Debauched (Hades and Persephone Book 3)

by Bella Klaus

I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything else but scream.

  “You won’t touch my daughter.” Mother rushed at him from behind.

  “Silence, treacherous wife.” Samael waved a hand.

  Mother flew across the room and landed on Persephonia, who fell onto Agori with a thud.

  Samael gasped. The prongs of a bident sliced through his chest, followed by a blast of Hellfire that filled the room with the scent of brimstone. The flames turned from orange to yellow to white as they increased in temperature, and then they became transparent.

  My heart flip-flopped. That had to be Hades. Somehow, he had made himself invisible.

  Samael’s eyes bulged. He glanced from side to side, his pretty features twisted in a rictus of incandescent rage. “Hades, where are you?” Flames rose from his parted lips. “Show yourself.”

  “Hades?” I asked into the bond.

  “I’m here,” Hades replied, his voice urgent. “Keep an eye on his shadow. It’s thinning. As soon as you can break free, teleport to Namara. She’ll take you to a hideout where no one will find you.”

  The pressure on my arms loosened, and I inhaled a deep breath. Hades was right. Samael’s shadow was loosening, but it still encased my arms. “I’m not leaving you here with that bastard.”

  “For once, will you do as I say?” Hades snapped.

  “Coward.” Samael’s voice became hollow as his vocal chords burned. “You berated me for not having any balls, yet you attack in the dark.”

  Hades growled. “Release your shadows from my wife or—”

  “You’ll what?” Samael said, his voice light for someone burning from the inside-out. “What you fail to realize is that I can draw on the power of the Factions under my control. Your colleagues will sign their thrones over to me, and I’ll use the full extent of my power to take the Fifth.”

  Hades’ fire engulfed Samael’s body, making him flail his arms and legs.

  “You cannot kill that which is immortal,” Samael screamed.

  “No,” Hades said with a chuckle. “But it will be fun to try.”

  All the tightness around my arms and torso released, and I kicked out to loosen the shadows from my legs. Whatever Hades was doing, it was working.

  The children wailed from the other side of the room. I glanced at Mother, who wrapped her arms around them and erected an opaque shield of magic.

  “Azriel,” I hissed. “Now’s probably the time for Heaven and Hell to work together and end this bastard.”

  He shook his head. “The two forces shall never unite.”

  As the shadows receded back into the ball of fire that was Samael, Hades said into the bond, “I wanted to save this attack until after the angels and Demeter had worn him down. As soon as your feet are free, I want you to retreat.”

  “Will you be behind me?” I asked.

  Hades hesitated for a heartbeat too long. “Yes.”

  Dread pulled my stomach to the floor. “If you think you’re going to sacrifice yourself for me, it won’t work. We fight together.”

  “You’ve barely had a week of being whole—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I glowered at the shadows encasing my feet and keeping them rooted to the ground. “If I survive and you don’t, I won’t want to continue.”

  “Kora.” His voice broke.

  “I mean it.”

  Samael’s pained gasps filled the silence as the Hellfire continued to burn his body. Heat radiated from the ball of fire, making sweat break out across my skin. Wiping my brow with the back of my hand, I shot a blast of lightning into his shadows, turning them a pale shade of gray.

  “Hades,” I said into my bond, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Go on.”

  “Will that Hellfire burn me?”

  “Of course not,” he replied. “We combined magic, remember?”

  “Good, because I’m going to strike him with my lightning.”

  “It didn’t work last time.”

  “The angels never changed up their attacks. They just did the same thing and then waited for him to react.”

  Hades grunted. “The two-pronged approach might weaken him for a while, but he’s going to repair himself soon enough.”

  “Not if Mother joins in.”

  The flames engulfing Samael flickered, and some of the heat radiating from him receded. Hades cursed out loud and pushed more fire out through his hands, making me reel backward with a flare of heat.

  “Do you think Demeter will help?”

  I nodded. “If it’s to protect her children.”

