Godkiller (Hidden: Godkiller Saga Book 1)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  But they were wrong. Death can touch any one of us. Maybe even me.

  I furrowed my brow, nodding at a few demon guards as I passed. I’d been trying not to think about that since Heph had told us about Demeter. If it could kill Demeter, really, truly kill her, then we were all in danger. And I wasn’t so sure that the bizarro combination of blood and power that had created me was enough to stand up to the technology or power or whatever it was that the steroid demons had.

  I honestly wasn’t in a hurry to find out, either. We needed to find them fast. Hit them hard. Make sure no more of them came through.

  When I got back up to my office, it was to find it packed with people. E, Brennan, Heph, my mother, Athena, Triton, and Poseidon all stood around, most of them looking like they wanted to hit something. Zoe, Sean, Michael, and Rose sat in a corner by the gigantic stone fireplace, mostly looking like they didn’t want any of us to realize they were there.

  “Any word from Gaia?” I asked as I closed the door behind me.

  “She wants to do the ceremony tonight,” Heph said.

  “Good. We can stay for that, and then we need to go. I need to find the breach before too many more get through.”

  “We need to go find it,” Nain said, emphasizing the “we” part. “There are enough immortals staying, in addition to the demons, to ensure the Netherwoods stay secure if any of those demonic assholes try to get here.”

  “I’m staying,” my aunt Megaera said. “So is Poseidon.”

  “So are all of the other Guardians,” E said, which meant another twelve immortals.

  “And Gaia,” Heph added.

  “But the rest of us are going with you, demon girl,” E said, giving me a determined nod. “We’re stronger together, and you do not need to do any of this alone.”

  I gave her a small smile. “Okay. We’ll leave after the ceremony, then.” I took a breath. “I told Persephone she could attend. I’ll be by her side the entire time,” I said quickly, heading off any arguments. Mainly Nain’s. He’d advocated for punishing her by keeping her alive, and so far, it had worked. She’d lived to mourn her mother. But most of them wanted her dead. Even Heph, who is pretty easygoing, wanted her dead.

  “You are better to her than she deserves,” E said quietly.

  “I have all the power. She will spend eternity in a dungeon cell. She already recognizes that this is a result of her stupidity. One more thing for her to spend the rest of her life thinking about.”

  “All right, I take it back,” E said. “You’re a genius at punishment.”

  “Thank God I’m an expert at something,” I said drily, and she laughed. I looked toward where the gaggle of teenagers was sitting. “What the hell are you all doing in here and where is Hades?” I asked.

  “We’re here because I wanted to hear what was going on. And we can’t find Hades. He’s off pouting somewhere like the dickhead he is,” Zoe said.

  “Hades isn’t a dickhead,” Michael said. He looked a lot like Heph already. Just as broad-chested, with those same dark eyes and prominent brows. But instead of Heph’s dark hair, Michael had waves of dark red hair like his mother’s. He also had Heph’s love of taking things apart and putting them back together again, as well as Heph’s appreciation for cussing.“ He’s going through some shit, Aunt Molly.”

  “Jesus, your kid has as much of a mouth on him as mine do,” I muttered to Heph, who laughed.

  “He doesn’t want to do any of this,” I said, giving everyone preparing for battle a general wave. “I know.”

  Michael looked uncomfortable, and Sean suddenly seemed to find his toes more interesting. I looked at them. Really, really looked at them.

  I have a thing against seeing into my kids’ souls. But Michael and Sean are not my kids. I took my glasses off and looked at them.

  Most of their guilt had to do with masturbation and porn. Ah, the teenage mind.

  But there, in the middle of all of it, was my answer. Sean seemed to know more about it than Michael, so I focused on him, and I saw everything.

  Oh.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “A little while now,” Sean said.

  My son, a Fury by birth if not by choice, the probable future god of death, had fallen in love with a soul who was awaiting her judgment from me. He’d told Sean all about it, how I was going to judge her and hurt her and send her away forever, and how could he ever want to be what I am? He’d talked to Sean about her a lot, which was odd since he was usually closer to Michael.

