Titan_Kingdom of the Dead_An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology

by Daniel Mignault

  “So you’d be willing to sacrifice me?” I ask.

  “Andrus…” Hannah lays a hand on my arm, but I shrug it off.

  “No!” I say. “No, let him answer.”

  Ares says, “If there was a way to preserve you, we would.”

  “And if there wasn’t?”

  The War God shrugs. “You would have a decision to make: to sacrifice yourself or not.”

  “And that’s just it, isn’t it? It would be my decision! And what if I chose to do what I wanted?”

  Hannah says, “I know this is a confusing time for you, but the Titans are your enemy as much as ours. Haven’t we been good to you? Haven’t we trained you, fought at your side?”

  “Yes, and I’m grateful. Don’t think that I’m not! But if this Bridge is some ultimate weapon, I want to use it right.”

  “You will,” Hannah says. “I know you will.” She gives me an encouraging smile.

  “We should rest,” Ares says. “Tomorrow, we free Hades.” He stalks into the cave, followed by Cerberus.

  Hannah watches until the cave swallows them, then turns to me. “Ares likes to finish what he starts,” she says as if to apologize. “I don’t know if you noticed, but he can be kind of a dick, and damn, is he stubborn.”

  “You’re telling me! I thought he was this great guy before.”

  “He still is, in his own way. It’s not always a nice way, or an easy way, but in a fight, there’s no one else you want by your side.”

  “What about the rest of the time?” I ask.

  “He has his moments. But there’s reasons he’s the way he is, and not just the usual ones. There’s more to it than that…”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “He lost so much in the war, and more than that, he lost his pride. How great a God of War can you be when your side loses? He had one job, Andrus, and that was to win.”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “The only thing that keeps Ares going is we have one last chance, one last shot for his redemption… redemption and revenge. Ares can be hard and cruel, but he’s exactly what we need. That’s why I let him get away with his little temper tantrums. That’s why you should too.”

  “The fragile male ego?” I joke.

  Hannah snorts. “Something like that, but times a million. He is a God, after all.”

  “Correction, he’s an avatar.”

  She grins. “Taking my side already? I must have trained you well.”

  “Ha, ha. I’m just worried… I don’t know where I fit after this is all over.”

  Hannah puts her arm around me. “You belong with us.”

  “Us?”

  “Fine, with me, for however long you can stand it.” We kiss, then sit on the ledge, dangling our feet over the side. “I get it, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Why you want to save Prometheus,” she says. “I think you want to save him because you think he’s different, like you. And because you want a family.”

  “I have a family. My human parents, remember?”

  “An extended family, then. A magical one, so you wouldn’t feel so alone. I know all about human parents. I had a human mother, so I know what that’s like, and how they can never fully understand what it’s like to be a God.”

  “Demigod.”

  “Demigoddess,” Hannah corrects me, then leans in for a kiss. “But I’m no Aphrodite.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She gives me a playful punch. “I can’t believe you said that. You’re such a jerk!”

  I chuckle. “I meant you’re better than her.”

  “Why’s that?” Her face drifts close.

  “Because the Goddess of Love wouldn’t make out with me.”

  “You’re pretty smart for a rock.”

  “I’m pretty sexy too.”

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “Yeah, Rock Boy, you are…”

  22

  WE’RE ALL MURDERERS

  The next morning, we set off from the hillside. The forest, already thin in this part, gives way to a harsh, broken land. Cerberus leads the way, snuffling the barren ground for the scent of his lost master.

  The dog-beast seems confused at first, sending us in circles until I begin to wonder if he can find the path at all. Ares also becomes impatient, though our mutual anger does little to bond us after last night’s argument. Only Hannah remains confident, and it is her confidence that pays off.

  “He’s found it!” Hannah exclaims as Cerberus bounds ahead. “He’s picked up the scent!”

  As we hurry to catch up, I ask, “How can you be sure? What if he just smelled some prey or something?”

