Nether: Hidden Book Five

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  "Babe," Nain said, reaching out and pulling me back to him again.

  "What? We have to do this now," I said, looking at the woods, the flames leaping from some of the trees.

  "I know. Listen to me. If you need it, you take what you need from me. Feed, absorb, whatever you need. Okay?"

  I pulled my arm out of his grip. "You're not a walking battery, Nain. I'm not going to weaken you."

  He tossed his ax to the ground and wrapped his hands around my biceps, then pulled me close to him. He looked into my face, his eyes locked on mine.

  "I am your husband. I am your mate. I am your fucking happily ever after. I will be whatever you need me to be, because you're the most important thing in my life. So if you need to use me as a walking, ax-swinging battery, you do it so we can wake up together tomorrow morning. So we can spoil our daughter rotten and do all that parent shit we're clueless about. Okay?"

  My breath caught in my throat. This man. What in the hell had I ever done to deserve having someone like this in my life? I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his as tears escaped my eyes. I sniffed, and he kissed me again, then kissed my eyes, banishing my tears with his lips.

  "It's not just me. I can't lose you," I said.

  "You won't. I'm depending on you saving my ass if I ever need it. Don't forget that," he said.

  "I love you, Bael," I whispered.

  "And I love you, Mollis Eth-Hades," he murmured. "Promise me you'll use me if you have to, baby."

  I nodded and kissed him again. "I promise."

  "Okay. Let's go find our baby girl."

  We walked into the Netherwoods together, all of us, and the second I was inside the outer line of trees, I could feel the familiar, yet different, energy of the Nether. The amethyst sky was clouded with smoke, and, several hundred feet away, trees were burning.

  We ran, charging as one toward the fires, and the closer we got, the more clearly we could hear sounds of battle. My father's booming voice, throwing insults, my aunt occasionally calling out instructions to Hades.

  In the middle of it all was Hyperion, dressed head to toe in gold, as always, his golden face sporting a pair of long, jagged scars from my father's scythe and sword from the last times they'd faced off.

  Without a word, we charged him. E and I took to the air, and the rest stayed on the ground. Hades and Hyperion were fighting, and Hyperion laughed when he saw us.

  "How convenient," he shouted. "I should have done this a long time ago!"

  With a roar, Nain, in his full demon form, charged forward, swinging his ax, the black flames hissing as the blade sliced through the air. Hyperion ducked it easily, but that was the plan; Heph stood to Hyperion's unprotected side, whipped a length of heavy chain (which was glowing red as if it had just been taken out of the fires), and it wrapped around Hyperion's throat.

  Hyperion screamed in agony, and Heph tugged.

  My turn. I soared over Hyperion and brought my flamesword down toward his throat. At the last second, just before I made contact, he reached out almost impossibly quickly, and grabbed my ankle, pulling me down, which saved his neck from my blade. He threw me hard to the ground, and my wing crunched under me painfully.

  I ignored it. I charged him again just as he got free of Heph's chain. Nain was swinging at him again, and he was swinging his golden sword back at Nain.

  I charged him, barely recognizing the enraged shriek that escaped me at the sight of this golden asshole slicing at my mate.

  On impact, I hit him so hard my teeth rattled. It was like hitting a concrete wall, but it was enough to get him off of my husband. He got ready to strike me, and Hades appeared to his left, slicing out with the black-bladed sword he uses sometimes.

  He caught the edge of Hyperion's armor, and Hyperion sneered and shoved him back.

  "You," he roared, glaring at me with those freaky gold eyes. "You have gotten in my way too many times, abomination. All I wanted was to come here and kill your father for these scars he gave me. For the insults and squalor he forced me to live with all those centuries. Maybe to eradicate those children everyone is so intent on protecting. And you have to come and stick your nose in it. You have continually gotten in my way. I thought keeping you busy with hordes of fearful humans would work until I was ready to deal with you. They are even more idiotic than I realized."

  "Sorry your witch hunt plan didn't work," I said. "Nice try, though. Asshole," I added, swinging out.

