by Helen Scott
“Have a seat, my queen,” said Emmett.
“Don’t I need to find the helm first?” I asked, looking around me as I finally took in the whole area and not just the throne.
“Something tells me the helm will find you,” Hunter said as cryptically as ever.
I scowled at him. Now was not the time for him to keep ideas to himself. When I didn’t move to the throne, he sighed dramatically and pointed to the top, the piece that I hadn’t been able to make out from the other end of the hall. In the middle sat what looked like a helmet, although the intricate design around it almost obscured it from view.
“So you think if I sit in this, the helm will just go poof and appear?” I made a little explosion gesture with my hands as I spoke, which made Hunter and Knox grin. When they didn’t say anything else, I just nodded and moved to sit on the throne.
The cold from the stone radiated through my jeans, making goosebumps break out all over my skin. As it spread, I realized that it wasn’t a natural cold. It was the kind of cold that reminded me of the space between realms.
My body froze to the throne, and light shimmered all around me. I had no idea if the guys could see it or not, but it reminded me of a Portuguese Man O’ War, beautiful but deadly. The stone seemed to vibrate around me as I waited for some indication of what was going on.
When I felt something touch the top of my head, I looked up only to find a helmet hovering above me. As I straightened my head, I felt the cool metal slip down over my hair, pushing my ponytail out of the way until it was fully seated, and then I screamed.
22
Nolan
Poppy’s scream was gut-wrenching. All four of us who had been waiting in the wings were up on the dais before anyone could even process what was happening. Knox and Emmett were trying to get to our girl, but there was some kind of invisible barrier around her that made it impossible to even touch her. Hunter was trying to get to the back of the throne but looked to be he encountering the same problem.
I pushed at the side of the throne but couldn’t even get my fingers within an inch of the stone. It felt as if my hands were in a wind tunnel and the air was forcing them away. When sweat started to trickle down the side of my face, I backed off. It was taking too much effort, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I knew I’d rather save my strength for the battle we were sure was coming. There were too many patrols and guards around for it not to happen.
As though they had heard my thoughts, the guys all stopped, waiting for some kind of signal from Poppy that she was okay. All of us were breathing hard from our efforts. I wasn’t sure if Hunter knew it, but his panic was on full display. It didn’t bother me. I knew Poppy would pull through—she always had—and I couldn’t start thinking she’d fail now when it was more important than ever that she didn’t.
Shadow and Derek turned from their positions and took up sentry duty as they looked out over the throne room. I wasn’t sure if they just felt it was the only productive thing to do or if they couldn’t look at our girl’s body anymore with her muscles standing out, taut with pain.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there like an idiot while the other guys ran around like headless chickens. When she stopped screaming, it felt like an eternity later, and when she disappeared from our sight, we all let loose a string of expletives that would have made a sailor proud.
My princess was gone, vanished, and I had no idea what had happened. The barrier between us and the throne fell, and we could touch it again. I watched with bated breath as Knox’s hands carefully moved over the seat, looking for any indication that she was still there somehow. When he found none, we all stood there awkwardly, clearly unsure what we should do.
A moment later, the throne room door burst open and a group of those Alpha soldiers came running through. We all flew into motion. Knox, Emmett, and I teleported through the shadows to get behind them, while Hunter, Shadow, Derek, and Cass ran down to face them head on.
I was expecting an all-out battle, but the men and women in the group fell to their knees, throwing their guns to the ground out of reach, and raising their hands into the air in surrender. I slowed as I approached them.
“Please, we give up!” the man in the middle of the group shouted.
We surrounded them without needing to talk about it. There were five of them total. Two women and three guys, all of which were outfitted in classic bad-guy attire of black cargo pants and long-sleeved tactical shirts. Weapons were undoubtedly sheathed on their ankles and thighs, and I felt fairly confident that we could take them all down in a matter of moments if this surrender turned out to be a ploy.
Hunter surprised me by being the one who addressed them. I had expected it to be Knox, but as I looked over at the bigger man, I could see that he was distracted, his gaze constantly going to the throne as though he expected our girl to reappear any moment. Wherever Poppy had gone, I hoped she came back soon. My heart couldn’t take it if she just disappeared.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Hunter asked.
“We were members of Alpha. We ran away from the fight between Alpha and some zombies. All we want is to find a way home,” the woman on the left said as everyone else seemed to clam up, afraid to admit they were part of an invading force.
“A fight between Alpha and zombies? Sounds like a good thing to me,” Emmett said.
Hunter nodded. It was barely perceptible, but it was there. The only thing we could hope for was to have the agents of Hel wipe Alpha out before they came for us. At least that way we wouldn’t be battling two forces at the same time. “Where’s the fight?”
“On a bridge, I think, although this place is confusing,” the man in the middle responded. “The thing was huge, and I think it was the entrance to this place, although we spent most of our time on it running for our lives and looking over our shoulders.”
“We can return you to your home, but you will have to wait until the fight is over,” Hunter said.
