Oh fuck them! They’re nothing! Ancient freakin’ history, man! Their world dried up with their dicks eons ago, they’re just not intelligent enough to die. Why should I put my ass on the line for them? No matter what I do, they’ll never truly Accept me as one of them anyway. They will always hate me…always look down on me. Better to kill them than bend to their archaic rituals.
That could be true, in fact it was true as far as Raven’s innermost thoughts and feelings went.
“Alecto! Show yourself!” he demanded suddenly. “I know you’re here! Come out of the shadows you malicious bitch!” Raven mistakenly thought she would try to worm her way into his head by using Alena and Rose against him. She’d gone a different route as he’d left the door to anger over Zeus and the other Olympians wide open.
The air filled with a wicked crackling cackle as it whirled before his eyes in a mighty dust-devil just before the Fury of unceasing anger appeared. “Well, if it isn’t Raven, Son of Ares,” Alecto crooned as her red eyes glowed at him with sizzling wicked hunger. She floated around him to get a full view of his body and found him appealing. “You look so like him—your Father, I mean. Did you know that he and I had a very special relationship?”
“Listen bitch, my Father’s had a ‘special relationship’ with just about every pussy on, above, and under the planet, so don’t think you’re all that.” Although his voice was smug, snotty even, he couldn’t help but take in her dark beauty and understand how very much Ares would enjoy fucking the viscous bitch.
Flowing dark tresses peppered with coppery fire complimented those ever-blazing eyes, deep ruby lips, and her mahogany flesh. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. Unfortunately, that fact extended to her breasts and her ass both of which were flat as pancakes. His genetic memory kicked in and told him that Alecto had been much more than Ares’ lover, she’d helped him at Troy to great degree and won his favor. Even though her mere presence made Raven brim with anger, rage nearly uncontrollable, he tried to hold to the adage that he would catch more flies or furies with honey than vinegar. “I imagine you served several of his purposes well enough.”
“I did,” she cooed, “again and again and again,” she kept repeating the word until it became nonsense and her voice broke off into a titter that echoed in the dark. Alecto spun around in the air, she whirled and twirled with great delight as the memories overtook her and flames sprung up around her levitating body. She stopped suddenly, a great rush of fire engulfed her, and she looked at him with wide blazing eyes before she scanned the area and then settled on his gaze again. “I’d like to win yours too, little Lord Raven.” She reached out a steamy hand to trace a fingertip through the crevice between his pecs. “If I tell you a secret, will you kiss me?”
“Why?”
Alecto pouted as her fingers wandered from his pecs along his nipples and up to his shoulders. “We don’t get many like you down here and your Father never visits me anymore.” She let out a mournful sigh. “Besides, I’ve never kissed a Fae.”
Raven had been on the verge of giving in to her request but now he shoved her hands away from his body and then reached out to give her a push. “I am an Olympian.”
Alecto shook her head. “Be careful little Lord Raven, do not deny yourself, it will be your downfall.” Bravely she put both of her hands on his bare shoulders. “You’re ashamed of your Mother, you think her weak and frail yet she is stronger than Ares will ever be. Kiss me and I will tell you another secret. Hurry, time is short.” The Fury tilted her head, moved in close, and closed her eyes awaiting the feel of his lips on hers.
She reeked of soot, ash, and smoke but Raven took the plunge and planted his lips on hers to find them hot, nearly searing, with the heat of Tartarus and womanly desire. They were scaly and dry like those of a lizard. Raven was repulsed. When he felt her pull in closer and her nails sink into the nape of his neck, Raven broke the embrace and then propelled her away from him as he swiped a hand across his lips. “You’ve had your kiss, tell me the secret.”
Alecto’s long deprived lips tingled and hungered for more but Raven’s eyes told her that, for now, more was not forthcoming. “While out of my affection for your Father, you are done with me, my Sisters will not be so kind. They have no love of Ares and one has even less love of you I’m afraid.”
Raven searched long and hard in his genetic memory other than to recall Alecto’s Sisters were Megaera, Fury reigning over shades filled with jealousy and, the mother of all bitches, Tisiphone, Fury reigning over shades committing cold blooded murder—of which Ares was no doubt guilty a thousand fold—Raven came up empty. “Why? Which Sister? What did Ares do to her?”
