Sacrifice

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  “They need sustenance, as do we. They’ll enjoy your friends and keep them from interrupting us. And this”—he holds up a blinking remote— “will ensure that I can enjoy you two properly. Shall we begin?”

  Kles is in his armor faster than I can blink, but I’m not too far behind, hands hitting the sides of my blade’s hilt to break them in two.

  Scylla and Charybdis press on the button.

  The walls turn instantly black.

  We know what’s heading our way seconds prior to being overrun by it.

  It’s that heinous, dark energy again. The same Cyclops used to incapacitate us.

  It’s my last coherent thought before the visions begin anew. A forced recollection of a past that brings nothing but agony and disaster along with it.

  CHAPTER 16

  HERAKLES

  “Flip her over. Yes, just like that. Hold her open for me.”

  Beings, much larger than her and monstrous as only daemons can be, are surrounding my already broken female, rag-dolling her in position in their quest to continue to abuse her.

  To take her.

  Break her until she’s nothing but a shell of what she once was.

  I shout at the image. A desperate attempt to interrupt them, perhaps, although in the back of my mind I know how asinine that is.

  This isn’t currently happening. It’s a memory.

  Not mine, hers.

  When Cyclops used this weapon against us, I relieved the look in her eyes when I’d walked up to her at the base of Mount Olympus to say goodbye.

  To hug her like the ungrateful bastard I’d been and bid her a wonderful life as I turned my back on her to join the gods.

  Her. The woman I’d adored more than anything and didn’t realize that until too late.

  That expression had been a silent plea. I noticed it upon reliving it, knowing what I now know. That day, as I became hyperfocused on the glorious achievement of my goal, she’d been mentally begging me not to leave her to her fate.

  Not to abandon her to the punishment awaiting her because of her sacrifice for me.

  And because of a jealous sister that despised me simply due to the fact that our fickle father had shown me some favor upon my cursed birth.

  “She’s tight, even after we’ve all used her. Tighter than any hole I’ve been in.” The daemon raping Megara laughs, his next thrust punctuated by her weakened scream.

  She shouldn’t even still be alive based on the level of her injuries, but he takes her brutally enough to illicit a cry from her nonetheless.

  Ah, unmerciful gods, this energy being used to torture us is worse than the first. This isn’t my recollections haunting me, they’re Meg’s memories of what happened to her. I’m on the ground, knees inches into the wet mess of torn human meat, barely able to move.

  Weak on a level that is almost impossible to fight past.

  Brutalized by visuals that no male in love should ever bear witness to.

  I hear her shout in real life and have the distant thought: What is she seeing of my past? Which part?

  Beyond it all, that unnatural male zooms across the corner of my vision, moving with a bewildering speed, even for one such as I—

  I see a quick flash of reflective light along that metallic jaw, then it’s coming down on my arm.

  Shredding right past my supposedly impenetrable armor!

  That twisted fucker yanks a huge chunk of my flesh with him as he goes. There’s a trail of color as he zooms away from me and comes to a stop near a wall, chewing happily away at what he took.

  His two feminine voices hum with appreciation. “You might be the most delicious being I’ve ever bit into, Herakles.”

  Megara is on him instantly, teeth bared in a feminine, vicious growl. Her eyes are squinted, glazed—trapped between reality and whatever vision of my past she’s being subjected to. She manages to slam his head into the bloodied wall, leaving a massive dent. Scylla and Charybdis let out a strange hiss, spitting what was left of my skin and muscle toward her. His head comes around in a quick arch, metallic teeth ready to strike.

  The thought that he’s about to take a chunk out of female is all it takes.

  Images continue to haunt me, sounds that I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind, but I dematerialize at him like an arrow. Arms around his lean waist, I tackle him, only to be overcome by a tidal wave of black electricity.

  That fucking miasma they keep using against us.

  In the ensuing chaos, where it’s my mind versus what’s actually happening in front of me, he gains another opening.

