“What is this meeting about?” I demand.
He frowns. “When I got the message, I thought you’d called it.”
My stomach twists. “If you didn’t call the meeting, who did?”
I hear the crunch of shoes outside the door. A second later, the human known as Peter enters. He is our liaison in the Special Unit. Most of his people work to keep the supernatural community hidden from the humans, but Peter secretly links us information about any monsters, so we can kill them when they least suspect it. When they think they’re safe. Although I’d say he failed miserably when it came to Medusa.
He has dark hair and dark eyes. He’s built like a god, and wears a black shirt and pants that are almost a uniform. His gaze moves over both of us, and then he sits down beside me.
“Why did you call a meeting?” I ask him, lifting a brow.
Technically, he could call meetings, if it is important. But the human knows his place. He works for me, and with us, not the other way around. So for him to do this must mean whatever is happening is important.
He sits up taller, his gaze jerking from the phoenix to me. “I didn’t call a meeting.”
What did he just say? Ice moves through my veins.
I stand abruptly. “This is a trap.”
“A trap? What an ugly word.”
A man enters the room, and I feel terror blossom within me. Well, not a man, a god. Hades wears a pink suit with skulls stitched into the lapels. His hair is neatly styled, and his eyes are ringed by red. He takes the only remaining seat, and I swallow hard, slowly sitting down.
Hades is not a member of this group, however, he has used us for his own purposes in the past. And each time, he left nothing but death and destruction in his wake. The fact that we were called here by him means only trouble.
But I’m too smart to say that. I just wait.
“Uh, why do we have the pleasure of a meeting with you?” the phoenix asks, and there’s a waiver of fear that runs through his words.
The god cocks a brow. “Because an old problem may come back to bite us all in the asses.”
Peter sighs and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “What old problem?”
Hades plays with the cuffs of his suit. “If you’ll recall, one of our first get-togethers involved a certain plan.” I feel the color drain from my face. “Peter came to me with an interesting bit of information he found on a dead monster. Information about how to bring back a certain titan from his prison without releasing the others. A certain titan who could make Peter a god, kill all the monsters for Gary, and restore the phoenixes’ prior glory…”
Fucking hell, I don’t want to think about that disaster. At the time it had seemed brilliant. I could get rid of a problem gargoyle and have a titan kill off all the monsters, leaving my people free to simply exist in peace. It’d been worth working with the human, god, and phoenix.
And then everything had gone wrong.
“No one should know about that,” Conley rushes out. “We all swore the secret would stay with us.”
I can’t help but say, “Yes. The man responsible for killing several young phoenixes has a vested interest in making sure that secret remains buried.”
His eyes flash gold and lock onto mine. “And the man responsible for selling the soul of one of his gargoyles wants the secret known?”
It’s like a punch to the gut. If my people ever learn what I did, I’ll be cast out. Maybe even turned to stone forever and shattered.
“Well, I don’t want two groups of powerful people to know I had anything to do with this either,” the human admits, his face twisted in anger.
“Exactly,” the god drawls lazily. “I have done all I can to ensure that the only people who could tell our little secret, well, that they stayed dead. But recently Andros has...disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” The word comes with an ounce of arrogance.
Hades moves a hand and I go flying, smashing into the wall and shaking the whole building. The air is knocked from my lungs for a long moment before I gasp in air. It takes me a minute to come shakily to my feet and stumble to my chair.
Hades lifts a brow in my direction. “Are you finished?”
I nod, realizing I should’ve been more careful. “I just...I just meant to ask how he could be missing?”
Hades shrugs. “Either he’s hiding after some chaos in the Underworld, or he’s currently making his way to the surface. But if he should be successful, his soul will return to his body. He’ll remember the ritual that Gary performed to remove his soul from his body and leave it empty for the titan. He may even remember that Conley murdered three phoenix children for the spell.” He glances at Peter. “He could even recall a certain human who has learned the darkest witchcraft and performed a certain spell. A spell that went horribly wrong, screwing us all.”
“What do we do?” I ask, the room suddenly feeling far too small and far too hot.
Hades taps his fingers on the table. “Gary, do you know where Andros’s body is?”
“I did. I might. Why?”
The god smiles, a terrifying smile. “If you remove the head from his body, even if he reaches the surface, his soul will return to me.”
“And us?” the human asks.
Hades's smile widens. “A certain god who owed me a favor has told me how I can send people to track his soul, but they must be newly dead. And they must be people with a vested interest in making certain Andros never reaches the surface.”
“Newly dead?” Peter frowns.
“What’s more, Andros has help. The help of Hecate. And, I suspect, others. They will need to be punished for these crimes against me.”
The phoenix shakes his head. “How are we going to get newly dead people to track them for us?”
Hades snaps his fingers. Two glowing red necklaces appear around Peter’s and Conley’s throats.
“What is this?” Peter asks.
Hades snaps his fingers again. Two shades are suddenly behind the men. My mouth opens in a silent scream of warning, but the shades are faster. They rip the men’s heads off, spraying blood across me, the room, and the table. The two bodies fall to the floor, and the shades laugh while holding the heads, then disappear.
