Blessed (3 page)

Deep and heated, his gaze traced her mouth, and she could feel his touch like a phantom press of flesh stroking over her mouth. She licked her lips and heat flared in his eyes before his gaze dropped lower, and the ethereal touch traveled on, moving down her neck like the stroke of a finger, pausing at the junction of her neck and shoulder to place a gentle bite. She barely choked back a moan as the delicious sensation of kisses feathering over her neck drove her arousal higher. Her breath came out in a soft hiss when his gaze returned to hers.

Hunger, heat, and need all swirled in those green depths.

Abruptly, Professor Klemenson looked away, and she could hear and function again.

“Wow, he was totally staring at you!” Rachel said in awe.

Eliana ducked her head in the pretense of getting something out of her backpack when in reality she was almost shaking with desire. A deep ache radiated from her pussy, and her pulse pounded in her throat. She would have happily thrown herself on Professor Klemenson's desk and yanked down his pants right now if she wasn’t in a crowded classroom. Trying to gather her wits and figure out what the hell was going on, she shook her head. “No, he wasn't.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“Maybe he heard you being a pervert,” Eliana offered and gave her friend a big, false smile.

“I wish. Hey, Professor Klemenson,” her friend whispered, “if you can hear me right now, Eliana wants to ride your baloney pony.”

“Shut up,” she whispered back, trying to contain her laughter as Rachel made exaggerated expressions of sexual bliss.

They hushed their giggles as Professor Ventan, the senior professor, cleared his throat then began his lecture.

Her heart still thumped as she replayed the eternity that Professor Klemenson held her in his gaze. Of its own accord, her hand stole up and traced the path of those imagined fingers, her body tightening in need. Rachel grumbled and read the syllabus and test schedule while the rest of the class did the same. Eliana jerked her mind back to the present with a hot blush heating her cheeks and tried to return her attention to the material they were going over.

The rest of class was spent fighting a losing battle to keep her mind on the lecture and off the man who had devastated her with a glance.

****

New York City still hummed with energy despite the late evening hour as an elegant woman knelt next to a pile of dirty blankets and wet cardboard in an out of the way alley. Glancing up, Linda scanned the shadows then looked over her shoulder to check the street behind her, hidden from view by a pair of huge garbage bins. She was alone with the homeless man and she let out a silent sigh of relief. Finding a victim had been especially hard tonight and she’d wasted hours walking through dirty alleys trying to find a sacrifice. Normally she didn’t like to hunt so close to home, but she needed a victim for the spell and she needed one now.

With a swift jerk, she jabbed the sleeping man with a potion-filled syringe. He woke up with a muffled shout and tried to fight the influence of the drugs, but all he could do was breathe as his eyes rolled in panic. Linda watched him as a soft rain began to fall, tapping her fingernails on her knee. After a few moments she decided the potion had taken effect and smiled. From within her black vinyl trench coat, she pulled out a fillet knife and kissed the blade.

Working swiftly, she jerked the stained shirt and grungy jacket the man wore open, revealing his pale and sunken belly. He made a high, whimpering sound, like a scared rabbit, and she drank down his terror with a delicious shiver. She loved that, loved the fear in her victim’s eyes, loved seeing the hopelessness fill them as they realized they were looking at their death. Closing her eyes, she opened her mind and soul to her goddess of war and destruction, Eris. She pushed back the sleeves of her coat, and a soft chant fell from her cosmetically enhanced lips while she began to methodically butcher the man alive.

After peeling his skin back, then cutting through the thin layer of fat and the muscle of his abdominals, she plunged her hand inside warm cavity of his stomach and began to pull out his intestines, slowly running over each rubbery inch while continuing the chant. This careful evisceration continued for a long time while she read the future in his entrails. Silent tears of agony ran through the stubble on the man's cheeks and she had to keep herself from being distracted by the urge to luxuriate in his suffering.

Suddenly she read something, a prophecy that struck fear through her and she dropped his intestines with a startled yelp. Linda stood and washed her hands in a puddle alongside the edge of the building, then wiped them off on the man's jacket while she tried to make sense of what she’d just learned. Distracted, she scanned the alley while she jerked a pink crystal-studded cell phone from her pocket and began to pace.

