We should untie her. We shouldn’t have tied her.
Ares apparently thought the same thing; his hand twitched over the knots where he held her fast to him, like a human shield. Aphrodite went to his side and put a hand on Persephone’s shoulder.
“We haven’t harmed her,” she said sweetly.
“That’s the only reason you’re still wearing your skin,” said Hades.
Athena and Ares exchanged a glance. Tread carefully. He could burst out from under that boy-shaped mask anytime he wants. And that’s all it is. All it ever was. But what’s underneath it now is far worse than what used to be.
“My dog lies shivering at my palace steps and my wife stands a hostage. And that is my dead boy.”
“I was never dead,” Odysseus said quietly.
“You’re still dead. The breath in you is stolen. And dead boys don’t speak to me.” Hades turned toward him, and blood poured from Odysseus’ mouth. He fell before Athena could catch him, and his sword clattered to the rocks.
“Stop it!” She went to her knees. Odysseus’ hands pressed to his eyes and red leaked through his fingers. He bled from his nose and his ears, sprayed blood from his mouth like water from a blowhole. Virus blackened his skin and ate it away as she watched.
Athena grabbed the sword and leapt for Persephone. It was skewered through her side before anyone had time to block Athena’s way. Persephone didn’t cry out. Stabbing her was like running a blade through a loaf of dry bread. But Hades paid attention, and Odysseus stopped bleeding.
“Don’t do that again,” Hades warned.
“Don’t make me.”
“We just want to walk out of here, with Odysseus.” Ares spoke boldly, but his eyes were ringed with white. Seeing a sword shoved through their cousin had rattled him, but what did he think a hostage was for?
“You shouldn’t have taken her,” said Hades.
“It was the only way to get you to bargain,” Athena said.
Odysseus had regained his feet. He spat blood onto the rocks. It still dripped from one ear and blinked from his eyes like tears, but that was just leftovers. Ares’ wolves fussed around him in a circle and stole licks from his clothes and fingers.
“So let’s bargain.” Hades motioned for them to cross the river.
“Not so fast,” said Ares. “Not until a deal’s in place. We walk out of here, and cut her loose at the threshold.”
Hades shook his head. “You can’t trade him for her. She is already mine. He is already mine. Mine for mine. It doesn’t play.”
“We don’t have anything else.” Athena thought of Aphrodite but dismissed the idea quickly. It was going to be hard enough for Ares to leave Aphrodite behind as a voluntary guest, let alone as traded chattel, and Athena didn’t fancy having a brother-sister spat about it in front of their uncle.
“Not a trade at all, then.” Odysseus stepped forward and wiped blood from his nose onto the back of his arm. Athena half wanted to throttle him for opening his mouth, to ask him if he enjoyed hemorrhaging from all the holes in his face. But her other half was proud. Her Odysseus. Bold and two steps ahead of himself, as usual.
“Not a trade,” Athena agreed. “But a task. You’ve been known to lay tasks before, Uncle. They say you did it for Heracles lots of times, and he was only your half-nephew.”
“A task.” Hades smiled. Just enough time passed as he thought about it for Athena to dread putting it into his head. “A task it is. So here are the terms. The way up is through my palace. It is the only way up that will be allowed to you. And Persephone is released to me on the steps.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. After that, you’ll be free to leave. If you can fight your way out.”
* * *
Athena pulled the sword out of Persephone’s side and threw it to Odysseus, trying to ignore the dry bits of flesh that stuck to the blade.
“Nothing starts until we reach the palace,” Athena said, and nudged Persephone forward to cross the Styx again. Hades showed his palms and agreed, backing away from the shore to let them come. Athena looked past Persephone at Ares, and back at Odysseus. She’d fought everything the underworld had thrown at her in the dark and she’d done it bare-fisted and mostly blind. Now she had another god of war, and a hero with nine lives. It could work. They could make it.
Or they could wind up in pieces with Odysseus’ ghost sucking blood off their severed stumps.
