The Petros Chronicles Boxset

by Diana Tyler

  For he broke the chains of darkness and set the captives free.

  A new age dawned for all mankind; a time for Petros to believe or deny,

  Many accepted and followed the Way, while others let truth pass them by.

  The Ashers—your family—were tainted by one whose sin-sick heart turned black,

  Who was corrupted in youth, deceived and seduced, all part of Apollo’s attack.

  A new wave of evil washed over the world, all traces of Phos were destroyed,

  Man’s connection with Duna was completely erased, replaced by Hades’ void.

  The Moonbow, bright sign of redemption, placed long ago in the night,

  Has appeared again to signal an ending to hell and Petros’s plight.

  The brothers foresaw a coming Vessel, for Iris’s prophecies they read,

  How quickly they forgot: Duna is always ten steps ahead.

  And so they’ve plotted and prepared, poised to pounce should an Asher rise,

  For although they cannot kill you, they can corrupt you with their lies.

  There is a way, there always is, to escape the enemy’s snare,

  But you must seek it first with a single, heartfelt prayer.

  Your doma is not enough, for to faith it must be tied,

  Strength and wits can save no mortal, nor heaven’s gates be pried.

  You have never been alone, despite your many years of sadness,

  Duna’s eyes have been upon you; he can fill your soul with gladness.

  The old man and those around him who wander through these vales of dust,

  Can be restored with all of Petros, if in Duna’s might you’ll trust.

  The scroll jumped to the grass from Chloe’s fingertips and curled closed on its own accord. With all feeling draining from her limbs, she shrank onto the ground in frozen silence while Anastasia interpreted the message for Calix.

  Carya’s words swirling thick in her mind, Chloe watched as the pair locked arms and began to dance, pure joy shining through their eyes and infusing their faces with youthful euphoria. She marveled at the miraculous way hope could transform people, even if it was founded on nothing but delusion.

  “You believe this?” Chloe snatched the parchment and crammed it back into its container.

  Anastasia stopped dancing and held a hand to her collarbone as she caught her breath. She kneeled beside Chloe and tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “Sometimes it takes falling into the pit of Petros to start believing in the impossible.” Her eyes welled with tears as she leaned in closer. “I wish you could meet all the men and women here who have been praying for centuries to an unknown, unknowable god, pleading with him to help us.” She smiled at the sky, her moist eyes twinkling. “And he heard us. He heard us…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  NIGHTMARE

  Chloe awoke to the wetness of saliva pooling around her chin. Rolling onto her back, she noticed a constellation of green, glowing stars stuck to the ceiling. She then realized that her head was supported by an abnormally squishy down pillow—her pillow. The sheets she clutched were teal with white polka dots, and at her feet was folded a patchwork quilt—her quilt.

  Her antsy eyes darted right, where a shaft of warm light shone through the window, illuminating dust particles in the air. She threw off the covers and ran to it, hardly registering that the plush carpet had been removed and replaced by a surface that was hard and scalding hot against her soles. With a yelp, she scampered toward the window on her tippy-toes, desperate to see the sunrise and hear the morning birds.

  Behind her, something fell to the floor with a clear ringing sound then skidded toward her. She held her breath and turned around, cold beads of sweat beginning to trickle beneath her sackcloth tunic. She looked down to see Carya’s silver cylinder glinting up at her.

  “Carya?” she whimpered, but she knew, by the malevolent presence she could sense drawing closer, that Carya was nowhere nearby. In the darkness that filled the rest of the room, she could see nothing except the outline of the bed, just another trick.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The voice sounded as though it were made up of many voices, some grating and shrill, some breathy and childlike, and others low-pitched and gravelly, all with a mechanical, almost robotic, undercurrent running through them. It sent a chill straight through to Chloe’s bones.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “Where am I? Where are Calix and Anastasia?”

