The Pentagram Child: Part 2 (Afterlife Saga Book 5)

by Stephanie Hudson

  My eradication. My extermination. The annihilation of my own soul. And finally the time for my personal extinction so others could live. No, it was not right for me to have one last wish in seeing Draven again and speaking words of love.

  No, now I had a new wish…

  My date with Death.

  Draven

  Chapter 45

  Broken Gods

  I had watched many horrors in my countless lifetimes but none even came close to watching the woman you loved in dying agony. Seeing each wound lacerate her body over and over was living a torture of the likes I had never known. The battle that raged inside me was a torrent of emotion flooding my senses with both the need to kill and destroy but also to protect. I knew what needed to be done in order to keep the balance to my people and the mortals we shared this earth with but seeing my girl in danger overrode all of my rational mentality.

  So I took her place and could only pray that in my absence she would remain safe. I had to believe that or my demon would take over completely and seeing where I had now come, I needed that belief more than ever. It would be so easy to let myself go completely and free the beast that lived at the centre of my rage.

  It also wanted his girl safe and unharmed and anything that threatened that only needed to be eradicated in the eyes of the demon. But what the cretin Alex didn’t know and what my Keira had to trust in was that I too had a plan.

  Belphegor had been more than a little helpful after our persuasive chat and I was surprised when so little force was needed for him to crack. It had been a disappointment really as I had hoped to have relieved some of the mounting pressure I felt from having my Electus taken from me. But one look at me entering that Dublin pub and his vessel had nearly relieved itself. After that he had told me all I needed to know about one Alex Cain and his sordid family history.

  I had to hand it off to Sammael at the sheer depth of his plans. They had taken root near the very beginning of time. But unbeknown to all of us it was only through the right alignment of the planets and all levels of Heaven and Hell could such a feat be accomplished. And that feat was the key to unleashing the Titans. A key that I now held in my hand at the mouth of Tartarus.

  I looked down at the vial of blood in my palm and then back up at the black volcanic wasteland that surrounded the Mountain. I knew where I needed to go and what lay in the belly of the prison, a fact I didn’t relish.

  Inside the mountain was where the prisoners were kept. Where the worst of Hell’s demons that could not be tamed remained forever bound.

  The sides of Mount Tartarus weren’t made from demonic rock formations at all but something far more sinister. It was a steep maze made from a mass of Devil’s soulweed. A demonic plant life that entwined itself with the fossilised bones which represented the mortal victims of each incarcerated inmate.

  As each new prisoner was added, so did the walls of the mountain. It grew from the lost souls of the lives taken and in fact became a piece of the guilty’spunishment. And all this is spawn from the core in which it surrounds. Its centre was the heart from which true evil was born…

  The Titans.

  Thinking these gruesome facts made me clench my fist to a point where I needed to remember what I held in my hand. Knowing now that Alex had in fact orchestrated the whole reason I had bound myself to Tartarus was one that made my blood ignite with rage. All this time forces had been at work of the likes I had never known. For an enemy unseen, is an enemy that will come bearing a blade at your back and find a way to pierce your heart from the shadows.

  I had always wondered why the leaders of this realm had put certain measures in place to prevent most Demons coming here but I had absentmindedly never put two and two together.

  It was around the same time that the last of the Eves was found and finally a stop to her resurrection had been made. It was so blindingly obvious now but at the time I just considered Sammael’s reasons were for personal gain and nothing more.

  So now it was time for me to face the Demons I had once put there and in doing so putting the whole world at risk.

  “Oh yeah, this is a great plan Dom.” I said to myself before unfolding my wings and crossing the expansive space. The black surface looked like cracked concrete slabs that had been laid down with flowing lava as their foundations. It almost looked like miniature amber rivers were glowing through the crust.

  It was said that when the Titans were defeated they were imprisoned in their once Temple of worship on top of Mount Olympus. Then the mountain they had once called home split open and the Temple fell into the earth and continued until finally stopping at the lowest level of Hell.

  The impact rocked the core of the earth enough for magma to flood the imprisoned Titans, encasing their bodies in Hell’s natural chains of an unbreakable force. All it would take is one break in the cooled lava that encased the bodies with igneous rock to allow them to break free.

  And there was a time when only two men knew what the key was to breaking such a mighty force... Titan blood. Cronus knew this as it is said he was the only being to ever escape the fiery chains of Tartarus. But the once mighty leader and King of the Titans used the last of his powers to escape and had to do so leaving behind his kin, never again to have the strength to return to free them. Hence making it his mission ever since.

  There was once a time when many of my kind believed this was the Prophecy the fates spoke of as the release of the Titans would most certainly mean war. And where the last War of the Gods brought new life, another would most certainly mean the end of it.

  This was the reason getting into Tartarus was not an easy feat. It might have made for an indestructible prison but what it held at its heart also made it a dangerous one to even exist. But the Titans needed to be kept somewhere and unfortunately with the power of Heaven and now Hell combined, they had little choice seeing as they could not be destroyed.

