“It means there is nothing I or any of my servants can do,” Hades replied.
“And what about me?” I asked, aiming the question at the Horseman. “Can’t I go after him?”
Hemingway opened his mouth to speak but closed it as the scent of burnt ash flooded the room and a wave of power crashed over us all. I gritted my teeth with the effort to stay standing, to turn and face the source of such overwhelming power. I found Hades studying me as if noticing me for the first time, his fingertips bridged and pressed to his lips, his calm repose at odds with the intense pressure beating against my skin.
“And who, may I ask, are you? Besides an intruder.” The god of the dead held up a hand to still Hemingway, who’d jerked at the accusation. “Come now, she has spoken well enough up to this point. Let’s hear her out.”
I wanted to speak, but my mouth was suddenly way too dry, my skin clammy, my mind utterly blank—talk about brain dead, I thought, though the joke fell flat even in my own head. Something told me Hades wouldn’t find it funny, either.
4
The room was silent as the grave, which—under the circumstances—was saying something. Even Narcissus, who’d offered a running commentary that we’d all ignored up to this point, had shut his gob the moment Hades’ power had coursed through the room. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for me to answer the god’s question.
Who was I?
I didn’t bother spouting my credentials, nor did I waste Hades’ time with a philosophical response—the first would take too long, while the second had a very real chance of landing on dead ears. Right now, I needed the Lord of the Underworld to know one thing and one thing only about me.
“I’m the only person who can stop the Frozen One. That’s why I’m here. What I came to do.”
“And why should we trust you to do such a thing?” Persephone asked, her suspicion plain. The snake in her hair wriggled in agitation as she stalked to her husband’s side, flashing its fangs at me like a spitting cat.
“Because Gaia sent her,” Hemingway answered, speaking up on my behalf. “And because she survived a drinking contest with Charon.”
“Is that supposed to impress us?” Persephone asked.
“He had her drink his special brew.”
“Truly?” Persephone’s snake hissed as the goddess whirled to face me. “And why aren’t you dead?”
But Hades held out an arm as if to halt the Q&A before it could begin in earnest. He slipped his glasses into a smoldering pocket, the smoke swallowing them up like a fog bank. The pressure I’d felt earlier ramped up again, though less oppressively than before, dancing along my skin rather than crashing against it.
“What do you sense from me, child?” Hades asked, holding his arms out wide as if in invitation.
“Ashes,” I said, recalling both his unusual scent and the texture I’d associated with him from the beginning. “Ashes and still water.”
Hades actually smirked.
“And from them?”
I told him, pointing first to Persephone and then to Hemingway. Both reacted to their descriptors, though only Persephone seemed appalled; Hemingway looked more intrigued than upset. Somehow, I’d done something he approved of. Indeed, something both he and Hades found interesting. The god of the dead leveled his gaze, staring down at me from his haughty perch.
“Horseman, take my chariot. Escort this one to Fólkvangr, then feel free to report to the Others. They’ll want to know what has happened.” Hades looked faintly sad for the briefest moment, though I had no idea why. “Be sure to tell them it’s possible that the time has come. To prepare.”
“The time for what?” I asked.
But it seemed Hades was done talking to me; he turned back to the prisoners, forked tongues of smoke seething along his shoulders. Penelope withered under his attention until Hades crooked a finger and lifted her chin. The woman trembled like a kicked dog.
“Your husband’s name has yet to be recorded in my books,” Hades said, his voice softening in an unprecedented display of tenderness. “I know what it is like to long for a reunion. But you do not belong here. I must insist you take the flower and return only when your time has come. Dear wife, would you please see to their travel arrangements?”
“Of course, husband,” Persephone replied, her voice breaking. For a moment, with her lips unpursed and her eyes bright, I saw just how much the Queen of the Underworld cared for her spouse and decided to take her marriage advice a tad more seriously.
Not that marriage was ever going to happen.
“Thank you, Lord Hades.” Tears brimmed in Penelope’s eyes. “I swear it.”
