Nether: Hidden Book Five

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  "It won't be me. I'm going back to watch over Meaghan," Gaia said, and without another word, she was gone.

  "You know her better than I do," I said to Heph.

  "Debatable, Queenie," he said. "She likes you more than she likes me."

  I closed my eyes. This would break her. I knew that. Apollo was her twin brother. And while they didn't always see completely eye-to-eye, they were very close. Apollo had been a regular fixture at the loft and now here, spending time with his sister and her descendants.

  "Brennan's not gonna be happy, either," Nain said.

  "Brennan's on the list," I said quietly.

  Silence.

  "What?" Nain finally said.

  "Gaia said that Hyperion wants to destroy the Olympians and their offspring. All of them. That includes Brennan and Sean."

  The already-dark mood in the room darkened considerably.

  "I'll tell them," I said. They were awake. I could hear Sean's energetic babbles and laughs, Brennan's low voice responding. I looked up at Heph. "Uh. Can you go in the other room?"

  He nodded and left, and when he went into the living room, I heard him mutter, "What the hell is this, now?" I supposed the "this" he was talking about was Zoe, whose bassinet was in the corner of the living room. Nain and I got up and got dressed. About midway through, when I was about to start pulling my jeans on, Nain pulled me into his arms and held me tight.

  "It'll be okay," I told him, putting my arms around his waist.

  "Too much crazy shit. Nether and now this? It's taking everything in me not to steal you away and keep you hidden."

  I forced myself to smile up at him. "My parents tried that once already, remember? Didn't work out all that well."

  He leaned down and kissed me, rested his forehead against mine.

  "It'll be okay," I said. After a moment, he released me, and I could tell he didn't want to. I finished getting dressed, and Nain and I walked out into the living room, where Heph was pacing. He gestured to the bassinet.

  "Zoe. We adopted her," Nain said, and Heph gave a thoughtful nod.

  "Well, watching you parent a girl should be interesting, if nothing else," Heph said, and Nain flipped him off.

  I was watching the door to Brennan's apartment. I wished I could put it off. "I'll be right back."

  I walked across the kitchen, knocked on the door that led into their apartment. Brennan answered, dressed in the dark pants he wore to work. His shirt was partially buttoned, as if I'd interrupted him in the middle of getting dressed.

  "Hey," he said.

  I tried to smile. "Hey."

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Is Artemis awake?"

  He nodded, and gestured for me to come inside. Artemis was sitting on the living room sofa, Sean in her lap. It hit me, then, how much Brennan and Sean both took after Artemis. They both had her blond hair, though Brennan's was darker than Artemis and Sean's. It was the eyes. All three of them had those slate-blue eyes fringed with thick black lashes. And when they smiled, as Artemis and Sean were just then, the family resemblance was even more pronounced. They were reading a pop-up book, and Sean was laughing. I felt happiness from Artemis, a huge amount of love for the toddler in her lap.

  I felt like even more of a shithead for having to ruin that.

  She turned her head, noticed that I was there. "Good morning, Mollis," she said, and Sean held the book up for her to read more. Artemis was studying me. "You look like someone just died."

  I was speechless. This wasn't my thing. How are you even supposed to handle telling someone that one of their loved ones has died? I wanted to turn and run, save her, for just a few minutes, from the pain that would come.

  "Molly?" Brennan asked, putting his hand on my lower back. Such a familiar feeling, and I let it comfort me, even though I knew better.

  "Artemis, Heph and Gaia were just here," I began. "Apollo spent the night at their house, I guess, because he and Heph were having some epic card playing drinking night or something."

  "Yes. Idiots," Artemis said with a small smile.

  I looked at Brennan. "He was leaving this morning, and on his way out, he was attacked by the other Titan that escaped through the gateway. Hyperion," I added.

  Artemis gently set Sean on the couch, and stood up.

  "And?" she asked softly. Her shoulders were already slumped. Her hand shook when she brought it to her face.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered.

  She stared at me. It was as if time had stopped, as if the air had all gone out of the room.

  "Um. Gaia told me he was the other Titan. I didn't think he'd move so fast," I said.

