The Chronicler reviews the rest of The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

After the Loinfire Club struggled through the first chapter of The Darkest Kiss, the Chronicler picked it up (always the masochist when it comes to terrible fiction

) and decided to finish it. Here follows a report for those who are curious about how the story about Anarchy and Death live happily ever after...

First of all, The Darkest Kiss is really quite a bad book, but it doesn't suffer from the stereotypical problems of normal romance novels. The heroine is more free of the classic I Am Not A Slut complex than most (with one or two incredibly annoying and notable exceptions, but I'll get to that.) The hero isn't full of rape and ravishment threats, doesn't stalk the heroine, invade her personal space and call it love.... And yet all this doesn't stop it from being really quite an annoying book.

The World Setting

The Chronicler is that most of The Darkest Kiss' readers probably don't care about the metaphysics of its fictional universe and exactly how it all operates. Given that it's the second book in the series, perhaps it should not be expected to lay down the setting with introductory simplicity. And yet it makes no effort to advertise it's Not-the-First-Book status.* That said, the Chronicler really doubts her problems with the setting are answered in the previous book.

The setting is riddled with sweeping statements and loopholes. For example, the origin story is mind-boggling:

Once upon a time, there was Pandora's Box (aka dimOuniak) and in it were lots of demons. These warriors, led by one who felt insulted he didn't get to guard it (?!), opened the box. As punishment, they were made into living prisons for the demons.

Now, this story seems simple. Or at least. Showalter thinks so. But it's not. She's vague as to how much our version applies. Was the pre-box-opening free from Death, Pain, Promiscuity, Lies and all that? Are these simply demons of the concepts as in they are the physical embodiment of them, free from personality and scheming or are they more sophisticated? Were they physical, as in, after release, did the demons personally kill/rape/torture/lie to everyone in their way or did they just possess people and make them do so?

The Chronicler really wants answers because it's actually relevant to the plot. Galen, the Keeper of Hope... wait, Hope is a good thing, right? It was in the original. So why was the demon of it imprisoned in the box along with the other demons? Was the pre-box-opening world also free from hope? And if it's a good thing, should he be allowed to go about and do his work, keeping people's spirits up despite all the death, promiscuity, lies, doubt, defeat (etc) that is happening all over the place?... Sorry, derailed myself there. Galen, who has demon of Hope imprisoned inside him, is running around being the leader of an organisation that busies itself tracking down the imprisoned demons** and killing them all, because the blame the demons for all the shitty things that happen.

The main characters are justified in not knowing what would happen if the imprisoned demons are killed, but they seem phenomenally uncurious about the effects of their death. Baden, Keeper of Distrust, has died and the world doesn't seem to be devoid of distrust, but you can't really fault the hopeful warriors of Galen to keep trying. I'm really okay with them being selfish about their own death versus the world being painless forever, but can they not at least consider the possibilities? What would answer my question is a description about the pre-box-opening world, but Showalter just doesn't want to share.

But then we get to other metaphysical problems. The Greek deities are real. Fair enough. And they differ somewhat from legend, which is again, fair enough. Though it would be better if Showalter actually acknowledges these differences and addressed them, since of all the pantheons the average person would have heard of Greek is quite high on the list. But the immediate question that follows is: Are any other pagan pantheons real? They certainly aren't geographically confined to their original continent, so where is everyone else? They don't have to exist, but it's just really odd because there is a Christian heaven and hell, where some select souls get to go after death (very select, I'll come to that), and yet there are no other gods. Showalter doesn't even feel the need to say, "I know the ancient Greeks believed in an underworld that's different, but that's because they're wrong and were off their tits on mushrooms." Most books employing an existing mythology in its world-building puts in a line or two, the standard: "What a silly superstition you humans have about garlic and vampires. We fear it not."

The Anthropologist suggests perhaps that Showalter simply doesn't realise that other religions have a different vision of heaven and hell. But then she does as she mentions Hades later, but it doesn't seem to feature in any great way.

It's just weird to try to fuse the two.

 

Lucien, Incarnation of Death

Which really quite neatly brings me to Death Himself. Now, beauty is the eye of the beholder and all that, but it really defeats the point of having an ugly hero if the heroine finds him irresistible. The point of Beauty and the Beast is that Beauty grows to love him despite his appearance and eventually grows to love his appearance as well (the latter part surfaces in modern retellings and I quite like it.) But if she thinks he's walking porn to begin with, then he might as well be walking porn to everyone else.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the scars so puckered they abraded his palm. Had they scratched Anya?

Anya's over-the-top attraction to Lucien comes across as delusional. His descriptions of himself as horrifically scarred don't add up to her descriptions of him. He wonders if his scars are scratching her but whe

n we're reading from her point of view, Anya hasn't even noticed, which is weird considering how much attention she was paying to him.

Now that I think about it, who is the man on the cover? He has the mismatched eyes of Lucien, but he lacks the horrific scaring. Also, as the Anthropologist notes, MrCoverModel is incapable of ever moving his arms since it would distort his carefully placed shoulder tattoo.

Lucien's insecurities are ridiculous. He obsesses about how Anya is perfect and how he is so scarred all her attraction must be feigned... but what is most annoying is that he possesses the ability to see emotions with his damned SpirtEye. He saw her passion. But after this one use of his magic power, he doesn't really use it again in the book. He doesn't even use it to see if Anya's faking it. Seriously.

In this spiritual realm, Anya’s passion appeared a blazing pink. Real. Not faked, as a part of him had assumed. That pink trail glittered with a dazzle unlike anything he’d ever seen.

 

Lucien, Keeper of Death

But that's not really the bone I want to pick when it comes to Lucien and his job of soul-ferrying. He insists he hates his job and that he finds the taking of innocents distasteful, but he never really articulates this hatred as anything other than (as Azrael puts it) the hatred one has for an exceptionally dull desk job. If he believed that his own death would stop death forever in the world and if his existence was really that joyless... wouldn't he try to end it? Why doesn't he have some sort of philosophical stance on the necessity of death, if only to justify to himself his existence and not feel like a bastard?

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea. He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation, but he did both without question or hesitation

One isn't really sure how free will and the gods (keepers?) interact. Is he personally responsible for the deaths of his victims or not? He didn't chose to have the demon of death stuck inside him, but then if he believes what he's doing is truly Evil. He mysteriously thinks he is, but he arrives at the scene and sees the mangled bodies of the soon-to-be dead. (The Anthropologist notes a quick comparison thing to Death of the Pratchett's books, who sees his job as a necessity but doesn't see any reason to make it any worse for the people concerned.) Lucien thrusts his arm into the chests of the dying, retrieves their soul, teleports to the gates of either heaven or hell and tosses them in, all rather unceremoniously. I understand he's on a tight schedule, but really, it can't be pleasant. Nor does it seem very Greek since they have ideas about Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

He was still at a loss as the pearled gates opened wide, revealing golden streets and bejeweled, arched lampposts hanging like diamond-studded clouds. White-clothed angels lined the sides, singing a melodious welcome, their feathered white wings gliding gracefully behind them.

I can't get over how Christian heaven and hell are. Pearly gates with golden streets is very specifically Christian. It's straight out of The Book of Revelations, "The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate being made from a single pearl." There is nothing of this in Greek mythology and it is jarring. But that isn't what is getting to me.

“Lots of people die. Every minute. Every hour. Why don’t you have to escort all of them?”
“Some remain to wander Earth, some are reborn and get the chance to start anew. Some, I think, are escorted by angels.”

That practically makes him redundant. I know that he can't be too tied up with this whole soul-ferrying business since he needs to have time for being with Anya and hanging around with his heterosexual friends, but it really diminishes the character when we find out he doesn't deal with all death, that he's just one soul-collector amongst many.

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal. Shadow Walker. Mairya. King of the Dead. He was all of those things and more, for he was a Lord of the Underworld...

The other odd thing is what qualifies as evil enough to land a soul in hell.

The man’s sins suddenly flickered through the demon’s awareness and in turn through Lucien’s. As the man had already proven, he had considered himself above the law, slaying anyone who got in his way—men, women, children—all in the name of a better world.
Bastard.
Maintaining a strong grip on the protesting spirit, he flashed to the entrance of hell. Not Hades—that gloomy underworld was reserved for those who did not deserve either the tortures of hell or the glories of heaven. This man deserved the flames. Though the gates to the fire pit were closed, Lucien could feel the intense heat radiating, could hear the symphony of tormented screams inside, the demonic laughter. The jeers. The stifling scent of sulfur permeated the entire area, enough to make a man gag.

Firstly, as the Anthropologist points out, considering himself above the law isn't really more than what Anya is doing in her daily life. Given how many legal systems Lucien must have lived through, it seems odd that he would attach that much significance to any actual law code.

