Nether: Hidden Book Five

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  "If she could have killed you, she would have. Something stopped her, or you wouldn't be here."

  I stared up at him. "Maybe she's just fucking nuts," I said.

  "I'm sure she is. But she had you at her mercy and stopped. Why?"

  I shook my head. His hands were on my arms now, and he was straddling my body. He rubbed up my arms, pulling them above my head, holding my wrists in his hands. His eyes were glowing, his entire body tense.

  "Make me forget, Bael," I whispered.

  It was all the encouragement he needed.

  The next morning, I was up early, mostly due to Artemis pounding on our bedroom door like a loon.

  "Up and at 'em, princess," she shouted. "We've got Titans to find. Let's go."

  Nain pulled his pillow over his head and I ducked further under the covers with a groan.

  "Separate houses. I should have done separate houses for all of us," he muttered. I leaned over and pulled his pillow aside, then gave him a long, lingering kiss that had him reaching for me and trying to pull me closer.

  "Not now," I said gently. "There's a drill sergeant standing outside our door."

  "I heard that. Let's go. You can screw later."

  Nain pulled the pillow back over his face and I laughed, then patted his thigh and got out of bed.

  "All right, I'm coming," I called to Artemis.

  "I don't need to know that. Just hurry up so we can go," she said, and I laughed, heard Nain do the same under his pillow.

  A few minutes later, I was dressed and ready to go. I met Artemis in the living room. "Belle Isle, maybe? I'm thinking maybe Gaia would stick to the more natural areas of the city," she said in greeting.

  I nodded. "The greenhouse and gardens first." A moment later, I focused, and found myself standing in the perennial garden outside of the Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle. The conservatory was open year round, full of plants from around the world, including a huge orchid collection. Artemis appeared next to me, and we looked around the gardens outside first.

  "Inside?" she asked, and I nodded. A quick tour of the conservatory netted us nothing, though a few Normals did end up with photos of me in the cactus room. Artemis sniggered, and I shot her a glare.

  "We'll check the woods next," I said.

  There was a lot of area to cover, and neither of us had any clue where she might be, or if she was even there at all. So we started near the Nature Center, and strolled the woods, working farther and farther into the forest, listening and watching for any sign of the Earth mother.

  "She's not a bad type, really," Artemis explained. "Actually, I like her a lot. And if she wanted you guys to hurt, she would have hurt you the other night."

  "I know," I said. "I just don't want her to pull that shit again. Someone might get hurt next time. And how are we supposed to explain forests popping up all over the city?"

  "My grandson would figure something out if it came to that," she said with a shrug. "By the way - thank you for not being such a bitch to him anymore. It's much appreciated."

  I raised an eyebrow. "That's kind of between us, not you. And if I'm a bitch, I have every reason to be."

  "Or so you think," she muttered.

  "No. I know. He lied. He cheated. He sold me out to his little government friends. I like Brennan, and I'm not going to kill him, which you should be thanking me for, but I definitely don't trust him."

  "Yes, he only gave you the will to live when the demon tricked you into murdering him. But please, do go on about what a bastard he is," she said, and I could feel her temper rising.

  "He lied. And he used me. And that's it."

  Artemis shoved me, hard, and I crashed into a tree. I leapt up and sprung back up at her. 'What the fuck is your problem?" I demanded, shoving her, but not as hard as she'd shoved me.

  She shoved me back. "I am so sick of everyone dumping on my grandson. Take your high and mighty bullshit and shove it up your ass, little girl."

  I stopped. Held my hands up. "Stop. Settle down."

  "No. Screw you. You have your happily ever after. You have your bond, you have your husband. And do you know what Brennan is left with? Nothing. He's alone, and he gets to spend every day of his life watching you with the demon. So fuck off, princess. I like you, but if you badmouth my grandson again, I will break something."

  "He won't be alone forever," I said quietly, hating the stab of guilt that her words brought.

  She gave a derisive laugh. "For someone as powerful as you are, you really know nothing."