  "And what else did she say?" Brennan asked.

  "She said that he wants to destroy the Olympians. Wipe them from existence as revenge for locking him up in Tartarus. That means you, too," I said to him.

  "I'm not Olympian," he said.

  "You're my offspring. It is enough," Artemis said, voice shaking. Her gaze met mine, and I was struck by how hard the news had truly hit her. Artemis had always been larger-than-life. Tough. She'd helped me survive my first confused days when I was trapped in the Nether.

  She'd wanted me to be part of her family. And that is something I'll never forget.

  She seemed shrunken. Pale. Her eyes had a wild gleam to them, as if she was just on the edge of madness. And the feelings coming from her, the pain… it was heartbreaking.

  The one constant in her long existence, her best friend and only true confidant, her brother, was gone.

  "I need to go," she said.

  "What? Where?" Brennan asked, moving away from me and toward his grandmother. She shook her head.

  "I need time. Time," she repeated. Her face crumpled, and she made a visible effort to get herself under control. My heart ached for her. I would have hugged her (awkward though I was at the hugging thing) but Artemis is not really affectionate that way. Instead, I stood there dumbly and let her pain wash over me. My hands hung awkwardly at my sides. Brennan looked just as helpless as I felt, watching his grandmother with concern on his face.

  "You don't have to go," he said softly. "Stay with us. We're not him, but we're still family."

  She shook her head. "I need to mourn him alone. I need…" She trailed off.

  "She needs to mourn where no one will see how ruined she is," I said, filling in the blanks. "She needs to control her own mourning, since it's the only thing she can control right now."

  Artemis nodded, patted Brennan absentmindedly on the shoulder. Then she fixed me with a steely gaze.

  "Avenge my brother, Fury," she said, her voice full of rage and unshed tears. "If you ever valued our friendship, avenge him."

  "Grandma," Brennan intoned.

  I took Artemis's hand, and I bowed my head just a little, keeping my eyes on hers.

  "I swear it. He will be avenged." It was the only thing I could give her now.

  Once she had my promise, Artemis turned, gave Sean a quick kiss on the top of his head, and disappeared. Which left me and Brennan standing awkwardly in their living room.

  He ran his hands over his face.

  "He's a Titan," he said, and I nodded. I told him what little Gaia had told me about Hyperion, feeling guilty the entire time for not having told him before it had affected his family. He listened, arms crossed over his chest.

  "I'm sorry I didn't say anything before. I just found out that day with Gaia, and things have been nuts ever since. I'm sorry," I repeated.

  He waved it off. "You don't have anything to be sorry about." He glanced toward Sean, who was now pulling wooden blocks out of a plastic bin in the corner of the living room. "My grandmother is in mourning, my great-uncle or whatever he is is dead, and you're telling me that this thing wants to destroy my son?"

  "And you," I said.

  "I don't care about me," he said.

  "I'll take care of it."

  "You can't do everything."

  "I can do this much. I promised her."

 
"Is this the thing that attacked at Wayne State?" he asked.

  "I think so. I heard Heph saying something to Nain about gold armor when I was heading over here. It fits."

  He nodded, lost in thought. "I'm an asshole, but I just realized I have no one to watch Sean. I depended on her for everything."

  "It's not selfish. It's life," I said.

  He looked away. "I was not ready for any of this."

  I honestly didn't want t hear what his "any of this" was. Partially because I knew it would somehow come back to the two of us, because that's a conversation we needed to have and I kept avoiding it. Kept putting bandaids on it, hoping it would just go away. When it came down to it, I'd mostly forgiven him for my own sanity, but I didn't trust him. And I hated that, because I wanted to. For a million reasons, some that made sense and some that didn't, I really wanted to trust him again.

  Bandaids would do, for now. Because despite what everyone seems to want to believe, I have no problem admitting that sometimes, I'm a coward.

  "Um. We can help watch Sean while you work. Since we have Zoe around, I mean. I'm hoping my parents and E will help. They can watch Sean too, maybe, until Artemis comes back."

  He didn't answer.

