“I was thinking we could order—” Cal stiffened as he felt a tugging in his chest.
Not now. Damn it.
“Is something wrong?” Marinda pulled back from him.
“The gate. It wants me to open it. Someone wants to pass through.” He flicked a glance from his phone to her, aware of what he should do, but also what he wanted to do.
He didn’t want to call for backup. He wanted to take Marinda to the gate so she could see it. Curiosity glimmered in her blue eyes. Curiosity he wanted to sate by showing her another part of his world.
Their world.
She felt lost and he wanted to show her that she had a place where she belonged, that their world could be beautiful as well as dark and dangerous.
“You want to come?” He pocketed his phone.
She rapidly shook her head. “Your brother said to keep me here, and what if daemons are there?”
But that curiosity remained.
The sensible side he preferred to pretend didn’t exist called him reckless and whispered that she was right. Keras had told him to stay in London, and his brothers would be furious if they learned he had gone to the gate without them, and Marinda would be in danger.
Damn it.
Irritating his brothers wasn’t a problem for him, but placing Marinda in danger was something he couldn’t do.
So he fished his phone back out of his pocket.
Fired off a message to Daimon.
He was the best choice given the fact Cal still intended to take Marinda with him to the gate so she could see it. Daimon was in such a sour mood that he wouldn’t care if Marinda came with them, would just go with the flow so he could return to Hong Kong, back to his fortress of solitude.
Daimon answered.
Make it quick. Meet you there.
Exactly as Cal had hoped.
He took hold of Marinda’s hand as he pocketed his phone again, and it was weird that he no longer had to wear his amulet to the gate. The cat was out of the bag with that one and since he didn’t plan to go through the gate himself, there was no need for him to wear it. He wasn’t out to tangle with the gatekeeper who protected the Underworld side, preventing anyone who didn’t have permission from his father from approaching the gate.
Which made the fact the Hellspawn that Megan had recognised, the necromancer who had killed Calindria, was able to come and go through the gate all the more annoying to Cal. The bastard had been getting permission from Hades to come and go from the Underworld, and he had probably been enjoying the fact Hades didn’t have a clue who he was or what he had done, or what he planned to do.
Well, the cat was out of the bag about that too now.
Ares had sent a Messenger to their father to update him with a photograph of the necromancer, taken from the CCTV footage. By now, his father’s legions would be using it to hunt down anyone who knew him in the Underworld. The chance of the necromancer being in that realm now was zero. Hades had closed the gates to all necromancer traffic when Enyo had told Marek it was likely one was involved. Which meant the necromancer had been in the mortal world since then, but the bastard could still have allies in the Underworld.
Before Marinda could form another protest, Cal stepped with her, landing her in the middle of Hyde Park. She wobbled as she set down, but showed no sign of discomfort. It hit him that not once had she been shaken by teleporting, not like Megan and Aiko, and the other women had at first.
Daimon turned his back to the Round Pond, his pale blue eyes gaining a dark edge when they landed on Marinda.
“What’s she doing here?” His brother slid him a black look. “This is hardly keeping her hidden.”
Cal shrugged. “We’re both here. Anything goes down and I’ll teleport her away. I don’t sense any daemons within a mile of this place. Do you?”
Daimon pulled a face. “No… but when Keras kicks your backside to the Underworld for disobeying him, don’t come crying to me. Let’s get on with this.”
“Where are we?” Marinda whispered as she looked around them at the dark park. Her gaze stopped on the illuminated elegant brick building on the other side of the water beyond Daimon. “Is that Kensington Palace?”
“Yep.” Cal tugged on her hand, pulling her forwards with him. Daimon flanked her, huffing about something. Probably how reckless Cal was being. If he sensed even the weakest daemon, he would get Marinda home, but she needed to see this. “I wanted to show you something.”
“The palace?” She stared at it in awe. “Royals really live there?”
He had planned to make showing her the gate a birthday present, but she looked more interested in the palace, which irritated him for some reason.
“My father’s palace is far more impressive than that paltry little shed.” Cal couldn’t keep the bite out of his voice as he glared at it. “Royals are just human beings. The crowns on their heads are just jewellery. You want to see power, take a look at the god-king of the Underworld and his queen.”
“And they are?” Her eyebrows furrowed, that adorable crinkle that he found so damned alluring and irresistible forming.
“Father and Mother,” Daimon intoned in a deadly serious voice.
“Wait.” Marinda halted, forcing Cal to stop too. He looked back at her and she stared wide-eyed at him. “The man I met… the woman I met…”
Her mouth flapped open and then snapped shut.
“You like royalty?” He grinned at her. “Well, you’re holding the hand of a prince.”
“There’s nothing princely about you,” Daimon muttered and hastened past them. “This is taking too long.”
Marinda continued to stare at Cal in disbelief.
“I don’t have a title, but Dad is king of the Underworld. Mum is his queen. That has to make me a prince, right?” He had always liked the distinction it gave him from all the other gods out there.
