by Nicole Thorn
Finally, a man appeared to us. He had gold eyes, and blond hair that I recognized. Hermes stood in front of us, and Nemo hissed at the man, lunging.
“No!” I commanded the hydra. “Not right now.”
The hydra didn’t let up, and he stared down the god like he would have tried to kill him right here. That would have only gotten one more thing taken away from us today, and my heart couldn’t take it.
“Nemo,” Zander said, finally speaking. He didn’t sound like himself, and it made me shiver in all this rain. “Please.”
He looked at Zander, and I waited for him to back off. The hydra only wanted to protect what was his, and I couldn’t blame him for that. I wanted to do the same thing, but I failed at it. Did Nemo hate me for it? He had the right to, because I had come out here to lay out bodies for him to protect. Why shouldn’t he have hated me?
When Zander didn’t look away, Nemo lowered his heads, and put them over the protective dome that covered his people. He made that sad sound again, and I felt more tears leave me.
“Hermes,” Verin said with bite. “Nice of you to show up.”
“Thanks,” the god said. “Do you need something?”
Verin opened his hand, and I recognized what he had in his palm. A little coin that the god had given to him not that long ago. It was a punishment for stealing from Hades. Verin’s father made Hermes promise a favor to Verin as a thank you for getting Cerberus back for him. It made me wonder if he knew we would need it eventually.
“Yes, I need something,” Verin told Hermes. “Take us to the underworld.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
It Ended in Blood
Jasper
EYES, ALWAYS STARING EYES. They looked at me, and I saw nothing in them. They had the right colors. One gray and one blue. They sat in the same face, but they looked wrong.
Everything around me shifted and changed, turning, turning, turning.
Blood, so much blood. I’d never seen so much blood, and I had seen a lot of things. I’d seen death like no one could believe, and I’d see furies swooping down into a village to slaughter everyone, but I’d never seen this much blood. It soaked into the walls and leaked into the cracks of the tiles under my feet. The smell of it crawled into my nose, a reminder of all the ways that I had failed, and the texture of it made my hands sticky. The red liquid shined in the overhead lights. All I could think about was how upset she’d be if she saw this. So much care, she put so much care into the house, and it had all been ruined in under a second. She would be heartbroken when she saw this.
Then everything twisted again. I could almost feel it squeezing me, suffocating me.
No air. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think of anything but the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes. They looked greener in my vision, and I wanted to keep that. To keep that shade of hazel in my mind, because nothing else mattered. Nothing but that hazel color, and the memory of what came with it. I would hold it close to my chest.
Couldn’t breathe.
She would find me, I knew. Who else could’ve found me, but her. She would’ve been so worried about me, because they would’ve found Jasmine and Juniper first. My sisters would block the way to the garage, so she’d know. Right up until she opened the door, she would know what happened to me. She would be wondering how it happened, and she would be thinking about how I’d probably died in pain.
Couldn’t breathe, everything burned, gods, everything hurt. My heart, my head, my chest. Couldn’t breathe.
She would walk into the garage, she would look up, and she would see me. She’d see how I had died, and maybe she’d have a moment of hope. I hated those. Moments of hope. They hurt worse than everything else, because they gave you a reprieve from the pain. One second where nothing hurt anymore, and then the pain came back.
Couldn’t breathe. Gods, why couldn’t I breathe. It didn’t make sense, because I should’ve been feeling fine. What kind of cruel irony would that have been, that the biggest reprieve people had, the biggest relief from all the pain, the one thing that was supposed to make it go away, didn’t do that.
It certainly didn’t feel like peace to me. Everything hurt, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think about anything else, either. Just those eyes, and how my chest burned with this deep ache that throbbed down to my stomach. Why couldn’t I breathe? One breath, just one breath, and everything would’ve felt better. One breath, and then I would’ve been able to think and rationalize. Just one breath, and everything would have been fine then. I would’ve killed for that one breath, and the knowledge that maybe, just maybe, none of this had happened. Maybe something else had gone wrong, or someone wanted to torment us.
