Zealot (Hidden: Soulhunter Book 3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “We all are.”

  She took a deep breath, and then she seemed to be listening. And then, to my shock and Phantasos’ obvious confusion, she started laughing. I waited, watching, and then she started laughing harder.

  “She’s fucking losing it,” Phantasos muttered nervously. That only made Mollis laugh harder. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her laughter turned into sobs.

  “Mollis?”

  “Nether says that’s what she was trying to tell me. She sensed that our time was ending. She’s been afraid of it and I wouldn’t listen to her so she could tell me. I was so fucking busy fighting her, trying to shut her up, that I missed it. You’ve been worried about me losing my mind, myself. I’ve been so afraid of Nether taking over, and all this time, she’s been trying to save my ass. Yeah, I’m a brilliant fucking leader,” she finished, wiping her eyes. She shook her head. “How am I supposed to tell Nain our time is almost over?” she whispered. “He is mine for fucking eternity. It can’t be over now. I’m not ready to say goodbye. What about my kids?” her voice broke, and she turned away. I know Mollis is, like me, not comfortable at all with showing her emotions, especially to someone she does not know. I fought the urge to go to her, to hug her the way we so often had when we needed to console one another.

  I did not know what else to say. I hated hearing her, seeing her this broken.

  She let out a short laugh and shook her head again. “How did we ever get to this point, E?”

  I glanced at Phantasos, who was looking even more nervous than he already had been. “I think he has some answers for you. If we cannot stop it, we can at least learn who is to blame. And we can punish them.”

  She turned, and her eyes met mine. They blazed, and I fought the urge to squint at how they brightened the room.

  “Well, E. Let’s do what we do best.” She stalked across the room toward Phantasos.

  “Dream gods, huh?” she murmured.

  “Morpheus was a lot of help,” I said, knowing the god of dreams would appreciate the kind words.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” She stood in front of Phantasos and crossed her arms. I could feel Phantasos trembling beside me as she looked at him.

  “All this shit over a woman who didn’t want you, huh?” she asked quietly.

  “I didn’t know it would come to this,” Phantasos said. “I swear.”

  “You are not as easy to read as everyone else.”

  “The whole dream thing. Our powers are mental, like yours.”

  “This will hurt, then. Too bad for you,” Mollis said, and then she closed her eyes and Phantasos went rigid, a sure sign that she was making her way into his psyche.

  I watched both of them. I still had a firm grip on Phantasos’s arm in case he tried to make a run for it, but my eyes were mostly on Mollis. After a few moments, she went completely still, as if she’d frozen. She stayed like that for far too long, and then her face creased in what only looked like agony. She shook her head as if she was trying to re-focus, and then, after a few moments, she froze again. I had no idea what she was seeing. The only thing I knew was that to cause that kind of reaction, that kind of frozen horror in Mollis, it had to be bad. A few moments later, she turned away from Phantasos with an ear-splitting shriek. Phantasos fell back, unconscious, and I lowered him gently to the floor and beckoned three nearby imps to standby and guard him. Despite their diminutive statures, the imps would not allow him to go anywhere.

  I went to Mollis, who let out another agonized shriek and bent over, holding her head.

  “Mollis? Demon girl, what did you see?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm while also trying to get her attention. I went to her and put my hand on her back.

  “Mollis is away, away, away right now,” a deeper, scratchier voice came from the body of my dearest friend. A shiver went down my spine. I knew that voice well.

  “Nether,” I said quietly. “You promised you would be good.”

  “I am good. She is resting. And she deserves the rest.”

  “Nether. Part of why she is so tired is from fighting you.”

  “It is not my fault My Prison misinterpreted my warnings. She loves Me, but she fears Me.”

  “What did she see, Nether?” I asked quietly.

  Nether/Mollis got a faraway look in her eyes, and then shook her head. “She is beginning to worry. I will fade now, as not to frighten her. Be there for her, Guardian. She needs it.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Nether.”

  Nether/Mollis closed her eyes, and when she opened them, I recognized the focused expression I was used to seeing. Mollis met my eyes for a moment, and then she turned away. Her breath was heavy, her body trembling. Her power swirled, roared around me. She let out an enraged shout, and the large desk full of paper and other debris went flying across the room, through one of the heavy stone walls of the palace, and out into the courtyard.

  “It was Persephone,” she said a moment later, still looking toward where the desk had landed, where several demons had immediately gathered to inspect the damage. They did not meet Mollis’s gaze.

  “Persephone?” I asked. “That cannot be right. She has been in mourning. She has been here. You have seen her.”

  She turned to me. “Not up close. Not anywhere where I could focus on her for more than a fraction of a second. I thought she was avoiding me because of everything that happened with my dad. Because she hates me. Because seeing my son hurts her.” She let out a low, cold chuckle. “Oh, she hates me all right. I just never knew how much.”

