I steadied my bow and eyed up the red dot on the harpy’s chest where the arrow had pierced her skin the first time. Erebus watched me, an annoyingly arrogant smirk on his face. I didn’t know if he was smirking because he thought I was going to miss, or because he was confident I could do this.
I had to prove the latter. Because he was right—it would be humiliating if I missed.
And so, zeroing in on the target, I pulled back on the string and sent the arrow flying toward the harpy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Bullseye!” Erebus announced, dropping his hold on the harpy and letting her crash back onto the ground.
I jogged back over to where they were all standing, leaning forward to inspect the shot. “That’s not a bullseye,” I said, yanking the arrow out of the harpy’s chest. “If it were a bullseye, there would still only be one hole. But there’s not. There are two.”
“Seriously?” Danielle rolled her eyes. “They’re like, an inch apart, and you were fifty feet away. Seems like a bullseye to me.”
“It was a good shot,” I agreed. “But not a bullseye.”
“You children of Apollo are so picky,” Erebus said. “I told you to aim for the heart. Your arrow hit the heart. Thus… a bullseye.”
“At least you know you haven’t lost your ability to shoot,” Chris said. “So save that last active arrow for an impossible shot, all right?”
“I will,” I promised, adding the used arrow back into my quiver. With only three arrows left—and only one of them active—I would have to be careful to use the two used arrows only in situations where it would be possible for me to retrieve them.
“Now that that’s finished, you both need to hear what Erebus and I were discussing by the gate,” Danielle said, turning her attention to the god. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”
“You go ahead,” Erebus said. “Since it was your idea to ask in the first place.”
“Okay.” Danielle flipped her hair over her shoulder, and I had a feeling that she’d planned on being the one to tell us even before she’d asked Erebus. “First let me explain how I got to asking the question in the first place. You see, when anyone dies on Earth, they go to Hades—the underworld of Earth. So after the harpies died, I wondered… what happens when creatures die in Kerberos? Does Kerberos have an underworld of its own?”
“It’s a good question,” I said, and then I turned to Erebus. “Do creatures killed here even go anywhere? Or are they just gone forever?”
“No creature—mortal or immortal—is ever ‘gone forever,’” Erebus said. “The physical form may perish, but the soul is everlasting, and cannot be destroyed. And Danielle is correct that Kerberos has its own version of the underworld—a dark, miserable place where the soul takes no form. It floats alone in the shadows for all eternity, conscious and aware that it’s powerless to escape.”
“What happens to the creatures who die here who don’t deserve a place like that?” I asked. “Is there somewhere else they can go? Someplace more similar to Heaven?”
“Kerberos was created by the original primordial deity—Chaos—to imprison the most dangerous creatures on Earth,” he explained. “In the Second Rebellion, we—the primordial deities—knew that if the Titans won, there would be no future for this planet. And so, Nyx filled a comet with her magic and sent it soaring across the sky, opening the portal to Kerberos and gifting the Olympians with enough power to force all those who rebelled against them inside. Then, once the comet disappeared, the portal sealed. We hoped it would remain sealed forever. But as you know, that’s not what happened.”
“Clearly,” Danielle said. “Do you even know how we’re supposed to seal the portal? Because I know we need to seal it, but we still haven’t been told how to do that.”
“You’ll find out in time,” he said. “But I deviated from your original question. The short answer is—every creature in Kerberos is here for a reason. Once killed here, they have no opportunity for a pleasant afterlife because they do not deserve one.”
“What if one of us dies in Kerberos?” Chris asked. “We’re not prisoners here. Would we get sent to the underworld here, too?”
Erebus gazed up at the mountain and took a deep breath. “When Chaos created Kerberos, I don’t believe he took it into consideration that any creature would enter this world by choice,” he finally said. “It’s never been done before.”
“What about those born in Kerberos?” I asked. “Like the Cyclops who escaped through the portal. Why should he be punished when he couldn’t have even been alive during the Second Rebellion?”
“I assure you—he was alive in the Second Rebellion,” Erebus said. “When in Kerberos, no creature is able to age or procreate. Most of the Cyclopes actually supported the Olympians in the Rebellion. But there are extremists in all groups, and as such, there was a small sub-sect of Cyclopes who supported the Titans. The Cyclops who escaped was part of the sect. Do not be deceived by his age—Cyclopes age slower than humans. Though he appeared young, he was actually older than you. If Ethan hadn’t used Medusa’s head on him, he was most likely planning on doing something equally bad, if not worse, to you once you had him in that cave.”
“At least I don’t feel guilty anymore about having him turned to stone,” I said, remembering how I’d hesitated before Ethan had brought out the head.
“Ethan was correct in what he did,” Erebus agreed.
I nodded, remembering the Cyclops’s final scream as he turned to stone. Which of course reminded me of Kate’s final scream, which made my heart hurt for my lost friend. I wanted to believe that her final moment wasn’t painful, but given the agony in her scream, it was impossible to convince myself that that was true.
