OF WAR Anthology Novels 1-3

by Lisa Beth Darling

  Before Raven could ask any more questions, Tisiphone’s black form dove into the blazing river and she was gone.

  VII

  “Raven!”

  “Help me!”

  “Don’t let me die again!”

  “Raven please!”

  Raven’s mind returned to the task at hand, looking up he wondered how he would ever be able to tell which pleading crying Trinity was his pleading crying Trinity. All he saw were hundreds of identical Trinities in hundreds of identical cages suspended an identical distance over the river. It was maddening. He scoured them, scrutinized them, trying desperately to discern differences in the girls and found no telltale sign. Raven ran up and down the hot riverbank with his feet burning and his head craning ever upward as hundreds and hundreds of little arms reached out to him for rescue. “This is insane!” he bellowed. “Which one of you is it?!”

  “ME!” They all cried in unison.

  “So much for that,” Raven mumbled to himself.

  The cages precariously suspended above the river dropped several inches closer to the burning bloody river. All of the girls screamed. All of the cages rocked and Raven knew time was running out. In the middle of the chaos and heat, his eye caught the sight of absolute stillness. Raven looked up to one cage where a little girl sat on a makeshift cot, her back to him, crying, not reaching for the rescue being offered because she was sure he wouldn’t give it. “Trinity,” he muttered, settling on the quietest one in the bunch. Then he looked around trying to figure out how to get to her before the cage dropped the last five yards to the churning burning river.

  Following the chain holding the cage in place he traced it to a swing-arm above it and then back to a wheel and lever on the other side of the river. If he could get over there and pull it at least it would stop dropping and then he could work on how to swing it to him and then bring it down to the safety of the hot black sand. Boulders dotted the course of the river, some of them clustered close enough together to use as stepping-stones, but they all glowed red. If he put his bare feet on even one of them it would surely cook right through with enough blistering pain to cause him to lose his balance and fall into the river.

  At somewhere near fifty feet across the span was much too wide for him to jump. Even if he got a running start he wouldn’t make it unless he had—

  Raven pulled the spear from its holster embedded in the vest and nodded his head as he took in a deep breath of smoky air through his nose. He looked for the narrowest spot in the nearby river he could find, walked to the edge, then sprinted back to the far wall where he crouched and put a bare foot against hot rock. Bouncing in place a few times, taking in quick short breaths through his nose, Raven got his body primed before pushing off and pumping his legs for all they were worth. Sprinting to the end of the riverbank where the blazing river waited to engulf him, Raven planted the blade of the spear into the soft sandy soil. Giving out a hearty cry he tightened every muscle, flung himself high into the air, and vaulted over the river with only inches between him and the flames. He landed on his feet, safe on the other side, but his spear was lost to him.

  The cages above fell another foot. The girls within screamed and began scrambling up the bamboo poles holding them prisoner. Raven scrambled over to the spot where he’d seen the wheel and lever but now there were hundreds of wheels and levers, one for each cage, all lined up neatly ten deep and ten long. “Shit!” he cried as he stopped and had to look back for the single Trinity embracing her fiery Fate so he could trace her chain to the right lever. As the chains hung over the bank, they intertwined, snaked around each other, and it was nearly impossible to tell which chain attached to which lever by the time they spread out again. “What the fuck?” Raven railed, staring at all of the levers before him, each nearly to their bottom position on their wheels. As his anger threatened to overtake him the levers moved before his eyes, the chains gave out a loud ca-chunk, the girls screamed, and now they had only two yards between them and certain destruction. There was no way he’d throw all of them in time to stop the right cage from falling. Running his palm through his sweaty hair he looked down at his feet in desperation and near defeat only to take in the sight of a large piece of volcanic glass.