They left the river, soaked through with hate for what felt like the hundredth time, and followed Hades through tunnels and past fields of asphodel. It wasn’t long until they’d left the tunnels completely, headed toward the massive marble columns of Hades’ palace. Like everything else in the underworld, the palace was half-illusion. It appeared as a great rectangle. But the closer they walked, the larger it became. Columns stretched up farther and the shadows between grew darker. It was easier to look at than the walls of the tunnels, at least, constructed of plain white marble rather than shifting, iridescent stones, but at its steps it blotted out everything else. Athena wouldn’t have been able to see the top had she craned her head all the way back.
This place sucks. I’ve never liked it. Never. Not even as a guest.
She looked back at Aphrodite, who stood at Persephone’s shoulder, absently stroking the half-dead goddess’ strawlike hair.
How could you ever think I would call you a coward for choosing to stay here?
A dog barked, and barked a second time. Cerberus emerged from behind a column and wagged his tail, then bared both sets of teeth when he saw Ares’ wolves. Oblivion and Panic flashed fangs of their own, but neither they nor Cerberus attacked.
Hades placed his foot on the first step and turned. Aphrodite gently untied the knots of Persephone’s bonds and let them flutter to the floor. Persephone rubbed her wrists, out of habit more than any real discomfort, Athena thought. In such an advanced state of decay, she doubted if Persephone felt much of anything anymore.
“There,” Ares said. “She’s free. And now you’ll let us pass.”
“If you can.” Hades nodded. Ares looked at Athena and placed a cautious foot on the steps. Hades did nothing. His word was solid. He still believed in the scales tipping even.
“Come on.” Ares beckoned Aphrodite as he backed up the steps. “It’s all right.”
Athena walked up the steps beside Odysseus and didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see anything that passed between Ares and Aphrodite. She didn’t want to be softened. But she couldn’t keep from hearing.
“I’m staying,” Aphrodite said gently. “With Persephone. I’m not going up to fight with you. I’m no use.”
Ares kept his voice hushed and his words ran together. For a moment Athena thought he’d take her anyway, that he’d abduct her from the underworld like Hades had abducted Persephone from above. But he didn’t, and Aphrodite wouldn’t change her mind.
“I never get to keep you very long,” Ares said softly.
“So it seems. You’ll come back for me, if you can.”
“Don’t I always?”
Athena tried not to listen as they embraced, and tried not to hear the emotion in Aphrodite’s voice when she said, “Go with her now. Bitch that she is, she’s your best chance.”
“And you, Hades,” Athena said over her shoulder. “You won’t harm her?”
“If Aphrodite wishes to stay as my guest, then she will be treated as one.”
Athena nodded as Ares brushed past. She and Odysseus followed behind, watching the wolves press their muzzles into his hands. None of them looked back. Enemy or true love, none could bear the sight of Aphrodite left behind in that dead place.
* * *
“Hades got the raw deal,” Odysseus commented as they walked through the bleak, empty halls.
Athena had always been inclined to agree. When the world was divided, Zeus took the heavens for himself and Poseidon the seas. The underworld and the dead they gave to Hades.
“It suits him.”
Ares shrugged.
But had it always? Maybe in the beginning, Hades had been as bright and as full of laughter as his brothers. Maybe he’d been turned to morbidity slowly, from days and nights and centuries of the same gray nothing inside his palace. The same shifting red-orange light and the mourning dead crowded into his walls.
Or maybe he’d always loved the decadence of decay. The aggression of disease. The despair of no time passing. In any case, he loved them plenty now.
“Why doesn’t he put things here?” Odysseus asked. “Furniture. Art. Candles.” The light inside the palace was dull and washed the color out of their skin. They might have been a rerun of a ’50s TV show. Perhaps the one where the fat guy was constantly threatening to slug his wife. “To the moon, Alice. To the moon.” Athena took a deep breath. The moon would’ve been a welcome trip.
“He has homes topside for that,” Ares replied. “This place he wants pure. Desolate. So if you kill yourself to get here you’ll wish you could kill yourself again.”
“Poor Persephone.” Odysseus cleared his throat. Poor Persephone. And now poor Aphrodite. Athena still wasn’t sure if Aphrodite had made the right choice. The underworld was just as likely to drive her mad as her sickness. And it would be a crueler mad. Rats in an endless maze mad. Picking your brain out through your ear mad.