  “This whole kingdom smells of my father. It took Cerberus some time to separate the general scent from the specific. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you…” Hannah pants as we race along.

  “What?” I puff back.

  “If Cronus wants us to free my father, then why’s he making it so hard?”

  “Good question,” Ares agrees.

  “He’s testing me,” I reply. “I guess to make me reveal my powers… I think this is all a game to him, and besides, if he made the quest too easy, we’d suspect something was wrong.”

  “Makes sense,” Hannah says. “Boy, look at Cerberus go!”

  The three-headed beast is bounding along a river bed. It’s only as we get closer to it that I notice the river is red. “Call him back!”

  “What?” Hannah gasps “Why?”

  “That river! It’s full of blood!”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? You call that nothing?”

  “It’s just the run-off from Murder Town.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what there is to say, what any sane mind could think of. But this isn’t Earth, this is Tartarus, the Kingdom of the Dead, so why shouldn’t there be a river of blood? Maybe that’s the most normal thing here.

  “It’s called Acheron,” Hannah explains. “The River of Woe. Remember, I told you it’s what separates the good half of Tartarus from the bad?”

  “I don’t think we should go near it.”

  Hannah laughs. “Chicken!”

  “Next, you’ll be telling me some of your best friends are murderers.” I steal a quick glance at Ares, not wanting to give offense, but then realize we’re all murderers.

  “We all kill,” Hannah says. “You, me, Ares… Every God and Titan kills. It’s the reason why you kill that matters.”

  We’re jogging along now, just trying to keep Cerberus in sight.

  “Morality,” Ares says, breaking his silence, “is different for us, Andrus. It’s less fixed, more situational. There is duty—your moral duty to defend your kind against enemies—then there is your personal code, your ethics. We all have lines… lines we dare not cross, lines we think will break us… until we realize they won’t, that life goes on, so we draw new ones.”

  And speaking of lines, the cruel lines of Murder Town come into view, all sharp angles and surreal, serrated architecture. The buildings look like knives, broken skulls, and other unpleasant things. Like everything in Tartarus, the place has a strange but terrible beauty, the kind you could get lost in and never leave.

  There’s a bridge ahead, a long stone bridge, but it never reaches the opposite shore. It’s broken, leading nowhere but to a lengthy drop into the blood-water below. There are ghosts on the bridge, laughing ghosts, and for a moment, I think Murder Town might not be so bad. It looks like the laughing ghosts are fishing, but with rope—rope that ends in nooses. The ghosts cast them over the side, and I wonder how they will ever catch fish like that. Only they’re not trying to catch fish.

  They’re trying to catch people.

  Other ghosts, surely. The ghosts of their victims, who bob along in the crimson current screaming, gasping, and groaning.

  “Got one!” a murderer cackles. He hauls up his line, dragging the victim from the bloody river below. Dragging her by the noose w
rapped tight around her neck. “She’s a live one,” he exclaims. “Watch her kick!”

  And she does, legs dancing on air, arms grasping at the noose. Her eyes bulge, her tongue lolls like a pink snake trying to escape the cave of her mouth. Her face purples, her beauty fades. The killers on the bridge laugh and congratulate their friend.

  “You know the rules,” one of the murderers says. “Catch and release. Save some for the rest of us!”

  The victorious ghost grudgingly cuts his line, sending the strangled girl back into the bloody river. I watch her drift away, seemingly dead, and I wonder how that’s possible, but then she comes back to life, screaming and moaning again.

  Begging to be killed.

  “It’s all a game to them,” Hannah says. “To those on the bridge, and those below.”

  “A sick game,” I say, and can’t believe I’m still watching. The scene has all the terrible fascination of a traffic accident, only it’s never-ending. I’m reminded of the Ritual of the Worm in the temple back home… Where the priests hang a sinner from a blessed meathook, then hack off his legs and force him to crawl around the temple, praying for forgiveness. Crawling, like a worm. And if the sinner can’t make a complete circuit of the temple, they cast him into the pit… a sacrifice to Cronus.

