by Jamie Wyman
Loki surreptitiously stroked his bruised cheek. “Much to my chagrin.”
“And yet, here I am.” I studied Loki’s face, locking stares with those gas-flame eyes. “If I came back, why couldn’t he?”
Before Loki could answer, Heph rumbled, “Someone is coming.”
Not a second later, there was a knock on the door.
Loki lifted a finger. “Hold that thought,” he said, bouncing up from the sofa. He crossed to the door, and when he opened it, Malcolm stormed in.
Ignoring Loki and Heph, Mal marched right up to me. His wild curls were in an unruly state. “Where the bloody hell have you been?” he shouted at me.
“Who is this?” Hephaestus asked.
I sighed. “This is Marius’s brother, Malcolm.”
Mal had no interest in introductions. “First Marius runs off. Then you. And when I go looking, I can’t find either of you about. I understand if you wanted to nip off for a cheeky romp, but come on. Have some manners.”
There was a dissonant note in his words. His voice shook, but it was more than that. I took him in. Something was wrong about the set of his jaw. His blue eyes blazed widely, and his skin was pale. His hands trembled.
“Mal, what’s wrong?”
“You tell me.” He fixed me with his stare. I’d have to have been blind to miss the accusation there. “Where is he?”
I hung my head. How the hell was I supposed to explain what had happened?
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Loki suggested. “We should talk.”
I glanced up just as Mal violently shrugged Loki’s hand off his shoulder. “I don’t feel like sitting.” He looked as though he was being held together with little more than his anger and a threat.
“You know already,” I said softly. “Don’t you?”
The young satyr grimaced, lips pressing together in a thin, colorless line. Fury flared in his eyes, and every muscle in his body tensed. When he spoke, his voice was a forced, quivering whisper. “Blood calls to blood.”
Heph stepped in close to Malcolm. “You have my sorrow. Your brother was a good friend. I will mourn him.”
Malcolm’s face twisted with bitterness. “Fuck off with your sympathy, mate. It’s not like he’s dead.”
“Mal,” I began.
Loki took over for me, bless him. “I’m sorry, but it’s exactly like that.”
“You daft twats, I think I’d know if me own brother was dead. He’s not. Cat’ll tell you.”
Mal’s desperation called to that stubborn ember of hope, fanned it. “Mal, what do you think is happening here?”
“If I knew, would I be asking you? You went off to find him, then…then it was like he was in my head, screaming at me to protect you. Then he just…he just disappeared. Like—” His face fell.
“Like he died?” I didn’t try to hide the tears or stop their flow. “Because he did, Mal. He’s gone. I couldn’t save him. I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
“But he’s not dead.”
“He is.”
“Then why do I hear him now?”
My heart stopped. Did I dare believe? Should I hope?
I glanced to Heph. “Is it possible?”
The blacksmith’s brow furrowed with deep creases, silver eyes narrowed as he pondered. “If he crossed into Hades…”
“Oh for fucksake,” Loki said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They took him where we can’t follow.”
“Wait.” I shoved into Loki’s face and forced him to look at me. “What the hell are you saying? Is Marius alive?”
“Of course he’s alive,” Mal answered. “He’s not happy about it, but I can feel him out there. Surely you can, too, love. Can’t ya?”
I searched my feelings and found a cyclone. “I can’t be sure of what I feel.”
Mal snatched my hand. The change was almost instantaneous. My blood flashed hot, and with the heat came a sense of connection. Like a computer plugged into a network, I could feel others sending and receiving data. Mal pinged into being, a fiery light that pulsed hotly. If I followed his rhythm, I could trace other lines. Small tendrils were little more than dull gray filaments. But two of them…two of them blazed in my mind. I let myself drift toward the brighter of the two, a blue sphere. Immediately, I heard French music. Llyr’s eyes opened wide where he sat in his home. He’d been worrying his fingers, and his face was lined with despair. He whispered my name, but I pulled away and fixed my attention on the next light. Emerald green, it gave off a wan radiance.
