by P M Cole
“We ain’t gotta do nothing, little—”
Again, Hades raised his hand, making the officer think twice before continuing. “How do I know you will keep your word? You are quite adept at hiding how you really feel from me, daughter.”
I heard an intake of air from Lucas, but I kept my eyes on Hades. “You have my word we will lower the wards. Then, even if I am lying it won’t make any difference as I’m sure your little lapdogs are hiding in the woods and will find their way into the house and take me regardless.” I asked again. “So, do we have a deal?”
“We do.”
Lucas and I turned and started our way back up the path. I felt Lucas’s eyes on me but refused to acknowledge them.
We silently walked up the steps and he opened the door for me. I walked in and he did the same, closing it behind me.
“Why did you not tell me!” he shouted.
Daniel appeared from the nearby room. “Is he coming?” He then looked at Lucas’s demeanour. “Has something gone—”
Lucas held his hand up to him. “You did not deem being Hades daughter important enough to tell us?”
I wanted to explain that the only way I had any peace of mind, to be able to function, to be able to help in the endeavour to bring all of this to an end was to forget what my mother said to me in the attic room. But instead I said nothing for my brain was too much in chaos and I needed to focus.
“Is it true!” Lucas shouted again, my silence being insufficient recompense.
Charlotte appeared from the basement entrance. “What is happening? What is true?”
“Tell her!”
I looked at Charlotte. “I am… I think… I am Hades daughter.”
She visibly shook. “What?”
Lucas looked at Daniel. “Did you know?”
“Only Ophelia and Hades knew, none of the foster children knew. And I only learned when Corine did.”
Lucas strode forward to the centre of the room, shaking his head.
“This doesn’t change—”
Lucas stood upright as if just realising something. “Is this why you couldn’t kill him? I saw the state he was in. I wondered why you did not end him and that explains why, even though he had numerous opportunities to kill you, he never did…”
I turned away from Lucas. “I don’t know…” My emotions felt as if they were tethered to me by the thinnest of threads.
Charlotte stepped forward slowly. “Lucas, there’s no time to argue about this now. They are waiting outside. Everything is ready. We keep to the plan.”
“Is there anything else we need to know before we all risk our lives for you?” said Lucas.
I shook my head. My body felt heavy, but I was ready to do what needed to be done. “Drop the wards. I need this to be over.”
Charlotte turned and moved back downstairs.
Lucas looked at Daniel and I. “Stand back.” He then moved to the centre of the hallway, his hands already aflame with blue fire. He closed his eyes and uttered arcane terms and words, gradually getting louder, then slapped his hands together. A wave of air washed over me, but he kept on talking, the flame now covering his arms, but the fire did not appear to burn him. He was now shouting, and brought his hands together again, and again, each time the flame grew in intensity until his whole person was alight with blue fire. The lanterns around us flickered, then they too turned blue. I backed up against the wall behind me. Suddenly with a final clap the flame was gone from Lucas. He stood, covered in sweat.
“The wards are gone. Now there’s nothing to protect us.”
CHAPTER NINE
I stood in the doorway, my destiny slowly walking up the path in the distance towards me. The images from my dreams flickered before my eyes, doing their best to make my nerves even more frayed.
We can’t fail… this will work… You’re sending your father away…
I gently shook my head, trying to rid my mind of the last thought. This man, this god was going to bring death and destruction to us, my friends and everyone else beyond. And anyway, he wasn’t my father, at least not in any meaningful way. He was evil.
I’m evil…
Another shake of the head. Hades and the two policemen were now at the bottom of the stone steps, both officers holding lanterns.
I stepped backwards and took up my place against the wall, near one of the paintings and Daniel. Lucas stood resolutely at the bottom of the staircase.
Boots were heard just outside, and the orange glow of the policeman’s flames briefly reflected off the stone floor until they walked across the threshold, standing a few feet inside.
Now I could see Hades in the full light of the hallway, he looked older than before. The lines on his face more pronounced. The effects of Daniel's power had stained him.
One of the policemen went to walk towards me but Hades started to speak, halting him in his tracks. “Whatever plan you have to kill or capture me, please get on with it, so I can take young Corine there, back with me.”
The two policemen looked confused.
“We’re here to arrest her Lord Cannington, she killed—”
Hades clicked his finger; the cracking bones of the policemen filled the hall and they slumped to the floor.
“I can’t have any witnesses for this. With my new role, keeping my true identity from the casuals is proving most taxing. Anyway, two more bodies to lay at the feet of…” He sighed. “Corine Arturo.” He looked around the hallway. “Proceed then! What are you waiting for!”
“Where… are the others?” I said.
“Others? Oh, you mean my children who did not try to kill me? I told them to stay back. I felt it was important that you saw for yourself the true power of a—” His eyes turned red. “God…” His changed appearance jolted a dream or memory, I wasn’t sure which into my mind. The beast at the window, when my mother was reading to me… it was him.
Lucas and Daniel were looking at me. It was time for me to play my part in our plan, but instead I walked forward until I was just a few feet from the god of the underworld.
“What are you doing!” said Lucas.