  I’ve never liked the ritual, never much liked going to temple for that matter, but when you’re raised to go, to watch, to never say or think or do anything contrary to the priests’ teachings, well… This is what you get.

  The New Greece Theocracy isn’t a town full of murderers and victims. It’s a country full of them, the last country on Earth. And once we defeat Cronus… once we stop the crazy rituals and the sacrifices, what then? What do we have left? What do we have that’s worth saving?

  I don’t know, and that scares me. It fills me with unfathomable dread. Once the war is won, the real struggle, the struggle to rebuild our country and the soul of our people, begins…

  The ghosts notice us watching and pause their game to wave, ghoulishly beckoning us to come join in. Each ghost wears the same mad, fixed smile, watching our every move with cold, cunning eyes. Even their victims join in, begging us not to help, but to join them…

  One of the madmen on the bridge even hurls his noose at us. It’s a good throw, good enough for the rope to land at my feet. I kick it into the river.

  As we walk away, I can’t help but feel we’re walking into a noose of our own—one fastened by Cronus with Hades as the bait.

  23

  ALL YOUR EYES CAN SEE

  Hades’ scent leads us from the banks of Murder Town into open country. Here, the broken land looks like an open wound, the brittle, dusty ground shot through with clay—clay as red as blood.

  I feel better with the ghost city and its ghastly fishermen behind us, even though I know where we’re going will be worse. We’re going right where Cronus wants us to, doing exactly what the King of the Titans wants us to do.

  I’m more stressed than ever because as the Bridge Between Worlds, I have more power than ever. Power to decide who lives and who dies. It’s power I never asked for, power I never wanted, and once the Olympians know I have it, they’ll expect me to use it for them, the same way Cronus wants me to use it for him. I can only hide it so long, and then… I’ll have to decide. But first, I have to figure out how to use my secret power, on top of whatever other powers I have. I haven’t even mastered the ones I know, so how I’m supposed to wipe out a whole race of immortals, I don’t know.

  We come across the dried-out shell of a monstrous scorpion, a black-armored nightmare the size of a tank. Cerberus pauses to sniff at the husk, so we take the opportunity to rest. Hannah passes out water and energy bars, and we sit with our backs against the shell.

  “Aren’t you running low?” I ask, then notice something weird: her leather belt pouch is way too small to have held all the food and water she’s been handing out.

  She smiles and hands me the pouch. “Go on, open it.”

  The inside is pitch-black. I stick my hand in, but don’t feel anything, including the bottom. “What the hell?” I mutter. I pull my hand out and turn the bag upside down. Nothing falls out when I shake it. “This some sort of trick?”

  She grins impishly. “Well, I am a witch.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “Check it out; that’s the first real magic item I made. I needed something to hold all my stuff, since I was always on the move. It basically holds infinity of whatever. Mostly food and water, bird seed for Shadow, a few odds and ends.”

  “Then how come it’s empty?”

  “It’s not, but you have to know what you want. If it’s in there, you’ll find it.”

  I stick my hand back in, and rummage around. I think about a bottle of water, and feel one slide into my hand. I pull my arm out, and there it is: a fresh bottle. “So it’s like a magic vending machine?”

  “Yeah, it’s also a purse, a backpack, a whole damn storage unit. The only limitation is it only holds whatever fits in the opening.”

  “So no pillows, chairs, or tents, nothing like that?”

  “I wish!” she says. “Anyway, if I wasn’t always on the run, I’d have made all kinds of cool items by now.”

  I hand her the pouch. “It’s great though. Really clever.”

  “Thanks.” She opens the pouch and digs out some bird seed for Shadow. The familiar greedily pecks at the tasty kernels. “You know, as much as I like big flashy magic, I still prefer small, practical tricks like this. It’s the little things that make life easier.”

  I shrug. “You might not think that way if you’d lived in a palace instead of by your wits.”

