Struggle & Strife
Mythverse (Book 4)
Apparently when you cause the apocalypse, it’s your job to fix it.
Turns out that killing a god kind of wreaks havoc on the world. Like, our world.
So yeah, that’s my bad.
But I’m trying to fix it.
All of Zeus’ powers went into ten different teenagers, and they’ve got to compete to see who gets to take his place and put everything— and everyone— back into their places. It’s my job to hunt down and mentor the last contestant, a tougher-than-lacquered-nails beauty queen from Wisconsin.
Brandee Jean picked up Zeus’ super strength after getting struck by lightning, which should be helpful to her in the competition. But the others got powers, too. Flying. Teleportation. Virility. Wisdom.
Now she’ll have to attend Amazon Academy, where she'll take classes and compete in different tasks. At the end of it - winner takes all. The losers give up their powers, while the winner becomes a god and an official Amazon Princess.
Now that's a crown worth competing for.
This young adult magic academy fantasy novel features: non-stop action, lots of cute boys, a hero who's a total Darcy, and tons of plot twists to keep the pages turning.
Previously published as Amazon Princess.
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Excerpt:
I have visited actual, literal hell. Wisconsin is way worse.
It’s not completely Wisconsin’s fault, I guess. Maybe it was nicer before the end of the world. And the earthquakes. And the floods. I guess Boston fell into the ocean, and California is now an island. Also, it’s all happening because of me. I made a huge mistake that kind-of-sort-of ushered in the apocalypse.
And now I’ve got to fix it.
Apparently, the way I do that is by finding a girl by the name of Brandee Jean. I’ve been scouring the Midwest, flying the not-so-friendly skies in my dragon form, trying to find this girl. At first, people took shots at me. One super serious guy in Indiana must’ve been some sort of prepper, because he spotted me in the sky and came back out into his yard with a rocket launcher.
That’s when I decided Brandee Jean probably wasn’t in Indiana.
Luckily, my sister Mavis has a shifter form that’s a little more acceptable to humans. She’s a housecat, and she recently followed the gossip coming out of a fae biker gang—yes, all the supernaturals have come out to play in the human world (also kind of my fault).
It’s my mess to clean up, after all. Finding her is the first step. And luckily, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be very difficult. I mean, Brandee Jean kind of stands out, even from the air. Having that many Swarovski crystals on a ball gown will do that. Also, wearing a ballgown in the middle of the end of the world while on a grocery run.
I maintain my soaring altitude, keeping an eye on Brandee Jean’s old beat-to-crap pickup truck. I guess she must spend all of her money on dresses, not transportation. A few minutes later I see her cart a load of Quik-Powder out to the truck. It’s an all-purpose protein powder that the government started pumping out as soon as the food supply collapsed.
Brandee tosses her baseball bat—apparently her weapon of choice—into the back of her truck to load up groceries, and that’s when I descend, shifting into my human form as soon as my feet hit the ground. I approach her cautiously and quietly. I’ve seen what she can do, and I know that the ballgown only makes her look delicate. There’s insane strength in that award-winning body.
“Brandee Jean?” I ask.
She spins, bat back in her hands, raised and ready to strike, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you want?”
I put my hands up in the air, studying her face. She really is beautiful, with the kind of cheekbones people pay for, and perfectly formed eyebrows. The crystals on her dress hug her slim waist, and accentuate her bust, which is most definitely not slim.
“My name is Edie,” I tell her. “And I’m here to take you to Amazon Academy.”
“Ha!” She barks out a laugh, and tosses the bat into the passenger seat. “Is that what they’re calling it now? An academy?” She puts air quotes around the last word, her pouty lips twisted into a sneer. “Girl, they already tried to get me into porn a long ass time ago, and I told them these titties might be made for television, but you’ll never see them there.”
“Porn? What?” I’m so confused, then I see her eyes roving over my outfit. I’m still wearing my Mount Olympus Academy uniform, and I guess I can understand where she made the jump to Catholic school-girl porn.
“No, wait. Listen,” I try again. “It’s not like that. I just don’t have any other clothes right now.”
“Oh, tell me!” Brandee suddenly becomes animated, like we’re buddies talking shop. “This here getup cost me an arm and a leg. That’s kinda a joke, but also kinda not. Last week, I totally saw Miss Teen Dairy Queen on the side of the road. She was missing her left leg and had bled out. I tried real hard to not think about how that might’ve happened. You know she had those long legs insured for something like a hundred grand a piece? Seems unfair the insurance won’t be paying out on them suckers.”