  These thoughts plagued me whenever I came here. But when I decided to use this place as my prison, I only locked my demon to the outskirts. The last time I had touched this place was when making the decision to send Sammael here for his crimes. I had pounded my swords into the earth and called forth the Reapers of Tartarus to drag his soul back with them…when clearly the punishment should have been death.

  But thanks to Aurora and her vile family connections I now had my own VIP access card carved into my very skin, which meant I could walk directly up to the inner circle gates and gain entrance. Which was exactly what I was about to do.

  The maze that covered the sheer mountain face was one that, even if a prisoner completed the unlikely task of escape, trying to find his way out of the maze would have sent him deeper into the realms of his own madness. And this would have been long before reaching what is known as the Tartarus crust.

  This was the wasteland I had spent far too long staring out at in depths very close to my own madness as a result of being without my Chosen One. But I was a prisoner no more and soon my Keira would be back in my arms with the blood of my enemies at our feet, where they lay slain for their treason.

  I swooped down noticing the guards positioned at the battlements as if at the ready for the war we all hoped would never come. Oh my kind had tried before. They thought that by coming in the masses with their armies behind them that they could release the Titans. Foolish enough to believe in doing so they would be granted favour by them or even more delusional, to believe they might even be controllable.

  However that time was long ago but no less forgotten. And nor should it be, for the importance of keeping such an event from ever happening was one both Heaven and Hell were even willing to work together in preventing.

  As I made my way up the maze surface I knew the only way to spot the cleverly disguised entrance was to look for the largest knot of Devil’s soulweed. This was the only thing that grew in this place and it would have been better if nothing had grown at all.

  It was like Hell’s own version of Japanese knotweed, only this had vines t
he size of earth’s tree trunks and was grey and lifeless looking. I actually took a moment to wonder why it was named what it was. Was it for the way it looked or for the way it attached itself onto the stone corpses and embedded its foot long thorns into the fossilised bones?

  Either way Hell’s natural parasite grew with as much fury as though the bodies of the damned fed its very roots. I didn’t know what was stronger, the deathly vines or the mountain itself. I did however know how far those roots travelled, as I saw the evidence for myself every time I entered my people’s crypt. The Tree of Lost Souls was foolishly also known as the Tree of Life but this was not because it represented what it gave but more like what it took away. And like its mother, I knew what the soulweed wanted the most in this world and right now that was my immortal blood.

  That vermin Alex had certainly known what he was doing by feeding the Tree of Lost Souls Keira’s blood. As soon as it had tasted that brand of ambrosia it had been like an electrical charge to a dead man’s chest. The tree was known as the heart to not only my kingdom of the living but also to my kingdom of the dead.

  And even the dead still had secrets to keep.

  So it was time to go visit one soul that should have died by my hand a long time ago…

  Sammael.

  I let my wings fold in on themselves just at the right moment to land. I knew that if I hadn’t been in this vile realm I would have spent the falling seconds basking in the clean air pushing back at me. As it was however, the second I landed I needed to stretch out my wings in annoyance just to dispel the volcanic black dust this part of Hell was plagued with.

  I stepped up to the tightest part of tangled thorns and tried not to think of what the other half of my soul could be going through right now. I should have healed her! I should have insisted, NO! I should have demanded that I heal her before allowing that bastard to send me here!

  This mounting rage was more than enough encouragement needed to do what I had no choice but to do. I thrust both my bare arms into the hellish plant and let it yank me forward. The second it felt a warm body enter its domain I went forward nearly losing my footing the deeper it dragged me into its deadly breast. I clenched my teeth against what I knew was to come but no matter the anticipation, as it meant nothing the second the needle points pierced my flesh.

  Pain was quickly followed by even greater pain as the thorns sank deeper into the pinnacle points of the entwined Pentagrams, the Tartarus symbols carved into the flesh on my forearms. I felt sick. Not from pain… No, I felt sick knowing the very reasons I was forced to take my knife and hand it over to Aurora. To unknowingly hand the fate of my kind and that of Keira’s to a lost Titan bloodline.

  But it wasn’t using Aurora to do it that caused me to force my vessel to keep its stomach acid in place. No it was knowing that we had all been fooled for so long. How could I or any of us have missed the existence of Sammael’s son living amongst us for so long? If that wasn’t bad enough then finding myself tied to the lowest level of Hell because he had cursed the very necklace I gave to Keira, one that should have protected her...!

  Oh yes, I felt sick indeed.

  “Fuck!” I shouted, both from frustration at myself and from suddenly being hauled forward and being impaled by even more thorns to various parts of my body. I gritted my teeth and let my body be dragged into the belly of the soulweed until finally it released me by flinging my pierced body to the ground on the other side.

  I had been expecting this kind of welcome but it still didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt like a son of a bitch! I got up on unsteady feet and let the anger inside me fuel my healing abilities, so that by the time I took my first step my vessel showed no signs of weakness.

