by Melody Rose
“The plan was for me to take you away and for Poseidon to bring Hades to his place where he was going to be super fucking powerless against him. I don’t wanna get your hopes up or anything, but I’m betting that Poseidon already killed Hades.” Zeus snickered.
NO! NO, NO, NO!
He had to be lying. Hades would never allow anyone to defeat him, least of all one of his own brothers. No, he had to be alive. He just had to! But even as I tried to reassure myself that he was alive, the malicious glint in Zeus’s eyes told me that he might be right.
He finally loosened his grip on my throat and spun me around towards the door, then violently pinned me against it, face first. His breathing had grown ragged as he dug his fingers into my thighs and hoisted my dress above my waist. Zeus then buried his face into my neck as he pressed his bare chest against my back.
“Don’t worry, Persephone,” he cooed. “I’m going to make you feel fantastic. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a while now.”
I stood frozen against the door, unable to find the strength to fight back. I wanted Hades to come back to me. I wanted to go home! I couldn’t understand why everyone sought to make our lives so miserable when they already led lives of their own. Hades had been right about his family; this pantheon was nothing more than a circus, and the Olympians were the fucking clowns.
Even my own mother had retaliated against us. She would never see me as anything more than a sniveling little girl, would she? I felt a white-hot spark ignite in my chest. No, my mother would never let me be myself. In fact, none of these people would let Hades and I be ourselves until we made the effort of forcing them to leave us alone.
I was so tired of being the good girl. I was so sick of everyone, including my mother, treating me as some delicate little flower that needed to be protected at all times. And in the off chance that Hades really was dead, who else was going to rescue me?
No. I had to do this myself. Squaring my shoulders with my resolve, I allowed my hands to fall to my sides limply as I felt Zeus fumbling with the zipper of his jeans.
“No, Lord Zeus,” I whispered, causing Zeus to pause with his hands on my ass. “Let me show you how to feel fantastic.”
“What?” he replied breathlessly.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, centering myself for what I was about to do. Even as a goddess, I had never truly had a need to tap into my full potential. Trying to use my powers at home would have only caused them to backfire on me anyway, but now was as good a time as any to see what I was truly capable of. I was going to make Zeus feel every last ounce of pain he’d ever caused the love of my life to feel.
With my hands poised directly over the ground, I opened my eyes and allowed the full extent of my powers to consume every fiber of my being. My eyes turned a startling shade of white as I clenched my hands into fists and summoned thick thorny vines to erupt from the ground beneath us. I flicked my arms up and snapped my fingers, mentally ordering the vines to latch onto Zeus’s legs and throat and pull his disgusting heat off of me.
Slowly, I turned to face my assaulter and smiled darkly. He yelped in pain as he narrowed his eyes at me. “You stupid bitch!”
“My name is Persephone!” I cried as I spun around and roundhouse kicked him directly in the chest. Zeus soared across the room until he slammed into the large black armoire that sat beneath the tracks of sex toys. The armoire shattered beneath his crushing weight, sending all manner of black lace wearables and neckties flying from the destruction.
As Zeus sunk to the ground in a heap, he gritted his teeth and growled beneath the rubble. He raised his head slowly, and I glared down at him. Blood dripped from the back of his scalp down to his neck and onto his chest.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he snarled before he climbed to his feet. He threw his hands towards me, sending hundreds of tiny golden bolts of lightning in my direction, each imbued with the intention of killing me. But I raised my hand and ordered my vines to grow enormous thorned bulbs to form a protective barrier around me. As the tiny bolts of lightning collided with each bulb, the bulb sprang to life and unleashed a green cloud of venomous spores. Before long, the entire room was covered in a thick green fog.
Coughing at the gases and seething with rage, Zeus summoned a lightning bolt-shaped halberd that sparked with electricity into his right hand. With a thunderous roar, he lunged towards me and thrust his halberd outward for a finishing blow.
