Sacrifice

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  “Hydra’s venom was always one-of-a-kind. Hera’s to thank for that. As mighty and nearly-imperishable as this boy is, even he will need some rest to get through this one.”

  “That still doesn’t fix the problem of my needing to fix, Hades.”

  “You know what to do about that as soon as he wakes up, my dear Meg.”

  CHAPTER 13

  HERAKLES

  My surroundings are familiar, yet distorted enough that it takes me a while to make sense of where I am.

  The black velvet runner. Statues in nooks above my head, stretching as far as the eye can see.

  It’s the passageway leading to Hades’ throne room—

  Except, suddenly it isn’t. I’m in another place, far removed from anywhere I’ve ever been before.

  It’s a different throne room, also in ebony shades, yet it appears to be lit up by the sun itself. The source of the light are rows upon rows of small, glowing white orbs on the walls. What has to be billions of them.

  At my back, in the middle of this mind-bendingly large room, is an empty dais.

  A tribal-ish, absurd monstrosity of a throne less than thirty yards from it.

  A voice. Female. Fractured. It invades my brain, pounding in its fibers.

  Forcing me to pay attention.

  “The lies spread farther than you could ever imagine, young one. I watched them spin the tale, as I watch everything else. And you, poor fly, became caught in that web. Trapped for eons, awaiting your true destiny.”

  I’m ripped away from that place and deposited back in the hallway of statues in Hades.

  Above, the first odd one I noticed upon my entry—Hades in that ancient version of a trench coat, scarred forearms bared. The effigy comes to life, head turning to stare down at me.

  It’s only a flash, a brief moment in time, yet those eyes come to life, silver. Shining.

  Without pupils.

  The marble mouth parts, speaking, the voice similar to Hades’ yet not his at all. “You’re blind, bewildered by resemblance, mistaking it for fact. You believe me to be him, but the path will show you reality.”

  “And it’s so at odds with the world you think you know.”

  My head flies around to locate the source of that other voice and I find the second replica of Hades, the one with the horns and wings.

  It’s staring at me, as well.

  But the next time he speaks, it’s not the statue’s mouth that moves. It sounds as if he’s right behind me. “I’m not him, either, you know, but our blood is the same. Exactly the same.”

  I jump around . . .

  He’s there, in the flesh, a vision of purity against that black wall. Wearing a white robe, chest bared, he’s hugging an armful of vibrant red roses to his chest. A carbon-freaking copy of Hades, everything except his eyes.

  Hades’ usually show black, although I’m almost sure his true color is that bronze shade I saw and he disguises them.

  This male stares at me with eyes shinning an incandescent, prismatic white. As if staring into the purity of universal light itself. “I was something else once. Before,” he mumbles despondently, an angel of a male lost and alone. “We all were.”

  “If you’re not Hades, who the hell are you?”

  Those white irises change, bleeding bright red, and black horns tear their way out of the skin of his forehead. “We share the same blood. And unlike our other brother, who’s managed to hide himself from the masses, the legends of Hades and I continue to reign.”

  My eyes go wide, a new, niggling suspicion taking root.

  Bleeding red eyes.

  Black horns.

  Wings.

  The humans, they’re obsessed with this creature. Fear him nowadays above any of the mythological figures. But that would mean he’s . . .

  Real.

  No. Impossible. This can’t be.

  “IT IS,” thousands of voices yell while the carvings begin to shatter apart, marble chips raining down like deadly, little daggers to cut my face.

  Even with that kind of confirmation, I need to ask, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Too many questions. Too many answers. And before you can know that one, you first must find out: what’s inside you? What’s inside her? What part are you both meant to play?”

  Meg.

  He’s talking about Megara.

  The simple reminder of her brings me to my knees faster than the hailstorm of broken marble that continues to slice into me. “Oh gods.” I wrap an arm around myself, fucking starving in a way that doesn’t make sense.

  It’s sexual.

