Tartarus was a magical realm that existed between worlds, one destroyed and uninhabitable and the other Earth. As Cameron stood among the ruins of the Parthenon, time still immobilized around them, he stared across the dark pit into the ruins of Olympus, as if he were on a bridge between two worlds that no longer existed. The Greek realm swirled in angry vortices of purple and red, but nothing remained beyond the energy that had once made Olympus the home of so many Greek gods.
London, who was too young to have ever lived there herself, still watched the old realm of the Greeks with an aching longing. Cameron had the sudden and horrifying realization that he could be staring across worlds and seeing his own much like this one day—nothing left of the Otherworld except the energy that allowed it to exist in the first place. Perses nudged his arm to get his attention then pointed into the blackness of the abyss.
“It’s unimaginably deep,” he said. “And the chains that bind them are strong.”
“Wait,” Cameron asked, “they’re actually chained up?”
Perses shrugged. “Metaphorically. It’s an enchantment, but any Olympian can break it, which is how Athena freed Mnemosyne from Hades.”
“Question two,” Cameron said.
Perses sighed but waited.
“Can I bring a flashlight?”
Perses blinked at him.
London rolled her eyes and pointed out, “You’re a sun god. Just light a fire.”
“Okay, can I light a fire?”
Perses continued to blink at him.
“Dude, it’s dark,” Cameron tried again. “And there could be giant snakes in there.”
“I’m going to pretend like you’re joking and remind you that if we don’t hurry, the world you’re trying to save will be destroyed.”
Cameron folded his arms over his chest and pouted. “If we bump into a giant snake down there, you’re killing it then.”
London sighed and tugged on his arm until he uncrossed them. “Come on, Sun God. I don’t know about you, but I’m anxious to get this over with. Not exactly a fan of the dark, and Tartarus seems awfully dark.”
Cameron nodded in solidarity with his young friend. “Especially if the dark is hiding giant snakes.”
“Good God, I’ll go in alone,” Perses muttered.
Cameron held out an arm to stop him. “Which god?”
Perses started blinking at him again, so for once, Cameron gave up and waved him off. “What do we do? Just jump in?”
“I’m not exactly sure I want to help you anymore,” Perses admitted.
London snorted and slowly placed her right foot at the neatly demarcated edge of where the light of Earth met the darkness of Tartarus. As her shoe crept past the lip of the abyss, it seemed to disappear, and she quickly pulled it back, planting her feet firmly on the ground where light and being existed.
“Cameron,” Perses said quietly, “you do know Tartarus isn’t just a place, right?”
“Are you kidding me?” Cameron groaned. “Now you’re going to tell me he really is a god too?”
“Um, not exactly a god. More like an ancient, primordial entity. He is the abyss, which is why your fires won’t work here.”
“So how have the Olympians been able to use him as a prison?” Cameron asked. “I mean, you Titans are older than the Olympians, so did you piss him off or something?”
“Tartarus has no allegiance to either of us,” Perses explained. “Mortals once believed Tartarus existed as a sort of Hell for the evil, but he’s neither wicked nor good. He just is.”
“Okay,” Cameron breathed. He bent down and touched the ground where the darkness had swallowed the ruins of the Parthenon. The rough stones of Athens most famous structure transformed into a hard, smooth surface, but he couldn’t see whatever path would lead them to the bottom of the abyss. For that matter, he couldn’t see his hand anymore either. Just like London, he pulled it back into the light and flexed his fingers a few times to ensure himself they were all still there.
Perses let out a slow breath and said, “Shall we?”
Cameron had at least sixteen reasons they shouldn’t just walk into a void, a realm of nothingness where even light couldn’t penetrate, but he rose from the ground and nodded. He silently offered a prayer to Danu to bring them back from the abyss then shot a half-smile in London’s direction. “You first?”
London squinted at him but bravely walked toward Tartarus, held her arm out for the Olympian guards to verify she had permission to enter, then disappeared.