Somewhere I had a body, and in that body, my stomach lurched. My connection wavered as I registered the physical sensations. Tightening my focus, I reached for the green sphere.
It was like swimming through sheets of cool fog. Shimmering fractals of frost climbed rock walls the exact color of lunar dust, and voices echoed in the caverns. Screams, haunted whispers, and panicked animal bleats filled the air. Someone lay on the stone floor, a heap of blood, fur, and shredded flesh all curled in on itself in the fetal position. A hand twitched, flattened against the ground, and pushed up. Slowly, the body drew away from the floor. He lifted his head. And I saw them—a pair of eyes the color of a leaf.
“He’s there!” I shouted.
Mal broke apart from me, and I came back to the corporeal world. Loki and Heph gaped at us.
“How did you do that?” I asked, my voice raw.
Mal stared at me, haunted. When he spoke, he sounded like a traumatized child. “He’s my blood.”
“Mal, I need you to answer me this: was that real?”
His eyes swam out of focus, face pulling into a grimace. He’d seen too much. What was it Llyr had said about him? That Mal had spent so long blissfully unaware of most of the magical world? Those days were gone for him now. The shrieks echoing in that other place, they had heralded the end of Malcolm’s innocence, such as it was. And to see his brother as we had?
Too much.
To jar him back to me, I grabbed his face with both my hands. “Was it real?” I asked more sternly, urgently.
“Yeah.”
“Yes!” I planted an ecstatic kiss on him. When I pulled back, Mal wore a pleased leer. “You’re a genius, Mal.”
“Hello, there,” he growled.
I whirled to face the gods. “He’s alive! Marius is alive.”
“You’re certain?” Heph asked.
I nodded and explained the vision. “It’s him. I know it. He isn’t dead.”
Hephaestus put his hands on his hips and regarded his fellow deity. “She has described the innermost pit of the Underworld, playground of Hades himself.”
“Cat,” Loki began, “are you sure you saw blood? A whole body, not just a shade?”
I shrugged, terrified that I was wrong about the vision. “How would I know the difference?”
Heph answered. “A shade is an echo. Think of what you saw and tell me again. Was the blood dry?”
I closed my eyes and focused on the memory. “Some. It oozed out of him and dripped down. It was…fresh,” I said, almost choking on the word.
“You are certain it did not float out of him, like mist?”
I nodded. “Positive.”
“And did you see his eyes?”
“Yes.”
Heph paused, and my heart raced. Hephaestus was fighting off hope himself. I could tell by the intensity of his stare, the way he’d gone still. The air itself seemed charged with possibility. If Heph believed… If he could find an ember of hope…
“Did he see you?” the god asked. “Recognize you?”
Oh shit.
My stomach fell. “He didn’t look at me. He was looking around the cave, afraid, and he was making that face—you know, the one he gets when he’s trying to get his bearings so he can squirm out of a trap?—yeah, that. But he didn’t seem to see me. Is that bad? Please tell me it’s not bad.”
Loki sighed and stepped back, clearly weighing something in his head. He pressed his fingers to his lips and stared into the
middle distance. “Why would they do that?”
Heph’s deep bass voice answered. “He is more valuable alive.”
“You said alive!” I jumped up and grabbed Mal’s hand in what I hoped was reassurance.
Loki ignored me, pensive. Heph watched my boss think.
“What are they doing?” Mal whispered in my ear.
“Being gods, shh.”
Loki came to some conclusion. “So they kill him and whisk him to Hades, but revive him?”
“All the better to torture him, my friend,” Heph replied with a sad nod. “There will be a line forming of beings seeking to take a chunk out of his hide.”
“Right, then,” I said. “Let’s get him out of there before the line gets too greedy.”
With quick steps, I burst into the bedroom and grabbed my bag. I didn’t bother actually packing. Just grabbed the few things I might have need of along the way: a stun gun, my panic button, and a few other gadgets. I slid a handful of mistletoe darts into my pocket, too. Loki had given the charmed weapons to me the year before and I found them quite useful.
