Rise of the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

  “What about them?” I asked in a whisper. Even that hurt. I indicated them with a flick of my eyes—Thanatos, Hypnos, Hecate.

  He didn’t follow my gaze, but brought his face in close to mine and then murmured in my ear, “They might not return my kingdom. You, on the other hand…”

  “We’ll do it,” Apollo said for us both. “Just…let her go.”

  Hades’s hand opened, and I dropped to the floor with the sudden release, coughing as each wonderful breath seemed to saw at my throat. As grateful as I was to breathe again, I didn’t trust Hades. I thought about Atlas tricking Hercules into accepting the weight of the world onto his shoulders and then refusing to take it back, but if Hades was worried about a coup in his absence surely he wasn’t going to stick us with the Underworld for keeps.

  Anyway, Apollo had already agreed. My throat ached as I took in air too greedily.

  “Done,” Hades said.

  Apollo rushed toward me, and I went into his arms, so glad to see him recovered and to be alive myself that I wasn’t worried about signals, mixed or otherwise.

  “But no sitting on my throne,” Hades said, fixing us both with a glare from those coal-burning eyes.

  Now that he mentioned it, I was a little tempted to play with his things. I could have a ton of fun with his helmet of invisibility on the off chance he left it at home.

  “Fine,” Apollo said, though I hadn’t made any promises. “Now, what do you bring to the table?”

  His eyes glittered. “Only all the heroes of old.”

  Apollo smacked his head. “The Elysian Fields, how could I have forgotten.”

  “Paradise sounds great until you have an eternity of it. Truthfully, the heroes have been growing restless. If I don’t do something, like let them out to fight an epic battle, they’ll start fighting each other.”

  I was dumbstruck. The heroes of old! Hercules, Perseus, Odysseus, Achilles, Theseus, Jason and the Argonauts… Was I really about to come face to face with them? It was funny that the gods didn’t make me geek out—mostly because I hadn’t even believed in them at first—but the heroes, normal mortals facing overwhelming obstacles… (Okay, maybe some had Olympian parents, but the others…)

  “You look like a fan girl,” Apollo said, a little grumpily, I thought. “I’d know, I’ve seen enough of them in my time.”

  “Women interested in your on-screen attributes,” I teased, letting my gaze drop so that he’d have no question about the attributes to which I referred. Rumor had it that Apollo had started out in adult films before transitioning to more mainstream theatre.

  “Exactly. Maybe if I showed you—”

  “Children,” Hades snapped. “Focus.”

  He pressed a button on his smart screen and then enlarged the thumbnail picture that came up…The Elysian Fields. Fruitful, lush, perfect, like the concept of the Garden of Eden. Butterflies chased each other in a meadow, and when Hades swept a hand across the screen, the image panned to show two young men wrestling nearly naked in a field—and looking very enthused about it.

  A smile lit Hades’s face, and he clicked some kind of link. Then he cleared his throat and the sound seemed to carry through the screen and out across the fields, based on the sudden pause in the wrestling match. “Gather in the Hall of Heroes as soon as possible. Full battle gear. This is not a drill.”

  “Drill?” Apollo asked.

  Hades’s smile widened. “Keeps them on their toes. Plus, Cerberus likes the workout. Come on.”

  “What about the titans?” I asked, looking at a moving picture Hades had relegated to the bottom of his smart screen, the one with Christie and a whole host of monsters who could crush her with a flick of their fingers or…whatever.

  “They’re already at the Archeron.”

  “The Archeron, but—” Apollo started.

  “You see the conundrum,” Hades said.

  “I don’t,” I cut in.

  Hades turned his burning eyes on me. “Archeron was a god, son of Gaea. He aided the Titans during their first battle against Zeus, and as punishment he was cast into the Underworld and turned into a river. The question is, will he offer them aid again or has he learned his lesson?”

  “He’s got nothing left to lose by helping them,” I said, horrified. What was it with the ancients and their crazy punishments? Who turned someone into a river?

  “You’d think that,” Hades said, “but never underestimate the power of sulking. He’s had time out of mind to regret his decision and to blame others for the consequences. It will be an interesting experiment, no?”