“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Odysseus said. “There are two of them now, to keep company. They can play Pickle in the Middle with the two-headed dog.” He stopped. They’d come to a long set of wall-to-wall stairs. “Do you think that’s it?”
“I doubt it,” Athena muttered. All the way through the hall she’d been waiting for something to come at them. A horde of shades maybe, freshly amped up on Hades’ blood. That would’ve been fitting, a fine case of turnabout. But nothing came. Oblivion swept his nose back and forth along the ground. Panic’s ears flicked in all directions. The wolves didn’t sense anything, either.
Up was the only way to go, so they took the stairs, Odysseus by two and then three when Ares and Panic began to compete. Athena followed them up slowly with Oblivion. At the top of the stairs was a door.
And behind that door is a monster. Or an axe rigged up at head level. Or another door.
“Don’t just run in,” she said when they both looked about to. They gave her their best patronizing faces, but waited and moved, each to one side, while she checked it over. No trip wires or visible triggers. She chewed her lip. Open it low and slow, or kick it in and dodge? She felt Ares’ smug eyes on her, and kicked hard.
Nothing but yellow light spilled out onto their faces.
“This is all getting pretty anticlimactic,” Odysseus said as he walked into the new room, and promptly stopped talking. He also stopped dead in his tracks, causing Athena and Ares to run up against his back, but no one complained. The wolves whined. Athena’s eyes widened.
The room they’d walked into was an arena, and in the arena stood three behemoths.
“The Judges.” She clenched her teeth. Son of a bitch.
The three judges of the underworld, Hades’ generals, who decided the fates of the dead and guarded the borders within. She hadn’t thought he’d pull them from their posts, but there they stood. Rhadamanthys, Aeacus, and Minos.
“They’re bigger than I remember,” Ares said quietly. They were bigger than Athena remembered, too. Aeacus and Rhadamanthys seemed as large as trees and Minos, though smaller, looked more bull than man, from his cloven feet to his beautiful set of curving black goring horns. He even smelled like an animal: coarse, musky, and salty.
Along the walls of the room a few sad spears and shields lay littered in the corners. Provided for their benefit? Or leftover from the last heroes the Judges squished between their meaty hands? It didn’t seem that the weapons could be of much use, anyway. Aeacus’ and Rhadamanthys’ skin was a dense-looking ivory-gray, and looked hard enough to shatter a spear like glass.
“There’s one for each of us,” Odysseus said. “I’ll take a big one. Big and dumb is sort of my specialty.”
“They’re big, but they’re not dumb,” Athena said.
Hades had tasked the Judges with determining their worthiness, and that was exactly what they would do. Athena’s palms began to sweat. No single one seemed a more appealing prospect than the others, and staring them down would be no more effective than staring down a mountain you had to climb.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “A lot.”
“I’ll lend you a wolf,” Ares said to Odysseus. “Pick one.”
“I should be able to pick both. You’re a god. I’m a legally dead mortal. Panic, Oblivion.” He motioned with his head for them to come, and they went to his side. “But you’re thinking about this wrong. We don’t need to beat them. We need to fight our way out. Our way through. To that tiny door, up those stairs.”
Athena followed the tip of his sword to a stairway in the far right of the arena. It led to a door, the only other door in the room. From that distance, it looked about the size of the door Alice had to wedge herself through in Wonderland. But that was just a trick of the eye.
Odysseus made to move and she heard his name squeak out of her in a tone she hadn’t known she could make. Aphrodite was right. Fear was getting the better of her. She cleared her throat.
“I didn’t fight river monsters all this time only to have you torn apart now,” she said.
Odysseus smiled his crooked smile.
“If you could see your face,” he said. “So tender. So worried. You’d hate it.” He reached out and touched her chin. “But I love it.”
Ares chuckled, and Athena slipped away from Odysseus and steeled her spine.