  “How?”

  My gaze wandered to where Mother formed a huddle with the children. “That wreath around her head is one of those carnivorous plants. As soon as you release your fire, it will feed on my lighting and make it grow.”

  Hades laughed. “I sure as Hell would like to see what kind of flower sprouts from that bastard’s carcass.”

  “So, we’re agreed?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Keep the fire going until Mother comes forward with the plant.”

  “Right.”

  I poured even more power into the bident, turning Samael into a ball of lightning that overwhelmed Hades’ flames. My skin still tingled from the intense heat, indicating that I hadn’t put out the fire. Palpitations reverberated across my chest, and my nerves shuddered with anticipation. If this idea didn’t work, then we were all screwed.

  Samael fell silent, but that couldn’t mean a thing. I’d seen enough of how he’d bounced back from the angels’ attacks to take his inaction as a sign of victory.

  “Mother,” I shouted out loud. “Give me that plant.”

  Her head snapped up from the huddle. “Kora?”

  “We can’t destroy Samael without your help.”

  She released her grip on the children and ushered them to where Lucifer stood. Strangely, it was the one patch of the room that hadn’t been affected by any of the hostilities. All three of them hid behind his unmoving form, while Lucifer stared ahead, oblivious.

  Mother clutched her hands to her chest. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You need to make that vine around your head feed on his magic,” I said.

  With a shaky nod, she advanced toward us, her limbs trembling. My insides quivered. I had never seen Mother look so nervous or cowed. The wreath around her head twisted, and tendrils grew from it like baby snakes.

  Koritsi grabbed her wrist. “Don’t hurt Daddy.”

  Mother’s eyes filled with tears. “Daddy is a very bad man, and he needs to be stopped.”

  “But he’s good,” Koritsi wailed.

  Hades snarled into the bond. “And this is why newborns should never gain the power of speech.”

  Mother turned to the other woman and placed her hands on her shoulders. “My darling, I know you love him, but this is the only way you, your brother and your sister will be safe.”

  Koritsi stamped her foot, and black vines snaked out across the floor. “I won’t let you hurt Daddy.”

  I ground my teeth and suppressed the urge to snarl. It wasn’t Koritsi’s fault that she hadn’t understood that Samael had wanted her dead. For thousands of years, I thought Mother was the greatest goddess in all of Mount Olympus. It took centuries of being with Hades to see her faults.

  “Hurry up,” Hades yelled. “We can’t subdue Samael forever.”

  “Darling girl.” Mother’s voice broke.

  She placed her hands on Koritsi’s face, looking like she wanted to cup her cheeks, but the young woman fell slack. She laid the young goddess on the ground beside her twin brother, who stared down at her with dull eyes.

  “Finally,” Hades muttered into the bond.

  By now, the wreath had formed a thick vine that wound around Mother’s torso like a sash, with leaves the size of her hands. A tulip-shaped flower head larger than my skull emerged from her back and opened itself to reveal a maw of needle-sharp teeth.

  “It’s ready,” she s
aid.

  I turned my head to the direction where I’d last heard Hades’ voice. “Pull back your flames, so they don’t destroy the vine.”

  “Done,” he said.

  As the dry heat faded, I beckoned Mother over. “Can you make the plant move?”

  She nodded, and the vine slithered down her dress like a giant centipede. Sparks flew from my ball of lightning, making the plant thicken as it crawled toward Samael. I clenched my teeth, watching the hateful creation, urging it to grow bigger, faster, more ravenous.

  Moments later, it disappeared into the lightning, and Samael released a low groan.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “The parasitic roots have latched onto his energy centers.”

  My mind drifted back to one of Mother’s teachings about invasive plants. “Like dwarf mistletoe?”

  She wrung her hands. “That’s right. May I return to your brother and sisters? I tried teleporting, but the room is sealed…”

  I glared to the left of the room where Azriel stood in the corner, still clutching his computer tablet. The angel shook his head. “The transportation block isn’t my doing. As soon as the last angels died, Heaven locked down this pocket.”

