I shrugged. “To hear her tell of it, yes. But when did you know any of the creepy crawlies who make my life interesting to tell the whole truth about themselves --- or anything for that matter?”
“So you don’t believe her?”
“I believe she wants to believe what she says about herself.”
“S-So she isn’t living chaos?”
“I - I think she’s something worse.”
“Worse? What could be worse?”
“Whatever she is, she’s bad. I’ve seen her lift an eyebrow, just an eyebrow, mind you, and suck the life out of every man, woman, and child in an entire city block.”
Toya paled even more. “God.”
“More in the opposite direction. I saw her whisper one word and wither the life from an entire crew of a Nazi submarine.”
“What was the word?”
“Hungry.”
Toya shivered, and I reached under my table. “Rind told me that once long ago Nyx screamed, and the Black Plague laid waste to most of Europe.”
“B-But that was a disease, and it took months to kill that many.”
“Historians weren’t there. Rind was, seeing as how it’s her job and all. Those thousands of people died in a day.”
“A day?”
“Yeah, a day. One terrible, terrible day.”
{Samuel takes the Spurs of Hephaestus out from under his table. To wear them is to feel bone-deep pain. But the pain of whatever wound is inflicted upon the wearer is felt by the person wounding the wearer of those mythic spurs. After some searching of his club, Sam finds Nyx at the Baccarat table, surrounded by dead players.}
I turned to the Baccarat table to my right. All the other players were withered corpses. That's what Nyx did to you if you lost. Or won, for that matter. She was a sore loser. Big surprise there.
Sitting high above the baccarat table, in a chair like a judge at one of those tennis matches, was a woman in a red Victorian-style gown. She looked like she belonged in a ballroom. But I knew what she was doing. She was the ‘floorman.’ Sitting in her polished oak chair, she nervously twirled a long oak paddle, used to scoop up the dealt cards and hand them to the players.
Directly below her, a short, slim woman in a skin-tight Harlequin costume stood with her fingers to her obviously terrifed face.
The Harlequin would have to be the caller, the one whose job it was to announce all the totals and proclaim the winner. She didn’t look happy with her job. She kept looking at the tall, skeletal woman to her right. The woman was human in looks alone.
She was Nyx.
If she had been alive, she would have been a very sick woman. But I suspected that she was undead, a very creepy kind of undead. Though, truth to tell, was there any other kind?
Long, black hair hung straight down each side of her old ivory face. She was nothing to write home about unless you were into frightening letters. She had gray, insane eyes, the same eyes that DayStar had. They said she was a law unto herself, that she recognized no code but her own hungers. To get in her way was to get dead - or worse.
Her tight dress fit her like a black leather second skin. It plunged down so low in the front I was sure that if she leaned forward, one of us was going to be embarrassed. And I had a feeling it wouldn't be her.
She seemed to wiggle without moving. Maybe if you were into kissing dead women, you would have found her sexy. Not me. I wasn't into necrophilia.
She was toying with her cute little necklace of tiny skulls and looking bored. I followed her gaze. She was looking at a tuxedoed man sprawled across from her at the green table. I smiled bitter. Once he had been called 'Mr. Lucky.' I sighed. Sooner or later, the cards always turned against you.
You might think it was just your life you lost when you played with Nyx. You'd be wrong. As I watched, Nyx reached out and touched the man, and another skull was added to her necklace.
“Next?," she laughed.
Nobody seemed eager to take the man's place. Who could blame them? She looked at me with hungry eyes and smiled.
You could starve off the difference between her power and DayStar's. And DayStar was the timeless dark personified. Nyx smiled wider, crueler. I hated powerful sadists.
There were two ways to deal with supremely powerful demi-gods. You could toady to them, kneel at their feet praying that they would only taunt and play with you, that the pain would be survivable. I made a face. Genuflecting was out. My bad knee and all.
That left the other way, and I forced a lazy smile. "Oh, a fan. I don't have a photograph on me, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks."
"Ape!," Nyx spit.
I quick held back the blessing to Hephaestus's spurs. And my world became white-hot agony. I had been in agony before. This was worse, much, much worse. I fell to the floor, squirming in spasms. I heard my customers scramble from their chairs. Some screamed. I would have, too. But the sheer torment had stolen my breath.
I heard the Harlequin cry out, "Please, Nyx, no. H-He was kind to me."
I didn't remember, but I did hear Nyx hiss, "You dare ask me for mercy?"
I had been too smart for myself. I thought whatever she would hit me with would still leave me breath. I had been wrong. But I heard the Harlequin cry out in terror. No! I would damn well find the breath.
I gasped out Hephaestus's blessing, "I-It is better to g-give than to receive."
Nyx reeled from her chair, hit the floor, and screamed her throat raw. The agony left me. But I knew my club, especially back here. I couldn't stay on the floor, though my trembling body begged for me to do so. I wrenched up to my feet to see a few of the predators heading for me. I glared at them.
"You know who I am. You've seen what I can do. You want me to do it to you?"
As a man, they took a long look at the squirming Nyx, the personification of timeless Chaos. Then they looked at me. They spun on their heels. I thought they would run for it. But the predators this far back were sadists.
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