  “Experiment?” I asked, horrified.

  “Yes, it all a starts with a theory of mine…”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Apollo said. “They’re waiting in the Hall of Heroes.”

  Hades’s eyes burned, not with the fire of suns, but with a much more infernal glow, like the molten core of a volcano ready to explode.

  “Some day,” Hades told him, “you and I will have a reckoning.”

  “I’ll look forward to it. Now, let’s go.”

  If Hades had laser vision, Apollo would have been cut in half, but since he didn’t, he had to settle for a glare. Then his gaze swept past Apollo, and he rapped out, “Thanatos, you’re with us. Hecate, you hold half back with you to repair what damage you can and prevent further escapes. Hypnos, you take the rest and meet us at the Archeron. One way or the other we’ll defeat the titans. Either we’ll stop them at the river or if they’re beyond, marching on the gods, we’ll sandwich them between the two armies.”

  Armies. Right. I hoped the others’ recruiting efforts had been successful and I hoped that Rhea had been quiet while we’d been gone—other than possessing my best friend, which she was so going to pay for, and unleashing the titans. Come to think of it, that probably would have kept her pretty busy.

  Hades turned back to us and ordered, “Follow me.”

  He barked an order at the smart board and then made a gesture like he was closing it up between his hands. A door opened even as the smart board closed—part of the stone wall of the echoing space sliding out of the way. Beyond was a dark passage that Hades illuminated by clapping his hands. A Clapper? Seriously? Along the walls of the tunnel, torches seemed to flicker, but when I looked more closely, it was just a trick bulb. Electric torchlight.

  “Nice effect,” I said wryly.

  “I think so,” Hades answered.

  I was eerily aware of Thanatos bringing up the rear of our party. He’d already tried to kill me more than once in our short acquaintance. Sure, those attempts had been at his father’s orders and we were temporarily on the same side, but if his father was worried about a coup, how much weight would that really hold? He could do away with his father and blame it on us without breaking a sweat. If we were killed in the assassination—if Thanatos killed us in supposed retribution—who could contradict his version of events?

  Apollo, apparently picking up on my tension through our link, reached down and squeezed my hand. He let go almost immediately, to have both his hands free, I guessed, in case of trouble, but it was reassuring. Right now the odds were stacked against Thanatos. He had to know that. And anyway, who wanted to inherit a kingdom in the middle of crisis? Much better to let someone else do all the heavy lifting of putting things back in order.

  It was a long corridor, and the walk was uneventful except for the gnawing in my gut, my precog trying to tell me what I already knew. War is coming. Hurry, hurry.

  When we hit the end of the corridor, marked by another sliding slab of stone, we stepped out into another desolate cave. Skeletal trees stood on rocky ground, bearing no fruit and only the most occasional leaf, looking like carcasses dotting the landscape. As we followed Hades’s lead, though, moss and lichen started to cover some of the rocks. Then grass. Then, slowly, flowers started to appear within the grass. Teeny, tiny white flowers, sometimes interspersed with purple. Just like above ground. The light in the tunnels had changed too. Thoug
h I couldn’t spot the source, weak sunlight seemed to sift down from above.

  And then…and then we reached them—the Elysian Fields. The diamond gates gave it away. A hundred million facets glittered in the sunlight that had grown progressively stronger. It should have been gaudy, like a Miss America crown. Instead it was…Heaven. Or one incarnation of it, anyway. Because beyond the gates the sunlight shined, butterflies chased each other, the whole world was in bloom. The peace and beauty of the place called out from beyond the gates, beckoning, making promises I was pretty sure it could keep. I wanted with an ache that was almost physical.

  “Tori?” Apollo asked.

  “Why would anyone ever leave?” I gasped, awed.

  “Maybe you should wait here,” he said gently.

  That swung my startled gaze toward him. “Like hell!” I answered, catching the irony only as the words left my mouth.

  “Fine, but don’t eat or drink anything. And for gods’ sake, don’t fall for Theseus’s sloe-eyed look,” Apollo warned.

