Unseen

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  I looked back up to Kierson, whose doubtful expression told me what I needed to know. He would do as I had asked, but the plan did not sit well with him.

  “I will be fine, brother. Go and wait. I will not be long.”

  I forced a smile, then turned to Casey, who scowled at me in return.

  “You’re sure you’ll be fine?” Aery asked. Her level of agitation was far lower than it had been earlier, but she was still unsure. She had every right to be. I was about to go find Persephone so that she, Hecate, and I could release the most venomous souls of the Underworld. If we were unsuccessful, I wanted my family where they could quickly and easily escape.

  No more brothers would die if I failed.

  23

  The three of us stood at the veil that separated us from the most depraved beings that ever were, and, though I felt no fear, a sense of urgency fueled a measure of anxiety that I was not accustomed to. If we failed, Hades’ demise seemed imminent, despite his unwillingness to acknowledge that truth. Persephone’s brow creased with the weight of his fate. It marred her otherwise flawless face.

  “We will have only one chance to succeed in this,” she said, her voice low and serious. “Once the veil drops, I will not have the energy required to reinstate it, should we fail. Not even temporarily. Those that waste away in the Oudeis will be released.” Her narrowed eyes fell heavily on me. “There is no room for error, Khara. I need you to understand the full weight of that.”

  “I do.”

  “Good,” she replied, turning to Hecate, who stood at the gate, her shoulder nearly brushing the opalescent, swirling barrier. I wondered if she were to lean in just an inch closer if it would take her, sucking her into the vortex of nothingness that was the Oudeis. From what I knew, only Hades could both enter and exit that realm. All others would be lost to the endless emptiness. If Hecate’s talents had not been needed for the task at hand, I would have been tempted to push her through. Her incarceration there would cause me no remorse, even if it was by my hand—not after her cruel dismissal of Casey.

  Persephone’s voice startled me from my dark ruminations when she spoke to her near-constant companion. “Are you sure you can reach them through the veil?”

  “I can feel them,” Hecate replied, her dull eyes focused through the opening to what lay beyond. Whatever it was that she could see, I could not see it. All I saw was an endless gray. “It is so thin.” Her words were a mere whisper. “The order is collapsing . . .”

  “Can you call to them?” Persephone pressed.

  Hecate pressed her eyes shut.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you control them once you do?”

  Her eyes then shot open and a look of uncertainty fell upon her face.

  “Of that, I cannot be certain,” she admitted, turning her worried expression to Persephone. “Their combined power will be great. How great, I have no way of knowing. Once they amass at the veil, you must be ready. If I cannot compel them, I fear that their combined force may overtake the failing barrier regardless of your magic. We should proceed with that in mind.”

  “I am prepared either way,” I told them. My confidence in the plan was of no consequence. We would succeed in this endeavor. There truly was no other option.

  “So be it,” Persephone said with a wave of her hand before she guided me several steps away from both Hecate and the waning veil that separated us from those we were about to release. “Do you remember how it felt when you absorbed the souls from the Stealer?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Think of that. Let the feeling overtake your mind and body. You must be as devoid of emotion as ever, sister, for even the slightest hesitation on your part will be your undoing as well as your father’s. Maybe all of ours.”

  With the heavy reality of the situation hanging over us, Hecate began to chant, her arms sweeping up wide above her. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She repeated a jumble of Greek over and over again until I felt the slightest shift in the air around us. My eyes shot to Persephone, and I found her looking back to me. She felt it, too. Our connection to the dead was awakened, however slightly.

  As Hecate’s voice rose, her words growing ever clearer, I looked to the veil, watching for those that she summoned. At first my stare was met with the same gray that had been there only minutes earlier. Then, subtly—slowly—an inky darkness wove through that gray, striping it hypnotically while it alone danced through the Oudeis, lulling me. Beckoning me.

  I took a step forward, halted only by Persephone’s arm across my chest.

  “Hold steady,” she warned while a shapeless, smoky soul intertwined with another, creating an entrancing pattern that I was unable to turn away from.

  Straining against her hold, I looked on as the once-gray background turned to a mesmerizing black sea of the dead. They pressed against the pliable barrier, and it bulged against their desire to escape.

  I could hear the strain in Hecate’s voice while she chanted on. Forcing my gaze from the gate, I saw her, eyes still closed, rivulets of sweat streaming down her face. Her arms shook violently as though she was single-handedly holding back the forces the Oudeis contained. The forces I was about to take into me.

  “I cannot hold them much longer,” Hecate cried out, her voice straining.

  Persephone turned her sharp and shrewd eyes to me.

  “Do not disappoint me.”

  She then placed her hand on my forehead and mumbled incoherent words. Unlike Hecate’s ramblings, which had aroused my connection to the dead, Persephone’s words felt like they were tearing me in half, splitting me wide open.

  “Now!” she screamed. The shrill cries of the damned disoriented me while they filled the space that surrounded us.

