by Bree Despain
Joe shakes his head. “I can’t drive your mother. I’m coming with you.”
“Joe, you can’t.”
“I can, Daphne. And I will. I was supposed to be there last time. I was supposed to help you. Maybe none of this would have happened if I had been.”
“It’s okay, Joe, I don’t blame you . . .” Joe had been under so much stress and he was an addict after all, I should have realized he wouldn’t be strong enough to resist the temptation to drink. . .
“Yes, but I blame myself. Even if I was drugged—”
“You were drugged?” I ask, sticking my hand in the pocket of my cloak and clutching the sobriety coin. So he hadn’t given in? “That’s why you didn’t come.”
“Yes, someone drugged my water bottle. We think it must have been Garrick trying to manipulate the situation. But I should have pulled myself through it. I should have been there for you no matter what. There’s nothing you can say to stop me from going now.” Notes of absolute determination pound off of him, and I know there is no way to deter him. He wants to be redeemed, not only for not being there the last time the gate was open but also for all the mistakes he made in the past. That was the reason he had wanted to go last time. I can’t deny him the opportunity now.
I nod, conceding, and he gives me a cheeky smile. I think for a moment that I always want to remember him with that expression on his face.
“Do you know how to wield one of these?” Dax says, offering a large sword to Joe. “We had to incapacitate a few guards on our way out of the Skyrealm. Thought a few of their weapons would come in handy.”
Joe takes the sword. “I’ve never handled a sword, but I have wielded a few guitars in my day,” he says, playfully swinging the sword as if it were a guitar he was about to smash against an opponent’s head.
“I guess that will do,” Haden says, but I can sense the worry in his voice.
“I can help,” Lexie says.
We all look at her as if she’s growing a second head all of a sudden.
“What I mean is that I’ll make sure Daphne’s mother and I get as far away as possible. Maybe an outlet mall near Vegas? That’ll be fun.”
My mother raises an eyebrow at this but doesn’t protest being taken away from this mess.
“Phew, Lexie,” Haden says. “For a second there, I was almost worried you were going to insist on coming with us, too.”
“Whatever, I know my strengths and my limitations,” Lexie says. “I’ll let all of you with the superpowers take on the monsters. I’ll provide the hot chocolate and muffins when you get back.” She sounds flippant, but to my surprise the hidden tone behind her words makes it sound as if she actually does care.
“Thank you for watching out for my mother,” I say to her.
“Please, make sure Tobin comes home, okay?” she says, her tone softer and sincere.
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s a promise I can keep. I try not to think about the likelihood that Tobin is even still alive after facing the swarm of Keres that pursued us to the gate. Instead, I give her a reassuring smile.
Haden takes my hand again. He holds it like he never wants to let go. I wish he never will. Ethan, Jonathan, Dax, Abbie, Psyche, and Joe follow us out of the house. There’s a car parked askew in the driveway, and a woman in a rumpled red dress-suit jumps out when she sees us. She looks so frazzled, with frizzy, disheveled hair and sleepless eyes, it takes me a minute to recognize her.
“Mayor Winters, what are you doing here?” I say to Tobin’s mother.
“My son, where is he?” she asks, tones of desperation clinging to her words. “He hasn’t come home in days.”
“You know where he is,” comes a voice from behind me. Abbie steps forward. “The same place you tried to send me in order to get seed money for your company.”
“Abbie?” Mayor Winters looks even more crazy-eyed than before. “How? Where? What about Tobin?”
“Nice to see you too, Mother,” Abbie says. I realize it’s been at least six years since they’ve stood face to face. “But I don’t have time for this not-so-pleasant reunion. I need to save Tobin from the Underrealm.”
Mayor Winters’s mouth drops open. She stammers until Haden puts his hand on her shoulder. “I need you to evacuate the town again. Get everyone as far away from here as possible. Things are about to get far more stormy than last time.”
She nods, still in shock, and we leave her behind. Haden leads us out into the street.
“Shouldn’t we drive?” I ask. “There’s no time to waste.”
“We’re going to fly,” Haden says.
