Hecate's Spell

by Lacey Carter Andersen

But maybe Blaise and I were both just desperately grasping at straws.

  I sit down with Blaise and wrap an arm around his shoulder. We both stare out at the ocean, or maybe I’m staring at the ocean, and he’s caught in the past. I’m not good with words, but something needs to be said. I’m not the smartest gargoyle, but even I know that Blaise had been blamed for a horrible accident. Phoenixes aren’t the only ones who play games like that, but the second any of us feel dizzy, well, we come back down. Blaise isn’t to blame.

  But I understand the need to blame oneself.

  “The day my brother...left, he asked me to help him with a favor for the Elites. I’d said no. I did what the Elites ordered, but never more than that. In my mind, they were old assholes who were stuck in the old ways. My brother didn’t push me, he just left to do it. When I found him, he wasn’t breathing, his heart wasn’t beating, and he was cold as ice. The other gargoyles came. They told me he was dead, but I wouldn’t hear it. They said my stubbornness was because I blamed myself for not being there to keep him safe, and maybe that was part of it, but...well, the message here is that we all make mistakes. Most of those mistakes have small or no consequences, but sometimes there’s a terrible consequence. It doesn’t mean you did a terrible thing. It’s just that sometimes life isn’t fair.”

  “You didn’t suggest something reckless and stupid to your brother,” he says, his voice breaking.

  “No, but I failed him all the same.”

  We sit together for a long moment in silence before he says, “I went back to the village once. I apologized for what I did and begged forgiveness. No one would even hear my words. They shut their doors. They shut themselves away. So how can I redeem myself if I can’t even make it up to the people I hurt?”

  I don’t really know. “Sometimes, other people can’t forgive us for our mistakes, but we have to find a way to forgive ourselves anyway.”

  He gives a sad laugh. “I always thought if I could save a child, maybe somewhere in the universe karma would see that I’m not all bad.”

  “You’re not bad. Not at all. I promise you that.”

  He rubs his face again. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you before…”

  I can’t help but smile. “You asked me to let you into my Brotherhood as a broken man who didn’t want to live. You saved my life. It’s okay if you’re a little broken too.”

  He looks shocked.

  “Come on,” I say, “we have to find the rock shaped like a raven.”

  He nods and slowly stands. His expression is that of a man who isn’t quite sure if he’s awake or dreaming. I wish there’s more I could say. But I think he just needs time.

  So I lead us off the rocky beach and we head through the small forest, looking for the raven-shaped rock. My mind replays Blaise’s confession, and my gut twists. I don’t blame the parents for being angry with Blaise, but I also don’t blame him for expecting such a terrible consequence. It’s nice in life when we can wrap everything up in a pretty bow. When we can say one person is good and one is evil. But in my experience, that’s not how the world is. Most of us exist in some kind of grey zone, where we’ve done bad things, but it doesn’t make us bad people.

  I hope one day Blaise will realize that.

  We explore the island for over two hours. Slowly, Blaise begins to talk again. By the end, he even manages to crack a joke. I can see in his face that he’s really trying to get back to normal, but I want to tell him, from experience, that revealing my own darkest secrets felt like expelling a poison. And that wasn’t something easily ignored.

  “There!” he shouts.

  I rush toward him, climbing over a few rocks tangled with roots. Following his finger, I freeze. Sure as hell, it’s a big raven sitting in the middle of nothing. But other than that, there isn’t anything unique about this place. It just has more rocks and more trees, just like the rest of the island.

  My stomach flips as we move closer to it. When we look down at the base, we see a dark hole. It’s big enough for both of us to fit in, but there’s something creepy and unsettling about it. The wind rushes around us, and I swear I breathe in the scent of blood.

  “So, Persephone’s visitors use this as a quick entrance in?” Blaise asks, kneeling down and inspecting the hole.

  I nod. “So it has to be safe…”

  He pulls a flashlight out of the side of his backpack and points it down. All we can see are smooth surfaces and rock.

