The Petros Chronicles Boxset

by Diana Tyler

  Chloe tilted back her head and threw the water against her mouth, the excess flowing onto her neck.

  “Look at me, Asher!”

  Chloe obeyed and locked eyes with the bloodthirsty hybrid stalking toward her. Instantly, she recognized her mistake.

  “Unafraid, are you?” Deimos turned to look at Phobos, who was crouched on the bank, his ears retracting as his tail began to twitch.

  “It looks to me like the Vessel is having second thoughts,” Phobos yelled. He dug his hand into the dirt and growled deep in his belly.

  “Then I’ll see to it that she has no thoughts.” Deimos whipped back to face Chloe, reaching out his claw to hook her like a fish.

  “Help me,” Chloe whispered.

  “Who are you talking to, you fool?” said Deimos. “He doesn’t hear you. You’re as good as dead.” He pulled back his arm and thrust the tip of a talon into her forearm, grinning as a circle of blood pooled on her flesh.

  Chloe hissed as she watched her blood spill into the clear water, staining it crimson like paint splashed on a windowpane.

  “There is a way, there always is, to escape the enemy’s snare,” she murmured, replaying Carya’s last message in her head. She looked around one last time for any sign of Carya or a symbol of hope, but only empty faces and meaningless flowers met her gaze. “But what way?” she whispered. “There’s isn’t a way.”

  His patience expired, Deimos grabbed the back of Chloe’s neck and forced her head down to the water. “Your mind’s left you already. Now drink.” His dagger-like finger was pressed dangerously close to her jugular vein.

  Chloe folded her lips together, shaking her head, resisting Deimos’s grip, but to no avail. He closed his free fist around her nose, and she had no choice but to open her mouth and let the Lethe fill it.

  “Let me see it go down.” Deimos bent beside her, hot breath panting against her neck.

  Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, tears sliding through them as she willed herself to loosen her tongue and swallow. Her parents’ faces filled her mind as she silently recited their names over and over and over again, as the water moved smoothly down her throat…

  “There,” said Deimos. He released his hand from her neck and shoved her forward.

  Chloe fell headlong into the water. Her arms and legs flailed as she hurried to right herself. She screamed at the sight of the beast with an animal-like body and ugly human head, his brown eyes blinking fast as he looked her over with a wicked smile. He raised a bloody talon to his lips and licked it clean.

  “Farewell, Chloe the Asher.”

  Then he turned and swam to the shore, heavy hooves pounding against the water. He joined another monster, and together they took off toward the cloud of fog that was settling over the sickly green hills.

  “My name is Chloe,” she whispered. And that was all she knew.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  NICHOLAS

  Slowly, the river peeled away from Chloe’s sides, receding back to the banks and sinking into the sediment. The only one still standing in its midst, she plodded toward a gently sloping knoll on which three people stood watching her.

  An old man and woman with deep wrinkles and tattered tunics reached out their arms, beckoning her with slow, tired waves. A younger man beside them held his elbow with one hand and covered his mouth with the other. Beneath them sat a row of wicker baskets, each one filled to the edge with white flowers.

  “Chloe, come here, child,” shouted the woman, her shaky voice cracking as loose skin quavered on her thin, leathery arms.

  Chloe blinked up at the pale expanse of motionless sky above her. A dull ache throbbed in the back of her head. Her limbs felt leaden, the deadness of the air settling into them, stiffening her bones, clotting her blood. Her stomach rocked with nausea as unbearable pressure tightened around her skull, disorienting her as she stumbled to stay balanced. She forced one foot in front of the other, for no other reason than to be free of the river before it rushed back and consumed her.

  The younger man rushed down the hill, his face taut with a strange mixture of anguish and joy as he ran toward her, calling her name.

  Chloe doubled over and vomited onto the rocks and mud, flushing out her headache with every heave. She rose and took a deep breath, filling her head with musty air that stuck to her throat and sharpened the acrid taste of bile.

  The man froze a few feet away from her and crashed to his knees. His sandy-blond hair fell across his eyes, almost hiding the tears streaming out of them.

