by S. E. Babin
“Well...if we don’t fix this, we’re all going to die.”
He knocked another shot back. “But this difference this time is no one believes you.”
Hades let out a bark of laughter. Artie snorted and even Clotho grinned.
It was true. This motley band of warriors was the best we were going to get. Which was kind of awesome because it had started out with less than five of us.
The sound of rushing water put us all on high alert. “Uhhh, Hades?”
His expression darkened.
The trident appeared first. Followed by the man himself: Poseidon.
“Erm,” I said eloquently. “I don’t know how he found out,” I stage whispered to Hades.
My gaze found Hermes but he shrugged. Clotho raised her hand. “It’s family,” she said. “He deserves to know.”
“Good gods,” I muttered. “Can we finally get this show on the road so we can get this over with?”
“Don’t you mean so we can hasten to our deaths much faster than we ever would otherwise?”
“It’s always nice to see you, Poseidon,” I said with gritted teeth.
He gave me a mocking little bow. “Likewise.” Poseidon’s attention turned to his brother. “My, isn’t this the grandest little war party. I hear you’ve gotten yourself in a pickle.”
Hades gave Poseidon the death glare. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. You can leave.”
Poseidon tsked. “I’m not here to save you. I’m here to save Abby’s Hades. He’s the one I know and hate after all.”
Clotho finally interrupted the cheery family reunion by stepping forward. “Thank you all for coming today.”
Like we were all at some immortal wedding or something. If she asked for any objections I was going to stand up and say let’s all get the hell out of here.
Okay. No I wasn’t, but the longer we stayed here the more nervous I got about what was going to happen when we opened that door.
“We’ve managed to unseal and unlock the back door to Heaven, but inside of it rests the tortured souls of the wicked.” Her gaze flicked over to me. “Aphrodite has passed judgment on Heaven and has condemned those souls to spend their afterlife in Heaven, but we came up with a better plan. We will destroy them.”
Dionysus lifted up his pint of beer and screamed, “HELL YEAH! SCREW YOU, SOULS!”
Artie giggled and promptly slapped a hand over her mouth. Her almost mortal metabolism could not keep up with the god of debauchery. So I’d be walking into battle with at least two drunk Olympians. But from how Hera was pounding back shots with Rafe, there had the potential to be four. Three drunk gods and a drunk angel. He’d never drank ambrosia before so this was, of course, the perfect time to try it. I let out a sigh and tried to tune back into Clotho.
“If we are able to destroy them, we should be able to salvage the Underworld. If they get away from us, I cannot say what will happen.”
“So we don’t let them get away,” said Hades. You would think that would be a question, but he didn’t phrase it like that.
“I don’t know how much we is part of it as much as it is Draco.”
Dionysus blinked a few times. “You named your kid Dragon?”
I shrugged. “It was a nickname. It stuck.”
“Poor kid.” Dionysus shook his head and poured himself some more vodka.
This was quite literally going to Hell.
Clotho cleared her throat. “Hades had something of a failsafe built in just in case his father pulled a stunt like this. He created and honed a power we think came from a book he was given. The magic can kill angels.”
Clotho didn’t tell me that. My gaze found my mother’s and she nodded. It was the same. But how was it in him when Hecate and I were carrying tiny vials of potions we’d spent weeks in the basement making?
My husband was full of secrets. I was going to pry all of them out of him with a wrench when I found him.
“It can also destroy souls.”
“It sounds like Draco shouldn’t be let out of his cage,” Poseidon said.
“Poseidon!” I snapped. “You asshat. He might save us all so if you don’t shut up, I’m going to stick you in a cage!”
He glared at me but shut his mouth.
Clotho continued but not before giving the sea god a dark glare. “When I open this door…” she paused. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
“But it’s going to be bad,” I added.
“Very bad,” Artie agreed, slightly swaying on her feet.
“Dionysus,” I hissed. “Get her seated before she falls over.”
He stared at me, confused, until his gaze cleared. With a short nod, he swept Artie up in his arms. He didn’t bother to set her down. “I got you, Huntress.”
She patted his face. “I always liked you.”
“No you didn’t,” he grumbled, but a smile touched his face.
Typhon watched them both with greedy eyes. While a large part of me was ecstatic he was here because he was a total badass when he transformed, I also didn’t want to be distracted. And what happened during that spell was a massive distraction.
“Do not let them touch you!” Clotho said. “Throw all your magic at them if you have to, but do not let them graze your skin.”
“Crap,” I said under my breath.
“Everyone ready?” she yelled.
“Woooo!” said Dionysus.
“We’re all going to die,” said Hermes.
“You always say that!” sang Artie as her legs dangled from the tree trunks of Dionysus’ arms.
“And sometimes I’m right,” Hermes grumbled back.
A massive golden fireball shot from the palm of Clotho’s hand and slammed into the door. It took the blast with a shimmer and a shudder, and just when we thought we were past the worst, the door shattered into thousands of metal chunks.
I bit out a curse word and threw up a shield as large as I could. “Duck!” I screamed just as the first fragment slammed against the protective barrier.
