“Yeah, and a pox on the—”
She playfully pinched his lips together before he could let fly the insult. “I love you both. Now behave and take care of your guest.”
Only his wife could get away with treating him like this and being so cavalier with his body. But then she held his heart and he’d give her anything.
He kissed her finger. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I’ll be home soon.”
Soon. Yeah, right …
But there was nothing to be done about that.
Hades nodded glumly then cursed as she faded away from him. Damn the bitch, Demeter, for cursing them to live apart half the year. But right now he had bigger problems than his wife’s mother.
And at about six foot eight, that god-killer in his cell was definitely a big problem.
* * *
Apollymi gasped as she felt the weight in her chest lift. Without being told, she knew that she now had the ability to leave Kalosis.
Leave …
“No!” she screamed as she realized the significance of that. There was only one way for her to gain her release.
Apostolos is dead.
Those three words chased themselves around in her head until she was nauseated by them.
Unwilling to believe it, she ran to her pond and summoned the universal eye. There in the water, she saw Xiamara, her best friend and protector, lying dead on the palace floor, and Apostolos …
“No!”
From the deepest part of her being, a scream of rage and grief swelled, and when she gave vent to it, it shattered the pool and rocked the garden around her.
“I am Apollymia Thanata Deia Fonia!” she screamed until her throat was raw.
She was the ultimate destruction.
And she was going to bring her son home.
May the gods have mercy on each other because she was going to have none for them. Every single member of her pantheon would pay for this!
Once she finished, none would be left standing.
* * *
Bethany gasped as an unexpected, unmitigated pain racked her.
“Bet? Is it the baby?”
She shook her head at her mother. “No. It feels more like my heart’s been snatched out of my body and crushed. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. I have to get to my husband.… He needs me.”
Something had happened to Styxx. She knew it with every part of her being. Her heart was destroyed. She could feel it.
Her mother rubbed her back. “Breathe. Just breathe, daughter. There’s nothing wrong. You’re pregnant. It does strange things with our powers. I once sneezed while I carried you and set fire to your grandfather.”
She laughed at the thought. “Did you really?”
“I did.” Her mother kissed her brow. “But I also know nothing will calm you down until you visit your mortal and make sure he’s all right. So let us go say good-bye to the family and then I’ll send you on your way.”
“I love you, Matera.”
“And I love you, too.”
* * *
Apollymi staggered on the rocks of the sea where Apostolos’s broken body rested. Her precious son had been dumped here as if he were nothing but garbage. After all the bastard Greeks had done to him, they couldn’t even provide a decent funeral.
Weak from her unshed tears, she made her way to him. His body was as cold as her heart. His beautiful silver eyes that matched hers were open and glazed, yet for all the horror of his death, his features were serene.
He looked so beautiful and perfectly formed. So tall and strong …
Choking on a sob, she ran her hand over the long gash in his chest to seal it closed. And then her tears broke. This was the first time she’d held him since the moment she’d cut him from her womb.
Agony ripped her apart as she cradled his head to her breasts and screamed out so loud that the sound was carried on the wind all the way to the halls of Atlantis. “Damn you, Archon! Damn you!”
She buried her face in her son’s wet blond hair and cried until her sobs were spent. How could her precious Apostolos be dead? How?
Why?
But she knew those answers and they cut her all the way to her soul. They’d both been betrayed by the very ones who were supposed to love and honor them.
Their worthless family.
Now there would be Kalosis to pay.
Heartbroken, Apollymi clothed her son in the black formesta robes of his godhood. As the son of the Destroyer, his symbol was that of the golden sun that represented her, pierced by the three silver lightning bolts of his power.
Picking him up from the surf, she took them both home to Katateros.
This was the home of the Atlantean gods. She had claimed this area aeons ago and had allowed her family to settle here with her. Similar to Atlantis, it was an island surrounded by islands. The tallest of them belonged to her personally. One of them housed the paradise lands where the souls of their Atlantean people went to rest until reincarnation. Another had been held by the Charonte before her banishment, and one had been intended as the home of her son.
But this one where she currently stood, the second-largest and tallest of the islands, was the main one where the hall that ruled and united all of the islands stood.
Archon’s.
Music from the hall drifted out to her. Oblivious to what had come to pass, they were having a party.
A party!
She could feel the presence of every Atlantean god inside. All of them.
And her precious son was dead.
Holding him close, she ascended the stairs and slung the doors wide with her powers. The white marble foyer was circular with statues of the gods taking up station every four feet against the pristine walls.
She walked through the center of the foyer where her emblem of the sun had been etched into the floor. And as she crossed over it, she changed it to that of Apostolos’s.
The colors, now red and black, represented her grief and his spilled blood.
Without hesitating, she walked straight for the set of gold doors that led to Archon’s throne room. To the room where the gods made merry while her son lay dead from their treachery.
She opened those doors with the full force of her fury. A resounding crash resonated as the heavy doors snapped against the marble walls.
The music stopped instantly.
Every god in the hall turned to look at her and one by one, their faces blanched white. As well they should.
