by C. M. Owens
I brace myself. If she tries anything, I’ll have to react whether I’m ready or not.
Please wake up Aphrodite or Kaos. One of you needs to be here right now, damn it.
My frantic inner pleas are met with utter silence, and I tremble as I continue to watch the goddess kneeling beside me.
“So this is her? The girl foreseen to end my life? It’s not possible,” she growls, and her voice is almost hollow in itself.
“Yes,” Ava quickly answers with an eager and slightly fearful tone.
“So you killed the girl with such ease when she evaded the traps of my daughter and destroyed her twice? You killed the girl who took down Pyrrha after so many failed attempts by the immortals of our time?” she muses somewhat skeptically. “How?”
“Athena’s garden, ma’am. She came here on her own, and we capitalized on the rare opportunity,” Edgar answers with a stammering boy’s finesse.
“And her daughter? How did you kill her?” she inquires, and the blood rushes from my body.
Aster.
“We haven’t,” Ava says while lowering her eyes, and I feel my body go limp with the rushing fear slowly subsiding.
“What?” Rhea blares. “You summoned me early?”
“We had to. We have no idea where she hid the child, and now they’ll most likely suspect us to be the ones who killed her,” Ava cowardly explains.
“So you didn’t summon me because you killed the girl prophesied to destroy me and her daughter promised to have even more power than she? You simply feared for your own lives. Am I right?” she seethes.
They both stare at the ground shamefully, and Rhea takes a handful of petals from one of the towering beauties behind her. I cringe when the petals turn to ash beneath her deadly touch, and then she strokes the cheek of her faithful servants.
“You two have been precious. You did well in delivering information and feeding me with knowledge of the world I had been banished from,” she coos, but there’s an ominous tone in her voice that brings my skin to a crawl.
“Anything for you, my queen,” Edgar almost whispers, and I can see both of them praising her with their eyes.
Suddenly, their faces darken beneath her touch, and Rhea smiles as the veins in their faces turn black with the poison she’s pumping through them.
“It’s so sad you had to disappoint me so close to the finish line. Perhaps in another life,” she sighs, and they heave loudly as they struggle uselessly to gasp for air.
I cover my mouth to silence my near squeal that begs to spring free, and then I see her eyes completely glaze over with the volcanic stir as the ground beneath her feet singes and wilts under her strut.
She leaves them to die as she breathes in her chaos, and I stay hidden as she heads toward the ocean while her rain pounds down harder.
I have to act now while her back is turned. Maybe Aphrodite will come forth then. I can’t just let her get away after bringing her here.
“Adisia!” Devin screams, and I almost lose my breath in frozen fear as he leaps through the garden.
Rhea’s eyes narrow from the adjacent beachside, and I see Theia stumble to a halt as she stares her down.
“Theia. What a long awaited and pleasant surprise,” Rhea murmurs with wicked malice as the sky darkens with swirling cyclones.
“Fuck!” Kry spews when he gazes upon the too powerful goddess who shouldn’t be here.
No! I’m not ready, and I’m the only one who can kill her. She’ll kill them all! She’ll kill Devin. He’s not supposed to fucking be here.
“No. No. No!” Devin screams as tears pour from his eyes, and he jerks the body he thinks is mine from the ground.
I dart out from behind the crouching spot, and his tearstained eyes gush with a feverish flow when he sees me standing in front of him. He drops Slash to the ground and charges toward me.
“I thought-”
I cover his panicked lips with my finger, but he knocks it away to pull my lips to his. His trembling breaths rattle against my angst-filled ones, and then I stare over at the woman who still doesn’t know I’m not dead.
She’s here now though, and she can’t crawl back into the earth.
“Damn you,” Slash growls while rubbing his head. “That bloody hurt,” he snarls, and then his body shifts into his own.
“What the fuck have you done?” Gemma blares as she stares at her parents dead on the ground.
“They were-” Slash starts, but I interrupt him quickly.
