by S. E. Babin
Noticing my look, Rafe chuckled. “They aren’t as rebellious as I am, Abby.”
Hermes, who had been silently shoveling food in his mouth, looked up. His face brightened with a thought. “Can we pool our power?”
We glanced at each other around the table until we were collectively staring at Rafe. He paused with a fork full of eggs to his mouth. “Maybe?”
“Okay,” I said with a nod. “Better than hell no.”
19
Clotho blew into the Underworld shortly after looking a wee bit different than she had a few days ago. Her power was on display like she’d used the wrong watt light bulb to power her lamp. She jittered like she’d taken too much meth and needed to figure out how to mow her lawn with a pair of scissors. She looked weird. Out of sorts. Definitely not the calm cool and collected Fate I’d known earlier. The new power had done something to her.
Her normally coiffed hair had taken on a strange new wild look, like it was no longer content to listen to the siren’s call of blow dryers or hair product. Or Clotho’s magic. Not that she’d ever cared too much about her appearance, but she did brush her hair. Now it just waved around her head like Medusa’s snakes. Her eyes, usually a pretty honey brown, now flicked in and out of the silvery flecks I knew to be prophecy. This was the most concerning to me.
Was she constantly seeing the future or the possible futures? That could not be good for one’s social life.
She stepped into the kitchen surprising us all and didn’t bother with polite greetings. Artie and I gasped when we saw her.
Clotho was wearing blue jeans.
What in the everloving hell?
Was she possessed by a demon?
Artie and I turned to stare at each other. Could we be possessed we asked each other with our eyes.
But more importantly, why in the hell was our favorite Fate looking like she’d just gotten frisky at a Whitesnake concert?
“The world has changed,” she announced. “We are tuned in. To everything. Plugged in to all of it.”
She gave us all a serious look, so at odds with the rocker vibe she had going on. “And I think we can help.”
Her gaze was lingering on my son, currently oblivious and shoveling pancakes in his mouth like there was no tomorrow. That would normally be funny, but when you hung out with us, it was quite possible there would be no tomorrow. So far we’d avoided that, though. Even if we’d paid the price of our sometimes stupid solutions to really big problems.
“Clotho?” I inquired, my lips twitching as her hair waved around her head like she was in a mosh pit.
“A sacrifice must be made.”
She was still staring at Draco.
Concern began to grow in my stomach. “Ummm.”
“A big one,” she continued. I rose from my chair, making sure to set my mug down so I didn’t accidentally or on purpose chuck it at her head.
Draco, finally noticing he was the object of Clotho’s attention, set his fork down.
“In order to set the world aright again, Draco’s powers must be honed.”
My fingers itched to pick up my mug. Maybe Hermes’ too. “No,” I said, my tone dead. “I don’t even know what that means but my answer is still no.”
“You do not know the future I see, Abby. You cannot refuse us.”
I blinked at my friend. The friend who was perilously close to being a former friend.
“I can refuse anyone I choose to, Clotho. I don’t know what the hell kind of designer drug you’ve been smoking lately or what magical hairspray you’re using to get your hair to do the wave, but you are not coming into my territory and staking a claim on our son!”
Hades cleared his throat.
“He is in an alternate timeline,” I snapped.
“You don’t have a choice,” she said blithely.
Magic began to gather in the palms of my hands, unwillingly. “The hell I don’t. He’s my son. Of course I have a choice.”
She finally deigned to look at me and the silver outweighed the brown in her irises. Clotho looked high on magic. Totally strung out by it.
“You have no idea what he will do for this world. Staying her with you is diluting his power. You are not teaching him to hone it. You aren’t teaching him anything.”
Rage bubbled in my veins. I...I was going to smack a Fate. It would probably get me burned to cinders, but I was going to do it. My fingers began to itch even though they were clasped so tightly against my palms, I could feel ichor. I was just beginning to open them, when a flash of cool magic settled against my skin.
“Abby.” Hecate stood there, giving me the look that said slow your roll, but also the one that said you can cut a bitch later if you still want to, but hear me out now.
I blinked at her and gave her a short nod.
She stared at Clotho. “Well, Fate, your delivery has left a lot to be desired. Did you really think you could waltz in here and demand Abby give up her son for no good reason?”
Clotho glared at my mother. Good. Maybe Hecate would smack her too. “I gave her a reason.”
My mother snorted. “No, you waved your hands around spouting mumbo jumbo. She’s a mother, Clotho. A new one. Given a son she hasn’t quite yet figured out. A friend would have given her time.”
“We are out of time,” Clotho snapped. She shut her eyes for a moment, took a couple of deep breaths, and when she opened them again, they were a familiar honey brown. She blew out a long breath and met my gaze. “Sorry. Abby, I cannot tell you the reasons why as much as I wish I could. We cannot give information on the decisions that will have to be made. But this...this is how we can help you. Draco possesses an immeasurable font of power. He, along with you and the rest of the people sitting here, will be the ones to bring the Heavens to its knees. This is what we can do for you. Give him to us. Allow us to care for him. To train him. To instruct him in the ways of power.” She glanced over at my son. “And we will bring you back a king.”