The clicking of heels echoed on wet concrete as she paced and tapped out a number from memory. “Identification, please,” a soothing computerized voice intoned on the other end of the line.

“I am an instrument of Eris, a silent carrier of her destruction, a poisoned blade in the dark,” the woman said in a soft, sweet voice as she watched rainwater collect in the blank eyes of the corpse.

After a short pause, the machine answered, “Identification accepted. Please continue Dark Oracle Linda.”

There was a click, and Linda began to speak into the phone. “My Brothers and Sisters, I have foreseen a woman of remarkable power coming into her time of Choice. If she fulfills her destiny, she's going to be a tremendous pain in the ass. We must concentrate on her and find out who she is. Focus your scrying on places within a 200-mile radius of New York City.”

She paused and twisted her lips into a small pout as she noticed a chip in her glossy pink nail polish. “Oh, and one more thing—her weakness is love. Find her, but do not kill her, and my goddess will reward you.”

Linda checked her boots for blood and removed a travel pack of baby wipes from her pocket. She made fussy little sounds as she cleaned the viscera from around her nails. Tossing the raincoat and used wipes into a nearby trash bin, she fluffed her blond hair and strolled out of the alley into her waiting limo.

Word of her prediction would spread through the servants of destruction.

Eliana stumbled back to her dorm in a daze. The paper she’d received from Professor Klemenson smelled like his delicious cologne, amber and cedar, similar to the woods in autumn. He’d caught her sniffing it in class and given her an odd look. Professor Klemenson probably thought she was some kind of weirdo ink huffer in addition to her embarrassing staring match with him earlier.

Cheeks burning with a blush at the memory of her spazzed-out hormonal reaction, she let herself into her room. Stuffing the key card into her jacket pocket, she kicked the door shut behind her and went through the small foyer. She toed off her shoes and put them into the small closet to the left of the foyer then entered her shared bedroom to dump off her stuff. The bedroom itself was tiny, and every available inch of space was crammed with books and knickknacks. Her dorm was actually a two-bedroom suite with a shared bathroom, but she and her roommate had converted one of the bedrooms into a small lounge area. After tossing her backpack on her computer chair, she stretched out and looked around the room with a smile. The space was an eclectic mix of tastes and Eliana loved it.

A large dream catcher hung over the window, the little crystals attached to its web throwing rainbows on the walls. Impressionist posters and pictures of her family decorated the walls on her side of the room. On her roommate Chrissy's side, there were posters of shirtless soccer stars along with spell and hex charts. A bundle of fresh herbs sat on Chrissy’s desk next to a big white marble mortar and pestle. From the lounge area in the next room came the sound of music and Chrissy singing along to the song.

Eliana yelled in the direction of the open door, “Hey, Chrissy, I'm leaving for work soon. Do you need anything while I'm out?”

“No,” Chrissy yelled back, “not unless you can buy us beer for the party on floor five tomorrow night.”

“I wish. I look so young they would card me for Kool-Aid.” She popped her head into the doorway of the other room. Chrissy sat on the couch in front of their small TV with a tray of herbs on her lap. The room was decorated in classic “poor college student” style: hand-me-down furniture, mismatched throw pillows, and a huge fuzzy white beanbag. She sat in a ray of sunlight that made her wild blond curls flare in a halo around her face and brought out the green in her hazel eyes. Her pretty looks combined with her lean soccer player’s body gave her the appearance of a model, and Eliana had been intimidated by her friend’s beauty when they first met, but Chrissy was as down to earth as could be and they’d instantly clicked. She’d missed Chrissy immensely over summer break and realized with a start that her dorm and friend felt more like home than her family.

With a frown Chrissy began to sort through the bundle of herbs. “Can you believe this shit? First day of class and my herbologist professor gives us a giant plastic baggie full of mixed plants and wants them all separated and labeled by tomorrow.”

“That sucks.”