“They tried to stop her from rising,” I lie. “She doesn’t know I’m alive, and this is our only chance to stop her,” I continue with merciful deceit.
She sobs uncontrollably as she throws her body over the lifeless duo that I never intend to reveal the truth about. Slash’s eyes show an acceptance for my sparing words, and Devin’s eyes stare toward the beach at the two titans glowering eye to eye.
“You were never stronger than me,” Rhea smugly snarks to Theia.
“I never wanted to be,” Theia murmurs without fear. “This can go differently than last time,” she adds.
“What now?” Hale whispers as he steps over the deadly shackles that once bound Slash.
“I need Aphrodite or Kaos or something,” I whisper back.
Devin’s lips consume mine again, and this time I feel him provoking the powers within me. Something stirs from within, and suddenly I feel the power I’ve lacked.
A strong, confident storm brews around me despite the sky it’s forced to share, and I back away with the white eyes I thought to have abandoned me.
Devin looks worried, but he takes my hand as I begin stalking toward the back of the bitch in red. Each step takes me farther from the garden, and then smoke bellows free from the hellacious fire consuming the life of death’s promise inside.
Gemma is circled by the flames, but she doesn’t care.
Ther rushes over and pulls her mother and father from the fiery blaze, and Gemma collapses back down on them while he consoles her grieving disaster.
Rhea’s eyes jerk to the crackling downfall of Athena’s pride, and she looks shocked to see me walking among the living.
“Impossible,” she snarls.
“That’s what everyone keeps saying,” my echoed voice taunts, and then I feel the daring, confident, arrogant tone of Kaos interjecting as well. “I won’t go that easily.”
She smirks lightly, and then I pull one of her cyclones to my side as the storms brew with more ferociousness when the flames swirl with it in a fiery spiral of death.
Asteria rages throughout me as she bashes her power from side to side to reunite herself with me and my forgotten body.
“So what’s it going to be, girl?” she says with her cool, wicked tone. “Do you wish to kill me or join me? Though, just because an oracle foresaw my death doesn’t mean you’ll actually succeed in taking my stubborn life. The earth has been very generous to me these many centuries, and she’s rewarded me with my old powers along with a few new ones.”
I decide to skip the creepy monologue, and the power within me starts to stew, boil, and explode from me in the form of the magnificent white fire I’ve missed. It blazes toward her, and then I smile when her winds prove to be an ineffective barrier against my stronger force.
My moment of confidence shatters, though, when my power rattles around her without so much as charring her red dress. Her smug, wry smirk infuriates me.
“I’m the prodigy of fire, girl,” she taunts. “Unlike my daughter, I was the straight embodiment of fire, magma, and so very much more. And to think I almost feared you,” she laughs, and then her arms swirl the vicious winds full of my own blaze.
I try to snuff out my fire, but it has grown too wild in her hands for me to control. Screams erupt from behind us, and I can hear the battle raging I didn’t even know existed.
Harpies, sirens, hellhounds, furies, and various other entities have sprung free from the ground to join their puppet master.
Rhea’s wind grow
s stronger against me, and I fight to keep the white flames from reaching the others. Warm drips pour from my nose, and the red stain prove it’s blood as it falls to the white sands beneath me.
No. I can’t lose to her.
Her laughter breaks free, but a desperate Aphrodite uses her power only meant for her pregnant children as it crumbles the hoard of rabid fiends behind me to their feet. Rhea is forced to stagger backwards from the unexpected jolt, and I can hear the screeches of the excruciating pain erupting from the vicious fleet.
Jace isn’t here, so he can’t help out with the damn hellhounds, but with them subdued, they wont’ need him as much. If he’s not here, then Nadia’s vision can’t come true.
“Do it while they’re down!” Devin yells to the others, and I’m forced to keep all my attention on the unfathomably powerful devil in front of me.
She strains back now, making it all the more impossible for me not to over exert myself, and more blood drips from my nose. I at least have some faith that she’s not invincible now though.