  Raven ripped the length of rope off his shoulder, tied one end around the rock and heaved it to the other side of the first of row of levers. Bringing it up taunt, he nestled it under the levers, and he gave the rope a good pull. All of the levers rose. Behind him, he heard the chains rattle and he looked over his shoulder to see intermittent cages rise in the air away from the fire, but Trinity’s wasn’t one of them. Yanking the rope back to him, he tossed down the second row, pulled up ten more cages, and then went to the third row just as they clicked into the next lowest position. More screams but Trinity’s cage didn’t rise.

  As he approached the fourth row, the levers began kicking off on their own, some of the cages dropped so low as to rest mere inches above the flames reaching up to greet them. “No! No!” Out of panic and desperation, Raven abandoned his plan, dove into the midst of the rows of levers, and began grabbing at every lever within reach, throwing it back to the top most position and going to the next with both hands. Everything around him seemed to fade away and for a short while he was lost, caught in the grip of panic as his hands grasped hot handles and the muscles in his arms began to ache.

  The deafening silence finally brought him around. It echoed through the desperation and fear, bringing him out of his daze to look upward and see all of the cages stopped falling. Somewhere along the line he threw the right one but hadn’t realized it. The girls weren’t screaming. Instead, all of them were staring at him, staring him through, with accusing eyes.

  Except for the one who refused to look at him at all.

  Now that they were silent and they were still, Raven noted another difference between the fake Trinities and the real one. All of their heads were on right but the one who sat still with her back to him, her head was cockeyed. It rested unnaturally on her shoulder as though her neck were broken. In the waves of heat rising off the River Phlegethon, Raven saw her falling off Olympus. He heard her cry of shock, watched her little head impact with an icy boulder. It split open like a ripe watermelon spraying Ichor and flesh all over the pristine snow. Then she was quiet. The rest of her fall continued in blissful, almost peaceful, silence.

  At the time, he felt victorious but now he felt ashamed.

  The image in the hazy wave of heat faded from his sight as Raven wiped his blurry eyes. He reminded himself he was far from done here. He still had to get her to the Fields and before that, he had to get her out of the cage. He looked at the rope with the rock on one end. “Trinity?” he called out.

  “HERE!” They all called back.

  “No, not you. Her! Trinity! Look at me, I want to help you, I want to get you out of here but you have to help me do it. T urn around, please. Turn around.”

  In the cage near the middle of them all, the girl who sat still and quiet with her head resting unnaturally on her shoulder turned around and watched him gasp. “What?” Trinity asked through lips nothing more than shredded meat. She stared him, her head on her shoulder, her face smashed in, and one eyeball bulging out of its socket. When he flinched, she gave a smile nearly hideous enough to freeze the raging river below her.

  Raven found it very hard to look at her, he wanted to turn away, wanted to run away. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but stand back and fully appreciate his handiwork all over her face. What a jagged little pill, but Raven swallowed it the best he could before he opened his mouth. “I’m gonna throw this to you, you catch it, you tie it around the bars and then I’m going to swing you this way and pull you down, got it?”

  “Why? What do you care? Why should I trust you?”

  “You’re gonna burn in that river,” Raven warned.

  “So what?” She turned away from him again.

  “So…so…so you don’t deserve that, do you? You didn’t
do anything. Let me help you, I’ll take you back to the Fields where you’ll be happy.”

  “I was happy on Olympus,” she mumbled. “You were my Brother, you were supposed to protect me, look out for me, not kill me. You’re only doing this so you can rule Olympus one day.”

  “I want to help you, please, Trin, I’m gonna throw this, we’ll only get one shot if the rope lands in the river it’s gone. So get up and catch it. Let me help, let me get you out of that cage.” Raven waited but she didn’t turn around and she didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, looking down at the rope in his hands and feeling the nasty sensation of guilt run through him. “I never should have…I’m sorry, Trin.” Words he never thought he would utter fell out of his lips. “Please forgive me.”

  Although it took much effort, Trinity stood up in her rickety rocking cage and looked down at her Brother. “Do you promise not to do the same to Rose? Do you promise you will look out for her? You will protect her the way you should have protected me.”

  “From what? Who?”

