Hercules leapt off the back of her head and sailed toward me almost in slow motion. His sword was angled downward, straight for my coils. I stared at him, tried to strike, and was cut short. My coils around the Hydra’s body kept me from completing the blow. He landed, and his sword drove down through my hide. I roared, my head thrown back with the pain, but I didn’t let go of the Hydra. I knew how this worked. If I let her go, then she’d attack again. I wasn’t going to make that mistake. Not if I wanted to come out on top.

Ernie zipped into view, and I locked eyes with him and shook my head. He couldn’t help me with this. Or maybe I just wanted to do it on my own.

“Alena, let me help!” Ernie shouted, and again I shook my head. He flew out of sight. Good enough for me.

“Strength of character was not something I thought you would have,” Hercules mumbled as he pulled his sword out and prepared to drive it in again. From his left side, a flutter of wings, and then Ernie was there, slamming into his head and knocking him sideways.

“Get her, Alena. I’ve got him.”

If I could have smiled I would have. The thought of Ernie taking on Hercules? Nothing short of brilliant, even if I’d told him not to. I had to loosen my hold on the Hydra to get the room to strike, but as soon as I did that, she wriggled away from me. Two of her heads whipped around and bit into my side, pinning me to the ground, cutting right through the diamond-hard snakeskin. Fighting through the pain, I flicked my tail up and slammed it into her side, sending her sideways and into an empty building across the street from my bakery. The structured crumbled under her weight, and the rubble dust billowed up. I took stock of my injuries. I was hurt, but nothing was a mortal wound. I would heal. I lurched forward to see where Ernie and Hercules had disappeared.

Hercules held the cherub by his foot in one hand, his bow and arrows in the other. “Look, Eros, I’m not exactly happy working for Hera, but we can’t have a monster like the Drakaina floating about. We can’t. It’s bad for the people.”

“She’s not like the others, you idiot!” Ernie screeched. “Put me down, fool hero! You’re making a mistake! She protected people from Theseus!”

I hesitated, thinking that Hercules didn’t seem like Achilles or Theseus. Maybe I could talk to him and convince him not to go through with all this. I had to try. I let the shift take me down in size.

I was completely naked, as per the usual shift out of Drakaina and back to human. “Don’t hurt him!” I yelled as I scrambled toward Hercules and Eros. Hercules turned to me, a frown on his face.

“I’m not going to hurt him. But what would it matter to you?”

I glanced over my shoulder to where the Hydra was scrambling back to her feet. I didn’t have long. “He’s my friend, please don’t hurt him.”

My words only seemed to confuse him further, but he did let Ernie go. “You aren’t . . . I don’t understand why you would care. You’re a monster.”

I rubbed my hands up and down my arms and all but danced in place. Hercules seemed to be coming around, and unlike Theseus and even Achilles, his eyes didn’t rove over my body like a kid with his face pressed against the glass display case in my bakery.

A roar from behind us snapped me around. The Hydra was back up on her feet, all nine heads swinging my way. All with wide-open mouths. Sugar doodles, this was going to be close. I dove out of the way, rolling across the street, my bare skin ripping from me in bits and pieces, showing off my snakeskin underneath. I stood. “Over here, you big dumb jerk.”

She whipped her heads around and snarled at me. I lifted one hand slowly, and then one middle finger. “That’s from my yaya.”

The Hydra screeched and launched at me, but she was so big I could avoid her . . . I dove between her legs and then rolled back to my feet behind her. She smelled like an oil slick, and the Drakaina in me did not like being this close and this small. The desire to shift caught me unawares, and I struggled to fight it off. Not yet, not yet!

I wrapped my arms around my upper body and squeezed tight. “Not yet, she can’t find us.” Us. Like we were two entities. Time to think about that later. Not right now.

I ducked between the Hydra’s stomping legs, grabbing onto her fat ankles and spinning around them. She screeched, and above us Hercules called out, “That’s enough, Angel. Time to go.”

Angel. What a name for a monster with nine heads. She roared, and the grinding noise of teeth cracking together one after another, like an echoing rumble, ripped through the air. I dodged out from under a stomping foot and ran to the front of the bakery. Ernie zipped over, floating by my shoulder.

“Holy shit,” he muttered. “If you don’t have to fight him, don’t. I’m not . . . I’m not sure you can beat the two of them now that I’ve seen them together.”

I nodded, thinking he was right. I stared as the Hydra and Hercules conversed. I didn’t disagree with Ernie. Not for a second. The wounds the Hydra had given me finally made themselves known. Aching, throbbing as they announced themselves on my hip and upper rib cage. I pressed my hand to the worst of them. “Ernie. Go get Damara. I’m going to need her help.”

He saluted me and zipped off. I shouldn’t have sent him. I know that now, but . . . hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that jazz, I’d done what I thought was best.

I pressed my back against the bakery, and the door opened. I spun sideways. “Mom, get out of here.” I kept my voice down so that Hercules and the Hydra wouldn’t hear me.