“Uh, Phro, you’re a goddess again here, right? Don’t you have some kind of powers?”
She lifted a slim eyebrow. “I can make you fall in love with me.”
“Yeah, no thanks. That’s obviously covered or we wouldn’t be in a freezing cave and about to step into dark water. Have I ever mentioned that though I love water, I’ve never been fond of wading in it in the dark?”
“We might as well go. We do need to catch that lilin.”
I took a deep breath and splashed into the water. While it was cooler than I expected, the farther we moved into the dark chamber, the warmer it became. I stepped through pockets of warm and it reminded me of swimming in a public pool as a kid and coming upon a pocket of warm. I froze. Oh, ew. “Phro,” I whispered, but my voice echoed off the walls making the sound a lot louder than I’d planned. “I think there are things living in this water.”
There was an immediate scrambling noise as Phro obviously tried to crawl up a wall. I wanted to laugh at a goddess being afraid of some underwater creature, but then I thought about all those myths I’d read and the crazy creatures in them.
Phro screeched and splashed. “Something swam by my leg.”
“Go faster.” I worked to fight the water. My costume wasn’t meant to be wet and it hung heavily on my body. I’d take off the top part, but I didn’t really want to be wandering the underworld in a black push-up bra. When I felt a solid bump on my hip, absolute fear sent my muscles into overdrive. I reached out, hooked an arm around Phro’s chest and yanked her to me. “I can move quicker, so just hang on.”
“No problem. Can I ride on your shoulders?”
“Very funny.”
Her weight slowed me down. Waiting for her would have taken even more time, so I held on to Phro and pushed through the water. My sigh of relief was loud when I saw a rock outcropping. A soaked and furious lilin sat perched on it. I helped Phro climb onto the ledge before I followed.
The lilin suddenly screeched and dove at me with her fingers curled like claws. Her power hit me before her hands did. Hungry, sucking power that felt like she’d stuck a spoon down my throat to scoop my heart back out.
I gasped and flailed and nearly went flying back off the rock. I managed to clutch a protruding stone coming out of the wall and shoved her off me. Air seared my throat as I tried to breathe. With stars dancing around my peripheral vision, I made a fist and punched the shit out of her face.
The crack of her nose echoed in the stone chamber. She screamed, flew backward and grabbed hold of the rock with both arms to keep from sliding off the other side.
I growled at her. “You try that again and I’ll do more than break your nose.” The pain was gone, but my ribs ached—especially the one that had already taken a beating by the Kuru-Pira. Unfortunately, the wound in my leg had started to burn.
Something big moved through the chamber, making the water splash as whatever it was slid along both sides.
“Whatever is in that water is huge,” Phro whispered.
“Hey.” I kicked the lilin. “Do you know what’s in the water?”
She rolled onto her back, shook her head, then pulled wet strands of black hair off her cheeks.
“Didn’t you come this way when the Dweller and the elemental opened the portal?”
She grunted and sat up. “The Dweller? We called him the Dark One.”
“Still not original,” Phro muttered as she peered over the side of the rock.
The lilin sneered at Aphrodite. “There are supposed to be only a few ways out of the Realm of the Discarded. Charon who will take you along the River Styx is one. But we all know the elementals have different portals.”
“Gods, I knew that’s where we were.” Phro, shivering, leaned against the rock wall behind her. She was breathing hard. “I know who to avoid now.”
I frowned at her. “You knew before. When I told you about the water in the buckets.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was hoping I was wrong.”
“Well, I wish you hadn’t been wrong about my cord and the labyrinth.”
She started to answer, then sucked in a breath as the water slushed against the sides of the rock. It was too dark to see what moved down there, but I heard the faint rippling sounds, the slide of something solid against a limestone wall.
“I think it’s some kind of snake,” I murmured.
“Good.” Phro breathed in relief. “Do your snake mojo thing and charm it into letting us pass. Call it.”
I fought back the urge to poke the goddess with my knife. “I can’t call them. I’ve tried. They just follow me around. But I don’t know if it is a snake.”