  “Hunter. Apollo. I know you think he’s your friend but he’s not. S wear, when the time comes, you will rise against them and stand up for your Sister.”

  Raven didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. It was clear from the other night that Hunter had a perverted interest for Rose. Raven wasn’t blind, he watched Hunter taunt and tease Rose beyond belief at the Bacchanalia and Raven hated him for it. All he could see was Trinity doing the same to him except he was able to understand Trinity hadn’t done it maliciously the way Hunter did. He relished in crushing Rose’s spirit. When he went after Rose in that most despicable way, Raven had no choice but stand up for her. Raven saw where Hunter might taunt and degrade Rose the rest of her life but Apollo? Even when she was mature, a woman by anyone’s standards, Rose would never be beautiful or desired. What appeal would she ever hold for Apollo? It didn’t make any sense but if it got her to go along with him, “I swear, I’ll look after Rose. Nothing will happen to her. Ok? Ready?”

  “Ready,” Trinity stuck her hands out through the hot bamboo bars to catch the rope Raven threw to her. She looped it around the bars as he asked and soon found the cage floating over the river toward the land. When it rested safely over it, she watched Raven tie off the rope then climb it the thirty feet to where she was suspended. “There’s no door.”

  “I’ll make one.” Raven stood on the outside of the cage, his feet between the bars, pulled a knife out of the vest and cut the bamboo poles to free his Sister. Face to face with her, he felt disgusted with himself as she stared at him from those accusing eyes resting sideways in her head. “Come on, take my hand, get on my back, I’ll get you down.”

  “You’re a lot bigger now,” she remarked quietly as her wounded eyes moved up and down trying to take him in head-to-toe with her perpetually busted neck.

  “Yeah, a little,” he soothed as he reached out for her and she put her hand in his as he swung her onto his back so he could climb down.

  “Kinda handsome too.”

  The second their feet hit the riverbank, all of the cages crashed into river. Ninety-nine Trinities screamed and shouted obscenities at him in the split second before they burst into flames and sank to the river bottom. Raven threw himself in front of Trinity to protect her from the fiery spray of boiling blood.

  With the last part of the Trial before him, Raven didn’t know which way to go. He couldn’t go back the way he came, neither of them would make it across the river. There had to be a way out, otherwise, what was the point in the Trial?

  “Down that way,” Trinity pointed ahead of them, “there’s a passage that leads out of here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s how they brought me in here.”

  For a while, they walked along the bank of the smoldering river in silence. As they neared the narrow opening to the passageway out of here, Trinity stopped and did her best to look up at him. “Is your life better now that I’m gone? Do they like you now?”

  “No,” Raven confessed.

  “Maybe they will after this.”

  “Maybe,” Raven said, although he knew they wouldn’t. They would never like him but one day he would force them to Accept him as one of their own, no matter what it took. Rounding the corner, they entered the passageway. To Raven’s relief it was large and wide although there was no end immediately within sight. They walked side by side for a time with the river growing distant behind them and with it the sweltering heat.

  “No matter how much they come to…like you or to pretend to like you, promise me you won’t let them use that against Rose.”

  Raven stopped and looked down at her with the opening of the cavern finally within sight. “Why do you care? What is this? What about Rose?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out, little Prince?” Trinity asked with wide-bulging eyes full of wonder gazing up at him from her tilted head. Her eyes wandered around for a moment but it was safe here, deep within the thick walls of the canyon, even Hades himself couldn’t hear. Hades was a tricky devil, in her heart Trinity clung to the hope that maybe this was why he took her from the Fields for Raven’s Trial so that she could impart to him the secrets she learned in the Fields. “When she fell down the stairs, Magdalena, your Mother, poured everything she had into Rose to ensure her survival. Everything. Even the things she tried to hide from you when she carried you. Every thought, every memory, every ounce of power and strength that lay dormant within her. Rose is more powerful than you can imagine but she is simple, she is innocent and she is sweet, as I once was,” tears welled in her eyes. “They will try to abuse her. They will feed your need for power, bolster your plan to destroy this world and then they will turn it against you, destroy you, and they will drain your Mother and Rose of everything they can like vampires.” Shaking hands reached out to rest on his forearms. “That won’t be enough, they’ll find all of the Fae in the Dark Kingdom, they will murder them after they rape and enslave them. Then whatever light and hope is left in this world, after you’ve broken its spirit and brought it to its knees, will be lost forever.”

