Love Croakies by Sam Cheever (the kiss of deception read online .txt) 📕

on a negative shake. “I’m simply trying to cut this as short as possible. Perhaps I might even escape with my life.”

I sighed. You squash and threaten a guy one…or a few…times and you get a rep. So unfair. “I need to know everything you can tell me about the love serum and Cupid.”

“Which one?” he asked unhelpfully.

“Which one what?” I responded.

It was his turn to sigh. “As would be expected for a family whose focus is on love, there have been thousands of members of the Cupid clan throughout history. To my knowledge, only two are still active. Though ‘active’ is a stretch for one of them. Lovelace Cupid is a dour, unhappy traditionalist whose every thought pertains to keeping up appearances. History hasn’t represented him well. He seems to be kind of a feckless creature, not good at anything he tries. While his brother, a Cupid who reportedly gave himself over to his darker, more demonic side with breathless abandon, is all about shaking up the status quo. The two brothers…”

“Half or full,” I interrupted.

Doctor Osvald’s full lips tightened with irritation. “Full of course.”

I frowned. “But I thought demigods rarely shared both parents.”

The head shifted slightly under what was presumably a shrug, though all I could see was the helmeted, disembodied head. The Cupids came from a rare pairing. Mythology is stingy on the details of Ares’ pairing with Amore Cupid. I, of course, am one of the few historians who took the time to dig into the mountains of inconsequential information about the Cupids to get to the meat of it. From all accounts, Amore was a demon princess of great beauty and grace. Ares was quite smitten with the creature and stayed with her for several centuries. They were reputed to have had a dozen children together. Of that dozen, seven were daughters.

“Of the five sons, only three were interested in pursuing the Cupid family business.”

“Family business?” I asked, pretty sure I knew but wanting to make sure.

“Love. You see, the Cupids have been love demons for millennia.” He frowned. “Their idea of love and current day’s accepted notions of it were vastly different, of course. For the demonic Cupids, love was all about control and power. Their type of love was destructive to the victim and caused great strife in the form of wars.”

I nodded. “The serum was theirs?”

“Yes.” He shook his head, lips tight. “Nasty stuff. It should have been destroyed Millennia ago.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Historians. Singularly short-sighted people. They refuse to see the potential for great damage inherent in some historical objects. Particularly magical ones.”

“So what happened? How did Cupid begin to signify real love over the tyrannical kind.”

He gave me an assessing look. “That’s actually a very astute question, Naida keeper. Imagine my surprise.”

I glared at him. “Ha.”

Looking pleased with himself, Osvald continued with his story. “As I mentioned, Ares loved Amore to distraction. It was an all-encompassing, unselfish love which, as you can well imagine, was just as rare for Ares as it was for a demonic love princess. Fortunately for the smitten god, Amore shared his passion. The magic their shared love created sparked a new path for the Cupid dynasty.”

I held up a hand. “Wait, you’re telling me that, just because Amore and Ares loved each other, the entire Cupid clan gave up their cynical war for power and control?”

Osvald’s laugh was bitter. “Of course not. Amore and Ares had to kill them all.”

I winced. “Even their children?”

“Don’t be daft,” he told me. “They convinced all the daughters their destinies lay elsewhere. Most of the girls, who took after their father anyway, hadn’t been huge proponents of joining the family business. They were happy to take their riches and royal titles and go out into the world in search of their own love and happiness. Two of the boys, Lovelace and Denzel, were initially on board with the change.”

“And the other three sons?” I asked.

“Eaten by a giant slug monster on a hunting trip in the fifth circle. Wretched creatures slug monsters.”

I swallowed hard. Alrighty then. “Fifth circle, huh?” I half thought he was pulling my leg.

Seemingly oblivious to the doubt in my voice, Osvald nodded. “It was a huge scandal at the time. Ares and Amore went on a killing spree on the fifth, killing all the slug monsters they could find. They emerged from the deadly forests in the core of the fifth after twenty days, pale, starving, and covered in slug gore. Hideous.” Osvald’s disembodied head shook from side to side. “But, there you have it. The Cupid history that mythology doesn’t reveal.”

I nodded absently. “So tell me about the serum.”

“Horrific stuff. Amore’s great uncle Seymore Bastion Cupid developed it as entertainment. He enjoyed spreading it through hapless human villages and watching them tear each other part in the name of love.” He shuddered.

“How did it end up in the vault at Croakies?”

“You might ask Keeper Bandy Joe Barrows about that. I believe he was the first keeper to be tasked with guardianship of the serum.”

Bandy Joe had been the Keeper who gave Croakies its strange name. Along with the tatty sign depicting an ugly, spotted frog that hung outside the store, he’d created a magical entity that could not be changed by any means. Legal or magical. When I’d taken over the store, I’d tried to legally change its name and put up a new sign. My efforts had failed in the end. The legal name-change paperwork reverted the moniker to Croakies within hours every time I tried, and the new sign quickly morphed back into the ugly frog sign.

Joe loved frogs. He still had a giant aquarium of them in another dimension, where he continued to serve as KoA in that plane’s own version of Croakies.

“I do know how it was taken out of circulation,” Osvald continued, seemingly oblivious to my distracted thoughts. “Interestingly enough, it was one of Ares and Amore’s daughters who removed it from her uncle’s evil clutches. Mythology says she was