  He moved to block my strike, which was just what I wanted. Nain stood behind him, ax poised, and he brought it down hard. He was aiming for the neck, of course, but Hyperion moved just before he struck, and Nain's blade mostly hit armor, though it did cut nicely into the flesh below Hyperion's ear. The gaping wound there streamed blood, and Hyperion roared in rage.

  "Now," I shouted, and all of the immortals attacked at once, Heph swinging a giant, deadly-looking hammer, Nain with his ax, my aunt with her flamesword, E with her daggers, Hestia and Athena with bows and arrows. Asclepias stood back, ready to jump in and heal any of us who needed it. Hades snarled and swung his sword.

  Hyperion just laughed, and then he started turning kind of an orangey color.

  "Take cover!" Asclepias shouted. As quickly as they could, the immortals dove behind trees and boulders. Nain shoved me behind an outcropping of black stone, then covered my body with his.

  I heard Hyperion laughing, and then there was a gigantic "boom," like the sound of something exploding. Heat washed over me.

  It passed, and I shoved at Nain. He got up, pulling me up with him. He had his ax at the ready.

  "Holy fuck," I muttered.

  For several feet all the way around Hyperion, the world was burning. Flames licked along the ground, and everything was scorched. My father had been the last to try to take cover, and his robes were on fire.

  Yet he and Hyperion lunged at one another, my father snarling.

  Hyperion was obviously weakened from his insane blast attack, yet he met my father's attack and struck back. Their swords clanged, and the immortals slowly but surely started converging on Hyperion again.

  Hades stumbled.

  "Fuck," I said, my stomach sinking. I focused, rematerializing behind my dad so I could pull him away.

  It took a fraction of a second.

  By the time I got there, his head was falling to the ground. Hyperion was laughing.

  "Enough for today, godling," he said, giving me a sarcastic salute. And then he was gone.

  I could barely hear him. Not over the anguished scream that came from my parents' castle behind us. I couldn't hear or feel anything over the agony coming from that direction.

  From my mother.

  I crumpled to the ground, her agony and anguish flooding me. I screamed, and heard my aunt doing the same.

  It was bad enough on its own.

  But worse, feeling my mother's devastation over the loss of her mate, over the snapping of that bond, brought me right back to that night in the Packard plant, right back to the instant I'd felt Nain die. I relived it all over again: the pain, the emptiness, the overwhelming sense of loss so strong, so complete that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was contemplate living another moment.

  My mother was going through it. And she'd had thousands and thousands of years of loving my father, of wanting him from afar.

  God, I could feel it. Such immense loss I swore it would swallow the whole world.

  I was peripherally aware of Nain holding me, of his strong arms around me, yet all I could do was wail both in commiseration with what my mother was feeling, as well as with my own loss.

  It hit me: I'd lost my father. I could barely contain my emotions, and a high-pitched shriek that barely seemed to belong to me escaped me. I was crying so hard I could barely move, and my own sense of loss was only compounded by my mother's lingering anguish and the mourning of all the immortals around me.

  I sat up slowly. Nain pulled me close to him, put his hands in my hair.

&nbs
p; "Don't look, baby. You don't need to look," he said, his voice full of emotion. I'd forgotten how my grief would hit him now, how this was making him re-live his own grief over the breaking of our bond. His heart was pounding, his hands shaking under the effects of what he'd felt from me.

  "I can't fucking feel that again," he said, voice low and hoarse. I cried, holding him tight, grasping the fabric of his shirt in my hands as I clung to him. I kept my face buried against his neck.

  From the palace, I could still hear my mother's wails.

  I started standing up. "I need to go to her," I said. "And Zoe." Nain nodded, holding me tight against him as we walked toward the castle, Nain using his body to shield my father's body from my sight.

  I heard Asclepias saying he would stand watch over the body. He sounded hollow.

