The apparition at the back of the shed held Cindy’s stare. She pulled against Ronan’s grasp moving towards it ─ towards Kay. Another person, a man, stood close behind her friend but in shadow. Cindy tried to get a better look at him but his face was lost in the dark. Kay reached for her with one hand and Cindy broke away from Ronan’s hold.
“No cara! It’s not what you think,” he said, but his voice was distant as she felt through the blurry screen that separated her from Kay, finally she made contact. Her fingers pressed against Kay’s ice cold hand, instantly chilling her to her marrow. A movement from the back caught her eye and the man’s form melted away, turning into a tarry blackness that writhed like serpents. Cindy screamed at the sight, but even more so, from the crushing grip that encased her hand and yanked her through the mist.
Instantly, freezing wetness struck her skin like shards of glass. She thought all the bones in her hand would break when she tried to pull away. At her resistance, Kay whipped around and sent her hair flying in a chaotic halo. Cindy screamed again as her friend’s face split down the middle ─ one side remained a perfect depiction of the girl she’d grown up with while the other was that of a monster!
Skin stretched tight over one half of Kay’s skull, pitch black and shiny from wetness with bits of gray bone showing through in patches. One black-red eye glinted through the oozy half visage and flickered when the creature snarled. Instead of a sound though, what came forth were a thousand tiny winged insects. They flew straight for Cindy, set to envelop her in the cloud of their collective mass.
Rearing back, she tried to shield her face but the ice cold grip of the demon holding her was unrelenting. She started to slip into the black tar.
“Heeelp!”
No sooner had the word left her lips than she felt hands on her shoulders pulling her back, out of the wet, dark nightmare.
Ronan, thank God!
A surge hit her and she felt his strength fill both their bodies. She knew that their short lapse in contact had cost him but she didn’t have any time to dwell on that thought as the slippery wall that now held her entire arm began to undulate. She shook as the feeling of movement all around her took on the shape of hundreds of individual bodies slithering over her skin. The wall had manifested into a river of snakes all writhing around her arm, moving toward her face.
“Aaagh!” She shrieked.
Just as the reptiles started to fall at her feet and slither up her legs, Ronan gave one mighty heave and pulled her free of the serpents, past the mist, til they both fell to the floor of the shed. The walls rattled as wind came at them from all directions. They turned to look back at the horror show they had just escaped. A sound like a siren in a vacuum came from the two-faced demoness and then the whole scene, snakes and all, burst into fragments, spinning violently as everything was sucked back into the tiny shell it had come from.
Cindy clung to Ronan, breathing in short terrified pants.
“What…the hell…was that?”
Ronan breathed hard from exertion too but his hold on her was solid.
“A demon’s trick cara, the shells were enchanted. Your touch must have unlocked a curse that opened a gate to the underworld.”
He stopped speaking and looked down into her frightened eyes. She knew they were starting to glaze over with hysteria again but she couldn’t help it. Before she could slip into a state of shock, he grasped her shoulders and gave her a shake to bring her back.
“We have to leave this place, quickly cara.”
She nodded as he pulled her to her feet. The storm outside had picked up strength and as if on cue, a gust of sea laden wind pushed through the door.
They ran in the rain back toward where the city shuttles were but when Cindy spied a taxi she tugged Ronan into it instead. She reached across him and pulled the car door shut against another angry blast of rain and wind.
“I don’t want to wait for the shuttle.” She said, as she slid across the seat. When he wouldn’t let go of her hand, she gave him a pointed look.
“I need to put on the seatbelt.” She all but yelled, unreasonable and cracking under the strain of what had just happened. The cabbie flicked a glance at her in the rearview mirror and she knew she looked like a lunatic.
“Safety first, you know?” She hissed out at Ronan through the chattering of her teeth.
He released her hand and she buckled. She could feel his eyes on her and looked up to meet them. He’d lost all color again. Out of instinct, she reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder. He brightened visibly.
“What the hell is going on here?”
The cabbie looked at her again.
“You, just drive and eyes on the road!” She yelled, shaking her finger at the poor guy in the mirror, then had the presence of mind to feel bad when he jumped. She was losing it…already lost it. So long sanity! Could anyone blame her?
“Cara, calm yourself,” Ronan said under his breath.
She snarled at him ─ a real snarl with gnashing teeth and everything ─ then gritted out, “I don’t want to be calm. I’m freaked out of my mind right now and I’d really like to punch someone in the face.
Her voice rose at the end, she may have even spit, but she went on in a tenor usually relegated to the sinisterly deranged.
“More than that, I want to know what just happened to me back there and why you keep fading or melting or whatever the hell it is you’re doing every time I let go of you. I want to know why, ever since you jumped me in that garden this morning, my day has steadily been going down the shitter!”
He blinked at her language then set his jaw.
“I can’t explain it either,” he said under his breath, mindful of the cabbie, “not all of it anyway.”
He shook his head in a genuine state of confusion.
Cindy pulled her hand back and waited, all the color instantaneously drained out of him and he coiled in on himself in pain. She touched him again and he was, once more, restored. She tested the phenomena twice more before Ronan grabbed her hand in a vice grip.