“Cat,” Loki said, “I can’t let you go.”
“I don’t remember asking for your permission.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I.”
He grabbed my arm. “Do you think this is a game?” he seethed through his teeth. “Do you forget our arrangement?”
“No, Loki, I don’t think it’s a goddamn game. In games people can win or lose. Me? I’m just trying to get everyone out alive.”
“Then why would you run headlong into the mouth of the beast? No. Don’t answer that. I refuse to believe that you’re that fucking stupid.”
I slammed my bag down on the bed. “Unless you have some helpful advice, I urge you to get the fuck out of my way, Loki.”
The god’s eyes widened. How long had it been since a mortal—one who wore his mark, no less—defied him? I realized in that moment that he could have leveled me, left this resort a smoking crater. But he didn’t.
“Cat, you’re not the only one charged with protecting someone.”
“Then help me get him back!”
“Dammit, woman, I’m not talking about the satyr! You can be so irritatingly dense sometimes, you know that? I can’t let anything happen to you.”
Then I remembered something Loki had said on more than one occasion. That he didn’t own my soul but was its steward. Someone else held the deed. Someone else pulled his strings. And mine.
“Who is it, Loki?” I breathed.
He shook his head. “Can’t tell you that.”
I took in the bruises and cuts on his face, his swollen and split lip. “Is that what happened to you?”
“Well, you know how deities can get,” he sniped. “They’re like children, really. Get more than a little testy when you break their favorite toys.”
I rankled at that. In my years working with Loki, I’d almost forgotten that I was a piece in someone else’s game. Someday I’d be free of this crazy cycle. No more gods or warring factions. No more immortal politics.
“I can’t let you just fly off to the Underworld and risk your life, Cat. I need you to stay alive.”
“Then help me,” I pleaded. “I can’t just sit here. I have to go after him. I have to, Loki.”
“Why? So you can keep up this futile attempt at finding another backer for him in time? You lost. It’s done. Why can’t you accept that?”
“Because…” The rest of the answer caught in my throat. I couldn’t say it. I locked my gaze on his, hoping he would understand.
Loki’s head fell. “Dammit. Of all the brainless, foolish…”
I pulled the pack over my shoulder. “If you’re going to try to stop me, Loki, now is the time to do it.”
His gaze flicked to my hands. I’d drawn power into them, ready to fight the Bane of the Aesir if that’s what it took for me to get to Marius. The Trickster’s lips hitched up in a smile.
“So incredibly stupid,” he muttered. “But damn, you’ve got moxie.”
From behind my steward, Hephaestus said, “It will serve her well if she is to parley with the Lord of the Dead himself. And if her description is accurate, that is where Marius is being kept—Hades’s most inner sanctum. There will be no breaking him out, no daring escape. There will only be diplomacy.”
My knees wobbled, as did my confidence. I’d never been great at diplomacy. But for Marius…
Loki and I stared at each other: will against will.
“I need to do this,” I whispered. “Please.”
Loki spun on his heel and breezed back into the sitting room. Jabbing a finger at Mal, he barked, “You’re going with her. And you’re going to look after her, do you understand? If anything happens to her, I will take great pleasure in pulling every inch of your skin off your bones and feeding it to the hungriest souls in Hell, do you understand me?”
Mal nodded vigorously, eyes haunted and pallor ashen.
I rushed Loki and threw my arms around him. “Thank you.”
He gave me a reluctant pat on the back. “Don’t thank me,” he said darkly. “I can’t go with you.”
Hephaestus stepped up. “I will guide her to the Otherworld.”
After a grateful nod to the blacksmith, Loki said, “Cat, any glamour I would lay upon you would be rendered null once you crossed over. Watch your back. But you get in, you get the satyr, and you get your ass out of there, do you understand?”
I bobbed my head. “Snatch and grab. Got it.”
“Good. Now go get him. Bastard owes me money.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Dime”
Hephaestus had urged me against indulging in hope, but that ship had sailed. As Loki took his leave, the flames of hope roared in my chest, and I smiled. This was crazy. Possibly suicidal. As I thought of Marius, though, of all the things we’d been through and all that I had yet to tell him, I knew there was no turning back.