But more importantly, this man wasn't just working for a better world. He was working for a world that is devoid of pain, suffering, death, war, lies... He is working for paradise on earth. I'm not saying that I feel this means he deserves heaven, I'm just saying that in his paradigm, it's justified and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that this man deserves eternal torment. I'm uncomfortable with the adamance with which the hero thinks this. I'm not saying that I personally believe that the ends justifies the means every time, but there are many things that have been done in the name of the Greater Good and these things do include the American War of Independence (picking an example that most Americans would like to think of as a Good Thing) and the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.***** Perhaps again it is that Showalter doesn't think that the audience may disagree on this point, that her reader won't read that and feel uncomfortable. It's that the Universe judges it so with Absolute Morality, not simply the hero's personal morality.

Two bodies lay on the floor, a man and a woman. The man, Lucien instantly knew thanks to his demon, had wrongly suspected the woman of cheating on him, had shot her and then turned the gun on himself.
Bastard, he thought, then stilled.

Now, I'm not saying that killing your girlfriend for cheating on you is morally right. But again, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that it deserves eternal torment in hell. Eternal is a very long time, like seriously. And he did kill himself afterwards. I'm not saying that I like him or that he deserves heaven, but eternity in hell?

Furthermore, what did that woman do to deserve heaven. Again, I'm not saying she necessarily doesn't, but what differentiates her so very much from everyone else since this is a setting where only a select few get into heaven.

She  [the dead spirt] saw him and gasped. “Naked,” she said, staring at him. “Am I in…heaven?”
Should have dressed first. “Not yet.”

Can you really respect Death who goes to work naked?

 

Anya, Minor Goddess of Anarchy

Yes, minor. 

“You are the minor goddess of Anarchy.”
“There’s nothing minor about me.” Minor meant unimportant, and she was just as important as the other, “higher” beings, damn it.

No, minor means she wasn't widely worshipped, which she wasn't. She doesn't have a cult, let alone a widespread one. She has no temples or shrines dedicated to her. She's minor and none of her quibbling is going to change that. Her petulant, foot-stomping tantrums come across like a six-year-old insisting that they're all grown up, because being a child is unimportant. She doesn't hold power in the divine courts of the Greeks, uninvolved in godly politics. She seems to serve no function in the everyday running of the world. I'm not sure you can get more minor than that.

When she’d first come to earth, she hadn’t known how to control her rebellious nature. Gods had been able to protect themselves from it, humans hadn’t. Besides that, she’d been almost…feral from her years in prison. A simple comment from her—you aren’t going to let your brother talk to you like that, are you?—and bloody feuds erupted between clans. An appearance at court—perhaps laughing at the rulers and their policies—and loyal knights attempted to assassinate their king.

Showalter has no idea what anarchy means. When Showalter describes Anya's deep need for anarchy, she describes pyromania and kleptomania. Anya controls her instincts to anarchy and disobedience by stealing, and whilst that is anarchic on a personal level in that she is disobeying the law that tells her not to steal... kleptomania just isn't anarchy. Neither is doodling moustaches on the original Mona Lisa. And really, it's quite unremarkable and dull.

Eventually she’d learned that if she fed her need for disorder with little things—petty theft, white lies and the occasional street fight—huge disasters could be averted.

What immediately came to mind as something she could be doing is feeding her desire for anarchy by inciting rebellion against tyrannical leaders across the world. She would justify to herself that many of the riots she incites may not succeed, but that freedom is a cause worth dying for. She would tell herself that she has a need to incite rebellion so she should at least do it in a place where she knows there is an unjust dictator. She could work ferrying equipment to guerrilla fighters and pass messages. She probably won't get personally invested in any cause too much, but she'd hang around salons  and bitch about dictators, though she wouldn't put much store in political idealism. Would that cut a little close to home for escapism? Perhaps, but it would make her so very much more interesting. That heroine is one I can root for... pit she only exists in my head.

“Once I attended a masked ball and dressed as the devil. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the year was eighteen-nineteen and I created quite a stir, let me tell you. When I asked Baron something-or-other to sell me his soul, he tried to stab me with a butter knife.”

It was great when Showalter finally decided to tell us a little of what Anya was doing for the last few millennia, but why she doesn't talk nostalgically about past rebellions? I disbelieve she wasn't there for the French Revolution, wasn't involved in the English Civil War or the Glorious Revolution, didn't care about the leaderless state of medieval Iceland.****

Showalter's blindspot really cripples Anya's potential as a character. She seems so very petty when compared with what she could be doing. Self absorbed and really... well, what claim has she in being a goddess when she isn't doing anything to affect the world? She's hardly the embodiment of a force if she isn't involved in places where anarchy is at its zenith. Surely not all rulers deserve their thrones? And not all laws are just?

 

The Goddess of Lawlessness and Sexual Sin

Dysnomia is really obscure a figure, usually coming in lists of personifications. She is named daughter of Eris...

"But abhorred Strife [Eris] bore painful Toil [Ponos] and Forgetfulness [Lethe] and Famine [Limos] and tearful Sorrows [Algea], Fightings [Hysminai] also, Battles [Machai], Murders [Phonoi], Manslaughters [Androctasiai], Quarrels [Neikea], Lying Words [Pseudea], Disputes [Amphillogiai], Lawlessness [Dysnomia] and Ruin [Ate], all of one nature, and Oath [Horkos] who most troubles men upon earth when anyone willfully swears a false oath." (Hesiod, Theogony 226; as quoted on Greek Mythology Link).

Now, in the context of that list, it is quite easy to see that Dysnomia is not associated with promiscuity. She is lawlessness in the sense of chaos and anarchy. She is lawlessness as in the world turned upside down. The opposite of ordered, stratified Greek society. She is by no means an important figure, but the reduction of her to some slutty goddess (which isn't really true in Hesiod, at least) who sleeps her way around Olympus seems a bit of a slap.

Her kiss had been sinful. Delightfully so. But the woman he’d held in his arms had not seemed evil. Sweet, yes. Amusing, absolutely. And, shockingly enough, vulnerable and wonderfully needy. Of him.

The whole novel is firmly set in the moral framework that views sex as sinful (the standard of romance novels) and it's really quite jarring. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Greek pantheon would know that they hardly adhere to our sexual standards. A classicist would be able to describe all the nuances of Greek sexuality, but suffice to say it is hardly identical like our own. Read Thornton's Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, for example. No, we don't know what it was like exactly and there is hardly critical consensus, but they are not exactly like us. If they were, it would be really dull. These are immortal warriors from the dawn of time, can't they at least think a little differently?

Why did he have to look so sexy standing there? The sun was acting like his lover, caressing him, weaving an angelic halo around his dark head. Yes, angelic. He was a fallen angel just then, causing her pulse points to throb and her stomach to quiver.

Even more perplexing is the constant reference to angels. At first the Chronicler simply thought it was metaphorical (which is odd since they don't exist in Greek Mythology) but then references to real angels happened. The reader is never told how they fit into the hierarchy. Presumably with the existence of demons there are also angels, but who are they working for? What purpose do they serve?

 

Anya the Warrior Princess

Showalter allow Anya to fight competently when it comes to the various combat sequences, but why does she dress her in the literary equivalent of cheesecake? I know she's busy bucking trends and expectations, I know she doesn't really need mobility since she can teleport but...

"Despite what you seem to think, I am a powerful being, and I choose whether or not to endanger myself." [...]
Finally, he looked at her—and immediately regretted it. She wore a white gossamer gown with gold threaded throughout, and was even lovelier than he remembered. With the golden glow of moonlight crowning her and emerald plants framing her, she was an ancient queen straight out of a storybook.
The top layers of her pale hair were piled on her head, the rest tumbling down and begging for his touch.

Firstly, he was there in the ancient times and he hardly has time for storybooks, so maybe she should be "an ancient queen like that one he saw in Sparta" or something.

Secondly, her comment that she is a powerful being is really rather undermined with the gossamer gown. Maybe mortal armour is useless for her and she likes the way it looks but Showalter never justifies Anya's battle wear, especially since she doesn't blast them with her lasers, she actually enters the melee.

 

The Canonical Characters were Mean to Me

The Darkest Kiss, as the Anthropologist pointed out, is a lot like Knight of Darkness in that the author is writing about a setting she seems to despise. Kenyon dramatically recast the Arthurian setting to conform to her ideas of manliness and relationships and ideal worlds, keeping almost none of the original concepts.*** Sandra Hill did the same to the Viking era and Showalter is doing the same now with Greek mythology. She uses so very little of the classical Greek religion, the big names of the pantheon barely make an appearance. Her use of Christian heaven and hell points to a world setting badly thought out. When gods from classical myth do turn up, it's only be mean to Anya and call her names in goddess-training-school. Showalter just doesn't seem to care about her source material.

 

Inexplicable Pop Culture References

The Anthropologist wondered about the pop culture references and the tendency for these books to feel dated really quickly. It doesn't make Anya any more connectable. Or likable. Where did she pick up all that slang anyway? Surely hanging around valley girls and chavs is hardly feeding her anarchic desires.