In the center of the arena, Rhadamanthys squared up. The Judges wouldn’t wait much longer. Athena exhaled. Rhadamanthys was the only judge without a weapon. Aeacus carried some kind of silver scepter with beautifully honed and twisted edges, finely wrought lines of razor that would slice flesh like corned beef at the lightest touch. Minos had weapons built in: his sharpened horns had a good ten-foot reach.
Athena, Odysseus, Ares, and the wolves leapt up and out in different directions, scattering before the Judges with no plan and no steadying “on three” count. Both Athena and Odysseus went for Minos. She grabbed hold of one of his horns and wrenched it upward; Odysseus slid through the gap between his feet and trailed his sword. One judge on one knee. A solid job of hamstringing.
Something in Athena’s gut told her to duck, and she hit the floor just in time to feel Rhadamanthys’ massive arm pass over her head. A wolf yipped and Panic went sailing through the air. She glanced back: Oblivion was still on its paws, feinting and charging Minos where he knelt, bleeding.
“Up, wolf!” Odysseus scooped up Panic and made for the stairs but Rhadamanthys was there first, his leg stomping down like a tree trunk in their path. Athena didn’t think, she just leapt as the judge aimed a blow at Odysseus and the wolf. She caught his wrist in her stomach and doubled over his arm as it swung, watching the floor and walls fly by until she struck one and all the wind left her body. She slid straight down and landed on buckled legs and her ass, sucking as much air into her deflated lungs as she could. Ares bellowed to her left, engaged with Aeacus and his razor scepter. Every inch of Ares’ exposed skin was painted red. He didn’t know how to dodge. Aeacus swung and Ares took it, a blunt instrument, digging in and pushing back and losing pints. He’d never shake loose enough to get to the door.
And maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he wants to stay until the Judges lie still on the floor.
Idiot. Pick up a spear at least, you dope.
Athena rolled right in time to avoid Rhadamanthys’ elephantine stomp and leapt back toward the center of the arena. She ducked another of his grabs. The bastard was fast, despite his size.
“Oblivion! Panic! Hands!” she shouted to the wolves and they jumped to it, each sinking teeth into one of the giant’s hands and clinging there. They wouldn’t be able to hold long, but at least the wa
lls were far enough away that he couldn’t crush them against the marble. Athena ran to the stairs and used them to kick off, launching onto the judge’s back and scrambling for his neck. It would take one whole arm to choke him out and maybe part of the other.
If Heracles could manage with the three heads of Cerberus, I can manage just this one.
Her arms wrapped around Rhadamanthys’ massive neck and squeezed.
The judge could hold his breath, she’d give him that. Whether it would be his throat that gave or her arms came down to the wire, but just when her muscles began to shake, he dropped to his knees and then onto his face.
“Nice,” Odysseus shouted as the wolves let go. He jogged to her from a prone Minos. While she’d been choking Rhadamanthys, Odysseus had apparently hamstringed Minos’ other leg for good measure.
On the other side of the room, Ares stood over Aeacus, bludgeoning him with his own scepter. Odysseus winced when the scepter made contact with the judge’s skull. They’d had to take them all down after all.
“Come on,” Athena called to Ares from the base of the stairs. “Before they pop back up like jack-in-the-boxes.”
Ares smiled, covered in cuts, and brandished the stolen scepter. She had to give him credit. She’d thought she was going to have to run to his rescue.
Odysseus slipped his hand onto the small of her back as they headed up the stairs. How he loved trouble. He’d never want a quiet life, or a safe one. Looking into his exhilarated face, Athena could almost believe that they suited each other, and that it would last forever.
She paused at the door. It was the end. Behind it was the way out. She jerked it open and looked out at the damp rocks and dirt of the tunnel leading up. Wind hit her cheeks. Real wind.
“Amazing.” Odysseus grinned and stared into the flame of a torch. “Light. And the smell of regular water. It’s been so long.”
Athena smiled. She looked at the scepter in Ares’ hand. “Minos’ scepter. You should toss it back inside.”
“But I like it,” Ares said, and held it up to the torchlight. With a closer look, Athena saw that the lines of razor didn’t stop at the handle. They twisted and worked all the way down the grip. To wield the scepter turned the fighter’s hand into hamburger.
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