  I gave him a startled glance. “Do I seem like the swooning type?” I asked, giving him the stink-eye.

  He shrugged. “No, but then he doesn’t necessarily wait for the swooning. He’s more the grab and go type.” He looked to Hades. “Sounds like someone we know. Surprised you two aren’t best buds.”

  Hades glared.

  We followed him toward the gates, but he stopped a distance before them to mutter a spell to let us pass through the invisible barrier, like the one we’d seen explode outside of Tartarus. Once we’d stepped through the barrier, the glitter of the gemstone gate was almost blinding. It was a wonder the Underworld wasn’t awash in thieves. Then again, maybe it was. But Hades’s realm was like a roach hotel. You no sooner checked in than you checked out…permanently.

  Hades put a hand to the ornate gates that rose to triple our height and they began to swing inward, so silently that we could hear the buzz of the bees beyond and the wingbeats of fireflies. Or maybe that was my imagination, but there was a music to the place, and a sweet breeze that wafted out toward us, scented with flowers and the smell of dew-drenched grass.

  I breathed deeply as I passed through the gates, taking in the barely traveled path before us and the orchard all around, trees heavy with every kind of fruit imaginable. I wondered if the Elysian Fields had been modeled on the Garden of Eden or vice versa or… What did it matter? The thoughts flitted away along with all my cares. If I could just stay here in this heaven then no one else could ever get hurt because of me. No death, no destruction. No mystery, motives or murder.

  Apollo pinched me. I yelped and jumped, then punched his arm. Hard. “What did you do that for?”

  “The Elysian Fields, they’re making you peaceful, yes? Complacent? It’s something in the air here. It’s like a drug. Get over it.”

  “You get over it,” I said stupidly. I rubbed my butt where I still felt his pinch. “Next time I pinch you back.”

  He flashed a smile at me as lethal as Typhoeus. “I’m ready to turn the other cheek.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. But he had broken the spell. For now. I still felt the pull and the peace of the Elysian Fields…and most compelling the release from responsibility. But now I could remember that there were people who needed me, even if they didn’t think so. And those people were waiting for our help.

  “Any way you can crank down on the happy hormones?” I asked. “I think rallying the troops for battle would go a whole lot smoother.”

  Hades muttered yet another spell so low that I could barely hear it, and in a language I couldn’t understand. The breeze stopped. The sound of wingbeats and the buzzing insects no longer carried toward us. Everything seemed dead still, as though perfection had been trapped in amber. No longer a living, breathing thing.

  As we walked through the orchard, I spotted a temple up on a hill. Classic architecture, built on the highest point, looking down. It had the typical pillars, pitched roof and triangular pediment at the pinnacle. I couldn’t see the relief carvings, but at a guess they’d be Hades’s greatest hits. I wondered what those would be. On the upside, he wasn’t the philanderer that most of the gods were. On the downside, he’d kidnapped his wife and impressed her into marriage against her will and he wasn’t exactly known for his heroism.

  “The Hall of Heroes?” I asked, looking up.

  “Precisely,” he answered.

  It wasn’t as far off as it looked. Once past the orchard, we came to a grassy area that led into what looked like a temple complex or market square, similar to a Roman agora. Half-clothed children played hide and seek among the pillars, and a few women lay about in a grassy area nearby, drowsing, only half watching the children. No one else was about. I guessed everyone else was already at the Hall of Heroes.

  The women began to sit or stand as Hades approached, but he motioned them down and smiled with almost a fatherly beneficence at the children. Could it be the Elysian Fields worked its magic on Hades as well? It was the first time I’d seen anything but a sadistic smile or out-and-out rage on his face. He directed us beyond the agora to a path that wound a little as we climbed, our view of the temple above and the agora below obscured from time to time by the trees in the way, some of which rose straight into the air, almost like Christmas trees that had never been cut out of their restraining mesh. They were that narrow and concentrated. Just like some actual trees on the actual Greek landscape. In fact, Elysia was so much like home, no one could possibly get homesick…except for the lack of monsters to fight, wars to win or other heroic pursuits. We were about to change all that.