“And of course I swear it!” Narcissus declared, openly crying. “But, uh, Lord Hades...does that mean I won’t be getting rid of this curse? Because that’s really why I came…”
“I cannot help you with that.”
“Well, you’re useless.”
The rattlesnake lunged for the Greek, who promptly returned to his floral state with a startled cry. Persephone plucked the flower from the chair and snapped her fingers, freeing Penelope from her bonds.
“He’s lucky this is my favorite flower,” Persephone told her, spinning the narcissus round and round as she headed for the door.
Penelope, meanwhile, made to stand but ended up stumbling into my arms, her legs seemingly unable to bear her weight. I briefly considered dropping her on her ass—it would have served her right, in my opinion. But the sudden press of her lips against my cheek, mere inches from my ear, stopped me.
“Frankenstein hopes you’ll chase after them,” she whispered, gripping my arm tighter than she had to. “He plans to set a trap for you. Don’t fall for it. She isn’t what she seems.”
The wife of Odysseus straightened and stepped away, avoiding eye contact with me as she left the room at Persephone’s insistence. I watched her leave, wondering whether I should call her back and demand more answers. Frankly, she was getting off unbelievably easy; if I were in Hades’ shoes, I’d have made her sweat a hell of a lot longer before letting her off the sickle.
“Back to work,” the Lord of the Underworld said as he headed for a desk on the far side of the room. “I trust you’ll see yourselves out.”
“Come on, Quinn.” Hemingway waved for me to follow. “We should hurry.”
“A word of advice, child,” Hades added, glancing back at me over his shoulder. “Very few who find their way down here ever resurface, and time is never on your side. Don’t linger any longer than you have to.”
“Shit!” I exclaimed, throwing up a placating hand, struck by something he’d said. “Please, I forgot to ask. There’s someone I need to find, someone who’s lost. He’s like me. I mean, he isn’t dead, just lost. His name is Maximilliano Velez. D’ye know how I can find him?”
“It’s possible.” Hades pulled out the chair to his desk, its leather seams strobing with volcanic light. “But first I have to know what you would do to be reunited with this lost soul.”
“Ye mean besides huntin’ down and stoppin’ the trespassers for ye? Shouldn’t that be enough?”
“You said yourself that you came here to stop this Frozen One,” Hades replied as he slipped into his chair. “Don’t pretend like you’re doing me a favor.”
The instant the god of the dead sat, his cloak evaporated, replaced by a suit roiling with black flames, his tie and artfully folded pocket square flaring scarlet. Hades fetched a notebook from his desk and thumbed through it, his dull gaze flicking across the pages at a freakishly rapid pace. At that moment, he looked to me like Hell’s most dangerous accountant.
“I’ll repeat myself this once: what would you give to be reunited? Surely we can strike a deal.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, uncomfortable with the sudden turning of the tables. “What would ye want?”
“As it so happens, there are a pair of troublemakers causing all sorts of mischief under the supervision of a peer of mine.”
Hemingway groaned,
but Hades ignored him.
“If I return your lost soul to you,” the god of the dead continued, “I would ask that you pay them a visit and pass along a message at your earliest inconvenience.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but—when I really thought about it—the deal seemed better than wandering the afterlife shouting Max’s name to the literal heavens. If passing along the message led me to Max, then there wasn’t really a choice to be made.
“And what’s the message?”
“Tell them their machinations have begun to pay off, and that it’s time they reveal their hand before we all end up paying the price for their hubris.”
“Alright...and who exactly are these troublemakers?”
“Calvin and Makayla Temple.”
5
Hades’ chariot was made of pure gold, its luster richer and more vibrant than anything I’d ever seen before. But then maybe that had more to do with the fires that blazed damn near everywhere we looked—from the braziers mounted along the tunnel walls to the volcanic currents of the Phlegethon surging far beneath our feet—than the quality of the precious metal. The flames were reflected in the chariot’s clean lines and sloped curves until it seemed to writhe in place. Or maybe it was simply that it was a study in contrasts: four pitch black horses heaved at their glinting bridles, their eyes pitted and smoking, their hooves sparking whenever they struck stone, sending embers spiraling into the smoke-filled air.