  Chloe leapt to the window and seized the iron bars, using them to pull herself up off the scorching floor. She sat on the narrow stone ledge and pressed her nose through the bars, straining to view her surroundings. There was nothing but fiery red sand dunes as far as the eye could see, and a sky tinted a nauseous shade of green, the color of mold. It was a scene from a recurring nightmare she used to have after her parents died, one a drug from Doctor Leandros had banished. I’m dreaming, she told herself.

  “No such luck,” called a young man’s voice.

  A bolt of neon-red lightning flashed past Chloe’s ear with a terrifying roar, striking behind her with a deafening crash. She jerked back as the bars began to buzz with an electronic hum, closing together no matter how hard she pulled against them. She gave up trying when her knuckles were within centimeters of each other, seconds away from being smashed.

  Thick trails of smoke filtered in from outside, and with a cough, she sprang back down to the floor, only to find more smoke billowing, forming a dense cloud around the conflagration that used to be her bed. She wondered which would make her pass out first: the fumes or the pain of third-degree burns on her feet. The part of Carya’s message that said she couldn’t be killed was of little comfort to her; she would rather die than be tortured and toyed with.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” said the first voice, or group of voices. “We let your friends be after we forced the poppy capsule down your throat. Now tell us, what was in the Vessel, Vessel?”

  The floor turned to ice beneath her feet, which promptly sizzled and stung with relief. She picked up the cylinder and emptied the rolled-up parchment into her hand. “Could you not see for yourselves?”

  “Watch your tongue, or I’ll slice it in half.”

  Out of the smoke stepped the owner of the voices: a tall, wild-eyed man a little older than Chloe, with bulging black eyes and two-inch-long fangs protruding from his mouth. From neck to ankles, his body was covered in what appeared to be lion’s fur, and his feet were cloven hooves. His hands were humanlike, save for the tawny curved talons he had for fingers; Chloe realized he could slice her tongue in two. She also discovered the reason for his strange voice: he was four, perhaps five, animals in one.

  Just as she was about to speak, the other being leapt in front of her on all fours, a leonine tail swishing against her shoulder and cheek. He began to unfold upwards onto his human feet, and her gaze rose along with him, meeting his slanted, green feline eyes.

  He, too, was a hybrid creature, half lion, half man as far as she could tell. His lion’s head was framed by a short, shaggy mane, and his furry arms and legs were covered in brown rosettes, indicating to Chloe that he was young as well. His extremities, however, were completely human, as was his adolescent voice.

  “Speak politely, Deimos, or let me change the scenery. She’ll not talk if she’s scared out of her wits.” He pivoted toward Chloe, his round pupils dilating. “What’s it like to be living in your own nightmare?”

  “She isn’t scared, she’s stupid,” said Deimos’s horrid harmony of voices. “Some Asher you are.” He began to stalk the width of the room, his tasseled tail swooshing violently back and forth. “What’s your doma, anyway?” He turned to his brother. “Phobos, I think there’s a very real possibility that our overlords captured the wrong mortal.”

  Phobos dropped to all fours and lunged forward, taking deep whiffs of her through his muzzle. “I don’t sense any power in you.” He yanked her hand toward him and flicked it hard with his finger. “N
o fire in those palms, like your ancestor, Iris?”

  “You’re right,” said Chloe, pulling back her hand. “There’s nothing special about me. This has all been a mistake.” It was a lie she’d believed as truth until Carya’s message had arrived. And still she had no clue what to do with it.

  “Duna doesn’t make mistakes,” said Deimos. “We know he sent you the message. There’s no other means by which it could have entered the Fields.”

  “We intend to find out what it said.” Phobos’s hot breath reeked of sulfur. He spat at the cylinder in her hand before backing away. Then he lifted his hands and began chanting something in Próta.

  A faint squeaking noise followed, and Chloe’s eyes caught movement from a crevice in the corner of the limestone ceiling. The squeaking grew louder as a pair of wings flapped open.

  “We heard that you like bats.” Deimos smiled, clicking his talons against each other.

