Page 4 of Zodiac Demons

I took back all sympathy or illusions of her being a good mother. This woman had been trying to fuck me up for life from the very beginning.

“Did you struggle to not eat me?” I was flabbergasted. There was no coming back from this. Lamia was literally a serpent demon who ate babies, and I had been a baby living in her house. No part of this was reasonable.

“Of course not. The child-eating thing was just a nasty rumor that Hera spread.” She waved it off dismissively. “The gods and goddesses back home basically accused anyone they didn’t like of eating infants. It was like ‘Oh, my husband stepped out on me? Yeah well, his mistress eats babies!’ It was the most bizarre thing. My dear friend Cronus never got over the slander.”

“So you never ate even one, single baby?” I gave her a side-eye.

“Well, maybe one…” She held a straight face, and I was waiting for it to break and tell me she was joking. “Or two?” Still steady. We stared in silent stalemate for three solid minutes, before she started full belly laughing. “The look on your face is priceless.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture. Great. That improved this situation. “No, not even one. I’m a demonic, carnivorous serpent. I only eat grown men, I promise.” She managed to get out between bouts of giggles.

She did not backpedal on that one, however, and I didn’t want any more clarification if it was true. Though, to her credit, Marcus had also killed people because of his monster side, which he openly admitted, and I didn’t really blame him for it either. Not sure what that says about me. I guess Mom did a great job of raising me to be empathetic and nonjudgmental of murderers.

Yay. So progressive.

Whatever. Men probably deserved to be eaten by women back then. I wasn’t sure a solid third of them didn’t deserve it today.

Only a third of them though. Considering I was sleeping with three different guys lately, and two of them were super sweet, and one was a stubborn asshole, I had real life statistics to back this up.

“So how did you manage to have me then? Was it because you said dad was an Omega? Was he able to get you pregnant despite everything?” This was legitimately important considering I’d just… uh… met an Omega.

She stopped giggling and switched immediately to a frown. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I don’t want to go into all of the gory details, because it was… rather gory…” Please don’t. “But part of why I thought it was possible that you weren’t fully a part of me was because the ritual involved a witch, a human’s womb, my blood, and an Omega’s se—your father’s DNA contribution.” The fact that she thought noting my father produced semen was somehow the most disturbing and objectionable part of this explanation was comical. But also correct. I didn’t ever need the words “Daddy’s seed” anywhere in my brain of brains. “Implanting the womb in my body and infusing it with my DNA, so I could create you from my own magic, was a risk, and there was no guarantee that you would be fully, or at all. my blood in such a complex surrogate-like ritual.” She paused, then looked me up and down. “Can you shift?”

“I don’t really know how to,” I mumbled. “One of my friends has been trying to teach me, but this is all I’ve really figured out how to do.” I met her gaze and concentrated until I maybe, hopefully turned my eyes all snake-like.

Mother smiled, then used one finger to remove her contact, revealing her own snake-eyes. “I’m practically blind without these, but since I’m a full blooded species and not a shifter, I have to use cloaking contacts and rings.” She held up her hand, where she wore the same ring she’d worn my whole life. “I’d be so curious if you can take on something similar to my true form. You’ll have to let me know once you figure out how to fully shift.”

I could oddly imagine my entire lower body being that of a serpent, yet it was near impossible for me to see Mom that way, so I tried not to think about it further.

Not the least of which because there was one more thing in particular that had me confused. “So if you used a human’s womb, and you didn’t have one yourself… was the egg human?” Was it possible that I was still at least a little bit human?

“Debatably.” She tilted her head to the side as she considered it. “Technically it was a former human’s womb, as a regular one hadn’t survived when we tried it the first time.” My next question should have been ‘how many humans did you guys harvest exactly, and did you also eat them after? But I didn’t actually want to know that, and we weren’t asking questions we didn’t want the answer to right now. “We harvested the womb from a newly converted witch, who had completed the ritual to sell her soul to the Triple Goddess, so she had enough power to immortalize her flesh to help it survive my internal ecosystem, but not so much that it would overwhelm the fetus. The hope was to pass on my DNA, and a full blooded, ancient witch would have been far too fortified to allow my body to interfere.”

“I see…” Not sure what to say to that. It sounded like legitimate monster shit, and that was a lot of gibberish that would be going right over my head.

“In the end though, it was always possible that all of this magic could have canceled itself out, or you could have been a witch and taken on neither your father’s nor my DNA, all of which would make you closer to a human than I was. But it appears that you simply received all of our collective gifts instead, which is delightful, don’t you think?”

“Does that mean I’m technically… uh… three species?” I scrunched my nose.

“Technically, I suppose. Though it’s unlikely you have much witch magic in you. But then again, if you’ve never tried to cast spells, I couldn’t say for sure that you don’t.” She shrugged, because that wasn’t a big deal at all.

“Huh, well imagine that.” I ran out of words and opted to idly eat french fries instead of speaking. Here I was ready for Mom to just tell me she was a magic thing, and dad was a magic thing, and they banged and produced another magic thing, and they were just grossly negligent in telling me nothing.

I was not going to guess that mom was an ancient serpent demon as old as time, who harvested organs to birth me in a complicated blood ritual so that my dad could live his picket fence dreams. Don’t even get me started on their age gap. I thought Dad was older than Mom my whole life, and now it turns out she’s something to the tune of 4550 years his elder.

I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad about crushing on Adrian when he only had twelve years on me. That was about as long as it took for Mom to blink.

We sat in awkward silence for way too long, not sure where the conversation could even go from here.

“So now that that’s out of the way,” Mom started, finally breaking the tension, “why don’t we talk about your semester? I met your Physics professor yesterday.” My whole face blanched. “I’d love to hear how your studies have been going.”

“When did you meet Dr. Karras?” It was a wonder I said that without my voice shaking.

“Well, it’s actually a funny story.” I doubt that there’s anything funny about Adrian Karras. “I ran into him in the teacher’s lounge yesterday while I was catching up with some old friends.” Oh, so right after we nearly fucked on my desk. Cool, cool. Excellent. “He was actually one of my students back in the day. He was so talented at math as a child, and he would stay after school or spend lunches with me for extra tutoring. He was insatiable. If you can believe it, he was already doing basic Algebra in third grade.” My mother knew Adrian when he was a child. My mother tutored Adrian when he was a child. My mother knew the Incubus who pounded me into a lunchroom table… “I can only imagine he’s become a wonderful teacher himself. He was such a compassionate kid.”

I full blown laughed or scoffed or choked or… something. I made a very loud, very disturbing noise for sure.

“Oh wow, that’s unexpected.” I said flatly. “He’s definitely very passionate about… physics.” I used my sandwich as an excuse to not elaborate. I wanted her to just keep telling me how great Adrian was, because this was dangerous territory.

“He’s actually a Zodiac Shifter, too.” She was smiling so sweetly as she started on the part of the conversation that could only end in tragedy. “Well, a hybrid shifter. You and him actually have a lot in common, so he would be a good person to lean on for your major if you get stuck, and for better understanding being a zodiac hybrid shifter, since I don’t have that experience myself. His father was an Incubus, I believe…” She trailed off, and I could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she started piecing things together. “You told me that you met an Incubus… But you also said you had mate marks…”