Inky blackness poured out of the maw. Hisses and screams and joyfully evil sounds flitted around us.
“You have to drop the shield!” Clotho screamed.
I searched for her with wild eyes. “Why the hell would I do that?” I screamed back.
“Draco needs to destroy them and he can’t do it through the barrier.”
“Aaaaarrrgh,” I cried. I took a single deep breath and dropped the shield.
The barrier had dimmed the noise. My head felt like it was going to explode as the blackness rushed toward us. I held up both my hands and allowed the pink and icy silver of our joined magic to pour from my hands.
An inhaled gasp of shock made me turn. Hades was white as bone. “My magic,” he whispered. “How?”
I didn’t have time to educate him on the sheer badassery of us a couple. “Talk later. Kill now.”
Hades shook himself out of his shock and gathered magic. I shuddered as I felt him pull on mine. He turned to me with a look that said he had no idea what the hell was going on, and I had to laugh.
The first bunch of souls rushed us and I wasn’t too proud to admit I squealed a little bit when they got too close. Just as I was about to have an up close and personal meeting with a few of them, cool silver magic tinged with the teal of the Aegean sea rushed past me. The souls dissolved in a burst of white light.
Tears sprang to my eyes. My son’s magic. Bright and beautiful as the place I’d been born in. I gathered the few people next to me and shielded them as I watched my son, my beautiful son, kill his first monsters. Now, a normal human parent wouldn’t be proud of this moment. They’d be slightly terrified, but this is what some of us did. We killed the bad guys when they bad guys tried to kill us. Other than that, we drank a lot of coffee and watched too much television. At least my crew did. The rest of the Olympians were involved in a whole lot of debauchery I probably didn’t want to know about.
But my son stood there with a grimace of concerted effort on his small face with magic pouring out of his hands. The power he was exerting was more than I’d ever exerted. That I knew for sure. The strong magic of his father and the teal magic of his own coalesced together into a thing of beauty. I had never been more proud of him. Not that I’d had a whole lot of opportunity to be super proud, but still. Right now? Super freaking proud. My kid was a big damn hero.
And as we watched, soul after soul after soul shattered in a burst of light. I watched for signs of the Underworld imploding or any impending doom, but I saw nothing. Only souls shattering under the light of Draco’s angelic and Olympian powers. It felt like a super morbid fourth of July parade with former people exploding as fireworks. It was both beautiful and macabre.
When it was over and we all took a breath, I turned back to the door only to see a piece of inky blackness seep into the wall.
“Draco!” I cried and pointed, but he was too late.
I opened up my senses to see if I could track the soul, but there was nothing.
“It’s gone,” I whispered.
Clotho’s mouth turned downwards in a pretty epic frown. “That will have to be our first priority once we get your husband back.” She stepped closer into the yawning darkness of the door. “Are we ready?”
Draco stood shaking with exhaustion. I hurried over to him and brought him into my arms. I stroked his hair back from his clammy face and kissed his forehead. “You did an incredibly brave thing just now. Do you understand that?”
He gave me a weak smile. “I need you to do the rest.”
I swallowed hard. “Of course. I didn’t expect you to do anything more.” Our pockets were full of tiny, angel-killing vials and we were about to go storm the metaphorical castle.
“I’m so tired.” My son slumped down to the floor. I held him gently even as panic started to set in.
“Clotho!”
The Fate rushed over and brought her fingertips to his temples. She closed her eyes, murmured a couple of words, and a glow of golden light penetrated through his face. “He burned himself out,” she said quietly. “Someone will have to stay back with him.”
“What? What does that mean? Is he okay?” I felt myself babbling and couldn’t stop myself.
A soft smile crossed her mouth. “He will be fine. He just needs to rest.” She stood and dusted off her skirts. “Abby cannot stay,” she announced. “Artemis?”
Dionysus burst out laughing. Artie’s legs were still swinging to and fro. Clotho sighed, walked over to her, and mumbled something. My friend yelped with pain, sat up, rubbed her head and said, “Why am I on a tree?”
The tree gently set her down and patted her on top of the head. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realize you were such a lightweight.”
Artie frowned up at him.
“Can you stay with him?” Clotho asked.
My friend gasped and dropped to her knees. “What’s wrong with him?” She turned her fading purple eyes to me.
“He’s going to be okay. He’s just really zapped.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice a little teary. “I’ll stay.”
I touched the top of her head in thanks, but before I left I put a shield over them just in case the soul came back and tried to get frisky. I had a feeling it was long gone, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
With a wave back to her, me, what was left of my angelic and Olympian friends, and my kind of husband stepped through the door to go rescue my other husband.
Had I ever mentioned how weird my life was?
27
It was dark as hell in here. Metaphorically. Although, Hell could be pretty dark sometimes, it was nothing like this yawning, gaping, absence of light. Rafe, good weird dude that he was, conjured up some Hellfire to light our way which scared the crap out of all of us so we made him walk up front. Just in case he tripped.
“Hades?” I inquired. “Do you know what we can expect?”