  Chloe felt herself beginning to panic. How did they know she had a fear of bats? Ever since she’d been to the zoo and learned that a species of bat subsists on blood, she’d been terrified of them.

  She turned and hugged the wall, squeezing her eyes shut and breathing as deeply as she could to keep her anxiety at bay. She heard the bars on the window beside her groan, and then watched as they were snapped like twigs and ripped out of their bracket by an invisible force.

  A black cloud of rushing wings flooded the empty space and descended upon Chloe, the bats’ tiny claws scratching through her tunic, their harsh squawks and high-pitched squeals piercing her eardrums. She crumbled to the floor and covered her head, feeling the bats pull and tangle her hair. After a few minutes, she began to scream. A few seconds after that, she began to cry.

  “Enough,” she heard Deimos say. He was standing close, apparently looking on her torment with pleasure.

  Phobos chanted once more in Próta, and the bats disappeared in an instant, though their echoes still grated inside her ears.

  “If you won’t cooperate with us,” Deimos said, “I assure you we have plenty of methods that will get you to talk.”

  Chloe pressed herself up and sat against the wall, her tear-drenched hair stuck to her face. As a salty teardrop entered her lips, she was overcome with thirst…and immediately remembered the River Lethe. How long until she begged for water and forgot everything—and everyone—she ever knew?

  She could see no harm in telling them what Carya had said. They already knew she was the so-called Vessel. She was already trapped in a simulation of her utmost fears, surrounded by devils that would love nothing more than inventing new ways of making her suffer. Nothing could get worse.

  “She told me I was the Vessel,” she said. “That’s isn’t news to you.”

  “And what of your brother?” Phobos said, his mouth pulled back tightly in a snarl, revealing black gums, and every one of his canines and sharp incisors.

  Chloe’s heart pounded. She thought of Damian standing behind her at Lake Thyra, pleading with her to go home with him. How had he known she was there? Why had he been so concerned? Normally, Damian couldn’t care less about what she was up to. He must have known something. Maybe he’d had strange sightings of his own. Whatever the case, she couldn’t risk getting him involved in this, even if she ended up drinking from the Lethe and forgetting she ever had a twin.

  “She didn’t mention Damian,” she said flatly.

  “That’s not what we heard the fat man tell him,” said Deimos, the high register of his voice overpowering the others. He pawed impatiently at the floor with his hoof. “He told him he’s the Vessel as well.”

  “What fat man?” They’d truly lost her this time.

  “Your brother has befriended someone with some sensitive information,” began Phobos as he waved a hand toward the wall, beckoning the bars to return to the window, “which would greatly interest our masters if we prove it to be true.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that a jerk named Orpheus told me we both had domas and promised we would meet a woman named Iris who’d answer all our Asher questions.” She couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of her words. It was more preposterous than anything she could think up for her cartoons. “I never met a fat man.”

  “A decoy, perhaps,” murmured Phobos. “She’s the Vessel,” he said, louder. “Duna wouldn’t have prevented us from observing her the last few days if she wasn’t. The brother is meant to confuse us.”

  Chloe shrugged and started picking at her cuticles, trying in vain to get her mind off her parched tongue, which was presently glued to the roof of her mouth.

  “We’ll keep our eye on you,” bellowed Deimos’s baritone. He nodded to Phobos. “Wine.”

  Phobos cupped his hands together and whispered into them a conical gold cup, the shape of a donkey’s head.

  “Should we learn of your deceit,” Deimos said, “I will hold your head under the Lethe until it empties itself of every memory, leaving black weepy holes where images of your sweet mother and loving father used to be. And then I will waste no time securing an identical fate for your cursed twin. Seems appropriate, does it not?”

  Phobos laughed uproariously and handed the red wine to Chloe, purposefully sloshing some onto her tunic. “I have a better plan,” he said, as a long string of drool broke away, falling into the cup. “Just because there’s never been two Vessels at once doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.” He knelt beside her, an amber eye reflecting the dying firelight behind him.

  “Pray tell, what is your plan?” said Deimos.