  My aunt Meg was kneeling on the ground, sobbing, and when we reached her, I held out my hand and she took it. We walked into my parents' home that way, hands clasped, both of us trembling. Aunt Meg knew where my mother had been staying, guarding the babies, and she led us through the corridors to an interior room. Inside, my Netherhounds were standing guard beside the crib the babies were in, eyes glowing, ears back. Kurt raised his head and gave a mournful howl, and Courtney joined him. I looked around, and saw that my mother was crumpled in a corner, tears streaming down her face. She was ripping at her hair as if she had lost her mind.

  And she had. I've been there. The insanity that comes from feeling that bond break is the worst thing I've ever felt. Feeling it secondhand, through her, was enough to make me want to lose my mind right alongside her. I went to my mom, knelt beside her, and gathered her into my arms.

  She was shaking, keening. Aunt Meg gently took her hands away from her hair and held them firmly in her own so my mom wouldn't hurt herself.

  I watched Nain lean over and pick up a crying Zoe out of the playpen, then lift Sean in his other arm. He looked helpless, and clueless, but he did it nonetheless.

  For some reason, that only made me cry harder.

  I don't know how long we stayed that way. I know that, eventually, E and Hestia came in and took the kids. There was a lot of talking, immortals and demons coming in and out of the room as arrangements were made. No one dared disturb my mother in her grief. Meg and I sat there with her, holding her, and her tears seemed endless.

  Nain came in and quietly told me they were taking Zoe and Sean home, and asked if there was anything I needed. I reached out for him, and he took my hand, crouched on his heels. His eyes met mine, and I could see that his were red-rimmed, as if he'd been crying.

  Nain pressed his lips to my fingers, lingered there.

  "You've been everything I need," I said in answer to his question. "I love you."

  "I love you. Take all the time you need. I've got everything else under control, all right?"

  I nodded, and he kissed my fingertips.

  "I am sorry for your loss, Tisiphone," he said to my mother, bowing his head to her.

  "You made her feel this," she said in a hoarse whisper.

  "Mom," I said softly.

  "I want to kill you for that. I had no idea it did this. But I understand now why she forgave you. If I had another chance with Hades, I'd take it in a heartbeat. I won't get it. I won't get it," she repeated, and then she was incomprehensible again. Nain looked at me helplessly, sorrow and guilt flowing from him.

  I love you. I'll be home soon, I thought at him.

  Love you more, he answered. Then he rose and walked out of the room.

  We sat there for hours, and I started noticing things. Feeling things.

  Something was different.

  Not just our mourning. Not just the overwhelming sense of loss that seemed, just then, to envelop all of existence.

  Something else.

  I opened my eyes and looked at my mother, who was still crying, rocking back and forth in my aunt's arms. And I saw so much more than I usually did.

  I saw… everything.

  Her best moments. Her happiest.

  Her worst.

  I saw her sins. The things she felt most guilty about. The things she wanted no one else to see.

  Chief among them, the moment she left me in the mortal realm. It was as if that instance, that scene of her life, that moment she left a screaming, raven-haired baby on the front stoop of a Detroit church, was front and center, her shame. There were others. There were many things I didn't want to see about my mother. About how she had sex with Cithaerus, her former lover, trying to pretend he was Hades. How she'd held such deep hatred for Persephone. There was guilt over the fact that her sister Alecto had betrayed me, and she'd never seen it coming. Thousands of sins, from the almost ridiculously meaningless to the big ones; I saw them all.

  I heard myself gasp. I closed my eyes again, trying not to see it. And when I opened them and looked away, I ended up looking at my aunt Meg, and it happened all over again, an instantaneous cataloguing of her sins.

  I let go of my mom and grabbed my head.

  "What's wrong, Mollis?" my aunt asked worriedly.

  I was freaked out so much that the emotions coming from me were enough to snap my mother out of the haze of grief she was in. She took my shoulders. "Mollis?" she said.

  I shook my head.

  "Mollis!" she said, louder.

  "Mom," I said. "I don't want it."

  "Don't want what?"

  I opened my mind. And I let her see.

  The next thing I felt from her was grief for me, mingling with her grief for her mate.