Apparently Hell was a pyromaniac’s wet dream.
Who knew?
“Did it not occur to you to ask me to find your friend?” Hemingway folded his arms across his chest while we waited for the specters to finish preparing the chariot for us, exasperation written across his face. “Before you struck a deal with Hades, I mean?”
Actually, it had.
“Pretty sure askin’ for favors all the time is the easiest way to lose a friend,” I replied, eyeing the horses and wondering whether Hades would cook me for all eternity for stealing one—I’d always been fond of black accessories, and nothing says “badass” like an infernal steed. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to owe Captain Apocalypse a solid.”
The Horseman grumbled something under his breath and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, speaking loud enough for me to hear only once we stepped into the chariot and he’d taken up the reins from the sycophantic shade who’d escorted us.
“Listen, there are some things I need to tell you about where we’re going,” he began. “And I should warn you: when Hades makes a contract, even a verbal one, he considers it binding. I hope you’re prepared to follow through on your end.”
“As long as he sends Max along like he promised, I’m fine with those terms. Max is running out of time back in the mortal realm. I had to take the risk.”
“How do you plan to help him?” Hemingway asked, whipping the reins in a practiced manner that made me question whether or not he’d driven one before. I was also left to wonder just where the Horseman intended to go; the stone ridge we’d reached after leaving Hades dropped off precipitously, its base hugged by a torrent of raging fire. Before I could ask, however, the chariot rocketed upwards, pulled by the ridiculous horsepower of four obscenely muscled steeds. In seconds, we left the barren ground and its fires behind, the hooves of each stallion burning holes in midair that lingered, leaving starbursts in my vision as we ascended.
Well, I guess that answered that question.
“I’ll cross that burnin’ bridge when I come to it,” I shouted over the rush of scalding wind, clutching the side of the chariot with a literal death grip, mindful of the cavernous, stalagmite-riddled ceiling overhead. “What is it ye wanted to tell me about this place? Fólkvangr, was it? Why there, if Ryan is in Helheim?”
“That’s part of what I wanted to tell you,” Hemingway called back. “Helheim is a small region within Niflheim that cannot be accessed by the living. It’s surrounded by a river, Gjoll, that sucks the life out of any who cross it and keeps the dead from leaving. Its sole entrance is guarded by one of the Jötunn, a giant hound named Garm, who can scent any intruder from miles away.”
“How giant are we talkin’?”
“Big enough to step on you by accident and not notice.”
“Yikes. Sounds like quite the security system. But if Helheim is so well protected, how’s Ryan supposed to access it?”
“All the realms connect in unique ways,” Hemingway explained. “And they each have their own hierarchies. Their own geography. The Norse realm is no different, Beneath Yggdrasil, the World Tree, there sits nine realms.” The Horseman held up a flat hand and began ticking it lower with each name. “Asgard. Vanaheim. Alfheim. Midgard. Nidavellir. Jotunheim. Svartalfheim. Niflheim. Helheim.”
“So it’s sort of like how Catholics think of Heaven, Purgatory, Earth, and Hell?”
“Yes, though Purgatory sits adjacent to Earth, not above it.” Hemingway waved that away. “In any case, there are paths that connect the Underworld to Helheim, just as there are roads that lead from Elysium to Heaven. But they are infrequently used and notoriously hard to access, which is why what your friend has done is so problematic. He’s bypassed security.”
“How much damage could he do down there?” I asked, baffled by the notion that Ryan could make any Hell-adjacent realm worse than it already was. I mean, wasn’t that the point of those places? To suck in every imaginable way? “I mean, isn’t Helheim bad enough without his help?”