“Stick your leg in the water and see if it tries to cuddle.”
I pulled out my knife. Then I felt a tug on my chest I recognized instantly. I narrowed my gaze on the lilin. “Really? You’re trying to feed on me again?” I didn’t wait for an answer, just set my knife down, curled my hand into a fist and let it fly into her face. She made a strangled, yelping sound and fell back into the water. When she didn’t struggle to get back on the rock, I rolled my eyes. “For a supposedly scary underworld creature, she sure is a wuss.”
“She only gets power when she has a crowd, and mostly through song. She was probably just hungry and looking for a snack. With the way she fed in your world, she needs a lot to survive.”
“I don’t give a shit. I’m nobody’s food.” But I sighed and reached into the water to grasp her hair and pull her back onto the rock. If she’d been awake, that would have hurt. Too bad she wasn’t. “We have to keep going. Whatever it is didn’t try to eat us before—it just swam next to us. Maybe it’s friendly.”
Phro snorted. “There’s nothing friendly here.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my knife out and hope that I’m stronger than whatever it is. You’ll have to move faster on your own because it looks like I’ll be carting her ass through the water.”
Sliding back into the water on the other side of the rock was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Knowing I’d be carting this creature didn’t help. I’d prefer to have both hands free. Tugging her behind me didn’t work, so I moved to the side of the chamber, hoping for shallower water and when I found it, I swung her around my neck in a fireman’s carry. I’d considered throwing her over my shoulder, but I didn’t know if lilins could drown. I could hold on to her behind one knee this way. I also grasped the sleeve of her ridiculous robe and pulled her arm in toward her knee so it wouldn’t bob around. This left my left hand free to hold the knife, which was a good thing because whatever was in the water picked that moment to come out and greet me.
Glowing yellow eyes appeared before the serpent’s entire head came out of the water. It hissed long and low and I felt a heavy punch of fear in my gut because the mouth that scary noise came out of was bigger than my head.
I dropped the lilin.
She could drown. I wasn’t fighting this thing one-handed. When I raised my knife, the thing backed up its head, but its tail wrapped around my lower body. I expected it to start squeezing, but the wrap was gentle. It tugged lightly and turned its face in the opposite direction before looking back at me. “I think it’s hugging me.” Shock and fear kept my body frozen and my voice high. “And I think it wants us to follow it.”
“See?” Phro muttered from behind me. Far behind me. “Snake mojo. Do you have any idea how handy that’s going to be here? Everybody has a snake fetish here. Do it. Follow.” Phro wasn’t as close as I expected, so I glanced around to find she’d climbed back on the rock.
I turned back to the snake and inclined my head. It stared at the knife, hissed again. The yellow eyes put out a stream of light that glittered on my blade.
“Sorry. I don’t trust that easily, so the knife is staying out. I don’t suppose you have a friend who can carry that floating piece of trash, do you?” I nodded toward the lilin. The huge serpent unwrapped its tail from around me and slapped at the lilin so hard she hit the wall. The sound of he
r head hitting the rock made me wince, but she did wake up. The tail came back around me, squeezed gently and then the snake swam away from us, keeping its head above the water.
“It’s like headlights,” Phro murmured as she came up beside me.
“You’d better follow us,” I told the lilin. “It doesn’t seem to like you very much and will probably eat you if you aren’t with me.”
She swam awkwardly to me and in the dim light, something dark dripped down her forehead and her nose looked awful, twice the size of before. We followed the serpent until the muscles in my thighs screamed in protest. It’s not easy walking in waist-high water. Both Phro and the lilin breathed hard on either side of me. I was about to suggest we crawl up on another rock outcropping when I saw real light.
I nearly fell over in relief. Speeding up, I watched as the snake swam in circles. The stream ended in a pool here with two sides flowing on either side of a huge rock slab that looked like it jutted out of the cave. I helped Phro climb onto the rock. She sprawled there, bedraggled and exhausted. The lilin looked at me for help and that made me laugh. She scowled and climbed onto the rock before crawling to the edge. I pulled myself up, my arms feeling like they were made of gelatin. I slipped once and the snake was there to bump me in the ass and help.