Without a word to her betrayers, Apollymi cradled her son in her arms and walked with a calmness she didn’t feel toward the dais where her throne was set beside her husband’s. Archon stood up at her approach and moved to the side as if to speak to her.
But it was too late for that. There were no words that could save any of them from her wrath. Not after every degradation and abuse her son had suffered in his human lifetime.
Apollymi ignored Archon as she placed Apostolos in Archon’s throne where he belonged. Her hands shaking, she sat him up and carefully placed each of his arms on the railings. She lifted his head and brushed the blond hair back from his bluish face until he looked as if he would blink and move at any moment.
Only he would never blink again.
And it was all their fault.
Her heart beat with fury as her powers mounted. A feral wind exploded through the hall, sweeping her hair up and out as her eyes glowed red. She turned on the gods then and leveled a malevolent glare at each one in turn as they held a united breath in expectation of her wrath.
One that was going to be fierce indeed.
She didn’t pause until she came to Archon. Only then did she speak in a voice that was deceptively calm. “Your bastard daughters deprived my son of his life. Those little whores damned him. And you,” she snarled the word, “dared to protect them instead of my son.”
“Apollymi—”
“Don’t you ever speak my name again.” She sealed his mouth shut with her powers. “Yo
u had every right to be afraid. But your bastard bitches were wrong. It won’t be my son who destroys this pantheon. It is I. Apollymia Katastrafia Megola. Pantokrataria. Thanatia Atlantia deia oly!” Apollymi the Great Destroyer. All powerful. Death to the gods of Atlantis.
It was then they scrambled for the doors or tried to teleport out, but Apollymi would have none of it. Drawing from the darkest part of her soul, she sealed the hall closed. No one was going to leave here until she was appeased.
Archon fell to his knees, trying to plead for her mercy. But there was nothing left inside of her except a hatred so potent and bitter that she could actually taste it. She kicked him back and blasted him until he was nothing more than a statue remnant of a god.
Basi screamed out as Apollymi turned toward her. “I helped you.”
“You didn’t do shit, except whine and piss me off.” Apollymi blasted her into oblivion.
One by one, she went to the gods she’d once considered family and turned them into stone as her relentless fury demanded appeasement. The only one she hesitated at was her beloved step-grandson, Dikastis—the god of justice. Unlike the others, he didn’t cower or beg. He stood with one hand braced on the back of a chair, meeting her gaze as an equal.
But then he understood justice. He understood her wrath had been earned by all of them.
Inclining his head respectfully, he didn’t move as she blasted him.
And then there was Epithymia. Her half sister. The goddess of desire. She was the bitch Apollymi had trusted more than the others.
With tears of crystal ice in her eyes, Apollymi confronted her. “How could you?”
Tiny and frail in her ethereal appearance, Epithymia stared up at her from where she cowered on the floor. “I did what you asked. I made sure he was born into a royal family. Why would you destroy me?”
Apollymi wanted to claw out her eyes for what she’d done. “You touched him, you slut! You knew what that would do to him. To be touched by the hand of desire and to have no god powers to countermand it … You made it so that every human who saw him was driven mad with their lust to have him. How could you be so careless?”
And it was then she saw the truth in her sister’s eyes.
“You did it on purpose!”
Epithymia swallowed. “What was I supposed to do? You heard the girls when they spoke. They proclaimed him to be the death of us all.”
“And you thought the humans would kill him in their efforts to possess him?”
A tear slid down Epithymia’s cheek. “I was only trying to protect all of us.”
“He was your nephew,” Apollymi spat.
“I know and I’m sorry.”
Not as sorry as she was going to be.
Apollymi curled her lip. “So am I. I’m sorry I ever trusted you with the one thing you knew I loved above all others. You ungrateful bitch. I hope your actions haunt you into eternity.”
She blasted her sister.
“What have you done?”
Apollymi turned at the sound of Symfora’s question. She sent the force of her winds to knock both Symfora and her daughter back into the foyer. She flashed herself outside to stalk them like the predator she was. “What did you do? You hunted my son! And you killed him. All of you!”
“We didn’t kill him. He still lives.”
Apollymi shook her head. “He was slaughtered this morning by the Greek god you invited into my lands.”
Symfora’s eyes widened in terror. “I never welcomed Apollo here. That was a decision made by you and Archon.”
“Shut up!” Apollymi blasted her for speaking a truth that speared her with guilt.
Bethany pulled every bit of power she could from her mother and from her Egyptian blood as she faced the older, primal goddess.
Apollymi hesitated as she realized Bethany was pregnant.
“I did not incarcerate you or hunt your son, Apollymi. You know this. The one time I thought I’d stumbled upon him, I came to you with that information and not the others. I never breathed a word to them against either of you.” Tears choked her. “You know it’s true. I came here today to leave this pantheon forever so that I could have my own baby in peace. Please, do not do to me what I did not do to you.”
Apollymi hesitated. No matter how much she wanted Bet’anya’s blood, she couldn’t kill another innocent baby. Not when she understood how much it hurt to lose one. “Who among the gods is the father?”
“The father’s mortal. Human.”
