Greed God chapter 236

April 15th 2016 New Jersey, Rosewood, 9:00 PM EDT

I  admit to being a bit distracted by Jenny's thick green booty as we  walked out the doors of the drawing room, but I was ninety percent sure I  wasn't distracted enough to miss us leaving the house and walking out  onto the grounds to wander into the rose maze. Not to mention the roses  in this maze were made of black stone, glowing with a freakish purple  light, and the actual hedges were black and stretched high into the sky.

We all stopped, even Alan.  "Um." I said blithely. "This wasn't here before right? Because I could  have sworn this place used to be a hallway."

Scott  scowled. "No." Said the old man. "Eclipso has done...something. Warped  reality within these walls. Probably something to do with the wards  around the house. He locked us all in, now he's altering the world  inside the mansion to make it impossible for us to reach the wards and  break them."

Huh.  "That sounds ridiculously complicated. How the hell does he have the  power for that?" I was pretty sure I didn't have the power for that, and  I was a fucking dragon.

"The  stone." Sneered Scott. "He may not be fully manifested, but the  entirety of his strength is locked up in that cursed rock. I'd guess  he's using it as a wardstone to power...this. This is...good and bad.  Good because power has limits, and even for an area as small as this  mansion, a working on this scale would take an extreme amount of energy.  Bad because he almost definitely put the stone in the center of this  ridiculous maze."

An  eerie cackle echoed from around us, it sounded almost like Hobbes, but  there was a high pitched, almost manic tinge to the sound that made even  me a little wary. That was crazy-bitchery of the highest level right  there. "Alan Scott. The Sentinel. The first Green Lantern. I suppose  you're every bit as competent as that brat always said, not that it's  going to help you here."

The  voice rolled off every surface, bouncing all over the place in a way it  really shouldn't have in the middle of a bunch of bushes. Probably some  bullshit magic. I rolled my eyes, deciding to ignore his antics. Since I  was now a regular human, and I'd learned a lot about emotions, I was  aware of how I should be reacting to this. In reality, I wasn't super  attached to Hobbes, the old man was a decent cook and had seemed nice  enough, but he was mostly a background character to me.

Sadly,  a normal person would probably be all betrayed and shit if a beloved  family friend turned on them, so I decided to play my part. Lowering my  voice to seem downtrodden and a little broken, I asked. "Why?" The sound  cut through the quiet darkness, and everyone looked at me as I stared  up into the night sky overhead. "Why would you do this Hobbes? Why would  you turn on us? You've been with us for years. You're practically  family. How could you do this at my dad's funeral? You practically  raised him?"

Granted,  I wanted the answers to those questions, but I wasn't as broken up as I  should be. A little goes a long way with sadness though, Ingrid taught  me that in our session. Mind breaking wails and sobbing was often less  effective than quiet heartbreak, so I let out just a little quaver of  uncertainty and pain. My voice didn't crack, but it shuddered a bit, and  I saw everyone giving me sympathetic looks. I deserved a fucking oscar.

I  was briefly distracted by the mental image of Jenny dropping that fat  green ass on my face in sympathy, and the question of how that pretty  green skin would feel on my face as I motorboated those soft jiggly  cheeks. I was snapped out of my reverie by the response from Hobbes  though.

"Family?"  Despite the high pitch, the voice was warped by hate and mocking. "I  was never family. Not to any of you. Not to that frigid old bitch  Maxine, not to the brat, not even to that pathetic old fool Albert. He  never even realized I was poisoning him. I was in his will you know? Or  at least I had been. I didn't know he'd changed it to leave everything  to Maxine and the brat."

That...was  mildly annoying to me for some reason. My heartbroken shocked  expression almost twitched into annoyance before I caught it, ruthlessly  pushing that down. I was experienced with annoyance, and it had been  one of the earliest emotions I'd adapted to with my new training regimen  from Raven. "What about my grandmother?" I was mildly curious about  that. Grandma's death had been pretty sudden, but she WAS older, so a  heart attack hadn't seemed weird.

Hobbes  chuckled mirthlessly. "Of course not. Maxine was a paranoid old slut in  her old age. After Albert died she became a survivalist lunatic. I  never had a chance to poison her. She insisted on having all of her food  prepared right in front of her, and she made the chef taste test every  dish. She slept in a padlocked room with the door blocked off, and her  windows were reinforced wire mesh. I couldn't even kill the brat because  she watched the whole damn house from cameras she had set up in that  fortress of a room."

"So  you were...what? Waiting for my dad to die to see if he left you  anything? This was some sort of test?" The timing here  wasn't...impossible to understand. But I felt like there had to be more  to it than just a crime of opportunity.

"No,  it was a crime of opportunity." I blinked. Oh. Well, ok then.  Apparently I'd been too wrapped up in malicious fae plots and secret  vampire plans lately. I guessed sometimes shit just happened. That...was  a bit of a letdown honestly. I was even more annoyed. How  anticlimactic.

