I swallowed, and then took a step forward. “I’m not afraid.”
Although I was shaking inside, I wasn’t going to let them intimidate me. I didn’t go through hell in the twelve trials to be bullied around by three bat girls.
Tisiphone grinned, her teeth gnashing. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Hades patted her on the shoulder. “Be nice, Tis. I need her to stay in one piece, okay?”
“I’ll think about it.” She sniffed, and then flexed her wings. The hooked ends came very close to my face. Allecto and Megaera snorted and chuckled.
I couldn’t let them push me around especially since I was going to be training with them every day. I had to show them I wasn’t scared, although I was a little, and that I wasn’t someone to mess around with.
Puffing out my chest, I focused my mind. Seconds later, my black feathery wings split through my shoulder blades and unfurled around me, six feet wide on either side. All three sisters’ eyes widened in surprise.
Hades chuckled. “There’s the fierce girl I saw in the trials.”
Megaera sneered. “Fierce? We’ll see about that.”
Tisiphone leaned down toward me, reaching out to touch the tip of my wings. She pulled a face. “Not bad. They look good. Can you use them?”
Without hesitation, I shot up into the air, flapping once to gain velocity in a few seconds. I flew up to the ceiling, touched the crossbeams, and then swooped over the ropes hanging down. I grabbed one and swung myself around, then let go and flew off like a shot again to the other side of the training studio.
Laughing, Tisiphone clapped, cheering me on.
Hades’ grin was instant and huge and I felt a sort of pride swell in my heart.
Allecto just sneered.
Not to be out done, Megaera took to the air with a loud whoosh of her wings. As I hovered near the corner of the studio, she flew right at me. Folding my wings in, I dropped, then right before I reached the ground I shot them out again and soared just over Hades and the other’s heads. I caught Hades pleased chuckle as I swooped overhead.
Megaera came at me again, arms far outstretched. I was about to dodge her and fly to the right, when two green whips snapped out of her wrists. The tips just brushed the top of my head, and it was then I realized, with sickening dread, that the whips were in fact snakes. I heard the hiss of them opening their mouths as they snapped right by my face.
Shocked, my wings folded into my body in retreat and I dropped like a sack of rocks to the floor. Before I could break my limbs in the fall, Hades caught me in his arms, and then set me back onto my feet. I wobbled a little but I didn’t fall.
I couldn’t believe what I just saw. I gaped at Megaera as she landed softly next to her red-headed sister. She rubbed at her wrists, and I saw painful looking red slashes across her skin where the snakes must’ve broken through.
“There, I knew you’d all get along. Just like one big happy family.” Hades clapped his hands gleefully. He patted me on the shoulder. “Have fun. I’ll leave you to your training. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Then he left the room, leaving me with three very strange and very unpleasant women, who I suspected had no intention of seeing me succeed.
Chapter Six
MELANY
“Your flying’s not bad.” Tisiphone folded her wings behind her back. They didn’t retreat into her body like mine had. “But we will teach you to be even better.”
Megaera snorted. “She flies like a tiny chick.”
“Now now sister, don’t be so harsh on the poor girl. She just got her wings while you’ve had yours for over a thousand years.” Tisiphone patted her sister on top of her green head like a child.
Megaera batted her hand away. “Whatever.”
“Stop bickering,” Allecto snarled at her sisters then she glared at me. “Are you ready to start training?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” She walked toward the weapon wall. I rushed up to her side to join her. “In combat you must be able to pick up any weapon and know how to kill with it.”
I flinched at her bluntness, but the truth was I was a soldier training in an army. I not only needed to know how to defend myself and others, but how to kill. If someone or something was coming at me or those I loved intending to hurt, I couldn’t hesitate to act.
She plucked a large mace, with a spiked ball at the tip, from the wall and handled it like it was made of plastic and not iron. She went over to one of the wooden combat dummies, the one Hades had impaled with a knife, and swung the mace overhead. It came down on the dummy and broke it into pieces. With one mighty blow she had demolished it, reducing it to toothpicks.
Turning her fierce gaze on me, she tossed me the mace. I caught it with both hands. It was heavy, but I’d been holding a sword for months now so my muscles didn’t shake.
She pointed to the other wooden structure. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
“Won’t Hades be angry we’re breaking his things?”
Allecto’s brow furrowed. “Do you really care?”
I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face. “Nope.” I hefted the mace over my head and brought it down. The wood cracked, one of the pegs broke off, but that was it. Despite the limited damage I’d been able to inflict, it still felt good.
She sucked on her teeth, looking at me with thinly veiled distaste. “You have some bulking up to do. So that next time you wield that mace it will be lethal.”
For the next seven hours I trained harder than I ever had before. The three sisters put me through my paces challenging me at every turn.
Under Allecto’s drill sergeant like instruction, I did fifteen pullups on the metal bar, she wanted me to do fifty, thirty-five pushups, she expected one hundred, and then I had to run the obstacle course five times in a row. During the last run, I got a cut on my cheek from the barbed wire I had to crawl under, and I couldn’t get over the cement wall, in fact I had a hard time holding my arms up, so I sort of shuffled around it, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides.