  In the periphery of my vision, I saw Hecate drop her hands and collapse to the ground. Like a bubble bursting, the veil exploded; a rush of darkness swarmed my half-sister and me while we held steadfast against the surge. With Persephone’s palm still pressed forcefully to my forehead, I looked over her shoulder while the wave of souls organized itself, swirling like a nearly opaque mass. As the black funnel cloud of death hovered above me, Persephone thrust my head back, forcing me to face what was about to inhabit me. The ever-concentrating mass of darkness stopped just short of me, pausing for a second. I could feel it—feel its pulsing evil. It was testing me. Taunting me.

  It would see no fear in my eyes.

  Then, suddenly, as though it was a single sentient being, the mass pulled back, tightening itself into a compact stream of midnight black before it screamed, shooting like a bolt of lightning at my face. I could not stop myself. I, too, screamed at its advance. That lightning struck down deep into my throat, gagging me while it burrowed deep into me. My back arched rigidly, my body pulled tight, my arms stretched outward painfully as though they would explode from my body under the immense pressure the evil caused as it overtook me.

  I could not breathe.

  I could not move.

  My eyes bulged widely; my need to escape the sensations I felt consumed me. And then, finally, mercifully, it all stopped. The screams were silenced. The pressure abated. Dropping to my knees, I looked up at Persephone, who loomed over me with an assessing expression. Hecate, exhausted though she was, soon stood to join her. She cupped my chin in her hand, holding my face such that my eyes absorbed the scant light surrounding us.

  “Gods be damned,” she whispered, unable to suppress her incredulous tone.

  “She has done it,” Persephone continued. A mix of emotions swirled in her eyes, though I could not make them out; my mind and body were far too tired to focus with any measure of acuity. “Help me get her back to her room. We must return her there without being seen. Hades must not know of this.” Her words carried a weight of warning in them. She knew he would not approve of what we had done. She did not know what the punishment for our actions would be if he were to learn of them. He may have loved her blindly, but, in his weakened state, I wondered if he would make an
example of her, putting fear into those who served him. Mental instability in a leader was not a required trait, but it was effective when one wished to cow those beneath him.

  “Will he not feel what we have done?” Hecate asked from beside me.

  “No,” Persephone replied tightly. “The souls are contained. The veil has returned. There is nothing to feel other than a momentary opening of the gate between the Oudeis and the greater Underworld. I possess the power to enter that realm, if I choose to. And that is exactly what I am going to tell him should he have suspicions. You, however, will remain mute on the subject.” Her words were an order, laced with anger and authority. Persephone was protecting my father from Hecate’s curiosity. She truly did love him. “Now help me with her!”

  With great effort, they lifted my limp body, hooking my arms around their shoulders. I did my best to force my feet to move, but they were too leaden—dead weights attached to my uncoordinated legs.

  “We will have to carry her,” Persephone said, a strange urgency in her voice. My lids too heavy to open, I could not see what vexed her so.

  “You will put her down,” a male voice commanded, giving them pause.

  I fought to see who approached, but my body failed me in every way imaginable. As they dropped me to the ground, my mind wandered away from the present, fogging with a haze of nothingness—remnants of the Oudeis. With its inhabitants trapped inside me, I could only wonder if my mind would somehow become a part of the isolation they’d been tortured by. Perhaps forever.

  Magic always had ramifications.

  And as my mind quieted—the dark imprisonment that beset it settling in—I wondered if the loss of my sanity would be one.

  24

  But imprisoned in my mind I was not.

  When I awoke, I found myself in my room, lying on my bed while darkness surrounded me, comforting me as it always had. Pushing myself up slowly, I reached for my head, expecting a surge of pain and pressure that never came. I felt fine. Normal. That was most unexpected, given what we had just done. What I had just consumed.

  “You are a fool,” a voice called out from the far corner of my room, its owner lurking in the shadows just as he had when I first met him. “And you are playing with fire. You’re lucky you survived that idiotic stunt.”

  “Yet I did, so there is little need to scold me,” I countered, throwing my legs over the side of the bed to stand and face the disembodied voice.

  “For now you have,” he argued, slowly emerging from the blackness he shrouded himself in, wings hidden away. He looked human but not. No human could ever look like Oz. “Is that the pressing matter that you had to attend to before leaving the Underworld?”

  “It is.”

  His expression darkened.

  “I suppose absorbing the inhabitants of the most evil realm is still preferable to you fucking Deimos for answers.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked in my most put-upon tone.

  “I brought you back here when the others could not,” he replied, as though that fact was obvious. I remembered how incapacitated I had been immediately after absorbing the souls of the Oudeis into me. I was dead weight that both Persephone and Hecate could barely manage. I had no doubt that Oz did not struggle at all to return me here.

  “How did you find us?”

  Coming to stand right before me, he smiled wickedly, an all-knowing expression that said both everything and nothing. His hubris told me that he would not answer my question. I was not surprised.

  “Tell me something, new girl; was it your idea to drop the veil between the greater Underworld and the Oudeis?”

  “It was not.”

  “Ahhh,” he drawled, arching his brow for effect. “How very interesting. I cannot imagine what would possess you to go along with such a self-destructive plan, then, especially if it was not one of your making.”

  “I did what needed to be done,” I said curtly, turning away from his piercing stare. “My reasons are my own, not something for you to judge or make a mockery of.”