I can’t keep up, my head is spinning, and my arms have dropped to my sides as I stare, open-mouthed at this girl who has no idea the enormity of the power she has inherited.
“I guess a lotta things ain’t fair these days,” she goes on, her mouth slipping into a frown again. “But that doesn’t mean I’m interested in making any sex tapes. So you tell your boss, or your brother, or your momma or whoever sent you out here, that I’m not interested, and to stop asking.”
“Wait a minute,” I say, but Brandee Jean is on a roll and she keeps talking right over me.
“You’re becoming a real pain in my ass. And it’s an award-winning ass. Do you know Carl?”
“Wait, what?” I ask, lost again.
“Carl,” she thumbs over her shoulder back at the Piggly Wiggly. “Works in there. Bandits killed his dad a few months back. He’s got a machine gun right there by the register and I will load you up with lead if I see you again, kay? You’re a real pretty girl, you know that?”
“I...” I don’t know what to say. We’ve gone from death threats to compliments in the same breath.
“Maybe you could’ve done the pageant circuit, if you wanted,” she goes on, her gaze sweeping me top to bottom. “We’d need to take care of those split ends, maybe put a little more in your bra. You know I saw a dragon last week?”
“A dragon?” I repeat. At least I know she pays enough attention to have spotted me before.
“Yep,” she confirms. “The world is a messed-up place now. Six months ago, I would’ve thought I was taking too many diet pills. Or that I just needed a Lunesta and a good long nap. Now, though, a dragon doesn’t even count as the weirdest thing I’ve seen lately. Before the news went out, there were reports that vampires are real. And I swear, last month I saw a girl change into a cat and run off.”
I could tell her that vampires are definitely real. I’ve got one for a boyfriend, and that housecat was probably Mavis, keeping tabs on Brandee Jean. I’m about to tell her that, but she swings up into the truck, and revs the engine, letting blue exhaust belch into my face.
“Get out of your line of work, girl,” she yells at me, then peels out, leaving two black ribbons of burnt rubber behind her.
That did not go down the way it was supposed to. I have battled gods and been in full-fledged battles with monsters, but I have never, ever been as flummoxed as that human made me. Okay, I guess it’s time to pull out the big guns. I shift into my dragon form, and fly low, tailing Brandee’s truck to her home on Colby Court. I’m so low I can see her reflection in the rearview mirror, and I don’t get any mixed messages from the double bird she flips me, either.
Brandee parks and starts unloading her groceries. I land and shift, approaching her on foot once again.
“Brandee, wait,” I call, and she turns, shading her eyes against the dying sun.
“Seriously? What did I tell you? And how did you get here so fast?”
“I flew,” I tell her. “And you really didn’t need to flip me off.”
“What in the seven pageant hells are you talking about?” she asks. “And think hard about your answer because circle two is the swimsuit competition.”
I shift partially, allowing purple wings to sprout out of my back.
“Shit!” She jumps backward, the crystals on her dress scratching the paint of her truck. “You’re the dragon?”
“Are you ready to listen now?”
“Sure,” Brandee Jean agrees, after considering it for a second. “But only if you help me get the groceries inside. My mama taught me that whatever else is going on, keep your priorities on track. Right now my priorities are moving this Quik Powder into the house before anyone spots us.”
“And no shoes in the house,” she calls over her shoulder. I shoulder a hefty box of Quick Powder, and stagger a little under the weight, making note of how easily Brandee Jean glides even carrying three. We go inside and she makes us both a glass of it, which I can’t really wave aside without being rude. I’d rather eat a whole hog raw, but that might offend my host.
“Drink up,” she tells me. “That stuff’s precious.”
I take a hesitant sip as she eyeballs me over the rim of her own glass. “So,” she says, “What do you want with me?”
“Well, here’s the thing—god is dead.”
“Oh no, are you one of those end-of-the-worlders?” She shakes her head. “I’m not joining your dragon cult and sacrificing myself to the flames, or whatever it is you weirdos do. Sorry, but I already got plans to join this ‘we keep girls in cages’ group next time they come through town recruiting.”
I frown. “You want to join a group that plans to put you in a cage?”
“Long story, I’d rather not get into it right now. So if your group is looking for some sucker to feed one of their organs to a warlock who promises to roll back time, well sorry, but I’m not voluntarily giving any of them up. Mostly because one year, Miss North County Bee Hive Queen donated a kidney, faked appendicitis, and had her uterus removed, all in an effort to lose a few pounds. Her scars totally showed during the bikini competition though.” Brandee Jean shakes her head. “Not worth it.”