  But, I knew just from being around them that Sean was easier to talk to. When he’d felt like he had no one else, my son had gone to Sean with his troubles.

  “But he’s having orgies,” I argued, and Sean rolled his eyes, looking exactly like his father. The rest of the immortals around us seemed confused.

  “Sex isn’t always love. It’s not like he can actually do anything about that, can he?” Sean said. “It’s a distraction from what he can’t have.”

  “What?” Zoe asked, furrowing her brow.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Sean muttered.

  “We promised we’d keep our mouths shut,” Michael said.

  “Like it wasn’t going to come out sooner or later anyway. It’s kind of hard to hide that, considering what he is.”

  “Is that why he doesn’t want to work as a Fury anymore?” I asked.

  “You should probably ask him that. I’ve said too much already,” Sean said, rubbing the back of his neck. Zoe continued to stare at him, and Sean kept his eyes averted.

  I glanced at Nain, meeting his eyes.

  You knew, I thought at him as a twinge of guilt hit me, from him.

  I was going to tell you when we were talking about it earlier, but we got interrupted.

  I took a breath. Great. My son was in love with a soul. To develop feelings for those we’re supposed to rule over is… at the very least, it’s immoral. It makes life confusing, and makes judging and punishing the dead fairly completely fucking impossible. And when I judge this soul and send it on its way, he’ll hate me for it.

  Can my life possibly get any more messed up?

  “Okay. I guess I’ll try to talk to Hades later,” I sighed. “Funeral, then hunting down demonic assholes. You,” I said, raising my voice and pointing at the group of teenagers, “are to keep your asses inside the palace at all times. Do you understand?”

  Zoe nodded, then Sean and the rest of them. I knew Zoe had the sense to keep them from doing anything stupid. Assuming they told her about it first. Based on the Hades revelation, she was out of the loop now. She hadn’t been, even a few months ago. They’d all been fairly close as kids, but as they’d gotten older, an obvious split had occurred between the boys and girls. I guessed it was natural, kind of. But it was still stupid.

  At that moment, Gaia arrived in my office and gave me a nod. “It is time.”

  Chapter Eight

  Demeter’s funeral reminded me far too much of my father’s. It was the only other time we’d had to admit that one of the gods was dead, and that same sense of disbelief, the same combination of fear and anger, shrouded those gathered to honor Demeter.

  Persephone sat beside me, her hands still bound in the cuffs that kept her from rematerializing. Another cuff joined her wrist to mine. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  For her part, she sat, quietly sniffling, eyes on either her lap or her mother’s body, which had been wrapped in a gauzy white shroud, a riot of flowers tucked into the fabric all up and down her body. Demeter, as goddess of the harvest, had answered prayers for bounty for her entire existence. Now, platters, baskets, and bowls sat empty around the stone table where her body lay, symbols of a less bountiful life without her in it.

  In other ways, it was very different from Hades’ funeral. After the speeches had been made and the fires lit, immortals had lined up to speak to me and my mother, sharing in our grief.

  No one so much as looked at Persephone, let alone tried to comfort her. They
all thought exactly what Persephone herself had expressed, that she’d caused this death through her own selfish, reckless actions. Not a single one of the surviving immortals felt any pity for her. Most were appalled that she was allowed to be there at all.

  I got it. And I had more reason to hate her than any of them did. She’d done absolutely fucking monstrous things, and she deserved the harshest punishment we could give her. But Demeter was still her mother, and now she was gone. Her hatred for herself was much deeper than anything any of them felt, no matter how much they despised her. So despite the fact that I felt sorry for her, maybe I’m a cruel bitch after all for making her stay alive and live with her guilt and shame every day. I keep her locked in a cell, where there are no distractions, where no one but me visits, and all she does all day is think. She spends a lot of time thinking about the things she did. And now she has this. Maybe that’s hell enough. Death would be easy.