I barely managed to side-step the attack before I tripped over one of my vines. I hit the ground and gasped as the air escaped my lungs from the fall. Zeus whirled to face me and glared down at me from where he stood before he raised his halberd over his head and thrust it downward.
With a gasp, I quickly rolled out of reach, but not nearly in time. I hissed as the sharp blade of the halberd sliced into the meaty part of my bicep. Zeus bellowed at his victory in drawing my blood as I swiftly jumped to my feet with a shriek.
“This ends now!” Zeus growled as he fell into a crouch for an attack.
“I agree,” I hissed through clenched teeth. With a snap of my fingers, a new set of vines burst from the ground and wrapped themselves around Zeus’s entire body, leaving very little room for him to escape my clutches. I had had more than enough of Zeus and his fucking family already. I wanted all of them to hurt, and I wanted all of them to feel not only Hades’s pain but also my own. I would never let anyone treated me like anything other than the queen that Hades treated me as.
Zeus cried shrilly as the thorns on the vines doubled in size, impaling his tanned flesh with the same minimal effort a pair of scissors would use when gliding across a sheet of paper. I smiled down at him, allowing myself to revel in the fear that lurked behind those swirling silver eyes.
With a wink, the room began to shake. Zeus ceased his squirming momentarily to gaze around the room in terror as a loud groan sounded from beneath the floorboards. As Zeus began to flail against my vines, I raised my hand and dropped it quickly, ordering my vines to force him into a kneeling position, much like a lion tamer would order her pet to sit.
“I just want you to know,” I said with deep satisfaction. “That I plan on enjoying watching you scream.”
Zeus screamed wildly as an enormous orange and yellow Nepenthes Pitcher flower broke through the flooring beneath us and swallowed Zeus whole. As the flower snapped its beaked jaws shut around Zeus, I could hear him starting to wail. The highly corrosive acid had already begun to melt him alive. After several minutes of screaming, the room finally went silent.
I sighed with relief as I shakily ambled towards the door, allowing my power to return to their normal levels. When I reached the door, I grabbed at the handle and turned, but it still didn’t move. I sighed angrily. There was still a warding placed around the room. If it wasn’t Zeus’s warding, then whose was it?
Damn it all to hell.
32
Hades
Once I was confident that my brother was good and truly dead at the hands of my beloved Kraken, I had flashed myself to the exterior of Eros’s club, The Olympian. I glared up at the eyesore that my nephew had chosen to be his place of business.
To mortal eyes, the club would have appeared to be nothing more than an old church with two large crumbling towers. The lawn, which was littered with both garbage and shattered headstones, was overgrown and smelled like a rotting animal. The only indication that the building was being maintained at all was the glossy red double-doors that opened into the club.
Before I decided to go further, I fell to my knees and took one heaving breath after another as a large surge of energy coursed through my veins. Now that I was on cosmically neutral grounds, my powers were returning to their full strength, albeit slowly. The positive side to this, however, was that now my wounds would heal exceptionally faster than they had when I was still in my brother’s sinking city. I gasped at the pain that wracked my rib cage as my broken ribs and punctured lung stitched themselves up.
Th
e injuries that I had sustained from Poseidon had been worse than I had mentally prepared myself for. While I had known what the stakes were going to be, I had still hoped that I was going to make it out in better shape than I had. My clothing was wet and torn, my skin covered in dried flakes of blood. I looked like I was ready to crawl into my death bed! Truthfully, though, the only thing that had kept me going was the thought of Persephone being left in the hands of either of my brothers.
If I was dead, who would protect her from the savagery of my brother’s insatiable lust? Who would protect her from the wrath of her mother? I couldn’t let them touch her. I couldn’t let them get away with what they were planning on doing to her. I wouldn’t.
I snarled to myself as I recalled Poseidon’s chilling words.
“Oh, big brother,” he had said with a cackle. “Who is going to watch over your little Persephone when you’re dead? Should it be me? Or should I let Zeus do it? You know, right now, he has her locked away with him at Eros’s shitty little club in the mortal realm. I bet he’s drilling her as we speak. Tell me, Hades, how does she sound when she moans?”