Calistos, Prince of the Underworld.
It sounded powerful.
Panty-melting.
Marinda didn’t look as if it was blowing her panties away. She continued to flounder as he started walking again, pulling her along with him towards the pond that was more like a small lake.
As he approached it, a flash of purple light chased back the darkness, obscuring the view of the palace across the water.
And apparently snapped Marinda out of her daze.
“What was that?”
“That…” He kept walking, watching as that dazzling violet orb began to grow and flatten into a disc that hovered a foot above the water. “Is the gate. I thought you might like to see it. It’s why me and my brothers are here. It connects the Underworld to this one. There are seven of them now, spread around the world. If the enemy has their way, they’ll destroy them when they’re open, forming a bridge between both worlds that would eventually destroy them to form a new realm.”
The disc began to grow, and when it was over five feet across, it pulsed brightly and a ring appeared, a flat circular band that shimmered with rainbow colours as it spread outwards over the water and slowly rotated around the central disc. Another pulse chased the darkness back as a second ring appeared, spinning in the opposite direction, and glyphs formed on both rings. Tiny ones chased around the outside of the larger ring, shining in green and blue. Larger ones filled the space between the inner ring and the central disc.
It flashed again and another ring appeared, this one spinning faster.
“Megan was right,” Marinda muttered beside him and he looked at her, watching her profile as she stared at the gate, the colours of it reflecting in her eyes. “It is beautiful.”
He was glad she liked it and the hurt that had shone in her eyes earlier was gone.
“This is part of our world, Marinda. An important part. What do you feel?” He brushed his thumb over hers and tightened his hold on her hand as she stepped closer to the gate, keeping her back from the water’s edge.
She lifted a trembling hand and held it up with her palm facing the gate as her eye
s remained locked on it.
“Home.”
That single word sent a shiver through him.
They really weren’t so different after all.
Maybe this was what her father had seen. Her at the gate. Aware of her connection to the Underworld and accepting of it.
He looked down at their joined hands and her words rang softly in his mind. She was meant to trust him. Had her father seen them like this, growing close to each other? He could understand why that would have been important to him in the moment before his death, aware of his imminent departure and not wanting her to be alone in this world.
Another shiver chased down his arms and spine.
He tried to ignore the words that echoed in his mind, rising up from his heart.
With her hand in his, with her in his life, he also no longer felt alone.
“It feels like home.” She looked back at him, an awkward twist to her face, as if she expected him to laugh at that or mock her.
“Feels like that to me too.” He smiled at her.
“And me. Whoop-de-doo. We’re all from the Underworld.” Daimon always had possessed a talent for ruining the moment, but it wasn’t like his brother to be this caustic.
The gate stopped growing as it hit over fifty feet across. The rings slowed, lazily rotating as the glyphs and symbols that filled the spaces between them shimmered in a multitude of colours.
The air hummed with the power that pulsed off it in waves, tugging him to it.
He released Marinda and approached it, willing it to open to allow whoever was on the other side through.
The central violet disc flashed in response, pulsing brightly in the darkness. Seconds trickled by and then a female rose out of it, gently levitating upwards as colourful mist swirled around her, until she hovered a few inches above the gate.
The disc beneath her feet dimmed again and she strode forwards, her feet touching nothing but air as she approached the edge of the rings. When she reached the outer ring of the gate, she nodded to him and stepped down onto the broad path that encircled the pond. She tipped her head to his brother too, and then Marinda, before she walked into the darkness of the park.
“That was… wow.” Marinda stared after the woman.
“Get her home.” Daimon disappeared the moment he finished saying that.
Cal really needed to figure out what was bothering his brother, because it was beginning to bother him too.
He focused on the gate, willing it to close.
Only it refused to cooperate.
“What the hell?” He tried again as Marinda drifted away from him, wandering in the direction the female Hellspawn had gone, towards a path that banked around towering trees, separating them from the grass.
He wanted to tell Marinda to come back, because he found it hard to focus when she was distant from him. Thoughts of daemons crowded his mind and he wished his brother had stuck around until he had closed the gate and teleported with her back to the townhouse.
This time, the gate responded, the rings gradually shrinking back towards the gate, each circle of glyphs pulsing as they were absorbed back into the central disc. For a moment, he had been worried. It was dangerous if the gate acted up, remaining open.
Marinda came back to him.
The damned gate expanded again and he looked across at her as she stared at it.
He frowned.
She wasn’t a Carrier, so there was a chance it was reacting to her presence, believing she wanted to pass through it and forming again so he could open it for her.
“Go over there.” He nodded to his left. She looked there and then back at him. “Just walk until I tell you to stop.”
She did, and as the distance between her and the gate grew, he could convince it to close again.
“Come back,” he said and held his hand out to her.
She turned on him. “Go. Come. Which is it? Make up your mind.”
But she came back anyway.
And the second she neared the gate, it formed again.