  Nain sat on my other side, and E sat on the other side of Persephone, extra insurance in case she tried something stupid, I guessed.

  As the fire died down, immortals, those few of us that are left, started wandering away. Those who would be staying to defend the Netherwoods and the rest of our realm would be changing into armor and sharpening weapons.

  Those of us leaving to try to find something we weren’t even sure how to identify mostly wanted to stretch out our time in the Netherwoods, with our loved ones.

  I haven’t faced the possibility of death in a very long time. To be honest, it was all I could do not to grab Nain, Zoe, Hades, and my mom and aunt and run like hell. Where, I had no idea. I wanted to do anything but go hunting down an enemy whose fucking armor had killed an immortal. And it wasn’t just me who was freaking out. Nether was more excitable than usual, and I could only guess that my mood was affecting hers.

  Nain wandered away, and E and Bren stood up and joined Heph and Meaghan, undoubtedly making plans for our hunt.

  I glanced at Persephone. Her eyes were still on the stone table, on the layer of ashes that had, just a while ago, been her mother’s body. The fires used for this purpose were powered and stoked by the gods, and burned hotter than anything I’ve ever seen. The whole process takes mere minutes.

  Which is for the best, really.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “It’s my fault,” she answered. She shook her head. “He didn’t even want me. He didn’t want me that way, and I did those things… and now she’s gone,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “It didn’t really become clear to me, how wrong I’d been, until I realized that she was not coming to visit me after I arrived back here. She’d cut me out of her life completely.” Persephone closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “She should still be here, and I should not.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  We sat in silence for a while, both of us watching the ash slowly drift away. Demeter would be one with the earth, even in her death.

  “These… beings who caused her death. What of them?”

  “A group is going out to search for the breach and try to prevent any more from coming through,” I said.

  “So she will be avenged,” Persephone said.

  “Among other things. I hope.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  I turned my head and stared at her. It took everything in me not to laugh. I mean, I’m not the smartest chick who’s ever walked the Earth, but even I’m not that stupid.

  “It’ll be taken care of,” I told her.

  “I can be of help. Maybe I can find the breach easier than the rest of you. I can sense for it—”

  “Do I look that stupid to you? Really?” I asked. I jerked my head toward the entrance to the palace. “Time to go.” I stood up, and, after a moment, she followed suit. I started moving, and, since we were shackled together, she had no choice but to follow me.

  “They killed my mother,” Persephone continued. We walked past E, and I rolled my eyes at her as we passed. She shook her head in response. “None of you want them stopped as badly as I do. And we’ve seen what I can do when I put my mind to it.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s it right there. We’ve all fucking seen what happens when you decide you want something. Billions die and everything goes to shit. We’ve seen that episode already.”

  “All right. Perhaps that was a bad example,” Persephone admitted.

  “No shit.”

  “For what it’s worth, I hated doing that to your son. I made sure he never felt a thing.”

  I stopped and turned on her, and she barely stopped herself from crashing into me. “Do not. Fucking. Talk. About my son.” Aside from the physical damage she’d done to Hades, she’d left psychological scars, too. He didn’t even fully realize what he’d been through, I don’t think. The memories are there, buried deep within him, the sensation of being among strangers, of losing life and then waking again, even more confused and alone than before. The searing burning of his tiny body repairing itself. Part of him knew he’d been through hell, even if, consciously, he couldn’t seem to remember what he’d been through. His trust issues, at least some of them, had clearly started with Persephone’s vileness.

  And now I absolutely wanted to kill her. I wanted to make her scream, put her in more mental and physical agony than she could ever imagine. Even I could feel my power ratcheting up, matching my rage, and Persephone’s eyes widened. “The only thing keeping me from destroying you is the knowledge that you’re in hell already. But I can make it so much worse.”

  Her fear was good. I’m used to people fearing me by now, but the fear of an immortal is something I haven’t felt in a while. Those who remain are family and friends and have no reason to fear me.