If Zeus had laid one finger on Persephone in any way, I was going to rip his arm off and shove it down his throat until he choked to death on it.
I took a much-needed breath to steady myself before I climbed back onto my feet, swayed, then started for the door once I had regained my balance. As I marched towards the club with a steely resolve, I snapped my fingers and cleaned up my appearance so that I didn’t draw too much attention to myself. Once I reached the double doors, I opened them and stepped inside. Almost immediately upon entering the club, I was assaulted by the intense aroma of cigarettes and sweat as blinding white strobe lights pulsed in perfect synchronization to the beat of the music.
A throng of humans, drunk no doubt on Lotus wine, danced mindlessly on the dancefloor while Dionysus stood manning his post at the bar. So far as I could tell, he hadn’t noticed me come in. I took this as a good sign. The last thing I needed while I was trying to hunt down my brother was for someone to warn him that I had arrived. Deciding that I needed to remain inconspicuous, I headed towards the crowd on the dancefloor.
As I bobbed and weaved through the wall of bodies on the floor, I noticed that a handful of humans had snapped out of their stupor long enough to recoil at the disastrous sight of me before they fell back into their drug-induced haze. The way they stared, their pupils dilated from the lotus laced cookies, caused my lips to curl back and bare my teeth. When a human was under the influence of the Lotus flower, time essentially seemed to freeze for them. As they danced and continued to enjoy their high, life around them would continue to move on without them ever being aware. And while they lived on for decades in this party-filled reality, certain Gods, demons, and other beings would suck their souls away little by little before they ever realized they were dying.
Animals, my subconscious hissed as I passed by.
Near the back of the club, standing behind a maître d podium guarding another set of doors, stood Psyche, Eros’s mortal on-again, off-again girlfriend. Psyche and Eros had a relationship whose complexity rivaled my own and Persephone’s. Ages ago, when chariots and togas were all the rage in Ancient Greece, a young princess was born to a king. To everyone’s surprise, Psyche, the youngest of the king’s three daughters, was the fairest throughout the land. Her people thought she was so beautiful, in fact, that instead of honoring Aphrodite, they began to honor her.
Of course, Aphrodite wanted none of that. She had always been a selfish and self-absorbed brat. In a fit of rage, Aphrodite had sent her hideous little hell-spawn to the mortal realm in hopes of shooting her with a love arrow that would cause her to fall in love with only the most miserable and atrocious man as a consequence of her beauty. But when Eros had laid his eyes on the girl, he immediately fell in love. It was the only time in his life that Eros had betrayed his mother. To this day, I wasn’t sure that she ever forgave him for that incident.
Shortly after the two began their courting, Eros and Psyche had God-Spoused, which was when a mortal and a god bound their souls together in a holy union. This granted Psyche immortality. However, their relationship was never an easy one. Though Eros had sworn himself to Psyche, he had never been truly faithful to her. And Psyche was always hungry for attention. More than once had she tried to make a move on me when Eros had been ignoring her. But I hadn’t been interested at the time. However, I could use that to my advantage now if I wanted to find my brother with little resistance.
As I sauntered closer to her, Psyche glanced up from the large, leather-bound book on the podium and gasped at the sight of me. For a mortal, Psyche was quite attractive. She had large brown almond-shaped eyes, full hips, and an overflowing bosom. And, if I had to be honest, the red gown she was wearing tonight was quite enticing.
“Hades?” she said as her brows rose in surprise. I paused by the podium and smiled as I placed my hands in my pockets, internally grimacing from the pain in my back as I did so.
“Hey, Psyche. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You look… absolutely incredible,” I replied.
A bright fuchsia crept up her cheeks as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh, thank you. You look pretty handsome yourself. What brings you here tonight?”
“I’m actually looking for my brother,” I said as I took a step closer to her. “Is he around?”
“Oh.” Psyche’s smile dropped. She said nothing, but I could see that her thoughts were processing rapid-fire behind her hazel eyes. She was looking for an excuse.