"So...you  never cared?" I asked woodenly. "About any of us?" I was really hoping  this dumb asshole would go off on some acidic tantrum about how he  deserved better, because at least two of these people were superheroes,  and crazy evil magic powers or not I wanted a legit reason to kill him. I  wasn't down with letting anyone who carried this big a grudge against  me or my family stick around, so I'd do it anyway, but some  justification would make it go down easier for the green bombshell with  the coke bottle curves.

"Oh  I cared." Drawled the high pitched voice. "I HATED you. I still hate  you. You, your irritating father, hell, I even hate that stupid little  braindead slut Max fathered, and I only met her a few days ago.  Honestly, taking care of the funeral was cathartic for me. All that  evidence the brat was dead. It was like planning the world's most  satisfying party."

Yup.  That would do it. Now to try to dig up some righteous anger. I'd seen  this enough times to fake it convincingly, and my training in acting was  still more than valid, so my voice had just the right quiver of rage as  I spat. "You'll pay for this you bastard! I don't care how long it  takes, how hard it is to accomplish. I'm going to fucking end you for  what you did. Bet on it!"

For  a second I thought I might have oversold it, but the shocked looks on  the faces of the others were mixed with pity, so I was pretty sure it  would hold up. "You'll have to find me first, brat." Taunted the voice.  "I've laid out quite the little gauntlet, but I would hurry if I were  you. Our little game of hide and seek wouldn't be much fun if it didn't  have stakes, now would it? Tell me, do you remember seeing your sister  after I vanished?"

I  paused, and it only took a second to confirm that, no, I hadn't. Gods  damn it. Had that dumb bitch gotten herself kidnapped? Ugh. This was  going to become a theme wasn't it. Since I wanted to keep the heroes  around from noticing me in the wrong ways I'd have to save her. Oh well,  she was my sister after all. I guessed for dads sake we should try some  bonding. Go to the park or let her slobber my knob or something.

Oh,  right. I was supposed to be appalled and outraged. "You son of a  bitch." I spat convincingly. "Let her go." Shit, what did regular people  say at times like this? "This is between us." Yeah, that sounded right.

"Oh  no." Said the voice tauntingly. "This is between me and your whole  degenerate family. Though I admit, Emma is probably the best looking of  the lot. Her face is just average, but what a rump. Perhaps if you don't  make it in time I'll test it out." Oh, hell no. That was my ass. Nobody  got to break in my new sister's booty but me.

My  anger at the situation became genuine at that point, but sadly I didn't  have the cathartic advantage of shouting more, because Hobbes cut off  his taunting with a gleeful laugh. I could literally feel the air shift  around us as the presence fled. The others looked grim. Jenny came over  to put a hand on my shoulder sympathetically. "I'm sorry Nick. I promise  we'll get her back. We'll stop him before he lays a hand on her."

I  nodded, feeling touched as I laid a hand over hers. I wasn't really  familiar with gratitude, kindness wasn't something I really got. But it  meant a lot to me the Jenny was willing to help with this. I smiled at  the girl warmly. She was really something special. How many women would  help you save your new sister from having her backdoor plundered before  you could get it.

On  second thought, she was probably just thinking about the whole  'kidnapping' thing, but still, any port in a storm. Jenny blushed and  looked away, and Barbie rolled her eyes at me from behind the green  girl, while Amy gave me a weak smile. "Alright." I said firmly. "Time to  get going. We need to get through this maze to get to Emma before  Hobbes decides to stick his wrinkled old dick in her." I turned to  Scott. "Can you give us a heading by any chance?"

The  two of them looked momentarily thrown by how I'd phrased the rescue  thing, but I guessed it sounded close enough to what they were expecting  for them to write it off. Still, that didn't mean they agreed. "No."  Said the old man firmly. "This place is dangerous. When we were  searching the house that was one thing, but I'm not bringing a bunch of  civilians to search an evil pocket dimension for an insane demon."

I  rolled my eyes. "He isn't a demon, and we aren't civilians. I'm coming  with you. He has my sister, and just confessed to murdering my  grandfather." Which...I really didn't like. "So we're coming with you,  or we're wandering off on our own, but one way or the other we're going  to be out here. You want to help? Or do you want to be responsible for  us dying alone in the dark?"

Scott  looked pissed, but before he could respond, I decided to give away some  of my secrets, since this was the only chance the argument would end  anytime soon. I turned and called the Primordial Spark to my hand, the  shimmering golden light had replaced my green lightning, and honestly it  was unsettling to look at, but I didn't care.

I ignored the manifestation as I hurled a massive cloud of destructive  light at the hedge nearby, blowing it away with very little  resistance...sadly revealing more hedge on the other side as it opened  into another aisle of the maze. I pointed at it smugly. "So, since  that's out of the way, where did we land on that heading? Because if you  don't have one, I suggest we go that way."