“Oh, give me your number,” I said before catching myself.  “I mean, if you want to?  You don’t have to if-“

                He cut me off by laying a finger on my lips.  I smiled under his finger as I read his thoughts and heard what he said aloud.  “I’m happy to trade numbers, Cass.”

                Michelle rolled her eyes as she called the limo to come get us while we moved our party out of the restaurant.  Griff and I swapped numbers before the over stretched crimson car pulled up to the curb.  I let the others get in first, wondering how to ask when to see him again.  I like plans. 

                He seemed to feel the same way.  “I’ve got a show coming up next weekend, want me to get tickets for you?  Oh- and Michelle and Luna, too.”

                “I’d like that,” I said with a wide smile. 

                He lifted my hand while bowing over it to kiss the back of my hand.  “Awesome.  Text me to let me know you got home safe, ok?  I mean, you’re an uber powerful beautiful goddess but a guy worries, you know?”

                “Sure,” I said.  “You text me as well.  I mean, you’re this buff guy with a rainbow of martial arts belts but a goddess worries, you know?”

                He laughed at that.  “Fair enough.  First one home starts the text chain.”

                “Deal.”

                He waved as I slid into the car, a stupid grin on my face.  I knew it.  I knew the girls were going to gush at me but I didn’t care.   Griff thought I was beautiful.

                That good feeling stayed with me through dropping Ceres off at her dorms and all the way into getting ready for bed in my own apartment.  We’d had contractors in to line the walls of my room with dense stone so I didn’t have to hear the thoughts of others in my unguarded moments.  I’d had to have a had wired extension to the wireless put in so I could use my phone in my room, but it was worth it. 

                I fell asleep with my phone on the bed next to me, watching videos of the band Griff was in on YouTube. 

                My next moment of awareness of in a place of cool stone, frigid water and the smell of earth undisturbed by the passage of time.  I stood on a path that led across a bridge over a vast chasm and what lay on the other side of the bridge…

                Him.

                Slumbering, the vast cavern a tomb for his sleeping self, wings curled along his back as he laid on his side.   Eyes larger than I was tall were closed tight against the passage of time.  It meant different things to him than it did to me.

                I stepped onto the bridge and felt through the bare soles of my feet who it was.  It was one who had rejected me in all forms when I was a child seeking connection.  I stepped back onto my side of the bridge with a scowl.  “I’m not crossing you, and you damn well know why.”

                “You sought a connection beyond genetics,” the bridge told me softly.  “You hate me.”

                “And you me.”

                “True,” she acknowledged.  “They did things to me they did not do to you or the others.”

                “They didn’t hurt Gwen like they did you and you still liked her,” I pointed out.  I was here, in front of my genetic father for the first time in my existence and I was wasting it arguing with her.  I must be a special kind of stubborn.

                “You get that from me,” she thought with a chuckle.  “You get many things from me, I see.”

                “Well, I am the improved second edition,” I told her. 

                “Didn’t even get your own number though, little #40.2.”

                “At least I didn’t have to abandon my baby to escape, #40.”

                “You were never my baby.”

                “No shit,” I growled back.  “Just an egg they stole from you and played with before sticking in some woman who took money to donate her womb.”

                “All but #40.1 and #42 were born that way,” #40 pointed out.

                “Yeah, Gwen’s special because her creator was also her womb bearer,” I grumbled.  “Wish the bitch had died in childbirth like the others did.”

                “Don’t we all,” #40 said, agreeing with me.  It was a first that I knew of.  She laughed at that.  “No, we agree on other things.  We both love Gwen.”

                  “The company you keep does not,” I pointed out, glaring at the sleeping behemoth. 

                “She is poorly mannered,” a voice boomed in my skull, driving me to my knees.

                “Turn it the fuck down, I’m psychic for fucks sake, I can hear you,” I howled, eyes blazing with black flames as I shielded myself. 

                “Indeed,” the vast one said, opening a single eye to observe me directly.  “That is not a common skill among my offspring.”

                “Zothie’s psychic,” I pointed out.

                “He’s useless,” our father growled, making the bridge tremble. 

                I could feel her pain over sustaining a connection in the face of his ire and hate her though I did, I didn’t want her in pain.  “He has his uses to me but that aside, what do you want, oh Dread Daddio?”

                The epithet caught him for a moment as he pulled the meaning from my skull with the delicacy of a five year old destroying a slice of cake.  I cried out but he ignored my pain as he tried to dig deeper.

                “Why can I not see all that you are?”

                “Cause you’re-“ gasp “-not fucking-“ oh gasp “supposed to,” I hissed around the throbbing pain as I fought to keep the core of myself private.  I summoned up all that I had gained from Grandmother Shub Niggurath, all that Celestine and Zoth O’mmog had taught me and used it to shield my mind. 

                “I sense my mother’s powers in you,” he growled.  “You should not be connected to her.”

                “She likes me well enough,” I said as I slammed the last of my shields up.  Relief flooded through me as I realized he couldn’t break my shielding, not like this.

                “Were you here, he could,” #40 thought to me, quick and quietly. 

                “She is fickle,” our Dread Father informed me, as if I hadn’t figured that out already.  “Come to me, Psyche.  Join me as your sister-mother, #40, has.”

                “Gonna take a pass on that one,” I told him, using my tendrils to force myself to my feet.  Be damned if I did this on my knees.  “You had your chance to save me.  To bring me to your side.  But you fucking left me there to rot, just like your damned bridge did.”

                “If you could not free yourself, you wouldn’t be worthy of standing by my side.”

                “Yeah right,” I scoffed. 

                His wings ruffled, making the earth beneath me shake as he rattled the cavern.  The open eye narrowed dangerously at me.  “I am right.”

                “No, I mean you don’t fucking know anything by judging if someone can break out of operant conditioning and a life of imprisonment,” I told him, raising my chin to meet his glare with one of my own.  “You ain’t exactly walking around feely either, buster.”

                He roared at that, the audible and psychic volume making me scream out in pain.  The bridge between us, formed by #40’s psyche, began to waiver as if in pain.  The cavern seemed less solid as it waivered and I took a gamble.

                I struck at the bridge with all I had and a whispered, “I’m sorry.”

                #40 shrieked as I did the psychic equivalent of launching the Lance of Longinus up her back end, the bridge falling apart visually as the connection she formed between our father and me frayed. 

                “Next time you want to chat, send a damned friend request,” I hissed before hitting her again.  The dream shattered around me, leaving me to fall through a void and back into my warm bed. 

                Dread Daddio knew I existed.  Not good.

                He also knew that I wasn’t on his side and was teamed up with Zoth O’mmog.  And if #40 told him we were on Gwen’s side, it could go badly for both of us.  We weren’t strong enough to stand against him, not yet.