I heard his clothing shift so I imagined he shrugged. We were closer to the back so all I could see were vague shadows and the sides of people’s faces when they shifted. I wanted anything but a shrug right now. “Couldn’t say,” he said. “I’ve never entered this way.”
“Never?” I said in total disbelief. “Even when it was first made?”
“I thought we were married. Don’t you know how much I hate my dad?”
I blushed in the dark. I did know that. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be an ass. I just knew he visited you sometimes.”
Hades chuckled. “Only when he wanted something.”
That was true too. “Sorry,” I said again.
“Stop apologizing. You do that when you’re nervous.”
“Sorry.”
“The Hades you married must be a saint.”
“If I had a heart, that statement would really hurt my feelings.”
Hades chuckled, a deep bravado that did funny things to my insides. I missed my husband. I missed the smell of him, the way he toyed with my hair when we were sitting together, the way he listened to me. Even the way he yelled at me.
“Abby?”
I grinned. “You called me Abby. I told you. I’m like a worm gnawing inside of an apple. I’m going to get to the center eventually.”
Hades sighed. “What happens when we save him?”
“Besides the raunchy sex marathon and the rampant consumption of caffeine?”
“You really should try tea sometimes.”
“Hades says the same thing.”
“I am Hades,” he reminded me with barely veiled irritation.
“Sort of. Mine was nicer.”
This got a choked laugh out of him. “Yes, besides the sex marathon. Also, would it be weird if I volunteered as tribute for that?”
“Dirty old man,” I said cheerfully. “You’d violate another man’s wife?”
“I’d violate my wife,” Hades retorted.
“Oh. Am I your wife now instead of some dirty husband stealer?”
And that was how I found myself quietly plucked out of the back of the line and smashed against the cool stone walls being kissed into oblivion.
“I don’t care whose wife you are. It doesn’t mean you don’t make me insane with want,” he whispered to me right before his tongue did a slow, languorous slide down the side of my neck.
Hades picked a damn terrible time to ravish me. He held me pinned up against the stone, one knee between my legs, his arms resting over my head.
“You like me,” I whispered.
“I don’t know if I like you.”
Our party had disappeared around the corner. None of them appeared to notice we were gone. I would wonder about that later on once Hades stopped doing wonderful things to my as of lately unused body.
I chuckled low. “Well. At least one part of you likes me.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “You aren’t my type.”
“You already said that to me. It’s getting kind of tiresome. I’m like coffee. Or beer. Very few people like me right away, but you keep sipping and then suddenly you’re addicted.”
“You’re also very humble,” he said as his fingers fumbled up the back of my shirt looking for my bra strap.
“It’s a gift,” I gasped as I arched against him.
He made a savage noise in the back of his throat when he couldn’t undo my bra and, instead of being a problem solver, the front half of my top tore away.
“Hades!” I gasped. “I can’t show up wearing a different shirt. People will talk.”
“Gods. We’re immortals, Abby. Shut up and kiss me.”
He was right. I could conjure up another shirt.
To save my own reputation, I wouldn’t speak about the events in the gaping pit to Heaven, but I can say my unwanted state of hopefully temporary virginity was still intact. If it had been up to Hades, we would have gotten down and dirty on the cavern floor, but I was able to maintain some semblance of sanity during the i
mpromptu makeout session with my kind of husband. Mostly.
I, alas, was not an angel.
I conjured up an identical shirt, but even as magical as I was, I couldn’t hide the flush of my cheeks or the sparkle in my eyes.
Hades on the other hand looked like he wanted to chew up a boulder and spit it out. I wore a slight smile the entire time he walked beside me. He was frustrated, annoyed, and very confused, both by his perplexing (in his words) reaction to me, and the fact that he’d managed to fall in love with me even though I was annoying as sand in his underwear (also his words).
My Hades was a poet. The Hades standing next to me was a mess of contradictions. I, unfortunately, liked them both. However, the one thing they both had in common was seriously magical hands and the ability to make me feel like I was the most beautiful woman on the planet.
Every time I thought about it, I wanted to smack the hell out of Persephone, but I also wanted to kiss her because she’d gloriously screwed it up, allowing me to snatch up the best thing that had happened to me since Twinkies had come back on the market.
We’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when we rounded a corner and stumbled on all of our friends. They were all giving us knowing smiles.
Dionysus was the first to congratulate Hades on his manly prowess even in the face of certain death.
Hades literally growled at him, making Dionysus raise one bushy eyebrow and slowly step away from the God of Death. This reaction made Hermes grin widely and even Clotho had a sparkle of amusement in her eyes.
“Well,” she said, “glad to see some things never change.”
“Abby could irritate Mother Teresa,” Hermes chimed in.
“Shut it,” I said without heat, because all things considered, I was in a pretty good mood.
“We have a little longer to go. We would have been there sooner had Hades and Abby not stopped for an impromptu makeout session.” Clotho’s eyes landed on Hades as if she knew exactly whose fault that was. She cleared her throat and continued. “Anyhow, we’re a little delayed, but since Hades couldn’t finish the deal, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.”
