Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  I so chose, keeping an eye on both him and Sophie as I got out. I had to admit, Friday was right: the ambience in this part of the castle was creepy as hell.

  “This way,” Vlad said, taking the lead again. Sophie walked beside me, me eyeing her, her eyeing me, neither of us really trusting the other. I also listened very carefully for footsteps to make sure someone didn’t bushwhack me from behind. Vlad might have been disarmingly nice thus far, but nothing about his tour or his answers had made me forget that he was both a legend for the worst reasons and also someone who had a strong connection to the all manner of hell that had rained down on me in the last few years.

  We walked until the corridor turned abruptly left at a ninety degree angle, passing modern wooden doors that didn’t quite fit the stonework and aged frames. This really was an old, castle, every bit of it—

  Until we turned the corner.

  Here the local carpenter had put in his best work, adding some frames and whatnot that were actually shimmed properly into position around the doors. One door, specifically. It was taller than the others, and I had a feeling it might have been a throne room or living quarters for the biggest cheese in Revelen at the time of its construction.

  “I see you live in the renovated wing,” I said as Vlad opened the door and held it for me. Such a gentleman. A bloodsucking gentleman.

  He smiled again, and I stepped inside to find—

  I let out a low whistle without intending to. This was definitely the modern wing, antiquity be damned.

  A lushly appointed living room the size of a small barn awaited. The typical tiny castle windows had been ripped out here and replaced with an impressively large glass pane, which looked out over Bredoccia in all its rising glory. Despite its size, the room looked … homey, with couches and chairs that wouldn’t have been out of place in a rustic lodge. There were even a few animal heads on the wall, though not too many, a couple of really big deer, one bear, both of which looked like local species rather than the North American varieties I was used to.

  “Little bit of a hunter, there, Vlad?” I asked, strolling past to the window. The view of Bredoccia was amazing, and I shuffled up to the edge of the floor to ceiling window. Nothing was visible below save for the tarmac, which suggested the hangar deck was immediately below. After a several-hundred-foot section of castle wall and sheer cliff.

  “Those trophies are mine,” Sophie said.

  I looked at her. A little query. She looked back at me, solidly indifferent. Sophie didn’t seem to me the type who enjoyed hunting animals. I had her figured for the sort that preferred hunting the most dangerous game, man.

  “So … you two live together?” I asked. Should have seen that.

  “Not like you’re thinking,” Sophie said.

  “I’m not thinking anything,” I said, “except that you’re both of that certain age where maybe looks aren’t as important as finding that special someone who enjoys megalomania and murder as much as you do.”

  “I don’t think you’re losing your looks at all,” Vlad said to Sophie, nodding at her in a very reassuring way. “I, on the other hand, have been on a bit of a downhill slide for … many years now, shall we say.”

  “It’s good that you acknowledge it,” I said. “Once you’ve confronted the problem, you’re ready to take steps to fix those certain things that start to go wrong. Like, for, instance, have you considered Hair Club for Men to maybe smooth out the knife point thing you’ve got going on there …?”

  Vlad chuckled, hardly menacing at all. “You really are quite amusing. I should perhaps look into that, but it is something of a signature at this point, is it not? Part of my … how do they say it these days? Brand awareness?”

  “Dracula’s got brand awareness and self-awareness,” I said. “This is not what I expected. At all.” Because it wasn’t. A guy as old as Vlad, I would have thought he’d have missed the train on irony. But surprisingly, none of my insults or jibes was going over his head.

  However old he was, he was still sharp. And sharp … was way more dangerous than dull.

  “Can we get down to business?” Sophie asked, folding her arms in front of her and pacing toward the big window. She was twitchy, at least for her, but she moved to give me space. It wasn’t exactly a sign of trust, since, again, I didn’t know her powers. But psychologically, it was a nice gesture.

  “Ah, yes,” Vlad said, and he took a tentative step toward me. He was only a few feet away, just out of arm’s reach, and offered me his hand, palm up, keeping the other where I could see it was empty. “Would you mind?”

  I stared at his proffered hand, then up to his eyes. They glistened bright blue, brighter than the sky out that window. “You want me to … take your hand?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

  I looked at it, looked at him. Well, this might solve more than one problem. “Okay, bub. But if you want to hold hands, I’m just going to go ahead and warn you—this is gonna hurt you more than it hurts me.”

  He just smiled, and I hoped he wasn’t about to reveal Gavrikov powers and burn off my hand.

  I slapped my mitt right in his, and he held onto it—gently. He gestured toward the window, and we took a couple steps toward it. Enough I could see pretty clearly out of it, not so close he could yank me around and defenestrate me without giving me enough time to react. “Nice view,” I said, counting the seconds in my head. Five … six … seven …

  “I chose to build here because of the commanding views,” Vlad said. “I came here long ago. These lands were all controlled by local tribesman back then. The local wars were brutal, and there were no metas to speak of. Oh, some would pass through every now and again, looking to pillage and conquest, but … they were easily dealt with.”

  Ten … eleven … twelve … oh, shit …

  I put a hand up to my face, blocking the light from my eyes as I groaned.

  “You start to see now, yes?” Vlad asked. Boy, he was chipper.