“Stop that!” he ordered through clenched teeth.
“What the fuck is happening?” She shook, on the verge of hysteria, “Why do you keep doing that?” She covered her face with her free hand. “Holy crap!”
“I’m not sure what’s happening, cara, but I don’t want to discuss it here, inside this…moving contraption,” he eyeballed the mirror then lowered his voice, “and mind your tongue woman. You sound like a wharf doxie.”
“Moving contraption? Hello! This is a car, you know, a taxi cab, and did you just call me a hooker?”
He slanted a reproving look her way but she ignored him.
“Who are you? I want some answers right now!”
Ronan looked out his window as the sights sped past him then he leaned forward and spoke to the poor confused driver
“Please stop this carriage, we wish to get out,” he said.
Cindy threw up her hands and rolled her eyes at his verbiage. And he wanted to talk about her language?
The driver pulled the car to the side of the road right then, obviously not wanting to set either one of them off. Once it stopped, Ronan practically dragged her out of it. She managed to jerk back around to pay the fare but the vehicle sped off with tires squealing, the momentum slamming the door shut.
She stood there with her hand in her purse, at a loss, until Ronan pulled on her arm and led her out into the gloom of the storm once more. Actually, things seemed to be dying down a bit weather wise though it remained gray and wet. They headed towards the sea and didn’t stop until their feet hit the beach.
***
The water was still churning. What had happened in that shed had shaken them both. And the woman… Ronan’s gut clenched. He’d nearly lost her to the underworld. One moment longer and… he shook his head at the thought. He squeezed Cindy’s hand clutched in his own. It was delicate and soft. It was hard to believe that this little mortal might hold the key to his getti
ng through this whole ordeal alive.
He felt her shudder and pulled her to him. When her body had been underneath his that morning he’d immediately felt his strength return. He had refused to believe that a curse of the gods could be neutralized by merely touching her. Soon it had become clear though, that somehow, she had the power to restore him. Whenever they parted, Thema’s curse came back worse than the time before it. It appeared that, until he came up with a plan to reopen the Tides, he would just have to remain in contact with her…close physical contact.
A smile tugged at his lips. He could live with that. The smile disappeared as soon as it had come though when he thought of the shed. She was right, she needed answers. He blew out a breath.
“How well do you know your fairytales?” he asked.
Her eyes widened then her brow drew into a scowl.
“Do you mean like princesses and fairy godmothers?”
Her tone and the look on her face said that she was not amused. He shook his head.
“I speak of the gods of legend.”
Her eyebrows shot up at this.
“What if I were to tell you that I don’t live here?” He went on.
She shrugged and looked at him. At least the wind had died down.
“I don’t live here either. I’m here to find my friend, end of story. Anyway, most people down here are tourists. I’d have been more surprised if you’d told me you were a local.”
She was sounding surly again, but he knew she was upset. Who wouldn’t be in her situation?
“I mean here as in Earth, cara. What if I told you I’m from another time and another world altogether?”
He brushed a wet strand of hair from her forehead, searching her face. She looked at him with disbelief in her eyes but he trudged on ahead now that he’d started.
“They really do exist, the gods and worlds beyond this world Cindy, all of it.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’re a…a…what? A god?”
“No,” he rushed to halt that notion, “I’m human. Or, at least, I was once. Now I’m not quite sure what I am. All I do know, is that I haven’t lived in the human realm for quite some time, but now I’m trapped here and expiring. There’s been a weakness coming over me since the dawn came this morning. It’s a curse of the gods for staying in the earth realm too long. My life force is being drained away the longer I’m here. But when I touch you…”
“You’re strength returns.” She finished for him.
She reached up and touched his cheek as though to prove to herself that he was real and not some figment of her imagination. He nodded.
“What about the tool shed? You said something about some veil thing – how did any of that happen?”
“The shell must have been enchanted. It opened a water veil, a gateway into another place.”
“Who…what was that thing that grabbed me, it looked just like Kay at first, but then it wasn’t.”
All things considered, he thought she was taking this rather well. Her need for answers proved that she had strength, despite how terrifying this all must be for her.
“That wasn’t your friend cara,” Ronan explained. “She may have been here at some point but I’m sorry to say that she’s probably long gone by now.”
Cindy started to shake her head at his words but he went on.
“What you saw was part desire and part underworld evil. You want to find your friend. The creature pulled that desire from you to create half of her likeness while the other half was pure demon. As I said, it was a trick. The one you met in the water veil is called Melinoe, a demoness who lures the hopeful into the underworld, then sends a malevolent spirit in their place.”
Cindy shuddered.
“But you pulled me away. We’d lost contact, how did you have the strength?”
“I was weakened, it’s true, but I wasn’t just going to stand by as you were sucked into the dark realms.”
She was quiet. Maybe he’d said too much. She had no knowledge of the otherworld, perhaps it was more than her earthly mind could take in. He needed her to understand though. He also wanted her acceptance, he frowned. Needing the physical connection with her to stay alive should have been a burdensome thing to him but he found that he didn’t want to let her go. Beyond that, some buried part of him was starting to hope she felt the same. He couldn’t let that feeling go any further. His only concern should be for her safety.
