by Addison Fox
“Who did he capture?”
“Oh, he managed to secure a sizable cross section of gifts. Seven, in all, I believe. A nymph, a Cyclops, one of the Horae”—Hera held up a hand and finished ticking off the list—“a centaur, an Argonaut and he even managed to capture a giant.”
“Who was the seventh?”
The delicate sniff told Enyo all she needed to know. “One of Themis’s Warriors. He was the one who freed them all.”
One of Themis’s boys had been captured by the sorcerer?
“Which one?”
“Who knows? She has so many of them.”
Although Hera saw no difference between the men, Enyo knew, without a doubt, it was Kane.
It had to be.
He was already involved in this and that was no coincidence.
“How did the sorcerer get so powerful? Especially if he wasn’t an immortal himself.”
“The darkest of magics. His sire was an incubus. The incubus who sired Merlin, in fact.”
“But Merlin wasn’t a dark wizard.”
“Well, his brother is. The darkest of the dark.”
In an even tone, Enyo pressed with one final question. “Surely he was killed when the immortals escaped?”
“That’s the hope. But the immortals were so drained—so near death—they simply fled when the opportunity presented itself.”
“And the Warrior? The one who freed them?”
“It’s said that when they battled, the sorcerer lost a great deal of his power. That he relinquished nearly all his power.”
Enyo couldn’t believe this. How had she never heard the specifics of this story?
Were there really mortals walking the earth with this much power? This great an advantage over their brethren?
Nearly breathless, she pressed her mother with one final question. “Victory? The sorcerer was victorious?”
“Of sorts. The sorcerer left the Warrior with a terrible curse.”
“What kind of curse? He’s an immortal. How bad can it be?”
“The worst of punishments. He is an immortal who battles his own death.”
“Ilsa,” Kane whispered in her ear, “we need to keep moving.”
What was he thinking? He and Ilsa were within screaming distance of the cruise director of the Underworld and he was so crazy for her that he’d practically torn her sweater apart.
Movements gentle, Kane disengaged himself from her. He pulled his hand from beneath her sweater, settling both hands at her hips before he stepped back from her body.
She was truly amazing.
Responsive. Warm. Beautiful.
And if given the opportunity, he’d have stood there all day, just staring at her.
A loud, insistent droning from the direction of the lapping river had pulled him from her arms. Now that he actually focused on it, the sound grew more intense, like a swarm of locusts coming closer and closer.
“Ilsa. Come on, sweetheart. We have to get going.”
At the word “sweetheart,” her gaze met his—and her blue eyes were deep, luscious pools he could fall into.
“Come on. The river isn’t that far away and we need to get there.”
A small smile hovered at the edges of her lips and her voice was husky when she spoke. “Why did you do that?”
“Because it gave you pleasure.” A hot warmth filled his face and Kane almost laughed at his schoolboy reaction.
Almost.
“And because, at that moment, all I could see was you.”
The bright blue of her eyes darkened and her lids went all heavy on him. “I’m so very glad you did.”
Kane nodded, fighting the image of her as she came apart in his arms. They still had a lot of ground to cover and he’d barely be able to make it three steps if he didn’t calm down and focus on . . . something . . . else.
Like her wiggling behind as she adjusted her skirt.
His already overheated body tightened in response to that tight ass covered by the thin stretch of material.
Fuck, he had it bad.
Reaching for her hand, Kane tried a little trick he’d used the last time they’d been together. As the letters of the Greek alphabet ran through his mind—backward—he focused on the road ahead of them. Despite his very best intentions, all the omicrons and epsilons in the world couldn’t erase the feel of her pressed against him, the searing heat of her feminine core as she rode his thigh.
Gods, they’d shared pleasure twice since she’d come back into his life and he still hadn’t even gotten her into bed. Hadn’t driven his body into hers with long, mindless thrusts of pure bliss. Hadn’t spent hours showering her with pleasure, lavishing attention on each and every part of her body.
What was it about her?
They’d just had the sexual equivalent of teenage groping in the back of a darkened movie theater and he was hotter than he’d ever been for a woman.
Ever.
The thought humbled him, even as it made him harder, ready to go off with the finesse of a Fourth of July fire-cracker.
Hopeless.
This woman made him hopeless. But she also made him strong.
On a sigh, Kane tried again to divert his thoughts. Right, left, right.
Movements precise, Kane concentrated on lifting his feet. On the effort it took to take one step after the other. The deliberate moves were designed to ignore the painful erection and the writhing poison that had come roaring back to life in his veins.
As if the poison would forget about him or leave him alone.
Nope.
Not a chance.
Ilsa’s voice penetrated the fog in his head. “Kane. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look mad.”
“I’m strung out, not mad.”
“Oh.”
He could practically hear the wheels in her head turning in rhythm with the buzzing noise that grew louder from the direction of the river.
Stopping, he took a deep breath and turned toward her. “ ‘Strung out’ means that I’ve got a serious hard-on and I want to lay you down and give you so much pleasure you can’t even remember your name. Just in case you were wondering.”