  I crossed my arms. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? He'll fall in love again. He'll get married someday and be happy."

  "No, Mollis. He'll never have what he should have had. His future relationships will all be missing something. Something he should have. Something our kind craves more than anything else."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "The bond, you thoughtless bitch. He'll never bond with anyone else. He'll never have that again. We can do that precisely once, and it is instinctive." She stopped, shook her head. "Think, Fury. I don't disagree with you that he messed up. I don't even disagree with the fact that maybe the two of you were wrong together, somehow, though I do think you could have worked at it a bit harder, had there not been someone else in the picture. He bonded to you, fell in love with you. He couldn't have prevented it even if he wanted to. Breaking that bond, losing something he knew he'd never have again… that takes a tremendous amount of love. He set you free, sacrificed the one thing he's ever really wanted, because you asked him to. And he didn't have to do it. So think about that the next time you want to run him down. Think about what loving you has cost him. I'm done here."

  With that, she winked out of sight, and I was left alone.

  "Fucking shifters," I muttered. I kept walking, mulling over what she'd said. I swiped at my eyes in irritation. Why hadn't he told me that? How could I not know he could only do it once? I mean, not that it would have changed anything, but at least I would have known what I was asking of him.

  Still. He'd lied. And he'd told the government god-knows-what about me. And the cheating. Let's not forget the cheating.

  I trudged through the woods for a few more hours, mostly just so I could be alone for a while, and eventually, I had to admit that the chances of finding Gaia that way were pretty much zero.

  When I got home, the house was empty.

  Or, it should have been. But when I opened my apartment door, Gaia was suddenly standing in my kitchen.

  I shook my head. Oh, someone out there had a sense of humor, didn't they?

  "You are aware that two of us came through the gateway," she said in greeting.

  "That's what my grandmother said, yes," I replied.

  "Your grandmother," she echoed. "I don't suppose that as the granddaughter of Nyx, you have any insight into what's powering the Nether?"

  I shook my head. "I assumed Nether was powering it."

  "God, you Olympians are utter morons."

  "Well, Maybe you could enlighten us," I said, determined not to hurt the Earth goddess.

  She glared at me. "Nether and Aether powered the realms of the gods. But they weren't all that powered them. Had that been true, the Nether would have died the instant you freed Nether," she said.

  I sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. "So what else is powering them?"

  "The realms are sentient. They were alive. Most of their power came from Aether and Nether, and from what I understand, the Aether still stands, for now, even if it is overrun with creatures from Tartarus. The Nether, however, seems to have finally died." She paused. "Except that it hasn't, really. Life will find a way to continue, and my guess is that there is enough of the sentient power in you Nether beings, Furies and Hades, as well as Nether herself, that when I tried to heal the Earth, my power ended up being exactly what it needed to fully live again."

  "God, this is crazy," I muttered.

  "I can't do my work. I can't do any of the things I plan
ned to do when I returned to find my creation so defiled," she complained.

  "Life's tough all around," I said before I could think, and she gave me an icy glare. "I don't suppose you know who else came through with you."

  "Oh, I do. I came here specifically to tell you."

  "Not just to bitch about my family corrupting everything? Wonderful," I sniped.

  "You have quite a mouth on you, Fury."

  "Thank you."

  She clamped her mouth shut.

  "Are you going to tell me who? With all due respect, I have shit to do today."

  "Gods, you are clearly Hades' daughter," she muttered, looking away in irritation.

  I wasn't sure how happy I was to hear that. My dad was kind of an asshole. But whatever.

  "Who came through, Gaia?" I asked. I could sense that she at least didn't hate me. There was no malice from her, no hatred. I'd felt plenty of that one to recognize it easily by now.

  "His name is Hyperion."

  "What's his deal?" I asked. I supposed it would be too much to hope after his little fit at Wayne State (at least, I still assumed that was him) that he just wanted to visit Disneyland or something like that.

  "He wants to eradicate the Olympians and all of their offspring. Completely erase their existence."