“So we have to make sure we stay alive while we’re in Kerberos,” Chris said, bringing me back into focus. “Not that I was planning on anything else, but we can’t, under any circumstances, end up in the underworld here.”
I shivered, not wanting to think about the consequences if that were to happen. At least on Earth I knew that when I died, I would be reunited with my loved ones in the afterlife. Not even having that to comfort me was unimaginable.
“The possibility of ending up in the underworld here scares me too,” Danielle said, her voice surprisingly soft. Then she stood straighter and rested her hand on the grip of her sword, her eyes strong with determination. “So we can’t let it happen. We have to get up that mountain, get the head, stop Ethan, and then all of us—Blake included—have to get out of here as fast as possible. Because the sooner we’re back to Earth, the safer we’ll be.”
“So let’s keep going,” I said, turning toward the mountain. Blake was up there, and we were going to find him. I refused to settle for anything less. “We have no time to waste.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Erebus opened the gate, and we all walked through, starting up the winding path that ascended the mountain. Surprisingly, nothing jumped into our way to try to kill us, and the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. A slight breeze blew against my skin, cooling off the places where I’d been bitten and stung by the wasps.
I didn’t want to say anything, because I was sure that once I did something would jump out at us and prove me wrong, but this area was actually pretty nice. I could only assume that after the Badlands, the Whispering Forest, the River of Dreams, the merpeople who tried to drown and devour us, the freezing rain that nearly wore us to exhaustion, and the harpies who’d wanted us dead, that most people didn’t make it this far. So the mountain didn’t need to set up any torturous traps.
If we didn’t have Erebus as our guide, I doubted that we would have made it this far, either.
“Is it just me, or is this place too good to be true?” Chris asked, also looking around as if waiting for something to attack.
“This area of Kerberos is deceptive,” Erebus warned us. “We have to keep moving, and we can’t stop until we reach the point where the grass is dead.”
“What happens if we stop?” I didn’t plan on stopping, since we needed to get up the mountain as quickly as possible, but still, I was curious.
“A lightning bolt will strike you down and cause you more pain than ever imaginable.”
“Oh.” I glanced up at the amber sky. “Good to know.” There were a few wispy clouds, but nothing that looked like it could create lightning. Still, I picked up the pace, just to be safe.
We walked for about three hours, making sure to keep moving. Finally, the grass ended abruptly and turned to dirt, forming a clear line along the land. I stepped over the line, taking a moment to uncap my water and take a sip.
Then the wind blew from up ahead, and I smelled something strange—something metallic and rusty.
“Do you all smell that?” I asked, sniffing the air some more.
“Yeah,” Chris said. “It smells like… death.”
“Not death.” I shuddered at the idea of whatever we were approaching. “It smells like blood.” The wind stopped blowing, so the smell wasn’t coming at us anymore, but the remains of the scent lingered in my nose. It was definitely blood.
Danielle stopped walking and eyed up Erebus. “I’m guessing you know what’s ahead,” she said. “So if you want to warn us, now would be a good time.”
“We’re approaching the Red River.” He faced the breeze and took a deep breath, not reacting to the smell at all. “Crossing will be difficult, but I trust that you will figure out how to do so successfully.”
“Why will it be difficult?” I pressed.
“That’s up for you to discover yourselves.” He continued forward without bothering to look back at us.
With nowhere else to go, and since we clearly weren’t about to get an actual answer, we followed his lead.
The smell grew stronger, until I could taste the blood in the back of my throat. The air was hot and sticky, and when we turned a corner I saw it—a river of bubbling blood. It was like the blood was boiling, evaporating into the air. But that wasn’t the strangest part. Because around the river were horses… although they weren’t like any horses I’d ever seen.
Their bottom halves were horses, but their necks morphed into the top halves of humans.
“Centaurs,” Danielle breathed.
The moment she spoke, one of their heads twisted in our direction. He caught sight of us and smiled.
“Humans,” he said, and before I knew what was happening, all of the centaurs galloped toward us, forming a circle around us so we couldn’t escape.
I readied myself to grab my knife from my boot, although it wouldn’t be much of a defense against the centaurs. There must have been thirty of them in all. They licked their lips, digging their front hooves into the ground.
The four of us clustered together in the center of the circle, tensed and prepared to fight.
The centaur that spotted us walked toward us, staring down at us as if we were bugs he wanted to squash. “Not humans,” he said, taking a few deep sniffs of the air around us. “I smell magic in your blood.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Danielle said, although she reached for the handle of her sword and wrapped her fingers around it. “We just need to cross the river.”
“Cross the river?” The centaur laughed, and the others laughed along with him. “Why do you wish to cross the river?”
“Our friend was taken to the top of the mountain,” I said, pointing up at where the peak of the mountain disappeared into the clouds. “We need to get up there so we can help him escape.”
I purposefully left out information about Medusa’s head—since these creatures were locked in Kerberos, I doubted they would support our mission to seal the portal. The last thing we needed was to give them a reason to want to kill us on the spot.
“That’s unfortunate,” the centaur said. “If your friend was taken to the top of the mountain, he’s surely already dead.” He paced around in front of us, eyeing us suspiciously. “Where did you say you were from again?” he asked.