Couldn’t breathe.
Why do this to us, when we hadn’t done anything to deserve it? Nothing but weak humans, as everyone pointed out to me every chance they could. Weak, and fragile. We didn’t mean anything in the long run, because we’d die. We’d die so quickly that most creatures would think we were babies, even as we looked old and withered.
I just needed to breathe.
I just needed to . . .
Just needed . . .
My mouth opened, air came in, slicing through my body like a knife, and I could breathe while the world faded.
***
Everything came into focus around me. My chest rose and fell steadily, and air slid into my lungs the entire time. Yet, it didn’t feel as good as I thought it should have. It brought no relief, no gasping realization that it would be fine. My chest rose and fell, and I felt nothing inside.
I should have felt something.
“Oh gods, oh gods,” Jasmine said from my right.
Hope rose up in me, and I wanted to kill it. I missed the days when I didn’t hope for anything. In many ways, life had been easier then. I didn’t have to feel the crushing disappointment that waited on the horizon. I could remember it all so clearly. Argus had busted into the house, snapped Jasmine’s neck, destroyed our kitchen, cut Juniper’s throat, and hung me in the garage. He had destroyed six lives in the course of ten minutes, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. We hadn’t been able to slow him down, and we hadn’t been able to save ourselves.
Nothing but weak humans, after all. We couldn’t have been expected to do anything else.
I pushed off the grass and looked up at the sky. Gray clouds rolled across the sky, some of them shimmering with blue, and others had striations of black. If they blocked any light, I didn’t know. I could see just fine, despite how everything around us looked.
“Oh, gods,” Jasmine said, again.
Finally, I turned to look at my sister. Part of me thought I’d find her sitting on the grass, with her head and neck not quite looking right. The thought had my stomach twisted around, but even that didn’t feel right. Not solid, I supposed. As if my insides couldn’t feel anything real.
Jasmine didn’t look abnormal, though. She looked the same as she always did, with her mismatched eyes, her brightly colored clothing, and springy hair. She shifted around, whispering that same phrase over and over again, and I knew why. The second I looked around, I knew why.
We laid on grass. It looked deeply green. Abnormally green, actually. A fog rolled in off the water, obscuring everything else, but I could see the sky and the grass. Odd, now that I thought about it. I shouldn’t have been able to see either, since the fog covered my head completely.
I shouldn’t have been able to see my sisters, either. Juniper laid on the ground, her eyes still closed, her throat whole. She seemed to be sleeping.
I reached for Jasmine. “Jazzy?”
She leapt to her feet. “This can’t be happening,” Jasmine said, her chest pumping up and down. “This can’t be happening. We can’t be here. Do you know where here is, Jasper? Do you have any idea where we are?”
“I know,” I said.
“We can’t be here, this is wrong, and we need to get back immediately. If we don’t get back, then they’ll think that we’re dead, and we can’t let th
em think that. We can’t let them go through that! Can you imagine how they’re feeling right now? Kizzy is probably crying, and Verin is . . . Do you remember what he did the last time someone he loved died? Do you remember what happened when he couldn’t save her? And Zander . . . ” Jasmine closed her eyes, and tears actually leaked out from under them. “I can’t do this to Zander. It’s cruel. He’ll think that I . . . that I . . . ”
I didn’t say anything, because my throat closed up. The words that needed to be said, I couldn’t bring myself to speak them.
I just stared at her and hoped that she would understand.
My sister started to shake her head violently. “No!” she shouted. “That didn’t happen, because that would mean that we left them. I didn’t want to leave him. Zander will think that I didn’t fight, or something. I don’t want him to think that. I didn’t want to leave him.”
“He knows that,” I said, the words squeezing through my throat.
“How can he?” Jasmine asked. “I never told him that. I never had the chance, because I had to make sure that he knew I loved him.”
