Oookay. This is new. A forest fit for a storybook princess. Too bad Cameo was the villain of the tale. Browniebitch and the Twelve Immortals. For her and her family of demon-possessed warriors, nothing had ever been just right.
Cold fingers of dread crept down her spine as a butterfly the size of her fist fluttered past her. Over the centuries, the wretched insects had become an omen. Death and destruction await...
The heavy weight of depression settled on her shoulders, and she wallowed about the travesty of her life.
Lost so much already. All because she’d made one teeny tiny mistake when she’d lived in Mount Olympus.
That mistake? Helping her friends steal and open Pandora’s box. An appropriate punishment would have been a hand amputation or two. Maybe a few hundred years in the slammer. Instead, she was forced to play host to the demon of Misery for eternity, free will a thing of the past.
To commemorate the occasion, a butterfly tattoo had appeared on her lower back.
The beginning of the end.
Misery had quickly peeled away the layers of her humanity, hope and happiness. Again and again he’d wiped her mind of any joyous memories.
The bastard still wiped her mind of any joyous memories. Every day he breathed his poison into her thoughts, hurt others through her voice and ruined whatever relationships she managed to forge. He’d reduced her life to one horror after another.
If only she could control him. But Misery was a separate entity with his own motivations and goals. A dark presence she’d never been able to drown out. A prison she had never been able to escape.
Right now, he’s not my biggest problem. The butterfly...
Disaster was imminent.
Cameo searched for a way out of the forest. At one side, a breathtaking river with rainbow-colored water trickled into a rocky crag. Some type of fish broke the surface. A water unicorn? A long, ivory horn stretched from between his eyes and—
She gasped. Another water unicorn had jumped up and thrust his horn into the belly of the first. Blood spurted, creating a crimson waterfall. Countless other fish converged on the injured one, sharp teeth ripping into scales and organs until not even bones remained.
Mental note: no baths in the wild, ever.
At her other side, a field of ambrosia flourished, unaffected by the over-hot sun. Thick emerald stalks dripped with countless violet flowers, the petals drawn together to avoid the worst of the heat.
The field might be her only viable—
A thorny limb snatched the jumbo-size butterfly from the air. Her ears twitched, the soft breeze carrying the faint sounds of screaming.
Viable path or not, it was time to go.
Cameo lumbered to shaky legs, wincing as twigs sliced her heel. Her brow wrinkled. Her feet were bare, her combat boots gone.
Someone had stolen her shoes?
A quick scan proved her tank top and battle leathers were torn and stained with dried blood, but still in place. However, the daggers she’d made over two hundred years ago were missing.
Someone had robbed her while she’d drifted out of consciousness.
Someone would pay!
This villain had come here to find a formidable immortal named Lazarus the Cruel and Unusual, and she would destroy anyone who hindered her.
According to her friends, she had interacted with Lazarus twice before. Thanks to Misery, she remembered nothing about either encounter. Or did she? On the fringe of her mind was a suggestive montage of images that might or might not have happened.
Flicker: Cameo performed a striptease for a faceless, muscled man, a sultry half smile playing at the corners of her mouth, her silvery eyes smoky with desire.
Flicker: Cameo crawled toward the same faceless, muscled man, clearly intent on his seduction.
Flicker: Cameo sprawled beneath the faceless, muscled man, one of his big, callused hands on her breast, the other between her legs as he drove her closer and closer to orgasm. Her spine was arched, her head thrown back, her expression taut with a sublime mix of agony and pleasure.
Was the faceless man Lazarus? How had he tempted her into his bed?
She wanted so badly to remember.
Sex wasn’t something she enjoyed or usually even risked. Not anymore. She had a Sexually Transmitted Demon, and almost everyone she dated ended up depressed at some point.
Guilt flared, adding to her all-consuming misery. And yet...
Every time she imagined her faceless lover, languid heat wrapped loving arms around her. Blood rushed through her veins with new purpose, molten shivers cascading through her, every inch of her tingling.
Did he miss her? Or did he rejoice, thinking he would never see her again?
Her heart seemed to crack open and seep acid. Memories were as necessary for survival as oxygen or water; without hers, she was incomplete. Weakened, even.
Would Lazarus tell her what had happened between them? If there was even a chance, she had to find him.
Problem was, she and the rest of the world knew very little about him. His past was shrouded in mystery. What she had managed to glean: her friend Strider, the keeper of Defeat, had beheaded him not too long ago. Lazarus’s spirit had traveled through the Paring Rod and entered one of thousands of realms in the afterlife. Perhaps this one, a strange and predatory world.
Soon after Lazarus’s death, her semifriend Viola, the keeper of Narcissism, had accidentally followed him through—while still alive. Also alive, Cameo had followed her, intent on rescuing her.
Cue her adventures with the mysterious warrior.
If her brothers-by-circumstance hadn’t launched a rescue mission of their own, would she have chosen to stay with Lazarus?
Going by the tidbits she’d revealed before Misery had cleaned her mind with mental Windex, she and Lazarus had partnered up to find Viola and Pandora’s box—aka dimOuniak—both supposedly hidden inside one of the realms.
Why he’d agreed to partner with her when he had no stake in the outcome, she wasn’t sure.
Unless he wanted the box? DimOuniak was just as powerful as the Paring Rod—no, more so—and could be used to instantly kill anyone, everyone, who was demon possessed. Or so rumors claimed.
Had Lazarus planned to harm her all along?
See? Loss of memory left her vulnerable in the worst of ways.
So. She would find Lazarus. Hopefully he liked her and wanted only to help her. After he filled in her mental blanks, maybe they could renew their quest for the box and he could make her happy? At least for a little while. What good was a life without happiness?
Going to forget him again. Why
