Unbound

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “For how long?” Drew asked, and the creature eyed his semi-transparent form curiously.

  “Sssince you took up resssidence in the Dragon’sss lair,” he replied, stony expression giving nothing away.

  “And yet you said nothing,” Pierson said.

  Azriel moved his massive shoulders in what appeared to be a shrug. “You were all ssso busssy with the fear god and other problemsss that I took it upon myssself to find them.”

  “Did the Dragon know?” Casey asked, his expression cold, but there was a note of hope in his tone that I could not ignore.

  The gargoyle nodded. “He wasss the one to sssuggessst it.”

  Casey went silent.

  “When did you find them?” I asked.

  “I found them a couple of daysss ago. After the wine god wasss freed by the wing-footed one.”

  “Fucking Hermes,” Kierson muttered under his breath. Oz’s sentiment, had he been there, would have been eerily similar.

  “And now they are gone?” I asked.

  Azriel nodded. “They were here only hoursss ago. It isss asss if they knew you were coming…”

  “I wonder if the messenger god is to blame for that, as well,” Drew growled.

  “Except he didn’t know we were coming here tonight,” Pierson argued.

  “Well, this fucking sucks,” Casey snarled. “Now we have to start over again.”

  The gargoyle smiled, exposing his protruding canine tooth. “You have forgotten sssomething, warrior,” he said to Casey. “The Dragon is blesssed with a sssense of sssmell like no other. Even a werewolf’sss tracking abilitiesss pale in comparissson. If you were to asssk him, he would sssurely come and track them from here—for you.” Azriel’s gaze drifted to me. “And for her.”

  Casey pulled out his phone and stared at it for a moment before dialing as he walked away. “Yeah…it’s me. I’m at the Metro station…I need you for something.” Casey grew quiet for a moment, and I could see the tension in his shoulders growing until, with one loud exhale, they relaxed. “We’ll be here.” He tucked his phone away and turned to face us. “He’ll be here in ten.”

  “Does he even know why he’s coming?” Drew asked, and I realized that, once again, Drew was no longer in the know.

  Kierson grinned. “He doesn’t care. All he needed was for Casey to ask.”

  Drew’s confusion grew, and his brow furrowed. “But I thought they hated each other.”

  I walked over to the leader of the Detroit PC and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Come, Brother, and I will tell you the story of a love once lost, now found again.” I ushered him toward the stairs while he looked back at Casey. “There is much we have yet to tell you about the time you have lost.”

  He turned his attention to me, and I smiled at him in what I hoped was the same way he had once smiled at me. “Wait—are you saying that Casey—”

  “Is more than he seems?” I said as we descended the stairs. “Yes, he is.” I stole a glance over my shoulder at my black-eyed brother, and he nodded. “And his story is as tragic as it is beautiful.”

  12

  The Dragon arrived ten minutes later, just as he had said he would. He was still in his reptilian form when he reached the upper floor. He snorted smoke as he stalked toward us, and Azriel stepped out to greet him, bowing low before him.

  “Casey has asked you to come here tonight to help us track the missing gods,” Drew explained. “They were here not long ago.”

  The Dragon’s slitted eyes turned to Casey. “Is this true?” he asked, his deep, booming voice vibrating the ground we stood upon.

  “Can you do it?” Casey asked.

  The Dragon stepped closer. “Of course, but that isn’t the question you really seek an answer to, is it?”

  Casey’s jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. “Will you do it? Will you help us?”

  Something very human flashed behind his reptilian eyes. Something that desperately resembled sadness.

  “Do you really still feel as though you need to ask?”

  Casey’s expression softened.

  “Can you track their scent?” I asked. The Dragon swung his massive head to face me. Then he made a show of inhaling deeply, dust and debris stirring as he breathed in his surroundings. His eyes went wide for a moment, then narrowed.

  “Get on and I’ll show you.”

  With only a moment’s hesitation, Casey rounded the beast’s shoulder and climbed onto his back. The others followed suit. I, however, removed my jacket and let my wings erupt from my back, slicing through my sweater. I would have sworn the Dragon smiled at the sight.

  “Can you keep up, little angel?” he asked, a plume of smoke punctuating his question.

  “Perhaps, once the gods are found,” I replied, letting my mouth curl at the corners, “you can challenge me to a race and see.”

  “Enough dick swinging, you two,” Kierson said with a laugh. “Let’s go find these assholes.”

  “Indeed,” I replied.

  The Dragon’s gaze slid to a hole in the ceiling at the far end of the room; then he took off at a run. In a blink, he shot into the air through the small space.

  I was already losing.

  “Fucking Dragon,” I muttered under my breath as I sprinted toward the makeshift exit.

  We landed in yet another familiar place: the factory where we had faced off against some of the arisen gods and slain them. All but the one currently residing in the void inside of me. Artemis had been spared to serve as a cautionary tale to any who would dare to defy me.

  She would be a useful example to those inside should they choose to stand against us.

  The six of us gathered outside to form a proper plan, now that we had acquired our target. I could not help but notice that the Dragon had once again silently agreed to fight beside the PC, though it was not required of him. I also could not help but notice how he hovered behind Casey like his personal guard.