Shortly after, he’d found her a second time and threatened her with the Lords. Now here she and Lucien were, about to go Halo 3 on each other. Score one for Team Cronus.

What does "about to go Halo 3 on each other" even mean? Does it just mean "perpetrate some sort of violence"? Or is the hero going to be permanently stuck in some suit of power armour and aliens will descend from space? It's a shooter game and most of the violence in The Darkest Kiss is even gun violence....

 

To be continued... on the subject of The Darkest Kiss...
How Not to Write Sexual Tension
Distancing the Reader: Revelations of Backstory
Romance Novel Curses
The Other Keepers

 

---

* Perhaps it's publishers wishing to appeal to readers who shy away from reading books out of order, but this decision to not imprint a large number on the spine really does impair one's ability to understand the world setting and actually get into the book. MrsGiggles has complained on many an occasion about the false advertising of non-standalone books. And every dedicated Harry Potter reader is well sick of Rowling's insistence on reiterating the plot of the previous books in her first few chapters.... So, a compromise is need. This the Chronicler well understands. But the point is: two pages of things-you-should-know situated just before the beginning of the story really can't be that much effort to produce. Or maybe they feel it'd scare away readers who want to just leap into the romance and feel uncomfortable with needing to acquire prior knowledge.
But that is the crux of the problem: pretending the book can stand alone when it can't. 

** Why are they called "Lords of the Underworld" anyway? They don't possess an underworld, which presumably is Hades, but this setting has a curiously Christian afterlife. There's a heaven, complete with pearly gates and a sulphurous hell. What is the Underworld, in that case? And why does being a walking prison make them lords of it?

*** To be fair, every era does this, but the Chronicler is often annoyed when a thing goes from being interesting to boring and nonsensical.

**** Some anarchists hold that medieval Iceland is the closest thing to a realised ideal system in their book. A government where there is only one paid official (the lawspeaker) and regular gatherings to settle issues. Minimalist government, eh?

***** I'm not happy about the things that happened in the Cultural Revolution. It was horrific. Thinking about it makes my uncomfortable. But I'm not going to say I believe that everyone who participated in it was evil with a capital "E" and deserving of hell.

The Loinfire Club reads... The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

She has tempted many men… but never found her equal.

Until now.

Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death—a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him.

But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining...

Preamble and Dedications

Cathed has been re-reading Cupid's Melody this morning, apparently.

The Anthropologist: "You have to remind yourself how bad these things are. Or else it'll be like grade inflation, but not. We'll forget how bad and wrong the old ones are and the judgment would be skewed... it's like Connie Mason's lactation fetish. It's weeks before I think of that these days."

This week (at the Anthropologist's urging) we are reading is Gena Showalter's The Darkest Kiss.

(The Anthropologist has recently found F.A.T.A.L. and if that becomes the theme of this week's meeting... well, the point is, there were many digressions about it and anything she says is merely a rehash of the horrors of the actual review. If you, dear reader, feel like poking your eyes out with a spork, this is a valid alternative.)

The Balance decides to start by reading the (unusually long) dedication...

To Kresley Cole. You would let me wear your skin if at all possible—and I won't mention what you’d let me do to your eyeballs...

Pillywiggin: "What?! Eyeballs?"

To Marjorie Liu. Because you spank on and there's nothing cooler!

The Anthropologist: "Mental image I didn't need!"

(The Chronicler notes that Majorie Liu is also a paranormal romance novel writer.)

To Jill Monroe. You are a sister of my heart— hearter? sisart?—and even though you stole my gnome, I can't imagine a life without you. For realsies.

The Anthropologist: "WHAT?!"

Pillywiggin: "I don't think book dedications is a good idea."

The Chronicler: "I don't think book dedications this length is a good idea."

Art director Kathleen Oudit and designer Juliana Kolesova—I owe you big-time! The lips on this cover…Shiver! And you didn't blink twice when I mentioned one brown eye and one blue eye.

The Anthropologist: "Because they don't expect that, romance novel cover artists, mismatched eyes."

(Also, the cover is really freaky. The more you stare at it, the more weird it seems. For a start, that man's arm is now forever fixed in that position as any movement will distort his butterfly tattoo. Secondly, his head is far, far too small for his torso and his pecks glow... the Anthropologist thinks he has a birth defect which means he looks as though his head is photo-shopped on.)

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. 

Cathed: "As they are."

Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal....

Cathed (pointing): "He's Azrael! But he's Azrael!"

The Balance: "Different spelling. It's spelt Az-real."

Azrael: "That's okay, then."

Long ago he had opened dimOuniak, a powerful box made from the bones of a goddess...

Cathed: "As you do."

... unleashing a horde of demons upon the earth.

Pillywiggin: "You make it sound so casual."

Cathed: "Like trying to open a restaurant."

The Anthropologist: "And what, he couldn't hire any good waitresses because of they just kept falling in love with him?"

Pillywiggin: "He could always hire lesbians and old people."

The Anthropologist: "Around this man, lesbians aren't lesbians for long..."

As punishment, he and the warriors who aided him were forced to house those demons inside themselves, melding light and darkness, order and chaos...

Pillywiggin: "So, a mobile, sentient prison is better than a non-mobile, non-sentient one."

(The Balance: "Yes, the best way of preventing these demons from escaping is by putting them inside sentient prisons who don't want them to have them inside them.")

Because he was the one to open the box, he had been given the demon of Death. A fair exchange, he supposed, for his action had nearly caused the demise of the world...

Cathed: "God! If I'd known that I wouldn't have done it!"

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea.

Azrael: "He opposes the idea of death in general?"

He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation...

The Anthropologist: "Taking innocents from families... remember what that means normally in these books..."

Pillywiggin: "Death... Death of rats... Death of hymens..."

Azrael: "Skeleton with artfully lodged scythe."

Resistance, he’d soon learned, brought something far worse than death to his door. Resistance brought an agony so complete, so inexorable, even the gods trembled at the thought.

Cathed: "Oh dear."

The Chronicler: "Exactly why are the gods contemplating his punishment with anything other than glee?"

Did his obedience mean he was gentle? Caring? Nurturing? No. Oh, no. He could not afford softer emotion. Love, compassion and mercy were enemies to his plight.

Anger, though? Rage? Those he sometimes embraced.

Azrael: "Both anger and rage."

Woe to anyone who pushed him too far, for man would become fully demon. A beast. A sinister entity who would not hesitate to curl his fingers around a human heart and squeeze...

Loinfire Club laughs.

The Anthropologist (referring to the new Halloween toy): "We have to get the heart!"

Squeeze so tightly that human would lose his breath and beg for the sweet kiss of eternal sleep only he could offer...

The Loinfire Club each squeeze the "Throbbing Heart" in turn.

With that thought, the Prologue ends and the first chapter begins...

The Darkest Kiss, part two...

Chapter One...

ANYA, GODDESS OF ANARCHY, daughter of Lawlessness, and dealer of disorder,

Pillywiggin: "Tell, not show!"

All of the dancers were human females, beautiful and nearly naked, chosen specifically by the Lords of the Underworld to provide the night's entertainment. Both vertical and horizontal...

The Anthropologist: "If they're sitting down, it's not really vertical or horizontal... it's a sort of Z shape."

Wisps of smoke cast a dream-fog around them, and pinpricks of starlight rained from the swirling strobe...

The Anthropologist: "It's a Vampire From Twilight mooning everyone!"

From the corner of her eye, she caught a scintillating glimpse of a taut immortal ass...

The Anthropologist: "No ass should ever scintillate!"

Cathed: "Maybe that's why you'd want one... they're walking mirrorballs!"

The Lords of the Underworld were delectable immortal warriors who were possessed by the demon spirits that had once resided inside Pandora's box. 

Pillywiggin: "We know."

And now, with a few rounds of hard liquor and even harder sex, they were saying goodbye to Budapest, the city they'd called home for hundreds of years.

Cathed: "Budapest?! It's living in Stockton!"

Anya wanted in on the action. With one warrior in particular.

There are some debates over which one it is she sees.

Cathed: "Darkest and Most Seductive one, obviously."

The Anthropologist: "No, it can't be. She says 'each more dangerously seductive than the last' and this isn't the last book in the series..."

"Part," she whispered, fighting her intrinsic compulsion to shout "Fire" instead and watch as the humans raced away in a panic, screaming hysterically...

Pillywiggin: "What? Ah... I see. She's trying to get them to move."

Let the good times roll.

Pillywiggin: "Is that all she can come up with? How about shouting 'Smallpox'?"

The Chronicler: "What's holding her back from shouting 'Fire'?"

An erratic pulse of rock music that matched the erratic beat of her heart blasted from the speakers, making it impossible for anyone to hear her.