Shit, my subconscious hissed. Clearly, she hadn't gotten the memo regarding the situation at hand, but she knew well enough to know that Zeus was not to be disturbed beyond these doors. Even so, I needed to try to pry further so that I could end this. The longer I stood there with her, the more of a chance Zeus had to hurt Persephone.
“Yeah, we were supposed to settle something between Poseidon and us, but he never showed. Poseidon sent me here to get him while he gets caught up on some work back down in the ocean. Is he in there?” I asked, gesturing towards the doors with my head.
“Yes,” Psyche said in a rushed whisper. “But I was told not to let anyone in or to interrupt. Eros didn’t give me much detail, but Zeus didn’t look very happy when he came earlier with some new girl. Is something bad going on?”
I scoffed light-heartedly and waved a dismissive hand. “No, no, no. We’re all fine. The girl’s an oracle, and Poseidon and I needed to get some more insight from her.”
“That’s odd,” she said as she crossed her arms over her chest, her brows pulling together in confusion. “I thought you guys hated each other.”
“We’ve settled that little bit of sibling rivalry. Don’t worry about it, Psyche.” I growled seductively as I said her name, hoping to veer her off the path of suspicion. Psyche picked up on this, and her pupils dilated almost immediately.
“Oh,” she replied, visibly flustered, “Well, that’s great! But I still can’t let you go back there. I really don’t want to get on Eros’s bad side. Or even your brother’s.”
I internally grumbled at her opposition. Why the hell was she so resistant? She was making this much harder than it needed to be, and it was wasting too much time. Deciding that I needed to ramp up my charm, I removed my hands from my pockets, set them on either side of the podium, and leaned forward. Psyche’s eyes widened to saucers as her hands trembled over the book between us.
“Come on, Psyche,” I purred. “I just wanna have a quick talk with my brother so we can all go to Poseidon’s with the girl. It’ll be fast; in and out.”
I licked my bottom lip to emphasize my double entendre before I raked my gaze from the crown of her head down to her cherry red pumps. She shivered lightly at my appreciative once-over as she drummed her nails on the book as if weighing her options. Her eyes quickly shifted from me to Dionysus at the bar, then back again. “I don’t know, Hades.”
If I hadn’t been staring
directly at Psyche, I would have missed the look of fear in her eyes as she glanced at Dionysus. Damn, that couldn’t have been good. Trying to remain nonchalant, I peered over my shoulder to see that Dionysus was eyeing us suspiciously from behind the bar, his hands planted firmly on the counter, ready to pounce at any moment.
“I won’t tell Eros that you let me in,” I said hastily as I turned my attention back to Psyche. “I’ll just say I ignored you when you told me to stop. You know how I am. I don’t listen to anyone, anyway.”
Psyche peered up at me from beneath her long, curled lashes and smiled softly. “I mean, I guess that’s okay. You promise you won’t tell on me?”
I reached over the podium and took her hand in mine, then placed a warm kiss along her knuckles. I allowed my lips to brush her skin as I muttered, “I swear.”
Psyche nearly melted under my fingertips as she smiled and reached under her podium to press a button. A loud click sounded beside us, and the double doors opened ever so slightly. I grinned up at her devilishly before returning her hand to the book.
“Thank you, gorgeous. I hope I get to see that smile on my way back out with Zeus,” I cooed. Psyche giggled in response.
With another quick look over my shoulder, I could see that Dionysus had come around the bar and was heading towards us with purpose. Time to go! With one last smile to Psyche, I slipped between the doors and shut them closed behind me, flipping Dionysus off before they were locked once again. Once I was safely in the hall beyond the doors, I took a deep breath and sighed.
That was the single most stressful thing that I had done in the last twenty-four hours…. And that was including the fact that I had just sent my Kraken to murder my brother. I shook the thought away and quickly made my way down the hall. I couldn’t afford to worry about anything else. Persephone’s scent had grown stronger beyond the doors, and I could sense her energy much clearer now.