  “Meaning that we’re all trapped here with Samael?”

  He lowered his lashes. “The other angels will do anything to stop him from rising. They were encasing this enclosure with wards the entire time they sent soldiers to sacrifice themselves in those attacks.”

  “They were a distraction?” Hades snarled.

  “I’m afraid so.” Azriel’s shoulders rose to his ears.

  My lips tightened, and I turned to Mother. “Go to them.”

  “Thank you, Kora,” she said, her eyes softening.

  I tore my gaze away from Mother’s and kept on the pressure of my magic until leaves emerged from beyond the lightning ball. They were a green more vibrant than the plant that had fed from Hades and unfurled toward the edges of the room.

  Thick vines sprouted toward the ceiling, their tendrils burrowing through the plaster and bringing it down into my magical sphere. Roots bored into the floor and stretched across the room.

  I breathed hard, my veins thrumming with the onset of triumph. This plant was going to be bigger than the one that had consumed Hades. With the amount of power it had to be leaching from Samael’s body, it would probably blast through the angels’ wards.

  Hades appeared at my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Time to stand down.”

  “You’re right.” I pulled back my magic and planted the butt of the bident to the floor. “The plant should do the rest of the work.”

  He pressed a kiss on my temple. “Well done, darling.”

  My lighting faded, uncovering a tangle of ropy vines as thick as Samael’s body that formed a mass the circumference of a dining table. One of the stalks had merged with his body, exposing only his front.

  His skin was still an angelic peaches-and-cream, but his hair had turned into green tendrils. The parts of his armor that the plant hadn’t consumed were still white, and all the scorch marks I’d expected to see on his breastplate were gone.

  “This isn’t going to keep me down,” he said with a rasping chuckle.

  “I don’t see you breaking out,” I said.

  “Because I’m tearing through the plant’s cellular structure with a velocity you can’t even begin to comprehend,” Samael snarled. “In only a matter of minutes, I will extricate myself from this parasite, and you will become its prey.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Hades said out loud.

  Samael’s eyes narrowed. “Am I? Or are you failing to grasp the enormity of my power?”

  I ran a hand through my hair and blew out a breath. “If you’re so strong, maybe we need to weaken you a bit more.”

  “With more Hellfire?” he said with a sneer. “Any flames you can spare will only hasten my salvation.”

  My lip curled. Samael was such an aggravating dick. I reached into the pocket of my armor and extracted a test tube filled with a thick yellow substance.

  “What’s that?” he snapped.

  Ignoring him, I closed my eyes and connected with the grains of pollen. The spiky ball I’d visualized in the greenhouse appeared in my mind’s eye. “Fly into that angel’s mouth and eat everything, all right?” I asked to it. “Not just his lungs.”

  The pollen bobbed back and forth in a nod.

  “And as soon as you get settled, reproduce until you overwhelm his insides, understand?”

  It nodded again.

  My teeth worried at my bottom lip. If I wasn’t careful with my instructions, the pollen could end up trying to consume us all. “Eat only that angel, not anyone else. Is that clear?”

  Another nod.

  I opened my eyes, flipped the cork, and let the yellow substance fly toward Samael. “Separate,” I told it. “Enter through his mouth and nose and don’t let him see or block you.”

  Samael shook within the confines of the plant. “Do you think I can be defeated by flesh-eating pollen?” he said with a hollow laugh. “With the power of Hell at my command, I will order this bastard plant to do my bidding.”

  All the blood drained from my face and flooded my galloping heart. How on earth had he seen through that attack?

  Leaves drifted down from the force of his rage, and small branches sprouted from the trunk and raced toward me.

  I clenched my teeth, raised both palms, and ordered the limbs to retreat. Instead of completely obeying my commands, they wound around each other before falling to the floor with a gentle thud.

