by C. R. Jane
“I’m not offended,” he responded, and I winced realizing he’d just read my mind once again. There had to be some kind of way to block that.
He cleared his throat and I realized that he’d heard that too.
Hades did that thing again, the one where I blinked and we were somewhere we hadn’t been just a second before.
I swayed on my feet again but this time I only felt a little bit nauseous. He touched the side of my face briefly and any sickness disappeared. It was bright wherever he’d taken us, and I wondered why he hadn’t done that from the beginning. My thoughts dissipated though when I saw his face.
If I thought Hades was something before...now he was more.
There was no way now to miss the fact that he thrived in the darkness. His skin was glowing, like there was a light inside of him that was sparking him up from the inside. His eyes were no longer blue. They were silver, reminding me of starlight stretched out on a tapestry of darkness. There was a cruel, proud smirk on his mouth, like his transformation during our journey through the darkness went much further than skin deep. His presence seemed to fill up the air around me until all I could see, all I could breathe...was him.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he growled, an inhuman echo in his words.
“Like what?” I whispered, the words difficult to choke out.
“Like you want the monster as much as the god.”
“I don’t see a monster,” I breathed, as his thumb slid to my bottom lip and pushed against it, the tip of it slipping inside and sending my insides spiraling. He leaned forward, his breath adding to the shivers sparking across my skin.
“Then you aren’t looking close enough.”
He abruptly let me go and strode past me. My knees almost failed me. My chest was heaving, my breath hard to come by. My panties...yeah, they were damp.
It was only the myriad of sinister eyes watching me just beyond the pool of light I was standing in, and the shadowed figures standing just feet away, that brought me back to where I was. I turned and ran towards the being I was realizing was king of all those monsters.
9
Elena
Now that I was a little less distracted by Hades’ transformation, I could see that the light was coming from a large lake stretched out before us that was giving off a ghastly green glow.
I took a step closer, my eyes straining to see what was floating throughout it, just beneath the surface of the strange neon green water. Hades hand shot out and stopped me from going any further.
“Careful,” he murmured, and I realized I had almost walked right into the water. “That’s what they want. And once they grab ahold of you, it would be difficult, even for me, to get you away.”
“They,” I whispered and then a cry slipped from my lips, because I realized what was floating in the lake. It was spirits. Millions and millions of them by the looks of it. They looked never-ending. The spirits seemed to be crying out in agony as they stared up at me. These weren’t the lovely spirits we’d been promised we would be in our Catholic mass. These were spirits in torment. Their hands seem to reach out to me beseechingly. I shivered and stumbled away.
I was officially freaked out.
“They feast on misery and would love to get someone like you in their midst,” Hades commented helpfully.
I had no response. I stared at the souls in fascination...and horror, wondering what they’d done to get this fate. My ideas about heaven and hell were rapidly disintegrating.
A dark shape appeared from across the lake. Squinting, I could just see the shoreline on the other side. The dark shape was moving closer and soon I could see that it was a large rowboat, one that could possibly sink at any moment judging by the state of it.
Please say there’s another boat. Please, I chanted silently.
“Breathe, Elena,” Hades said softly, touching my lower back in a whisper of a caress. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
For once I was glad he could read the panic coursing through my mind. I was going to need all the encouragement I could get if I had to get on this boat.
“Maybe you should tell me where we’re going now,” I told him as the boat pulled up to the shore.
“Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Hades smirked, and I cursed myself for what the simple movement of his lips did to my insides.
Hades turned his attention to the boat and that’s when I saw Charon. Except he wasn’t the same Charon I’d met before. He looked even more skeletal in the dim, green lighting. More demon than human. Instead of the suit he had been wearing before, he was dressed in a simple black shift. He looked like I had always imagined the mythical Charon had looked in the story books.
“Master,” he said to Hades. Hades just nodded at him and stepped into the boat, helping me to step inside of it afterwards. Hades pulled out a blade and sliced his skin, black blood dripped onto the worn wooden floorboards of the boat. I watched in amazement as Hades skin pulled together rapidly at the same time as the blood soaked into the wood and disappeared.
“Payment,” Hades murmured in answer to my questioning stare.
“I guess those myths about the gold coins held some truth,” I said under my breath as the boat began to move across the water, propelled by Charon’s slow and steady rowing.
I hugged myself tightly, wishing that Hades wasn’t sitting a row away. I didn’t know where to look. Between Charon, the glowing water, and Hades himself, my mind was a mess.
A particularly gruesome looking spirit grabbed my attention just beyond the edge of the boat.
“Elena,” I heard Hades’ panicked voice say before a pair of strong arms wrapped around me.
Belatedly I realized that I had one foot on the edge of the boat, like I was about to dive in. There was a group of spirits gathered right in front of where I would have jumped from, like they were waiting for me. I shivered as I watched them soundlessly gnash their teeth in frustration that Hades had stopped me from becoming dinner.
“Don’t touch them,” he chastised, needlessly, his grip momentarily tightening on me almost desperately before he reluctantly let me go.
