"Esther M. Friesner - Chicks 03 - Chicks 'N Chained Males" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

"I'm Perseus," he said. "My grandfather, Acrisius, is King of Argos. There's a prophecy that if my
mother had a son, he'd end up killing Gramps. So Mom was grounded for life, but Zeus visited her in a
shower of gold, and here I am."

"And on display, too," Andromeda remarked. Zeus had been catching Hades from Hera ever since,
tooтАФAndromeda remembered the snideMr. Shower-of-Gold . But that was neither here nor there, and
Perseus was definitely here. "The sea serpent will take your granddad off the hook for doing you in?"

"You got it," Perseus agreed.

"Ah . . . what about the chains? Doesn't he think those might have something to do with him?"

Perseus shrugged. Andromeda admired pecs and abs. The chains clanked. "He's notreal long on ethics,
Acrisius isn't."

"If you get loose, you'll do your best to make the prophecy come true?" Andromeda asked.

Another shrug. More clanks. More admiration from Andromeda. Perseus said, "Well, I've sure got a
motive now, and I didn't before. But I'm not in a hurry about it. Omens have a way of working out, you
know? I mean, would you be here to set me free if I weren't fated to do Gramps in one of these years?"

"I'm not here to set you free," Andromeda said. "I just stopped by for a minute to enjoy the scenery,
andтАФ"

Perseus pointed. He didn't do it very wellтАФhe was chained, after allтАФbut he managed. "Excuse me for
interrupting," he said, "but the sea serpent's coming."

Andromeda whirled in the air. "Eep!" she said. Perseus hadn't been wrong. The monster was huge. It
was fast. It was hideous. It was wet (which made sense, it being a sea serpent). It had an alarmingly big
mouth full of a frighteningly large number of terrifyingly sharp teeth. Andromeda could have rearranged
those adverbs any which way and they still would have added up to the same thing. Trouble. Big trouble.

She could also have flown away. She glanced back at Perseus and shook her head. That would have
been a waste of a great natural resource. And, no matter what Hera had to say about it, Zeus wouldn't
be overjoyed if she left his bastard son out for sea-serpent fast food.

She drew her swordтАФZeus' swordтАФand flew toward the monster. One way or another, this story was
going to get some blood in it. Or maybe not. She held up Hera's mirrored shield, right in the sea serpent's
face. It might figure it was having a bad scales day and go away.

But no such luck. Maybe the shield didn't work because the sea serpent had no hair. Maybe the serpent
had already maxed out its ugly account. Or maybe it was too stupid to notice anything had changed.
Andromeda shook her head again. If Cindy, Claudia, and Tyra had noticed, the sea serpent would have
to.

No help for it. Sometimes, as Zeus had said, a sword was just a sword. Andromeda swung this one. It
turned out to cut sea serpent a lot better than her very best kitchen knife cut roast goose. Chunk after
reptilian chunk fell away from the main mass of the monster. The Aegean turned red. The sea serpent
really might have been dumber than the Gorgons, because it took a very long time to realize it was dead.