  “You’re not a thug, Mollis,” Persephone said in a shaky voice.

  I leaned toward her, pinning her gaze with mine. “You have no idea what I am. The things I’m willing to do. The things I dream of doing when my day goes to shit and all I want is to blow off a little steam. You lived with my father for thousands of years. Surely you recognized this darkness in him. He was a cruel bastard and now I know why. If you don’t think I crave pain and fear, that he didn’t crave those things, you never really knew him at all.”

  She stared at me, fear coming off of her in waves, feeding me, strengthening me. I backed away, my gaze still locked to hers.

  “They’re all so sure you’re some benevolent goddess,” Persephone said in a shaky breath.

  “Oh, I am. I’ll protect them with everything I have. I’ll keep them safe, because that’s my job. It doesn’t mean I’m not as dark and fucked up inside as Hades ever was.”

  With that, I spun around and continued through the corridors, dragging Persephone along behind me. The rush I’d gotten from her fear had me feeling like I could take down a thousand of those mega-demon assholes or whatever the fuck they were. For the first time since I’d gotten the news about Demeter, I felt something other than dread.

  Excitement. Hunger.

  It was time to break some shit, and I was ready.

  I got Persephone to her cell and disconnected the manacles we were wearing, leaving her power dampening cuffs on. Without another word, I slammed her cell door shut and rematerialized back up in my office.

  I’d worn my more formal uniform for Demeter’s funeral, and I changed back into my more utilitarian one, the one with the thin armor embedded in it. I wondered as I buttoned my shirt how well it would protect me against the weaponry that had killed Demeter.

  We all had armor like this now. Heph had made it for everyone, years ago. Most of us liked having it embedded in our clothing, flexible and able to move easily with our bodies. Nain and Heph, however, had actual armor, a dark, matte gray that only made them look more bulky than they already did.

  I sat and started pulling on my boots, thinking of the equipment I wanted to gather for our little expedition, and there was a knock on my door.

  “Come on in,” I said, sensing Zoe on the
other side of the door.

  “Sean helped me find Hades,” she said. I quickly grabbed my glasses and shoved them onto my face before I looked at her. Privacy. Boundaries. “He’s here now, with aunt Meg. He… he said he doesn’t want to talk about any of this right now.”

  I nodded, pulling on my other boot. “Well, that makes two of us,” I muttered. “Thanks for finding him.”

  “He didn’t want to come but Sean kinda freaked out on him. And we both might have threatened him to make him come.”

  I smiled and stood up. She has more of me in her than she realizes.

  “All that matters is that he’s here. He’s stuck here now until we decide it’s safe enough to leave.”

  “What about rematerializing?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Gaia added an extra layer of protection to the shield that hides the Netherwoods. No rematerializing in or out, for anyone. And the demon guards have the entrances heavily guarded.”

  She nodded, and I could feel her relief. “Good. He was pretty pissed. I assumed he’d try to take off as soon as he got the chance.”

  “I’m sure he’s tried already, and now he’s probably doubly pissed,” I told her, and she shook her head.

  “Do you need any help?” she asked.

  I picked up my flamesword and inspected it. Took a deep breath. “Want to grab my armband out of the safe?”

  She gave me a wide-eyed look, then nodded and went to the wall safe. She was one of only four people who knew the combination to it, and Nain still thought I was crazy for telling her about the safe and what was in it. Heph knew the combination, too, because, when it came down to it, if I ever fell, he was the one I trusted most to decide who was worthy to wield the power the armband contained.

  Zoe took out the exquisite silver armband Hephaestus had crafted for me so many years ago. Of course, it wasn’t the silver part that was important. It was what the armband contained, the swirling black stone encased in the silver. That stone contained the energy of three powerful immortals: Ares, Dionysus, and the spirit daemon Strife. It gave my power a significant boost, and I hadn’t had any reason to use it since the Undead wars had ended.