“Thank you!” The woman practically fell from her kneeling position onto the ground so that her body was prostrate in front of us.
“If you want to make it home, then you’ll need to help us defend the throne,” I said, unwilling to throw away this opportunity.
Hunter and Emmett glared at me over the group’s heads.
“Of course! Whatever you need,” she said.
“We’ll take your guns and any other weapons you have on you for now, and then if anyone makes it to the throne room, we’ll give them back so you can defend yourselves.”
“Nolan . . .” Hunter’s warning was clear. I was supposed to shut up.
“They are highly trained combatants. It would be a waste just to have them sitting in here on their asses. Plus, one of us would have to sit out of the fight to guard them.”
“If they are going to fight, then they should come and fight with us,” Knox said.
“Wait, where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m taking the battle to them. We can’t risk anyone getting this far with our current situation.”
“We’ll go with you if you think you’re on the winning side,” one of the men currently kneeling on the floor said.
Hunter sighed. “He’s right. I want each of you to go let our allies know that we are fighting. Cass, let Hypnos and Thanatos know. They won’t want to come, but remind them that they serve their queen. You can tell them it’s a direct order from her if you need to. Shadow, you’ve got the furies and Hecate. Emmett gets Pandora. Knox, you get Achilles. Derek, you get this group back down to the fight. We will all lock onto your energy to find the battle. Nolan, I need you to get Lycus and anyone else you can find in the Halls of Night . Get them to the battle and then get back here. You and I are going to stay here and guard the throne for as long as possible.”
I nodded and wrapped the shadows around me, filling my head with the details of the Halls of Night until I was sure when I opened my eyes I would be there. I didn’t want to leave Poppy, but I
didn’t have much of a choice. We needed to keep everyone away from the throne room so she had a chance to get herself back there. If that meant taking the fight to them, then that was what we would do. I’d kick as much ass as I could for a few minutes before coming back to Hunter and the—hopefully—no-longer-empty throne room.
Poppy
The cool, smooth metal of the helmet that slipped so gracefully down over my head was completely at odds with the searing pain that spread through my body. Every inch of me felt as if it were being stretched to the maximum, stopping just short of the muscles and ligaments tearing.
A cool, wet sensation covered my legs, and for a moment, I was actually worried I had peed myself from the pain, but the sensation was climbing higher and higher on my legs before it started moving up my abdomen. I wrestled my eyes open after feeling as if I had been asleep for a hundred years. What I saw was impossible, but as I reached my hand out, I couldn’t deny the reality of what I felt.
I was floating in the ocean, my body draped over a thin piece of wood as I clung to it for dear life. As far as my eyes could see, there wasn’t a speck of land in sight, just wide-open ocean. I knew it was the ocean because of the salt water splashing in my face. There wasn’t a bird in the sky, and all I could hear was the waves lapping against one another while the wind gently whistled over the water.
Where the hell was I? And how had I arrived there?
I looked at the wood and saw the gold filigree of a name on the edge. It wasn’t the whole thing, but it was enough for me to know that it was some kind of shipwreck that I had been involved in.
How had I moved from the Underworld to the open ocean?
A chilling thought clawed its way up my spine and dug around in my head until I had no choice but to acknowledge it. What if my guys, the Underworld, Alpha, the agents of Hel . . . What if it had all been a hallucination from dehydration or overexposure to the elements? Things like that had happened before. That would mean that my guys weren’t real, and that I wasn’t the future queen of the Underworld. I was just a girl fighting for her life on a piece of boat. The thought soured my stomach and made my chest ache with grief for what I had lost.
I tried to think back, to remember what had happened that had led me to my current situation, but all I could remember were the seven gorgeous, loving men who had been about to kick ass with me. I didn’t remember getting on a boat; hell, I didn’t even know anyone who owned a fishing boat, let alone a yacht or something bigger, which was definitely where the piece of siding currently keeping me alive had come from.
My mind swam with confusion, and all I wanted to do was wake up from this nightmare. As I looked out over the ocean, a dark shadow was making its way toward me. I kicked my legs, trying to get out of its path, but it only course corrected so it could follow.
The beat of my heart became frantic as it seemed to resonate out of my throat and make my whole body pulse with terror. I needed to get out of the water, but there was nowhere for me to go. I was trapped in the most open area in the whole world and was about to be eaten by a shark.
As though my thoughts conjured it to make its presence known, the iconic dorsal fin drifted up through the surface of the water as it got ever closer. I hated sharks. And the open ocean.
Too many horror movies as a kid had left me with a healthy respect for one of the largest predators of the ocean. Only killer whales scared me more. I didn’t care how cute they were in the movies.
That was exactly what my current situation felt like, though: a movie. It was as if someone had delved into my head and pulled out some of my greatest fears and plopped me down in the middle of them with no regard to my backstory whatsoever.
I knew the guys were real. I felt it in my bones. My body remembered what it was like to be touched and kissed by them. I remembered what they tasted like. If anything wasn’t real, it was me being in the middle of the ocean.