  It’s spiritual.

  But it’s also biological. An awakened burn in my throat that leaves my stomach feeling hollow.

  “Make it stop. Make it stop. She wants nothing to do with me.”

  He’s no longer here to respond. When I look up, a skeleton is left in his place, head thrown back in a silent scream. Purple flowers sprout out of his chest cavity, climbing higher, wrapping around the ribs.

  What is all this? What the fuck am I seeing? What’s going on?

  Clutching my stomach, I stare out at the hallway, with its now-missing statues and it’s floor covered in broken marble. Out of the corner of my eye, those purple flowers dominate, covering everything as they expand—

  I’m in a garden now.

  No, not “a” garden. I remember this one specifically. It’s the one I took Meg to on our first actual “outing”. What humans would call a date.

  Grecian pillars and fountains surround me, also changed from their original forms. The flowers are all purple here, hungry vines that grow and cover everything. The fountains spew putrid water. The air itself is gray smog.

  There’s a clock ticking in the background. Weird. They didn’t exist yet during our time. Locating the source of it, I see it floating in midair, a white sphere with classical black numbers and hands. It’s counting down, but to what? I watch as a side of it begins to crumble away, turned to ash by an invisible fire. The ticking disappears, replaced by the beating of a heart.

  It has to be mine. I shake my head to disperse this ill vision, the fire in my throat raging strong. Mouth growing drier. That beating becomes unbearable. Overwhelming.

  And then the heart is in my hands, darker than the night or anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

  More murmurs in the air. “The primordial darkness.” Always that word—primordial. As in: the beginning. Is that the message I’m supposed to interpret? That every piece of this puzzle goes back to the beginning of it all?

  A female appears in the fog, staring at me beneath her brow. Eyes that are completely black, gray irises barely showing within. Lettering in the same color glowing on her skin.

  Smoke, so much of it, coming out of those letters, surrounding her—

  Three howls.

  I remember those.

  Yet the visions have begun changing too fast, the only constant being those purple flowers—it isn’t lost on me they’re the same color as Meg’s eyes when she was human—and the agony is spreading too deep for me to think.

  I need to think. Need to analyze what’s being presented to me. The answers I’ve always sought are there.

  The solution to my keeping Megara is there!

  The source of the howls walks into my line of sight, as massive as he always was, fifteen feet tall on all four legs. Ebony fur. Six pairs of reddish-bronze eyes narrowed with malice. His three wolf heads are thrown back to the gray moon in the sky.

  It’s him.

  Cerberus.

  His heads lower and he begins walking to me. “Make the exchange with me, Madness, gain more of the Power you were born of. Make the exchange and you will never question again, for everything will be revealed, one ancient secret at a time.”

  What exchange? What does he want from me? I’m on a mission to kill him.

  Wait, what did he just call me? Madness?

  The scenery changes in a quick spiral once more and now I’m in a temple-lik
e space. Gold furniture. Dark gray walls.

  Bodies writhing in the wildest of sex in my peripherals. Cries. Moans. Groans. It’s a pleasure den on overdrive but that isn’t the only thing it is. Along the walls, paintings of war come to life. Of conquest. Of sheer success in every walk of life, for both immortals and mortals alike.

  As well as Meg. My beautiful Meg sitting in a gold chaise, on a platform above it all, wearing a black peplos.

  “You’re seeing what she will eventually see.” It’s the female I heard in that obsidian throne room with the glowing orbs. “The desires held in every heart, both twisted and pure.”

  Megara says nothing, but sits there as if she’s the ruler of this entire scene, a sinuous, supple leg crossed on top of the other. Gold, Grecian sandals are tied up her calves. She holds out a golden goblet, like she’s offering it to me—

  Her wrist tilts sideways, the glass along with it, and viscous blood pours out of it in a never-ending stream.

  Her blood. My body is screaming that liquid came from her veins.

  Torrents and torrents of it.