Alecto pouted and then grinned. “That will cost you another kiss.”
She was beautiful but her kisses tasted like an old ashtray and her touch drier than burnt paper. “I’ll pass, but thanks anyway.”
“Your loss, but I’ll give you this for free,” she gave Raven a sly smile, “to cross into Dis the Gate will not fall unless your soul has already been condemned to Tartarus.”
“I’m here on Hades’ Trial,” Raven contended. “The Gate will open for me no matter what. Besides, the Judges said the shade I seek is innocent and she wandered into Tartarus.”
“No, little Lord Raven, the Gate will not open for the Innocent.” Alecto shook her head. “The Judges lied. The shade you seek did not wander away from the Fields; Hades snatched her from her Eternal Reward just for you.” With a sad sigh, Alecto spun into a whirlwind and disappeared from his view.
III
The way between himself and the Walls of Dis clear, Raven walked at a slow pace trying to conserve his strength and his water. Every step closer to the canyon containing the blazing river was torture. The air grew thicker, oilier, as though he were trying to breathe in water. It clung to his esophagus as it singed his lungs making them feel heavy with hot ash.
On stumbling legs, he arrived at the edge of a crevice so deep and so wide it made the Grand Canyon look like a crack in a sidewalk. The river flowing within bubbled and rolled with blood as it streamed flames high into the air. Peering over the edge, stretching out his sore back and trying to find the oxygen in the thick air, he gazed into the abyss to see more Flaming Shades down there but these had no bodies, only skeletons armed with flaming swords. He didn’t see a cage. Forcing himself erect, he drew the wineskin from inside his vest and took a long drink. He squeezed until his fingers met, released to draw air into the sack and began to clamp down again but stopped and capped the skin. Instead of water, he grabbed a slab of jerky from his pack and bit down on it, letting the salty taste of the dried meat drive the horrid bitter taste from the back of his throat while it energized his tiring body.
Chewing the last bit of jerky, he looked across the canyon to the closed city walls, wondering how he was going to get across. Looking left and then right, the canyon didn’t narrow and it was far too wide to jump. Another deep breath of disgusting air and a short drink of water later, Raven walked the short distance to stand directly in front of the gates. When they gave out a loud ca-chunk and began lowering, he felt his heart drop. “I am not damned,” he muttered, watching the gate fall into position at his feet, welcoming him home as though he were an old friend.
The first thing to hit him was the stench. Not just thick or oily or even smoky, it was vile. Putrid with the reek of rotting flesh, brimstone, and despair, it blew through the open gate and hit him full in the face, blowing back his hair as it went rushing past. Raven’s stomach heaved and threatened to toss up the precious water and bit of meat; he had to swallow against the reflex.
Through the wide-open gate and a heavy fog of smoke and ever-falling hot ash, Raven got his first look at the desolate City of the Dead, the eternal resting place of the wickedest of the wicked. In there, behind the choking smoke, he saw buildings that may have once been grand but were nothing but ruins of crumbling rock, actively disintegrating on their foundations before his bewildered eyes.
&n
bsp; More skeletal Flaming Shades armed with swords ran around inside the walls. They were standing guard and bullying the tortured souls of the Damned, herding them away from the walls and back to their eternal torture. In various degrees of decay, from mildly rotted flesh, to skin hanging off the bone in long maggoty pus-oozing sheets, the Eternally Damned moaned and screeched in an ongoing refrain of anguish, dragging around heavy boulders chained to their necks or ankles. They stumbled along aimlessly, bony arms outstretched, like blind zombies. Others hung from necks, arms, feet, and the remnants of private areas from great long beams. Beneath them fires burned and sharp stakes jabbed upward to puncture dead flesh. Still more stood in stocks that stretched as far as his eyes could see, they were whipped endlessly with blazing lashes. Others sat in gigantic metal pots of oil or tar settled upon the hot embers of a blazing fire, eternally cooking to death, the release they craved and wanted forever out of reach, replaced with endless torture and pain. All of it looked as though it came out of some bad horror flick.