When I finally was all the way on the rock, I turned and looked down. Here, even though the light coming in wasn’t that bright, I could see the creature better and was suddenly glad I couldn’t see all of it before. Black with thin red stripes, the snake’s body stretched to fit the entire pool and it looked like had coiled several times under the water’s surface. Yellow eyes stared at me, so I offered it a smile.
“Thank you,” I said softly. It didn’t act like it understood me, but it obviously had earlier when I’d asked for help with the lilin. It only turned and slithered back into the cave. “Well.” I breathed before lying back on the rock. “That was weird.”
“What are you?” the lilin asked. “No one can control the snakes like that. Not even Tisiphone, and they are always all around her.”
“And always hissing mad,” Phro muttered. “Don’t blame them. I can’t stand that goddess either.”
“I don’t know what I am,” I told the lilin. Wasn’t about to share any of my past with her. Who knew what having knowledge did down here? For all I knew, pieces of information could be like fodder to some. I rolled over and crawled to the ledge, getting my first good look at this realm.
Wavy brown landscape stretched out far, and it looked like it had been under water at some point because there were ridges that meandered toward a wide river. It could have been pretty—maybe if there’d been sunlight—but what lay above was nothing but a murky wall of gray mist. The land below held no green, though gnarly dead-looking trees did dot the landscape. The rest was dirt and rock, with lots of scary shadowed areas. Jagged stone walls showed in the distance through the mist rising off the river.
In the opposite direction, I had to narrow my eyes, but that part of this world looked dark and blistered—like fire had recently burned through. Anything that looked like fire was going to be in the opposite direction from where I wanted to go. I shivered. Stupid fire elementals.
“We’ll be going that way.” I pointed toward the stone walls. “Are we still on Earth?”
“We are and we aren’t,” Phro answered.
“Are we back to being cryptic now?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“We’re back to being clueless. Bergdis, I have not been in this part of the underworld before.”
One spot of yellow, daffodil bright and garish amongst this landscape of ash, caught my eye. “Is that fruit?” My stomach grumbled.
She squinted in the direction I pointed. “If it is, you can’t eat it. Don’t eat or drink anything down here. Remember what happened to Persephone? She ate a few pomegranate seeds and had to spend part of the rest of her life here. Eat enough food or drink enough water and you are a permanent resident.”
“Phro, Nikolos has been here months. I’m sure he’s eaten.” I stared hard at her.
I felt another tug on my chest and I briefly closed my eyes and cursed under my breath. Should have realized the lilin was being awfully quiet. She crawled toward me, her pouty lips in an inelegant snarl, her eyes bleeding to black. Her power hit stronger than before, like a slug to the chest. I gasped and raised my hand to my throat as I felt energy being pulled from inside me.
“I’m so hungry,” she breathed before making the very big mistake of crawling in front of me.
I pushed away the instant weakness she’d given me, hauled off and punched her in the nose again.
Blood flew from her nostrils as she gasped and flew backward. Her yell of anger became one of terror as she fell. And fell. And fell.
The screaming broke off and I scrambled closer to the edge and looked down to find her sprawled on the ground, one of her legs bent at an angle that made me wince. A cloud of dirt had been kicked up around her and I saw something crawling along the edge of it.
“I think we’re going to have to get down there fast. It’s either that or we lose our bargaining chip because you see that thing?”
Phro leaned over and squinted again before she shuddered. “The demon scavenger. I’ve heard about him. Eurynomus. He’ll wait until she dies before he starts eating her.”
“Ew. Okay, so, let’s figure out how we’re getting down. Think these notches are supposed to be footholds?”
“You try them first,” Phro suggested.
I chuckled and hit her with my shoulder. “You are like the worst protector ever.”
“Hey, I never signed on for any of this.”
“Yeah, I know.” I looked at her disheveled, tangled hair, her pale shivering form and had to smile. “Yet you came right in here with me, didn’t you?”
