Free Medusa's Desire (The Fate of Eros #1) (The Fate of Eros Series) by E.B. Black Page B

who still possessed trinkets. Medusa was barely able to escape with her life as they beat one of her wings to the point where the top was broken. She flew crookedly and they chased her.
    The piles of riches they held were ransacked. Their caves were no longer safe to near: ghosts wandered around the entrances and waited for them to return. Soon they had taken back control of all their treasure, but they still continued to harass the girls out of desire for revenge.
    The sisters were forced to sleep in shifts to keep an eye out for any sign of attack and alert the others so they could run away in time.
    "How dare those ghosts do this to us!" Stheno paced as she spoke to Medusa one day. "They've taken our homes!"
    "I told you not to mess with them. Now they're fighting back and we deserve it."
    Euryale shoved Medusa. "Whose side are you on anyway? You haven't been acting like a sister to us."
    "I need to teach those ghosts a lesson," Stheno said. "I'm going to steal some more of the coins and take back control of one of our caves. I'll show them that they're at our mercy. Not the other way around."
    Euryale nodded her head. "I'll come with you."
    "Please don't." Medusa's stomach tied up in knots. "If we leave them alone, this whole thing will blow over eventually."
    "The ghosts respect Charon because he blasts them with his eyes," Stheno said. "It takes violence to teach them their place."
    "No one listens to someone they love. They listen to those they are frightened by. You have so much to learn, dear sister." Euryale pat the snakes on Medusa's head.
    The two flew away. Medusa swore for a minute. She didn't want to get messed up in their drama, but she couldn't just abandon them, even if they were doing something stupid. They were all she had left.
    She stroked the baby in her belly. Maybe they'd be less reckless if they knew her condition, but sometimes she didn't believe a baby could be in there and doubted they'd listen to her. Her belly stayed relatively small. The only indications that there was a living person inside her were the tiny movements she felt, mostly at night.
    When Medusa arrived, Stheno and Euryale were already inside the cave. She could hear shouting and pieces of the cave were falling off. It could collapse. She would have charged inside if she didn't already know her sisters were immortal and couldn't die.
    Euryale flew out of the cave first, carrying nothing, but looking wide-eyed and terrified. She almost ran into Medusa who was fluttering her wings in the air nearby. She hadn't seen her.
    Stheno came charging after her. Her arms were full, but the weight of the coins prevented her from lifting off to her full potential. She was overpowered by the ghosts and beaten until she dropped everything. The coins were covered in her blood and once it was safe, Medusa and Euryale retrieved her twisted and rapidly breathing form.
    Medusa was tired of running. This whole thing was a losing battle because the ghosts weren't restrained by physical limitations like the three of them were.
    Euryale agreed to watch over Stheno while Medusa spied on them from far above. She wasn't sure what she could do to stop this whole thing. It had escalated too far.
    Some of the ghosts shouted and ran from the group. Medusa flew a little closer to see what was happening and noticed some of the ghosts changing. Their bodies thickened until they looked as if they had skin. Their eyes bulged and the veins beneath their thin, white flaky limbs swelled. They looked as if they were mutated humans.
    What was happening? Medusa noticed the bright red color on some of the coins. Because the money had been buried with the ghosts, they had been able to swallow the blood that spilled on top of it and it was transforming them.
    When Charon arrived, they tried to pay him, but he wouldn't accept their money. He didn't believe that they were dead because they'd grown flesh again. They screamed and begged as the other ghosts were slowly rowed