  The sound of metal grinding against metal, then the dry tearing as a chunk of my armor gives way.

  Hot, fiery pain slices along my shoulder.

  His fucking teeth, sinking in—

  Muscle and tendon is ripped away with his next bite and I feel my arm go numb down to my finger tips as the nerves momentarily shut down from the shock.

  I kick out, slamming my heavy boot through his mid-section.

  What he bite off me is dislodged with a whoosh as I penetrate his own body. My skin and muscle, partially chewed, hits my chest with a splat.

  His intestines and part of his spine do the same, hitting the floor, and he stumbles back with his hands on the gaping hole I left behind.

  Straight into Meg’s path.

  “Stop. Fucking. Eating. Him!” Her double swords slice through the air, moving fast enough to dislodge purple sparks of energy.

  “Argghhh!” His left arm lands on the ground next to his innards. Chunks of his flesh and whoever else he’s been eating down here fly into the air on impact.

  Lurching on her feet, Megara struggles past the weakness of that dark energy and aims for his head.

  He escapes with that maddening, immortality-defying speed.

  Sensation returns to my arm in surges of misery. Using my right hand, I hold onto whatever part of the slippery brick wall I can find purchase on. In my mind, it’s a triple assault, making it even more difficult to keep my gaze on the blur he’s become as he rushes around the space.

  “Pl-please. No more. Kill me. Just kill me!” Meg, begging with her abusers, with her captor—my sister Atë—for the mercy of death as those pieces of shit continue to take turns on her.

  Then comes two dueling voices, threatening to split my mind as they wrestle for dominance.

  They’re owned by those impulses. Power.

  Never satiated. Never enough. Always need more, more, MORE. That other voice.

  Slapping the side of my forehead, I shout, “God damn it! Be quiet! I can’t listen to the both of you at once!”

  HAVE HER TURN THEIR DESIRES AGAINST THEM, they roar in unison.

  What?

  Meg bursts her molecules apart, but it’s a messy attempt. Her lack of concentration sends her flying back out of the astral-plane. She reforms mid-air, slamming into a wall.

  Scylla and Charybdis have finally come to a stop, clutching the gaping wound where his shoulder was connected, and he’s eyeing her with a savagery I will not fucking stand for.

  “Megara! Use what they want against them!”

  She throws me a quick, incredulous look. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Yeah. Exactly what am I talking about?

  She can sense their needs, Power answers on its own. She can multiply . . . “Just—just lock on whatever you sense and focus on making it stronger!”

  The last word leaves my mouth and then Scylla and Charybdis are gunning for her. Her warriors instincts are sharp, but not on par with her usual abilities. Not with those trails of obsidian energy whirling in the air around us both. She evades him in time, just barely, slamming onto one of the steel tables in her haste to escape.

  Need to distract him long enough for her to do what she needs to do. There’s no other way.

  I whistle to get his attention, followed by a, “Hey! You’re still hungry, aren’t you bitches?”

  His head snaps toward me, aqua irises alit wi
th delirium.

  Nodding at the exposed injury he left on my shoulder, I ease backward. Like tempting a dog to follow using a piece of steak.

  He hesitates, darting a glance between Meg and I.

  With an annoyed growl, I tear at my armor to expose more of the wound—and end up getting nowhere.

  Fucking forgot. This is Hephaestus’ work. Normally, nothing can penetrate it.

  Those teeth and jaw on Scylla and Charybdis must be made of something else entirely. Definitely not metal, but some kind of amalgam that is more powerful than any I’ve ever encountered.

  The silent battle rages on in his face, until suddenly he seems to lose control to the scent of my blood. His lips part, a thin line of drool slides down his slate gray jaw. Then, in a burst of speed, he’s coming my way.

  I brace for impact, at the same time trying to marshal up enough concentration to flash out of his reach.

  It isn’t necessary, however. He’s dropped to his knees by unseen hands, sent skidding along the remains of his meals. Bewilderment flutters across his face. In a state of shock, he stares blankly at the ground with those light eyes.

