Page 60 of Can you take it?

“Bexley!” I shouted. Surely he could come help a little. “Oh, fuck off,” he said.

“What good are you?” I shouted back, annoyed.

Two men towered over me, swinging wildly. Somehow, I managed to fling the original man into the other two and knock them down, but it wasn’t enough, and they were up much quicker than I expected. I was smart enough to know when I was in trouble.

Suddenly, Bexley was at my side and grabbed both men around their throats, his palms high under their jawlines. It didn’t look like it took much effort, and honestly, it didn’t even look like he was holding very tightly, but before I knew it, the men fell to the ground, clutching their throats before evaporat- ing, while my traveling companion grabbed a stray drink from the counter and took a hefty gulp.

“What the—?” I mumbled.

Another man charged at me, and Bexley stepped in lightly and touched the same spot under the man’s jaw. Just as before, the man’s eyes rolled back, and he let out a cry of pain before his eyes glazed over and he dropped to the ground, disintegrating into nothingness.

Bexley slowly turned, walked back to the bar, and sat in his original seat as if nothing had happened.

I picked my jaw up off the ground and walked back over to him. “Uh, what the fuck was that?”

“Stop bringing your shit in here. This is my illusion. Leave me alone,” he said, taking a few tall, thin green and brown bottles from behind the bar and tucking all but one away in various pockets in his coat.

“What do you mean, this is your illusion?” He went to grab for more bottles, but I leaned over the counter, blocking him. “It’s my illusion,” he said, taking a drink from the bottle in

front of him. “This is the Tier of Greed. It gives you everything you could possibly want. This is always how it starts.”

“And you thought I wanted to have a bar fight? That’s what I most wanted?” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah, obviously,” he said, smiling—a surprisingly charming smile, I might add—when the bartender brought him two more drinks.

“Don’t you think you should slow down? I’m not carrying you back to the platform,” I said.

“You want more than anything to be needed—you want to be the hero. That’s exactly what happened,” he said, waving his hand in my direction as if he were shooing a fly away.

“You know what I want more than anything? To get the fuck out of here! And you think that’s going to make me greedy? Helping some woman that was getting beaten by her boyfriend?” I scowled at him. Even though the fight had ended, my desperate thoughts of needing to leave brought on a fresh tingle of adrenaline. At this point, I wasn’t sure where the Tartarus itch ended and I began.

“That’s the illusion,” Bexley said. “This is how it starts. It’s glorious, isn’t it? Since you’ve been here, how many amazing things have happened to make you feel good? This is magical, isn’t it?”

A certain wariness crept up my spine. He wasn’t wrong, at least not entirely.

“Let me guess, something really special happened, and now you’re thinking maybe you don’t want to leave this place,” Bexley said, looking off into the distance, watching a group of patrons playing some game with tiny lizards in the corner.

“No, I definitely want to leave. That’s what I’m doing here. Get your ass up, you are going to vote for me to be the one to leave, do you understand? Let’s go,” I said then it dawned on me, and I sat down. “You’ve been here before.”

He was silent.

“In this tavern,” I pressed.

“This one? Possibly not. One frightfully similar, perhaps,” he replied. “It’s always a friendly tavern with an endless supply of drinks and people that like me.”

“That’s how you knew how to get here. You knew when we landed there was a tavern nearby, and that’s why you took off.”

“He’s a wise one,” he said sarcastically, taking another pull from the bottle.

I could tell the drinks had started to catch up with him as his words began to slur and his body started to sway. It was no surprise. He had drunk enough to take down a Ladon dragon. “You want to tell me what happened back there?”

He looked at me with blurry eyes.

I put my hand up to my neck, mimicking the gesture he had made to the men, and made a dramatic interpretation of being choked out. “What the fuck?” I didn’t know anyone with powers like that, not someone whose touch alone could kill. Mendax had his smoke. I had the sun…once, but that was a tool we wielded, a gift from the gods. Our mere touch did nothing. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not from around here,” Bexley said.

“Yeah, I know. The whole angel mom, demon dad thing…” I trailed off.

He shook his head. “Angel mom, Devil dad,” he corrected. “Much different than a demon.”