I feel the ease of burden as the last cry of the beasts falls flat, and then Devin flashes to my side to force a ripple through the wind. It strikes her hard, and she staggers again as she growls at him.
Her eyes glow, just as I see electricity surging past me and slashing her side, but it regenerates almost instantly.
Oh no. Jace is here.
Nadia’s warning flash through my mine, making me sick, dizzy, and almost frozen in fear.
I keep the wind forced back as I speak to our group uselessly launching attacks at the powerful bitch.
“Go now,” I yelp. “Go now before it’s too late.”
“We’re not leaving,” Kry asserts.
I know they won’t go willingly, and that leaves me with only one option. My eyes glow green, and I subdue Rhea’s storm while facing our family, our friends, and our allies.
“Go,” my echoed voice commands. “Take the women no matter how hard they fight, and go.”
It’s the strongest my Aphrodite’s gaze has ever felt, and it’s the first tie I’ve tried using it only so many immortal men at once while in my sane frame of mind.
I feel a little relief when I see it start to work, and I turn back just after seeing Deacon tossing Camara over his shoulder against her hissing protest.
“Put me the fuck down!” she screams, but he can’t.
She can struggle, but she won’t do anything to hurt him. At least I hope not.
“No. Kahl, stop! It’s our daughter. Look at me,” Persia blares, but her stare isn’t strong enough to counter mine, and my father is forced to do something he’ll regret if we don’t make it through this.
More protests scream out as the women are forced to leave against their will, and the men will bear the burden of guilt forever despite their forced compliance.
Rhea screeches as Jace slices into her side with another powerful bolt, and then Devin knocks her into a rolling back flip with a stronger ripple.
“Devin, you have to go too,” I strain out, but I know before the words leave my mouth it’s pointless.
“You can’t force me,” he snaps.
“Me either,” Jace growls as he takes my other side, and he blasts his energy streaks against Rhea with more force than I’ve ever seen him possess before.
“Please,” I cry.
“No, damn it,” Devin harps, and I see a small twinkle developing in the eyes of the enemy.
What the hell?
She gasps briefly as her side is ripped by Devin’s magnified ripple once more, and then suddenly the colliding forces of our monstrous winds are too much for the earth to take any longer.
The air explodes around us, and everyone is launched backwards to dig up the remaining fragments of sand on the beach.
I grunt as the unexpected impact of my body thrashing against the ground knocks the breath from my lungs. Devin slowly starts to climb to his feet as does Jace.
Rhea is staggering back up off her knees and I launch a hurling streak of electricity at her while she’s not at her strongest.
I gasp in shock when she suddenly dematerializes into the shadowy fragments I had seen her spawn from.
“It would have been nice to have known she could do that,” my chimed voices snap in unison.
“That’s fucking new,” Jace mutters out in ghastly bemusement.
The fragments whirl over to the line drawn by the crashing waves, and I thrust a new lightning streak at her just as she rematerializes. She screams out as it gashes her all the deeper and the steel color of the lightning changes into a blaring white force as it plummets from the sky and strikes her once more.
She screams out louder this time, and I see the blood pouring from her once indestructible body.
“You bitch,” she snarls, and the wind rips free from my clutches as she pulls forth the earth’s power as Deidra once had, but I have a few abilities in that area as well.
The ground quakes beneath us and jagged rocks shoot free with an impaling attempt. My eyes flash a deeper red to force the earth back into place, and she seems a little taken aback by this.
“You’ve got it all, don’t you?” she growls, and then I see that same, odd smirk on her face again. “Too bad I’m not invincible,” she murmurs with a suspiciously calm, eerie tone.
I don’t give it much thought as I hurl another bolt of lightning at her, and it slashes her side again. Then I grow sick as I see all the progress we’ve made suddenly taken away when her body heals itself in front of our eyes.
“What the fuck?” I screech.
“It’s what makes her so hard to kill,” Jace grunts. “She regenerates too quickly, and you’re forced to start all over.”