I ignored his comment. Instead I stared into Hades' glowing red eyes. “Do you not feel anything for me? Are you even capable of human emotion?”
“Corine…” said Daniel.
Lucas was also talking but their words were just a distant crashing of waves. I needed to know why the man who called himself my father, could treat me the way he had done.
“You were meant to be my greatest achievement. The child I had the most hope for, and even though you kept on disappointing me, over and over, I still held out the hope that any progeny of mine would eventually know who she was, and how powerful she could be.” He took a step forward and placed his hand on my cheek. It was burning, but no pain entered my mind. “But… for too long have I been in the human realm. My feelings for your mother had blinded me to how weak you all are. To think humans would be worthy of the powers I gifted them, and use them as they should be used, to rule! Was a mistake…”
I looked into the eyes of my father and the god that hated me.
I stepped back as metal shards burst from the floor beneath our feet and the ceiling and walls, all of it wrapping itself around the legs, arms, and neck of Hades. But he did not flinch, instead he stood with his arms out as if to embrace what was happening and smiled.
Something was wrong, but we had to push on. Lucas had already started his own magic, and blue fire roared from his hands, enrapturing Hades, igniting the god and the metal alike, at the same time Daniel's eyes burned fiercely, but Hades' expression remained the same, a smile.
Charlotte appeared from somewhere behind me, she and Lucas both speaking in an ancient tongue, and the pillars of stones and rafters supporting the floors around us started to shake and creak. I tried to ignore my father’s eyes that were fixed on me and concentrated on keeping the cage he was in secure, not allowing him any recourse to escape.
“Is this your best effor
t?” he shouted through the chaos, but then, for the first time I saw his confidence waver.
The room lit with an intense white light. I knew it had to be the fragment of the lightning bolt, but rather than being inside the small glass vial, Zeus’s power was now part of the iron poker, and the ancient necklace that was twisted around it, that also had Hades' blood covering it.
Charlotte walked forward, barely managing to hold the white-hot poker, bursting with energy. I could feel Hades struggling to break free, his strength was immense, but I held him fast, drawing even more metal from where I could around us. As parts of the man shaped cage cracked, I would slam more metal into it, covering the fissures.
As Lucas’s and Charlotte's words reached a crescendo, she walked to just a few feet in front of Hades and slammed the poker into the wooden floorboards and a sphere of light suddenly burst forth surrounding Hades. For the first time excitement started to form within me, for at the back of this strange illuminated bubble could I see a barren land, of flame and agony. Bodies writhing which I thought were human, but then I could see were demons, thousands of them. The underworld.
It’s going to work. We’re sending him back!
But then I felt my father’s true strength. The cage I was trying to hold him in, shattered, an explosion of metal shards flew in all directions. Most I managed to deflect from myself, and the others, but pieces still tore the flesh of all of us, knocking us backwards. Even before I fully hit the wall behind me, I was trying to pull the metal back from where it was lodged, but then I realised the man that I had tried to control, had been replaced with something else. I looked back to where the middle-aged Lord should had been, but instead a demonic creature, standing seven feet tall stood. It was mostly without clothes apart from a tunic, the type I had seen in ancient drawings, and its eyes were ablaze with flame. It looked back at the gateway to another world and smirked, for the portal was shrinking.
The creatures gaze fell upon me, as everyone else was getting back to their feet. “You want to see the underworld so much, young human?” Its voice was no longer that of Cannington, but coarse and raw. It thundered towards me, I went to scramble away, when a torrent of red magic streamed from Charlotte's hands, hitting Hades in the chest. He roared in pain, staggering backwards. I felt arms pull me upright.
“We have to go!” shouted Lucas.
Charlotte stepped forward, her magic striking the demonic god once more. I tried to take a step towards her, but arms pulled me towards the stairs. “We have to help her!” I shouted at Lucas and Daniel.
Lucas looked at me. "This was the plan, Cog. We have to go!”
“No!” I screamed and jumped from the steps back to the hallway floor, to a few feet from Charlotte who was wavering. Another stream of magic leapt from her, but this time it hit Hades and fizzled out. She fell to her knees.
“Go!” she said. “I can’t hold him off much longer!”
I ignored her pleas and tried to pull her to her feet, but instead a hammer-like fist slammed into me, sending me spiralling through the air and into the nearby wall. As my consciousness flickered, I watched Hades grab hold of the elderly sorceress, picking her up like a doll. He looked at me as he held her, a smile on his demonic face, then turned and threw her into the gateway to the other place, just before it shrunk out of existence.
Despite the pain and anguish flowing through my person, I staggered back to my feet and watched as Lucas and Daniel stepped towards the demon, blue fire cascading from the warlock and bathing Hades in intense heat, while Daniel's eyes were aflame, trying to consume the demon with pestilence and disease, but I could see both their efforts were going to be in vain. We had lost.
