Shafted Read Free

you’re doing? Are
you crazy? God I thought you were hurt. I just wanted make sure you
were okay and you freaking attack me!”
    With the bells of Hades ringing in his ears,
it took a minute for Anteros to realize it wasn’t ‘Dead Soul Speak’
wailing at him, but what sounded suspiciously like the annoying
screech of a mortal female.
    What was a mortal doing here? He must still
be drunk. That was it. He’d heard enough Ambrosia could make you
think things were real, which must be true because he could swear
the apparition fidgeting a few feet away was really there.
    “I’m so sorry. Are you going to be okay? I
didn’t mean to hurt you, but you caught me off guard when you
grabbed me. Scared me, you know?”
    Anteros braved another glimpse, cracking one
eye open; yup, an ugly one to be sure, but a mortal female
nonetheless. She hadn’t come any closer probably to stay out of
range should he retaliate. Smart girl, but he could hear the
genuine regret and concern in her voice.
    “Mister? Hey really, are you going to be
okay? Should I call for help? A doctor or something?”
    His tongue might as well have been coated in
cement for all the good it did him. “In fin, unky dorky. Kint you
till? Jus gim me a sick to gatch my bret.”
    “Excuse me I didn’t quite get that.”
    He flopped over onto his back, hoping his
lungs would remember what to do with the first full breath of air
they’d gotten in what seemed like an eternity, and cleared his
throat to try again. “I’m fine, hunky dory. Can’t you tell? Just
give me a second to catch my….”
    The last word formed on his lips, but as his
eyes focused, he lost track of what he was saying. He was snared by
a pair of green eyes fringed in enough frost to stick their edges
together, giving them a disturbing mismatched shape. They were
peering at him out of a blotchy pink face, complete with a hint of
chapped lips, a runny nose and a mess of icicle spiked hair
sticking out in every direction like some frozen parody of
Medusa.
    She was beautiful.
    Huh? Where the Hades had that come from? What
in the Nine Hells was wrong with him?
    As though struck by a God-bolt, his memory
came crashing back and with it the truth of how he ended up
here.
    He hadn’t been drinking with Charon at all.
No, he’d been coming in after a particularly painful fix of another
of his brother’s careless mistakes…. Suddenly the last piece of the
puzzle clicked into place, filling him with an overwhelming sense
of dread and anger.
    The miserable little shit shafted him! HIS
OWN BROTHER!
    He’d barely entered his temple home on
Olympus when something behind one of the marble columns had caught
his eye. He lived alone, and rarely did any care to visit, so he
immediately recognized the movement for the threat it was.
    He remembered reaching behind his shoulder
with one hand and bringing his black titanium bow to bear with the
other, but not fast enough. Flickering torchlight caught a golden
flash flying straight at – no, through – him. Anger turned to
bitterness as the memory played across his mind.
    As darkness pulled him under, Eros had
emerged from the shadows, still holding his own glistening bow, a
triumphant grin on his handsome face. Not a moment later their
mother had materialized directly behind him, her face void of
emotion, but her words had said it all.
    “Perfect shot, my son, you’ve done well.”
    He’d been shafted all right. The love of
Psyche, Eros’s wife, had proven too much for his brother, causing
his fall to ambro-fever, an irreversible condition many gods
developed after an overload of what they personified. The result in
Eros’s case was him periodically running amok, so drunk on love he
couldn’t see, let alone shoot straight, willy-nilly nailing any
poor sucker who got in his path.
    It had fallen to Anteros as the God of
Requited Love to run damage control by canceling out his brother’s
diamond-tipped silver arrows with his opposing obsidian-tipped