Elementals 4: The Portal to Kerberos

by Michelle Madow

  ELEMENTALS

  THE PORTAL TO KERBEROS

  Book Four in the Elementals Series

  Michelle Madow

  CHAPTER ONE

  I stared blankly at the spot where Ethan and Blake had been standing a few seconds earlier. I felt empty, as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

  Blake was gone. Ethan had turned on us and taken him into Kerberos—the prison world the Titans had been forced into three thousand years ago after rebelling against the Olympians.

  Kerberos was supposedly so terrifying that just being there could drive someone insane in weeks—or days.

  The portal to Kerberos had been sealed for thousands of years, until the Olympian comet appeared in the sky a few months ago. Now the portal was weakening, and less powerful monsters were slipping through, including the soul of the most dangerous monster himself—Typhon.

  It was supposed to be nearly impossible for Typhon to rise again, because after the Second Rebellion, Zeus split Typhon’s soul from his body, locking his soul in Kerberos and trapping his body under Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy. But now that Typhon’s soul had escaped from Kerberos, it wouldn’t take long for him to reach his body. And on the spring equinox—about six days from now—his mind and body would join and become one. If that happened, he would surely rampage the Earth, destroying all creatures in his path.

  Then on the summer solstice, the portal to Kerberos would open and all of the monsters locked within there—including the Titans—would escape and be free to rule again.

  Whether or not we stopped Typhon was a pivotal moment that would determine future events. We’d been told this by Nyx, the primordial deity of night itself who could travel between worlds and see all possible futures. If we stopped Typhon, we would have a chance to seal the portal to Kerberos, locking the Titans and all the other monsters inside. If we failed to stop him, we would be unable to close the portal, and war with the Titans would be inevitable.

  The world might never recover from the devastation that war would bring.

  The only way we could stop Typhon was by bringing the head of Medusa with us to Mount Etna, waiting for the moment he re-joined with his body, and forcing him to look into Medusa’s eyes so he would turn to stone. Getting Medusa’s head was difficult, and we’d lost one of our own—Kate—in the fight. She’d been turned to stone by Medusa. But we did get the head.

  Once we used it to destroy Typhon, we would close the portal. Then we would research to discover if there was a way to reverse Medusa’s curse.

  Kate was one of us, and we wouldn’t give up on her until we’d explored every possible way to save her.

  But now Ethan had turned on us, taking Medusa’s head—and Blake—with him to Kerberos. He’d made some kind of deal with Helios that if he stole the head and brought it to the Titans in Kerberos, Helios would bring Ethan’s twin sister Rachael back from the dead and would protect him and his family when the Titans rose again.

  Now I stood there, staring at the muddy portal to Kerberos, waiting for Blake to emerge. He would be holding Medusa’s head and smiling, he would tell us how he’d burned Ethan to a crisp, and then he would ask when the next flight to Italy was so we could go to Mount Etna and turn Typhon to stone.

  I reached for the knife in my boot and waited for what felt like an eternity, ready to fight in case Ethan came out as well.

  But the spot in front of the portal remained empty.

  Blake wasn’t coming out.

  Which gave me only one option—I had to go in there and get him myself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I ran toward the portal, but the air itself pushed against me. I couldn’t move. I ran harder, trying to use sheer determination to break through the wall, but it was hopeless.

  “Chris!” I dropped my arms to my sides and glared at him. “Stop using your power. Let me go.”

  “No,” he said, and the wind grew stronger, sounding like a storm as it rushed past my ears. “You know what Nyx—and Darius—told us. We can’t go in there. It’s not safe.”

  “What if we go in there and can’t get out?” Danielle added.

  “This is Blake we’re talking about.” I tried pushing against the wall of air again, but I was hopeless against Chris’s power. I banged my fists against it and screamed. “He’s in there, and who knows what he’s facing?” I said. “We can’t leave him there alone.”

  “I know,” Danielle said. “I agree with you.”

  “Oh.” I looked at her and tilted my head, confused. “Then why aren’t you trying to come with me?”

  “Because we can’t run in there unprepared, with barely any weapons and no idea what we’ll be up against,” she said. “We need a plan.”

  “But we can’t just leave Blake in there with Ethan,” I said, pointing at the portal. “The longer he’s in there… who knows what’s happening to him? If it were me Ethan pulled in there, Blake would have followed in a second.”

  “I would have held him back, just like I did to you,” Chris said.

  “What if it were Kate?” I shot back, although I looked down and pressed my lips together, regretting my words instantly. “I’m sorry…” I told him, although from the empty look in his eyes, I could tell there was no taking it back. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “No.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “You did mean it. And I get why you said it. Because if it were Kate, I would try running in there after her, too. But I’m sure that one of you would do everything you could to stop me. Because Danielle’s right. We need a plan. So…” He rubbed his hands together, looking back and forth at both of us. “What’s the plan?”

  I looked to Danielle, since she was the one who had mentioned coming up with a plan in the first place. Chris did the same.