  The change that comes over him is gradual, slow, as he processes whatever is happening in him. His head rises in increments, gaze meeting my own. Something flickers across his expression—cold, stark despair . . .

  His remaining hand shoots up to tear at his head, nails digging into his buzz cut hair and the surface of his scalp. “No. No. Stop! It’s already too much!” His female voices beg, that sorrow spreading.

  Standing behind him, Meg has her hand spread open and aimed at his head. Her struggle to accomplish what she’s doing is also written on her face and I watch in awe as Scylla and Charybdis crumble into tears.

  “We can’t . . . We NEED . . .” He phases as if planning to head to me and fails, collapsing onto his side. Flopping around like a fish out of water, he faces Megara, his one hand reaching for her, reaching . . .

  Her eyes glowing more than ever, she grunts with the force of exerting her will. When she speaks, it’s her voice that vibrates with a second, distinct echo beneath. “Yes. You need more, don’t you? Always more. You can’t live another second without it. Can you?”

  Curling up into a fetal position, he lets out a keening cry. “It’s worse now. More than ever. MAKE IT STOP. Pleasseee.”

  Meg approaches his prune form, her aura growing like a cyclone around her body—purple, blue, and a new color beginning to shine through.

  Deep burgundy.

  “You can’t stop it,” she commands Scylla and Charybdis, a fucking vision with all that power surrounding her. “It’s the only thing that’s ever mattered to you, isn’t it? The hunger. The thirst.”

  She drives them madder, I hear the unknown, malevolent voice in me gloat, tone filled with adoration.

  Her strength . . . it shall be legend. No surprise, that was Power, also consumed with veneration.

  “Yessssss!” Scylla and Charybdis shriek in response to Meg’s statement, full on sobbing in hysteria now.

  I watch as they lose control, searching rabidly for something, anything to—

  He bites into his remaining arm, tearing at it in a frenzy.

  Eating his own self.

  The display doesn’t last long. Megara rushes him with only one of her swords over her head. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck. You. Fuck. You,” she chants angrily, hacking away at his head.

  His frenzy is so absolute, that even as she beheads him, his jaw keeps working to eat more of his arm.

  “Ser—ious—ly. Fuck. You.” She drives the tip of her sword through what’s left of his head. “You.” Pointing the sword at me, chest heaving, she glares at me. “Find that fucking remote and turn this stupid black shit off!”

  I all but salute her, choking on the urge to yes ma’am her and whatever the fuck is exuding off her sexy form.

  I’m fucked up for even thinking it, especially with the images of her abuse still fresh in my head, but hot damn is she sexy in her fury.

  A few seconds later, I’ve found the tiny device and crushed it beneath my boot. The calm that settles in the room once the dark fog vanishes is almost unsettling.

  Not that it erases what happened.

  Or what we each saw.

  Megara’s half-accusing, half-questioning gaze searches my face.

  For my part, as I look at her, I can’t scrub the images of her past from my mind. Don’t want to; I should carry every ounce of this burden with the same resilience she’s managed to. Yet my own questions rebound through my thoughts.

  For my part, as I look at her, I can’t scrub the images of her past from my mind. Don’t want to; I should carry every ounce of this burden with the same resilience she’s managed to. Yet my own questions rebound through my thoughts. Appeals that’ll only push her further away. How do I make your pain go away? How do I make this better for you?

  By sticking to the plan.

  Dying for her.

  If that’s what Hades truly has in store for us, that is.

  There’s a last, loud shout that comes from the other end of the hall, snapping us back into the action.

  The others. They’d been engaged in battle against something.

  Megara and I flash our way back to them, coming across a scene even worse than the one we left back there.

  There’s more broken bodies and parts littering this place than most battlefields I’ve seen through the ages. Our friends are in the midst of this disaster, covered in blood from head to toe.

  They were engaged in battle against human corpses. Animated corpses.

  For lack of a better term, zombies, as Hylas claimed.