As the dorsal fin of a giant shark began to circle me, all I could think about was what any one of the guys would do if he were in my position. Most of them would probably get in a fist fight with the damn thing, which might be my only option.
When it circled closer, I kicked out, catching it on the side of its head with my feet. All I needed to do was make myself an unappetizing meal. If I was too much work, then it might just leave me alone. I swallowed my fear down and let my instincts take over, kicking and striking whenever it came close enough without letting go of the only thing keeping me afloat.
I felt my feet connect with something squishy and knew I had hurt it when it circled further away from me. We repeated our ocean dance a few more times, and each time I was able to hurt it, it stayed away for longer until it just swam away.
Out of habit, I threw my arms up in victory and began to sink, getting a mouthful of saltwater as a result. I kicked hard with my feet and broke the surface of the water once more, only the whole world shifted, and the ocean vanished.
The warm, salt-free water of a shower beat down on me as I spluttered and took a gasp of air. I yanked the curtain back and stepped out of the tub. I was still in my clothes, which was weird, and I was soaking wet. How long had I been standing in the shower? Was I imagining the ocean or was I imagining the shower? Or both?
Confusion clouded my mind, and all I wanted was to get dry. I pulled a towel that had been folded and left by the sink, just as I normally did when I took a shower, and scrubbed it over my face. When I pulled it away and started to unfold it, a spider as big as the palm of my hand dropped from it.
Had I seriously just wiped a spider over my face? A shiver rushed down my spine, making my whole body shake. There were few things that creeped me out more than spiders. As I jumped off the bathmat and went to the sink, I couldn’t help the little squeak that escaped me.
I took a breath, as the spider didn’t appear to be moving toward me, and squeezed my wet hair over the sink to ring some of the moisture out. As soon as the water ran down into the drain, the darkness started moving.
Spiders came up through the drain, climbing over one another to get out. When I realized it was one of my worst nightmares come to life, I screamed. My hand reached for the giant can of hairspray I kept at the back of the sink, and I began coating them all in the sticky substance.
While I might hate spiders with every fiber of my being, I wouldn’t let them run me out of my own damn home. I scrambled around the cabinets, looking for anything else I could use, when the orange plastic of a lighter caught my eye. In an instant, what had been a useless can of hairspray that was only slowing the nasty little arachnids down turned into a flamethrower. I heard the crack of the porcelain before I could see it.
I opened the door to get away from the spiders that were still coming from the drain in a never-ending stream, the likes of which would make every horror movie jealous. As I stepped out, I felt as if I had slipped off my feet and was sitting down once more.
My mind was still reeling from what had just happened. Between the ocean and the spiders, I couldn’t really make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I was back in the throne room in the Underworld, and all I could see was destruction.
Rubble and bodies were scattered all over the floor to the point that it kept me frozen in my seat. Fear rolled in my gut, bringing the meager contents of my stomach back up before I could even get out of the chair. Fortunately, I was able to turn my head to the side enough so that I wasn’t covered in my own vomit.
As I surveyed the room, all I could focus on were the faces that seemed to be turned to the throne, to me, and the terror that had frozen their expressions in death. When my eyes locked on first Knox’s face, soon followed by Derek’s, Shadow’s, and eventually all my guys, a strangled cry escaped me. Everyone was dead.
23
Poppy
I rose on shaky feet, my hand gripping the arm rest for support as I kept blinking, trying to make what I was seeing untrue. The shallow breaths I was taking meant that I was well on my way to hyperventilating, which I
couldn’t afford to do. I needed to find out what had happened.
My legs carried me down to the bodies of my lovers even though I hadn’t felt as if I had asked them to. I dropped to the floor by Knox, and a sob tore from my throat. They couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible.
The other bodies in the room were a mixture of Alpha members and agents of Hel. Something had happened here, and when I found out who was behind this, I would be kicking wholesale ass. I didn’t care who it was, which pantheon they were from, how powerful they were supposed to be, oh, no. All I cared about was channeling my grief and distress into actionable steps. I couldn’t let my emotions stop me, not now.
I placed a gentle kiss on Knox’s forehead and stood, ignoring every other body in there as I made my way to the main doors of the room. I couldn’t stop at each of my guys’ bodies; otherwise, my grief would overwhelm me and I would be useless. My plan was simple—follow the destruction to its source, or if that failed, call on the spirits of those who had died in the throne room to get answers, not that I wanted to disturb their afterlife, but I needed to hunt down who was responsible.
My hand connected with the door, and I gave an almighty shove. The heavy door swung open on the well-oiled hinges, and as I stepped through, I took a deep breath, readying myself mentally to face the destruction that I knew I would encounter.
When everything disappeared, I got angry. Something was going on, and I hated not understanding what it was. As my vision cleared, Hunter was kneeling in front of me. My breath rushed out of me in a giant whoosh, and the shield I had been building up to face everything disappeared as I reached out and touched his freckled face.
“You’re real?” I asked softly.
He nodded. “Anything you just saw was the helmet testing you. None of it was real.”