  “Who are you?” Chloe took a step back. She’d never seen this man before in her life. What could she possibly have done to upset him?

  The man put his head down and cried into his hands. Behind him, the old woman stepped closer to the man next to her and whispered into his ear.

  “What’s the matter?” Chloe asked. When the young man didn’t respond, she walked forward and shook his shoulder. “Please talk to me.” She winced at a shooting pain in her left arm and gasped when she saw globules of blood falling from it, staining the flower petals red.

  After a long minute passed, the man lifted his head and sat back on his heels, a bleary smile resting in his eyes. “I’ll show you.” He stood up and started toward the riverbank. “Follow me.” He turned back to her, wiping the tears from his cheeks and staring at her intently, curiously, as though to be sure she was real.

  Chloe thought he had a kind face, with warm green eyes much brighter than the grass in this stagnant haze of country. From the laugh lines around his eyes and the gray stubble along his jaw, she guessed him to be middle-aged. Then she wondered how old she was.

  She ambled behind him as the other two hobbled over to meet them.

  The old woman took Chloe’s hands in hers and kissed them with cold lips until she was out of breath and blubbering. “Poor thing,” she said softly. “Poor thing.” She removed her cloak and wiped away the blood on Chloe’s arm. Then she wrapped it tightly around Chloe’s elbow like a bandage.

  The old man’s bushy eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at his dirt-caked feet. He scratched a sore spot on his head and rubbed the woman’s back as she cried.

  What was wrong with these people?

  The blond man lowered himself onto a dry patch of grass and patted the ground beside him for Chloe to join him. He spoke to the others in a language she didn’t understand. They all knelt where they were, closed their eyes, and bowed their heads.

  “What’s going on?” Chloe asked. She peered over her shoulder at the wicker baskets and pointed at them. She started to rise. “Shouldn’t we get back to work picking the flowers, or at least go get the baskets before someone steals them?”

  A reluctant smile pulled at the younger man’s cheek. He rotated his torso toward her and studied his palms. “Duna,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Work through these hands.” Then he stretched out his hands and placed them on either side of Chloe’s head. “This may hurt.”

  Without further warning, he pressed the heels of his icy hands against her temple and buried his fingertips into the base of her skull.

  Chloe yelped as searing pain blazed across her brain. Her heart raced, thumping wildly as though it might explode from her chest at any moment. Sweat poured from her forehead. She seized the man’s wrists and tried to pry his hands away. But he persisted, shushing her calmly as the pressure intensified.

  She tilted her chin back slightly toward the old couple. “Make him stop, please!”

  Her ear canals buzzed as whirring heat rushed through them. She lost focus on the man’s face, the color of his hair, his eyes, his skin; fading to blobs of black and gray…and then, nothing.

  A gentle breeze blew across her face. She felt her muscles relax and her jaw stop clenching. The man slowly slid his hands off her head and onto her wounded arm.

  She opened her eyes. “Daddy…”

  The man’s nose twitched as tears trembled in his clear green eyes. He nodded his head and smiled, twin tears streaking down ei
ther cheek. “It’s me.”

  He held her forearm firmly with both hands as the old couple that she now recognized as Anastasia and Calix circled around them. A few seconds later, the pain in her arm was totally gone, replaced by the subtle sensation of heat filling the space where the gouge had been.

  Chloe fell into her father’s arms, and not knowing whether to laugh or cry, she did both for a good long while. She let her mind be emptied once again, though now it rid itself only of the shadows and sadness that had invaded on the day her parents died. In their place surfaced foreign tremors of happiness that vibrated from the deepest sanctum of her being, bubbling up into her heart and head and kindling every cell.

  She could have stayed here forever, absorbed in this sublimity, with her father’s chin on her head, her ear to his chest…

  She pulled away, her elation draining into the grass beneath her as an eerie uneasiness trickled in. She pressed two fingers into his icy wrist. “You don’t have a heartbeat.”