I focused my pain and got to my feet. Hades lunged forward towards the two men fighting for their lives, when a stream of metal formed in front of him, forming a wall, which he slammed into. It bulged, but I quickly wrapped the three inches of iron around him, pulling more metal towards it, thickening the barrier. I fell forwards towards the stairs. “Come on!” I shouted to Lucas and Daniel. They turned and pulled me up the stairs with them. Behind us the sound of metal warping and snapping rang out. As we rang along the landing, I tried to keep pulling the metal beams and pipes towards Hades, but he was breaking free as soon as they tried to restrict his movement.
We ran into the attic room. Downstairs we could hear the demon crashing up the stairs towards us. I was sure I could hear it calling my name. We staggered out onto the roof, where the dirigible’s cabin door was open, the large craft floating above us. The floor shook as if a tornado was let loose within the walls of Wraith manor. We climbed aboard and I sat in the pilot's seat, instantly increasing the power the steam engine was putting out, and we started to climb then stopped, jolting back to the ground.
“The rope!” I shouted.
Lucas pushed the door open and jumped out to the rooftop and ran to the reason we weren’t flying any higher.
Part of the roof disintegrated in an explosion of brick, wood, and iron, some of which hit the side of the dirigible sending us veering away. I looked back. What was left of the rope was still in Lucas’s hands, but he was half-buried under a heap of masonry.
I tried to steer us back towards the roof, when pinging noises accompanied sparks off the outside of the metal cabin. We looked down at the grounds filled with dark shapes of people and intermittent flashes of light.
“They’re firing at us!” shouted Daniel.
I looked back at the roof. There was a rumbling as bricks fell away and from the destroyed doorway to the attic, Hades emerged, looking up at us then back down to Lucas some yards from him.
I threw the throttle forward. The pistons surged in power, making the propellers spin even faster, and I banked us heavily towards the roof. We were accelerating quickly; I would only get one chance at this.
“What are you doing! We have to leave!” Colin shouted.
“He’s right Corine, fly us higher!”
“I’m not losing someone else tonight!”
I pressed a small button on the control panel, and a small door full of nails and other assembled small shafts of metal dropped with gravity, where I took control of them, and sent them with added vigour towards our attackers on the ground.
I struggled to keep us moving straight as we neared the roof, such was our forward velocity. “Take the control!” I said to Colin. He lunged for the wheel as I climbed out of my seat. “Just stop us from getting too low!”
I moved to the cabin door and kicked it open, then dangled my legs outside and pulled on a lever in the door frame. The glass of the window next to my head splintered as a bullet ricocheted off it.
A metal ladder fell out below me. I dropped a few rungs before catching one and kept on moving lower as the roof rushed towards me.
Hades realised what we were attempting to do and lunged towards Lucas who still hadn’t moved. Before the demon had taken his second step, the floor beneath him gave way and the metal beams and nails which I had been concentrating on, pulled him down into the building, while dust and debris flew up the other way.
“Keep it steady!” I cried out above, as the bottom of the ladder landed on the roof and I ran along, holding it with one hand, then got to where Lucas was. I frantically pulled the bricks from him and when I could see all of his body, his legs bloodied and twisted, I let go of the ladder and concentrated, causing the metal rungs to stretch and wrap around him. The ladder then sprung into the air taking the warlock with it. Like a spring recoiling it swept him upwards to the cabin door, where Daniel pulled him inside. I could hear the shouts and rage from the gaping hole in the roof. The policemen were storming the manor. It was time to leave. A pipe leapt from the rubble. I grabbed hold of it as it flew towards the dirigible, taking me to the open door into which I jumped.
Colin relinquished the controls, and I took us skywards, away from the manor.
“Where are going?” said Daniel.
“Northwards to Edinburgh.”
&
nbsp; CHAPTER TEN
As we sailed through the clouds, onwards into the night the image of Charlotte being thrown like waste into the portal kept coming back to me. When it did, I would jolt, and then do my best to hold back the wave of emotion which always followed. The others were resting behind me.
I felt a hand on the top of my wooden seat and Lucas stepped through the gap and sat next to me.
Daniel had healed his broken bones and lacerations, but the dust and soot had left its trace across his ripped clothes. “How are you feeling? Maybe you should rest more,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’ve rested enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the plan was for Charlotte to sacrifice herself?”
“Because she knew you wouldn’t let her if we did.” He was right. “There was no other way, and there was something you didn’t know. I too was in the dark about it, until this morning. She was dying, Cog. Heather had aged her to a point where her body was failing. She wanted to use whatever she had left inside her to send Hades back. So you could be free of his influence.”
My throat tightened as another wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm me. “And it was all for nothing.”
“It almost worked. The gateway was open, but he was too powerful. We threw everything we could at him, but it wasn’t enough.” He looked out the window at some lights hundreds of feet below. “Where are we going?”
“Edinburgh.”
“Scotland? Why… Oh, you’re going to try to find the council?”
“Athena told me to go to them, that it was our only chance. So that’s where I’m going.”
“But we already know they were hunting Chronus. Whatever he thought he would find there, he did not. Why do you think it will be any different for us?”
My head flicked to him. “And what else do you propose we do?”
He looked away and sighed. “Perhaps our only option is to leave the shores of this land, make our home elsewhere. Maybe if we did that, he will leave us alone.”