A broad smile broke out across her face, the only bright light in this dark, dank place. “That’s what I hoped it meant.”
The urge to kiss her again gripped him with its madness. Bending down, Kane shifted his body closer to her to steal one more kiss before they closed the final yards of their journey without Underworld accompaniment.
Their lips almost touched—the contact nearly complete—when a low, ethereal voice echoed from behind them.
“What passage do you request of me?”
Ilsa heard Charon’s disembodied voice and immediately pulled out of Kane’s embrace. The little demon stared at them in interest, his gaze dark and sinister as it roved over their joined bodies, his long ferryman’s staff held firmly in his scaly grip.
Robert’s and Alex’s souls began screaming inside of her, the cacophony raging through her head in a disharmonic symphony. They’d lulled her with their quiet, brooding silence as she’d navigated her way toward the river, but the continued silence wasn’t to be.
Oh, how she longed to be rid of them.
Their renewed screams echoed through her body, and the mental pain from earlier flooded back in full force, in counterpoint to a sharp, stabbing pain in her rib cage.
Ilsa had no words to describe what happened while she was a host. The internal process was often so miserable, she just sped her way through it so she could be rid of the offending essence.
But this.
This was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. The mental pain had become a very real, physical pain, as if a hole was being rendered in the fabric of her soul.
Straightening away from Kane, Ilsa gritted her teeth through the throbbing torture and turned toward Charon. “We seek passage through the River Acheron.”
“Do you have the toll?”
Kane shot her a questioning glance, but she nodded and patted her pocket. “Yes, I have the toll.”
The loud buzzing she’d heard on their walk rose up in loud complement to the lapping waves of the river where it slapped against Charon’s ferry. The souls of the unjust stood along the river, fiery torches held high in their hands, screaming at them in judgment.
Ilsa paid two tolls and took her place in the boat. Kane took the seat next to her, his back stiff and straight as Charon pushed off from shore.
They floated for a few minutes, Kane’s discomfort growing with each passing second. He shifted restlessly on the bench seat next to her and his hands tapped a rapt tattoo on his legs. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Clearly not, but she avoided saying so. Changing tactics, she leaned over, whispering, “Is it the poison?”
Kane turned toward her, the slashes of his brows framing an eerie luminescence in his onyx eyes. His irises were so dark, their color reflected the torches waving along the shoreline. “It’s not the poison.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s the boat. This place. I can’t see the stars. Or the daytime sky above me.”
“We’ve been down here for a few hours now. Did it bother you before?”
“Not like this. Before I could have turned back. Now we’re trapped.”
She followed Kane’s gaze as it skittered across various elements of their surroundings. The hot, boiling river they floated on. The dark cave Charon rowed them through. The dock where they’d boarded, now a small dot in the distance behind them.
“Why do you seek the sky?”
“Themis gave her Warriors many gifts, but the ability to communicate through the stars is one of them.” Kane lifted his left arm, pointing to a tattoo that covered his inside forearm. The tattoo was an intricate circular design, with various markings on it.
“But you’ve been inside before. You even said you’ve been here, to the Underworld before. What’s different now?”
“I’m too weak to port. I’m trapped.”
The truth of his words struck her as well, her situation equal to his. The ability to port from place to place was an unconscious gift. Like breathing, it was just something she took for granted and never thought about not having.
Sure, there were ways the body weakened, making an immortal unable to port, but none of them severe enough to keep the gift at bay for long. All easily remedied with natural cures.
But now, as they rode slowly through the Acheron, Ilsa was forced to agree with Kane.
The loss of a gift felt stifling.
Unwilling to dwell on the unpleasant imagery of being trapped, she refocused on Kane. “So tell me about this tattoo. And here I just thought it was some sexy ink.”
At the slight nudge he gave her with the leg pressed to hers, Ilsa nudged back. The increasing fear that there would be some damage if she didn’t dispel the souls soon—a fear she couldn’t explain but that grew with each passing hour—eased at the easy camaraderie between them.
How could a simple touch do so much?
Kane’s voice was instructional but he kept his tone low, avoiding an above-world lesson for Charon. The less the little demon knew how things worked up above, the better they all were and she was glad Kane understood that on some innate level. “Although we communicate with modern technology now, it wasn’t that long ago we used these tattoos to reach each other if necessary.”
Unable to stop herself, Ilsa reached out to touch the ink on his arm, fascinated by the intricate interlocking pattern. “Does this move like your scorpion?”
“No. I use it by touch.” A wry smile crossed his lips. “I can see the confusion on your face. I’ll show it to you later. Once we’re out of this place.”
At the suggestion they’d be leaving, Charon’s pointy ears quivered. “In a hurry, Warrior?”
“Just anxious for the lady to do her job.”
“How understanding of you.”
Charon’s voice floated over them, even as he kept his stare firmly forward.
As the moment with Kane was lost, Ilsa couldn’t help wishing the circumstances had been different. If she had ported in and out, they could have avoided Charon.
