“How? What is this power you have? Where did it come from?”
“Good questions. Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers for you. When I first met the shadow shapers—before I realised they were shadow shapers, and how they’d gotten their powers—I thought I might be one of them. Adrian seemed to be able to control animals, like me.” That had been such an exciting moment—to think that, finally, I’d get some answers to the mystery of my heritage, to feel that I’d found my tribe at last. “But of course, it turned out that he could only control bees because he’d stolen that power from Aristaeus.”
“What exactly can you do? And don’t give me the brush-off this time.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words, but I still bristled. Okay, maybe I’d been evasive with him in the past, but I’d had the lesson drummed into me: never admit to anything. Survival depended on secrecy. The only person I’d ever willingly told was Syl, and even that had been more than half accident.
“I can … connect to animals. Use their senses. Give them instructions.”
“What about this thing you have with Syl?”
He was observant, I’d give him that. “She has a human mind inside her animal form, so when she’s a cat, we can communicate mind to mind.”
“But not when she’s a human?”
“No. My power is only over animals, not humans.”
“But you and Cerberus can talk to each other, and he’s an animal, not a shifter. He doesn’t have a human mind.”
I had been kind of surprised when the giant dog had responded to my mental overtures. “I don’t know, Jake. This thing didn’t come with a manual. He doesn’t speak the way a human would, but we can make ourselves understood. He’s not your average animal, obviously.”
Jake glanced at the enormous hindquarters disappearing into the mist in front of us. “I guess not.”
The land began to slope downhill and the mist thinned somewhat, enough to show a boggy area ahead. The darkness had faded to more of a twilight grey once we’d left the area immediately around the palace. Spindly trees rose in ones and twos from little clumps of drier land like islands among pools of dank water.
I wrinkled my nose. “Smells bad.”
Jake paused. The aroma of rotting vegetation was overpowering. “Do we have to go through there?”
Cerberus stopped on the edge of the swamp to look back at us, clearly impatient with the delay.
“Is there another way, Cerberus?” I asked.
*LONG WAY. BLACK WATER. MANY TEETH.*
Right. The prospect of wading through a stinking swamp suddenly became a whole lot more appealing. “Looks like this is it, Jake.”
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Jake muttered. His feet were already sinking into the marshy ground. “I don’t like getting wet.”
I did my best to keep to the little tussocks of relatively dry land, following Cerberus’s lead, but it wasn’t long before I was mud to the knee and both my boots were soaked. Jake kept up a steady stream of curses that got particularly colourful every time he slipped into one of the dark pools. The best you could say was that, after a while, your nose became inured to the stench. I was going to need a serious soaking in a perfumed bubble bath once this was over. Syl had better appreciate what we were going through for her sake.
Cerberus moved with surprising agility through the swamp. He wasn’t soaked and covered in foul bits of rotting leaf. He leapt easily from tussock to tussock, finding the driest path even when it seemed there was nowhere that wasn’t drowned in fetid, stinking water. He had to twist and turn to do it, though. We could be here forever at this rate.
Ahead of me, Jake followed in the dog’s footsteps, sticking as closely to his path as he could. I watched where he put his feet and followed suit, sneakily drawing on some of Cerberus’s agility to keep me from tumbling into the soup altogether. I was so intent on watching where I put my feet that I hardly had a chance to look up, but every time I did, we seemed to be no closer to finding an end to the swamp. It stretched out on every side of us as far as I could see, which, now the mist had lifted, was depressingly far. I sure hoped Cerberus knew what he was doing. He’d taken such a seemingly random path that now I had no hope of finding my way back again without him.
“Couldn’t this be, like, a ghostly swamp?” I muttered as rank brown water splashed up onto my thighs again. My legs ached from the constant battle of pulling my feet out of the sucking mud. “Why does it have to be so real if the only people here are ghosts?”
“The Plains of Asphodel were real enough,” Jake pointed out. “Those damn flowers made me sneeze.”
“True. I guess it could be worse. At least there are no swarms of biting insects.”
I looked back at a splash behind me, but saw nothing. The only other noises were the ones we made ourselves—splashing and squelching, mainly, with the occasional grunt of effort thrown in for variety. Cerberus, of course, moved like a whisper, despite his size. There were definite advantages to being a supernatural creature.
My legs felt leaden from the effort of fighting against the mud. My boots were caked with it. Wherever I could, I used the branches of the spindly trees to help drag myself along. Several times, I’d slipped and landed on hands and knees despite the agility I’d borrowed from Cerberus, and I was mud practically from head to foot. Cold mud had even found its way under the waistband of my jeans. I smelled disgusting.
Jake was an even bigger mess, owing to more frequent slips. He slipped again as he fumbled the landing onto a clump of grass that had managed to take Cerberus’s weight, but now seemed unequal to the task of supporting a grumpy fireshaper. He sank straight down into the swamp up to his waist.
“Need a hand?” I balanced on the small clump of grass and reached out a hand to him.
He clasped my hand and I heaved, but he didn’t budge. “I think I’m stuck,” he said. “I’ve never wished that I was a watershaper before, but it would be damn handy right now.”