The Balance: "Medical complication..."

Cathed: "But she is a goddess of anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "I don't wanna pump blood! Shut up! Stop stressing on me! I want to hear my own music."

Heated breath caught in her lungs, and she shivered.

Pillywiggin: "Why is she shivering if she has something warm near her? Or is she that anarchic?"

Lucien. Deliciously scarred...

Pillywiggin: "Delicious... So he's scarred with licorrice?"

Azrael: "Or with the Cadbury's signature."

The Anthropologist: "It's like TT's fake blood. The people making the phys-reps ended up coming up with a concoction that tastes of chocolate..."

...irresistibly stoic and possessed by the spirit of Death.

The Anthropologist: "Back me up on this, Cathed. Didn't the stoics have a thing about celibacy? It doesn't seem to end well."

Cathed: "I really don't think stoic is that attractive."

Pillywiggin: "He has a face like the London Underground map!"

Right now he sat at a table in back, expression blank...

Cathed: "Wow. Hot."

"—she was right. I checked the satellite photos on Torin's computer. Those temples are rising from the sea."

Pillywiggin: "Get back in the sea where you belong!"

"One is in Greece and one is in Rome, and if they continue to rise at such a swift rate, they'll be high enough to explore sometime tomorrow."

Pillywiggin: "What? Out of the River Tiber? I didn't think there's that much space in it..."

The Balance: "It says the sea in the book..."

Pillywiggin: "But Rome doesn't have a sea."

Cathed, the classicist, affirms this. As does Wikipedia.

No one else would—or could—see them. She had made sure of that with a sweet little thing called chaos, her strongest source of power, hiding the temples with storms to keep humans away, while at the same time feeding the Lords enough information to draw them the hell out of Buda...

Cathed: "Buddah?!"

The Balance: "Budapest in short."

The Anthropologist: "I was thinking about trying to drag hell out of Buddah..."

Pillywiggin: "It's why he's so fat. He's got hell inside him."

"Perhaps the new gods are responsible. Most days I am sure they hate us and long to destroy us, simply for being half-demon."

The Balance: "I think that's a very good reason to hate them."

Lucien's expression remained blank. 

The Anthropologist: "Is he still being irresistibly stoic?  Man with hammer... does not matter..."

"If we're lucky, we'll find that damned box while we're there."

Azrael: "Damn that box! It killed my family!"

Anya ran her tongue over her teeth. Damned box, aka dimOuniak, aka Pandora's box.

Pillywiggin: "How many times have they explained the same box?!"

Cathed: "We get it."

The Anthropologist: "It's a book written for people with short time memory loss."

Boring? Ha! Anya had never met anyone who excited her more.

Cathed: "She is really, really excited by boring people."

The Anthropologist: "Has anyone read that book I wrote about accounting?"

Cathed swoons.

Azrael: "Is that some sort of dullness fetish?"

The Balance: "So the goddess of anarchy has a dullness fetish."

The Anthropologist: "That makes a certain amount of sense. Like that neat freak bureaucrat who wants to screw Fry..."

Cringe when they saw his scars, sure. But none of them wanted anything to do with him—and that saved their lives.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe they're allergic to liquorice."

"Notice me," Anya commanded softly. A moment passed. He didn't obey. Several humans glanced in her direction, heeding her demand, but Lucien's gaze latched on to the empty flask in front of him and remained, becoming a wee bit wistful. Much to her consternation, immortals were immune to her commands. [...]

"Bastards," she muttered. Any restrictions they could place on her, they did. "Anything to screw with lowly Anarchy."

Azrael: "She's the goddess of anarchy! You'd think her spells would summon a pineapple or something in front of him... That would totally attract his attention."

There are various theories about what boring and prosaic thoughts about the flasks is flashing through his mind:

Cathed: "Hmmm... maybe I spent too much on this at the flea market. Maybe I shouldn't have impulse-bought it... oh, but it wasn't really on impulse, but maybe it would be cheaper from a second hand shop...etcetcetc..."

Anya hadn’t been favored during her days on Mount Olympus.

The goddesses had never liked her because they assumed she was a replica of her "whore of a mother" and would jump their husbands.

Cathed: "Eris isn't a whore! She never got invited to any of the orgies!"

(At this point, we're under the impression that Anya's mother is a goddess of discord and we've assumed that she's a canonical goddess - thus Eris.)

The guys had wanted her, though. Well, until she'd killed their precious Captain of the Guard and they'd deemed her too feral [...]

The little shit had tried to rape her. If he had left her alone, she would have left him alone. But noooo.

The Balance: "It has four Os. And it's in italics."

Pillywiggin looks pained.

Cathed: "Noooo!"

Pillywiggin: "How many Os?"

Cathed: "Four."

The Anthropologist: "And in a strange font. A font of pain."

She didn't regret cutting the black heart out of his chest, didn't regret placing said heart on a pike in front of Aphrodite's temple. Not even a tiny bit.

(The Chronicler is wondering if this is meant to be a sacrifice to Aphrodite or otherwise...)

Choice. The word rang inside her mind, bringing her back to the present. What the hell would it take to convince Lucien to choose her?

Cathed: "She likes freedom of choice but she likes mindraping mortals?"

Pillywiggin: "Well, she is anarchy. She doesn't have to make sense."

She stomped her foot.

The Chronicler: "That's just pathetic."

For weeks she'd cloaked herself in invisibility, following Lucien, watching, studying...

The Chronicler: "And you're surprised he doesn't notice you?! You're invisible!"

Cathed (droning on): "Oh, maybe I should have checked on Ebay first..."

The Anthropologist: "Ebay might be a bit too exciting for this man... In fact, the internet is too interesting for this man."

Cathed: "Maybe I should check the stock market, just to see how it's doing."

The Balance: "No, the stock markets are fluctuating a bit too much. It would be too exciting."

And yes, lusting. He'd had no idea she lurked nearby, even as she willed him to do all sorts of naughty things: strip, pleasure himself…smile.

Cathed: "That would be spoiling the stoic façade... he could still strip stoically, though"

The Chronicler: "He's like St Benedict incarnate!"

Pillywiggin: "That man really hated laughing."

There is some speculation about high level stoics and their possible ability to be able to have sex without their expression changing. There is miming and giggling.

But she’d wanted to see his beautifully flawed face light in humor just as much as she’d wanted to see his naked body glisten with arousal.

Azrael: "He might be cheating and recently had botox."

Had he granted even that benign request, though? No!

Cathed: "And meanwhile, he's just sitting there counting the coasters..."

A part of her wished she'd never seen him, that she hadn't allowed Cronus, the new king of the gods, to intrigue her with stories about the Lords a few months ago. Maybe I'm the idiot...

The Anthropologist: "Why does it have to be a zero sum game? Maybe they're both idiots!"

Cronus had just escaped Tartarus, a prison for immortals and a place she knew intimately. He'd imprisoned Zeus and his cohorts there, as well as Anya's parents. When Anya returned for them, Cronus had been waiting for her. He had demanded Anya's greatest treasure. She'd declined—duh—so he'd tried to scare her. Give me what I want or I'll send the Lords of the Underworld after you. They are demon-possessed, as blood-hungry as starving animals, and they will not hesitate to peel the lovely flesh from your bones. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

Cathed: "So he threatened her... wait... the author actually wrote 'blah, blah, blah... oh'."

She'd ended up seeking out the warriors on her own. She'd thought to defeat them and laugh in Cronus’s face, a sort of look-what-I-did-to-your-big-scary-demons kind of thing.

Pillywiggin (rolling her eyes): "Fascinating."

One glance at Lucien, though, and she’d become instantly obsessed.

The Chronicler notes that that can't possibly be healthy.

She'd forgotten her reasons for being there...

The Chronicler: "That happens a lot with heroines..."

It was just that contradictions tantalized her, and Lucien had so very many. He was scarred but not broken, kind but unbending. 

Azrael: "Kindness and bendiness are not synonymous."

The Chronicler: "Neither is scarred and broken, for that mater."

He was a calm, by-the-book immortal, not blood-hungry as Cronus had claimed.

Pillywiggin: "Flangey, but dull."

He was possessed by an evil spirit, yet he never deviated from his own personal code of honor. He dealt with death every day, every night, yet he fought to live. 

The Anthropologist: "If you're immortal, you don't have to work very hard to stay alive."

As if that wasn't enough to prick her interest, his flowery fragrance filled her with decadent, wicked thoughts every time she neared him...

Azrael: "Wait, flowery fragrance?"

The Anthropologist: "Must be really inconvenient to find flowery fragrances irresistible. What if she gets sprayed with perfume in department store... an impromptu orgy?"

Azrael: "She must really freak out people in when walking in parks."

Why? Any other man who smelled like roses would have made her laugh. With Lucien, her mouth watered for a taste of him...

Cathed: "He's so hot in his grey socks."

