Putting my lips close to Wright’s ear, I whisper, “Flashlight.”
He takes the flashlight from his pocket and hands it to me. The small device casts a bright beam thanks to its LED bulbs, which require very little power. I kneel down close to the trough of fluid by the base of the wall and shine the white light on it. The liquid is brown.
Not blood. The red glow from the ceiling gives it that appearance. It’s an illusion. I stand and place my hand against one of the skulls. “Stone,” I whisper.
It’s all an illusion. The room is designed to look like hell. It’s horrible enough to intimidate even hunters. Perhaps even fellow Nephilim. But it gives me hope. Hades might not be as bad as everyone believes.
I turn around to tell the others and find them lying prone on the ground.
Not one of them is moving.
I was so wrapped up in my discovery that I didn’t even hear them fall.
I rush to Kainda’s side, whispering her name. I check for a pulse and find it in her neck. The beat of her heart is steady, but not as powerful as it should be. I check Em next, then Wright and Kat. All the same. Without wound, but unconscious, as though sleeping. Then I see the residue of purple powder on the floor around them. It’s a potent sedative, but not life threatening.
Knowing the others aren’t in immediate danger, I tune my senses into the world around me. I am not alone. I know that now. But who is here with me, and how did they subdue the others without being detected?
A scent, previously masked by the stench of death, tickles my nose.
A Nephilim.
Hades is here.
The sound of splashing echoes from the next room. He’s no longer concealing himself. “Come Solomon.”
The voice is ragged, like a smoker’s, but deep and powerful. That doesn’t intimidate me nearly as much as the giant knowing my name. And it’s not lost on me that he could have subdued me with the others, but chose not to.
I free Whipsnap from my belt and walk to the next room, ready for an attack. But my bravery seeps from my body as I round the corner and see the horrors on display. Bodies, very real bodies—human and Nephilim—litter the floor. At the center of the carnage, lounging in a pool of purple blood, is Hades.
He’s worse than I could have possibly imagined.
9
The giant uses his two six-fingered hands like a ladle, scooping the thick, purple fluid over his head. It oozes over his face. Rivulets of supernatural plasma flow down his forehead, over his closed eyes and around his mouth, which is turned up in a grin. But the blood bath doesn’t hold my attention nearly as much as his bald head. I’ve never seen a bald warrior before. In fact, he’s more than bald, he’s hairless. No beard. No chest hair. No arm hair. The warriors are generally covered in blood red hair. But Hades has the smooth skin of an Olympic swimmer.
More surprising than the lack of hair on his head is the missing golden ring that should be covering his weak spot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Nephilim warrior without one unless it was forcibly removed. That he’s not wearing one means he’s either supremely confident, ready to die or insane. Given the setting, I’m thinking door number three.
He picks up a blade. To me, it’s a sword. To the giant, it’s a razor. He draws the blade over his blood-soaked, bald head, filling the chamber with a scraping sound. After completing a pass, he shakes the razor in the pool of blood and begins a second pass.
A distant memory comes to mind and slams into my thoughts. I’m six. Same age as Luca. I’m sitting on the closed toilet in the upstairs bathroom with three dinosaur books clutched in my hands. The hot water heater next to me pops and hisses, fighting against the winter air flowing through the drafty window above.
“Why do you put whipped cream on your face?” I ask.
My father laughs, dips his finger in the white foam and holds it out to me. “Smell it,” he says. “Don’t taste it.”
I take a whiff and scrunch my nose. “Ugh. Yuck. What is it?”
He motions to the compressed air can, which looks an awful lot like a whipped cream bottle to me. I pick it up and speak the words aloud as I read them, “Shaving cream. For skin so smooth—” I stop reading and watch my father drag a razor across his cheek. He shakes the foam off in the full sink. “Aren’t men supposed to have rough skin?”
He smiles again. “Not according to your mother.”
“So you do this for her?” I ask.
He gives me a look that says, You know I do.
“Would mommy still love you if you had a beard?”
“I had a beard when she fell in love with me,” he says. “I shaved it off when I fell in love with her.”
I’m only six, but I get it. I know my dad would like to have a beard. He says so occasionally, but he shaves his skin smooth because he knows my mother prefers it that way. She doesn’t say so. Not with words. But she rubs his face a lot. And kisses his cheeks almost as much as she kisses mine. I wonder if I’ll shave for her, too, someday.
And then I’m back, out of the apple-shampoo scented bathroom of my youth and into Hades’s hellish den. But a question nags at me. Who does Hades shave for?
I consider backing out. He hasn’t shown any signs of noticing my arrival. Then I remember the others, passed out in the next room. He knows I’m here.
As the thick curtain of blood flows down his body and back into the pool, I notice a series of tattoos decorating his skin. They are ornate, expertly drawn symbols resembling others I’ve seen in the underworld. I recognize them as being similar to crop circles found around the world.
Ignoring the bodies strewn about the room, I do my best to sound casual and ask, “What do they mean? The symbols, I mean. The—the tattoos.”
So much for sounding relaxed.
I suppose it’s a good thing that I can’t feign indifference to the things around me. If I could, I imagine I’d be more like Hades than I’d prefer.