  "Unless you maybe don't want him to be around Nether types all the time," I added, remembering the previous night's conversation about Zoe. "Or around Zoe all the time."

  "Why the hell would that bother me?" he asked irritably.

  "I don't know. Because you're sure Zoe's going to be a menace. Or, the whole 'shifter and demon never mix' thing from last night. We should have thought of that before we started up, huh? Maybe there's a reason, or… I don't know," I said. "I am so fucking lost right now."

  He shook his head. "Why are you determined to believe that I don't still worship the ground you walk on?"

  I backed away, toward the door that led into my and Nain's apartment.

  "You never should have worshipped anything about me," I said. "And you didn't. Not really."

  He gave a bitter-looking smile. "Right. Because if I had, I wouldn't have messed around."

  "Bingo. Or lied to me, but in the end it's all the same, so…" I paused, shook my head. He always managed to push my buttons lately. "And we don't need to do this now. Like I said, we can work it out with having people watch Sean. And maybe sometimes you can help us with Zoe."

  He looked away from me. "Yeah. We can do that. Thanks."

  I left his apartment without another word. By then, our apartment was full of immortals out for blood and feeling impotent because they couldn't end Hyperion.

  I held my hands up, and they all settled down. Heph stood there with his arm around Meaghan's waist. Gaia stood beside the window as if aching to be out of the building. My family was all there. E, Asclepias, Hestia, and Athena were there as well. Nain stood to the side, watching me, and as I got ready to speak, Brennan and Sean walked in.

  "Okay," I said. "So Hyperion is the other Titan who escaped before Nyx destroyed the gateway. He wants your blood. He wants to end the Olympians. That means all of you," I noted, meeting my dad's eyes. "Every immortal in this room, as well as Brennan and his son, because why not, right?" I went on, then shook my head, trying, and mostly failing, to keep my anger in check. "I knew. Gaia warned me, and I thought we had time. I didn't believe he'd strike so quickly. That was stupid, and Apollo's death is on my hands. If you'd known, you would have all been more careful. I should have fucking warned you he was out there."

  "It wouldn't have made a bit of difference if you had. He struck out of nowhere," Heph said, and Meghan nodded, her eyes still red from crying. "Before we could even react, he was dead."

  "Still. Maybe he would have been more careful," I said. "Artemis asked me to avenge her brother, and I promised her I would." I transferred my gaze to Gaia. "I don't suppose you can give us any more insight into Hyperion?"

  She silent for a moment, then said, "All I know of Hyperion is that he's full of rage and hatred and desires vengeance above all else. He was one of the leaders of the Titans during the war against the Olympians. He believed, as we all did," she said, meeting the eyes of the increasingly angry Olympians, "that the Olympians, should they come to power, would cause nothing but hardship for the fledgling human race. We were focused on helping the humans thrive. The Olympians were about ensuring that the humans gave the proper sacrifices when they prayed. They punished, and we did not."

  "Yeah, you were all so benevolent. How many human women did Hyperion attack again?" Hades asked. "And don't try to pretend it didn't happen. Him and the other—"

  "Yes, and none of you Olympian men ever took what wasn't yours," Gaia sneered. "We could come up with a sizable list of Zeus's sickening acts alone. And you stole Persephone—"

  "He didn't steal me. Why does everyone keep saying that?" Persephone asked in irritation as her mother glared at Hades.

  "My point was," Hades said, raising his voice, "that you weren't all peace and light either, so get off your fucking high horse."

  "Okay," I said. "Let's not get into ancient history now, all right?" The last thing I wanted was to piss Gaia off and have another vengeful Titan to deal with. "Go on, Gaia," I added.