Tisiphone and Megaera had been on the sidelines, cheering and jeering me on, respectively.
“Yeah! You did it!”
“I’ve seen baby centaurs do better than you.”
After a short break where I must’ve drunken half a gallon of water, and I tended to my small cut, which I cleaned and dressed with a small bandage, I had been totally shocked they had a first aid kit available in the room, I was handed off to Megaera for flying lessons.
“Unfurl your wings,” she demanded roughly.
Concentrating hard, I pushed my wings out through my shoulder blades, and then spread them out wide around me.
“That took too long. In a combat situation, you’d be dead already.”
“It was like a few seconds.”
“A few seconds is all it takes for an arrow to pierce your eye.” She thrust her fingers toward my eye. “Or Medusa to turn you to stone or one of my snakes to bite your throat and inject you with lethal poison.” She rubbed her wrist when she said this, and I wondered if she was fantasizing about just that. “In combat, your wings should already be out.”
“You want me to fight while I’m winged?”
“Yes. Makes you ready for anything.”
“But they’re so heavy, I’m not sure I—,”
She punched me in the chest. “This is why you need to get stronger. Your chest, shoulder and back muscles need to be like steel.”
I nodded.
“Now, fold your wings back.”
Using my back muscles I pulled in my wings as tight as I could. I had a sense though that they still stuck out. Megaera came around behind me, poking and prodding at my wings. She folded them even more than I could. “There that will do for now.”
She came back around in front of me. “We’re going to practice taking off mid run. In combat you could be exchanging sword volleys in one second, and flying the next to attack another opponent. Watch me.”
She nodded to Tisiphone. “Toss me a sword.”
Tisiphone snatched a short sword off the wall and threw it to Megaera. She caught it, spun it once around with her wrist, thrust it out, and then started to run. After a few long strides, she launched into the air, and flew across the room in a few seconds. Then she swooped down and landed lightly in front of me again.
“You try.” She handed me the sword.
I held it up, and sprinted across the room. I then stopped and sprang into the air, my wings unfurling and flapping hard. I only got a few feet in the air, when she shouted at me to land.
She shook her head. “Horrible. You’d be dead by the time you got into the air.”
“According to you I’m going to die just by walking around.” I smirked.
She didn’t appreciate my humor and glowered at me with blood red eyes, which sent a shudder down my back.
“You could die right now…” She lifted a hand.
“Meg,” Tisiphone warned. “Play nice. Hades has entrusted us with Melany’s care. You don’t want to disappoint him, do you?”
Megaera sighed, and then lowered her hand. “Whatever.” She came to stand beside me, and then grabbed me around the hips. “When you are running, don’t stop. Instead bend your knees and tilt your pelvis. It will help you get power to launch into the air.” She released me, and then stood back. “Try it again.”
Taking in a few quick breaths, I lifted the sword and ran full tilt across the room. I did what she said, and bent my knees mid stride, but ended up tripping over my feet and falling face first onto the floor. Thank Gods, I had the forethought to thrust my sword arm to the side or I would’ve fallen on it.
I heard someone laughing. I assumed it was Tisiphone, as she seemed like the only one who had a sense of humor.
“Get up. Do it again.”
I did.
I fell two more times. On the third try, I stopped then jumped again. The fourth try I got off the ground, but my wings didn’t unfurl in time, and I just fell back down. On the fifth try, I ran as hard as I could, and sprang midstride and got air born. I flapped up and soared across the room, the tips of my wings brushing the ceiling, arrogantly.
When I came back and landed near Megaera, she didn’t smile, but she did nod. “Not bad.”
Tisiphone smacked her sister on the back. “Pretty high praise from this one.”
I tried to hide my smile, as I didn’t want to draw Megaera’s wrath again. Out of the three sisters, she was the one I worried most about. Not that I trusted any of them, but Megaera seemed like she’d have no trouble literally stabbing me in the back. I had a feeling she’d take great pleasure in it.
After another quick break, I started my stealth training with Tisiphone.
“I know you know how to use the shadows to cloak yourself and to move around. But to be truly invisible you need to know how to move around in darkness. Complete darkness without any sound.” She smiled, then every torch in the room extinguished, and we were plunged into the black.
I didn’t know what to do, or what she wanted me to do, so I stood as still as possible and tried to control my breathing. Then a tap came on my right shoulder, and I spun that way, then a tap on my left, and I spun back around. I hadn’t heard her move. There were no footsteps, no rustling of clothing or shoes. Mind you the sisters didn’t wear shoes.
“I am five feet behind you. Come and find me.” Her voice startled me and I flinched.
“I can’t see, so how can I?”
“Focus on other things beside what you can see with your eyes. Concentrate on what you hear. What you can smell. The movement of the air on your skin.”
I did as she instructed and focused on the direction her voice had come from. I took a hesitant step forward, stopped, listened, and then took another step forward. I tried to stop my heart from thundering in my ears, so I could zero in on other sounds in the room.