  Hades wrapped an arm around my middle and pulled me to the other side of the room. “Unless you have some other trick to pull out from your armor, I suggest we leave.”

  “He’s going to break free,” I said.

  “Probably, but not by the time we find a way out of this pocket dimension and form a plan B.”

  Another branch raced toward us. With a flick of my wrist, I diverted it toward a nearby patch of the wall, where it knocked loose all the plaster and a few of the bricks.

  “You’re going nowhere,” Samael hissed.

  “How could he be so powerful?” I asked.

  “I miscalculated,” Hades replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I knew Demeter was the reason he had shot to power, and I also knew she would turn on him the moment he threatened any of her children.” He cupped the side of my face. “And that included you.”

  An ache formed in my chest and spread to the back of my throat and up my sinuses. Blinking hard, I tried to clear my head. Mother was a lot of things. I could spend all week listing her faults. But her one saving grace was that she strove to protect her children from others.

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “You think we have no chance of surviving?”

  “Heaven’s given up.” The weight of Hades’ words gave me chills. “Those wretched angels have locked us in with a psychopath who is now worming his will through a parasitic plant. If we kill it, we set Samael free. If we leave him to the vegetation, he’ll soon wield it like a weapon.”

  I glanced at the giant vine, which had now grown a thick protective bark as well as thorns the size of Samael’s head. A weight the size of the world settled onto my shoulders. Right now, I just wanted to grab Hades, break through the wards, forget that Hell ever existed and hide until the Angels cleaned up this supernatural mayhem.

  “Basically, we’re buggered,” Hades said.

  My voice shook with false bravado. “Maybe we can think of something?”

  “I want you to do something for me, and don’t argue.”

  “What?”

  He placed a metal helmet on my head. “Keep this on. Don’t take it off, no matter what happens.”

  Grief thickened my throat, and I swallowed hard through the pain. Hades was trying to sacrifice himself for me. Again. “Because you think Samael will kill you?”

  He hesitated before replying. “He’
s going to destroy everyone and everything in this pocket realm, including what’s out there beyond this church.”

  “Then I’ll also die.”

  He placed his hand on top of the helmet. “I used this to fight a war against the Titans. It will render you invisible and invulnerable to indirect harm. If you stay out of his way, Samael will break out, and you can escape.”

  I parted my lips to argue, but Hades brought his mouth down on mine for a kiss that felt like our last.

  “It doesn’t matter who you are.” His voice echoed through my skull. “Persephone, Kora, or a shattered soul floating in the ether. I will love you until the very end.”

  My breath quickened, and the pulse in my throat dialed up to one hundred. This was definitely a goodbye. A goodbye he wanted me to remember long after he’d died. Something inside me shattered at the thought of surviving without Hades.

  A future opened up for me that I could only describe as bleak. The wealth of memories Hades had unlocked now rose to the surface, and somewhere beneath them lay all the centuries I’d spent alone. I couldn’t stand it—not for two millennia, not for two centuries, not even for two minutes.

  The room spun faster than my thoughts, and the backs of my eyes burned. “We can’t just give up.”

  Hades pressed his head against mine and sighed. “I want to destroy that bastard, but he’s more powerful than everyone in this room combined.”

  “Don’t expect me to hide in the corner.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll fight at my side, but you’ll wear that helmet.”

  A branch raced toward us. I held up a hand, slowing its course, and pushed my magic into it. “Attack Samael,” I snarled. “Don’t let him command you. He’s your food, not your master.”

  The branch retreated and slapped Samael in the face.

  “You two are hopeless,” said a familiar male voice. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

  My head snapped up.

  Lucifer walked toward us, his eyes burning with an incandescent rage.

  I blinked, taking in the white-haired fallen angel and his eerily pale skin. Samael had once walked into the Fifth Faction in an avatar, and Mother had possessed Persephone’s body to entrap Hades.

  Dread tumbled through my insides like an avalanche of rocks, squeezing the air from my lungs until my head spun.