Nether: Hidden Book Five

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Please don't be there, I wished, fruitlessly. As I got closer, I could hear the chaos.

  I heard screams from the streets below, and I focused, making sure the glamour that hid my wings was still in place. It took some concentration to hold it, but I still did it because I figured my wings would only freak the Normals out more than they already were about me. To them, it looked like I was just soaring in like Superman or something.

  I kicked, then put myself into a nosedive, able to see the Normals fighting, or, in some cases, just screaming and crying, terror rolling off of them. And it was all caused by beings they couldn't see, because imps can only be seen by supernaturals. I recognized several of my imps, whispering into the ears of the Normals, inciting terror. Really, I wondered if Nether actually felt the effects of what they were doing or if she was just doing this to mess with me. Knowing Nether, I kind of suspected it was the second. She knew damn well how much I liked and respected my imps.

  As I looked around, I could see Dahael standing, arms crossed, as if she was in pain. Refusing to do what she'd been ordered to do, and watching her mate give in to Nether's demand and terrorize the Normals. I tore my gaze away from her and flew into the center of the chaos, causing the imps to scatter.

  And then, as if they'd never been there at all, they disappeared.

  When I landed, the gathering crowd erupted into applause. There were phones raised into the air, and I knew there would be more YouTube videos, more pictures of me and my glowing eyes plastered all over Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr gifs.

  Shanti thought it was funny. I wasn't amused.

  I glanced around, looking for any signs of the imps, but they were long gone. Several of the women walked up to me and thanked me. One took a selfie with me and it took everything in me not to grab her expensive little phone and set it on fire.

  I was in the process of disentangling myself from the crowd that had formed when I heard a shrill laugh from overhead.

  I looked up, took a deep breath.

  "Nether," I said, focusing on keeping my voice calm. It wasn't easy. I'd felt, when I was her prison, how strong Nether really is. And, as powerful as I am, the level of power coming from Nether just then made my stomach turn, even more than it already had been.

  She landed with a smirk. The crowd watched us, and I had to marvel at the instincts of some of the Normals. They didn't know what they were facing, but they knew that this new arrival was trouble. Some of them ran for cover. Most at least backed away.

  Filming and snapping pictures, of course.

  I readied my power, let it grow within me as I observed Nether. She stood there, hip thrust out, arms crossed across her body, that smirk still on her face.

  And if the power coming from her didn't have me ready to run screaming, looking at her did. It wasn't that she was frightening, because she wasn't.

  It was like looking at a mirror image of myself, or one of those camera effects that changes the colors of things.

  Where my hair is almost black, hers is pure white.

  Where my wings are jet black, hers are covered in pure white feathers.

  And where my eyes glow white, hers are black as the depths of hell.

  "Mollis," she said. I knew she was holding her power at the ready, just as I did I sensed for her, and she was almost impossible to read, her emotions an absolute mess. Chaos, with a good mix of rage.

  "We don't need to do this now," I said.

  "Oh, sure we do," she said softly. Then she glanced around and smiled. "I don't doubt that your first concern is to protect them," she said, nodding her head toward the crowd. "Let's see how much of a hero you really are."

  Then she surprised me. I'd expected her to lunge for me, to shoot flames or energy or whatever the hell other freakish powers she had at me. Instead, she flashed to the side of two young men who'd been stupid enough to stick around, and grabbed them each by the back of their shirts. She took to the air, cackling.

  "Fuck," I muttered, kicking off the ground and going after her, keeping my eyes on her, on the men she'd captured, the entire time.

  "This one's not a keeper," she shouted as she chucked one of the men toward the side of a nearby skyscraper. I changed direction, dove, willing my wings to flap faster, trying to predict how far he'd fall before I got there.

  I snagged him about eight feet off the ground, then set him down as the gathered crowd clapped.

  "Go inside, you assholes," I shouted, knowing damn well they wouldn't listen to me. I took back my appreciation of the Normals' instincts.

  "Oh, Little Fury! Forget something?" Nether called as she dangled the other man by his collar. She hovered near the top of one of the nearby office buildings, and the man was kicking wildly, screaming.

  "Nether! Come on. You want me. Let's go. Leave them out of it, though."

  "Very well."

  And she dropped him, just as she released a stream of flames at me. I was already airborne, and I had to dodge the flames. I still felt the fabric of my shirt burning, but my focus was entirely on the man, who was screaming, praying, as he plummeted to the ground.

  Nether laughed and shot something else at me, a push of pure white energy much like what she'd tried to use against Brennan.

  The same power that had nearly killed my mother.

  "Ooh, fly faster, Fury. Faster!" she cackled, applauding and turning in midair like some kind of deranged fairy.

  I watched him fall.

  I'm not going to make it, I told myself as I tried for another burst of speed. My left wing was burning, which must have looked pretty fucking bizarre to the onlookers.

  As if that was the weirdest thing about this entire encounter.

  I focused, dove, barely snagged the man around his waist before he splattered on the ground. He was a big guy, and I felt my shoulder snap under the impact of trying to stop his descent.

  "Shit!" I screamed.