  I take off my backpack and peer down, really studying it, but there’s nothing alarming. And nothing to suggest this is an entrance to hell itself.

  Blaise takes off his backpack and puts it on the front of his body, then glamors his wings away, still holding the flashlight out in front of him. “It looks like we'll be pretty much climbing, and partially sliding, all the way down.”

  I grit my teeth and move my backpack to the front of my body. I don’t like this one bit, but if it gets me to my brother, I don’t care what’s down there.

  “I’ll go first,” I tell him, knowing that if I slip and fall onto him, it’s going to hurt like hell.

  Blaise nods and holds the flashlight out for me. I take a deep breath and go to the hole, stretching my legs out on the smooth surface. It feels strangely like I’m about to go down a slide. There’s a small moment where I wonder if this is all a trick by the monster, but I push aside the thought. This is our only chance. I can’t afford to have any doubts now.

  Taking a deep breath, I push away from the outside world and into the darkness. I keep pushing along, and I hear Blaise behind me. The beam from his flashlight hits my back, slightly illuminating the space in front of me. Still, when my legs start to tilt more and more down, I can’t make out what’s ahead of me until suddenly, I’m sliding forward.

  A gasp slips from my lips, and I reach out my hands to try and slow my descent. It works a little, but it also hurts like hell. I shift into my stone form, and then it’s like I’m plummeting straight down into hell. Blaise screams behind me, and the light bounces all around. But no matter what we do, we’re just going faster and faster, the world whipping away.

  I know my stone form can handle this, but my gut clenches at the thought of Blaise’s fleshy body sliding at this pace down the stone. And yet, as horrible as the thought is, there’s nothing we can do now except keep going and hope we aren’t crushed when we reach the bottom.

  10

  Andros

  Around me, people scream and scream. But it isn’t a constant sound. That would be far easier to deal with. Instead, it’s like a chorus of suffering that rises and falls like a song meant to tear at your heartstrings. One man’s fingernails are ripped from his hands every single hour on the dot. A woman is hit by a car, over and over again. By the time her body has healed enough for her to stand, the car smashes into her again. Both of them heal at a magical pace, and so they suffer over and over again all day long. There’s a man just out of sight. His hands are cuffed, and he’s abused just the way he abused women in life, by a creature that looks exactly like him. He begs, he pleads, but just as he ignored his victims, his punisher ignores him.

  Every day I’m forced to walk the upper levels of Hades’s Underworld. Every day I hear the screams and the suffering of these people. I know that none of them are innocent. I heard the story of the woman who hit a man on the road, dragged him home, and then watched him die, trapped beneath her car. I heard of the molesters, the abusers, the killers, and the rapists. I heard all their stories, and yet, it’s my own kind of hell to see their punishments.

  I will never be able to clear these images from my mind. I will always be broken and wrong inside because of what I’ve seen...and been through...and even done. And yet, I’m to have a child. The one thing I had always wanted.

  Gods damn it. Now? Now when I can’t be a good father to any child.

  I reach the golden gates to the side of this level of the Underworld. As I move closer, the screaming and crying fade away. My feet walk on green
grass, and I press a hand to the cold surface. On the other side, those people who had done good in life are experiencing happiness. Their greatest dreams and desires are unfolding, and it all feels real to them.

  So many times I wonder if I had died, really died and not been betrayed, would I have ended up in Elysium? Or had I done enough bad in my life to spend my eternity being tortured?

  I linger at the gate, pressing my hand against the cool golden surface. When I see no one close by, I let my cheek rest on it and close my eyes. I try to picture what the world beyond looks like, and the image that forms in my mind takes away the screaming and the scent of blood and brimstone for the briefest moment. The heaviness that settles in my heart lifts, ever so slightly, and a shudder moves through my body.

  “Sad that you’ll never enter Elysium?”

  I jerk and every ounce of peace drains from my body. Slowly, I draw back from the gate and open my eyes.