  She gave my father one last pointed glare. "So it came to war. And the Olympians were no match for the Titans. I stayed out of it, because I believe in peace. But in time, it became clear that the Olympians were using trickery to trap the Titans, since they couldn't defeat them in actual combat. And I started gathering information for the Titans. I believed, as the rest of them did, that the Olympians were the worst thing to happen to humankind. I still do," she added. "Once Zeus discovered my role, he had several of the Olympians capture me. Many of them are in this very room, actually," she said, looking around. I sensed a bit of guilt from Athena, my mother, my aunt, and Hestia. "I was tossed into Tartarus, and without my information, soon the other Titans followed. Hyperion remained free the longest, and when they finally captured him, the Olympians did much more than just throw him in Tartarus. They mocked him, tortured him, let the other prisoners throw things at him. Feces," she clarified. "And he swore he would get his revenge. By then, it was no longer about saving humankind from the Olympians. It was about regaining his pride and getting vengeance on his captors."

  We stood around in silence. My hand was clasped with Nain's.

  God, they are all such fuckheads, I thought at him.

  It is really, really hard to like your family, Molls, he agreed.

  "Yeah? And I don't suppose he told you what he'd done that made us treat him that way?" Hades asked, his voice purposely mild. That was always a bad sign.

  Gaia frowned at him. "He was our leader. That is enough."

  "We're not monsters, Gaia," Hades said. "The treatment he received was the least of what I, at least, wanted to do."

  "What did he do?" I asked.

  The Olympians all went silent, and Gaia watched in confusion.

  As I looked around at the Olympians, I met my mom's eyes. "Tell them. I can't," she said to the Olympians, and my father took her hand.

  "We sent Tis in, trying to lure him out of hiding. He'd always liked and respected her. And she wasn't afraid to do it. She's ever been the warrior," Athena began. "So brave. Determined to do what is right. Megaera, Artemis, and I stood watch near the cave where he was hiding, and waited for the signal from Tisiphone that he'd taken the sleeping potion Demeter had concocted. She was going to feed him. We knew he was starving, and he'd possibly trust Tisiphone enough to eat the food. When he fell into a stupor, we'd capture him."

  My aunt Meg picked up the story then. "The signal never came, and after a day had passed, we rallied the other Olympians to go into the cave. We feared we'd find Tis dead," she finished, her voice trembling.

  "At the time, I wished I was," my mom put in, and rage rolled over me, coming from my father. "We were stupid to count on any respect he'd had for me."

  "He'd captured Tisiphone," Athena went on. "And you can probably gue
ss what he did with her," she finished quietly. I closed my eyes, fought the bile rising in my throat. Oh, the bastard was going to pay, I promised myself.

  "We were determined to hurt him after that. We were like animals, hacking and stabbing at him," Hades said. "For a while, we were glad it wasn't possible for us to actually kill him. Death would have been too kind, and I wouldn't have been able to punish him in the afterlife," he finished.

  I nodded, remembering that he'd told me that none of us had any life after death. We could resurrect, usually, because we were mostly just this weird energy stuff. And while it's true that energy is never actually destroyed, there is nothing left of us — of the things that make us, us — once we truly die. While our bodies can die and we can resurrect, certain beings can end us for good. No one really understands why, except to assume that Nyx, in all her wisdom, set it up that way for a reason. While mortal souls exist in certain areas of the Nether, depending on how good or evil they were in life, gods, when they die, just cease to be. Gods and demons. There is some kind of irony there.

  "Eventually we stopped punishing him. He was weak, and we took him to Tartarus. If we let the prisoners throw shit at him, it was the least he deserved," he finished, addressing this last to Gaia. "I'm not claiming we were always right. I know we're selfish assholes a lot of the time. But he had that coming, and so much more."

  Gaia nodded slowly. "He did neglect that part of the story," she finally said. "And while I wouldn't believe a word that came from most of you, I believe Tisiphone's word."

  "Thank you," my mom said.

  I looked around. "Okay," I said. "Well, now I have two reasons to destroy him." I took a breath. Then I looked back at Heph. I couldn't do this now. Couldn't think of my mom at the mercy of the Titan. She would be pissed if she saw pity in my eyes, so I pushed it aside. "So no one recognized a power signature?" I asked Heph.

  "We can't feel them that way," Heph said. "That was how he caught Apollo so easily."

  "Um. I can feel Gaia just fine. Can't you?" I asked the Olympians, and they shook their heads.

  "Nyx's line," my mother said. "We can sense the Titans, but they can hide themselves from the rest of you."