“He knows,” I said, firmly.
Jasmine’s eyes shined, and she sank to the ground, her hands buried in the grass. She shook her head back and forth several times, her mouth open, and no sound coming out. “No, no, I didn’t mean to do this.”
“You didn’t do anything,” I said, pushing to my feet. The second I stood, I didn’t know what else to do, or where to go. I looked around the fog and saw nothing but the misty white.
Juniper gasped and shot up. Not just sitting but standing. She whipped around, her eyes huge. I grabbed her before she could bolt. I watched my other sister as her eyes wandered around, taking in the mist, and the sky, and the grass. Her heart started to slow down as she realized where we had ended up. I watched her knees lose their strength, and barely managed to catch Juniper before she fell.
“It was real?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, holding her tighter. Some weird part of me thought that if I let her go, I’d float off myself. I couldn’t seem to feel anything. If I had been alive, I’d say that I had gone into shock.
“This is the underworld,” Juniper whispered.
“Yes,” I said again.
“We died,” she finished.
Jasmine’s voice croaked when she said, “We died.”
My sisters didn’t seem to know what to do after that. We stood there, huddled together, not saying anything. My mind ran through everything again, picking apart the things we could have done differently. If we had gone with the demigods to Callie’s house, then we wouldn’t have been there for Argus to hurt. If we had left to get lunch, then he wouldn’t have attacked in a crowded area. If we had stayed in the backyard, we could have gotten through the gate. Hell, maybe if we had taken Erebus up on his offer, we wouldn’t have died. A thousand things had to come together, to lead us to this. The lining up of a dozen stars, furies, gorgons, and gods, all of it created this path that ended in us being dead. In the underworld, and dead.
Leaving our people alive, probably holding our corpses. Kezia’s eyes, much like her mother’s, might’ve changed. They might’ve looked brown instead of green. Verin could’ve killed a thousand people already, and Zander . . .
I couldn’t even imagine what he would have been like. For all his flaws, for all the things that he had said to me and done in the name of keeping Jasmine safe . . . he had loved my sister more than he could ever express. I didn’t know what he felt like right then, nor could I imagine how any of them felt.
We’d lost our people, too, but it somehow felt different. They had to mourn all the things they had lost when we died, and all the things they would get to see us do. But we might get to see them move on and have a happy life eventually. They might get to be everything we hoped for.
Just not with us.
For Kezia’s happiness, I would take that pain of watching her move on. I would deal with it, because I didn’t want her to suffer any more than she already had. She’d been through so much in her life, more than anyone should have. She didn’t need this too, but I had failed at saving her. I’d failed at many things.
But I still wanted to take a few moments to mourn everything that I had lost. There were the big things, like children, but those always seemed like something in the far distance to me. Mostly, I mourned the little things. Not being able to feel Kezia’s hand in mine ever again. Not waking up to find her hair in my face, smelling of the shampoo we shared. I’d never watch her rifle through my drawers, slyly stealing one of the shirts that I had stashed away. I’d never get to see her eyes sparkle when she thought of something mischievous.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
My sisters both looked over at me. “For what?” Jasmine asked.
“For everything,” I said. “I should have been able to get the two of you out of there.”
Jasmine stormed over to me in the next second and gripped my chin hard enough that I felt her nails. “Listen up, bucko,” she said. “If I ever hear you say something like that again, I don’t care what part of the underworld we’re in, I’ll make your death hell, do you understand that?”
Juniper nodded. “Knock that off right this second. I won’t have any of it. You did your best. You couldn’t have saved Jasmine. It happened so fast. One second she was fine, and the next second . . . ” Juniper wrapped her arms around her middle and closed her eyes. “You did your best,” she said, again.
“Even if you could have done something, I’d have been furious if you died for me,” Jasmine said. “I would have found a way down here, just so that I could kick your ass. Do you understand?”