  My gaze is drawn to that thick river of red. Magnetized in a way that makes no sense.

  Desire pulses hard in my groin. Hunger cramps my insides. The burn is too much and it’s making me more addled.

  “Your connection to her goes deeper than you imagine. Far removed from simple love. Once you figure that out, everything else will fall into place.”

  It’s the last thing—the last instruction, I realize—I hear within that disturbing scene.

  I awake back in the cavern, the ceiling coming into view.

  A breath, a single fucking breath, and I’m strangled by her scent.

  In the time I was out, it flooded this entire space. Without a way out, it’s an invisible, impervious myst, one from which there is no escape.

  I flip over into a crouch, growling in my chest.

  Megara is sitting on the ground, hugging her knees to her own chest. Her head’s tucked against them and she hasn’t even noticed I’m awake.

  Until she processes the animalistic sound leaving me, that is.

  Her head snaps up, maddened lust and a dangerous threat warring in her features. “D-don’t. Stay away. I do not choose this. Not you.”

  But she says it while being paler than I’ve ever seen her.

  While shaking in clear anguish.

  She’s on the verge of the worst fate that can ever befall a nymph—starvation due to lack of sex.

  Their main source of nourishment.

  Braced on the floor like some type of beast, I jerk my head to the left, then to the right, trying to trigger some coherence. “Did . . . has Hades released us from here?”

  “No,” she practically whines.

  “Then I’m sorry, Succubus. The choice has been taken from us both.”

  MEGARA

  “Then I’m sorry, Succubus. The choice has been taken from us both.”

  He’s lost his fucking mind.

  Of course he has.

  This is the worst my effect has ever been. Even I’m choking on the overpowering scent of my own arousal. It’s calling to him in pulsing waves, unsympathetic to my wishes. “Listen to me, Herakles—”

  He’s in front of in a flash.

  I’m lifted off my feet. Pressed to the wall.

  A healed, marked hand covers my entire neck, keeping me in place.

  Fight him. FIGHT HIM. Gods, I can’t. Body vibrating, he leans down into my space, lips parted.

  The same lips I could never truly forget.

  I’m melting for him, legs already parting to make room, but my heart breaks at the fact this is about to happen.

  He’s going to kiss me, eat me, fuck me, and reignite every emotion in me that never truly died. The beautiful ones, the horrific ones, everything he ever owned.

  I whimper, both in desire and pain, and he stops right before our lips touch, expression tight.

  “Do you understand what I’d give to take it all away from you?” he demands roughly.

  “But you can’t. You can never. That’s our curse, even as immortals, isn’t it?” I grit out, hands curled into painful fists. “Even we can’t go back in time and change things.”

  His lips peel back, teeth grinding, as if my statement causes him true physical pain. His thumb returns to my mouth, a rough caress like earlier, and his nostrils flare as he takes another hit of my scent. “It has to matter that I’m willing to die for you now. That I’m willing to give myself over to the freak in me before I go.”

  It does.

  Fuck! It truly does.

  And yet not enough. It’ll never be enough. Not after the extent of the degradation, the length of it.

  The fact it happened after he turned his back on me and walked away like I meant nothing.

  “Why did you lie to me?” I ask in an angry whisper, hips twitching toward him.

  He answer my call again, sliding a leg between mine.

  Lifting me up on his thigh.

  I moan at the friction against the hot, needy core of me. Barely restrain myself from grinding against him some more.

  “It wasn’t a lie, Meg.”

  “It was, you stupid bastard. You swore you loved me—”

  “I did—”

  “—and that you’d take me with you.”

  “I never thought my father would say no.”

  “You didn’t even truly know him, jackass!”

  He covers my body entirely with his own. “I realize that now.”

  “And when he gave you a choice, nothing you said to me mattered. Nothing you promised. Nothing. You. Fucking. Showed. You just turned around and walked away!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your deal with my sister? Fucking hell, when did you even make it? I would’ve never left you to her punishment had I known.” Kles tucks his head into the side of my neck, kissing me there hard.