He draws the blade over his head again, and rinses it off.
Did he not hear me? Is he ignoring me?
“They are signs,” he finally says, his voice vibrating through my chest. “Of things that have come to pass and of things to come.”
Okay. Vague. But he hasn’t torn off my head and drunk my blood so we’re off to an acceptable start.
“More generally, it is the language of our fathers, passed down from the time before man.”
Less vague. Almost helpful. Perhaps there is hope for—
A curtain of purple blood rises from the pool, propelled by Hades’s right arm, sweeping across the surface. It careens toward me, threatening to saturate my body. Were it water, I would think little of it, but so much Nephilim blood would kill me, quite painfully.
A bubble of wind forms around me, deflecting the wave. The purple spray coats the floor around me, leaving a ten-foot diameter patch of clean stone around me. My reflexes saved me from the deadly blood, but I’ve also just confined myself to this ten-foot patch of floor. The circle of blood spreads out for thirty feet in every direction. I won’t be walking away. A single step with my bare feet would drop me to the floor.
That doesn’t mean I can’t cover the distance. A good leap, propelled by the wind would get me clear. But Hades isn’t about to give me the chance.
He rises from the blood pool, bringing up a sickle and swinging it at me with enough force to cleave me in two. I leap to avoid the strike, carrying myself high with a gust of wind.
More of the floor is covered with blood as the sickle and the arm carrying it spray the purple stuff in a wide arc. In fact, when I look down, I see very little floor that would be safe to land on. The wind carries me to the wall and I grasp onto one of the faux stone skulls that’s free of blood, Nephilim or the fake stuff.
“Hades!” I shout at him. “I need to speak to you!”
“Then speak,” he says, swinging again.
I leap to the opposite wall, carried by the wind.
His strike misses, but it wasn’t because
I moved. He didn’t even come close to landing the blow. He wasn’t trying to hit me, I realize. I look back at the far wall and see that much of it is now coated in purple blood. At this rate, the entire chamber will be coated in the stuff and I will have nowhere to go.
“I was sent here by Cronus!” I shout.
The next swing comes close. I leap up, moving to the highest reach of the fifty-foot wall, just above the newest coat of purple blood.
“Cronus,” he grumbles. A sneer reveals his sharp teeth. “Cronus!”
His shout precedes a fresh attack. I barely escape the sickle blade this time, but I’m out of places to run. Most of the clean walls are close enough to Hades that he could reach out and pluck me from the wall. All that’s left—I look up—is the ceiling. A gust of wind carries me up and I jam my hand into a crack, flexing it tight so that my fingers hold me in place like a rock climber’s cam.
“Stop!” I shout. “Please! I don’t want to fight you!”
“Fight me?” he says with a laugh. “You have yet to even draw your weapon. I’m afraid that the whispers about you are exaggerated. You are a coward!”
My temper flares, but I don’t make a move. Instead, I attack with my words, “It would be easier to kill you than talk to you.”
“Then come, little one, show me.” He places the sickle on the floor next to the pool. “Kill me. Free me from this wretched world.”
I hang there, tempted to grant his wish. I have no qualms about killing Nephilim. But I need to know where the Jericho shofar is hidden. And I’ll never find out if he’s dead. My indecision lasts just a moment, but it is too long for the impatient giant.
“I thought not,” he says, then brings both hands up out of the pool and flings a thick spray of the stuff up at the ceiling.
There is no dodging it this time. My fingers release and I drop. Wind kicks up around me as I fall, pulling my hair in wild directions. I catch the strong scent of Nephilim blood, but the wind keeps its stinging effects from my body.
As I descend, my emotions take over. I have let Hades assault me too many times without a response. I pull Whipsnap free as my fall is arrested and point the bladed tip at the monster. “Do you know how my master, Ull was killed?” I shout. “Slain by his own arrow! Doing the same thing to you now would be a simple thing. I have seen your kind killed by simple throwing knives. I have seen the bits and pieces of your brothers strewn across the jungle floor. You cannot win this war.”
He stares at me for a moment, frozen in place. And then, he laughs.
His last mistake. Few things set me off like being laughed at.
“There you are,” he says. “You entered here as a boy. Fragile and afraid. I could smell it on you. But here you are now, Solomon, the man, killer of demons, who descended into Tartarus and rose from the depths three months later.”
I’m poised to throw Whipsnap through his forehead, but stop. His voice still sounds horrible, and ragged, but there was a tinge of something else hidden in there. Respect?
“Why did you attack me?” I ask, sensing the battle has come to an end.
“I needed to know.”
“Know what?” I ask.
“If you were capable.”
Get to the point, I think. “Capable of what?”
“Of becoming more.”
I’m about to ask, “more what,” but this time he continues without prodding.
“More...than a man. More than you understand. More than even you believe is possible.”
Of course, he’s being vague again, so all the talking in the world isn’t going to help. “What are you talking about?” I ask.
He points a finger at me. Purple blood trickles from the long fingernail. “Tell me, last hunter, did you know you could fly?”