There. Just now. I heard the slight crinkle, like paper moving, of Tisiphone’s wings shifting. I course corrected and took another step forward. I stopped, frowning, lifting my arm up to see if I could feel a shift in the air. For a moment, I could only feel my own puffs of breath as they stirred the hair on my arms. Then I felt something else. A whoosh of movement. Something coming around on my right side.
I whirled around. The flames sparked, and I was face to face with Tisiphone. She had her dagger’s tip nearly pressed into my side.
She grinned. “Good job. I almost had you.”
I knew she’d pulled back deliberately. She could’ve slid that knife between my ribs any time she wanted to. I appreciated that she didn’t.
“Now I’ll teach you how to walk without making a noise. Right now you slap your foot down with every step you take. I could hear you from a mile away.”
For the next hour, Tisiphone showed me how to walk on the outer edge of my feet. Then she threw down gravel over the floor and made me walk across it. Every time I made a sound, she threw one of those small pebbles at me. By the time I was done for the day, my body felt like it had been stoned.
When my training was done, they all informed me that we’d be doing it all over again tomorrow. And the next day and the next, and that I should probably have a long hot soak in the bath with some salts for aches and pains. Tisiphone informed me that there should be a small bag of special salts in my bathroom, brewed by Dionysus.
I walked across the corridor and to my room. My legs and arms ached with every movement. A hot bath sounded glorious. When I went into my room, I found a long sleeveless velvet black dress laid out on my bed, beneath it on the floor was a pair of black heels. On the dress was a note:
Spend the next two hours in the bath and resting, then put on this dress and meet me in the dining hall for dinner. Hades
I picked up the dress; it was pretty and elegant, and so not something I would ever wear. I wondered how angry he’d be when I showed up for dinner in leather pants and a t-shirt instead. I set the dress down, padded into the bathroom to start my bath. I guess I was going to find out, because there was no way I was going to go wandering around in that dress for anyone.
Chapter Seven
MELANY
I stayed in the hot bath until the water went cold. I didn’t know how long it was as there wasn’t a clock in the room and I didn’t have my cell phone, but it felt like hours. I grabbed the fluffy black robe that had been left for me in the bathroom, put it on, and wandered into the closet to get dressed for dinner.
The lamp automatically flared to life when I walked in, that was going to take some getting used to, and I immediately saw that the closet was empty. Lonely hangers swung back and forth on the rod, and after I rushed to the drawers and pulled them open, saw there weren’t any clothes folded neatly in there either.
“What the hell?” I murmured.
I went back into the bedroom, my gaze focused on the dress that still laid spread out on the bed. When I neared it, I saw another note on the dress.
You will wear this dress tonight for dinner like I’d asked. Hades
I crumpled up the note in my hand, and lit it on fire, until there were only bits of ash left in my palm. I opened my hand and let the ash float to the floor uncaring if it made everything dusty and dirty. I shook my head. I couldn’t believe that he’d removed, or gotten Charon to do it, all my other clothes just so I’d wear this dress. How did he know I wasn’t going to wear it? Was he spying on me? Did he hear my thoughts?
I shuddered thinking about that possibility.
Without any other option, except for the robe I wore, I picked up the dress and put it on. There was a full length mirror near the dressing table in the room, and I went and stood in front of it. I hated that the dress fit perfectly and accentuated my defined shoulders and arms and pale skin. I didn’t even want to consider what the plunging neckline did to my breasts, but the fact was I looked hot in this dress.
I did a spin, then a round house kick with my right leg, executing it flawlessly. I looked at
myself in the mirror again.
Damn it. I also looked bad ass in this dress.
After doing my hair, I mean I had to because I was wearing this great dress, and putting on a little lip gloss, I found a drawer of makeup in the bathroom, I made my way down the corridor to the dining room.
I opened the door to find the room lit by a bunch of tall candles on the table, and our meal already on the table. It smelled delicious and my stomach rumbled in response. Hades walked toward me, an unreadable look on his face as he looked at me.
He gave me a little bow. “You look beautiful.”
His compliment pleased me, and I felt my cheeks flush a little under his searching gaze. “Thank you.”
“I knew the dress would look extraordinary on you.”
“Well, you didn’t really give me a choice. Cool trick making all my clothes vanish.”
His smile came quick. Again my belly flipped a little over it. “I suspected you were going to come in a pair of jeans and t-shirt if given half the chance.”
“Leather pants actually. Since there aren’t any jeans in the closet.”
He pulled out the chair for me to sit. “Jeans are for lazy people. And you are far from that.”
I sat in the chair, and he pushed it up for me, then he picked up a bottle of wine that had been chilling in a metal bucket of ice. He poured some into my wineglass, then took it back to his side of the table and filled his glass, and then he sat.
He lifted his wineglass. “To the first day of a new chapter for the both of us.”
Although I wasn’t absolutely sure he was just talking about my training in his clan, I took up the glass and drank. The wine was sweet and delicious and surprisingly refreshing, something I desperately desired after the hard day of training. I took another sip before setting my glass down and digging into my food. I was starving.
As I shoveled the food in my mouth, I sensed that he was watching me from across the table. I looked up to see an impish lift of his mouth. “What? I’m hungry.”
Demigods Academy - Year Two Page 4