Second Snippet from Chaos

My gaze locked on the statue’s beautiful face as I pointed a shaking finger at him. “Who is he? Is he one of your ancestors?” I asked, even though I didn’t think they could be related—wings or no wings. There’s no way his perfect genes could have been twisted to produce the abomination hulking before my eyes.

“Mine,” the harpy answered in a harsh croak that sounded just like a vulture, if a vulture could talk. Her black eyes narrowed on him with possessive greed.

“Where’d he come from?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and trying to rub the chill from my shoulders.

The monster turned her wide leer on me. “Stole him,” she answered. “He’s mine.”

Okaaay then. He was hers. She’d made that pretty clear. I decided I’d better drop the subject. Moving on to the next topic, I asked, “What do you want with me?”

Her gaze shifted toward the handsome statue again. “Need girl. Need a girl to wake the pretty boy.”

I sent a frown in the direction of the gray sculpture. Okay, so evidently harpies were lunatics. At least this one was, if she thought statues could come to life.

Two deep lines creased the monster’s forehead as her eyes narrowed on me. “Not sure.”

“Not sure about what?” I asked tentatively and took a step away from the mine’s gaping black portal while I was at it.

“Not sure girl is pretty enough,” she rasped like she was gargling stones.

She wasn’t the only one who had doubts. I had the same concern. I mean, I wasn’t bad looking. Maybe I was even cute in an upturned-piggy-nose, needs-to-lose-ten-pounds sort of way. But I wasn’t beautiful enough to bring solid stone to life. Now I just needed to convince her of that while trying to remain positive about the whole situation.

“Well, lets get started so I can get back to the library before it closes. What do I need to do? Sprinkle him with holy water? Fairy Dust? Or will a kiss wake him up?” I ran my tongue over my lips at the prospect of collecting a kiss from the statue. He was the epitome of male perfection. And that pouting, sulky mouth of his was so…hot. A kiss might even make this whole episode worthwhile…if it didn’t turn out to be a bizarre dream.

But the harpy wasn’t so keen on the whole kissing idea. Her head swiveled around sharply on her neck and she glared at me with a look of black malice. She actually looked jealous. If she was, it was the first time anybody had ever been jealous of me.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked, going for unthreatening body language and hoping to assure her I wasn’t going to steal her boyfriend.

A wicked light flashed in her beady black eyes. “Suffer,” she answered.