  As we took a turn of the path and it opened up onto the leveled grounds surrounding the hall, a child spotted us and flew into action, yelling that we’d arrived in Greek so ancient I barely understood.

  We were met at the propylaea, the grand entrance to the temple, by a gaggle of men, some of them covered in the traditional drapery, some much more exposed. One wore not much more than a huge golden lion pelt thrown over his shoulder with the lion’s own teeth used to clamp the cloak shut. I struggled to remember which hero that might be. Didn’t Hercules have some labor involving a lion? He was definitely hero-sized—as if Andre the Giant and Arnold Schwarzenegger at his biggest had borne some bizarre love child with thick black hair and a manly beard coming to a neat point over his heart. The others were equally intimidating—young men with flowing hair and bodies that encouraged overpriced gym memberships. Or with tight black curls and arms of steel, stomachs going to paunch. All clearly men of action, even if that action was a distant memory.

  They all looked at us with wary, barely leashed hunger.

  “You called us,” Lion-man said, stepping forward.

  I remembered now. That had to be the famed Nemean Lion cloak from Hercules’s first labor. It was said to make him invulnerable, though if that was true, how had he ever ended up here?

  “I did,” Hades admitted. “But I will not discuss it with you on the steps of the hall. If you’ve forgotten how to treat your host, then perhaps you have forgotten too much to be of use.”

  He was riling them up, giving them something to prove, working the crowd before we’d even begun. It was cleverly done.

  An even larger man elbowed Hercules aside, and said heartily, “My son forgets his manners. Come, come, please, we have brought enough for a feast.”

  Son? I wondered, struggling to remember who Hercules’s father might be.

  “Ah, Perseus,” Hades said, clamping a hand down on his massive shoulder. “That’s more like it.” He sent a glare Hercules’s way and proceeded into the hall with Perseus as the others closed around us and followed. I was getting way more attention than I was comfortable with and realized that I was still in my makeup artist warpaint with my hair all dramatically pinned and curled. You’d think after all the action I’d seen that it would have fallen, but it was shellacked to within an inch of its life. Short of Cerberus and his foul and vaporous doggy breath, I didn’t know if
anything would wilt it.

  I glared all around me at the attention, but it seemed that heroes were not so much cowed by dirty looks. In fact, two young men only seemed encouraged—one with twinkling golden eyes, the other with rare green, but alike enough otherwise to be twins.

  The green-eyed twin sidled up to me. “Hello,” he said with a “come here often?” implied.

  I rolled my eyes, but that only brought me to the golden-eyed twin, who said, “Want to tell us what’s going on?”

  “I’m sure Hades will fill you in.”

  “Well then, want to fool around?” the green-eyed one asked, moving in closer. Apparently, come-ons hadn’t changed much since ancient times. I didn’t have the least bit of trouble understanding that.

  I upped my glare and he turned up the wattage on his smile from lewd to lascivious.

  I looked to Apollo in amusement. He was eying the twins as if he’d like to bash their heads in but wouldn’t deny me the pleasure. Somehow, it put the devil into me.

  “Maybe later,” I said, letting my face relax into my best coquettish look.

  “Really?” green-eyes said. He hit his twin. “Hear that, Castor?”

  Apollo growled and moved in.

  “You two had better beat it for now,” I told them.

  The golden-eyed one gave me a wink and a half bow before grabbing his twin by the cloak and pulling him into the sea of men. Mostly men, anyway. Here and there was a woman or a child, but overwhelmingly the Elysian Fields—or at least the Hall of Heroes—seemed to be populated by men. Darn sexist ancients. Where would Theseus have been without Ariadne’s ball of string to find his way out of the labyrinth? And Achilles’s heel was only famous because that was where his mama had held him when she dipped him into the River Styx to make him invulnerable but for that one little spot. Gah.

  Apollo must have sensed my agitation. “Don’t worry, you’re twice the hero of anyone here.”

  “Yeah, how do you figure?”

  “You successfully resisted the charms of Castor and Pollux, a Herculean task, I’m sure.”