My son was surprisingly agreeable to this. After Clotho made her impassioned plea, I pulled him out of the kitchen and spoke with him.
“I want to learn to use my powers,” he said, forcing a dark piece of hair out of his eyes. “If I don’t how can I become a king?”
I sighed. “Clotho shouldn’t have said that.”
“I already knew.”
I gave him a long look. “And how did you know that?”
“The prophecies of the worlds are written on my bones.”
I opened my mouth and snapped it shut before I said something I would regret. I tried another tactic. “And how exactly did that happen?”
“When you and Dad married. The ritual between you shifted my magic and with it, I knew the paths that all of us would have to walk to bring us to peace.”
I took a long and deep breath to keep myself from acting like Rumpelstiltskin cheated out of his baby. Draco’s youth had been stolen.
By us.
We’d put him in situations that forced him into using his magic. We’d terrified him. We’d never given him a normal life. Even though it had only been a little while. How could we? My husband was gone. I was a miserable semi-widow hell bent on revenge and rescue. I stomped all over the rules. How could I expect to raise a normal child?
I got down on one knee. “Promise me you will refuse to do anything that feels...wrong to you.” Not that I thought the Fates would turn him into some evil machine, but Clotho wasn’t quite right yet.
He nodded. “She’s fine, Mom. She just has to get adjusted to her new power.”
I leaned forward and dropped a kiss on his brow. “I love you. Obey your Auntie Clotho. Unless she asks you to do something weird. Then run from Auntie Clotho.”
He laughed and was about to go back into the kitchen when he stopped and turned back to me. “You feel like you will do anything to get my father back. You feel like you don’t have the strength to go on without him. But you do. You have strength with or without him.”
“But I really wa
nt it to be with him,” I said.
My too old son nodded. “Just be careful how you achieve it.”
He left me standing in the hallway completely perplexed.
When I finally reentered the kitchen, Draco was holding a small, packed bag. Clotho rested her hand lightly on his shoulder, but she removed it when she saw me glaring. I stopped in front of them.
“I will care for him as if he were my own,” she said.
I frowned. “That’s what I’m partially afraid of,” I admitted. “I would like to visit.”
“Within reason and as long as his magic lessons aren’t being interrupted.”
I rolled my eyes. “As much as I want to.”
Clotho bit back a smile. “We live in a place shielded from any magic but our own. He will be safe with us. He can learn to fail without changing the balance of the world. It is both our duty and our right to teach him this.” She looked around the room. “Now that our power is unbound, we are in a better position to assist him. And you.” She paused before she spoke again. “This is it. We are in the final stand. The choices you make today, tomorrow, and afterward will shape and mold our new world. Choose wisely.”
Well. Wasn’t that nice and cryptic? “You can barely stop your eyes from going all weird,”I told her. “How are you going to drop a bomb on us like that?”
“I’m a work in progress,” she said.
“This just makes me feel so much better.”
Clotho reached in and gathered me against her. Her words were whispered and fervent in my ear. “We will do right by him, Aphrodite. He needs this. You’ve birthed the most powerful person in the world. Let us coax his power into something that can make the world better. For all of us.”
I gave a choked nod and broke away from her before I begged them not to go. I gathered my son against me one more time. And did the thing I’d dreaded ever since he came into this world.
I let him go. Even as my heart itched for me to reach out, clutch him close, and never let him go.
The atmosphere around the Underworld was tense for the next few days. I left for my room directly after Clotho took my son, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit the only time I’d left it since was for coffee.
Food could suck it right now.
Even if Hades appeared to be making it at all hours of the day in a devious attempt to draw me back out into the real world.
The third day, he broke. A soft knock on my door sounded right when I was about to flip off my lamp and go to bed. Well...to sleep. I hadn’t much gotten out of my bed lately.
I groaned but got up and opened it.
Hades stood there with a thermos full of something that smelled delicious. It was weird, but he seemed to know me better than I knew myself sometimes. I might not have opened the door for just him, but him and food?
Total goner.
I held the door wider and let him step in, but when he pinned me with those silver eyes, I sighed. “I don’t have the energy to resist you right now. Please don’t make me.”
Hades winced as if I had slapped him. “Ouch. I’m glad I ooze such charm, but you made me sound a wee bit creepy there.”
“Sorry,” I said, exhaustion leaking from my voice. “I don’t have a lot of willpower right now.”
He set the thermos down and gathered me in his warm, strong arms and just held me.
I woke up the next morning to the smell of bacon and the scent of Hades on my skin. He was a perfect gentleman and allowed me the time and space to grieve.
But my heart still made me feel like it had been stomped on and thrown into the trash.
20
With the Fates out of the picture for the foreseeable future, we refocused our efforts on figuring out not only how to get into Heaven, but also how to take it down from the inside.
Not part of the original plan, but we were overachievers. Plus, none of us ever wanted to be in that position again.