  “Hades,” he said with distaste.

  “You will say nothing of this to him,” I spat, whirling back around to point a finger in his face. “You will not interfere, do you understand me, Dark One? This does not concern you.”

  His initial amusement with my challenge faded into an intimidating glare, and his eyes seemed to glow from within, casting harsh, angular shadows across the planes of his face. The effect was both menacing and mesmerizing.

  “Once again, new girl, you fail to see things as they are,” he whispered harshly. He moved closer to me, then continued. “All things concern me where you are involved, a fact that you should be thankful for, not spiteful of.” When his face was only inches from mine, he snatched my chin in his hand, forcing my gaze to lock with his. The silence in that moment stretched on for an eternity. “I told you once that I would keep you around until it no longer amused me to do so. Do you remember this?”

  I said nothing in response. He cocked his head at my insubordination.

  “So defiant,” he tsked. “What you fail to see is that your defiance does not constitute control, Khara. You have surrendered to the illusion that your wings’ emergence has awakened a power within you—a strength you had not earlier possessed. This illusion will be the end of you if you allow yourself to be manipulated because of it. You are strong, but, as you know, you are not invincible. Strength without wisdom means nothing. It makes you a liability, something you will undoubtedly become in the wrong hands. Then you will be used and discarded, left to perish just as I threatened to do when we first met in Detroit. Do not believe yourself to be above this fate. Even the mighty fall, Khara. They fall fast and hard.”

  “You mistake my compliance for weakness—ignorance—but what you fail to see, Oz, is that I do not allow myself to be manipulated, because that requires emotional ties that can be exploited. Though something in me has awakened that allows me to feel, it does not rule me, nor does it blind me to reality, which would allow for such a lapse in judgment that can be preyed upon,” I argued haughtily. “I assess the information presented to me and either accept or reject it based on merit. If you mean to imply that Persephone has somehow set a plan in motion that uses me as her so-called pawn, then you are overlooking one simple fact.”

  “Which is?”

  “That, regardless of Persephone’s motives, Hades is losing control of his kingdom, a fact which you have undoubtedly pieced together, knowing your penchant for skulking around and overhearing things that you should not.” His unfaltering gaze gave him away, though it did not need to. I knew I was right. “The veils are thinning, Oz. Persephone was right to fear what would happen if they could no longer retain those they were meant to. Whatever fields the souls would escape from, there would be anarchy, even by Underworld standards, and I chose not to stand idly by and watch my father’s kingdom fall. My home overrun by those it was designed to contain. For now, I have taken in the souls of the Oudeis, but I will take in all that I can—souls from every field—if need be.”

  He shook his head, his signature sneer marring his face.

  “How can a creature so steeped in darkness be so unaware when it courts her?”

  “I am very aware of you,” I replied, my voice sounding a touch too breathy even to my own ears. It undermined the sentiment I wished to convey.

  “Because I am transparent in my actions,” he countered, his eyes betraying him when they fell upon my lips for the slightest of moments.

  “Hardly,” I scoffed, though the word lacked my intended intensity. “You are transparent in your darkness, that much is true, but that is all. Everything else about you—your sullen, disgruntled nature, for instance—is secretive. Were you to give me five minutes and truthfully answer questions about you and your past—my mother—it would surely show just how opaque you have been with me since the moment we met.”

  “What I have and haven’t told you has been in your best interest, new girl. I, unlike your
precious father, have not failed you. Never forget that.”

  “I do not wish to be protected or coddled.”

  “Some things are best left alone.”

  “Because I cannot handle them?”

  “Because they can be used against you and those you have come to care for,” he explained, pulling away from me only slightly. “Just as I know your love of your father is being used against you now. You are simply unwilling to see it.”

  “So leave me to my fate, if you feel I am too stupid to be anything but a pawn in another’s game. What you fail to see is that I am far more aware of what I am doing than you would believe. I am not fodder to someone else’s agenda. I have my own, and I will utilize my skills as I see fit to fulfill it. If it proves my undoing, then so be it. Let me plummet, Oz. I neither asked for nor need your continued assistance,” I countered, the heat in my words marred slightly by the slur with which I delivered them, my jaw still captured in his grip.

  “No.”

  It was his only reply.

  “No?” I repeated, wrenching my face out of his hand painfully.

  “No.”

  I watched while his jaw flexed wildly, fighting to hold back an explanation that threatened to escape his mouth.

  “Then you and I are at an impasse.”

  “Wrong again, new girl. Impasse implies that your will has anything to do with our interactions. That you have a say in the matter. What you continually fail to realize is that my presence in your existence is a constant—not something you can bypass because you see fit to. Like it or not, I am here. I will remain here. For now, you can consider me your safety net, though you may be loath to admit you need one.”

  “To what benefit of your own is your eternal presence?” I pressed, knowing that Oz had proven to be a self-serving individual in virtually every circumstance. Even when it appeared he was helping either me or my brothers, there was something in it for him. Always. I did not assume that his becoming Dark would offer any exceptions to this inevitability. If anything, it would likely only have made it worse.