A minute later, wispy shadowed forms of the men hover above their bodies, their red necklaces burning brightly.
“Spirits,” Hades addresses them in a bored voice, “I task you with bringing the soul of Andros back to the Underworld and with punishing anyone found in his company. I also give you the power to track them anywhere: on the surface, in the Underworld, or on the paths between.”
The spirits look pained and frightened, but vanish within seconds.
My heartbeat fills my ears. Hades...killed them. Just like that. What will he do to me?
He turns to me, that sick smile still on his lips. “Find the body of Andros and remove his head. If you don’t, I’ll remove yours.” Then he leans in closer. “And Gary, I know all the many awful things you’ve done in your long life. I have already thought of glorious tortures for you.”
He stands.
“I understand,” comes out in a voice that sounds too afraid to be mine.
“Oh,” he says, looking back from the doorway. “There was also a little problem. Many of the monsters you and your gargoyles killed have returned to the surface. You may want to get someone on that before, you know, they destroy mankind.”
“Yes, your highness,” I whisper.
And then he’s gone.
It takes me several minutes to wipe the blood from my face and stumble outside. I go to a river and wash and wash, being certain I’ve removed all traces of blood. When I’m done, I look at my reflection. I need to find Andros’ body. Last time I saw it, Orion had resurrected some kind of shrine to him in their house in the woods. It will take nothing at all to behead him, but then there are the monsters to deal with.
I clear my head as I fly back to the sanctuary. Once there, I speak to the other Elites. I give them a story,
that an old ally had warned about the monsters returning from the Underworld. We call a meeting and tell all the gargoyles. There are gasps, tears, and questions. We let them know that the families with children will remain in the sanctuary, but that we will send the others on quests.
There’s excitement in the younger Brotherhoods.
I have one of my oldest and most experienced groups stay behind after the others. The men are rarely in the sanctuary, and it had been agreed upon a long time ago by the Elites that they were too dangerous to send on any missions, but now we need them. My gaze roams over the two men.
“You need to wake up your brother.”
Rokad’s dark eyes flash with an unnamed emotion. “I thought you said awakening him was too dangerous.”
“He’s too dangerous for the sanctuary, but we’ll turn him loose on the monsters.”
Rokad nods, and I truly can’t tell what he thinks. The half-breed gargoyles are always hard to read. A normal gargoyle would want his brother awakened from the curse we’d placed on him, but these men aren’t normal. They are evil. Dark and twisted. And I want them far from us, but know enough to know that they are useful right now.
“And what about the phoenix prisoner? Should we bring him?” Lucas asks, his tone even, his gaze locked somewhere above my head.
These two had been tasked with keeping our prisoner in his cage in a remote location for years and years, since the bastard has a way of escaping without constant monitoring. I can’t afford to waste gargoyles to stand and watch him any longer. It might’ve been easier to kill him, but I have an idea.
“Tell him if he fights beside you, he’ll earn his freedom.”
“That’s...generous of you,” Lucas says, again not looking at me.
I wave a hand. “If his use ends, or if he’s more a burden then a help, kill him.”
After a second, Lucas says, “Understood.”
“Now, get out.”
The damned half-breeds leave, and I rub my face. This isn’t how my rule was supposed to go. I’m supposed to rest and enjoy being in charge. I’m not supposed to try to keep old secrets buried, nor unleash those half-breeds on the world. I truly don’t know if they will help or hurt the situation. Because even though I’d told the Elites that they were simply unstable after so many times waking and falling back into their stone slumbers, I’m the only one who knows the truth.
A dark, horrible truth.
Lucas, Rokad, and Narath are not just unstable gargoyles. They are the children of my daughter...and a monster. Triplets. Nothing should have ended her life, but birthing them into this world did. It was a long time ago, before the sanctuary. My daughter had been made, and we had guarded our lands together. She never told me what had led to her impregnation, but I suspected who the father was.
And when the children grew wild and dangerous, there was no dying their parentage. I had sent them far away. I had them slumber on lands I hoped they would never wake from, but eventually, they did. By the time the sanctuary existed, it became one of roles to keep them far from here, and their parentage a secret.
I have been successful, up until now. But not only am I turning them out on the world, I’m awakening their brother. A psychotic killer who lusts for blood and death.
“Was that wise?” Elizabeth suddenly asks from beside me.
Her voice startles me. I turn in her direction and realize the other Elites are all talking in worried voices amongst themselves, but Elizabeth? I’m fairly certain she has been watching me for a while. I’m also fairly certain she’s the reason the freaks had returned.
“I am the leader now,” I tell her. “And yes, I think it was wise to use the tools we have.”
She glances at the door they left from. “You always said they were unstable... Let’s hope you were wrong.”
Gods, what have I done?
16
Hecate
We’ve only been walking for a short time after our last break in the dark tunnels when we hear music ahead of us. Blaise and Orion exchange a glance, then look back at me. I wipe at the sweat on my brow and shrug.
“She said there would be tests, right?”
Both men slowly withdraw their swords, and I feel for the magic inside of me. It’s there. A beautiful bright spot of magic. I don’t know if it’ll obey me, but at least it’s there, and it seems to be growing within me in a way that it couldn’t in my cell. The realization makes me smile.