Not only formed, but he could feel the power that vibrated through it shifting course, just as it always did whenever the gate was about to open.
Something that should have been impossible.
Because only he and his brothers could open the gates.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was probably nothing. She was probably a breed of Hellspawn and that was the reason the gate reacted. In turn, it then reacted to his presence and the fact he had already given it permission to open. He was reading into things.
“Shout at me all you want, but can you walk back that way again?”
She sighed, tilted her head back and stared at the faint stars as she stomped away from him. He closed the gate as soon as he could, waited for it to wink out of existence with a violent purple burst of light before he joined her on the grass.
“I think you’re a Hellspawn.” He skimmed his fingers across hers, took hold of her hand, and pulled her into his embrace and a teleport.
When they landed in the living room of his home, she was staring up into his eyes, her free hand pressed to his chest. His heart drummed against it, the closeness of her stirring his blood as he gazed down at her.
“Like the man who killed my father?” Darkness reigned in her eyes. “You said he was a Hellspawn.”
“Hellspawn are meant to be good. Descendants of demigods whose species my father has allowed to remain in the Underworld. I don’t know much about necromancers, but clearly they’re an iffy bunch.” He managed to convince himself to release her and pulled his phone from his jeans pocket, and sent a message to Keras and Marek, mentioning what had happened at the gate.
Just in case.
He frowned as he spotted the message from Marek and read it. Great. Caterina still hadn’t been able to get anything out of her brother about the wraith and anyone else he might have met while he had been working with them. Marek also wasn’t having much luck finding out about necromancers. All they knew was that necromancers were dangerous, drew power from death and were the offspring of a demigod born in Thanatos’s line.
Cal was getting sick of being patient. He wanted to find Calindria’s soul and make the necromancer pay, as well as Eli. Two days and they were no further along in their investigation and no closer to finding out about necromancers and how to deal with them.
Keras was concerned that all the enemies Cal and his brothers had managed to take down had only been feeding the necromancer more power, and his oldest brother wasn’t going to let anyone out into the field to hunt him down until he was sure they could handle him.
But how was that going to happen when even Marek’s research had turned up nothing?
“Something is troubling you.” Marinda’s soft voice coaxed him back to the room.
“Nothing. Just restless. I want to find him.”
“The Hellspawn?” She sidled closer and got that look in her eyes, the one that told him she was thinking about avenging her father.
He nodded. “Tired of waiting for someone to uncover enough information that Keras will greenlight a search for him.”
“I don’t want to play bait.” Those words rushed from her, laced with fear.
Cal stroked her cheek and ran his fingers along her jaw. He rested them under her chin and kept her eyes on his.
“No one is making you play bait.” If anything, he was considering being the one who played the bait.
The enemy wanted to shatter the gates. What better, and more reckless, way of luring them out than loitering near the London gate until they noticed he was there and made an attempt on it?
“Could I help somehow?” She tilted her head up and his gaze dropped to her lips, mind filling with a lot of ways she could help him with something.
He shoved it back on track.
“Not unless you know about necromancers. According to Enyo, a goddess and an ally of ours, necromancers are rare, and secretive. Not the best combination when you want to learn more about them.
She’s thousands of years old and only knows a little about their kind.” He lowered his hand from her face and checked his phone again. “I should get us some food.”
“If there are so few of them, surely it stands to reason someone would know them all, and maybe they could give us information about the one we’re after specifically.”
He stilled as her words hit him and a name echoed in his head.
“Thanatos.”
Marinda’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”
He lifted his head and looked at her, excitement and hope rushing through him like a heady cocktail, one that had him grinning. “Thanatos. The demigod who spawned the necromancer line is his only descendant.”
And according to Marek’s intel, Thanatos hated them all and wanted them wiped from the Underworld.
So it stood to reason Thanatos might know their necromancer in particular.
Cal extended his hand to Marinda, sure he was going to get into serious trouble for what he was about to do, but needing to go through with it. He couldn’t wait any longer and if he could uncover information that led them to the Hellspawn and Marinda to the revenge she badly needed, it would make for one hell of a birthday present for her.
“Let’s go ask a god about a necromancer.”
Chapter 19
Calistos had been sure that Marinda would talk reason into him, or refuse to come with him, but instead she had slipped her hand into his and nodded. He had used his favour mark to create a portal to bring them to the edge of Thanatos’s domain, a castle he had once seen from a distance and had decided to steer well clear of it.
There were a lot of rumours about Thanatos and that bleak obsidian castle that rose in vicious spikes, hugging the side of an enormous mountain.
None of them good.
The god of death didn’t like visitors.
Today he was getting two of them.
Cal clutched Marinda’s hand and fought the nerves that constantly tried to rise inside him. He would keep her safe. If it looked as if things were going to go south, he would cast a portal and get her back to London.
Hopefully, he would be with her.
But if he had to hold off the god of death to give her a chance to escape, then he would do it.
Calistos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 5 Page 19