  Nicholas brushed her fingers with his as he gazed out over the desolate gully. “I’m dead, Chloe. As dead as they are.” He gestured to Anastasia and Calix, who sat making wreaths with the stems of asphodels. “But you…” He touched her chin and gave her that same warm, understated smile she always envisioned on his face. “You’ve kept my hope alive all these years. Not even death could kill that.”

  “How…” Now that the shock of seeing him again was starting to wear off, Chloe didn’t know which question to ask first. “How did you know I was here?”

  Nicholas sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Would you believe me if I told you a messenger named Carya appeared to me after I died and told me to find an old curmudgeon named Calix?”

  Chloe laughed. “I think I can believe anything now. Where’s Mom?” she asked.

  “She’s here,” he said quietly, “and she’s like you.” He tapped his forehead. “Her memories are all intact. We stay separated so we won’t draw attention. I couldn’t bring her to meet you. Not yet.”

  “I understand.” Chloe removed Anastasia’s cloak from her arm. There wasn’t so much as a scratch left to indicate she’d ever been injured. “So you healed us with your…”

  “Doma. Yes.” Her father stood up and held out his arms. She latched onto them, letting him pull her to her feet. He closed the distance between them and whispered in her ear, “Your doma is imminent, Chloe. Don’t be afraid.” He hugged her to his side and kissed her hair.

  Calix grunted something, and Nicholas said to Chloe, “Calix is right, I should leave you now before Deimos and Phobos make their rounds.”

  “You understand Próta?”

  Nicholas lifted his head and chuckled. “I suppose that’s a perk of having lived in the Underworld for nearly a decade.”

  Chloe laughed as more joyful tears welled and slipped from her eyes. “Daddy, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you.” She wrapped her arms around him, trying not to shiver at his cold hands on her tunic.

  If only this could be the end. She would settle for this—picking worthless flowers in Asphodel and dying naturally when the time came. As long as she was with her parents, she didn’t need any doma to deliver her.

  “I don’t want you to go.” She pressed her wet cheek into her father’s chest as her eyes met Anastasia’s.

  “Child, you must be brave,” said Anastasia, her hands joined at her heart. “Remember what the messenger told you. All of us can be restored if you’ll trust Duna, the god who answered us when we didn’t even know his name.”

  Anastasia looked up into the pseudo sky, tears of thanks glistening in the mud-colored pools of her eyes. She shook her clasped hands, beseeching Chloe one last time. Then she linked her arm with Calix’s and together they trudged back to their baskets.

  Chloe’s shoulders slouched as a heavy weight settled in her stomach. Was she really going to forget what Carya had said and done for her? Was she really ready to abandon Calix, Anastasia, and the others while they stood a chance of becoming themselves again and getting out of this place?

  She’d come all this way, learned so much, seen and heard far more than she’d bargained for. Stopping now would be the most selfish thing she could possibly do. She knew that if she listened to herself, to her exhausted body and muddled mind, she’d curl up right there by the Lethe and live off of glimpses of her mom and dad whenever they passed by. She needed her father’s strength if she was going to take even one more step.

  “Daddy, what do I do?”

  He held her shoulders gently and rocked her back so he could see her face. “You do nothing, sweetheart. You only have to wait.”

  She’d never seen him so serene, yet instead of feeling comforted, she sensed her nerves unraveling. “How do you have that much faith in a gift I haven’t even been given yet?” She spread her arms and pivoted side to side, displaying her empty palms, scraped knees, and shins bruised by her tormentors. “Look at me, I’m nothing special.”

  She folded her arms and smashed her heel into a flower. “It should have been Damian,” she said under her breath. “He’s better at everything anyway.”

  Nicholas sighed and shut his eyes for a moment, as if searching for the right thing to say. He had to agree with her. Even as a kid, Damian had outshined Chloe in every sport, and just about every subject in school. He was popular, charismatic, and lauded by his teachers and friends as someone with the makings of a future chief councilman in any one of the four colonies.