“I guess that means I should follow her,” Cameron said.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any giant snakes in there,” Perses offered.
“That’ll be a first,” Cameron sighed.
He took a deep breath and followed London into the void.
IN THE TOTAL darkness of Tartarus, Cameron had no way of marking the passage of time, so he wasn’t quite sure how long they’d been carefully sliding down the long slope that descended to the bottom of the abyss. He’d occasionally bump into London, who walked in front of him, and would mumble an aggravated apology, but he wasn’t aggravated with her. Perses had failed to tell them they’d be trekking through a primordial entity, and despite his assurance that Tartarus was largely indifferent to the affairs of gods, what would stop him from deciding these intruders should be trapped in his abyss forever?
Perses had claimed he’d broken out of Tartarus before, but Cameron didn’t believe the Titan god of destruction would bother saving the Olympian and Irish god who’d been foolish enough to make this journey with him in the first place.
And so, they ventured farther down into the nothingness of Tartarus, walking in silence except for the occasional strained apologies and muted utterances of profanities because no matter how far they walked, nothing seemed to change. In those rare moments someone did speak, their voice didn’t echo like they were trapped in a tunnel or room—instead, it seemed to be quickly absorbed like they’d been sucked into a vacuum.
Eventually, Cameron’s legs began to ache and protest with each step, so he slowed and Perses walked into him, at first muttering his own apology then quickly regrouping and demanding, “Why did you stop? We haven’t reached the Titans.”
“Because I haven’t slept in over a day, and I’m tired. I’ve battled a bunch of asshole gods in Mexico City who killed one of my best friends, dug up half an island, fought two monstrous snakes there, and now, you expect me to walk endlessly when we don’t even know where we’re going or if we made a huge mistake in trusting you.”
“So you’re just going to return to Murias with a box you can’t destroy simply because you’re tired?” Perses retorted.
“No,” Cameron clarified. “I’m going to get Tartarus to help me out by bringing us to the Titans.”
Perses snickered and the sounds of his footsteps told Cameron he’d resumed his trek deeper into Tartarus in the hopes of eventually reaching his family. But while Ragnarok might be temporarily halted by preventing the passage of time, Huitzilopochtli and his army were free to launch their invasion into the Otherworld. And he couldn’t allow his home to become the useless, angry mass of disorganized energy like Olympus.
He felt London’s fingers groping for his hand in the darkness, so he squeezed her hand back in a gesture of commiseration: appealing to Tartarus scared the shit out of him too.
“Can you feel him?” he whispered.
“I don’t think so,” London whispered back. “I can only sense you and Perses. What are you picking up on?”
“Not sure,” Cameron admitted. “But I’ve never felt anything like it. There’s something powerful and curious all around us.”
“Curious?” London repeated. “As in, you find it strange or it finds us strange?”
“Um… the latter. I mean, he obviously heard me and what I’m planning on doing, so I think I’ve piqued his interest.”
From the total darkness ahead of them, Perses hissed, “Stop it, C
ameron! You’re going to get us killed.”
“Too late,” Cameron announced.
The darkness around them came alive, moving and pulsing against them, undulating and rippling, a contradiction of death and life, of darkness and light, of nothing and being.
London stepped a little closer to Cameron who was secretly glad she wasn’t telepathic like Badb, because truthfully, he wanted to scream even though he was the one who had dragged Tartarus into their midst.
“What,” a strangely loud and multitudinous voice asked, “are you?”
For a moment, Cameron was paralyzed with fear, but he remembered his promise to Selena, the woman he’d loved through two lifetimes, the woman who would once again become his wife and bear their child because Fate had chosen them.
In either life, he’d never broken a promise to her, and he certainly wouldn’t now.
He took a deep breath and told the living abyss, “I’m a god, a descendant of Fate herself, the immortal Danu who gave life to the Tuatha Dé. And I’m here for the Titans.”