Evidently it was dangerous to even look at the spirits. I kept my eyes averted from that point forward. I could feel Hades’ eyes upon me, watching me closely for my reaction.
We continued to float across the haunting green body of water. It was a strange thing, all you could hear was the sound of the water splashing against the oars, yet I’d never heard silence so loud. The pain and agony of the spirits was tangible, so overwhelming you could feel it crushing your shoulders.
“Do they stay like this forever?” I finally asked, taking a deep breath and trying to shake off the heavy sorrow I was experiencing. I’d always been a rather empathetic person and right now that trait was firing on all cylinders.
Hades cast a disdainful look down at the writhing spirits, obviously not feeling the same way I was.
Maybe he was just used to it.
“Yes,” he finally said succinctly before casting his gaze on me. “You feel sorry for them,” he said incredulously.
I shrugged, trying to stop myself from crying as I continued to be crushed by the spirit’s despair.
Hades suddenly grabbed at one of the spirits in the water and held it a few inches above the surface. The shrill screams of the spirit were no longer silent, they filled the air, echoing off the cave’s walls until I felt like I was going to go mad.
“This man liked to sneak into his niece’s room at night every time he visited his brother.” He dropped the spirit into the water, the spirit’s cries abruptly cutting off. Hades grabbed another one.
“This one murdered fifteen women before she was caught. She liked to keep their teeth as souvenirs.” Again the spirit was dropped.
“This man conned his mother out of every penny she had and left her homeless. She didn’t survive.” Splash. He went to grab another one, but I held up my hands beseechingly, feeling like I was going to be sick.
>
“Please,” I whispered.
Hades pulled a rag out of thin air and dried his hand off.
“Still feeling sorry for these spirits?” he drawled.
I didn’t bother answering him, I just resolutely stared at the shoreline while I tried to get control of my shaking body.
It seemed like forever before we reached the other end of the lake. Charon got out first, followed by Hades, who helped me onto the shoreline. I was still mad at him for the stunt he’d pulled on the lake, but I had to be grateful when my knees buckled briefly under me, and Hades deftly caught me.
“Easy there. Just relax,” he crooned at me soothingly.
I wanted to stick out my tongue at him or something equally immature, but I was still feeling deeply unsettled by everything I’d seen so far on this journey. I didn’t know where we were going, but we needed to get there...fast.
Once I’d gotten control of my legs, Hades waved a hand in front of a gap in the cave’s wall and I gasped when it extended, revealing a tunnel that was thankfully lit. We set off again through it, until we reached a room at the very end that had me gasping in amazement. That seemed to be my overall reaction to everything on this little expedition.
The room looked like it was made of millions of sparkling lavender crystals, like we’d found ourselves in the middle of a giant geode. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen...besides Hades.
“I was about to be jealous of the way you were looking at the room until that thought,” Hades purred.
I scoffed but couldn’t help blush again despite how annoyed I was with him. The Hades of the mansion had thus far been morose, self-hating, cold… This Hades? This Hades was nothing like him. I wasn’t sure I could handle this version of him when the other one did so much to me already.
I cleared my throat and gazed around the room, trying to pretend I hadn’t heard him and he couldn’t read my mind at that very moment.
It was actually pretty easy to distract myself in the midst of such beauty. I jumped when a stone structure appeared in the middle of the room. A closer look at it revealed that it resembled a marble birdbath. Hades suddenly pulled me towards it until we were staring down into a cloudy pool of water inside the large bowl on top.
“The pool of the Fates. They let me borrow it to watch over my domain,” he explained.
“The Fates? Like the ones responsible for me being here?” I asked, anger burning at my veins.
I didn’t admit to myself that the anger wasn’t quite as strong as it had been just a few days before.
I wasn’t listening to whatever Hades said in response because flashes of images began to appear in the water inside the birdbath-looking thing. There was what looked like a golden field that happy couples were running across holding hands. Another image showed people being burned alive. I could hear their screams of agony, and it made my stomach turn. Still another image showed a scene that resembled what I imagined the Garden of Eden would have looked like. Just the glimpse of it made my heart pang in my chest. I yearned for that place, a reaction that startled me. Through all the images, Hades watched me closely.
“You recognize that?” he asked, and again, the way he asked the question felt like he was asking something of great importance to him.
“You look like I should recognize this,” I responded. I continued to stare at the image that strangely felt like home to me. “It looks like somewhere I’ve been before,” I continued softly.
He made a pained sound that made me look at him sharply.
“Are you okay?” I asked, staring at his tortured face. Hades simply nodded and pulled us both away from the pool. I followed him with reluctance, not wanting to leave the image of the garden I had seen.
He walked us to the other side of the room and waved his hand along the wall. A hidden doorway opened up showcasing a room that looked like the inside of an elevator. Hades led us both inside.
Hades snapped his fingers and the crystal room disappeared as the hidden doorway closed. I gasped as the room started to move. Evidently it was an elevator.