We didn’t say where we were from, but he knew that, so I said nothing. Neither did Danielle and Chris.
“It’s no matter.” He waved away the question. “Because do you know what we do to anyone who trespasses on our land?”
“No,” Chris said, meeting the centaur’s gaze without flinching. “But I have a feeling you’re about to tell us.”
The centaur stopped pacing, and he stared at us. “The first thing we do is kill them,” he said simply. “Then we slash their necks and hold them upside down over the edge of the river, so their blood can drain into the water. Once their body is empty of blood, we feast on the parts that remain. Bones and all.” He smiled, showing off his sharp teeth.
“Is that it?” Chris asked, not looking scared in the slightest.
“What’s your problem?” The centaur sneered at him. “Do you want to die, boy?”
“Not particularly.”
The centaur’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Then this isn’t your lucky day, is it?”
“Actually, I think it is.” Chris smiled and reached for the Golden Lyre, starting to play. Each note rang clearly through the air, filling a massive amount of space for such a small instrument.
All of the centaurs were suddenly still, their eyes glazed over as they listened to the music.
“None of you are going to kill us,” Chris continued, his voice melodic and hypnotizing. “You’re going to take us across the river, and once we’re gone, you’ll return here and forget you ever met us.”
The centaur who had previously threatened to kill us nodded, his face slack. “Our biggest men will jump you across the river,” he agreed. “Once we’ve brought you to safety and you’re out of our sight, we’ll return here and forget we ever met you.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Chris stopped playing the lyre and swung it around his back. “Kneel down, horsey,” he said to the centaur. “Because you’re my ride.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We each hopped on a centaur, and I held on tight to its mane as the creature ran toward the river, gaining speed before he jumped. We soared through the air, landing smoothly on the other side. They let us off their backs, and once we’d dismounted, they turned away, as if they’d forgotten our existence.
We ran over the crest of the hill, wanting to get as far away from them as possible.
“Nice job,” Danielle told Chris once the Red River had disappeared behind us. “I was about to tell you to use the lyre, but you pulled it out before I could.”
“There were too many of them and not enough of us,” Chris said, reaching for his injured shoulder and massaging it. “The lyre seemed like the safest bet.”
“Since we’re out of the lightning zone, do you want to stop so I can check your cut?” I asked him. “It could probably use a cleaning after all that walking.”
“I’m fine.” He dropped his hand back to his side. “I was just holding onto the centaur too tightly. It’s not bothering me anymore.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to push it. Still, I worried. I knew that Erebus said it would take weeks—maybe even months—for the poison to work its way through Chris’s body, but magical fox venom wasn’t really an exact science.
We needed to get out of Kerberos as quickly as possible so I could heal him. Which meant we had to keep heading toward the mountain.
But the further we walked, the hotter it became. What little bits of vegetation there were disappeared, until only the occasional cactus remained. The sun shone down on us as if we were inside an oven and it was trying to cook us alive.
I’d always been that one person who never got sunburned, but now my skin felt hot and tight. When I looked at my arm, it was a bright, fiery red. Chris and Danielle were also burned on every place where their skin was exposed. Erebus, of course, was unaffected.
As we continued on, the desert played tricks on us. Every so often, a beautiful fountain of water would pop up out of nowhere. But we ignore
d them, since the source of all the drinkable water in Kerberos was the River of Dreams. If I didn’t have my water bottle, I would have succumbed to drinking the water from the fountains and found myself passed out in a nightmarish sleep for hours, the unforgiving sun beating down relentlessly on my unconscious body.
All I could do was remind myself to put one foot in front of the other and trek on. But the heat wasn’t the only thing that made that difficult—because gnats buzzed everywhere, seeking moisture in my eyes and my mouth. No matter how much I swatted at them, they refused to stay away. I splashed water from my bottle onto my clothes, and that provided enough distraction for the gnats that not as many of them swarmed my eyes and mouth, but no amount of water I drank could chase away the heat. It felt like I would get so burned that my skin would peel straight off my body. And that would probably be more pleasant than the pain I was in now.
Eventually, I stopped and stared up at the hot amber sun. “When’s this going to end?” I said, looking at Erebus for an answer. I sounded whiney, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of this heat. “The sun has to go down eventually, right?”
“The sun never sets in the desert here,” he said, which explained why it hadn’t moved from the highest point in the sky since we’d set foot in this area hours ago. “If you stop to rest it just means you’ll be in the sun for longer, which will make it worse long-term. So we need to keep going.”
“But for how long?” I repeated.
“Not much longer.”
“That’s not a real answer,” Danielle chimed in, emptying the remaining water from her bottle onto her face.
Seconds later, the bottle was magically full again. She dumped that on her head, too. Her hair was wet, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. But given the lack of humidity, it would be dry again in less than five minutes.
“An hour or two, tops,” Erebus said. “You’ll all survive. So stop complaining, and let’s go.”
Elementals 4: The Portal to Kerberos Page 10