“Fly?” I ask, thinking maybe he isn’t feeling quite well after his near-death experience.
He smiles and hooks my arms around his neck. “Hold on,” he whispers, his breath caressing my ear, and a second later we’re rocketing into the air.
“What the—?” I cling to his neck, looking down at the ground below us. We’re actually flying. Haden laughs and I stare into his jade-green eyes, forgetting for a moment that we are heading off into battle. “Well, I definitely picked a winner. What’s better than a boyfriend who can fly?”
“Boyfriend?” he asks.
“Do you have a problem with that title?” I say, punching him playfully.
“Not at all,” he says. “I was just thinking that the word seems inadequate to me.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I light a kiss on his cheek. I can’t believe we’re together after all this time, I can’t believe I’m in his arms, and we’re flying no less. I look at the town below us and notice a toddler pulling on her father’s pant leg, trying to get him to look up from his iPhone to see the “big birds” above them. I laugh and then close my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Haden asks.
“Yes . . . It’s just that . . . I know I shouldn’t feel this happy when the world is coming apart at its seams.”
“I know what you mean.”
Jonathan flies up beside us, flapping his great wings, with a less-than-enthused-looking Joe wrapped in his arms. Ethan, carrying Ren, and Psyche and Abbie hefting Dax are not too far behind. “Look,” Jonathan says, nodding toward the grove island in the middle of the lake. A thick, black cloud swirls up from the center of the island. It almost looks like smoke. “Skylords?”
I swallow hard. “Keres,” I say. “They’re coming through the gate.”
chapter forty-two
haden
Once I see that the Keres have breached the gate, it is as if I cannot fly fast enough. It feels as though we are stuck in slow motion even though we are soaring through the air. I was hoping we would have time to regroup and plan once we got to the grove, but that is not an option now. We must go headfirst into the fray.
I set Daphne down on the ground in the grove, only a few yards off from the spiraling cloud of Keres. Their screeching fills the grove. We are followed by Jonathan and Joe, then Ethan and Ren, and finally Psyche, Abbie, and Dax land as well.
A moment later, Jessica descends into the grove with two men who look like twins. They have golden skin and white-blond hair. One carries a battle-ax and the other a spear.
“Aris and Crux,” Ethan says, saluting his men. He turns to Jessica and reaches a hand toward her. She doesn’t take it but I can tell she wants to. “Is this all?”
Jessica nods. “Most of the brigade went into hiding after the last battle with the Skylords. They’ve all got bounties on their heads. This is all I could find, short notice.”
“Don’t worry,” the man with the battle-ax says, “My brother and I fight like six men. Each.”
“That you do, Aris,” Ethan says, clapping him on the shoulder, but I can tell from the look in his eyes that he was hoping for more men. Our troop may fill the grove, but it feels small compared to the thousands of Keres that Daphne reported escaped from the Pits.
I can only hope the Fates will deliver the Skylord army soon.
I signal to the others. Jonathan, Ethan, Dax, Ren, Abbie, P
syche, Aris, Crux, Jessica, Joe, and I create a wall around Daphne with our bodies. Jonathan draws his golden bow and knocks it with a graphite arrow from the sporting goods store. There wasn’t time for him to make more arrows from his Kronolithe, but I don’t doubt he can be just as deadly with mortal-made weapons. Joe tentatively raises his stolen Skylord sword in front of them. Aris and Crux electrify their weapons, and Dax, Ren, Psyche, Abbie, and I create lightning bolts in our hands.
I can tell Abbie is relatively new to using her powers and that Psyche probably hasn’t used hers in years. It takes her a couple of tries to get a bolt to spark. Psyche catches me giving her the side-eye. “Don’t worry about me. I might be rusty, and I might be a former princess, but I was trained by my father’s personal guard. It’ll come back quickly.”
I nod, not questioning her assertion. We will all need to adapt quickly. There are at least two dozen Keres in the spiraling cloud above the gate, and more coming. I thank Hades that the gate is so narrow, slowing the Keres’s progress into this world. However, we will face the same obstacle, trying to get our forces inside.