“Can you tell me where we’re going yet?” I asked, gritting my teeth and holding onto the wall. I’d never been a fan of those rides at amusement parks where you shot up in the sky and then was dropped. This felt exactly like that and I was expecting the floor to fall out at any minute.
Hades smiled at me softly. “I’m trying to give you all the proof that you need to know that this is real and not just some kind of trick. I’m taking you to Mount Olympus,” he said. My mouth hung open in shock.
The elevator seemed to move up forever. I had once been on an elevator in the Sears Tower. It took you to the top where the lookout was. There had been a screen in the elevator that showed you how high you were compared to national and world landmarks. I’d always been afraid of heights, and seeing how high we were freaked me out at the time. I had a feeling that I would’ve been even more scared if I could see how high we were traveling right now.
At last, the elevator stopped, and my stomach returned back to its normal place in my body. Hades looked like it hadn’t affected him, and as the doors opened, he simply smoothed back a piece of his hair that had fallen in his face and took my hand again. I hated that my heart seemed to leap whenever he touched me, and that his hand was beginning to feel familiar and almost necessary to me in such a short time.
My trail of thoughts disappeared when I actually took notice of the room we were walking into. It was the size of a ballroom, the most enormous ballroom on earth. It looked like it could fit hundreds and hundreds of people. The walls and floor were golden, and the light in the room was almost blinding, despite the fact that I couldn’t see any light fixtures anywhere. There were beautiful people in various poses around the room. Some were lying on lounges while what looked like servants brought them things. A group of perfectly built men were wrestling in one of the corners. There was a fierce looking woman that evoked images of an Amazonian shooting arrows at a target in the far corner of the room. My eyes flitted back and forth, not knowing where to look since there was so much to see. But through it all, I felt Hades’ eyes on me.
A centaur raced a unicorn across the ballroom as a tree just a few feet away from us turned into a sparkling silver clad woman with a pop. Everything was unfamiliar and strange. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. Except I wondered if Alice had felt like prey the entire time she’d made her way through Wonderland.
Because that’s what I felt like right now. Prey. Despite everything going on and the myriad of people that seemed much more interesting than I could ever be, I could feel their gazes...so many of them I wanted to hide. I’d never done well with attention. Especially with attention that felt...menacing.
“Stay by me,” I all but pled to Hades.
His grip tightened on my hand. “Of course,” he said. “But you have nothing to fear. I would never let anything happen to you.”
A flash of gold caught my attention...and held it. There was a man a few feet away, or I guess it was a god judging by the being’s perfection. He was the polar opposite of Hades in every aspect. Where Hades reminded me of the nighttime sky and made you want to discover the secrets he held within the depth of his sparkling indigo eyes, this man was the sun. As I stared at him I wanted his light, I wanted his warmth...I wanted his attention. Everything about him was golden...his skin, his hair. Everything. Well almost everything. He glanced over in our direction and his eyes captured me and held me prisoner. They were a light blue color, almost crystalline, like I was staring into a clear pool of water. They had a tint of blue, like a perfect summer sky. I’d never seen anything like them.
I hadn’t been able to see very much of Hades’ body, but from what I could tell from the way his clothes fit, both of these men were built the same. They looked like their bodies had been carved by Michelangelo himself. And just like Hades, this man was watching me intensely.
I watched as a gorgeous woman clothed in a sparkling violet dress hung
on his arm while he talked with a few other males. Something flickered around in my stomach, something that felt an awful lot like jealousy. I needed to get a hold of myself.
“Did you ever live here?” I asked Hades, looking up at him to distract myself from the golden god. It worked. It was like looking from the sun to the moon, both were equally beautiful. Both were equally dangerous.
“Once upon a time,” he said, his gaze flashing as a rainbow made up of what looked like real jewels suddenly sparked across the stories tall ceiling. “It feels so long ago it could almost be a dream.”
I realized, staring at him, that you could just tell he didn’t belong here. Hades’ beauty was cold, like being enveloped by a thick fog in an autumn’s evening. He reminded me of the quiet, maybe just a piano playing half-heartedly somewhere nearby. This place was loud, and bright, and overwhelming, like how I’d imagine Spring Break in Florida would have been if I’d ever gotten to go.
I personally preferred something right in between the two.
“Hades,” a female said softly nearby, catching both of our attention.
I felt threatened. That’s how I would best describe the myriad of emotions in my chest as I watched the ethereal female approach us, her gaze locked on his face like he held the key to everything she’d ever desired in life. Imagine the most beautiful woman your mind could comprehend, the world’s most famous supermodel, and then multiply the beauty times a million. Then you would maybe be a little closer in picturing the perfect blonde with emerald eyes standing in front of us right now.
“Aphrodite,” Hades said gently...perhaps even happily.
Ignoring the fact that this female was evidently the goddess who every woman on earth had been measured up to at one point in time, I was most threatened because this Aphrodite character was clearly, and desperately, in love with Hades.
Which should have meant nothing to me, except for the fact that I was starting to feel something for the complicated, dark god standing next to me. I was in denial about it. But it was still there.