  She took a deep breath and stared up at the ceiling, her forehead crinkled as she thought. “Darius, Hypatia, and Jason are all back at Darius’s,” she finally said, re-focusing on us. “We should go back there and tell them what happened. They have to know more about Kerberos than we do. They’ll help prepare us, and we’ll get the weapons we need from the training center so we’re ready.”

  “But how long will that take?” I asked. “We’ll have to get there, tell them the whole story… and then who knows what they’ll say or do? Every minute we waste here is more time that Blake’s in Kerberos, and every minute that he’s in there is a another minute when he’s in danger.”

  “And it’s more time that Ethan has to deliver Medusa’s head to the Titans,” Chris chimed in. “We have to get that head.”

  “I know.” Danielle bit her lip, pacing around the cave. She kept crossing in front of the child Cyclops, now a stone statue in the center. His face was twisted in agony, his eye wide, his mouth open mid-scream.

  My stomach twisted from looking at him, so I turned away.

  That Cyclops should have been delivered to the Cyclops’s island in the Aegean Sea. Instead, we’d let Ethan use the creature as a test subject for Medusa’s head. The head worked. But then, when our eyes were closed, Ethan grabbed Blake and threatened to turn us to stone if we opened our eyes to try to stop him.

  I felt like an idiot for trusting Ethan when he came back from Australia and said he wanted to help us fight.

  “What if you asked your dad for help?” Danielle stopped pacing, her eyes focused on me.

  “Apollo?” I reached for the sun pendant on my necklace, and she nodded, since of course she meant Apollo and not my step-dad, Jerry. “I don’t know,” I said, twisting the pendant around my fingers. “I’ve tried to contact him so many times since he sent me the necklace, and it’s never worked. I don
’t think he wants to help us.”

  It was either that or he just didn’t want anything to do with me. Maybe he was so disappointed in me that he’d given up on me. If I felt like an idiot for trusting Ethan, then Apollo probably thought I was an idiot, too.

  “Try one more time,” Chris said. “It’ll only take a few seconds, right? If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. But you have the necklace, so it’s worth a shot.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll try. But don’t get your hopes up.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the pendant and closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths to get focused.

  Apollo, I thought, but then I corrected myself. Dad. It felt strange to think of him as that when I’d never met him, but maybe a personal touch would encourage him to listen to me this time. We—Danielle, Chris, and I—need your help. Ethan just grabbed the head of Medusa and forced Blake to go with him through the portal to Kerberos. He made a deal with Helios where Helios will bring his sister back from Hades and keep him and his family safe in the upcoming war if he delivers Medusa’s head to the Titans. He forced Blake with him because he wanted revenge against me for Rachael’s death. We want to go into Kerberos to stop him, but we don’t have much time, and we don’t want to go in unprepared. I know you’re busy, but if there’s anything you can do to help us, we really need it right now, more than we’ve ever needed help from you before.

  Unable to think of anything else to add, I let go of the pendant and opened my eyes.

  “Well?” Danielle’s hands were on her hips, and she watched me expectantly.

  Before I could answer, an orb of light as bright as the sun filled the room. It was so intense that I had to shield my eyes and turn away.

  After a few seconds, the light faded. Figuring it was safe to look, I lowered my hand, turning back to where the light had been.

  Standing in its place was a man as tall as a model, with a lean, sculpted body and hair as blond as mine. In tight jeans, a casual blazer, and a designer scarf, he looked like he’d stepped right off a runway for a hipster fashion show. The only thing that clashed with his outfit was the large sports bag slung over his shoulder. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, but his skin was so smooth that he could have been ageless. And his resemblance to me was unmistakable.

  “Apollo?” I said, my voice cracking when I said his name. “Dad?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You called, and I came,” he said, as if he hadn’t ignored my call every other time I’d tried. “From what I heard, you’re in a bit of a bind, aren’t you?”

  I stared at him, shocked that he was here. I knew he was my father, but it was difficult to actually believe it now that he was standing in front of me. Mainly because he appeared to be only a few years older than me. He could have blended in with the college kids who hung out in the city—minus the unearthly radiance that would make him stand out from them all.

  Being here with him now, I had no idea what to say. This was the first time I’d ever been face to face with my father. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him. Why did he desert my mom when he learned she was pregnant? Why didn’t he tell her the truth about who he was? Why didn’t he want to be in our lives? Why didn’t he feel the need to let me know that I was a demigod? And why didn’t he care about ever getting to know me?

  I suspected I already knew the answer—it was because he was a god—and family and relationships didn’t have the same meanings to gods as they did to mortals. Still, I wanted to hear him say it. No apology could ever take back the years of him being gone, but it would be better than nothing.

  But I swallowed down my questions, trying to get ahold of myself. I hadn’t called Apollo here so we could have a heart to heart. I called him here because we needed his help. And we needed it now.