He reached out with his other hand and got a grip on a low-hanging branch. We both pulled again, but he didn’t move. His eyes widened in fear, and he nearly crushed my hand as he grunted and strained.
“Cerberus!” I called, just as the water rippled behind Jake.
A strange look came over his face, and then he was gone, jerked violently under the dirty water.
“Cerberus!” I lunged for Jake’s hand, feeling around under the water. I thought I found his head, and pulled hard, but my hand came up full of weeds. “Jake’s gone!” I yelled. “Something took him.”
Cerberus plunged into the water, sending up a wave that drenched everything in the immediate area, and disappeared into the depths. I hadn’t realised quite how deep the water was until both man and giant dog disappeared into it. Wildly, I reached out with my inner sight for whatever had Jake, but all I got was a sense of something big and hungry.
*Let go!* I screamed at it, frantically scrabbling through my pack for my knife, scanning the dark water for something to throw it at.
The water roiled, and a familiar dark head appeared.
“Jake!”
It had all happened so quickly I’d barely had time to grab my knife. Cerberus surfaced beside him with a pale limp thing in his jaws. It looked like an eel, only I’d never seen an eel with rows of teeth like that. I reached out to Jake, and this time I managed to drag him through the mud to the relatively solid area where I stood. He scrambled away from the edge of the water, coughing and retching, his whole body shaking.
“Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, still on his hands and knees, spitting out water. My gaze roved over his body, checking anyway. Maybe he was in shock? I couldn’t see how those teeth could have grabbed him without causing some damage—until I saw the state of his boot. The eel thing must have latched onto his ankle, but fortunately, the hiking boots he wore had protected him. He was lucky; he’d get away with a few bruises instead of potentially losing his foot.
Cerberus dropped t
he eel monster at my feet, and I stepped back smartly, just in case there was still life in the evil-looking thing. It was huge—the bulk of it was still in the water. That was fine by me; I had no desire to see any more of it, or of any of its family and friends, for that matter. Before, the black pools we picked our way between had seemed mere inconveniences, something that was holding up our journey. Now they loomed far more sinisterly. Who knew what lurked in their depths, ready to pounce on the unwary traveller? I shrank closer to Cerberus’s side, well and truly spooked now. So much for coming this way to avoid Cerberus’s “black water, many teeth”.
Jake shuddered and staggered to his feet, wiping filthy water from his face. He gazed with revulsion at the thing that had almost taken his life. Then he raised shaking hands and blasted it with a bolt of fire. I flinched back, startled, as it burst into flame. It burnt with an unpleasantly fishy smell, and Jake watched it burn, fists clenched.
“Feel better now?” I asked.
“Not yet.” Water and mud dripped down his face, and his eyes were wild. He threw both arms out in an extravagant gesture and fire burst from his fingertips, sizzling out in a wide arc. Every tree within reach burst into flames. Every bit of straggling greenery taller than knee-high burned, too, crackling and spitting wetly in an orgy of destruction.
He combed his fingers through his dripping hair, smoothing it back, and wiped his face again. Reflected flames danced in his eyes.
“Now?” I asked.
He turned that fiery gaze on me. “I hate water,” he said.
4
We didn’t talk much after that. Both of us concentrated hard on putting our feet only where Cerberus did, focusing all our effort on escaping the nightmarish swamp. I kept watch with my mind’s eye and turned anything larger than a small fish away from us. I’d have been warier from the beginning but I hadn’t expected to find anything living in the swamp. Even so, the occasional rippling sound of movement in the water set my heart to pounding.
At long last, we passed the last pool and the ground beneath our feet stopped squelching at every step. The land rose gently until we found ourselves on a rolling plain, covered in tall grasses that waved shoulder-high. Cerberus turned around three times, trampling the grasses underfoot, then flopped down on his side, tongues lolling from all three mouths. I sat down, too, using him as a backrest.
“How much further do you think we have to go?” Jake asked. He sat next to me and pulled off his damaged boot. As I’d expected, his ankle was ringed with bruises. The skin was broken in a couple of places, but it was nothing like as bad as it could have been. I offered him a bread roll from my pack. It was a little soggier than when we’d started out, due to a couple of unscheduled dips in the swamp, but still welcome. The Helm was also soaked, and would probably acquire a new stain to add to its collection.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That swamp wasn’t even on the map in the library.” I actually had no idea where we were, or how long we’d been travelling. My stomach said several hours, so it might be past dawn back at the palace, but here, the unchanging grey twilight made it impossible to judge the passage of time. “Do you think this is Elysium?”
Jake’s expression mirrored my own doubt. “The legends tell of palaces of gold and heroes enjoying their reward. It seems a little quiet for Elysium.”
I finished my bread roll and took a drink of water. Thank goodness we had real water and didn’t have to drink the black muck we’d seen in the swamp—or from any of the rivers here. There were five famous rivers in the underworld, and none of them seemed like a good idea as far as drinking choices went. The Lethe would make you forget—though if you managed to find the pool of Mnemosyne, you might get your memories back—the Cocytus would fill you with despair, the Acheron with pain, and the Phlegethon would burn you to a crisp. And as for the Styx, that was known as the river of hate. Having seen those tormented souls writhing in it down by the ferry wharf, I wouldn’t touch that even if I were dying of thirst. Not to mention that I wouldn’t trust the nymph Styx as far as I could throw her. I hadn’t liked the way she’d eyed Jake as if he were a particularly juicy steak she’d like to sink those pointed teeth of hers into.