  I set him on the ground and pushed back into the air, my arm dangling limply at my side. I aimed for Nether, used a force of pure energy to push her back, and she slammed into the limestone facade of the building behind her.

  She stopped laughing, and her smirk turned into a snarl. "That was rude, Mollis," she hissed.

  "You have a bone to pick with me? Let's go," I said. "Why you're pissed off at me is beyond me. I'm the one you fucking possessed. You used my powers to nearly kill my mother."

  Just remembering it made me want to kill Nether.

  "I was aiming for the shifter. It's hardly my fault your mother was stupid enough to get in the way," she said, shooting more flames at me.

  My flames, by the way. One of the powers she'd absorbed from me as she took up residence in my body.

  I snarled, dove out of the way, then redirected, heading for her. All I wanted was for my fist to connect with her face, just once, the memory of my mother's ruined body, the surety that I would not be enough to save her, still raw in my memory.

  The knowledge that, for eight days after I nearly died saving my mother and then getting beheaded by Strife, I was… somewhere else, and I still don't understand what happened to me.

  I reached her and she ducked away, throwing enough energy at me to send me spiraling through the air. Every twist and turn as I tried to right myself threw my still-damaged shoulder into agony. It was healing, but not nearly fast enough. Never fast enough, and I had to make sure she didn't hurt anyone else.

  I dove toward her again, thought I had her, and realized at the last second that I'd miscalculated badly. She grabbed my throat and rocketed forward. The next thing I knew, the back of my head was slamming into the side of a brick building. I heard the crowd below let out a collective "Oh!" of commiseration as the bricks exploded around me.

  "You forget, my Prison. I am evil personified. You don't stand a chance," she whispered.

  I tried to shake some of the fuzziness from my mind, tried to fight the blackout that I could feel coming thanks to the impact of my head hitting the side of the building
. I could feel blood trickling down the back of my scalp. My wings were crunched at a crazy angle, and I realized that when she released me, I'd fall.

  "Aw, is the widdle princess hurt?" she said, her voice turning into some sick parody of baby talk. Nausea rose in me as she yanked me back into midair.

  "You had some handy powers, princess," Nether said, looking into my eyes as she held me aloft by my throat. "I think I'd like more."

  I willed my body to heal faster so I could get away from her. I had no desire to splat to the ground. Then I'd be useless to everyone if she decided to go after the dumbass Normals again.

  I felt a presence poking into my mind, and I struggled against the dizziness and pain to try to fight it back, but Nether kept hammering at my mental shields. Tired as I was, I could feel myself weakening against her onslaught.

  "No," I whispered when I realized what she was doing.

  "Yes," she said simply, and I fought. I fought to keep my mind strong, doing everything I could to prevent Nether from using my own mindflaying powers against me.

  I felt her struggling, pushing more power into what she was doing. I could feel her in my mind. I felt her trying to siphon off my power and take it as her own.

  It was like living a nightmare. I struggled, useless with my broken body. I put all of my focus into keeping her out of my mind, keeping her from taking my powers.

  It wasn't working the way she'd hoped, it seemed. Frustration, rage, coursed from her through the connection she'd forged with me.

  Then she screeched in fury and hurled me across the sky. I turned and twisted like a rag doll.

  I slammed into the side of the Broderick Tower.

  Then I fell at least twenty stories or so to the concrete below. The second I hit, everything went black.

  Chapter Five

  I knew I wasn't dead. Everything hurt too much for me to be dead. And I could hear chaos around me. Weeping. Shouting. A random scream.

  A cackle.

  Bile rose in my throat. I'd hoped that once she'd hurled me that way, Nether would just take off. I should have known I wasn't that lucky.

  "Are you serious, you ridiculous mortals?" I heard her saying in her high-pitched, sing-song voice. "What do you think you're going to do, exactly, against a being like me?"

  I forced my eyes open.

  My eyelids hurt. That was a new one. Who knew?

  My vision swam. I blinked, and slowly but surely the shadows, the light and dark I saw when I looked up came into focus.

  There was a ring of Normals around me. Fear, absolute terror flowed from them, washing over me, making my stomach twist.

  Yet, there they stood, looking at a point somewhere to my right.

  Dumbass Normals, I thought, even as tears leaked from my eyes.

  "She's a monster, just like me. Look at her," Nether drawled. "I've seen what that one can do. She's vicious. Do you really want someone like that among you?"

  "We do when she's protecting us," a man said, and several people called out their agreement.

  "And if she decides to use all of that power against you?" Nether asked. Through the legs of the people standing around me I could see her walking, her feet clad in white boots. It was quiet, other than the sirens in the distance and the occasional sob from the people around me.

  "She wouldn't," a young woman said. "She's been saving us for years."

  Nether laughed. "Are you stupid? How can you blindly trust someone like that?"

  "We know her," another woman said.

  I hated myself a little just then for feeding off of their emotions. I'd make it up to them by protecting them from Nether, just as soon as my bones knitted themselves back together.

  Damn, it hurts to heal.

  "You know her? You fool yourself with the belief that you know what she is."

  Oh, Nether, shut the fuck up, I thought.