  “Thank you for coming.” I stood straighter, finally finding my voice again. “We need to go to Kerberos as quickly as possible so we can help Blake fight off Ethan, and bring Medusa’s head back to Earth. I tried to run in there the moment they disappeared, but Chris and Danielle stopped me. They said we needed a plan. So… I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Smart move not running straight into that portal,” he said, glancing at it in distaste. “You would have been in for quite the shock when you crossed through.”

  “We know it’s dangerous for mortals to go into Kerberos,” Danielle said. “But what about gods? What would happen if you went into Kerberos to bring back Medusa’s head?”

  I twisted around to look at her, shocked. We hadn’t discussed asking Apollo to go into Kerberos for us. It made sense, of course—he had a better shot at surviving in there than we did—but it seemed presumptuous to ask him for such a huge favor.

  Although it wouldn’t really be a favor, would it? He needed the Titans to stay in Kerberos just as much as we did. I didn’t know what the Titans would do to the Olympians if they escaped and regained power, but I doubted it would be good.

  “You’re right that if I could enter Kerberos, I would have an easier time retrieving Medusa’s head than the three of you would,” Apollo said. “But unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately for me—the primordial deities are the only gods who can enter Kerberos. They can cross dimensions without needing to use a portal. No other gods can do that—including the Olympians or the Titans. The portal is weak enough right now that most creatures who reach the entrance can cross through, but their auras aren’t anywhere close to as strong as a god’s. No gods will be able to pass through until the summer solstice, when the portal is open completely. So my crossing into Kerberos to retrieve Medusa’s head for you is not an option.”

  I almost thanked him for offering if he were able to, but I stopped myself. Because he hadn’t actually said he would have done it if he could. He’d just said it would have been easier for him to do than it would be for us. It wasn’t the same thing.

  “So then we’ll go through ourselves,” I said instead. “Like I tried to do the minute Ethan and Blake disappeared through the portal.”

  “Your friends were right in stopping you,” Apollo said. “And you were right in calling me for help.”

  “I almost didn’t,” I muttered, unable to meet his eyes. “You hadn’t come any other time I asked for help. I didn’t think it would work this time, either.”

  “I didn’t come those other times because while you may have thought you needed my help, you didn’t truly need it.” He held his gaze with mine, watching me closely. “Mortal parents nowadays do everything for their children—but I am not a mortal, and you are not a human child. You’re a demigod. And you must know that the relationships that gods have with our children cannot be compared to mortal relationships. We watch out for our children from afar, and it’s assumed that our children know that we’re keeping an eye on them. But we expect them to fend for themselves. It’s the best way that you can grow, so you can become the strongest version of yourself as possible. We only interfere if it’s absolutely necessary.”

  I thought it sounded like an archaic and aloof parenting method, but then again, Apollo was thousands of years old. And as he stood there in front of us, his skin so bronze that it appeared to glow with the light of the sun itself, I couldn’t forget that while he was my father, he was also a god. Our relationship would never be normal.

  But I still wished things could have been different between us.

  I was afraid to tell him that though, because I had a feeling he would just tell me there was no changing the way things were. And anyway, we had more important issues to discuss, since every moment we spent here was time lost going after Ethan in Kerberos.

  “Since you’re here now, you must want to help us,” I said instead. “Right?”

  “Correct.” He removed the sports bag from his shoulder and placed it at his feet. “The three of you are right that your best course of action is to enter the portal to Kerberos to take back Medusa’s head. You’re also right that going in there without the appropriate k
nowledge and tools would be unwise. So I’ve come to help you solve both of those problems.”

  “Great.” Chris rubbed his hands together and glanced down at the bag. “If this is anything like the mint Zeus gave me to amp up my power so I could fly the yacht over Charybdis, then I bet it’s gonna be good.”

  “I assure you—what’s in that bag is far sleeker than a mint.” Apollo scrunched his nose, as if Zeus’s gift appalled him. “But before I present your gifts to you, I need to warn you—Kerberos is a realm accessible from Earth, but it’s not actually a part of Earth. It’s part a different dimension. Your elemental powers are linked to the Earthly dimension. Therefore, you won’t be able to access your abilities while you’re in Kerberos.”

  “What?” Chris’s mouth dropped open. “Without our powers, how are we supposed to fight?”

  “You’re descendants of gods, and Nicole is a demigod,” Apollo said. “Fighting is in your blood. Unfortunately, most of your kind has become weak in the past century, growing comfortable in a time of peace and safety. But as you’ve seen from your training, you pick up on the skills of combat faster than a human ever could. You can do this.

  “Nevertheless, Kerberos is a deadly place for mortals who have only been training for a few months. Which is why I brought you each a gift that will help you while you’re there. But before I present them to you, I must ask you one important question.” He paused, taking time to look each of us straight in the eye.

  I fidgeted under his gaze, but I didn’t break eye contact with him. I was strong. And I wanted him to know that.

  He nodded, apparently satisfied, and continued, “Now that you know your powers won’t work in Kerberos, do you still plan on making this journey?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. “Blake’s in there with Ethan—and with who knows what other monsters. We can’t just do nothing. Plus, we need Medusa’s head. We have to go in there. We don’t have a choice.”