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  “What?” Vlad asked. His voice held traces of genuine wonder at my reaction.

  “Another incubus wants me for his bride, yay,” I said, pulling my free hand off my face. The other was still clutched—still gently—in Vlad’s.

  No burn.

  No sting.

  No powers working.

  “You guys suck, and I mean that in the worst way, not the garden-variety soul-sucking kind,” I said, words tumbling out in a rant. “You—none of you assholes—can even be bothered to get down on one knee. I mean, seriously, learn about what women want. I’m beginning to suspect you bastards all just want me for one thing—”

  “No,” Vlad said, shaking his head quite rapidly, vehemently. “No, no. I am not like Sovereign.” He cringed, and his lips pursing together in utter disgust. “Not at all. This is not—not my reason for bringing you here, to be … that.” He shook his head. “No.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “No?”

  “No.” He pointed at me, then himself. “We are family, you and I.”

  Eyeroll from me. “I’m sure, yeah, way back up the tree, fifteenth cousins eighteen times removed or whatever—”

  “No,” Vlad said, taking a step closer to me, voice a low and certain whisper. “No, Sienna … I am directly related to you. I am your great-grandfather. You wanted to know my name, my true name? It is not Vlad—”

  “Bullshit,” I whispered. My great-grandfather on the succubus side? I knew his name, and he was right … it wasn’t Vlad.

  It was …

  “I am not an incubus at all, you see,” he said. “I am … the father of all incubi and succubi … the first avatar of Death. I am—”

  “Hell,” I whispered.

  He blinked, eyes moving as he processed what I’d said. “No.” He shook his head gently. “Hades, not hell,” he said, correcting me as though I’d merely misspoken, awareness of what I was actually trying to say sailing over his head for once. He spoke again, apparently proud of
his title: “Hades.

  “The God of Death.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Oh, man,” I moaned, sinking a little inside. “You’re supposed to be dead. Everyone told me you were dead.”

  “Who told you that I was dead?” Hades asked.

  “Janus,” I said, then I sagged. “Janus, you know. The lying-ass, two-faced god of doorways and bullshit.”

  “In fairness to my former son-in-law, he probably thought I was dead,” Hades said. “He did, after all, come along with my brother, who certainly wanted me dead had the deed not already been done. It was not either of them that did ‘the job,’ however—”

  “I don’t remember who told me,” I said, moving a step past him and staring out at Bredoccia as I brushed my hair back behind my ears, “whether it was Hera or him, but … they said Persephone did it.”

  “Indeed she did,” Hades said, unbuttoning his shirt in the middle and pulling it open for a moment to show a chest that had a very immense scar right in the middle of it, a lumpy ridge of flesh in a circle right above the heart. “She did not miss when she aimed a root at me. She was trying to still my rage over—”

  “Your granddaughter,” I said, filling in the blank. “The one that had been killed by that mob in the square in some little Greek town.”

  “Exactly,” Hades said, re-buttoning his shirt. There were other scars there, too, but I didn’t inquire about them. Some kind of burn mark. He caught me looking, though. “You see this?” And he pointed to a mark, one of those burn scars. “This … is where my brother, Zeus, brought me back with his powers, some hours after my wife killed me.”

  I was blinking in surprise. “Uhmm …” This was all in utter contradiction to everything I’d ever learned about Hades, about Zeus, about … anyone, really. “Why?”

  Hades smiled. “Because in spite of all that Zeus was—an assclown, I think you would say these days?—he was still my brother. And because my other brother convinced him to do it. In the name of mercy.” He finished buttoning his shirt and walked over to the window, putting a hand against it and looking out. “And so, some hours after my wife stabbed me through the heart, putting an end to my … unquenchable rage … I awoke in a wooded grove, surrounded by my brothers and another, shall we say, interested party … and they presented me an ultimatum.”

  “Leave Greece and never come back,” I said. “Under pain of … you.”

  Hades smiled, thinly, still looking out the window. “If I returned, I would experience death on a somewhat more permanent basis, yes. For keeps, this time.”

  Man, my head was spinning. “Okay, so, you were expelled from Greece. Fair enough. Then you came here?” He nodded. “Okay. But … why not, say, in the modern day, go … elsewhere? Rear your ugly head again? Why stay cooped up here in Transylvania?”

  He shrugged. “This is my home and has been for as long as I can remember now. Why would I leave?”

  “I dunno,” I said, “to recapture some of that ascendant godhood you left behind in days of yore.”

  He smiled. “I am content in this place. From Revelen I can reach out with my influence. Try to steer the course of events in certain directions—”

  I closed my eyes and bowed my head for a moment. “You sat out the Sovereign fight.”

  “I did not, in point of fact,” he said. “I prepared Revelen as a stronghold against Sovereign and the threat he brought. We were prepared to fight, and did, killing several members of Century and eliminating many of their telepaths when they moved in Eastern Europe.”

  “But you didn’t fight in North America,” I said under my breath. I clenched my jaw. “I could have used some help back then, Great-Grandpa Death.”