  Philoctetes wipes gore off his forehead before it can drip into his hazel eyes. “They must’ve been animated by their will. They just stopped fighting when you all did.”

  Hylas drags his Xiphos—a short blade of ancient Greek design—through the midsection of one of the dead creatures, slice it in half, and turns to us with a shout. “Have I told you how much I fucking hate zombies? And now we were forced to actually fight them!”

  His tone is shrill, borderline distraught, and as we each look at each other, one by one we begin to crack up.

  “This isn’t fucking funny,” he snaps at us. “That was hands down one of the most disgusting experiences of my life.” The fact that an incubus is the one saying this only makes us laugh harder.

  It’s a flashback to our shared pasts, days long gone but never truly forgotten. I see the moment it begins to register in the others and my heart tears as I think of Meg once more—

  Air.

  Brutal, undeniable.

  A vacuum at our backs.

  Theseus yells something, reaching out.

  Elacatas begins running for us.

  There’s a slash of color in my peripheral, black and auburn.

  Megara’s hair wiping in the wind.

  The main color of her armor as she’s yanked backward.

  I’m being snatched as well, sucked in by the void that opened at our backs.

  My last view of the others is of them rushing to try and reach us.

  The world reappears within a tempest, the likes of which I haven’t seen since my days sailing with Jason on the Argo. The gusts of wind are punishing enough to slice through my cheeks. Water flies in every direction, buffeting the cliff we’ve been deposited on.

  Megara stands next to me, back to the cliff wall, hair flying in disarray around her furious face.

  Below us, an alcove surrounded by lush tropical life, on the other side of this inlet. It’s untouched by the madness of the clear blue sea thrashing about. Perfect, white sand, palm trees, lush vegetations. It’s only where we stand that’s being buffeted by the squall. The rest of this island—and it is one, the scenery past the mayhem shows us mostly surrounding by that beautiful, clear blue ocean—is tropical paradise all throughout.

  “Did Hades bring us straight here?” I turn to ask Megara above the roar of t
he wind—only to realize she’s been stripped of her armor, her weapons, and left in the same regular clothing she was wearing when we first arrived outside the mills where Scylla and Charybdis had hidden their freakish lair.

  My armor is gone, too, leaving me in the dark gray long-sleeve, military cargos, and my boots.

  Practical when it comes to blending into the human world; useless on a tropical island, when we’re about to face another of these reincarnated assholes.

  I’m still fucking regrowing the skin Scylla and Charybdis ate.

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t fucking put it past him!” Meg shouts.

  Shit. He probably found out our crew helped us with Scylla and Charybdis and, per our deal with him, took matters into his own hands to make sure we’d handle this one on our own.

  Whatever we’re due to face next, it’s out there, within the greenery surrounding the small, private beach across from this inlet. I can feel it prowling closer, even though my eyes haven’t picked up on it, yet.

  My senses, either.

  “Do you—” Megara stops speaking abruptly, and for a second I find myself thinking I imagined the sound of her voice.

  I turn my head and find her glaring at me, gorgeous and stubborn, even with all that water hitting her face and soaking us both through. We probably should’ve dematerialized to the beach already, but we’re both waiting.

  We’re supposed to be analyzing our new opponent. Pinpointing this battlefield. Doing all the things trained warriors do.

  But, as was the plan when that dark energy was used against us, we remain addled. Destroyed. Our minds at an angle and our emotions in disarray.

  Grinding her jaw, Megara jerks her gaze away and stares forward. “Do you really have an entire room in your penthouse with . . . drawings and carvings of me?”

  That’s what she saw in my recollections. While I had to see her being mauled and violated against her will, she watched every miserable moment of my longing for her.

  What it drove me to do.

  She already knows this, yet I can’t stop myself from admitting, “I drew each one myself. Carved each one myself.” Would spend an unhealthy amount of hours caressing the angles of the finished statues, frustrated with myself because I couldn’t get the angles just right. Couldn’t quite capture the nuances of her exotic beauty.