  Hades is standing in a dark robe, left open, with nothing underneath. In one hand, he has a glass with a handle made out of bones. Inside is a golden liquid that could only be ambrosia, and the man radiates drunkenness.

  He takes a sip from his glass, his gaze running over me. “You know that you shall always be my gargoyle, right? Another part of the collection of things that no one else has.”

  “I’m aware,” I say, keeping my face carefully blank.

  “Come,” he gestures, “walk with me.”

  We walk up the steps leading to the top of the wall, then stop and stare out over the river of souls. “The witch is pregnant.”

  It takes everything inside of me not to react.

  “When the child is born, before the bond between mother and baby can be severed, we will kill her, and the child shall gain all her powers. Then, I will gain a willing witch, the likes of which no other god has ever had.”

  My stomach turns. Everyone says Hades is an asshole, and it takes a special kind of god to not only think up the tortures he creates, but order his people to execute them. But talking about killing a woman after giving birth to her child is a kind of evil that no one should be capable of.

  “Just a few more months. No time at all. And those powers will be mine.”

  I keep my face blank, but inside I rage. It’s true that I had never been able to free Hecate, but I would think of a new plan. He would not kill the woman I love and take our child. No matter the price I must pay.

  “Now, go see to the witch. Make sure she gives me a healthy child, not something broken and ugly like her daughter.”

  My heart aches as I turn away from him. Her daughter, Empusa, escaped a short time before I died. The child was in her teens, from what her mother said, and Hecate had created a distraction, when she realized they couldn’t both escape. Hecate said that it was the best and worst day of her life. That Em, as she called her, was finally free, and that filled her with joy, but that she’d lost the bright spot in her life.

  I want this child to bring her that same kind of joy. I had thought, whether my brother came in time or not, that she and the child would be okay for a time. But it seems that Hades is determined that she is nothing more than an incubator, and my daughter nothing more than a slave to house her magic. I hate him. I hate him with every fiber of my being.

  But even more so, I hate him because now I can’t wait for my brother’s help. We have to escape before the baby comes. Before it is too late.

  Someone bumps into me, and I feel something being stuffed into my hand. I catch a glimpse of one of Persephone’s maids beneath a dark hood before she’s gone. Frowning, I look down at my hand. There’s nothing more than herbs. Berries maybe? Why did the woman given me such things?

  For a second I consider tossing them off the wall, but then I realize that plants from the surface are rare and beautiful things down here. The least I could do is give them to my Hecate.

  I walk down the wall and come to the door to the prison cells. A skeletal guard unlocks and opens the door at my approach. Moving down the hall, door after door opens before me until at last I come to Hecate’s cell. Pulling the keys from my belt, I unlock the door and open it. Inside I see all the touches that Hades had decided to give her now that she’s carrying something precious to him. There is a small bed in one corner, with a mattress, sheets, and a blanket. There is a small fire pit that burns brightly with blue flames, flames that never go out. She has clothes folded neatly in a chest near her bed, and a rug to warm the stone.

  As I stare at her new room, my chest aches. I’m glad she has these small comforts. I just wish it wasn’t because the man running this place planned to murder her and steal our child.

  She rises from the bed and smiles, setting the book in her hands down. Hopping off the bed, she shoves her feet into little slippers and runs to me.

  Despite all my doubts, I fold her into my arms and breathe in the scent of roses.

  “Can you believe it? The doctor actually convinced him I need all this to restore my powers.”

  My muscles tense. Should I tell her?

  She pulls back from me and smiles, but her smile wavers. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to go,” I say, the words tumbling from my lips.

  She frowns. “Go?”

  I nod, then step away from her to stare in both directions down the hall. Seeing no one, I close the door and go to her, lifting her in my arms and setting her onto the bed. She gives a little cry of surprise and is back to smiling at me when I sit down next to her on the bed.

  “Go,” I say again, softer this time. “We can’t wait any longer for my brother. I’m going to come up with another plan to get out of here.”