(The Chronicler: "At least the author is acknowledging roses is a stupid scent for a man... but it's still stupid.")

her skin prickled with white-hot awareness...

The Balance: "Heat. Skin comment. And Medical Complication!"

Pillywiggin: "Three in one combo!"

Gods, he was sexy. He had the freakiest eyes she’d ever seen. 

Cathed: "Freaky good or freaky bad?"

Pillywiggin: "Like a Cyclops?"
The Anthropologist: "Freaky is not a good word either."

One was blue, the other brown, and both swirled with the essence of man and demon...

Cathed: "I've seen creepier eyes."

Pillywiggin: "Like David Bowie, but less interesting."

The Anthropologist: "except he has a fruit pastel stuck to his face."

And his scars… All she could think of, dream about, crave, was licking them.

The Anthropologist: "It's because it's made of liquorice."

Cathed: "Why can't you just talk to him?"

Possessed by Promiscuity, Paris was blessed with pale, almost glittery skin....

Cathed: "It's a sparkly TWILIGHT VAMPIRE!"

...electric-blue eyes, and a face the angels probably sang hallelujahs over, but he wasn't Lucien and he did nothing for her.

Cathed: "Angels sing praise of demonic faces?"

The Chronicler: "She's mixing mythologies. Or simply copy-and-pasting an oft-used descriptor."

She might deal in petty disorder, but she never uttered a threat she didn't plan to see through. To do so smacked of weakness, and Anya had vowed long ago never to show a single hint of weakness...

The Anthropologist: "But drooling and shivering in the middle of the dance floor doesn't count..."

Azrael: "That's not weakness. It's drug abuse."

Paris's laughter intensified and managed to snag Lucien's attention. Lucien's gaze lifted, first landing on Paris...

The Balance: "Lucien's gay."

then locking on Anya. Her knees almost buckled. Oh, sweet heaven. Paris was forgotten as she fought to breathe

Pillywiggin: "Too many gaze!"

Azrael: "He's been deliberately not looking at her to kill her under an avalanche of his gaze."

Did she imagine the fire that suddenly sparked in Lucien's mismatched eyes? Did she imagine the way his nostrils flared in awareness?

The Anthropologist: "You're just pretending he's noticing you. You're just deluding yourself over his cold."

... Licking her lips, never removing her gaze from him, she eased into a sensual bump and grind and made her way toward his table...

Azrael: "Wait. She's bumping and grinding whilst walking?"

The Anthropologist: "She's walking quite slowly then, since at any given time, about 40% of her is moving in the opposite direction."

Azrael: "She could be bumping and grinding the furniture."

Up close, he was six-feet-six of muscle and danger. 

Azrael: "He's made of steak, tied together with police tape."

Pure temptation.

Pillywiggin: "Steak is very tempting."

The Balance: "And she's an anarchist, so she can't help but cross police tape."

There was a brief diversion in which the interesting quote is...

Pillywiggin: "I can't think of anything more dull than a clairvoyance conference."

"We meet at last, Flowers."

Cathed: "She really is the goddess of anarchy. She's going for the gay accountant."

She ground her left hipbone against the hard juncture between his legs, turning erotically and presenting him with a view of her back

The Anthropologist: "Juncture is not an erotic word."

Azrael: "Neither his hipbone."

Her ice-blue corset was held together by nothing more than thin ribbons...

The Anthropologist: "That implies it's not very tightly cinched. Which would render the corset pointless."

...and she knew her skirt hung so low on her waist that it failed to cover the bands of her thong. Oopsie.

Cathed: "And there I was thinking she's written her number in binary."

Azrael: "Appeal to the sodomite!"

Men, mortal or otherwise, usually melted when they caught a glimpse of something they shouldn't.

The Balance: "...like Cthulhu."

The Anthropologist: "It's not really a glimpse. She's just been showing off her thong all night because she's not capable of dressing herself."

...body as she raised her hands over her head then leisurely ran them through the thick mass of her snow-white hair...

The Anthropologist: "Mass is also not a sexy word."

Her nipples hardened.

Pillywiggin: "Pebbling!"

The Anthropologist: "Is she masturbating on the dance floor? Not that people would be shocked with all the fucking, but...."

"Why did you summon me, woman?" His voice was low, yet as disciplined as the warrior himself.

Pillywiggin: "Boring, then."

The Darkest Kiss, part three...

(Painting by Hans Baldung Grien, "Death and the Maiden", a painting to bear in mind.)

Listening to him speak was more arousing than being touched by another man, and her stomach clenched...

The Anthropologist: "It's only reinforcing the idea that she's a loser. She spent ages staring at him, willing him to notice her and now, despite her literally humping him, he's not really responding."

"I wanted to dance with you," she said over her shoulder. Bump, bump, slllooow grind. "Is that a crime?"

He didn't hesitate with his answer. "Yes." 

"Good. I've always enjoyed breaking the law."

The Anthropologist: "You have an interesting legal system in Budapest. Is this a holdover of the Soviet days?"

A confused pause. Then, "How much did Paris pay you to do this?" 

"I get paid? Oh, goodie!"

The Chronicler comes to the conclusion that this woman's narrative voice is exceptionally annoying.

Stepping back, grinning, she brushed her ass against him, arching and swinging as sensually as she was able. Hello, erection.

The Anthropologist: "She's making progress then."

The heat of him nearly liquefied her bones.

Pillywiggin: "Lava heat!"

"What's the currency? Orgasms?"

The Anthropologist: "What is the exchange rate between the dollar and the orgasm?"

Speculation results.

In her dreams, he always grabbed her and meshed the hard length of his cock into her at this point. 

The Anthropologist: "That makes her even lamer."

In reality, he jumped backward as if she were a bomb about to detonate, creating more hated distance between them.

The Anthropologist: "If the response to I want to sleep with you, is leaping behind tables, then you're doing something wrong."

Pillywiggin: "Or recoiling like he's a stoic."

A sense of loss immediately blanketed her. 

The Chronicler: "Again, the increasing pathetic desperation."

"No touching," he said. He'd probably done his best to sound calm, but he had sounded on edge. Strained.

The Anthropologist: "He's saying this from behind the table, bear in mind."

Her eyes narrowed. All around, people watched their interaction and his rejection of her.

The Anthropologist: "All around, everyone noticed what a loser she is."

They were still pursued by Hunters, humans who foolishly believed they could create a utopia of peace and harmony by ridding the world of the Lords and the demons they carried inside them.

The Chronicler notes that this is a really bad time to be trying to pick guy up in bar.

Ignore them. You're running out of time, chica.

Pillywiggin: "Are you up with the slang?"

The Anthropologist: "I'm up with the Spanish... In fact, I'm subando with the Spanish."

Azrael: "No, that's too foreign."

She ran a fingertip over the top band of her thong, not stopping until she drew the hot focus of his gaze to the glittery angel wings in the center.

The Anthropologist: "ARGH! No! That just makes you seem like a chav!"

Pillywiggin: "Hasn't that been apparent already?"

The Anthropologist: "But that's really tacky!"

"I was just about to walk away," he choked out.

The Anthropologist: "She sounds like the evil slut character... which means we can stop drinking for the I am not a Slut complex.... It's sociologically interesting, but AAAHHHH!"

Azrael: "Do you say that in seminars a lot?"

At his words, her nails elongated into little claws.

The Anthropologist: "Eewww... It sounds uncomfortable. And weird."

She'd shown herself to him, even knowing that the gods would be able to pinpoint her exact location—something it was best to avoid since they planned to snuff her out like a mangy animal. She would not leave this club without a reward.

The Chronicler: "Wait. She's risking almost certain death to shag him?"

Pillywiggin: "It's probably expected from shagging death itself..."

The Chronicler: "And on the sidenote, isn't she very against rape and very for choice of one's sexual partners a moment ago?"

Determination intensifying, she swung around with another roll of her hips, the length of her pale hair caressing his chest. As she nibbled on her bottom lip, she plumped her breasts.

The Anthropologist: "What? Plumping her breasts?"

The Chronicler: "I think she's consciously making them swell."

Azrael: "Isn't that what you do to scatter cushions... it's probably reminding he need to do some housekeeping..."

"But I don't want you to leave," she said with a practiced pout.

The Anthropologist cringed.

"What's wrong, sweetness?" Merciless, she moved forward. "Afraid of a little girl?"

The Chronicler: "Eww!"

Pillywiggin: "A little crazy girl."

The Anthropologist: "A little crazy girl wearing an angel thong!"

His lips thinned, but he didn't reply. Thankfully, he didn't move farther away, either.

Pillywiggin: "Because the walls are in the way."

Azrael: "Also because it wouldn't be stoic."

He was utterly magnificent. Rainbow-colored strobe lights rained down his face and body,

The Chronicler: "Rainbow coloured lights really shouldn't be a selling point... it's like sparkle vampires all over again."