“It is a realm of ice ruled by Loki’s Jötunn daughter, Hel, where the souls of those who died from sickness or old age reside. I’ve never been there, myself, but it is not rumored to be a terribly cruel place. I don’t know what your friend will make of it, but I expect he will upset the balance, one way or another. And, if what you’ve told me about his time in the Titan Realm is true, that is not something we can let resolve itself.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “But then why not just drop me off in Niflheim and let me find me way from there?”
“One does not simply walk into Niflheim,” Hemingway intoned, sounding eerily like Sean Bean in Lord of the Rings. “By all accounts, it is a realm of mist and death—”
“Wait, ye haven’t been there, either?”
“No,” Hemingway admitted begrudgingly. “I am not welcome there. The Norse have their own escorts to the afterlife, and they don’t take kindly to strangers.”
“Ye mean the Valkyries,” I said, recalling the role the winged maidens played in fetching souls in Norse mythology. I’d even met one, once; Hilde had been on loan to an FBI task force before getting kidnapped by Rasputin’s henchman and shipped off to a Russian prison. Last I’d heard, she and Agent Leo Jeffries had taken some much needed time off and booked themselves a well-deserved pleasure cruise.
“Yes.” The Horseman of Death shuddered, though with anticipation or fear I couldn’t be sure; he had his face turned away to study the passing landscape below—nothing but volcanic veins gushing over patches of charred rock. “Anyway, to survive Niflheim, you will first need to curry favor and be granted an Aesir blessing. Hades knew that, which is why he insisted I take you to Fólkvangr. That’s the paradise where Freya, the Valkyrie benefactor, resides. It also connects to Valhalla, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.”
“The mead hall where warriors go when they die,” I asserted, grinning. Personally, I’d always thought Valhalla sounded like an afterlife tailored to me in particular; fight all day, feast and drink all night...what else could a red-blooded girl ask for?
“Half the warriors. The other half go to Fórkvangr as part of an agreement Odin struck with Freya to end the war with the Vanir.” Hemingway shook his head. “But that’s not important. What matters is that you find one of the Norse gods and receive their blessing to enter Niflheim. Without it, the mists will try to strangle you and the beasts that call it home will swallow you whole. You’ll also need a way to enter Helheim. That I can’t help you with. You’ll have to ask around.”
“A
nd Hades couldn’t have given me a blessin’ because...?”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good, seeing as how he’s not one of the Aesir and has limited power outside the Underworld. Besides, Hades doesn’t bless. He curses. For that matter, so do a fair number of Norse gods. So try not to piss any of them off while you’re visiting.”
“Alright, so let’s say I get this blessin’, find me way into Hel, and stop Ryan. What then? What about Max, and the deal I made to talk to Calvin and Makayla Temple?”
Saying their names out loud felt even odder than I’d expected; I found myself suffering from the same rush of conflicted emotions that I’d experienced standing in Hades’ office. I mean, sure, Nate and I had made our peace, but there was plenty of animosity left over for the role his parents had played in my conception—not that I was complaining about being born, necessarily, but still. Indeed, Nate himself had decried their meddling the last time he and I spoke—assuming our time together had been more than just a fever dream brought on by a manipulative god. I still wasn’t certain what to think about my time under Morpheus’ influence—so much so I’d kept it to myself when relaying my story to Hemingway.
“I’ll make sure Hades keeps his end of the bargain and sends Max to you,” the Horseman replied, snapping me out of my thoughts. “It may take some time to arrange, though. As for the Temples...I’ll ask Charon to deliver you, if you make it that far.”
“I t’ink ye meant to say when I make it that far.”
“Did I?”
“That’s it, the next time I speak to Othello, I’m tellin’ her to dump your gloomy ass,” I fired back, smirking.
“I wouldn’t push her loyalty, at the moment,” Hemingway replied, glancing at me sidelong. “She’s had a lot to deal with lately. The world has become a...different place since you last walked it. One you may not recognize, assuming you ever make it back to the mortal realm.”
Brimstone Kiss: Phantom Queen Book 10 - A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 4