Artemis’ power had faded substantially, so much that we forced her to stay in the Underworld while we traveled the planet looking for other answers to our problem. Knowing how much she loved books, we made her the researcher. Artie’s job was to go through all the lore in the Underworld to see if any of it had any information about Heaven. Hades was able to narrow the books down for us, but there was still a massive selection he hadn’t had time to go through yet.
She grumbled about it a bit, but we could all see her eyes light up when we left her in a room full of dusty books.
Something occurred to me, though, a few days after we turned Artie loose. We were looking in the wrong places. We needed Hades’ book. The book. The one we’d stolen from Persephone.
I found Hades in his study the same evening and skidded to a stop at the door. When I told him what I needed, the book he was holding fell to the floor and he stared at me in open mouthed horror.
“How do you know about that?” he demanded, rising from his spot on the couch.
“Because I had to deal with your stupid wife when she stole it!”
He gave me a bewildered stare. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Everything that comes out of your mouth sounds insane, yet it all rings true.”
He stood fully and walked over to a spot on one of his shelves.
“Oh my god,” I said in utter belief. “You don’t have that thing in a better hiding place?”
He turned back to me with the book in his hands and rolled his eyes. “You’re the first visitors I’ve had in years and before a few weeks, ago I TRUSTED MY WIFE.”
I snapped my mouth close at his roar. “Fine,” I bit out and waggled my hands. “Let me have it.”
He hesitantly held it out. “You know there’s a -”
“Spell to kill you? Yes. Quite aware. But I’m looking for one to kill your father. Does it have that in it?”
He barked out a laugh, gave me a little bow, and exited the room. “I’ll come back when you aren’t so testy,” he said.
I almost threw the book at him before I remembered how deadly it was.
I was now alone with the book I’d almost lost my life over. I flipped it open and immediately let out a string of long and colorful curse words. It was now unreadable. A language I’d never seen before.
Well. Crap.
Hecate appeared in the middle of the room in a puff of white smoke, scaring the bejeezus out of me. She looked down at the book and an expression of delight came over her face.
“Ah! Hebrew!” She declared. “I can translate that.”
I stared at her. “It doesn’t look like Hebrew.” I peered down at the pages. “Much. Isn’t that a dead language?”
She took the book from my hands. “It was. For about two thousand years. It was slowly revived. This is slightly different from the Hebrew spoken today, but I should be able to make out the important parts.”
My mother began to flip through the pages, her eyes widening as some of the things she was seeing.
“So what’s it about?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Well, if you ever want to knock off your husband it’s in here. Or, if you ever want to get rid of an angel, that’s in here, too.”
My eyes widened. “Really? Where? How do you knock off an angel?”
I sat down beside her and we began to go through the book together. My mother translated all the interesting parts or the places where the words were accompanied by a suitably gruesome picture. Her long fingers paused over a page full of fiery pictures, explosions and faces stuck in grimaces of torture.
“Holy shit balls,” she whispered.
I snorted. That was something I’d never heard my mother say.
“There’s a door in the Underworld,” she said, awe tingeing her voice.
My mouth went dry. “Excuse me. A door? Here?” The ramifications were enormous. “Does Hades know?” I wondered aloud.
She shrugged. “If he’s read the book all the way through, he does. But I don’t think it has ever been opened.” She peered at the pages. “God put
it here as a backdoor way in except -” she leaned in closer. “He can’t open it by himself. It’s tuned to both of their blood. Father and son.”
“There’s no way God is giving up a liter of the good stuff to me.”
We looked at each other. “Can we fake it?” I asked.
She looked back the book and was silent for a moment. “Wait. Or...the blood of the Mother.” Hecate’s brow crinkled. “The Mother of what?”
The answer hit me like a truck. Gaia. Noooooo. Was she that old? Or that powerful?
I stared at my mother. “Were she and the old man hooking up?”
Hecate rolled her eyes. “That hoe hooks up with everyone.”
“Mom!”
We were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. And when we stopped, we both sat back against the couch pondering the answer. How in the world were we going to convince Gaia to give us a vial of her blood without tipping off God?
I sat up abruptly. “Typhon.”
Hecate made a humming noise in the back of her throat.
“I only contact him when I need something.” I toyed with a piece of my hair. “But I really, really need this.” I wondered on a scale from one to super weird, how odd would it be for me to ask him for some of his mom’s blood?
“Could we steal it?” I wondered aloud.
“Gaia is even more paranoid than I am, Abby. Odds are low.”
“Should I let people in on the plan?”
Hecate studied me. “Do we trust everyone currently here?”
I nodded. “Yes. I always will.”
She harrumphed. “Still wouldn’t. I’d tell Hades and Rafe and let them answer your friend’s questions until you return. Hopefully with a vial of blood.”
We agreed like thieves in the night. Lips sealed.
I was about to visit a Titan.
I hadn’t seen Typhon since he’d assisted me last time. He knew I’d chosen Hades and had gracefully bowed out from his impromptu courtship. But he’d sneakily left me his contact information in case I “ever wanted a real man who could make me scream.”