  Phobos continued to stare and sniff at Chloe, as if her scent or body language might give something away. “We act preemptively. We go to Apollo and deliver our concern. He will dispatch Hermes to go and lure the brother, just as his shrewd sister was lured.”

  Chloe set the wine aside as she turned her face away. But Phobos grabbed her chin and jerked it toward him, pinching the skin. “You’ll be reunited with your brother after all.”

  Chloe wanted to scream at them, to plead with them to uncover whatever decency, whatever shred of compassion they might have, buried deep beneath their callous words and heinous exteriors. But despite herself, she couldn’t speak, nor cry, nor move.

  Then she was overcome with a feeling of stillness, an uncanny quiet falling like snow, spreading from her heart to the top of her head. An inner voice, like a ray of sun through a wintry sky, whispered through it: Call to me…

  Phobos sneered at her silence, then skulked away from the wall and stood beside Deimos.

  “A good plan,” Deimos said, nodding to his cohort. He turned to the burning bed. “Phobos, be a good host and give our guest a new bed. The dirty floor won’t do for the blessed Vessel.” His myriad voices erupted in a chorus of sardonic laughter.

  Phobos raised his hands and waved them through the air, conducting a symphony of dark magic as he incanted another spell. Seconds later, a new bed appeared over the debris of the last. The comforter folded back and the pillows fluffed all by themselves. “Get your rest. We’ll throw a welcoming party when your brother arrives.”

  Then Phobos snapped his fingers, and the tormentors vanished, leaving her alone, yet somehow not feeling so.

  “Duna?”

  As she whispered the name, a soft haze of light poured in through the iron bars, stretching into the cell, suffusing it with the golden gleam of moonlight. Chloe froze as the wine beside her evaporated from the cup, making room for water bubbling into it like a spring.

  She took the cup and drank, cautiously at first, just a drop to note its effects. When nothing happened, she tested twice more, and still she felt just the same. Finally, she gulped it fast, only to see it refill again, and then once more until her thirst was slaked.

  Her mind remained clear, her memories intact as life, and hope, flowed into her veins.

  “Thank you, Duna.” She looked into the light, and began to weep. And then she prayed, for the first time in her life. “Please…help me.”
>
  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ORACLE

  Damian lay awake in his bed. He had tossed and turned all night, rehashing in his mind all that had transpired since his odd encounter at Lake Thyra. The lady in the mist, the Moonbow through the window, Ethan’s story about his father, the suitcase filled with magical jars… None of it made sense, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to report a word of it. He felt paralyzed, stuck inside a deep, troubled sleep he couldn’t snap out of.

  He had to choose a side. It had never been his nature to stay neutral on anything, and for the first time in his life he felt himself siding with his heart instead of his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t dismiss the claims of Katsaros, Ethan or Lydia as conspiracy. They resonated with him. They stirred something inside him, opening a compartment of his brain—or his soul perhaps, if there was such a thing—that demanded attention.

  He shouldn’t have left Ethan’s house. He should have reined in his temper and given himself time to process the barrage of information instead of rejecting it altogether. But he’d never been one for temperance.

  A bird pecked at the window. He turned to face it and was relieved to see that morning was still a good ways off. It’d been the longest night off his life; one he wished would never end. In just a few hours, Chloe’s absence would be noticed at school, and that, he was sure, would mark the beginning of a very long, very thorough, very ugly investigation.

  Nervous energy coursed through Damian’s body. He made a clicking noise with his tongue as his hands drummed along the side of the bed. He lifted his head and repeatedly dropped it against the pillow.

  When his pulse picked up, he kicked off the covers and rocked onto the floor, feeling the sudden urge to run or to wrestle, anything to burn off this anxiety. He didn’t have a key to the gym, but he could hit the track early. With the meet coming up, no one would think a thing if they saw him running sprints at five in the morning. That’s what he would do: run until his brain and body were too exhausted to bother him with useless whys and what-ifs.