“There are no warlocks who can turn back time,” I explain patiently. Then amend the statement in case I’m lying. “Probably. Not that I know of, anyway. We’ve gotten off course. Let me start again. A god is dead. Zeus, to be exact.”
“The lightning bolt guy?”
“Yes. Exactly.” It’s a relief that she knows who Mr. Zee is, or was. “That’s one less thing I have to explain.”
“No…I think you still got a lot to explain,” Brandee Jean says, wiping away her Quick Powder mustache. “But let’s start with Zeus. You’re telling me he’s real and also that he’s now dead. And I’m…what? His long-lost daughter set to inherit everything he left behind?”
“Actually…” I hesitate and I see laughter in BJ’s eyes. This girl is messing with me. “I’m his long-lost daughter. After Zeus died, things went to Hades overnight. A bunch of the minor gods went haywire without anybody in charge. There were crazy storms. Earthquakes. Hurricanes. Tornadoes.”
“I noticed,” BJ says. “Here in Wisconsin we had a blizzard in August. Also, you know, vampires.” She takes another gulp of her drink and then side-eyes me. “And I did see a girl turn into a housecat.”
“That was my sister, Mavis,” I explain. “With all the chaos in the world, many of us supernatural creatures have been doing what we can to restore the balance. Mavis has been keeping an eye on you for a while.”
Her side eye still stands. “Because?”
“We’re pretty sure some of Zeus’s powers went to you when he died. Notice anything weird lately?”
“Oh, I don’t know, like maybe that time I got struck by lightning and it didn’t kill me?”
I lean back in my chair, drink forgotten. “Can you I lean back in my chair, drink forgotten. “Can you walk me through exactly what happened?”
“I was out looking for Bethany Ully—she’s Miss All-Midwest Body Butter. I had a bone to pick with her, on account of I found out she’d been using body wraps to shed some pounds.”
“Is that illegal in a pageant?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“No, but we’d all made a pact that we were playing it straight for the summer. Strictly self-starving. But I spotted Bethany’s name on the sign-in sheet at the Skinned and Tanned—that’s a local business that used to do real well around here. The husband is a taxidermist and the wife is a cosmetologist.”
“So they’re both into preservation,” I say, with a wry smile.
“Anyway,” she says, waving her hand, “I went in for my bi-weekly tanning bed bake and that’s when I saw her big loopy handwriting three slots above mine. She’d been in for a wrap appointment earlier that day.” She shakes her head, still peeved about it. “Beth didn’t even bother covering her tracks. You can be shady or you can be sloppy, but not both. At least that’s what my mama taught me. As a friend, I decided to deliver that message to her in person.”
“Just a friendly chat?” I ask, raising my eyebrows and remembering her threat to machine gun me in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.
“Not hardly. I was gonna rip out every single one of her new extensions. I stopped home before paying her a visit. I wanted to wear my crown from the Miss Street & Sanitation competition, just to remind her what’s what. I was cutting across the high school soccer fields when the first storm whipped up.”
“Let me guess,” I interrupt. “The sky went from bright blue to darkest black in an instant?” This moment is familiar to me. It’s when I killed Zee. Or maybe a few minutes after. I got a few minutes to savor my victory at least before I realized the fresh hell I’d accidentally unleashed.
“Out. Of. Nowhere,” she confirms. “I made a run for it, but I might as well have had a lightning rod on my head. Took all of three steps before—WHAM! Just like that I was on my ass, smelling like a Pop Tart that’s been in the toaster too long.”
“And…?” I prompt her. “Did you notice anything after the lightning strike? Anything unusual?”
“Like the fact that I can deadlift three hundred times my own body weight?” She asks, chugging down what’s left of Quik Powder. “It took me a few weeks to figure that out. At first I was just happy to have survived that lightning strike. Then all the social fabric busted wide open—kinda like when Jenny May Malone dropped her baton at the third annual Miss Midwest Pure Pork Princess and the seams on her dress couldn’t continue hiding her five months along baby belly. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Uh-huh.” I’ve learned to just let Brandee keep going. And she does, with zero prompting.
“I can’t remember much of the dark days right after that. Mama was real low and I didn’t see the point of pulling her out of it. But then one night she woke me at 3 a.m., all hopped up on something that made the smile on her face look all painful and stretched out. Mama said she’d had a vision that mani-pedis would help pull us through the apocalypse. By the time I pulled on the dress Mama insisted I wear, she was passed out cold. But I figured I’d go and get the nail polishes Mama wanted anyway. Figured it might keep Mama from sinking back down in the darkness…and taking me with her.