Once flanked, Daphne doesn’t hesitate. She plants her feet on the ground and opens her mouth. I expect her to let out a magical scream, as she did the last time she and I fought a Keres together, but instead she sings. Not words, but a high pitched scale of notes. It reminds me of one of the songs I downloaded when I bought an entire music store’s inventory. It’s a song from something called The Phantom of the Opera. Daphne keeps singing the notes, scaling higher and higher until she hits the same frequency and tone of the Keres’s bloodcurdling screeching. It sounds like she’s singing a scream.
The noise makes me want to throw my hands over my ears, but I keep them at the ready because the Keres are even more irritated by the sound—because it causes them to take a solid form. The misty cloud of shadows transforms into a knot of winged creatures. They look like a fearsome crossbreed of black birds of prey and the statues of things mortals refer to as angels. Their forms are distinctly female, as if they were women with large black wings and horrible talons. They clack and screech and point their claws at Daphne. She’s made them angry, and they’ve chosen their first target. They shift position, creating a “V” formation as if they were a flock of birds. At the center of the “V” is the largest of the Keres. It bares its fanglike teeth at Daphne.
“Now?” Dax asks, holding his lightning bolt.
I shake my head. I don’t want to spook the Keres too soon—cause them to scatter and disappear into Olympus Hills, where we’ll have to hunt them down. There’s no time for that.
The Keres dive, swooping down at us with their talons extended.
“Now?” Dax says.
I wait one more second, until I can see the falcon-like pupils of the lead Keres’s blood-red eyes. “Now!” I shout and fling my bolt of lightning. My comrades follow my instruction, and lightning flies toward the swooping monsters. My bolt hits the leader, blowing it back into one of the other Keres. Dax hits it with a second strike. With a third strike from me, the Keres explodes. It shatters into thousands of pieces, as if someone has taken a mace to an alabaster statue. Bits of stone rain down on our heads. In the meantime, Ethan, Abbie, and Psyche take out two more of the beasts. Jonathan slings two arrows into the chest of a fourth Keres, skewering it to the ground before it explodes. Aris waits until a Keres is almost on top of him and then slams his electrified ax into its chest. Crux does the same with his spear. Joe hacks wildly at the air with his sword, keeping any creature from coming close. Ren grabs a low-flying Keres by its wings and climbs on top of it. The beast sends a primal shout echoing through the grove before Ren throttles it, sending bolts of lightning from his hands into its throat.
Five Keres break off from the group, trying to flee the grove. “Don’t let any escape!” I shout. Ethan goes after one, and Jonathan shoots down the second. Dax and Ren are on the tail of the third, and Aris and Crux run after the fourth and fifth.
I generate another bolt and fling it at a monster who has taken up the lead of the flock of Keres. They have circled the grove and are coming back for a second dive at Daphne, who is now only protected by me, Abbie, Joe, and Psyche. Right as the bolt is about to strike it in the abdomen, the beast flickers from solid to shadow. My bolt passes right through it, striking a tree. The four of us duck down to the ground, barely escaping the swooping shadow. I realize Daphne has stopped singing. She is gasping for breath. How she maintained the song for so long, I don’t know. She holds her hand up, telling me she is fine but needs a moment.
The mass of shadows swoops around, coming for a third diving pass. Daphne takes another breath and picks up her song again, and the Keres take their solid, gruesome form once again. I turn back to the fray right as a Keres swoops down on top of me. The Keres grabs me by the shoulder, ripping its talons into my flesh, and flings me away from Daphne and the group. I fly through the air and smack into the tree that has been set aflame by my stray bolt of lightning. Two Keres land on top of me, pinning me against the ground. One of them claws at my chest, going for my heart. Daphne’s song continues—my only way of knowing she’s okay.
A roll of thunder shutters through the grove, sending the trees quaking. A bolt of lightning hits one of the Keres that sits on top of me. The beast explodes. Another bolt sends the second Keres toppling away from me. I look up, expecting to see Dax or Ethan, but instead, Terresa stands over me with a ball of lightning in her hand.