“What?”
I look up and realize that grumpy Orion is looking at me. Those dark eyes of his have this strange way of devouring me at the same moment that they seem to hate me. It means that I never quite know what he’s thinking.
“You were smiling,” he adds, a rough note to his voice.
I decide to be honest. Andros had told me I could trust him. “The magic inside of me is growing. And...it’s such a relief. Like watching a tree shrivel away and die, and then one day it grows a new leaf.”
He frowns. “I would describe magic as more an evil oil spreading around it.”
I glare. “Anything can be evil when put into the hands of an evil person, but magic in itself is good.”
He humphs.
Blaise smiles at me. “I happen to have met a few charming witches in my life. All of whom were rather good in--” His eyes widen, and he coughs. “Good with magic.”
I lift a brow. “No, you were right the first time. We are good in bed.”
It’s ridiculously darling when his cheeks turn red and he looks away.
We continue climbing then, toward the music, and I’m surprised to find myself smiling. I feel the softest touch along my spine, and I almost turn around but force myself not to. It isn’t Andros. He can’t touch me in just his soul form. Right? But it did remind me that Andos wants me to be the lover of everyone in his Brotherhood. So as strange as it might be for me to think of being with other men, I have to relax and just see what happens between us.
The music grows louder and louder. A pumping and rhythm I’ve never heard before, but I find my head bobbing along with it. Up ahead, lights flash on the stone, and we all slow and proceed more slowly.
When the tunnel opens up into a large room, we all line up just inside the room and stare out.
I’ve never seen anything like this. A ball of sparkling light spins in the center of the room, casting flashing lights over the room. There’s a big open space with squares that light up, seemingly at random. And the music feels like it’s moving through my very soul as I bob my head harder and harder.
There’s a bar in the back too. A woman with blonde hair and a blank face dries glasses, not even glancing at us. There’s something familiar about her, but the magic inside me whispers that she’s not a threat.
“What is this?” I ask.
Blaise is bobbing his head too. “A night club...on the path to the Underworld, apparently,” he says with a grin.
I don’t know what comes over me, but I head out to the dance floor. This isn’t the music from my time. In fact, it’s nothing like it, but I start to dance. And the moment I do, I’m laughing. The music seems to flow through me, and I can sense magic in it, but it’s good magic, not bad. I spin, and the world spins around me.
And then Blaise is beside me.
He grins, which makes his terribly handsome face even more handsome. How hadn’t I looked at him before? I mean, really looked at him. He has the most pleasant features. Less harsh than Andros and Orion and softer, while still being masculine. His sword is back on his belt, and my eyes roam over him. He’s not as big as the twin gargoyles, but he’s sure as hell muscular. His dark shirt strains against his broad shoulders, and his dark jeans hug his thick legs. Thick eyelashes bring out the golden in his eyes. When he spins, I openly appreciate his ass.
Then one of his hands touches my waist, and we’re not just dancing in front of each other, we’re dancing with each other. He steers me a little, and I swear he’s teaching me new moves. I mimic him as he swings his arms at his si
de, and then he’s laughing.
I spin again, and I see Orion. He’s moved onto the dance floor, but keeps his distance from us. And yet, he’s staring at me. Not through me. Not in that pinning, judging way he has, but with open fascination on his face.
Something makes me beckon him with my hand, and I’m pleasantly surprised when he comes closer to us. At first, he doesn’t dance. He sort of just bobs. But then spirits that look like shadows of people fill the dance floor around us, and they’re all happy.
Orion surprises me by pulling me into his arms. His mouth comes closer to my ear, and I shiver. “Is this a trap? Are we in danger?”
I reach up and run my hand along his cheek to the back of his head, then tug him closer so I can respond. “No, this magic is good. I don’t know why it’s here, but I can’t sense danger in it, just happiness. I think we’re meant to enjoy this.”
Orion shudders. “I can’t dance this way.”
“Then show me how you can dance.”
He surprises me yet again by taking one of my hands and placing the other one on my hip. Then we’re dancing in a way I recognize. No one else dances like us, but in that moment, it feels right. It feels perfect. He smiles at me, and it transforms his face. I can see so much of his brother in him, but he’s also just...Orion. Himself. And I realize that just as Andros has suffered in the Underworld, Orion has suffered too. For a person to risk everything he did, he must have loved his brother greatly.
He spins me again and pulls me back. This time I crash into him. We don’t dance, I just look slowly up into his face. And then he leans down and kisses me.
It takes my breath away. This feeling that flows between us is curious and exploratory. Not the desperate way that Andros and I kiss, like we’re stealing a moment. This is the kiss of a man who thinks we have forever to learn about the other person.
When he pulls back, his brows are drawn together, and I swear he’s confused.
He releases me and slides back. His hand still holds mine, but then he drops it and the world feels colder.
Hands wrap around my waist, and I almost attack, but Blaise’s scent washes over me, like marshmallows roasting over a fire, and I spin in his arms to face him. His wings dance with firelight behind him, casting him in a golden warmth. He holds me far closer than Orion had, and his body rubs against mine, awakening things inside of me that surprise me.
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