  I stared at her. "Uh…"

  "You'll want to ask your father about that. In the meantime, watch out for those you care for, Fury."

  I let my head sink into my hands. Leave it to an immortal to drop a bomb like that and act as if it was nothing. "You aren't going to destroy any more neighborhoods, are you?" I asked.

  "I would hardly call that destruction," she said, offended.

  "You can't keep doing that. You messed up all kinds of shit that we had to fix later. You scared the hell out of people who were pretty sure the world was ending."

  She sat in ornery silence for a while. "And what am I supposed to do with my time, then, Fury? Am I supposed to stand by and watch my creation wither?"

  I thought.

  "You said Hephaestus' mate was one of yours, right?"

  She nodded. "An Earth-witch, yes."

  "She and Hephaestus have a small farm in the city. And Demeter and Persephone spend a lot of time there as well. I think they'd appreciate your guidance, Mother Gaia."

  She was watching me suspiciously.

  "And, maybe, you could keep an eye on Hephaestus and try to not let Hyperion murder him if he appears," I added.

  She still sat in silence.

  "Meaghan is all about protecting the earth as well. And making sure the people who live on it are taken care of. This sounds like something you'd be into," I pressed.

  She seemed to decide something. "Very well. I will visit Hephaestus and his mate."

  I started talking and she waved me off.

  "Yes, yes, and I'll keep an eye on Hephaestus. It's the least I can do considering the boy did what we've all been wanting to do and got rid of Zeus."

  I took a breath of relief. "Thank you. Ready to head over there?"

  She nodded, and I took her small hand in mine and focused on rematerializing at Heph and Meaghan's place.

  I almost felt guilty for saddling them with more, considering they were already busy with figuring out how to live together and the day-to-day insanity that comes with being friends with me.

  I dispatched Gaia as quickly as I could and could have kissed Heph and Meaghan for how graciously they accepted the new intrusion into their household. Honestly, Meaghan seemed like she was about to have some kind of crying fit, as overwhelmed with joy as she was when she met the Earth mother. Heph gave me a small wink and a smile and sent me on my way.

  How someone like me, someone as crabby and introverted and prickly as I am, ended up with such great friends, is an absolute mystery.

  Chapter Seven

  The next couple of days passed much more calmly than I could have hoped for. Other than continued attacks on Rayna's household, things were pretty quiet. Gaia was settling into life at Heph and Meaghan's, and at least I had one Titan mostly figured out. That gave me some time to work on a few of the lost girl cases that were giving Shanti trouble. We'd found one, but the other one continued to stump us, and I was determined to find her.

  The sky was overcast, and the fall leaves, in all of their glory, had finally fallen, leaving everything with a kind of sad, lonely look. The neighborhood I was searching was one I'd slowly but surely zeroed in on in trying to find my lost girl, Dayna Addams, a shifter from the Hamtramck pack. Over the past day or so, I'd questioned and read the minds of just about anyone who knew Dayna's habits and where she hung out, and this neighborhood, this squalid, depressing neighborhood, kept coming up. Everyone seemed sure of one thing: she had been seeing someone from the area until recently. And her scent was here; her pack members had verified that, but they'd lost it, almost as if her trail had been deliberately hidden once she got here. They'd gone through houses, businesses, and I'd been with them. Sensing their fear and frustration, and then their growing surety that she was a lost cause had worn on me just as much as the frustration over not finding her.

  "Today, I'm gonna find her today," I muttered to myself.

  As I walked, I kept my mind open, my senses open so I could pick up any emotions. From a few houses, faces peeked at me from behind curtains and blinds. I scanned them all, found that they were either terrified to see me or happy that I was there.

  So, par for the course, really.

  I snaked between houses, walked through back yards and garages. Honestly, it was a relief to be alone to work for a while. At first, Nain had been a pain in the ass about wanting to come with me everywhere, until I finally made him understand that his being around just messed up my focus, and that, no, I didn't want Heph or anyone else with me, either. This was my thing. This was still personal to me in a way I just couldn't shake, and my only regret was that I didn't do this kind of work as often as I should.