  "No. No, no, no," she murmured, holding me closer. "My baby. I don't want you to live the way he did. Oh, gods," she cried.

  I disentangled myself from my mother and aunt, and stood up.

  I couldn't take it anymore.

  "Where are you going?" my mom asked, struggling to her feet as my aunt took her hand.

  I felt my rage rising.

  "I'm going to go hurt a fucker. I am going to avenge Apollo. And most of all, I am going to avenge my father."

  "Mollis—" my aunt began, but my mom put a hand on her arm and silenced her.

  She took me into her arms. "Do what you need to do. Cause some pain for me while you're at it."

  "I will," I promised her.

  "Are you stupid?" Aunt Meg cut in, unable to hold herself back anymore. "Did you see him? Did you see where there was an entire group of immortals attacking him, and he walked away?"

  "I saw," I said, keeping my eyes on my mom. "He won't walk away again. I'll do whatever it takes."

  I turned and walked out.

  Hyperion would pay. But first, I'd find Nether. And I'd do what needed to be done.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I made my way out of the palace, studiously ignoring the demons who dropped to a knee and bowed as I passed.

  Did they know? Did they know I had all of my father's abilities? Did they know that every time I looked at them, I could see every dark, twisted, disgusting moment of their lives?

  Did they know how strong my father had truly been? Along with his ability to effortlessly see into the souls of every being I passed, I'd inherited the power of the god of death.

  I felt it surging within me. It didn't add to my power, necessarily. It was hard to explain. It felt like my existing power was focused. A razor blade instead of a bludgeon.

  As if it would take no effort at all for me to hurt whoever I was looking at in the worst way possible.

  This, I wanted.

  This, I would use for all it was worth.

  I stalked through the courtyard. My father's body had been removed. I wasn't sure what came next. I couldn't think about it right then, anyway.

  I left the Netherwoods, taking a deep breath of relief when it let me go. I'd been half expecting to be trapped there, just like before. I never wanted to go back. I would, because I had to.

  I could feel panic setting in, shoved it aside. Not now. I'd think about that another time. I tried to think. Tried to remember all of th
e places I'd seen Nether.

  The freeway.

  Downtown.

  Belle Isle.

  My house.

  I'd try there first.

  I rematerialized back in my old neighborhood, the empty lot where my house had once been. The last place I'd seen her.

  I remembered her parting words to me: "Hatred makes me strong." At the moment, I could understand them, even if I didn't agree. Because while I hated Hyperion, without a single doubt, it was my love for my parents, my love for my husband and child, that made me determined to hunt him down and make him pay.

  He would not take another person from me. I would give my mother her vengeance.

  I looked around. It was dark. It had snowed, just a little, and that made the world brighter than it should have been.

  She was there. I could feel her.

  I drew my flamesword, the black flames giving the area around me an eerie glow.

  I walked across my former lot, toward the back where the huge lilac hedge still stood, branches bare now with the onset of winter.

  I numbly realized that it was only a week before Christmas. It's crazy, the shit that comes to you at times like that.

  I could feel her. She was full of rage and hatred.

  She was afraid. Terrified.

  And she felt guilty.

  As my gaze landed on Nether, all I felt was pity.

  She was so broken. Her white hair was still snarled, bits of twigs and leaves and who knew what all else ensnared in the strands. Her clothing was practically falling off of her, it was so torn, disintegrating with filth.

  In addition to the normal filth, there was blood. So much blood. She stank of it, and she sat there rocking, her empty gaze locked on me.

  I put the sword away. "Nether," I said, settling myself beside her.

  She just kept rocking, though her gaze followed me. She was uncertain. Confused. When I looked at her, I saw everything.

  Uppermost on her list of sins was injuring Aether. And she'd been forced to do it because he'd been attacking her just as insanely as she'd been attacking him. She had just been the one to finally land a lucky blow.

  There weren't many others. How much can you really do when you've been in a prison, serving as a prison, for most of your existence? Ironic, isn't it, that the embodiment of evil had fewer sins to her name than anyone else I knew?