“Back off, harpies,” she says to the Keres. “If anyone is going to kill this lying piece of kopros, it’s going to be me.”
“Terresa, wait!” I shout, but she flings the bolt of lightning at my head. I roll out of the way, the lightning only singeing my right ear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you didn’t get your kiss. You, um, can get it now if you want.”
“Ugh, as if I’d kiss Underlord scum.” She sneers and generates a second bolt. “I don’t care about the kiss. I care that you made me feel like I loved you,” she says with such disdain that I realize the love spell must have worn off. “And then you just . . . just . . . left me behind!” She raises her hand over her head, her bolt aimed at my face. It might be a trick of the light from the lightning crashing around us, but I swear it looks as though she is about to start crying. “You made me love you and then you hurt me.”
I am hit with a sudden pang of guilt so powerful I don’t think to defend myself as she tries to stab me with her bolt of lightning. Fortunately, before she can land the blow, a Keres launches itself on top of her.
Thunder claps above us, shaking the ground. I look up and see at least a hundred Skylords descending from the clouds above. Daphne is doing her best to keep the song going, and my comrades are locked in battle around us. We’ve managed to take down a handful of Keres, but it is as if for every one we fell, another two escape from the gate. The Keres wraps its wings around Terresa. She screams as I watch terrible boils burst forth on her face. The thing not only is draining the life from her body but is also making her sick. I launch myself at the creature. As much as she wants to blow my face off, I need her in this battle. I grab the Keres by the head, clasping it at its temples with both hands. Searing sores cover my hands but I don’t let go. I send a pulse of lightning into the creature’s temples. The thing writhes and screams and then its head combusts between my hands, shattering into pieces of stone that slip through my fingers.
Terresa blinks up at me. The sores on her face slowly recede. “I don’t need your help, you filthy mongrel. My men will tear you and your precious Daphne apart.”
So much for a thank you.
Terresa continues ranting. I grab her by the shoulders. “Hate me all you want, but I am not the threat here. Look around you, Terresa! The Keres have escaped.” Terresa looks around her. Her eyes go wide as if really taking in the scene for the first time without revenge in her eyes.
“I need you to order your men to help us fight them back! We need to get through Persephone’s Gate and sto
p them at their source before they destroy my world.”
“I’m not going to help protect Underrealm filth!”
“Then do it for your world. Where do you think they’ll go once they’ve torn mine and the mortal realms apart?” I let go of her shoulders. “You can go back to hating me as soon as this is over. Please, we need your help.”
She brushes her shoulders as if my touch has somehow made her dirty. I take out a Keres that charges at her from behind. She jumps as the thing explodes, sending shards of stone around us. “Fine,” she says. “What do you need?”
“I need to get Daphne to the gate. I need to get her and as many soldiers through the gate as possible. We need to destroy the Keres before any more escape. But you know the drill, anyone who isn’t from the Underrealm has to go through the gate willingly. They have to want it with every fiber of their soul or they’ll burn up rather than pass through.”
Skylords begin to land in the grove, both male and female. They seem more than surprised by the monsters swirling around us. Some don’t hesitate and join the fight right away, while others wait for Terresa’s command.
“Listen up, soldiers!” she shouts. “We need to get that ugly girl over there,” she points at Daphne who continues to sing as Abbie and Psyche defend her, “into that gate.” She points to the two arched trees that cloak Persephone’s Gate. The bright green light that shines in the middle of the archway is almost completely blocked out by the black shadowy forms that billow through it like smoke. As soon as the newly arriving shadow creatures hear Daphne’s music, they solidify into black angel-birds. More than one Skylord soldier takes a step back at the sight. “But if you don’t have the ovaries to fight your way through the gate, then you had better stay here. Only the brave and willing are needed in this fight.”
Terresa continues giving instructions to her troops and I run back to Daphne, giving Abbie, Joe, and Psyche some backup from the swooping monsters. “Hey, did you see?” Joe calls, pointing at a pile of stone shards at his feet. “I killed one!”