  I kept walking, kept rematerializing inside empty houses, searching basements, attics, for some sign of my lost girl. She'd been nine months pregnant at the time of her disappearance, and that only added to the necessity to find her quickly. I'd asked her pack members if maybe she'd just run off with her lover, whoever he was, and, to a one, they'd argued that she wasn't the type, that she was a good girl who was mostly level-headed. I'd kept to myself that even the most level-headed among us do really stupid things in the name of love.

  I searched through early afternoon, into late afternoon, widening the area of my search, questioning anyone I came into contact with. November meant that my daylight was limited, and when the sun started setting, I just kept going.

  I wasn't afraid of the dark.

  I approached a rickety-looking bungalow, its formerly-white clapboard siding flaking, falling off the house. The front porch had collapsed long ago, and the windows on the upper floor were crooked, as if the house was beginning to lean. I was walking around to the back, heading to the garage first, when I picked up an emotion.

  Fear. Hunger. Fear. Fear. Fear.

  I spun and headed into the house instead. There was something different about the way the emotions felt, something I didn't really have time to think about as I crept in the back door, letting myself into the dark house.

  I kept my mind open, called forth my fire. I let it dance over my palm, my fingers, as I lifted it so I could get a better sense of the room. A kitchen, long since stripped of anything useful. Empty, other than trash in the corners. I continued through a doorway into what must have been the living room. I did a quick scan of the room, nearly dismissed something lying there as another pile of trash.

  But it wasn't. It was blankets. And a creamy white hand.

  Fucking hell.

  As I got closer, it became obvious that I'd found Dayna, and that she was very much not with the living anymore. There was blood all over the floor around her, not from any wounds I could see, though.

  And then I saw it. The source of the
emotions I'd felt, and now I understood why they felt weird. I'd felt them from Sean, too, the frenzied, unformed, chaotic emotions of a baby. Primal.

  She was probably a few hours old at the most, or she'd be dead already, I realized. Someone — Dayna, I supposed — had had the foresight to cut the umbilical cord and knot it. It was partially wrapped in a blanket, but not very well.

  I threw my hands up into the air in helplessness.

  "So what the hell am I supposed to do now?" I asked, and the baby opened her eyes and looked up at me. So quiet, so still.

  "Well, I'm not going to lose two girls today," I said in a softer tone, determined not to freak the baby out any more than I probably already had. I looked at the scene. "I wonder why she had you here," I said. I let my fire go out.

  "Okay. I guess you have to eat, or I'm gonna lose you, kiddo," I said. There was a coat Dayna had apparently worn, and after searching the pockets and finding nothing, I shrugged and set it down on the floor. I picked the baby up, more than a little awkwardly, and set her into the coat, then wrapped it around her. She was a mess; dried blood and fluids, really gross baby poo. I wrinkled my nose. "You stink, kid," I murmured, even as I felt something inside me melt at the feel of her tiny form in my arms.

  "Okay. Food," I said. I went out into the yard, flew into the air, not wanting to rematerialize with her, not knowing how it would affect a baby. I knew it hurt, and that was enough. I landed at a grocery store, begged a hapless stock person to help me gather diapers and wipes and formula and bottles and other shit I knew nothing about, then checked out and flew away, feeding her the bottle one of the older cashier ladies had mixed for me at the store.

  "I can just see the headlines about this tomorrow," I said to the baby, who was drinking greedily, not even seeming to care that she was about a hundred feet up in the air, in the arms of a winged, glowy-eyed freak.

  I landed in Hamtramck, and carried the baby up to the front door of the pack's home, which used to be a rooming house. I knocked, and the pack leader and his mate opened the door.

  "I'm sorry. I was too late to save Dayna," I said, telling them where her body was. They were both staring at the baby, disgust and fear rolling off of them. "But this is her daughter. I figured you'd want her."