  Directly in front of me stood an arched door of black charred wood in the shape of escaping bodies. My educated guess was this was all that remained when the damned souls of this place had tried to escape these mountain walls. Escaping Tartarus was a useless endeavour and one never yet accomplished by my kind…

  Until now.

  Knowing what I was about to do went against the grain in every way possible as it was the complete opposite as to why I existed. My job was to protect the realms and for more centuries than I cared to count I had done this successfully. Never once letting my personal life infiltrate this goal. But just one slip into my memory bank at seeing Keira in agony and I was ready to take on all the wrath Hell had to offer just to save one human life. It was perfect insanity and the most beautiful of mistakes to make.

  I never understood the meaning of true love and why those who have tasted its bitter sweet nectar would kill for just one more sip…until there was her. And bitter sweet this next action would be indeed…well, if all factors involved got their arses in place to aid me. Because as much as I hated to say it, if there was ever a time to admit that I couldn’t do this alone, then that time was now…

  Ego be dammed!

  I walked up to the faceless shapes immortalised in the massive wood panels and waited to be granted entrance. It wasn’t the type of place where you could just barge your way in any more than you could just knock and wait for the butler to answer. After about ten minutes I was just about ready to tear the bloody thing down and have done with it but as if my mounting rage was all that was needed, the door started to open.

  A bluish glow emanated from behind the opening making me squint against it for a moment until my eyes adjusted. As the door opened further it was almost as if the space behind it had its own blue moon. I stepped inside and was not surprised that I wasn’t that far off.

  I had heard about this place but never before seen its haunting beauty. The sound of the echoing doors closing behind me only emphasized the size of the room I now stood in.

  “The Temple of Lost Olympia.” I felt compelled to speak its name as an emotion I don’t usually feel overtook me. If I was to compare such a thing, I imagined it to be as simple as a young boy seeing something from his childhood stories now in the flesh.

  The Temple of Lost Olympia was said to be on top of Mount Olympus and also known as the Temple of Worship, but when the mountain split so did the Temple, half of which became the Titan’s prison. Knowing that I would be seeing one half was enough but this part was something else. It was as though a piece of Heaven itself had fallen down into the lowest depths of Hell and remained here untouched yet still broken.

  The colossal pillars that once framed the great space were now crumbling marble and looked like slabs of broken, stone cogs lay amongst the rest of the rubble. Parts of the many giant statues of fallen Gods lined the long room and remained in various states of decay.

  I walked down the centre that had strangely remained cleared of debris and couldn’t help but look up at the hundred foot statues in awe. Gods that had once walked these very steps as I and could have gazed upon their own commemorated grand image of themselves.

  To be honest I thought it was all slightly egotistical myself but that’s what you usually found from the Gods and considering they got most of their power from being worshipped I guess it made sense…well that was until you saw for yourself where that worship got them. Broken and immortal remains in Hell, is where!

  I had to shake my head at it all as I frustratingly had to move painfully slow through these parts, knowing what lurked in the shadows of Tartarus…

  Harpies.

  Chapter 46-

  Beauty Twisted Ugly.

  As if I didn’t have enough to contend with, one wrong move in this place and Zeus’ throwaways would come by in swarms. Harpies were known as the hounds of Zeus, created for the sole purpose to steal for the arrogant God. He created a new race consisting of four sisters. They were beautiful bird like creatures with the faces to rival any Goddess. Long elegant bodies adorned with half milky skin and plush white feathers. As such they each were gifted with a set of magnificent wings that outshone any Angel known.

  But as Zeus started to lose his powers as a God, so did he lose his patience with such things. His beautif
ul gift to the Heavens turned bitter and with that ungodly behaviour followed. The sisters became vicious, cruel and violent forcing Zeus to banish them to where he saw they would best suit.

  It was said that as they fell from their God’s grace they were stripped of any power gifted to them. They lost the power of flight and fell first to Earth to then keep falling until they landed in the pits of Hell. Their own feathers circled their twisting bodies as they plummeted to their demise. For our kind to be stripped of our wings there is no greater punishment on either side.

  Zeus’ wrath sent them straight to the same place he had banished the Titans, giving them what they had grown to enjoy best, a place they could torture freely. In time the once beautiful creatures turned into a form more fitting for their new home. But down here it isn’t only the harsh environment that can seep into your very skin… It is the pure hate that can seep into your very soul.

  So now they roamed freely amongst this mountainous prison as its shadowed wardens with no understanding of keeping peace within its walls. No, only pain and suffering is their goal…that and the continuation of their abominable race.

  It was a sickening thought to know my kind, even the guilty and the worst of the worst would often be forced to lay with a Harpie. But the higher ranking Demons, the presidents of Hell like my father were more than happy to turn a blind eye to the likes of these creatures and their, shall we say, insatiable habits.

  I had hoped in what was still considered a holy place that the Temple of Lost Olympia held nothing but bad memories for the sisters. Therefore I assumed it was not only free of them but also their mutated offspring. However I couldn’t take my assumption for granted which added greatly to my frustration. Taking steady steps still echoed in the vast space and my unease meant my blades forced their way from my vessel without the mental command given.