... a body so finely sculpted it could have been chiseled from stone. He wore a black tee and stone-washed jeans, and both hugged rope after rope of hand-over-your-panties muscle. Mine.

Pillywiggin: "Where is the hand-over-your-panties muscle?"

The Anthropologist: "I'm pulling up a human anatomy diagram now..."

Azrael: "Wikipedia won't be able to help you now."

Pillywiggin: "I don't even understand what that could mean."

The Chronicler: "Why is this woman's idea of an in-charge woman comfortable with her sexuality a childish, stalker slut?"

The Anthropologist: "Because Come to Me."

"I'm not touching you, sweetcakes." But I want to…I plan to…I will.

The Anthropologist: "She's a rapist."

"I'll dance with you," another warrior said, cutting her off. Paris again. "No." Anya didn't switch her attention. She wanted Lucien and only Lucien. No one else would do.

Pillywiggin: "Why?"

She recognized the deep timbre of his voice. Sabin, keeper of Doubt.

Cathed: "I have doubt... I think..."

Azrael: "No, it's more like: I have doubt... No, you don't. It's all mine!"

Bait, stupid girls that they were, were all about self-sacrifice; their job was to seduce a Lord to distraction so Hunters could sneak in and slay him. And really, what kind of moron wanted to kill the Lords rather than make out with them a little?

Pillywiggin: "Who would want to... gyah?!"

Cathed remarks that there hasn't been a I am Not a Slut moment yet.

The Anthropologist: "She only wants to sleep with one man. But is really bad at it."

Oh, yes. The plague. One of the Lords was possessed by the demon of Disease. If he touched any mortal skin-to-skin, he infected that person with a terrible sickness that spread and killed with amazing swiftness

Pillywiggin: "They're backplotting at every conceivable moment."

Unfortunately, there were many, many more Hunters out there. Seriously, they were like flies. Swat one away, and two more soon took its place. Even now, they were out there somewhere, waiting for a chance to strike. The Lords had to remain cautious.

The Anthropologist: "Why are they being cautious if they have ridiculous flange powers and are immune to throat cut?"

"Besides, there's no way they could have figured out a way to bypass our security," Reyes added...

The Anthropologist: "Given all of you are having sex all over the party, you probably aren't really paying much attention to security."

"And maybe the big guy and I can go the next few minutes without an interruption. In private." They might have gotten the hint, but they didn't leave.

Pillywiggin: "'Cause our mate doesn't want to shag you!"

Of course, he didn't. But his nostrils did that delicious flare as his eyes followed every movement of her palms

Pillywiggin: "That's missing quite badly. You aimed for hands and got nostrils."

"Pretty please, with a cherry on top of me."

The Anthropologist: "If it turns out she's a virgin, it'd be so hilarious..."

His eyes flickered with fiery provocation. Not her imagination, she realized. Hope flooded her.

The Balance: "Barrack Obama..."

Pillywiggin is in pain.

The Balance: "Maybe she looks like Sarah Palin, but with white hair!"

The Anthropologist: "NOO!"

(The Chronicler regrets that this meme hasn't died yet.)

"Do you not find me desirable, Flowers?"

Cathed and Pillywiggin: "Why does she keep calling him that?"

A muscle ticked below his eye. "That is not my name."

Cathed: "Lucien 'Death' Flowers."

The Anthropologist: "To be fair, 'Death Flowers' is probably quite a scary name to an Aztec."

Alrightie, then. She turned and bent down to the floor. Her skirt rode up her thighs and gave him another, better, glimpse of her blue thong and the wings stretching from the center.

The Anthropologist: "It's not a glimpse. It's right there. It's been there all evening. We're getting bored of it now!"

There is discussion of exactly what's going on there.

As she pushed to a stand, mimicking the motions of sex as she did so, she slowly circled, offering a lingering full-body shot.

The Chronicler: "This woman is not subtle."

Pillywiggin: "Nor anatomically plausible."

"You smell like strawberries and cream." As he spoke, he looked like a predator about to pounce.

The Anthropologist: "You smell like dairy products."

Azrael: "Technically, she smells like a dairy product and a fruit."

"Bet I taste like it, too," she said, batting her lashes despite the fact that he'd made the fragrance seem like a horrendous affront.

The Anthropologist: "So, that's ketosis plus some sort of milky discharge."

There is some discussion about whether or not it's some sort of yeast infection.

He growled low in his throat and took a menacing step toward her. He raised his hand to—grab her? Hit her? Whoa, what was that about?

Azrael (raising a fist): "I hate strawberry and cream!"

...before stopping himself and fisting his fingers. Before remarking on her scent, he'd been distant but maybe-kinda-sorta interested. Now he only seemed interested in throttling her.

Azrael: "He was probably at some point sexually abused by a tea lady at Wimbledon."

Anya ceased moving, staring up at him in openmouthed astonishment. Because she smelled like fruit, he wanted to hurt her? 

The Anthropologist: "Make her stop talking like she's a teenager... more how she imagines teenager thinks."

That was—that was supremely…disappointing.

Pillywiggin: "That's some interesting abuse of punctuation."

Azrael: "It's chaotic enough to be within her purview."

Men liked women who threw themselves at them. Right? She'd observed mortals for too many years to count, and that had always seemed to be the case. Key word, chica—mortals. Lucien wasn't, and had never been, mortal.

The Chronicler: "See! She's learning the I am not a Slut complex..."

Why doesn't he want me?  In all the days she'd watched him, he hadn't favored a single woman.

Pillywiggin: "He's a personification! Not a sexual being!"

He didn't prefer men. His gaze didn't linger on males with hunger or any hint of softer emotion. 

Pillywiggin: "O rly?"

Was he in love with a specific woman, then, and no other would do? If so, the bitch was going down!

Pillywiggin: "'Cause that's endear you."

The Chronicler wonders about the world view where every unattached man is expected to want to and consent to have sex with anything that offers itself.

Thoughts of using "Smother her with your expanding breasts" as Emic Seaweed (the band which the Anthropologist, the Balance and Pillywiggin have formed)'s second album title surface.

Smoke continued to billow through the building, hazy, dreamlike.

Loinfire Club: "It's on fire?"

Lucien hadn't moved an inch; it was as if his entire body were rooted in place. She should give up, walk away, cut her losses before Cronus found her...

The Anthropologist: "Do it! Do it! Do it now!"

Only the weak give up. True. Determined, she raised her chin. 

The Loinfire Club groans.

With only a thought, she changed the song blasting through the speakers. The beat instantly slowed, softened...

Cathed: "What is this? A school disco? This is the slow song time?"

Pillywiggin: "Surely the goddess of anarchy can only set songs on shuffle?"

"You're going to dance with me," she purred. "That's the only way to get rid of me." Just to taunt him further, she stood on her tiptoes and gently bit his earlobe.

The Anthropologist: "Just flash him. That's the only thing in your slut repertoire that you haven't done."

There was a rumble in his throat as his arms finally wrapped around her. At first she thought he meant to push her away...

Azrael: "Hasn't he already threatened to punch her?"

Then he jerked her deeper into the curve of his body, flattening her breasts against his torso and forcing her legs to straddle his left thigh...

The Anthropologist: "That must look really awkward. Try to imagine it...."

Slowly, decadently, he swayed her side to side, their bodies staying meshed together, her core rubbing just above his knee.

Pillywiggin: "Is she not in great discomfort?"

Gods in heaven, this was better than she'd imagined...

Pillywiggin: "Did she just swear by herself?"

The Anthropologist (referring to the hero of Cupid's Melody): "At least it's not By the Stones!"

He was big. Everywhere. His shoulders were so wide they dwarfed her; his upper body so muscled it enveloped her...

The Balance: "Eeeccclllurrrp!"

Azrael: "She's now gyrating in his torso."

Pillywiggin: "Gelatinous cube!"

Even if he wanted her the way she wanted him, she couldn't have him. Not fully. In that respect, she was as cursed as he. But she could still enjoy the moment.

Pillywiggin: "Why not?"

His nose nuzzled her jawline.

The Anthropologist: "He's also really, really flexible. As well as being huge."

Pillywiggin: "He is a gelatinous cube."

The Balance: "He's a muscle elemental."

"Just because," she said, inhaling his heady rose perfume

The Anthropologist: "Why does he smell girlier than she does?"

Azrael: "Because he's just better than she is."

Her nipples were still hard, so hard, and rubbing against her corset, enhancing her desire...

The Loinfire Club speculates about whether or not her corset is a proper boned one or not. There is some consensus that it's something else that is probably uncomfortable in real life.

"Do you find it amusing to tease the ugliest man here?"

"Ugliest?" When he appealed to her as no one else ever had? "But I'm nowhere near Paris, sugarpop."

Pillywiggin: "That might be a good thing to say to him, except for the sugarpop part."