  “Oh, I spent some time in palaces too,” Hannah says. “My father’s castle, Mount Olympus… Right, cousin?” She nudges the War God in his ribs.

  Ares gives her a grudging look. “You were always getting underfoot.” He says it without malice, the faint trace of a smile crossing his face. “Not much of a princess at all.”

  My jaw drops. “What? You’re a princess?”

  She laughs. “Seriously? You didn’t know? My father is the king. That makes me a princess; the princess of all your eyes can see…” She gestures good-naturedly at the desolate landscape, and I’m about to say something clever when her face changes, eyes growing wide in alarm. “We’ve got company!”

  Ares is on his feet, sword out, before either of us can do anything. Shadow launches into the air. Cerberus growls, fur bristling. Hannah and I get up, drawing our blades.

  There’s a dust cloud on the horizon. A dust cloud caused by galloping horses. No, not horses. Centaurs.

  “It’s Captain Nessus,” I say. “He’s found us!”

  24

  THE CLIFFS OF PAIN

  “They’re still a ways off,” I say. “I count two dozen centaurs. Can we outrun them?”

  Ares shakes his head. “The terrain’s too open and they’re fast. If we make our stand here, we have cover. The giant scorpion shell prevents them from taking us from behind.”

  “OK, good.” I look around, desperate for anything else that can help us. Then I remember I don’t have to look for help, not when I can make my own. “I’ve got an idea…”

  Ares raises an eyebrow. “Better make it a good one.”

  “It is… Remember in class when you taught us about tactics?”

  Ares nods.

  “Well, If I dig a couple of trenches with my magic, and make them wide enough the centaurs can’t leap over, then we force them to come at us one at a time. Funnel them in—and onto our waiting blades.”

  “I see I trained you well,” Ares says with a proud smile, melting some of the ice that’s stood between us since last night.

  A black smudge stains the air above the centaurs.

  The War God sighs. “Harpies! Now the enemy can come at us from above. Still, a trench will help. You should get started—”

  “Or we could ride Cerberus,” Hannah interrupts.

  Ares
and I stare at her, then the monster dog.

  “You mean all three of us?” I ask.

  “Yep. He has three heads—that’s three necks, one for each of us to hold onto. And he’s fast. Aren’t you, boy?”

  Cerberus cocks his heads in triplicate.

  She gives the nearest head a scratch on the cheek. “You can do it, can’t you?”

  Cerberus pants enthusiastically. It would be cute if he wasn’t so damned ugly.

  the big dog is fast, even carrying the three of us. She tells the beast to take us in the last known direction of Hades’ scent.

  “Won’t he lose it?” I ask, struggling to cling to the creature’s left head. “We’re going awfully fast for him to track!”

  “It’s OK,” Hannah says, clearly comfortable riding behind the center head. “If he loses it, he’ll pick it up again when we outrun the enemy.”

  “If we outrun them,” Ares says from behind the third head. “If you ask me, the bastards are keeping pace.”

  Hannah glances over her shoulder. “I know this dog. He can outrun any monster in the kingdom!”

  The hound of Hades barks in agreement.

  I’ve never taken a dog’s word before, but in my crazy life, there’s a first time for everything.

  Our lead widens, the centaurs and harpies falling farther and farther behind. Everything seems to be going to plan until the horizon erupts into orange fire.

  “What the hell is that?” I yell.

  “The Phlegethon,” Hannah answers. “The River of Flame!”

  We’re getting closer to Cronus, to the center of Tartarus. I can feel it, like a steel-clawed hand squeezing my heart. The air turns hot, smoky, my vision blurring against rising waves of heat.

  “Can we jump it?” I ask.

  “Too wide!” Hannah calls back. “There’s a bridge…” She points west, then speaks into Cerberus’ ear. The dog alters course, following the flaming river instead of heading toward it. There are black cliffs ahead, made from basalt, a type of volcanic rock. They look old and weathered, with the gigantic skulls of men and beasts carved into the surface.