“As for what happened with me,” Juniper continued, and tightened her hands into fists. “You tried to save me, and it didn’t work. We’re only human, and Argus has strength on his side. Gods, it all happened so fast. It’s like a blur in my head, but I remember watching him come for me.” She shivered. “That bastard took two people away from Verin. He’s probably so worried right now. And he, too, would kick your ass for blaming yourself.”
I looked down at the ground, because I didn’t want them to see the self-blame in my eyes. They could forgive me if they wanted, but I didn’t think I’d ever forgive myself. They didn’t deserve what happened to them.
Jasmine stepped back and looked all around us. “We should . . . go somewhere. I don’t want to just stand here.” She picked a random direction and started walking. I fell into step behind her, as did Juniper. We didn’t talk, because at this point, what did we have to talk about? Everything had been destroyed already.
The fog seemed thinner in some places, allowing us to see across the bank. For the most part, we didn’t know what we saw. Across the river, we could barely make out an even foggier patch of river bank. Shadows moved through that fog, and when those shadows started to break through, they look like nothing but blackness, writhing blackness.
From the dusty corners of my mind, I thought of what I’d learned of the underworld. I thought that foggy bank had to be the Vale. Where lost souls went. It certainly looked like it had been filled with lost souls from where I stood.
And the river shimmered with light. The water looked dark gray, almost black. Every now and then, I swore that I saw faces emerge from the ripples of water, but I couldn’t be sure.
We kept walking, on occasion finding someone else in the fog. They looked confused, and I couldn’t blame them. I wondered how many people even knew about the Underworld from ancient Greek legends. How many of them understood what being there meant? The fact that they didn’t run around screaming surprised me.
Jasmine stopped and frowned. “The fog looks thinner up there.” She jogged forward, and I immediately followed. I couldn’t imagine it being difficult to get into trouble in the Underworld, and my sister already had a knack for it. We broke through the fog and looked around.
In the distance, we could barely make out another landscape, down a slope. It app
eared to have magic surrounding it, because I could feel the pulse of power beating down on me. The wind blew, carrying the sound of screaming to our ears. Other sounds followed, ones that I couldn’t make out.
“Is that . . . ” Juniper asked.
“Tartarus,” I said, and nodded. “I think it is.”
A shadow started to move across the landscape that I could barely make out. It went up to the magic and started dragged its hand along the barrier. I felt the power shiver from where I stood.
The shadow lifted his head, and I saw a boy in his late teens. He had light gray hair that fell around his face, and pale eyes. He cocked his head, and then slammed his head into the barrier. The magic shook, sending vibrations across the ground. More shadows came out of nowhere, moving faster than anything I’d ever seen before. They slammed into the boy, knocking him down. The sound of screaming started to fill the air again.
What did someone have to do, to earn Tartarus as a teenager?
Jasmine stumbled backward as another shiver went through the barrier. “I think we should probably get away from that.”
Juniper must have agreed, because both my sisters stumbled aside. I followed them, thinking that my heart should have been pounding in my chest. Instead, it sat still. It would never beat again, I supposed.
As I turned my back on Tartarus, my thoughts on it started to feel slippery. They drifted further away, the more I walked. I had seen something in Tartarus. Something . . . peculiar. That something had looked right at us, I thought. But I couldn’t remember anything, anymore.
We followed the riverbank for what felt like hours, listening to the strange sounds of the Underworld. Eventually, we came across another person. He dug in the ground until his hands turned bloody. The man’s hair fell around him crazily, and he panted. All around him, more holes had been dug. They ranged in size and depth, some of them only a few inches deep, and some of them seeming to go more than a couple of feet.
“Sir?” Jasmine called.
He ignored her. “I can feel it!” he hissed, almost to himself. “I can feel it . . . ” He yanked his hands out of the dirt and held a coin in them. Somehow, despite being buried, the coin looked completely clean. He clutched it to his chest, starting to sob. “I found one! I found one!” He showed it to us, his eyes burning with mad joy. “Do you see it! I’ve found it!”