10
If I’d been asked, I would have said I’m standing on the floor. Not because I feel the stone beneath my feet, but because it’s the only thing that makes sense. I jumped from the ceiling, and without thought, instinctually placed my feet on dry patches of floor. That makes sense. But what I see when I look down...that’s something else.
The floor is ten feet below me. And there are no dry patches. Had I landed in the blood, I’d have likely died. At least I got something right; my instincts had taken over. But not in a way I would have predicted. The wind that normally carries me higher when I leap, cushions a fall or shields me from projectiles, now whips around my body, holding me aloft. I can feel its strength pulling at my limbs. My hair whips about. And my scant leather clothing is being pulled in a way that makes me fear I will soon be flying and naked.
“I can fly,” I say dumbly, as much to myself as to Hades.
The giant settles back in his blood bath, as though lounging in a hot tub.
I focus on the wind currently being generated by instinct and test out this new found trick. I move higher and then closer to Hades. “So you weren’t trying to kill me?”
“You could have died at any time,” he says.
“Then you were trying to kill me?”
“Yes,” he says with a sick grin. “But I was hoping you would survive.”
I don’t know why I’m trying to understand the methods of a Nephilim, especially one with the reputation of Hades, but I understand now that it was some kind of test. Pass or fail. Live or die. There was no in between. And I don’t think Hades intended for me to fly, only to see how I would escape his trap.
“Are my friends okay?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes at my concern. “They will survive.”
Thinking about the others reminds me of the corpses scattered around the room. I look down and see a hunter below me. He’s covered in purple blood now. I point to him. “And them?”
“They are very dead,” he says, still smiling.
“Why are they dead?” I ask.
“In service to you,” he says.
“Me? I didn’t ask for this.” I look at the human hunter. “I don’t kill people.”
“But they would have killed you had I not intervened,” he explains. “Not all hunters are loyal to your cause. You haven’t eluded capture on your own, boy.”
This surprises me almost as much as the fact that I’m flying, which is actually starting to take its toll. I’m slowly, but steadily growing tired. “You’ve been protecting me.”
“Not me,” he says. “My servant.”
The stench of Nephilim blood turns my stomach. “And the blood? Where does it come from?”
“You don’t care where it comes from. It is Nephilim blood. If I slew my fellow warriors, gatherers, seekers, breeders or feeders, you would be indifferent to its origins. Nephilim are deserving of death, of being erased.”
I agree with him, but saying so to a Nephilim who’s supposed to help me doesn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, I chew my lips nervously, which doesn’t exactly exude confidence, either.
“Do not worry, boy. I would agree with you. Our kind...was not meant to be. We are...unnatural.” His eyes look down at the floor and I think I see a flash of shame cross his face, but then it’s gone and his gaze turns back to me. “What you really want to know is why. Why do I bathe in the blood of my brothers? I have heard you have an intellect worthy of your namesake. You tell me. Why do I bathe in blood?”
I’m not sure if this is another test, but I decide to treat the riddle like it is, just in case. I look at the pool of purple blood. There are dark, almost black, stains around the edge. Dried blood. So this is not the first time he has done this. My eyes fall on the blade he used to shave his head, and likely his whole body. He is hairless. He looks like a Nephilim, but the blood red telltale sign of his corruption has been removed.
Why?
The answer hits me like a cannonball to the gut and I blurt out, “You’re not corrupt.”
He opens his arms and smiles, this time lacking any kind of sinister intention. “And yet my dark heart is feared more than most.”
“You shave to hide your hair.”
�
��As yellow as your own,” he says.
“You bathe in blood to mask your scent.”
“And to further my mad reputation. I make no secret of it when I pluck a lesser Nephilim from the halls above and drain its blood into my pool. As a result, I have very few visitors and have been left alone to watch, and wait...for you.”
“Why didn’t you help me before?” I ask.
“Even the finest ore must be melted in the hottest flames before it can be forged into a great weapon. You needed to...suffer. You needed to break. Without these things, you could not have been remade.”
When I was ten, my uncle Dan lost his job. I heard my mom talking to my father one night. They thought I was sleeping, but I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, listening to every word. Uncle Dan had some kind of mental breakdown, but not from losing the job. It was the job itself that created a wellspring of depression and anxiety in the man who wanted to be a painter. He didn’t want to sell insurance. But he had bills to pay, and mouths to feed and a mortgage. All the things that trap people into thinking they are stuck, like mice cowering in front of a cardboard cutout of a cat despite the exit to freedom being just beyond it—my father’s analogy, not mine. And finally, his despair overwhelmed him.
Broke him.
And my parents, who were not the kind of people to be trapped by circum-stances of their own creation, weren’t worried about Uncle Dan. They were excited for him.
“It’s too bad he had to get so low to realize his life was his to shape,” my father said. “But I’m glad he did.”
“Rebirth is never painless,” Mom replied.
I couldn’t see them from my position on the hallway stairs, but they shared a quiet laugh. In my mind’s eye, I could see them smiling, and I smiled with them. I heard kissing after that and went to bed, but the next day we went to visit Uncle Dan. He was a different man. A happy man. A remade man.
The idea that I, like Uncle Dan, had to be brought to my lowest point so I could reach my highest is horrible.
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