out who Mordecai was without him actually telling me.”

“Probably best you don’t do that with the other gods. Unless they tell you who they are, and some of them will, but a whole lot of them feel as if they’re someone else now. They want you to know them for who they are now, rather than who they used to be.”

“I get that. It’s nice when I meet someone and they don’t know I’m part of Mythic Beast. What we know of the old gods comes from the people who worshiped them, so I understand them wanting us to get to know them organically.”

“Marco kept Julian busy with work last night, both to keep him from worrying about you, and so he’ll be able to spend more time with you when he rises this evening. Also, I believe they powered him up right before dawn, so he might rise a little earlier.”

I looked at my watch. I’d thought I had four hours until he rose, but it might only be two or three hours. “Thanks for letting me know. I think I’m gonna zone out on video games until he rises.”