  “I was forbidden to interfere in North America directly,” Hades said quietly. “You are, I think, unaware of the forces that still slither about the world from days of old. Trust me when I tell you that more of our kind survived Sovereign’s attacks than you have perhaps thought.” He rubbed his chest. “Magni and Modi were very clear and unequivocal in spelling out what would happen to me if I involved myself in North America.” He smiled. “They did allow the very slight accommodation of not killing me on sight, and thus in 1990 or so, I was able to visit Disney World in Orlando. Have you been?”

  “I’ve been to the parking lot,” I said, and put all thoughts of happy theme parks out of my mind. His little revelation had caused the steely chill I was feeling to be replaced by a slight boil. “So you fought in the war?”

  He nodded. “I fought. We fought. I gathered metahumans here and we became a stronghold of Europe. Sovereign’s attempts to enter our borders with his forces were all repelled. He was, of course, planning to come back at us, again, later, but … you stopped him and his army first. To which I say … Thank you. For saving the lives of my people. Many would have died doing what you did easily.”

  “It wasn’t that easily,” I whispered. “We lost people.” I bowed my head. “I … lost people.”

  “We all lose people sooner or later,” Hades said softly. “It is the human condition to always be losing. Friends. Family. Our lives as they slip away an inch at a time, day by day. I am sorry for your losses. Sorry I could not do more to help at that time, though I had very little idea that you were even in the fight.”

  I looked up at him. He stared back and seemed … probably sincere, though I couldn’t really tell. “How could you not know?”

  “Because he wasn’t over there,” Sophie said, her eyes fixed on me, but calmer, less angry than usual for her. “That war was a war of secrets, a war of silos—a fight going on over here, another over there—there was no central front, no communication between the players, no union between those of us against Century. It was a quiet war, up until that last bit with you and Sovereign showdowning over Minneapolis.”

  “It was a whispered thing before that, though,” I said. “People knew. Omega knew. Governments knew—”

  “If I had known you were fighting that fight and could have intervened, I would have,” Hades said. “But … because I did not, because I could not … look at you now. You have ever stood on your own, have become great in your own right.” He turned his eyes away. “Your strength … it is inarguable. You are feared the world over, and not because of the legacy you represent. You are feared, not because you are one of my progenitors, a succubus, the way so many of your forebears were. The awe with which the people look at you,” and he stepped closer, eyes burning, “has nothing to do with your powers, with the social stigmas of your kind in the meta community, or with me—my legacy of—”

  “Death,” I said softly.

  He nodded, but did not look pleased about the title. “You are your own person, Sienna. The most famous metahuman on the planet. And,” here he smiled, a hint of pride swelling his chest—just a hint, “the most … dangerous? Most deadly, perhaps. Certainly the most feared.”

  “That’s not who I am,” I said.

  “It is,” Sophie said.

  “I mean … that’s not all of me,” I said. “That’s just the … brand awareness I use to scare people off when they try and do something stupid, like cross me. I’m not you. Not … Death. Why did you bring me here?” I asked. “Just to tell me this? Just to explain—what? ‘Psych! We’re actually family, and I mean you no harm’?”

  “I do not mean you any harm,” Hades said. “I have tried to help you—”

  “I appreciate you getting me out of prison,” I said, face burning, but some of my emotion spent, “but … I don’t know that I believe you when you say you’ve been ‘helping’ me. Helping me how?”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye out for you for a long time,” Sophie said. “Trying to keep some trouble off your back that you weren’t ready for.”

  “At your command?” I asked, looking right at Hades.

  He nodded, and I sensed there was more to it than he let on. “Yes.”

  “And you did this because … you serve him out of the goodness of your heart?” I turne
d on Sophie, and she evinced just a hint of surprise around the eyes.

  “Not exactly,” Sophie said, getting her reaction back under control. “We’re both in this for our own reasons.”

  “What is your reason?” I asked. “Money? Ideology? Creed? Ego? Cuz those are the four big ones.”

  Sophie chuckled softly. “I’m quite wealthy. I don’t care deeply about any political order or religion, nor does my ego need burnishing, thank you very much.”

  I felt the little grind in my heart, lowered my head, looked at the floor. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  “What did you think?” she asked, sounding a little careful about the question, as though she were afraid of the answer.

  “You’re a grade-A badass,” I said, looking her right in the eyes. Blue as the sky, a few little flecks of green in there. Skin as pale as if she’d been raised in a cave—which I suspected she had. “You look like you could wipe out Hades with one hit.”

  Hades sort of shrugged. “I suspect it would take at least two.”

  “You’re not his girlfriend,” I said, and she blanched, almost imperceptibly.

  She held my gaze. “What … do you think?” Waiting.

  For my pronouncement.

  “I think you’re another person who was supposed to be dead,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “I think ‘Sigourney Weaver’ was as good a name for you as ‘Sophie’, and that there’s a damned good reason you haven’t told me your real name. That you don’t even go by your name anymore—”

  “Most people couldn’t pronounce it in the original tongue,” she said. “Couldn’t read it.”

  “‘Lisa’ was as close as you wanted to get, right?” I asked. “Because the real name—the anglicized version—some people would know it. Educated ones—”

  “Education isn’t what it used to be,” she said.