Selfish Gods - Complete!

28

***A/N this is a bit of a bonus chapter that comes ahead of my bi-weekly posting schedule. If you've been wondering where Kwaku and Bia went after parting ways with Hilda, Elira and Delfina wonder no more...****

By the time Bia and Kwaku got the courtyard he was tired of all the killing. It wasn't that he had any real problem with killing, per se, but their journey to the courtyard had involved carving their way through at least 20 or 30 creatures, things and people. To get into the courtyard Kwaku had had to pull the head off some demonic lobster thing that was the size of minivan and it had splattered all over him right after letting out a long, terrible wail that shook something loose inside of Kwaku's mind.

The lobster thing, however inhuman and monstrous it had looked, had feared death like any other living thing and had crossed into death full of agony.

Kwaku looked down at himself. His bare chest was slick with blood and sweat and his new white linen pants had basically been tie dyed. Standing next to him, her thin shoulders heaving with exhaustion, Bia looked like like some abstract artist had flicked a paintbrush full of red paint at her marble-white form and then slicked her mohawk against her forehead with whatever paint remained.

"They're not even here," Kwaku said petulantly.

He sat on the floor.

A few hours earlier staying had seemed like the heroic, exciting thing to do but now it just seemed exhausting and pointless.

Bia stayed standing, hands on narrow hips and stared down at him with her enormous lamp-like yellow eyes. Her left eye twitched.

"Get up," Bia said sharply.

"Fuck that, I'm bored and this sucks," Kwaku said defiantly. "Also, I'm hungry."

"You're hungry?" Bia repeated. "Now?"

"Yeah, aren't you?"

"No," Bia said, her tone full of reproach.

"Must be nice," Kwaku said. He looked idly around the courtyard. There were a few dead bodies. Lots of roses. But nothing to eat. He wondered how much trouble it would be to get back to the swimming pool, find the conch shell and get out of there.

Bia looked like she wanted to yell at him but before she could one of the doors to the courtyard creaked opened.

A lone woman stepped through looking, at first glance, like a b-movie actress who had wandered off set after her character had been drowned. She had an improbable hourglass shape that was barely contained by a too-small white shift and wild black hair that fell to just below her ass. Her skin had a purple cast to it and when she met Kwaku's gaze her eyes were a bright, reflective blue that threw back the light in the courtyard the way the ocean might at high noon.

Bia started to transform but before she could Kwaku grabbed her tight by the shoulder.

"Wait," He said.

"Don't be such a man," Bia scowled at him.

"I'm not," Kwaku said.

"You think the Siren's hot, so you don't want to kill her, it's stupid," Bia spat. "She will kill us."

"Nope!" Kwaku said.

Without waiting to see if Bia was going to comply he crossed the courtyard, closing the distance to the siren just as she began to sing, the wordless, haunting melody of her song the most beautiful thing he had ever heard since the last time he had heard a siren sing. There was truly nothing like it. It was like all the best classical songs about sweeping, beautiful, epic things, condensed into one song but better, more heartfelt.