The nothing and everything swirled around him, brushing against his bare skin in equally contradictory swaths of heat and cold, softness and roughness. “And you think,” Tartarus said, his voice penetrating and reverberating rather than disappearing like the gods’ voices had, “that your ancestry has any meaning to me? That you can make demands of me?”
“I think,” Cameron corrected, “that I’m more powerful than you. And if you don’t believe me, try to expel us. Try to escape me.”
“Cameron,” London whispered nervously, but Tartarus was already pushing against them, the everything and the nothing that he was pulsing angrily in his increasing frustration that the gods who’d invaded remained untouched. Tartarus let out an exasperated cry that caused the smooth ground to tremble and the blackness around them to spin like the winds of a tornado.
But Cameron and London remained rooted to the same spot. Perses, who had tried walking away, still stood about twenty feet to Cameron’s left. He hadn’t made a sound since telling Cameron his hubris would get them all killed.
“Ready to talk?” Cameron asked the darkness.
“Leave!” Tartarus demanded.
“Gladly,” Cameron replied. Just bring us to the Titans so we can free them then bring us back to the portal between here and Earth.”
“And if I don’t?”
Cameron shrugged even though he wasn’t sure Tartarus could see him. “Then we’ll stay. You can’t kill us or get rid of us, and I can keep you here forever. And trust me: I can get annoying really quickly.”
Perses finally broke his silence by saying, “I believe it.”
The constant movement of the everything and nothing stilled for a few moments as if Tartarus were considering his options then those oddly contradictory winds picked up, stronger than ever, and Cameron heard new voices all around him.
“Free them,” Tartarus commanded. “Then I’ll bring you to the portal and you will never return.”
A single light that wasn’t attached to anything but miraculously hung in the air above them illuminated a circle of the abyss in a halo of pale yellow light. After being in total darkness for so long, all of the gods squeezed their eyes closed, but London finally let go of Cameron’s hand. He opened his eyes and watched her drop beside one of the Titans on the ground.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t see any chains. What’s keeping you here?”
“You’re an Olympian,” the god whispered.
“Prometheus,” Perses started, but Cameron’s surprise made him interrupt the Titans’ reunion.
“Prometheus? I thought you fought with the Olympians? Why are you here?”
Prometheus sighed and shook his head. “I did, but I wanted to serve man rather than rule him, so Zeus threw me into the abyss for interfering with his subjects. He feared they would abandon him and follow me instead.”
“Assuming you don’t hate us new gods, we might have a place for you,” Cameron told him. “Because that’s exactly the kind of world my girlfriend and I are trying to create.”
Prometheus arched an eyebrow at him and smiled. “I don’t hate anyone, not even Zeus.”
“He’s dead anyway, so that’s not exactly a problem.”
“Good,” mumbled a goddess sitting beside Prometheus.
“Eos,” Prometheus scolded. “We’ve had only time and our own thoughts for millennia. If this young goddess here has come to offer us a different life, I suggest we listen.”
“Actually,” London explained, “I’ve come to free you and the only thing I expect in return is that you don’t harm us or our allies.”
“And that’s it?” Eos asked, clearly suspicious. “We can just walk out of here and owe you nothing?”
London nodded. “Our deal is with Perses. He’s the one who purchased your freedom.”
The Titans exchanged uncertain glances, obviously expecting some trick, but Prometheus lifted his hands and smiled at the young goddess again. “Free me, and if your Irish friend speaks the truth, my service is yours.”
A thin silver restraint, no larger than the chain of a necklace, stretched tightly between his hands. London slowly ran her fingers along the fine links, which broke apart beneath her touch. Prometheus rose from the ground, grimacing from the pain of spending thousands of years there, and rubbed his wrists gently. He tilted his head at Cameron as he studied him, his green eyes bright and inquisitive. “You are truly a remarkable god, aren’t you?”