Crap. Crap. Damn!
The thunder rumbles with a ferocious desire as the lightning suddenly blasts free from the sky with an ambushing hail of white flares. She screams as they combine for one massive attack, and she’s thrown onto her back, her blood returning to a steady flow.
More sand from the beach is thrown free in a huge gust and forced to join the wet floor of the ocean. I launch another attack, but she dematerializes again.
“Damn it,” I snarl.
“Adisia, get back,” Devin yells, and I look over in gaping disbelief at the powerful pieces of her dissembled goddess clashing violently against the wind I had evoked as a barrier.
The forceful shadow fragments don’t swirl back together though, they charge right for us - right for Devin… not Jace.
No. No. No!
“NO!” I scream, and Devin’s arms fly up involuntarily as the shadows swarm into his mouth and rush to take him over.
I race toward him, but Jace grabs my arm to hold me back.
Devin’s veins pulse with her blood, his body contorts to adjust to her occupation, and when he looks back at me, it’s her volcanic eyes crackling instead of his swirling ocean blues.
“Isn’t this clever? I do hate taking on another body. It’s so very dreadfully draining,” Devin’s voice says, but it’s not him speaking to me.
No. It was supposed to be Jace she took over. That was Nadia’s dream. The shadow makes Jace kill Devin. That was her fucking dream!
“Get the fuck out of his body!” I command through my emotional gust, but she begins laughing.
“I don’t think so, lover girl. You see, Devin is immune to your incredible powers, and now, so am I. The others won’t harm him because they all love him so very dearly. I’ll rule the world without fight. Not to mention, even if he wasn’t immune, you still wouldn’t risk hurting him to save your own life. Isn’t love just a grand bitch?” she laughs even louder while mocking me.
“Adisia, step back,” Jace whispers while tugging on my arm.
“No. She can’t have him,” I wail, and tears flood my face.
“Oh yes I can,” she taunts. “And you’ll be the first one to die at the hand of the man everyone seems to love.”
She throws forth Devin’s ripple, but I bat it away a
t the last moment with my wind. The waves roar as the swirling cyclones of water charge me, but my fire meets them head on to steam the watery attack.
“Devin, fight her,” I plead as I stare hopefully into the eyes still void of all blue.
She laughs ridiculously hard, and then I feel a stabbing wave of pain as a ripple I didn’t see coming slices against my stomach. Before I can regain my footing, another one surges against me, and this time it cuts deeper.
I scream in agony, and then another strikes me with more force. I feel as though I’ve been tied to a post and forced to take lashings from a slave master’s whip.
Electricity surges against Devin as Jace goes on the attack, and I scream when I see his body falling to the ground.
“Jace. No. Don’t. You’ll kill him,” I plead, and my eyes gape open as realization springs to light.
No. That’s what the dream meant. No!
“She’ll use him to kill everyone, Adisia,” he shouts as he blasts Devin’s body again.
That’s why Jace is here. That’s why his mother told him he would be at my side. That’s what she meant when she told him he’d be the only one who could be at my side. He’s the only one who can kill Devin because everyone else loves him too much.
“You fool,” she shrieks humorously. “You can’t kill me. Only she has the power, and in here, she can’t touch me.”
“Only she could kill you before you put yourself inside his body,” Jace counters, and I see his body reddening from the strain he’s exerting to collect all of his energy.
“No!” I scream pleadingly as I flash over to try and stop him, but he releases it before my wind can knock him to the ground.
The ball of hurled energy only seems to grow, and I feel as though I’m watching the deadly surge of power heading toward Devin in slow motion. Her volcanic eyes grow wide as the energy wad strikes her, and then Devin’s body is sent flying backwards with a lifeless motion.
“Oh, please no,” I sob helplessly, and my feet stagger around in a drunken frenzy as I stumble over and over trying to get to him.
“Please no,” I pray again when I finally reach him, and I scream out at the sky as my tears drown and soak my face.
