For a giant monster with grayish green skin and flaming hair, he even looked like McCrum’s. With colorful scraps of fabric from pieces of furniture and tapestries making up his clothes,and gold and jewels that had sat in the store’s display for years, decorating his ears, wrists, throat and fingers.
Everything about him was a mockery of what I’d held dear. That store, the building, the apartment, all of it. It had been the only thing keeping me alive.
My precious home had transformed into something unrecognizable, something that wanted to hurt me.
Angry tears burned my eyes. “Are you going to kill me? If you are, can you get it fucking over with?”
“Oh, I’m going to kill you alright,Baeg Trua.”
Baeg Trua? I knew enough Irish to know what that meant. “Little Misfortune?”
Balor nodded, a cruel grin twisting his mouth. “Or, if ya get down to the scrap of it, little pity. Fittin’, no?”
He crouched to my eye level, the joints in his knees cracking from the shifting brunt of his muscular form. “Yer so small and pitiful. I could crush yer bones by breathing on ye too hard.”
The rage boiling beneath my skin had me lifting my chin. “That’s rich. What are you, eight feet tops? Aren’t you supposed to be king of the giants or some shit?”
“Yer looking at my weakest form.” There was an electric hatred in his bi-colored glare that ignited my veins. “Look me in my evil eye, wee one.”
I don’t know what compelled me to do what he said, but I did. There had always been something hypnotic about that topaz. With its cracked surface, it leaked glittering magical energy that whirled around him like glowing ash.
“I am going to kill ya. It’s nothin’ personal. But yer family held me prisoner for centuries. Using the giant king’s magic for something as lowly as that damn shop. I vowed a long time ago that I’d end yer bloodline as revenge.”
“So get it fucking over with then,” I hissed.
The giant’s green eye narrowed into a smoldering slit. “Oh, no, wee one. I’m going to savor this. But, I will give ya this… I’ll let ya pick how I do it.”
“Pick, why?”
“You kept me company in those final days of my curse, and you took care of Gilly.”
Gilly? Why would an evil monster like him care about an old shop cat?
“And you gave me the first look I’ve had at a woman in ages…”
I blinked. What was he talking about?
Ohfuck.
I’d been half out of my mind with grief, talking to the topaz and pretending he was a real person. I’d jokingly asked it for fashion advice, pretending Balor really was looking back at me. Only it wasn’t a joke. I had stood up on that chair in nothing but thin cotton panties.
“So, my beautiful wee Maeve gets to pick how she dies. Option one…” He held up a thick finger. “I kill you with a single look, like I did to this one.”
He nudged a fragment of Conor’s skull with the toe of his boot. “A single touch will do it too. I can’t touch humans without burnin’ them.”
“B–burn?” I swallowed.
“Oh, Aye. It will hurt like the Hells.” Balor’s grin stretched to his gold-cuffed ears. “The most pain you can imagine, all yer nerves screamin’ at once. Your eyes will melt in yer head, yer skin will blister and every beat that wee heart makes will be more excruciatin’ until the last. It won’t take long, but it will feel like an eternity.”
All the oxygen in my lungs vanished. “What’s option two?”
“I could grow into my true form. So tall I’d tower over this entire city.”
“So what? You’ll grind up my bones into jam or whatever giants get off on?”
The giant’s lips thinned, unamused. “Yer Maeve McCrum. Last of the bloodline who destroyed my life. Ya need a more original death than that. Do ya have any idea how big I can get?”
Balor leaned toward me, and the warmth of his fire had me shrinking against the blessedly cool alley wall. “My cock alone could crush you, that’s how big I can get. I’ll place you in a big tub, so I can hold ya in my hand. Then I’ll pleasure myself until yer swimmin’ in me.”