  “Those are lies, Chloe,” he said. “I don’t claim to know everything about Duna, but I’m certain of this: he doesn’t make mistakes.” He paused, and she raised her eyes to his. “Your being here is part of his plan.”

  “Did you know Damian knows I’m here?” she said, her anger rising. “Phobos told me. Damian knows I’m in hell, and he betrayed me.”

  Nicholas’s expression didn’t waver. Only a faint twitch of his cheek hinted at his displeasure. “You shouldn’t have listened to a word that monster said.” He took one of her hands in his. “Even if that is true, it’ll do no good to dwell on it. The Fantásmata haven’t made it easy to act bravely or take chances. Damian might have more of his old man in him than I realized.” He forced a quick smile as his eyes fell to his fingers.

  “What do you mean?” She willed herself not to retract her hand from the ice of her father’s cold, cutting grip.

  He squeezed her hand and let it go. He canted his head to one side, apprehension flickering across his countenance. His forehead crinkled as he swallowed hard. “I was a coward, Chloe. My family needed to know what I was, but I was too afraid, just like every Asher before me.”

  The squawk of a seagull sounded overhead. Chloe jerked her chin to the sky. “Did you hear that?”

  Nicholas looked around. “No, hear what?”

  The blue of the Great Sea slid across her eyes like a sheet of cellophane. The pungent smell of salt and seaweed clogged her nostrils. “Daddy…” She reached out for him, clutching his hand like a lifeline.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay…”

  She strained to hear his voice above the din of seagulls squawking in her ears. She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, but the motion only sharpened the image taking shape before her: the back of a woman with auburn hair, and bright orange flames shrinking over her palms.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PUNISHMENT

  Tiny hailstones pelted Damian’s head and shoulders as he stormed up the walk to Ethan’s door. It was well after curfew, but he didn’t care. He had to warn him—or perhaps threaten him, if it came to that—to keep his mouth shut before they both ended up on the Fantásmata’s hit list.

  Damian wiped his feet on the welcome mat and punched the doorbell. He waited for a few seconds, then rang it again as he knocked. He peeped through the beveled glass and saw a man, Mr. Ross he guessed, get up from a chair in the living room and creep slowly toward the door. Damian stepped back and cleared his throat, thinking up a lie that w
ould let him in, no questions asked.

  The door clicked as the man unlocked it. He cracked it open, just wide enough for one hooded eye to get a look at Damian.

  “Are you Mr. Ross? I’m one of Ethan’s friends.”

  The man’s eye squinted at him. “The Rosses were evicted this afternoon.”

  Damian lifted his chin and stared the man down for a moment. “Oh, really. And what are you doing here?”

  “Protecting the place from squatters,” the man grunted, then slammed the door in Damian’s face and turned the lock.

  “Right,” Damian muttered. “And I’m here to work on a physics project with Ethan.”

  He readjusted his hood and stomped back into the rain toward home. There was nothing more he could do.

  Like his sister, Ethan and his family had stuck their noses where they shouldn’t have. Damian couldn’t blame them, really. Who didn’t want to step behind the well-staged scenes of the Fantásmata, uncover their history, and learn their secrets? Everyone loved a good mystery. The prospect of solving it was nearly impossible to resist, but not quite. Damian had proved it was possible by leaving Katsaros’s offer at the lake.

  If anyone could infiltrate the government unnoticed, it was Damian. But he wasn’t a fool. He knew better than to play with fire when he’d seen it devour his own flesh and blood. The Ashers had had their chance to act. Besides, he was just one person. Dabbling with this magic gift of his, whether he went after Chloe in Hades or sneaked around the council premises, would be suicide. He would be caught eventually, and killed soon after that.

  The wind howled past Damian’s ears as he turned west toward the orange half-circle of sunlight bobbing on the horizon where the sky was clear—clear except for the Moonbow, its seven bands barely visible through a distant sheet of rain.

  The Moonbow is the warning and the Way.

  The words spiraled in his mind like autumn leaves caught in a whirlwind, never hitting the ground, impossible to rake up and throw away.