Avoided the need for secrecy.
Of course, if they had, she wouldn’t have experienced those amazing moments in his arms along the shore.
Paths chosen and the ones not taken.
Odd how she’d lived for so many endless millennia never understanding that. And now, since Kane had entered her life, it was all she could think about.
All she could see as she navigated the strange waters of worrying about another.
Kane’s voice interrupted her thoughts as he nodded his head subtly toward the crowd that lined the riverbanks. “What are those people on the shore?”
“The souls still awaiting their fate.”
“But they have bodies. How can that be if they’re souls?”
“Here in the Underworld, their souls have corporeal form. Every human does. Unlike immortals who can move between the planes of existence, once a human moves to a new plane, they stay there.”
“How long will they wait?”
Ilsa shook her head, surprised at how closely his questions mirrored the same ones she’d asked Hades millennia ago.
In all that time, the answer had never changed.
“As long as it takes. Until their time is decided, they live in a purgatory of sorts. And while they wait, they stand on the banks and shout their judgment of those who pass down the river.”
“Seems rather hypocritical, don’t you think?” Kane leaned in toward her. Despite his lighthearted attempt, Ilsa saw something bothered him. Strain lined his mouth and he didn’t relax the harsh set of his shoulders.
“That it is. But it works. By judging the souls in the boat, they’re able to see others’ sins and determine if they wish to atone for their own.”
“Sort of a preview plan?”
Charon continued rowing them through the murky waters, the blaring screams coming from both sides of the river growing worse with each minute that passed. “Exactly.”
“It’s clearly not a heck of a lot of fun to sit on the receiving end. And we’re not even the ones under judgment.”
Ilsa glanced down at her hands, images of all the people she’d held in place so she could remove their souls, staring back at her. Their faces—and their last moments of realization—ran through her mind’s eye like a movie reel.
“Hades’s intent is that the ones who can truly learn from their mistakes will atone before their own journey, anxious to have a smooth trip.” A long, low roll of anxiety skittered through her body. The screaming souls of the scientists continued to grow in intensity and the rocking boat didn’t help matters. She felt well and truly sick now, nausea slapping against her stomach lining in matched rhythm to the water hitting the sides of the boat.
“They’re screaming for the souls you carry?” Kane probed, his voice urgent.
She nodded, lifting her gaze from the imagined blood on her hands. “Aye.”
The scientists’ actions in their human lives ensured a scream-filled trip to their final meet with Hades.
Shouts and hollers flowed over them from the angry mob on the riverbank.
Traitor! Thief! Murderer!
Those and so many other epithets, directed against the two scientists who’d devoted their lives to greed and the most supreme form of self-indulgence.
Ilsa took several long, slow deep breaths, trying desperately to pull something fresh from the heavy, humid air into her lungs.
Although the derision wasn’t directed at her, something about the taunting spirits on the riverbanks filled her with shame.
Didn’t she blithely march forward with her own plans for revenge, ignoring the consequences to others?
Hadn’t she accepted Emmett’s bargain, uncaring what it meant to the Warriors who fought on Themis’s behalf?
Without
warning, a harsh cramp clenched her stomach as frantic screams rattled in her head like buckshot. Ilsa fell forward, clutching her midsection and gasping for air like she was drowning.
Nothing could stop it.
Even those glorious moments with Kane before they reached the river—the pure joy he could pull so effortlessly from deep inside of her—couldn’t keep the increasing pain at bay.
Ever since Zeus delivered his harsh punishment, Ilsa had always had some greater sense of her physical form. The horror of losing her body—even if it were for a brief period of time—had never left her. But for the first time in all those years, she actually resented her body.
Long, low moans—were they coming from her?—fell from her lips as misery dragged at her, body, mind and spirit.
Ilsa felt Kane shift next to her as his arm swung around her back. With a scream, she shook him off, agony and terror filling her as her skin heated with flames and stabs of pain ripped through her rib cage as though she were being shot from the inside out.
She heard Kane call her name.
Even though he sat right next to her, the sound came from very far away. All she could sense was the screaming inside of her and the desperate, clawing need of Alex and Robert to be free of her.
The sudden understanding the souls were trying to escape filled her with bleak certainty.
What to do?
Where could she go?
How could she ensure their delivery to Hades?
Kane reached for her again, but she shook him off, her gaze flying wildly as she sought an answer.
An idea took root as she looked at the boiling water that lapped against the boat, sizzling as it hit the ages-old wood of Charon’s boat.
With no other options, she leaped into the swirling waters.
Chapter Fifteen
Kane rushed to his feet, almost going over the side of the boat to follow Ilsa when scaly fingers sporting long claws stopped him.
“I will get her.”
Kane stared into Charon’s eyes. The dark depths held no emotion—no sense of life—and Kane debated the wisdom of allowing the demon to rescue Ilsa.
“I will get her, Warrior. In your condition, you won’t make it in the churning waters. The heat will boil you before you can even reach her.”