She didn’t meet my eyes. “I have my moments of stupid just like anyone else.”
A massive, dark shadow floated over the entire area and I looked up at the thick, swirling mist of gray above us. As I watched, some of the gray separated and floated close. “It’s a ghost,” I murmured. “So that isn’t a sky, it’s a cluster of…of…” I swallowed the lump in my throat, gaze glued to the thing that had spotted us and now flew our way.
“It’s a mass of the dead,” Phro said in a tight voice. “And I think I know what kind of dead.”
It floated close, stared with wide, white eyes, its mouth open in a silent scream. Lines bracketed its lips and wide cheekbones stretched translucent skin over an otherwise emaciated face. Shredded pants and shirt of gray fluttered around its equally skeletal body.
Phro shuddered, stared back at the creature floating in front of us. “The world of the condemned. I want out of here.” She sat back and hugged her arms around her waist.
“Me too, Goddess, me too.” More gray bodies floated toward us. Any clothes not shredded away barely hung on their thin frames. Their upper bodies could be either male or female—they were more unfortunate than me in the breast department. Their lower bodies were mostly nude and didn’t seem to have parts from either gender.
“Guess you guys don’t have a lot of fun here, huh?”
Without expressions or even pupils, it was hard to figure out what they wanted. They almost seemed like a herd of curious animals just coming over to check out the new creatures. “Phro, I don’t understand. You and Fred always told me that all souls reincarnate to learn many life lessons, that none are truly condemned.”
“Yeah, well it was better that you not know about this place. These are all creatures that have done the unforgivable or some the gods have trapped here. These?” She pointed at the group that grew thicker by the second. “They were bloodthirsty cannibals who decimated an entire world. My father put them here…condemned to starve for all eternity.”
Shuddering, I looked away from the toothless, gaping mouths. “Can they hurt us?”
“I don’t think so,” she murmured. “But we should go ahead and try out your footholds.
Get to lower ground.”
“You just got your legs back. Think you can do this?”
“I’ll be fine.” Her nose went up and I felt like cheering because, right then, she seemed like my Phro. Haughty, annoying, and a part of my real world I desperately missed in this moment. I smiled at her.
She narrowed her eyes, suspicious.
I chuckled and turned to press my foot on one of the notches beside our ledge. “It’s pretty solid. I think we can use them to get down. Just follow me and use the ones I do, okay?” Yes, there was a true irony in me being the protective part of a goddess and half goddess half human duo.
Wall climbing had never been a sport I enjoyed, so it was slow, slow going for our trip down. The one time I slipped, I had to stand with my body pressed to the stone for a good long minute before I gathered the courage to continue. Phro moved even slower than I did, her legs wobbly. Lots of curse words floated my way.
I reached the ground and sat for a minute, breathing hard and watching Phro stretch her long legs to reach the same notches. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white top. The shirt was no longer white, but a dirty, black-streaked brown. At least she’d pictured herself in comfy clothes and tennis shoes before diving into the portal. I tugged at the heavy, damp hood and wished I’d had a chance to change before jumping into that portal.
When Phro got close enough to the ground, I stopped watching and got up to walk to the lilin. The scavenger demon hissed and kept away, his bobbing head peeking out of the shadows every now and then. He looked at me with curiosity and I returned the perusal, working hard not to grimace at his thin black lips, two holes for a nose and beady eyes that sat so far back in his head it looked like his skull could pick any moment to just grow over them.
When the lilin groaned, he frowned and scurried away from us.
I hauled her off the ground before throwing her over my shoulder. She cried out then went still. Her lower leg flopped once in a way a properly attached leg wouldn’t and I gagged. I walked back to Phro who had sat on the ground, her back resting against a thick, dead tree trunk. She had her eyes closed, one palm lying face up on the ground beside her. Dirt clung to every wet surface of her clothes. The fact she wasn’t trying to brush it off or wash it off let me know we weren’t going anywhere yet. She needed to rest and frankly, so did I.
Blood of an Ancient: A Beri O'Dell Book, Book 2 Page 19