I swept my attention to Hephaestus. He frowned at me. “There is no swaying you, is there?”
“Nope.”
“What fools these mortals be,” he muttered under his breath.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes I stood…well, I didn’t know where it was. Sure as shit wasn’t the posh hotel room I’d just been in. Heph had done his teleporter trick again.
The ground beneath my feet was cracked and parched. It seemed we stood in a dry lake bed, but as I scanned the landscape, it was difficult to confirm. Anything more than ten feet away from me was blurred and twisting. This place lay beneath a thick haze, an odorless miasma that shifted and swirled. The obscuring lens gave everything a silver-yellow tinge. What I could see of the sky was the dark slate that came during an eclipse. If the sun, moon, and stars had any meaning here, they did not make an appearance.
Heph and Mal lingered a few feet away. As I stared at them, the air itself seemed to rob them of all color. It was like watching an old cathode-tube television as the garish orange T-shirt stretched across Mal’s barrel chest fritzed and twitched before going gray. His eyes remained piercing blue, too vibrant against the monochrome surroundings.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“The Otherworld,” Heph said. “The one that lies beyond your own.”
“Is this…is this like the Fae realm?” I shuddered at the thought. I didn’t do well with faeries.
“No,” the god assured me. “This place is not Fae. It is what lies between your world and Fae. The space between all realms.”
My head ached from trying to wrap my mind around the concept. “So there’s my place. There’s your place. And then there’s here? In between, like a buffer?”
Heph nodded grimly. “It is a place for dreamers, the dead, and the insane. They are the only ones that would roam this land willingly.”
“Not hard to guess which we are,” Mal murmured.
I snickered at that thought. In for a penny, right? “So which way to Hades?” I asked.
“So we’re headed toward a mirage,” Mal complained. “Brilliant.”
“It is no mirage,” Heph insisted. “That is your destination. And this is where we part ways.”
“You sure I can’t persuade you to come with us?” I asked, unease slithering in my gut.
Hephaestus shook his head. “I will not cross into my cousin’s realm uninvited. Stay on this path. Go to the tree. All will become clear.”
I swallowed my fear and nodded. “Got it.”
From the ether, Heph brought up a silver ball. Roughly the size of a large grapefruit, the sphere gleamed with a perfect, unmarred shine.
I tilted my head. “What’s that?”
“It is for you. A gift. It might be of help once you are in the realm of the dead.”
The sphere was cold and heavy when he transferred it into my hand. Whispers of power tingled in my fingers. Something churned inside, aching to be released. Guts still twisting with anxiety, I turned the ball over in my hands. No seams or hasps.
Hephaestus had given me a puzzle similar to Pandora’s box. Though it wasn’t the true relic, it bore the same kind of mystery as the chest I’d seen at the Forge. But what lay inside?
“Keep your hope close, girl,” he said.
I held up the sphere. “Thank you,” I said as I stashed it in my bag.
“Good luck, Cat. Follow this path. Find Marius in Hades’s sanctum. Bring him back to us. There are still memories we have yet to make together.”
With a shiver, I gave the blacksmith a salute. Tugging on Mal’s sleeve, I put my back to the god and started down the path. As we walked, the shapes of other travelers appeared in the haze. Now and again, one of them would step through the shimmering veil and share our path for a moment. Their forms shone like tarnished silver, devoid of any true color. At first, I thought that these people were travelers like me and Mal, lost in the not-fog of the Otherworld. It didn’t take long for me to figure out, though, that these were little more than ghosts.
When a little girl ran through the gelatinous barrier between us and the world, she flickered. The light that made up her body flashed and blurred. At one point she disappeared only to materialize three steps back from where she’d winked out of being. She chased something, reached for it with her chubby fingers. Then, with a jolt of surprise, she was jerked up by an unseen force and whisked away. The last I saw of her, the girl’s mouth was open in a silent scream.