“Huh,” she said, finally and he worried she might be cracking from all he’d revealed.
“What is it cara mía? Tell me.”
She shook her head side to side.
“Leave it to me to fall in with some alien man who’s in league with mythical creatures and keeps fading in and out of his own mortality.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “You’re cute but, I mean, let’s face it, you’ve got issues!”
Chapter Seventeen
The Underworld
Panacea tracked Thema through several of the god realms until the Nereid stopped. She stepped from the mists. The air here was hot and thick and made Pan’s nose wrinkle. It smelled like sulfur ─ the underworld. It was a good thing she was travelling on the back of a vision and she couldn’t be detected here.
Thema walked over to a wall of vertical iron bars that separated a recess just off of a dark stone wall.
“Show yourself Bazor, I bring news.” Thema said.
A figure turned in the darkness and stalked forward from the back of the cave. Its lethal eyes burned blood red fire as it charged the bars. Snarling, it bared its enormous fangs. Thema shrank back but just as the beast reached through the bars for her, it was slammed back by some unseen force. The nymph regained her composure quickly but Pan saw her terror.
Incredible, she thought, she’d heard tales about the bloodthirsty creature that stood there in the dark but she’d never seen one herself – a male Keres demon. The creatures were mostly thought to be female but that was because the males of the species were kept in containment by their feminine counterparts. Their race craved blood and flesh and sent the souls of those they’d eaten to the underworld. The males like this one were so powerfully ferocious that they would devour all in their path. They were only allowed out of imprisonment to mate or when the gods had special need of them. Even then, they were tightly leashed through enchantment. Pan could see that this Bazor’s wings had been secured and thought that he must be especially strong. What was Thema playing at?
“I have no use of news nymph.” Bazor spoke the words in a low growl. “Why do you not bring me the stone?”
“Soon, soon I’ll have it my lord. I’m close to obtaining it.”
The Keres gnashed his teeth, looking like he’d gladly tear her apart if it weren’t for his restraints.
“I’d have it for you already but Poseidon sent a feeble human after it and it was intercepted before he could get to it. When I come to power, that one will suffer worst of all the humans,” she said this last bit under her breath, “he will pay for spurning me.”
“That’s enough of your prattle!” Bazor snarled. “Until you release me, I cannot help you gain dominion. Bring me the amulet and set me free. Then we’ll control the sea god’s passages and you’ll have the bloodbath you desire.”
Thema’s dark eyes lit up.
“Yes, and I’ll relish the sight of you ripping Poseidon apart. After I set myself upon his thrown, we’ll annihilate all of his minions, and then the sniveling humans he protects!”
Bazor’s tongue passed over his teeth as she spoke. The Keres craved blood. The mere thought of it turned them into psychotic killers. No doubt, the imagined feast Thema spoke of was enough to set his mouth watering.
“You’re certain you know how to control the Tides once we have the stone?”
“Of course my lord, it will be easy to govern. Who do you think has been guiding demons through the portals all these years? The only difference will be that, with the stone, I won’t have to wait for a weak spot in the Tides to prese
nt itself.”
She’d also been ravaging the waters more vehemently than ever with violent storms, trying to weaken the vortexes herself, but no one was supposed to know about that. Pan had seen her activities from her astrals though.
“Yes but to control all the portals at once…” Bazor asked, “Is the stone that powerful?”
“The amulet holds a binding power that is used for fusing souls together, but when it entered Poseidon’s realm centuries ago, it was used to seal a Tide portal from the underworld. It can open them again. With it, I’ll free you from this cell and find a way to send its power out to all the portals at once. I just need to obtain it first!”
Bazor’s black eyes narrowed, a look resembling doubt crossed over his demonic features but the sound of someone coming drew his attention. Thema whipped around as a female Keres entered the hall.
“What is she doing here?”
The female demon bared her fangs at Thema. It was obvious her appetite for blood was barely restrained, she’d gladly eat the Nereid queen where she stood.
“She’s a friend,” was all that Bazor offered in Thema’s defense.
“Your queen awaits you, my king,” the female said.
***
Panacea waved her hand to erase the scene from her vision and strands of mist drifted apart as she reentered her own realm in the stars.
“So, the nymph queen has discovered some of the amulet’s secrets?” Panacea thought out loud.
Of course Thema would have remembered it. It had been brought to Poseidon long ago during the reign of the ten kings and combined with the great Fire Stone. It was sung about in the old legends even after Atlantis fell. The stone’s powers were celestial, derived from the moon and spelled by ancients. It had been created to maintain balance and order but in the wrong hands…
What was Thema thinking, allying herself with the Keres king? Didn’t she know that he’d kill her as soon as she freed him? Unless she planned to use the amulet to bind herself to him; there was a way to use the stone to unify two souls inside one being, but the result could be horrific if the souls were struggling for dominion over one another. Eventually, one soul would prevail.
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