  Suddenly, I felt Oz’s absence like a knife through the chest.

  “Surprise is our best weapon against them,” Drew whispered. “We need to surround the place and come in from all potential entrances.”

  “Including above,” I added, nodding at the Dragon. A puff of smoke escaped as he let loose a tiny cough that sounded strangely like laughter.

  The decision to split up was inevitable, given the size of the building and the number of egresses we were already aware of from the last time we had been there. Perhaps that was why the gods had chosen it as a place of refuge. Perhaps they had thought we would overlook it because of the slaughter of their brethren that had occurred there.

  Unfortunately, the gods could not have accounted for the tracking prowess of the Dragon.

  I crept to the entrance Artemis and the demigods had tried to escape through the last time we had been there, and I crouched outside of it, awaiting the signal. Seconds later, the screeching cry of the Dragon rang through the abandoned industrial area, and we all broke into the building.

  I met no resistance, so I continued on, storming into the room where the bulk of the previous fight had taken place. Instead of my brothers and my father standing at the end of a blade, I found the few remaining gods and demigods staring at us in utter surprise, Demeter among them.

  “Khara,” she called as the others went rigid with our approach. Dionysus and Hermes both knew what the PC could do. The rest seemed to take their cue from them and eyed us warily, though I imagined our drawn weapons and the presence of a full-sized beast of fire and death helped increase their trepidation.

  Demeter stepped forward from the rest, as though I would not strike her down if she endeavored to interfere. Had she so quickly forgotten our last interaction? The one that had left her seizing on the floor?

  “Demeter…” The name rolled off my tongue like poison.

  “Well, holy shit,” Casey said, coming to stand beside me, “this is the infamous Demeter?” He sounded as though he could not have been less impressed.


  The twins came to flank him, their expressions equally grim. But it was Drew’s reaction that surprised me most. The anger he felt blazed in his crystal blue eyes as he stepped toward her, his faintly translucent silhouette highlighted by the full moon filtering in through the filthy and broken windows.

  “I am,” she replied, her chest puffed with pride. “And who are you, exactly?”

  “We’re her brothers,” Drew said, stopping only a few feet away. “Her family.”

  “Nah, man,” Kierson said, “don’t use that word. She wouldn’t understand the meaning of it if it crawled out of the Underworld and smacked her in the face.”

  “She is a disgrace to the word ‘mother’,” Pierson added, “and she is unworthy of her power as goddess of nature and life.”

  Demeter’s eyes narrowed in anger as she shifted to look past Drew at me.

  “No,” he said, blocking her view as he closed the distance between them. “You don’t get to look at her like that. If I had my way, I’d make it so you never could again…but that’s Khara’s call to make, not mine.”

  The threat in his words was as plain as the contempt my brothers held for her. Though it was well-earned, it was clear that Demeter did not agree.

  “Khara, would you call off these ill-bred warrior brothers of yours, or do you intend to let their theatrics continue?”

  “Theatrics?” Casey replied, choking on the word. “Is this bitch serious?” He flipped a blade over and over in his hand as he stared at me. “Say the word, Sis, and it’s done.” His harsh glare went soft for a moment. “I owe you one.”

  “You owe me more than one,” I said with a wicked smile, “but I am perfectly capable of handling her.”

  “Like you’re capable of handling them?” Demeter scoffed, her disdain clear.

  “I do not control my brothers, nor do I wish to,” I said. “They are not dogs to be brought to heel. Besides, I am rather enjoying this.”

  “So am I,” Hermes said, his tone laced with dark amusement.

  “You should be silent and hope that I do not discover that you have been deceiving me all along about your lack of knowledge of their whereabouts,” I said, scanning the small crowd of reincarnated souls. “It would be such a shame to have to end you after all we have been through.”

  “You need me,” he said, his voice little more than a snarl.

  “Perhaps,” was my only reply before I turned my focus back to the woman who raised me—if her treatment of me as a child could be called that—and stepped closer. “I would choose my answers to these questions carefully, Demeter, lest you find yourself tethered to an unfortunate fate.”

  “Haven’t I already been?” she asked, her eyes raking over me—my wings.

  The subtext of her response was plain, and I heard my brothers move behind me. I placed my hand on Kierson’s chest to hold him back.

  “You didn’t deserve Khara,” he spat as he pressed against my hold.

  Demeter leaned forward, rage flashing in her narrowed eyes. “I never wanted her. Not when she was placed in my hands by that disgraced creature. Not when she grew to be nothing but a reminder of the daughter who was stolen from me.”

  “You mean the daughter that broke the covenant?” I said calmly, having already learned that truth. “The daughter that chose to leave you because your love for her bordered upon obsession, and you suffocated her until she fled to the one place you could not retrieve her—into the arms of the King of the Dead.”

  Her features twisted in anger. “Liar.” But her accusation lacked conviction because, deep down inside, she already knew the truth.

  “That, I am not, though my upbringing should have made me one.”

  Silence.