Not wanting to venture further but knowing he’d passed the Point of No Return, Raven put his foot on the old charred wood of the open gate and wished he’d followed his Father’s advice where shoes were concerned. Not only was it blistering hot it was covered in sharp metal studs from which clung bits of decayed flesh, bone, and the errant skull. Careful to avoid them but trying to stay swift Raven crossed the gate with the scent of his own burning flesh rising to his nose. He picked up the pace, jumping over and past the closely clustered spikes until he reached the threshold where he stopped for just half a second to read the advice on the massive gold plague hanging over the entrance: Enkataleípste Elpída.
Abandon Hope.
The words froze his feet to the blistering wood below as they struck fear in his heart causing his whole body to break out in a cold sweat. As he stood caught in hesitation, the great ugly gate let out another loud ca-chunk as it began rising in the air. It closed a lot faster than it opened, before he knew it he was tilting at a thirty-degree angle. With no other choice, Raven leapt into the City of the Dead before the gate could fling him into the fray.
IV
Landing low on his feet, he looked up to see his entrance already attracted the attention of the Flaming Shades. Instinct brought his hand to reach for the spear but rationale lowered it knowing only his meager supply of life-giving water would be of any good. They closed in on him, their heat searing his flesh until he felt himself beginning to cook. They stared at him from behind black sockets in their blazing skulls but they did not attack.
Holding an arm up to his face to protect it from the sweltering heat he growled, “What do you want?”
“To greet you,” a sultry female voice replied, “they want to see the demi-god who will one day reign here as their new master. Welcome to your realm, Raven, God of the Damned.”
The light was so intense it nearly blinded him as he struggled to take in the shape of the woman speaking to him. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” She huffed in disgust as she shooed away the Flaming Shades to lay her eyes on the Son of Ares. “Well, aren’t you the spitting image of your Father, except for that gray in your hair and…those eyes,” the words were nearly a hiss. “What manner of demon are you?”
With the heat dissipating around him as the Flaming Shades backed off, Raven forced himself to his feet and to take in a breath of the smoky air. “I’m not a demon, I’m an Olympian.”
“That remains to be seen,” she mocked.
“I am…”
“Nothing! You are NOTHING! You’re not an Olympian nor a Fey nor a Human. You’re a mongrel. You’re nothing. Not like Hunter. Not like poor sweet Trinity.”
Now that the waves of heat subsided, Raven clearly saw the woman before him, she was very tall and reed thin. She floated in the air with her fiery hair stretching far out to every side like snakes of fire they moved with a life of their own and seemed to stare at him. Her face was well-carved, beautiful even, like her Sister Alecto. “Megaera,” Raven sneered as his upper lip curled, “your tricks won’t work on me. I’m not jealous of my siblings.”
“Aren’t you?” she challenged. “Oh, I think you try to lie to me, little Lord Raven. I think you are so jealous of them, even the simpleton Sister of yours that the rage always threatens to overtake you.” Megaera stared at him with open disgust and loathing blazing in her black eyes. “I know that at least once it did.” Her words caused the certainty on his face to falter and that made her smirk as she made her way around him, taking in every inch head to toe and back again. “But, that’s not my concern, it belongs to another. Tell me about Hunter, how do you plan to kill him?”
“Slowly,” Raven answered without thought.
Megaera gestured to the crumbling burning City of the Dead with a scrawling hand full of fiery fingers. “Get used to this place, future God of the Damned, your Fate is sealed by our own hand.”
“I am not damned,” Raven asserted. If Zeus thought for one lousy second Raven intended to claim this place as his own, to spend Eternity down here in this hellhole, the Old Bastard had another thing coming. “My Fate is to command and no one else’s.”
Megaera’s face lit up, it burned even brighter, as she gave a sudden shocked smile. “Is that…your Mother talking? Certainly it’s not your Father, who would surely tell you a man’s Fate is sealed in the stars.”
Raven’s eyes dropped for hers just for a single second to take in his bare feet buried deep in the ash and black sand. He brought them up to look at her again, when he spoke his voice was strong, but it lacked conviction. “I speak for myself.”
The Fury shook her head in a condescending manner as she uttered, “Damned, surely you are.”
