Spells Trouble, Kristin Cast [books to read in a lifetime .TXT] 📗

himself that this would be his last escape. Curse or not, he couldn’t live as the monster these killings were turning him into. When Sheriff Dearborn’s body failed and its time in this world ended, so would Polyphemus’s. If this small town didn’t hold the cure, this was it for him, his last hurrah before he was sucked back into darkness. He might as well live a little.

He turned off the car and opened the door. It swung open without a sound and he closed it just as quietly. He squinted back toward the road and the trees that encircled the lake as he crept toward the shoreline. He didn’t want to be seen, or rather, he didn’t want Frank Dearborn to be spotted. The townspeople liked Dearborn, needed him. But no one had ever needed Polyphemus. He paused and frowned at the thought. There it was again. The self-pity that kept him jailed just as well as Tartarus had. But he had escaped the hell of Tartarus, and he had done it more than once.

Polyphemus untied his boots and struggled to kick them off as he fumbled with the buttons of Dearborn’s long-sleeved khaki shirt. The last time he’d felt this level of excitement, he’d been traveling to meet her. But that had been before she’d broken his heart and before she’d doomed him with this curse. His hands fell by his sides as a gust tented the open shirt. That was also the last time he’d been in the water.

“Nomia.” He twirled the name around his tongue before it slid past his lips. Only briefly had he wondered why such a beautiful creature wanted him. He had assuaged his fears and padded his ego by saying that she was attracted to his greatness and the power that came with being a son of Poseidon. After all, Nomia was a water nymph and he had been a prince of the seas.

His jaw ticked and he stared down at his bare feet slowly sinking into the sand.

No, he wasn’t a prince of the seas. Nomia had reminded him of that.

“You thought I could love you?” She crouched atop the large boulder that jutted from the center of the lagoon like a tooth. Her waves of moss green hair lapped against her bare breasts as she threw back her head and laughed. One by one, Nomia’s sisters rose from the depths of the lagoon. They encircled Polyphemus, their blue eyes sparkling as they fed from his anguish. “You are a bastard, Polyphemus. Denied by your father and unloved by his wife.” She brushed back her hair and her iridescent skin glimmered in the sunlight. “I would never love you. As Amphitrite has proven, no woman could.”

“Curse him, sister!” the nymphs chanted as one as they tightened their circle around him.

“He dared to make you his!” Their webbed hands and feet churned the cobalt depths and pinned Polyphemus in place.

“Now make him ours!” Water sloshed against his shoulders as the nymphs wrung out the space separating them from him.

Polyphemus blinked the water from the single eye pressed into the center of his forehead. His eye was the same deep brown as Nomia’s, the only difference between her and her sisters. “Nomia, we’re alike, you and I.” He tore his hand free from the current pressing against him and patted his eyelid. “We match, remember?” His chin trembled as he stared up at the woman he loved more than he loved himself.

Nomia’s talons snapped as she dug her fingers into the rock. “When I look into your eye, I see everything I hate about myself.”

A howl of laughter erupted around Polyphemus. Had he not been held up by the nymphs’ power, he would have sunk to the bottom of the lagoon.

“Sisters!” Nomia shouted. “Make him yours!”

Claws sliced his flesh as the nymphs pulled him beneath the water. Ribbons of blood twisted around him as he thrashed and reached for the surface. It was no use. This was their domain. And Nomia was right about his father. The great king Poseidon would never come to Polyphemus’s aid.

His chest burned as he reached for the sunlight that splintered against the water’s surface. His fingers broke through, then his palm, his wrist. He was almost there, almost out, almost free to take another breath—

A nymph caught his foot. She stabbed his leg with broken talons as she climbed him like a rock. Brown eyes met his when the top of his head split the water’s surface.

“Nomia…” Her name escaped his lips on bubbles of air.

A smile lifted her full cheeks and she pressed her lips against his. She cupped his face in her hands and pressed her warm tongue between his lips.

Polyphemus welcomed the kiss. It was proof that she loved him. That she was sorry.

More webbed hands were on his feet, his legs, yanking him back down. Pain flashed against his cheeks as Nomia dug in her nails. A grin stretched her lips taut against his as she sucked air from his lungs. She pulled her mouth from his and water filled his chest. Nomia pressed against him as he convulsed. The lagoon darkened around him as Nomia whispered a curse against his ear.

How delicious life would be

If only it could make you see

The hunger for what it truly is,

A way to set you free.

Now carry on with your cursed life,

And cut their eyes out, these orbs are so rife

With magic, but only one pair of these

Has what it takes to end your strife.

One of the buttons smacked him in the face when a sharp gust pulled up his shirt. He smoothed down the fabric and took a deep breath. He wasn’t drowning. He was here, at the edge of Goode Lake, sunk to his ankles in the sand. He shook his feet free, shrugged off the button-down, and stripped out of the undershirt and his pants. It was time to make new memories to take back with him to Tartarus. He shook his