  I was almost healed enough to get up. Now, what I'd actually do against her once I stood up was another matter entirely. It wasn't like I had a ton of energy or strength to do anything. But hopefully I could distract her from the Normals for a bit.

  Then I felt power signatures I knew.

  Powerful ones. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Time to stop this shit, Nether," Heph's voice called through the silence.

  More. I could feel Nain, Brennan, Athena, my parents, Eunomia.

  "Oh, look. It's the god squad. How quaint," Nether sang.

  "Stand down, Nether," Athena ordered. "Back away from the mortals."

  Screams.

  Fuck.

  I grimaced, tried to pull myself up. It felt like a few of my ribs were still not quite where they should have been, though I was able to move my head now, which was a definite improvement.

  Stay down, baby. You can't do anything now. Heal.

  They need me. I'm okay.

  Please, Molls. Just do this.

  "Oh, cute. And her mate is here, too," Nether said with a laugh. "Do you know what he is? He's a demon. A murdering, thieving, torturing demon—"

  Her words were cut short by the sound of fist meeting face.

  "You will pay for that, Fury. Have you already forgotten the last time you crossed me?"

  "You will leave my daughter alone, Nether," I heard my mom say.

  "Oh? And what do you plan to do about it?"

  Okay. That was that. She wasn't going to kill my mom, or almost kill my mom, again. I forced myself up, knowing full well that I'd hear about it from Nain later.

  "Okay, Nether," I said, pulling myself up and trying not to let on how much it hurt. The crowd erupted into a wave of shock and a chorus of applause and shouts of "Hell, yeah" and "Now you're gonna get it." I gently pushed past them. "Enough."

  She laughed. "Gods, you're pathetic. Another day, Mollis. I'm bored, and there is too much interference now. You will be punished, and I will enjoy it."

  And with that, she took a bow and disappeared. The Normals around us gasped, and my parents strode over to me. My mom wrapped me in her arms and I grimaced at the pressure against my still-broken body.

  "Sorry," she whispered.

  "It's okay," I said. I looked up at my dad, who was watching the crowd around us, ready to hurt someone.

  "I wanted to hurt her so bad. I wanted to see her bleed," he was muttering.

  "That makes two of us," Nain rumbled from behind me.

  "Next time. And I don't care who's around to see it happen. I know you wanted the humans protected, Mollis, so we agreed not to fight her if we didn't have to. Next time, there is no way in this world or any other that I'm going to let her walk away like that," my father seethed.

  "Relax, Hades," my mom said quietly.

  I pulled myself out of my mom's arms and took a step forward. The Normals were still watching us.

  "Thank you," I told them. "Do you have any idea how stupid that was? She could have killed you with a thought."

  "Yeah. And if we'd let her kill you, then all of us, everyone, would have been in deep shit," a teenage boy told me, and several other Normals nodded in agreement.

  "It confused her," said one of the office workers, a middle-aged woman dressed in what had previously been a crisp cream suit. Now it was smudged with dirt and it looked like someone had spilled coffee all down her front. "You could tell. She was confused by us protecting you like that."

  I nodded, slowly. "I think you're right."

  "Because she hates you?" one of the men in the crowd asked.

  "I think, maybe, more because she doesn't know what it's like to have anyone who'd give their life for hers," I said quietly. "She's had an insane existence. That doesn't forgive a damn thing she's done, and I am absolutely going to kick her ass next time we meet. But I think she doesn't understand loyalty or sacrifice, not the way we do." I took a breath, aware now of news cameras pointed at me, police on the scene. "Please do something for me. If she appears again, if she shows up and even if she kicks my a— butt, again, please run. Run as far and as fast as you can
. Take cover. Save yourselves. Save one another. Because if even one of you died because you got between her and me, I'd never forgive myself. She can't kill me," I said, knowing it was a lie. This little face-off with Nether had proven to me that she most definitely was powerful enough to kill me. But they didn't need to know that. "She can shove me around. But she can't kill me. Okay?"

  I turned around, met Nain's eyes.

  "How did you get here?" I asked him softly.

  "Rematerialized with your dad," he said. "You don't have enough to get us back."

  I shook my head, irritated.

  "Not a problem," Heph said from Nain's other side. "I'll take Queenie home. Hades will escort you back," he said to Nain, and Nain nodded.

  I took Heph's hand, and he gave my hand a gentle squeeze in return. Within moments, we were standing in the kitchen of the quad we were renting. Brennan, Jamie, Artemis, and Sean were already there, and instants later, the other immortals had all rematerialized in our kitchen as well.

  As soon as they were all there, the talking started. Because they're immortals and they each believe they're the most important being in the room, they all started talking at once, talking over each other, louder and louder.

  "Shut up a minute," I shouted, and they all stopped. Everyone from the scene downtown was there, but now we had Demeter and Persephone, Asclepias, Hestia, Apollo, my aunt Meg, and Heph's girlfriend Meaghan as well. "Thanks," I muttered.

  "We can't allow that to happen again," my dad said. "That was ridiculous. She tossed you around like you were nothing. Were you even trying to fight back?"

  "Wow. Thanks for the support, Dad," I said, glaring at him.

  "I'm not kidding, Mollis. That was pathetic. You are more powerful than that."