  I shook my head. “Mollis, I am telling you that has to be wrong. She came to look at baby Hades after we found him. She helped with Brennan’s son. She had coffee with me—”

  “It was her, E. She was there in his memories, bright and clear. She let him think he had a chance with her, that she was lonely and wanted to move on from my father. And he helped her. He messed with the memories of those who’d realized what she was up to. He helped obscure her, because she knew how easy it would be for me to find out it was her if even one person could remember her. She kidnapped my son. Sean. Michael,” she said with a snarl.

  “To what end, Mollis? As a revenge scheme, it is very haphazard. And how do the undead even fit into all of that?”

  She took several deep breaths, and I knew she was trying to regain some control after her outburst.

  “The undead… I think they started as a diversion. They kept all of us busy while she was working on her main project. She needed time.” She looked my way, met my eyes. “The first undead needed a spark of life, right? Something had to set that course in motion.”

  “Someone like a fertility goddess,” I said, and she nodded. “But there are others,” I argued. “Demeter. Hestia. Even Gaia could do that if she wanted to.”

  “Do any of them hate me enough to go through the trouble of creating the undead?”

  I had no answer for that. Gaia adored Mollis. Hestia and Demeter were more likely to keep to themselves than involve themselves in revenge plots.

  “Still. To what end?”

  “She wanted to bring my father back to life,” Mollis whispered.

  “That can’t be done. We burned his body. He was killed by a primordial god. That does not work. How would one even—”

  “With the heart of his blood. His namesake,” she said, meeting my eyes again. “My son was supposed to bring my father back to life. His heart was taken. We know that.”

  My mind flashed from the day we’d finally found baby Hades, to the large incision across his heart. I had known what it was then, but back then all we knew of those taking the hearts of the immortals was that they were using the hearts to bolster their own strength.

  Remembering that, I also remembered Hades’ earsplitting screams when Persephone had walked into the room. There had been no memory of Persephone in his mind, but something, a sixth sense of some kind, had made him fear Persephone. I had merely written it off as Hades being tired after his ordeal and not knowing
Persephone well.

  “The others, your sisters… they likely introduced the idea to Persephone,” Mollis said. “They knew how the original outbreak of undead happened, back in the day. He seems to know that it was one of your sisters who went to Persephone, hoping to find an ally against me. Against you,” Mollis added.

  “But his body,” I insisted. “It is not possible.”

  “She was married to him for thousands of years. Shared his life. Do you really think she had nothing of his? No hair? Hell, teeth? Nails? This is Persephone. She can grow anything, revive anything, with the right ingredients and a little focus.”

  My mind immediately snapped back to the coffee I had shared with Persephone a few months ago. She had been carrying black petals from the Netherwoods in her hand, and had made the dead petals grow into a full, lush, fragrant flower before my eyes. It had taken almost no effort at all.

  A shiver went up my spine. “This is still a lot of theorizing, demon girl. I do not see Persephone as someone who is so reckless that she’d set the undead loose on the world. It does not fit.”

  “Do you seriously think Persephone is right in the head right now?” Mollis asked. “She’s a shade of what she once was, like she’s exhausted. I blamed it on mourning. What if it’s more?”

  “What ifs do not answer questions,” I pressed. She turned away from me, irritated.

  “It was her,” she insisted. “It was all there in his mind. It was Persephone. She used him to erase your sisters’ memories so we wouldn’t know who was behind it. She used him to obscure herself with anyone who might have seen what she was doing. She promised him her love, but a while back, she stopped coming around. At one point, she was crying. Freaking out.”

  “That suggests she probably was not successful,” I said, allowing Mollis her theories for a moment. I could not believe this of Persephone.

  “You like Persephone,” Mollis said, reading my thoughts and emotions.

  “I have never had reason not to.”

  “She has been a bitch to me since the day we met.”

  “And that surprises you? The illegitimate daughter of the man she loved for practically her entire existence? The one who changed her life and everyone else’s forever?”

  “So it’s okay for her to treat me like that?”

  I shrugged. “Not okay. But understandable. Every time I think about Sean’s mother, I want to find her and remove her spleen.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I still want to find her and remove her spleen.”

  “You don’t feel that way about me, though?” Mollis asked. “I mean, I was technically first.”

  “I do not know sometimes how I feel about you and him. Mostly, I try not to think about it.” I paused, and tried not to think about Brennan. At the same time, I knew it was foolish. She saw everything.

  “Oh, E,” she said softly. “He hates it when shit is kept from him.”

  “I know.”

  “The most important thing in the world is to be there for the ones he loves. To be able to protect and nurture. You won’t let him do that.”

  “I know,” I repeated, my face burning. “I do not know how to do this.”

  Mollis sighed and walked over to me. She hoisted herself up onto the narrow table behind the sofa, and I sat beside her there. “Poor Bren. He seems destined to fall for women who can’t give him what he needs most.”

  “Thanks for making me feel better, Mollis,” I said wryly, and she bumped my knee with hers.

  “But the thing about Bren is, he’ll keep loving you, because what you need matters more to him than what he needs. And as much as he thought he loved me, he loves you even more. You fill some of the empty spaces in him that he never thought could be filled.”

  “I make him feel empty, too,” I said quietly.