He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, as though she could look right through him; he wanted to be out of here and away from her. “Are we supposed to fight now or something ‘cuz I got a schedule to keep, you’re wasting my time.”
Megaera continued to gauge him as she floated around him with anger causing her body to flare and erupt in great balls of fire. “Impudent little shit,” she scoffed, “Hunter will best you in battle and in life, he will be your demise, he will send you here, Zeus will praise him for it.” Her stare wormed its way into his head letting her search around for the jealousy she knew must be there.
“The day that bastard gets the best of me you’ll be freezing your fiery tits off down here,” he returned in a voice that boomed with conviction. “If that ever happens, bitch, you better be prepared for a new Master.”
Concentrating her stare, Megaera probed deeper and harder but, unbelievably, she found no jealousy in Raven. Although he was full of anger, he pitied his little Sister, and thought Hunter nothing more than an annoyance. He wasn’t jealous of the way the Olympians readily accepted Hunter as one of their own. On the contrary, Raven thought they were fools. There was nothing in him that she could use against him. Frantically she searched for the tiniest shred of jealousy, letting her own fury overtake her and her quest. Distracted by her own anger and with her guard down she suddenly found herself screeching and flying backward as though struck by a great force. She whizzed back through the air so fast her blazing body flared but then threatened to go out in a great puff of black smoke.
“Get outta my head!” Raven hissed. “You like that? Want some more?”
Raven turned out to be far more powerful than her and her Sisters gave him credit. There weren’t many creatures in this world or the one above who could sense her poking around in their heads. Fewer still who could expel her from her mission with such ferocity. Letting out a long low growl she wanted to throttle the little Lord, and suddenly whipped a long tendril of flame past him. “That way,” she fumed.
“We done?” Raven knew she could put up a fight and give him a run for his money, for all he knew she might even beat him, but like the Olympians, Self-Preservation was high on Megaera’s priority list. If he ever did rule down here, she knew he’d make he
r Eternity a real living hell.
“For now.”
“Go torture someone,” he advised as he pushed past her to make his way through the City of the Dead.
“I’ll see you soon, little Lord Raven,” she called after him.
“Not if I see you first!” he called without looking back.
V
The journey from the Gates to the banks of the River Phlegethon was creepy but no shade or other being attempted to get in his way. Not even when he passed through the middle of Dis and the large brimstone pyramid that housed those so wicked, evil, and dangerous they could never be let out to walk among even the Flaming Shades. Those so vile they were blindfolded, put in tiny cubicles not big enough to turn around, where they were chained naked to thick cold walls, bound from neck to ankle, left to hang, to starve, to thirst, and to rot for all Eternity alone in the dark. Passing by, Raven smelled despair hanging so heavily in the air around him that hot ran cold, icy, it went through him to the marrow in his bones. Through walls so thick no mortal weapon would ever blow them apart, Raven heard the lonely moans and cries of pain, desolation, and mumbled confessions of horrid crimes that came far too late for penance.
Past the walls of the prison, the landscape seemed to fade away. To his eyes it just stopped; where there should be open space and more buildings there was nothing but steaming rock and the small opening to a cavern glowing red with the River beyond it. The last leg of the first part of the journey lay waiting before him. Not knowing what was ahead or when he’d get another chance, Raven took a drink from his skin and downed another strip of jerky along with a bit of bread.
“They’re not real, whatever’s in there, it’s not real and it can’t hurt me.” He repeated the phrase until the words made no sense in his head. The last of the salty jerky down his throat, he drew his sword from its sheath and walked to the opening with its waves of heat radiating like a sauna gone awry. “I’m alive. They’re dead. They have no power over me.” Walking through the narrowing opening, he soon found the red-hot walls grew closer and closer. Raven sheathed the sword to give him more elbowroom but soon that wasn’t enough and he had to turn sideways to pass through. Grateful for having taken his Father’s vest as it saved his back and chest from being seared to bone even as it steamed on his body, he cursed himself for not taking the goddamn boots! The soil was hot, so hot Raven could only bear to tiptoe upon it. Each step burned and caused puffs of his cooking flesh to rise to his nose.
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