Accidentally…Over? (Accidentally Yours #5)(3)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Máax released Roberto, and her beloved vampire sat up rubbing his neck, grumbling profanities in his native Egyptian tongue.

“This must be some sort of mistake,” Máax said.

I don’t make mistakes.

Yes, you do. Just this morning you lit your cell on fire while trying to make a grilled cheese with a flamethrower.

Fine… guilty as charged.

“Brother,” she said, “I’ve been dealing with end-of-the-world crappity doo for thousands of years, and I know when a dead end has been hit. The gods must be jailed until things are set right again.”

A long stretch of silence didn’t fill the air. Because silence can’t fill the air, now can it? That would be weird. Like saying—

Cimil! Focus. Get Máax on his way. He has work to do. “Look at me, Máax,” Cimil said. “You’re the God of Truth. You can smell a lie from a mile away.”

Another long, silent stretch.

“Truthfully,” Máax grumbled, “I find it difficult to know when you are telling the truth anymore. You’re so full of shit, even your aura is brown.”

Damn. He can see that? “That’s because I’ve been lying for so long, lies layered up layers of lies, that even when I tell the truth, I’m not really sure I am.” She shrugged. “Makes life kinda fun! Dontcha think?”

“No.”

Such a stick-in-the-godly-mud. “Okay, okay. I swear to you, on Roberto’s life—”

“Cimiiil? Do not tempt fate in such a manner,” Roberto objected.

Fate? Pfff… Tempt her all you like. Ain’t gonna make a sea turtle’s ass of a difference.

“Fine,” Cimil grumbled. “I swear on my own life that this time I’m telling the tru—”

The ground rumbled beneath their feet and the angry sound of grinding bedrock filled the cavernous room. Everyone in the prison stilled for three long seconds.

“What the f**k was that?” Máax asked as the emergency lights flickered on along with an ear-piercing siren.

“Oh, boy. That came a lot sooner than I thought,” Cimil yelled, cupping her hands over her ears.

“What came sooner?” Máax screamed.

“That’s the planet! She’s very attuned to the Universe and senses the end is near. She’s not happy!” Cimil pointed toward the ground. “According to my sources, there will be ten global earthquakes, none of them catastrophic until the final one right before the big un–Super Bowl event. After that, the shit hits the fan. Cities topple. We go to war. Our allies and humans take sides. Everything is destroyed.”

“That’s impossible,” Máax yelled over the noise.

“Oh no. Not impossible! Worst of all, pigs are finally gonna fly! It won’t be pretty. Have you ever seen one crap?” The screeching siren stopped. “Ah! That’s better. So what was I saying? Oh yeah. We’re screwed.”

“Cimil, please tell me this is a joke.”

“Okay. I made up the part about the pigs, but not the rest. So now do you see why I had to lock everyone up?”

Máax grumbled several unhappy thoughts in the key of F—effing, eff, eff, eff, and effing hell. “If the gods should be locked up to prevent this war, then why are you allowing me to remain free?” Máax asked.

Here came the hard part. She needed to convince Máax to once again break the sacred law banning time travel. It was expressly prohibited, not to mention difficult and extremely risky. However, Máax had already broken the rule a thousand times, landing him in hot water. Not that he cared. Bad boy alert! Sure, he’d had a perfectly good reason for each offense, but that didn’t mean there weren’t consequences. The last time he’d been caught, he’d been banished, stripped of his powers, and left without a human shell. Yep… powerless and invisible for ten thousand years. Again, not that he cared.

’Cause bad boys rule!

That said, he’d broken the law once again (so, so bad!) to save his sister, Ixtab (so, so thoughtful!), and if they managed to stop the apocalypse, he’d be tried again. This time, he’d be entombed for eternity. So, so sad. On the other hand, he was going down anyway, so…

Cimil cleared her throat. “I had another vision. I believe it’s the precise moment in time where everything could be put back on course.”

“Do you truly expect me to believe that?” Máax scoffed.

Yes! No. Maybe? “Okay. Technically, you’d be a baboon’s ass. A stinky one at that.”

Máax’s laugh was laced with sinister arrogance and just a smidgen of “you f**king amuse me.”

“Let us pretend for a moment that I believed you,” he said. “Then why do I have the feeling you’re going to ask me to do something unlawful?”

Cimil clapped. “Ding, ding, ding! I need you to go back a few teeny tiny decades, to 1993, find a certain chicky-boo, and make sure she doesn’t croak prematurely.”

“Why?”

Oh. There was no good way to explain it so she’d have to make something up. Hmmm… what story would make him believe? She tapped the side of her mouth.

“You are getting ready to lie. Aren’t you?” Máax asked.

Dammit! She sucked at lying. “Yes. But only so you’ll do what I want.”

“Try telling the truth, Cimil,” Máax growled.

But I suck at that, too.

Okay. Deep breath. Sell the story. Be the story.

Right.

“At some point in the future, the woman will act as a neutral party and defuse the tension between us. If she dies, no neutral party. And what’s a party without Switzerland? They make awesome cheese. Minky loves eating the holes.”

“I’m not going to risk my ass to save some woman simply because we had a little earthquake.”

“I’m telling you, Máax, it’s the apocalypse. And… make that two earthquakes,” Cimil said cheerfully just as the ground rumbled like a ravenous, subterranean beast. Once again, sirens blasted through the prison.

“I don’t give a shit!” Máax bellowed over the noise. “I refuse to do any more of your bidding. It always leads to trouble.”

True. Máax had, in fact, been doing a lot of bidding for her lately, but he had to attempt this one final task. Not only did her latest vision reveal that saving the woman was their last chance to put things back on course and avoid the apocalypse, but it was also Máax’s one shot at happiness. Why? Well, that was something he’d soon find out.