The Anthropologist: "If she's an immortal goddess in Hungary, why does she talk like a waitress from Texas?"

The Balance: "Because it's only the demon-trapped-inside-them guys that are from Hungary. She could well be from Texas."

"I know what I am," he growled with the faintest trace of bitterness. "Ugly is being kind."

There is debate over what the hero looks like, since it is becoming abundantly clear that he looks nothing like the man on the cover since he is unscarred.

The Anthropologist: "He looks like he was eating gummi bears at one point and forgot they're stuck to his face."

"If you know what you are, sweetness, then you know you're sexy and deliciously menacing." [...]

He glared down at her. "Menacing? Does that mean you want me to hurt you?"

Pillywiggin (in reference to a line of Edward's in Twilight): "Can I crush your skull?"

His nostrils flared again...

Pillywiggin: "His nostril flares are like everyone else's gazes."

The Anthropologist: "A little light that goes off like a distress signal. He's signalling to his friends across the room..."

Closer…closer…Yes, contact. Oh, great gods! She glided her hands over his chest, luxuriating in the feel of his nipples as they reached for her...

Cathed: "His nipples are reaching for her?!"

The Anthropologist: "I'm sure I've read a Lovecraft..."

...savoring the ropes of strength that greeted her.

The Balance: "But they're strength-roped nipples!"

However he'd gotten the scars could not have been pleasant. He'd suffered. A lot. The knowledge suddenly angered her as much as it entranced her. Who had hurt him and why? A jealous lover?

The Chronicler feels this paragraph speaks for itself as to how dense, obsessive and annoying this goddess of anarchy is.

Looked like someone had taken a blade and carved Lucien up like a melon, then tried to put him back together with the pieces out of order.

Pillywiggin: "Melon..."

The Anthropologist: "He's a melon elemental! Or a melemental!"

Did he have similar scars on the rest of his body? Her knees weakened as a new tide of arousal flooded her. She'd watched him for weeks, but she hadn't gotten a single peek at his delectable form. 

Pillywiggin: "Because he doesn't habitually strip for anything..."

Somehow, he'd always managed to bathe and change after she left.

Pillywiggin: "Oh. She's just bad at it."

The Anthropologist: "Can you say 'restraining order'?"

Had he sensed her and kept himself hidden?

The Anthropologist: "When is Chronos going to reappear and kill them all?"

"If I didn't know better, I would think you were Bait, as my men do," he said tightly.

The Chronicler: "If she was, she wouldn't tell you."

If she assured him she wasn't Bait, she would seem to be admitting that she knew what Bait was. 

Pillywiggin: "Why can't she say what she is?"

"Do you want me to be?" she said in her most seductive tone. "'Cause I'll be anything you want, lover."

Azrael: "Silly."

The Loinfire Club finds out, at this point, that Azrael ate four bowls of salmon chowder and are horrified.

Pillywiggin: "I ate two and I'm feeling full!"

Azrael: "I have my specialities and in them I excel."

Now, there was a loaded question. She wanted all of his masculinity focused on her. She wanted hours to strip and explore him. She wanted him to strip and explore her. She wanted him to smile at her. She wanted his tongue in her mouth.

Pillywiggin: "The author really hasn't heard of show not tell."

The Anthropologist: "These are not mutually exclusive option! If I can do them at all the same time..."

Azrael: "I can totally revolutionise and streamline my sex life!"

At this point, only the last seemed achievable. And only by playing unfairly. Good thing Devious was her middle name...

Pillywiggin: "Anarchy and deviousness are two different things."

Cathed: "Tickle him!"

Lots of plans are formulated. Mostly to do with cutting his tongue off.

"I'll take a kiss," she said, gazing at his soft, pink mouth.

The Anthropologist: "I'm not sure you want to give me that mental image.... it makes him sound like some sort of FTM transsexual..."

"I need a moment alone with her."

The Anthropologist: "I want a moment alone with her. In this roomful of dancing people, with lesbian sex in the background."

There is talk of the scenes of the Matrix Reloaded with the lesbians making out.

Yes! Except his friends stayed put. Jerks...

The Balance: "She is Sarah Palin. She calls them jerks."

She arched her back, pressing the core of her into his erection. Mmm, erection.

Pillywiggin: "My favourite breakfast."

The Anthropologist: "Really can't imagine how he's bending down to "

His words should have offended her, but she was too caught up in the tide of pleasure that simple embrace elicited to care...

Pillywiggin: "Simple embrace where you're semi-masturbating against his knee."

The Balance is holding his hand in a benediction gesture.

Azrael: "You look like a Greek Orthodox icon."

The Anthropologist: "You're looking like a Teacherite icon."

"Kiss her, Lucien, before I do. Bait or not," Paris called with a laugh. Good-natured as the laugh was, it was still edged with steel.

The Anthropologist: "That doesn't make any sense."

Lucien continued to resist. She could feel his heart beating against his ribs...

The Balance: "...And that is the gospel of the Lord."

Azrael: "Thanks be to the Lord!... Dammit!"

Pillywiggin: "Your years as an altar boy have not been wasted, Balance."

Anya jerked his head down to hers and smashed her lips against his. His mouth instantly opened, and their tongues met in a deep, wet thrust. There was an intense rush of heat through her as the addictive flavor of roses and mint bombarded her.

Azrael (with a bowl of chowder): "Seriously, I'm eating here."

She pressed deeper, needing more of him. All of him. Plumes of fire infused her entire body. She rubbed against his cock, unable to stop herself. He fisted her hair, taking complete control of her mouth.

Pillywiggin: "This woman isn't aware of the other meaning of fisting, is she?"

The Chronicler wonders at the ultra-alpha nature of his kisses despite the fact that Anya is technically the one seducing him.

She'd entered the gates of heaven without taking a single step.

The Anthropologist wants desperately to skim.

His tongue thrust back inside her mouth, their teeth banging together...

The Anthropologist laughs.

Passion and arousal were a hot blaze between them, a raging inferno. Truly, she was on fire...

The Loinfire Club busies itself with the multitude of "fiery" drinks.

"More," he said roughly, palming her breast.

Pillywiggin (in a squeek): "Breasts!"

With one hand, she gripped the hem of his shirt and lifted. With the other, she caressed the ropes of his stomach. Scars. She felt scars and shivered, the jagged tissue wonderfully hot

Pillywiggin: "Liquorice!"

She almost came, his reaction like fuel to an already blazing fire. She did moan.

The Chronicler would be rolling her eyes if she could.

Her eyelids cracked open, and she nearly gasped when she realized they were indeed outside, leaning against the club's exterior in a shadowed corner. He must have flashed them there, the naughty boy. He was the only Lord capable of transporting himself from one location to another with only a thought. A skill she possessed, as well. She only wished he'd flashed them to a bedroom.

Pillywiggin: "This is not the time for exposition."

He raised his darkly haloed head, blue and brown irises intense, before pinning her with another scorching kiss. On and on it continued, until she was willingly, blissfully drowning in him. Branded to her very soul, where she was no longer Anya but Lucien's woman. Lucien's slave.

The Chronicler: "So much for being in control."

No, there would be no flashing, she realized with disappointment...

Cathed: "No flashing for me..."

She wasn't wearing a bra, so the hardened pink tips of her nipples were visible, two little beacons in the night.

There is much laughter and some confusion over what is happening with her breasts since they were previously encased in her corset (made clear with chaffage) but now they're beaconing...

The Balance: "Maybe it was an underbust and her nipples were drooping."

The Chronicler: "She could mean a corset-style top?"

Pillywiggin (pointing at the Anthropologist's glass of smoothie): "Look at that swollen purple shaft of drink!"

Poor, tortured Reyes, keeper of Pain. He liked to cut himself. Once, she'd even seen him jump from the top of the warriors' fortress and luxuriate in the feel of his broken bones.

The Loinfire Club giggles.

"You don't really want him," Reyes said. "We all know that. So tell us what you do want before we force you to tell us."

The Chronicler: "Unpleasant thing to say about your friend."

Lucien stepped in front of her, blocking her from the men. Was he…protecting her? How utterly sweet. Unnecessary, but sweet. Some of her anger evaporated. She wanted to hug him. 

"Leave her alone," Lucien said. "She doesn't matter. She's unimportant."

[...]

A red haze winked over her vision. This must be how my mother always felt. Nearly all the men Dysnomia had taken to bed had hurled insults at the woman when their pleasure had been sated. Easy, they'd said. Not good for anything else.

Cathed (muttered): "Dysnomia?"

(The Chronicler: "Really minor goddess. Daughter of Eris. Not sure why she's seen as an uber-slut here, though. Odd that the author re-imagines her as being hated for being a slut instead of an actual spirit of lawlessness and opposition to civil order.")

Anya knew her mother well, knew Dysnomia had been slave to her lawless nature, as well as simply looking for love. Mated gods, single gods, it hadn't mattered. If they had desired her, she had given herself to them.