  I arch into him, mewling, but keep my hands fisted at my sides, refusing to touch him. “Don’t you fucking get it? The nature of the deal kept my lips shut till the end, and then I couldn’t freaking speak as I watched your back getting further away. And does it matter? Never. Ever. You hear me? Because even without that deal and all that punishment in place . . .” My chest heaves, the heartache as fresh as the moment it first happened, and it stuns me it could be this acute this many millennia later. “You swore I was everything and then you were just gone.”

  “Fucking hell, why does it feel like I’ve been under your effect for weeks already, Nymph? Not a mere day.”

  “Because you have, bastard. Time moves differently when we’re in the underworld, remember?” Minutes equal hours. Hours equal days. Days equal weeks. It’s how it works in many realms outside the Earthen sphere. For every moment we’ve been down here, our bodies have recognized the difference in time, even if we didn’t.

  His pause is indication that he’d forgotten that little tidbit.

  Gritting my teeth, I use my weight to try and buck him off. “Now get the fuck off me.”

  His hands dig into the sides of my breasts, then drag down my waist. Relearning me.

  Hurting me.

  “I spent every fucking moment after that regretting it and you’ll never even let me prove it to you.”

  I turn my head away from him, trying to get away from that beguiling mouth. Swear to the gods, it was always one of the hardest parts of him to resist. Always looked too good, felt even better. “It’s too late. And the fact you’re about to force this on me, like so many other have before—”

  “Don’t kid yourself, my little nymphomaniac,” he snarls, rearing back off the wall and taking me with him. “With me, it would never be truly forced, and you fucking know it.” Settling me on my feet, he makes sure to steady me since I’m trembling too much to remain standing on my own. He throws a quick look around and, oh, how convenient.

  There’s a benchlike cut in one of the walls; the perfect spot for one of us to sit.

  He has me the
re, dematerializing us immediately. That sexual sixth sense that’s ruled my life since the moment I first opened my eyes as a succubus picks up on his plan as he faces me. His enormous palm slips around the back of my neck, beneath my mussed pony tail. “You’re feeding off me, Meg. End of subject.”

  Yeah, fuck him, but I am. We both know it. The red-hot knowledge is vibrating in the tiny space of air between us. However, I’m not stupid enough to allow for complete intimacy either. “Don’t ever kiss. Never again.”

  Anger flashes in his heated stare and he sits down, face level with my chest, fingers digging into the bared skin at my hips. “You don’t want to be close to me? Kiss me? Feel me skin-to-skin thrusting inside you? Fine. But it’s a little ironic considering you’re about to choke on my dick, baby.”

  CHAPTER 14

  MEGARA

  This male always had the audacity of a god, even back when he was a mere demigod among men.

  I’m still reeling from how infuriating and mouthwatering that comment was, especially coming from this eviler, altered version of him, when he releases my hips long enough to flip open his belt.

  He could just dematerialize his pants, but no. Kles wants me to watch him undoing his pants with those blackened hands, the tips of his finger now as dark as the scars covering them. Gold flecks of light continue to shine within those marks—specks of his aura showing through, I finally admit.

  Like glittering stars dotted along the night sky.

  The next tremble that goes through me is a straight bastard, a force sent to finish incapacitating me. For all my resolve to be as removed from his this as possible, gravity is gravity, even in this realm, and I’m too weak to keep myself upright without assistance. Hands landing on his massive shoulders, I’m forced to rely on him for support, even as my head ducks, eyes trailing the flesh being bared.

  The last time I saw that cock, we were both mortals.

  I’d only had one before him, my ex that also betrayed me, yet I’d seen one too many in my day. How could I have not? It was freaking ancient Greece. Dicks were everywhere to be seen. Obsessive modesty wouldn’t finish overcoming the world for another millennia, at least.