Cameron squirmed uncomfortably from the compliment by such a legendary god as Prometheus, but the Titan placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded as if all the secrets of the universe had just been revealed to him. “I see it in you, such capacity for greatness, such humility for what you are and can do. You’ve been chosen. And I’m ready to follow you.”
“Um,” Cameron deflected, “right now, I’d settle for your buddy over there destroying Koschei’s vessel so we can try to end Ragnarok.”
Prometheus arched an eyebrow at him again then turned his attention to Perses. “We finally get freed from Tartarus and it’s the end of the world?”
Perses took a deep breath and said, “Let’s hope these new gods are as powerful as you think they are. Or we’re all about to find out what kind of Hell Huitzilopochtli wants to create for those of us who survive.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The streets of New Orleans remained depressingly empty and quiet, and with time still frozen, the rain droplets that had stopped on their descent toward the Earth created a thick mist that Cameron and London avoided by appearing in the W Hotel’s lobby. Prometheus, however, stood on the sidewalk and waved his hand through the droplets, smiling at the sensation of water against his skin. Even the cold, damp air didn’t seem to bother him.
Perses had destroyed Koschei’s vessel as soon as Tartarus brought them to the portal, and while Cameron was glad the enchanted box had been destroyed, he was still a little disappointed that nothing spectacularly Hollywoodesque had resulted from it. The bronze box had simply disintegrated, leaving tiny fragments of metal on the ground.
If Koschei was going to hide his soul in a magical box, the least he could have done was ensure it would have a Raiders of the Lost Ark style moment when it was opened.
Cameron leaned against the doorframe and suppressed another yawn. Why couldn’t these supernatural villains have the common courtesy of allowing him to sleep for a few hours?
Bastards.
Beside him, London gasped and grabbed his arm. “I remember.”
“It’s about time,” Cameron started, but Mnemosyne had obviously relented completely because it wasn’t just the recent memories she’d stolen that had been restored. Somewhere in those dusty, archaic memories from another lifetime, Cameron remembered too.
“Ailill,” he whispered.
London looked up at him, confused, but the streets of New Orleans came alive as surprised gods returned from Hades.
“Um,” Thor
said, “reversing Lethe didn’t seem to be doing anything, so I’m guessing that’s not what brought our memories back.”
Cameron shook his head but his attention remained on Badb, whose obvious anger assured him she remembered now too.
Macha looked between them and finally asked, “What’s going on?”
“Ailill,” Badb hissed. “Somehow, I remember the promise Midir once made, and who Ailill met after he left their house that night.”
Cameron’s anger, his own and not the consequence of a geis unfairly placed upon him, threatened to burst into flames as he realized how deeply these betrayals ran.
Macha took a deep breath and tried again. “Is Koschei’s vessel destroyed? And is that Prometheus?” She pointed to the god still standing on the sidewalk so he could feel the world around him after spending millennia in the nothingness of Tartarus.
“I have no idea what’s going on with Cameron right now,” London answered, “but we made a deal with Perses. We went to Tartarus and freed the Titans in exchange for the destruction of Koschei’s vessel and Mnemosyne restoring our memories. We watched him destroy the box, and I’m assuming he just talked to Mnemosyne and told her we’d upheld our end of the bargain, so she gave us our memories back.”
“And she must have broken her alliance with Ailill,” Badb added. “Because I remember now who else used to live in Findias and who Ailill met with when he left Midir and Étain’s house.”
Nemain rubbed her eyes and sighed. All of the Guardians were exhausted, and the problems they faced just continued to amass. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If Ailill were planning on betraying us, why would he be so careless as to let others see him? And how could our other traitor possibly have lived in Findias? That means he was dead too.”
“No,” Cameron spit out. “Fúamnach’s father wasn’t dead. He lived in Findias because he wasn’t welcome anywhere else.”
Goddesses of War (The Guardians of Tara Book 4) Page 12