Pillywiggin: "Don't backstory in the middle of the scene."

Cathed: "More importantly, don't backstory in the middle of a sex scene."

Pillywiggin: "He thrust in her and that reminded her of the time when she was seven..."

Of all the things she'd expected and yearned for him to say, unimportant hadn't been close. She's mine, maybe. I need her, perhaps. Don't touch my property, definitely.

(The Chronicler: "She'd rather he claim she's his property than be unimportant? From her point of view, she's just some random chick who's humped his leg recently. If she's more meaningful to him, it'd just be weird.")

Azrael (referring to the Balance's style of reading): "I'm sure romance novels delivered at that speed is akin to assault.... I'm going have a lie down."

The Balance is going faster.

Pillywiggin: "He's speaking in tongues! The Holy Spirit is Among Us!"

"You have been following me. I recognized your scent." Strawberries and cream, he'd said earlier, accusation in his voice. Her eyes widened. Pleasure and mortification blended, spearing her all the way to the bone. All along, he'd known she was watching him.

Pillywiggin: "She sucks."

"Why did I get the third degree if you knew who I was? And why, if you knew I was following you, didn't you ask me to show myself?"

The Anthropologist: "Because I wanted an excuse to not take fucking showers."

"Well, no." Much as it would have saved her pride, she suddenly realized she didn't want him thinking she gave her kisses away so easily. "Not yet."

The Chronicler: "You were humping him a moment ago... She's learning to not be a slut..."

She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, her frustration renewed.

The Anthropologist: "Do many people do that when they're frustrated?"

Revulsion? He should be grateful! Hadn't she liberated him from the curse that had forced him to stab his BFF every night?

The Balance: "They use BFF!!"

Pillywiggin: "God! Kill me.... I need a lie down."

Azrael: "You can have the rug. I think I've recovered."

The Anthropologist: "We're lying down on the floor in shifts now, are we?"

The Balance: "About the BFF..."

Yes, damn it. She had. But his look was one she knew well, and one that never failed to raise her hackles. [...]

Because of her mother's amorous past and the widespread expectation that she, with her free-spirited ways, would follow suit, every Greek god in Olympus had projected that same sort of revulsion at her at one time or another. At first, Anya had been hurt by their smug disdain. And for several hundred years, she'd tried the good-girl thing: dressing like a freaking nun, speaking only when spoken to, keeping her gaze downcast. Somehow she'd even squelched her desperate need for disaster. All to earn the respect of beings who would never see her as anything more than a whore.

The Anthropologist: "Is this leading up to an I am not a Slut?"

The Chronicler: "Almost certainly."

One fateful day, when she'd come home from stupid goddess training...

Pillywiggin: "What?"

The Chronicler: "It's training to become a stupid goddess."

Pillywiggin: "1 + 1 = cock!"

...crying because she'd smiled at Ares and that bitch Artemis had called her ta ma de...

Cathed: "The canonical goddesses and gods are being mean to her!"

(The Chronicler wonders what that means. All that google can come up with is the Mandarin – literally meaning 'of his/her mother', a sort of equivalent of 'dammit!' – and that's just weird, since these are classical deities and it's not a direct insult. Unless there's some Roman or Greek equivalent that's eluding google...)

Dysnomia had pulled her aside. Whatever you do, however you act, they are going to judge you harshly, the goddess had said. But we all must be true to our own nature. Acting as anyone other than yourself merely brings you pain and makes you appear ashamed of who and what you are. 

The Chronicler: "She'll soon discover her true self isn't a slut..."

Others will feed off that shame, and soon it will be all that you are. You are a wonderful being, Anya. Be proud of who you are. I am. 

The Chronicler: "Exactly why is she proud of Anya living a lie and against her anarchic instincts?"

From then on, Anya had dressed as sexily as she pleased, talked whenever and however she wanted and refused to look at her feet for any reason other than admiring her strappy stilettos. No longer had she denied her need for disorder. 

Pillywiggin: "Strappy stilettos aren't very disorderly."

The Chronicler: "Surely dressing comfortably and happily would be more anarchic? Instead of conforming to other people's ideas of sexy and attractive? Why is this author fudging the ideas of anarchy/disorderliness with sexiness?"

"You are the daughter of Dysnomia," Reyes continued. "You are the minor goddess of Anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "She probably knows this already."

The Balance: "But we might have forgotten."

She would never be ashamed again.

The Chronicler: "Except for just now."

"There's nothing minor about me." Minor meant unimportant, and she was just as important as the other, "higher" beings, damn it.

The Chronicler: "No, minor usually means 'not having many worshippers' and 'not being quite as powerful,' both of which can be quantitively measured."

But because no one knew who her father was—well, she did, now—she had been relegated as such.

The Chronicler: "You've never read any classical mythology, right? And it's no surprise that her father's Chronos, so stop hiding it."

The Chronicler: "Wait. Just a minute. She's of the Olympian pantheon. The ones who have sex in every conceivable form..."

Pillywiggin: "And some unconceivable...."

Cathed: "Golden shower of light!"

The Anthropologist: "But she wears a thong with angel wings on it."

The Chronicler: "That is really slutty."

Irritation flickered in his dark eyes, but he continued calmly. "As I told you, since your appearance weeks ago I have been researching you, learning everything I can. Long ago, you were imprisoned for murdering an innocent man. Then, a hundred years or so after your confinement, the gods finally agreed on the proper punishment for you. Before they could carry out the verdict, however, you did something no other immortal had ever managed to do. You escaped."

The Balance: "He's backstorying again..."

She didn't try to deny it. "Your research is correct." For the most part.

Pillywiggin: "I'm glad I keep my own wiki entry up to date."

"Guards were placed in every corner to fortify security, as the gods feared the strength of the prison depended on the strength of its keeper. Over time the walls did begin to crumble and crack, which eventually led to the escape of the Titans." 

Gonna blame that on her, was he? Her eyes narrowed. 

"The thing about legends," she said flatly, "is that the truth is often distorted to explain the things that mortals cannot understand."

The Balance: "But they're immortals... so they should be able to understand it."

"You hid here, among humans," Reyes said, ignoring her. Again. "But you weren't content to live in peace even then."

Pillywiggin: "Personification of a concept!"

"You started wars, stole weapons and even ships."

Cathed (gasping): "Even ships!"

Pillywiggin: "She's a shipper!"

There is much gasping.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe it's like being a cattle rustler in a Western?"

"...You caused major fires and others disasters, which in turn led to mass panic and rioting among the humans, and hundreds of people being imprisoned."

Pillywiggin: "Anarchy. Was in the job description."

Warmth suffused her face. Yes, she'd done those things.

The Anthropologist: "Why is she ashamed?"

The Balance: "Maybe it's a good sort of warmth. Like a warm and fuzzy feeling.... oh, no..."

...she'd first come to earth, she hadn't known how to control her rebellious nature. Gods had been able to protect themselves from it, humans hadn't. Besides that, she'd been almost…feral from her years in prison. 

The Anthropologist: "What tells me that she's going spend rest of book angsting about that, isn't she?"

A simple comment from her—you aren't going to let your brother talk to you like that, are you?—and bloody feuds erupted...

The Chronicler: "That's not how feuds work. It's about not letting other people talk to your brother like that. Feuds don't tend to happen within families; they happen between families."

An appearance at court—perhaps laughing at the rulers and their policies—and loyal knights attempted to assassinate their king.

The Chronicler: "So she's single-handedly responsible for all feuds, assassinations and disorder everywhere? And what exactly is her opinion of Iceland's political structure with its systematised feuding?"

Eventually she'd learned that if she fed her need for disorder with little things—petty theft, white lies and the occasional street fight—huge disasters could be averted...

Pillywiggin: "But it's her nature!"

The Chronicler: "So none of the civil wars right now are her fault? By this logic the world should be more orderly now and...well..."

There is some defending of the concept – though not the execution. The Loinfire Club is quite fond of a shit-stirring goddess, however Anya is really getting on our collective nerves.

"I did my homework on you, too," she said softly. "Did you not once destroy cities and kill innocents?" Now Reyes blushed.

The Chronicler: "Honestly!"

Cronus, who had taken over the heavenly throne mere months ago, bringing new rules, new desires and new punishments, was about to arrive... As a bright blue light appeared in front of her, chasing away the darkness and humming with unimaginable power, she flashed away. With a sense of regret she had no business feeling, she left Lucien behind—taking the taste and memory of their kiss with her.

Pillywiggin: "Thank GOD the chapter's over!"

Pillywiggin: "I have brain indigestion... The Loinfire Club has pain."

The Chronicler: "On the bright side, not much to write up."

Pillywiggin: "Only because it's so horribly hard to get through... There's just so much wrong..."

The Anthropologist: "But no incestuous overtones on p. 2!"