If anyone was going to sink their teeth into the handsome fireshaper, it would be me.
He tipped his head back to drink from his own bottle, the muscles of his throat working as he swallowed. When he caught me looking, he rubbed at his cheek. “What? Have I got something on my face?”
“You’ve got something all over you.” I scrambled to my feet and resettled the pack on my shoulders. Covered in mud, he was far from his usual urbane self. “You’re going to need a lot of scrubbing when we get back.”
“Is that an offer?” He grinned lazily up at me, still sprawled against Cerberus’s massive flank. Dammit, even covered in mud he was hot. How did he do that? It must be the smile. It was hard to resist that twinkle in his eye. At least he seemed to have recovered from his bad mood.
I kicked him. “Get up, mud monster. We can discuss bath time once we’ve got what we came for.”
He got to his feet with surprisingly good grace. His smile widened, if anything. A man in his position probably wasn’t used to people calling him names and kicking him. But then, he obviously wasn’t used to being nearly drowned and eaten, either. Maybe he was just so relieved to still be alive that nothing else would dent his good mood. For someone so used to power and control, it must have been like something out of his worst nightmare to find himself fighting for his life under the water, trapped in the one element where his own power would have no effect. No wonder he’d felt the need to blast a few trees afterwards.
Cerberus heaved himself to his feet and we set off through the waving grasses. I was very glad he was there—with his giant body, he bulldozed a path for us, which made walking easier. In places, the grass stems waved above my head, making me feel as though I were walking through a grey tunnel. I much preferred the areas where it was shorter and I could actually see where I was going.
A light breeze blew, which set the grasses rubbing against each other, a soft whispering that began to get on my nerves after a while. It sounded like people murmuring, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or something—was watching our slow progress across the plain. There could have been anything hiding to either side of the path Cerberus forged for us, and we wouldn’t have known. My shoulder blades itched with the constant expectation that something was just about to jump out at us.
“Will we find Hammer Man soon?” I asked Cerberus. The itch between my shoulder blades was getting worse. I was going to go crazy if we didn’t find some clearer ground soon.
*SOON,* he agreed, which didn’t help much. His idea of time was probably a whole lot more fluid than mine, living in a world like this.
“What did he say?” Jake asked.
“Soon. I hope he’s right. I don’t like this place.”
“At least there are no monsters lurking.”
“Don’t say shit like that. You’ll jinx us.”
Cerberus halted to sniff at something invisible that seemed particularly interesting. I waited, impatient to be on the move again, looking around at the whispering grey grasses under the grey sky. Even Jake looked a little grey in this light.
“You seem very superstitious for someone who didn’t believe in the gods until recently,” he said.
“That’s not superstition, that’s just having watched a few horror movies in my time. The minute someone says, ‘Well, at least it can’t get any worse,’ everything goes to hell in a handcart.”
“Right. So if we hear a noise, we should run the other way instead of going into the dark to investigate?”
I rolled my eyes. “Exactly. And don’t have sex with anyone. That never seems to end well.”
“With ‘anyone’? I only see two options here, and Cerberus really isn’t my type.”
“I’m sure he’s relieved to hear that.” I glanced at the big dog, but he wasn’t pay
ing us any attention. One of his heads was still nose to the ground, but the other two were both gazing in the same direction, ears pricked.
“Did you hear that?” Jake cocked his head to one side.
“Ha, ha, very funny.” I thought he was making another horror movie joke, but then I heard it, too—a low rumbling, just on the edge of hearing, like a thunderstorm that was still far away. I glanced up at the grey skies, but there were no clouds. Did the underworld even have rain? It seemed unlikely. What would be the point? “What is that? Can you see anything?”
I wasn’t short for a woman, but he was nearly a head taller than me. He shook his head. “All I can see is this damn grass.”
Cerberus’s third head rose from the ground, and his tail began to wag. Maybe I should have asked him—he was way taller than both of us.
“Sounds like horses,” Jake said, just as Cerberus began to bark, and then I saw the riders.
Well, I saw their heads above the grass tops, at least. I assumed from the noise of hoof beats that there were horses underneath them. A whole troop was thundering down on us, maybe thirty or more riders, spear points waving above their heads.
*HORSES!* Cerberus shouted in my head, and then he was off, bounding through the grass, barking his head off.
“Cerberus!” I yelled, but I might as well have been talking to myself.
The riders split into two columns when they saw him coming. One column set off at breakneck speed through the grass, and Cerberus gave joyful chase, his deep bark floating back to us. The other spurred on toward us.
As they grew closer I realised I could see the outlines of grass behind them through their bodies. “Are they ghosts?”
And then they got closer still and I saw with a shock that they weren’t riders at all.
Rivers of Hell (Shadows of the Immortals Book 3) Page 4