  “I was glad to be rid of you—to have Hades take you away for those blessed six months at a time.” She scanned my face for any sign that her words had cut me as she had intended. “You always were impossible to love.”

  “She was a child,” Drew growled, the blade he had taken from Casey now pressed against her throat. “She was a victim of circumstances she could not control, and yet you speak of her as though she willfully ruined your miserable existence—as if that were even possible.”

  “Khara is the best thing to happen to the PC in centuries,” Casey added, turning his pain-filled black eyes my way. “She’s one of the best things to happen to me in that time, too.”

  “She literally brought me back from the dead,” Drew continued, “forced Hades to do something he wasn’t sure he even could because she refused to leave me to my fate in the Elysian Fields. And then, when I fell yet again, she stole my soul from the Underworld, along with the souls of all the other honorable PC brothers there, because she did not wish to be without us.”

  “She is the single most intriguing and fearsome female I have ever met,” Pierson said, stepping to flank the others, “and it is clear that you had nothing to do with that outcome.”

  “Plus she’s a fucking badass and a half,” his twin added. “Even your bitch of a daughter would admit that much.”

  “I guess only time will tell,” Demeter said, her eyes steely with hatred.

  I pulled Drew’s arm down, lowering the weapon from Demeter’s neck.

  “So, what do we do with her?” Casey asked, eyeing her up as though he had a long list of ideas about where to start. “And the rest of them?”

  “I suggest a barter,” Dionysus said, drawing our collective attention away from the woman who raised me. He crept out from behind Demeter, his battered form healed. His eyes were rimmed with angry creases.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be chained up in a basement?” Casey asked, blades flipping again in agitation.

  “I would be if you had your way.”

  “You say that like I still can’t.” He did not bother to hide the threat in his words. “So start talking—now—or I will.”

  Dionysus stopped short of the group, as though the distance alone could protect him. “I see that the fear god has not gotten you yet,” he said, his curious stare pinned on me, “which means that his plan must have failed…to some degree.”

  “What do you know of his plan?” I asked as I stepped closer.

  Dionysus stiffened and cast a wary glance at Hermes, a silent question burning in his eyes. Hermes shook his head, but Dionysus spoke anyway. “I do not wish to be annihilated, as the others were. Nor do I want to be a prisoner inside of you, Princess. But I will not return to the Oudeis.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I do not know the fear god’s plan, but what if I had something that could help you—something you might need?”

  “Like what, you piece of shit?” Kierson asked.

  “Information.”

  “It would have to prove both useful and true to buy you what you seek, and even then, I could not promise you anything. Your soul belongs to Hades, not me. If you choose to exist, then you surrender yourself to his will, not mine.”

  “But Hades loves you, does he not?” he asked. I nodded. “Then he will wish to know what I know should he desire to keep you out of the fear god’s grasp—or at least give you the upper hand in your war with him.”

  “And what do you want in exchange for this information?” I asked, closing the distance between us. His eyes narrowed in anger, but he knew he could not defeat me. This potential knowledge was all the leverage he had, and he planned to play it very carefully.

  “What I wish is for the King of the Dead to grant me, and the others, permission to move to the Elysian Fields—” Casey scoffed so loud it eclipsed the former god of wine. When his outburst died off, Dionysus continued. “I believe Hades will agree to this, given the alternative.”

  I considered his offer for a moment, then turned to my brothers. “What say you?”

  They shared a look before Drew stepped forward. “We need to know what the information is first,” he said to Dionysus.

  “Absolutely not! If I tell you, then what is there to keep you from killing us right
here and now?”

  Drew smiled in a manner so like Casey’s that it actually shocked me. “Because we have honor, unlike you.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “It’ll have to be.”

  “Can you tell us how the information relates to the fear god without telling us what it is?” I asked.

  Dionysus contemplated my question before casting another wary glance at Hermes, who lurked in the corner, uncharacteristically silent. “You are not able to find him, correct?”

  “Not yet, but we are working on it.”

  “What if I could tell you where he hides—where he was for all those centuries when he was missing? Where he will return when not on Earth? Because that is where you can find him.”

  I looked to Drew, the lines etched into his forehead a testament to his concern.

  “It’s your call, Khara. What do you think Hades will do?”

  “He will do what he must,” I said, grabbing Dionysus by the arm. “And so will we.”

  My brothers quickly collected the others and brought them to me.

  “I do not belong there!” Demeter cried as Casey hauled her away by the arm.

  “Keep that mouth of yours running and I’ll make it so you do.” The point of his blade at her throat silenced her.

  With everyone connected, I took a deep breath and focused on my father’s realm. Seconds later, I whisked us away to the gates of the Underworld.

  13

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Aery said as she walked into the Great Hall. One look at the former gods and my adoptive mother, and her humor fell. “I’ll go get your father—”

  “There is no need,” I said, stopping her short. “Could you escort my brothers across the Acheron so they can summon Trey to come get them?”

  “Khara, I think it’s best if—”

  “I will be fine, Drew. And you have other things to attend to above.” My pointed stare told him I was unbending on the issue. To my surprise, he did not put up a fight.

  “You know where we’ll be.”