  Mollis was quiet for a moment, and I knew I was not wrong.

  “E, that’s part of what love is. Everyone acts like true love fixes everything, like those parts of you that felt wrong all your life will feel right the moment you find the one you want to spend your life with. That’s such bullshit. Love is messy and crazy and even at the best of times, both of you are just trying to figure out how it all works. But the thing is, you’re figuring it out together, and eventually, you start seeing that your version of love and marriage doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and it shouldn’t.”

  “He will never forgive me for keeping this from him,” I said softly. “We both know that. This is the kind of thing he will not be able to get over, that I knew the day was coming, very, very soon, that would be the last day he would have with his son. With Nain. With me,” I said, my voice cracking. “That I knew it was coming and did not tell him. That I chose to keep the horror to myself. I almost think it would be easier for him if I had just cheated on him or something. This is the kind of betrayal we cannot come back from. Especially with as many times as we have argued about how I keep everything to myself.”

  “I have to tell them. Persephone needs to be punished, at the very least,” Mollis said. “I can tell him that you just found out.”

  I shook my head. “I do not want to lie to him about lying to him.” I looked out the window, at the amethyst sky of the Netherwoods. “This was a mess from the beginning. My first actual committed relationship, and we jumped into marriage before we knew anything really about one another. I have never done anything like that, and I still do not know what possessed me to do it then. I just knew that I had never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted him. If I was a decent Guardian at all, I would have done the right thing for him. I would have pretended I did not care. I would have insisted that he find someone else. Some sweet, gorgeous shifter who would at least understand those things he needs. Instead, I was selfish. He offered, and I took, and I had no right taking when I have no idea what this whole love thing entails.”

  “E…”

  “And now, he will spend the last few days of his existence knowing that when it really mattered, I still could not give him what he needed.”

  “You were trying to protect him,” Mollis said, and I gave her a small smile, touched that she was taking my side in things.

  “He hates it when I try to protect him.”

  Mollis let out a small laugh then and nodded. “He does.” She sobered again. “I’m sorry, E.”

  I gave her a small smile that felt utterly fake. “We have other matters to worry about. Finding Persephone, as you said. We will make her pay for this. And we will keep hammering the undead, hoping for a miracle.”

  “We both know that’s a useless hope. We don’t have a chance in hell here, E.”

  “I know. But I do not know what else to do, but fight.”

  She nodded. “That’s why we’re such good friends. I don’t know what else to do either.”

  She took a deep breath and turned to the three imps, who were still standing by Phantasos’s prone form. “Take him to my mother and aunt. Ask them to see what else they can get out of him. Then, please summon the other immortals. All of them. I’m gonna have my revenge, if it’s the last thing I do before this whole thing falls apart.”

  The imps bowed, pressed tiny fists to chests in a salute to their Queen, and then disappeared with Phantasos.

  Mollis turned to me. “I love you, E. This all turned out to be a fucking mess, but knowing you has been one of the best things I could imagine.”

  “You’re very zen about the end of the world,” I said.

  “Oh, no. I’m fucking fuming. I want to kill so many people right now, especially my grandmother and Persephone. I want to understand why Nyx went to you when I was right here—”

  “Nether,” I said quietly. “She watched you and said you were incapable of handling what she would have told you. I was not supposed to let you know, either.”

  “Oh, fuck her,” Mollis muttered. “Fucking whiny-ass bitch. Things are bad, so let’s just destroy it all and start over? Who the fuck even thinks like that?”

&n
bsp; “Creators of all reality, apparently,” I said.

  “Assholes.”

  “Super assholes,” I agreed. “I failed you.”

  “You were set up. She knew damn well it wasn’t a fight you could win. She was humoring you, because what is two weeks to her, with her whole ‘infinite existence’ thing?” Mollis said. “I have never been so ashamed to be related to someone. I wish she was woman enough to show her face here, but we both know she’s not. Fuck her,” she repeated.

  We sat in silence for a while, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “Is it possible that Persephone brought Hades back?” I asked.

  Mollis shook her head. “She would have used that against me, too. She would have had him reclaim his throne. I don’t think it would have really been him, you know? It wouldn’t have his memories. It would be physically him. It would have his power. But it wouldn’t have been him.”

  “Then why bother even trying?”

  Mollis shrugged. “Maybe she was okay with close enough. I get that she was grieving. Grief for my father plus hatred of me, plus the ability to actually do something about it all? Dangerous combination. I should have been looking at her more closely.”

  “I still cannot believe it.”

  Mollis nodded.

  A few moments later, Tisiphone and Megaera appeared and related to Mollis that they had been able to get no more from Phantasos, but they had seen enough. Tisiphone went to Mollis and held her tightly, the way, I realized, a mother holds a daughter she knows she will be losing. I looked away. My stomach turned, churned harder as the moments ticked by. Soon, I would not be hiding anything more from Brennan. It was both a relief and torture.

  When this meeting was over, I would hunt. I would destroy. It was, of course, the only thing I knew how to do.

  Chapter Fifteen