Human. There was something Apollymi would have never suspected from a goddess she knew hated humans even more than Apollymi did. “His name?”
“Styxx of Didymos.”
Uncontrolled fury consumed her. Of all the mortals, that was not the name to give her. Not after she’d seen through her son’s own eyes the life he’d lived and what had been done to him because of Styxx.
Bethany held her breath as she saw Apollymi’s eyes turn from silver to red. “Please, Apollymi … don’t hurt me. My baby’s innocent.”
“So. Was. Mine!” The goddess lunged at her then and ripped Bethany’s son out of her.
Bethany staggered back as unmitigated pain tore through her. Gasping, she stared at her unmoving son in Apollymi’s cruel hand. The very image of his father, he was so tiny and defenseless …
And far too young to survive on his own.
Blinded by tears, she reached to touch him. Just once.
The older goddess blasted her back then everything went completely dark.
* * *
Styxx stood on the human side of the River Acheron in the Underworld, watching as Charon took Ryssa and Apollodorus across to their final resting place in the Elysian Fields. Unable to speak as shades, he’d tried his best to get her attention. But she’d refused him even in death.
She wouldn’t even look at him.
Alone now, he wandered along the banks, hoping that his father would soon place an obolos coin in the mouth of his corpse so that he could pay to cross, too. Otherwise, he’d be damned to wander the banks here as a dismal shade, trapped between this world and the human one.
And as long as he was on this side, he wouldn’t be able to drink from the Lethe and forget the pain of having lost Bethany and his son. He wouldn’t be able to take his place with Galen and all the others who’d fought under his banner and died for Didymos.
He glanced back as Charon’s skiff holding Ryssa and Apollodorus vanished into the mists. His father had given them coins. Was it possible that his father had intentionally withheld his as a final punishment?
Surely not even his father would be so cold.
Who are you kidding? Of course he would. It’d been Styxx’s fault that his sister and nephew had died. Like Acheron, he’d been too drunk and high to help them.
This is the best I deserve. But what hurt most was the knowledge that Bethany would never join him here. She would go to Anubis when she died. Most likely his son would, too.
So here he would stay, alone, unable to forget them, with the knowledge that even in the end, his father hadn’t cared enough to tend his corpse.
Styxx was so cold his hands shook, but there was no way to warm himself. So he sat down to wait and to hope. But as more time passed and more and more people were ferried across, he had no choice except to accept the fact that he would never cross over.
And he would never forget.
June 25, 9527 BC
Mount Olympus
Thin and small in stature with dark hair and eyes, Hermes flew through the hall of the gods until he stood before his father, Zeus. Hermes wasn’t sure what was going on here, but most of the gods were gathered and lounging about as if the world was not about to end.
They ignored Hermes until he spoke. “You know the saying, don’t kill the messenger? Hold that thought, really, really close to your hearts.”
Zeus scowled at him as he stood up from the chair where he’d been playing chess with Poseidon. Dressed in a flowing white stola and chlamys, Zeus had sho
rt blond hair and vividly blue eyes. “What’s going on?”
Hermes gestured toward the wall of windows that looked down onto the human realm. “Have any of you taken a look out at Greece in the last, say, hour or so?”
Sitting at a banquet table with Aphrodite, Athena, and Artemis, Apollo rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively at Hermes’s panic. “What? Are they reacting to the fact I cursed the Apollites for murdering my mistress and son? It’s none of their business.”
Hermes shook his head in a gesture of sarcastic denial. “I don’t think that bothers them nearly as much as the fact that the island of Atlantis is now gone and the Atlantean goddess Apollymi is cutting a swathe through our country, laying waste to everyone and everything that she comes into contact with.”
The messenger god turned a smug look to Apollo. “And in case you’re curious, she’s headed straight for us, screaming your name. I could be really wrong here, but I’m guessing the goddess of destruction is extremely pissed … at you.”
Apollo gaped at that disclosure. Why should Apollymi be gunning for him?
Zeus turned on Apollo. “What have you done?”
Sputtering, Apollo blanched. “I cursed my people, not hers. I didn’t do anything to the Atlanteans, Papa. Unless their blood was mixed with my Apollites, they were unharmed by my curse. This is not my fault.”
Suddenly, he had a bad feeling as he faced his twin sister who sat across from him.
Artemis covered her mouth as she realized what pantheon Acheron must have belonged to. While she’d known he’d received god powers on his twenty-first birthday, she’d had no idea where they’d come from.
Terrified of what she and Apollo had unknowingly set into motion, she left the hall while the gods prepared for war, and went to her temple so that she could think through this without their angry shouts in her ears.
“What can I do?” She had absolutely no idea.
Just as Artemis was about to summon her koris to her, the three Fates appeared in her room. As triplets in the height of youthful beauty, their faces were perfect duplicates of each other. But that was the only thing they shared. The eldest, Atropos, had red hair, while Clotho was blond and the youngest, Lachesis, had dark hair. Daughters of the goddess of justice, no one was sure who their father was, but many suspected Zeus.
Styxx (DH #33) Page 65