“I was picking my way across Main Street when an abandoned car rolled onto my evening gown hem. That’s when I noticed the not-so-nice guy eyeing me from the alley. Instead of ripping my dress...” she pauses for the first time, thinking hard. “It was my pink one, Dolce & Gabbana, secondhand, $4,500. I tried to lift the car instead…and succeeded.
“I thought it was just the adrenaline, you know, like when a woman goes all mama bear because her baby is in danger? But then when I got back home I did an experiment and flipped the neighbor’s RV. So…”
“That’s not normal,” I say, grinning, relieved to know that I’ve definitely got the right girl.
BJ shrugs. “So fine, if you say I got a bit of Zeus’s power or whatever, I believe you.”
“Good!” I sit back, honestly relieved. “You’re way ahead of where I was when I started.”
This is actually the understatement of the century. I grew up thinking I was a sickly girl with asthma and back problems. Then my adopted father was killed by a monster and a god arrived to show me the wings that had been hidden in my back for my entire life.
“You still haven’t said what you want with me,” she says.
I take a second to gear up. I’ll to have to put on my showmanship skills if I’m going to impress this girl.
“If you want to keep your new power, you have to come with me to Amazon Academy. Once you’re there, they’ll find out if you can fill the void that was created when Zeus died. A bunch of different people got different pieces of him. We need all of you to compete. One winner will end up with all of Zeus’s powers, and he or she can then restore order to the world.”
Brandee Jean eyes me critically, and I know if this was a pass / fail, that I just got the big F. “Okay and what about the losers?” she says.
“Oh, um,” I clear my throat. “If you lose, you lose your powers.”
“But you just said I gotta go to this Amazon Academy if I want to keep my power!” The words explode out of her, and I realize she’s probably been relying on this newfound gift to keep her going in the post-apocalyptic hellscape that I’m responsible for.
I hold my hands out in a calming gesture. “Okay, look. Anyone who doesn’t arrive at Amazon Academy by the evening of the opening ceremony will lose their powers. And that’s tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” She takes a deep breath, clearly fighting back panic. “So let me get this straight. If I want to stay super strong, I gotta follow you to this Wonder Woman Academy, Hunger Games it out with a bunch of other suddenly supers, and eventually rise to the top?”
“Don’t freak out, but”—I reach across the table and take her hand—“the other contestants aren’t all people. Some are vampires or shifters, like me, and yes, some are humans like you. And there are quite a few royals in the mix.”
A sharp laugh escapes her. “Like another pageant queen?”
“Well…no. Royalty by blood,” I admit.
“So you got stuck with recruiting me, a beauty queen? Are they punishing you?”
“No, actually. I chose you.”
I don’t add that my best friend is a seer and I asked her for a little help. She narrowed the list of ten down to five who she felt good about—and from there I landed on Brandee Jean.
She barks out a laugh. “You had the option of picking an actual princess or queen or whatever, and you chose me? Aren’t I a longshot? What’s wrong with you? Mama always said you gotta back a winner, even if you like the loser.”
“I’m not going to lie to you,” I tell her. “The general consensus is that you’re the underdog. But I was once like you. I thought I was normal and then discovered I had incredible power. With my help, I think you can do this. You can be crowned the new Zeus.”
She’s still thinking, a little crease forming between her perfectly manicured brows. I bet she doesn’t know she’s doing that, because it will leave a wrinkle eventually.
“I’m not explaining this very well, am I?” I ask.
“Nah, you’re doing just fine,” she says. “It’s pretty basic, right? You want me to compete for a crown. If I win, I’ll be in charge of the gods. I mean, I’ve spent my whole life competing.”
She gestures around the house. It’s clear that her Mama wasn’t much into decorating, but the walls are covered with pageant pictures. From a young age to the present, Brandee is there on the wall, competing for sashes and scepters.
“Usually winning meant a crown, a sash, and a cash prize,” Brandee tells me. “Most of the money would go to paying for my dresses, the dance choreographer, and dental work. Shiny chompers don’t come cheap. Any money left over, Mama would hide in a Ziploc at the back of the freezer. Her not believing in banking institutions is why I still got any money at all.
“Some of the bigger pageants cost so much up front that—even though Mama never said it aloud—losing wasn’t an option. I always at least placed, and Mama always said, ‘You’re a diamond, Brandee Jean. You shine brightest when you’re pressed the hardest.’”
She looks at me and I try to dig deep and find a convincing smile. “Your Mama sounds... lovely.”
Brandee laughs. “Mama also said, only losers worry about what happens when they lose.”
She pushes her chair back with a screech. “Girl, I understand perfectly what’s about to go down. Let me grab my tiara, then we’ll go show them what a real queen looks like.”
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