  “Trin, this doesn’t make any damn sense.”

  “You, Rose, and Shar Draíocht’s great-granddaughter, are all that stand between the Olympians and the Dark Kingdom.” Trinity ran her hands along the soft warmth of his skin. “You were meant to be so much more than what you think. Why can’t you see that? Why do you let the Olympians blind you this way?”

  “Who is Shar Draíocht? I don’t understand.” Raven put his hand over hers as he stared down into her eyes looking back at him with so much earnest. Off in the distance ahead of them, Raven heard a strange noise. It was a whirring sound. It was almost mechanical. “Do you hear that?” Movement at the end of the passageway caught his eye and Raven reached for his spear but he’d left on the riverbank, instead he went for the sword. “Something’s up there, you stay behind me, right behind, if I tell you to run then you run as fast as you can, got it?” he whispered with authority.

  “Got it.”

  Turning sideways and holding the sword close before him, Raven stealthily made his way down the last part of the long passage, watching a shadow just beyond move on the ground. It was long and swift. It had the silhouette of a gigantic centipede with rotating legs and arms. Raven pressed against the left side of the passage as it passed by again, he peered around the corner and got his first look at the creature guarding this secret corridor between Tartarus and the road to the Elysian Fields. It had a hundred legs and a hundred arms, each one wielding a sword. On top of its fat serpent-like body sat fifty heads.

  A Hecatonchire. One of three creatures so vile and hideous, that their Father Uranus had them cast into the deepest pits of Tartarus upon their birth. The sound that Raven mistook for mechanical was the spinning of the blades in its hands. Cursing his luck, Raven searched his genetic memory for information on the Hecatonchire. There were three of them, triplets, born to Uranus and Gaia. Tw
o of them were warlike in nature but the third, Briareus, liked to talk. In fact, he was a lover of riddles and Raven hoped that was the card he’d drawn. If it wasn’t then he had no idea how he was getting out of this one.

  Keeping the sword in front of him and Trinity behind him, Raven emerged from the opening and immediately caught the attention of the hideous monster. It whirled around on all of its legs, its sprawling body slithering as it went and all one hundred eyes descended on him. “What is this?” All fifty mouths spoke at once in booming unison, “a little boy?”

  The fact that it didn’t immediately attack led Raven to believe his luck was holding and before him rolled and slithered Briareus. “I am no boy, I am Raven, Son of Ares. I am escorting my Sister to her rightful place in the Elysian Fields. I am on a Just and Righteous quest. Move aside and let us pass.”

  All fifty of the creature’s noses inhaled deeply at once causing a great wind to whip up and flow around Raven. “Smells like fresh meat to me,” the fifty voices spoke, “I haven’t had fresh meat in ages.”

  Raven looked down at his pouch. “If it’s meat you want I have some, I’ll give it to you if you let us pass in peace.” He reached into the sack to bring out a piece of jerky and throw it at the monster. One of hundred hands caught it and popped it into one of fifty mouths. “That good? You want more?”

  “Not bad,” it chimed as its fifty pairs of eyes rolled in its fifty heads, “but I think you taste better.”

  “I am on a Trial from Hades, you can’t eat me!” Raven challenged.

  “I can keep you here until your body starves and turns to dust,” Briareus lobbed back, “then I’ll eat you, not as tasty but still good.”

  “Hades won’t be pleased with you if you do that,” Raven warned. “Let us pass and no harm will come to you.”

  “Solve three of my riddles and I will let you pass, fail to answer but one correctly, and I will cut you to shreds. Hades be damned, he can’t do anything to me.”