  She gives me that humoring look, the one that says she doesn’t believe any of this will happen, then looks down at my hands. “What do you have there?”

  I’d completely forgotten the plants, which had now been a little crushed in my hand. I open my hand to show her, and her entire body freezes. Then, carefully, she picks up the stick with white bark, the leaves, and the little red berry as carefully as someone might pick up something glass and delicate.

  “Where did you get these?”

  I shrug. “Persephone’s woman slipped them to me.”

  “Do you know what this is?” she asks excitedly.

  I shake my head.

  “It’ll allow me to communicate with someone on the surface. It’s the exact components to the spell!”

  For the first time, hope really blossoms inside of me. “Good. We can contact my brother and see how close he is to rescuing us.”

  Her expression falters. “I thought I could speak to my daughter.”

  My heart hurts to hear her words. “If my brother can get us free, you can talk to her every day.”

  “And if he can’t and I waste my one chance to talk to her?” Hecate asks, her expression unreadable.

  I reach out and take her free hand, then squeeze. “You know I would never make you do anything I didn’t absolutely have to, but I need you to trust me on this.”

  She blinks away tears, and I feel like an asshole. “Okay.”

  Going to the fire, she takes a deep breath. “The last time I was pregnant, most of my powers still worked, but they were less reliable, so we’ll have to cross our fingers.”

  “Fingers crossed,” I say with a smile, then cross my fingers.

  She takes another deep breath, then begins to murmur softly. At first, I have no idea if she’s really saying words or just mumbling, but her volume increases, and I feel a powerful spell brewing in the room. She tosses the twig in and a cloud of white smoke drifts up from the fire, but it stays in the air, not moving or dissipating. She keeps speaking, then throws the leaves in and green rises to blend with the white. At last, she tosses the berry in and the cloud changes to red.

  Then she lowers her arms. “Call for him.”

  I stand and move closer to the fire. “Orion, gargoyle brother of mine, speak.” My gaze moves to her, and she gives a nod. “Orion, I’m here,” I say
.

  “Orion, brother of Andros, answer our call,” Hecate cries, her volume growing.

  But nothing happens.

  “Is it...the pregnancy? The spell?” I ask in confusion.

  She shakes her head, tears in her eyes. “It worked. If you can’t speak to him, then your brother is no longer among the living.”

  My stomach drops. “I’m sorry...I’m sorry I wasted your only call.”

  She bows her head and tears splatter the floor. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  I want to hold her. I want to bring her comfort, but something inside of me is screaming to get out, and I don’t think I can contain it much longer.

  My feet are numb as I move to her door, leave, and lock it behind me. The sound of her weeping follows me as I race down the hall, in the opposite direction from the entrance. I never go this way, but I do now, because I need a moment to myself. The tunnels to the cells break off at random, and I choose one direction after another until I reach a dead end. Then, and only then, I explode. A scream tears from my lips and I pound the stone over and over again, my human-like flesh tearing and bleeding. The stone makes my entire hand vibrate, but I don’t care, I just keep punching and punching until I collapse against the stone.

  Orion...he is dead. I had been here, promising my love that he was coming for us, and all along he was dead. My brother, the man who was my best friend, and the closest person to me outside of Hecate, is dead.

  And I hadn’t even known.

  I’m breathing hard as I slide down the wall. Beneath me, blood splatters from my hands onto the stone. I feel so lost, so hopeless.

  “What troubles you, gargoyle?”

  Every muscle in my body stiffens, and I turn slowly around. Still on the ground, I stare at the two cells in this branch of the prison. But I see no one.

  “You long for something. Something I wonder if I could give you.”

  Suddenly, a face appears on the other side of the bars, and my stomach twists. I recognize the creature. His skin is like tar, pocked and oozing with an oily substance that rolls down his bumpy, cratered skin. His eyes are two burning pools of lava, and smoke rises from his lips.