“Yep.” Chrissy sighed and held up a green twig with dark leaves up to the light. “As if that wasn’t hard enough, she put some kind of spell on them so I can’t identify them by smell. What an evil bitch.”

Eliana laughed. “I'm off to work. Can you help me study when I get back?”

Chrissy nodded as she arranged herbs in front of her and began to tape them to a graph. “Sure, good luck with your first day on the job.”

****

Seven hours later after a long day at a local greenhouse and craft store where she worked, Eliana drove through the parking lot of her dorm. It required extra time to hunt for a spot large enough to accommodate her old Cadillac, Big Fran. On the dash of the enormous car, a pink Grateful Dead bear wobbled back and forth in a hula girl skirt. It seemed as though no one was leaving the dorms any time soon, and she had to venture farther and farther out to find a parking space.

At first, her new job hadn’t been so bad. She was to run the register and help the customers. The owners were gracious, and the employees, most of them college students, were friendly. The only problem she had was the head cashier, Linda, had given her major attitude the moment she walked through the door.

Linda was an older woman with dyed red hair and an offensive attitude. She favored too-tight T-shirts and jeans that gave her a muffin top. Her permanent expression seemed to be either disgust or contempt. No matter how polite Eliana was to her, the head cashier gave her the stink-eye and ignored all of her questions. Working at the outside cash register, and away from Linda, was a relief.

The garden center had a large selection of outdoor statues of gods and goddesses, very popular items. One of the stock boys explained that the statues were arranged first by human, animal, or symbol, and then alphabetically. He could have told her they were arranged by chin length and it would have been as helpful. After stuttering and blushing her way through trying to help a customer find a statue of the goddess Ishtar, she vowed to study her mythology textbook tonight. It seemed like no matter where she went or what she did there was magic and religion somehow involved and she was tired of sounding like an idiot. So even though part of her still feared religion,
thanks Mom and Dad
, she’d do her best to figure it out.

After shouldering closed the heavy door of her car, she tugged her leather jacket closer and checked her watch. It was just passed seven so the cafeteria was closed, but maybe Chrissy would want to go in on a pizza while they studied. Preoccupied with thoughts of homework and what to eat, she didn't notice the sound of footsteps approaching until they were close. A glance over her shoulder revealed a matronly woman with a large patchwork bag and flowing peasant skirt walking toward her. Thinking it was someone's mom coming to visit, she gave her a quick smile and turned back to her dorm.

A few seconds later, the sound of footsteps came louder and faster. She was astonished to see the woman running at her full out with her elbows pumping in the air. With a squeak, she ducked between two cars as the woman barreled past her. The woman threw something on the ground by Eliana’s feet and shouted, “Bogge be gone”, before hustling off between the dorm buildings.

“What the fuck?” Eliana muttered as she tried to slow her galloping heart. “Did I almost get mugged by someone's mother?”

She leaned to see what the woman had thrown at her. It was a small fluffy yellow ball that tinkled when she shook it. Turning it in her hand, she frowned as she figured out what it was.

“Okay, seriously, a crazy woman threw a cat toy at me?” She shook her head and tossed the small ball into a garbage can, keeping an eye out for old hippies dressed like Stevie Nicks throwing cat toys.

****

Linda sauntered into the wood-paneled bedroom after work and posed in the doorway. A silver-haired gentleman in a well-cut suit reclined on the bed, looking out of place on the cheap Washington Redskins quilt. His hand rested on top of a bloodstained golf club and, above his head hung a stitched sampler that read
Gods Bless This Mess
.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked as she ran her hands through her now bright red hair. Gone were the designer clothes. In their place she now wore a pair of ill-fitting jeans and a tacky purple blouse.

His lip lifted in a sneer and he said in a smooth, cultured voice, “I think you look like you should be serving pie to rednecks at a truck stop.”

“Perfect. I need to blend in with those soccer moms and Wal-Mart grandmas at the store. Plus Linda”—Linda looked at the driver's license in her hand—”Bartlet has red hair on her ID. A persuasion spell was all I needed to get the job at that little bitch's work.”

“I don't see why you didn't use an illusion spell. Seeing you in polyester is distressing.”