Six Months with Cerberus

by Lucas, Naomi

  Back in the gatehouse room, it’d taken both time and courage to step beyond, even as the dogs forced her towards the door.

  She’d considered jumping out the window and into the water. She’d try to make her way out of this place without help, but Cerberus’s warning came back to her, and the fear of defying a force like Hades stopped her.

  No one, as far as she could recall, had ever escaped the Underworld without help. And the ballroom was maybe the place she might find someone to ask for it.

  Music drifted into the corridor. The vibration surged up her feet and legs. She started, finding her jailors gone. She searched for them, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  Fresh thoughts of running never fully materialized as the steady pounding drums loudened. The music entered her ears, her skull, her bones. Her body vibrated. A deliberate beat she couldn’t place, nor had heard before, yet it resonated throughout her being, making her heartbeat wild and uncontrolled. She lifted up onto her toes and lowered back down.

  The Day of Dancing.

  Cyane moved to the entrance of the ballroom and peeked in. She fought desire, refusing to cavort into the room beyond, a little afraid of what the music was doing to her. It wasn’t human music, which seemed more like noise now in her memories, but ancient and eldritch. It’s not meant for human ears. A breath escaped her.

  Her father’s note burned the flesh of her chest, reminding her not to get caught up in the magic.

  Hades sat at the far end of the ballroom upon his throne. A direct path was open from where she stood to where he peered with hooded eyes out over his guests. Cerberus was next to him on Hades’s left, imposing and alert. Decked out in the same Greek armor she’d seen him in earlier.

  She discerned Cerberus’s eyes the moment they found her. Like a red-hot laser to her flesh. The beat changed as they stared at each other.

  They’re ancient and eldritch, too.

  The music began to accelerate.

  War was on the horizon. Worlds were about to fall. The sun exploded from the sky above. She saw and experienced it all in the melody.

  “Today marks the beginning of the end,” Hades’s voice boomed out, adding to the gravity of the ritualistic pounding.

  With her gaze still on Cerberus, with the desire to see his face building like the tune, someone roughly ushered her to the dancefloor.

  The Day of Dancing

  Hades settled back down on his throne. Tantalus refilled his cup.

  Cerberus glowered behind the shield of his helmet.

  He’d felt each time Cyane had considered leaving Tartarus, like her thoughts, her intentions to be free of this place, were strong enough to provoke him despite the distance between them. He rarely received these feelings, as he was barred from the wants and intentions of the powerful undying that came and went from this place.

  Cyane was a mortal, he reminded himself, and that made her weak, incredibly so.

  So why am I feeling her?

  It was like when Hades called to him. Or when a rare soul tried to swim against the current. But despite the itch, Cyane never actually tried to leave. He sensed it all the same.

  He was attuned to this weak mortal. Perhaps it’s because of her weakness? Cerberus shook his head as if he could fling the annoying thoughts from his head.

  Either way, he couldn’t feel her now, not since the music began—a tune played by Hypnos and Pan—as she had no thought of fleeing. But, while freed from this sensation, he stalked her through his hound’s eyes. All entrances and exits were guarded by them—by the parts of him that were now somewhat autonomous—just in case.

  There was no escape. Not from him.

  She was jerked into the embrace of an Arae, one of the many daemons that dwelled here, before being pushed into the arms of old Menoetes, who even from where Cerberus stood, smelled rank from cattle.

  No other female would deign to dance with one such as Menoetes, and for good reason. The old undying not only reeked but was as large and lumbering as a giant, slobbering over the females with undisguised lust. Cyane was his first partner in eons. It mattered not how unwilling she was.

  She was passed to Trophonios, who brought a smile to her face, then to Cocytus, who made tears fall from her eyes. Each man pressed Cyane up against them, taking in her naivety and her ignorance. They took advantage of her and her weakness.

  She is meant for Hades. Cerberus scowled.

  He gritted his teeth as something strange took hold of his mind and churned his gut.

  Before he could stop it, he spoke out of turn. “Who is she to you?”

  “A means to an end,” Hades said.

  “Why did you bring her here?”

  Cyane was twirled by a different Arae to the lilt of Pan’s flute. The Arae released her, and she fell to the floor with a gasp before being picked back up again.

  Hades turned to him. Cerberus couldn’t tear his eyes off the mortal woman to address his lord properly. He would never know how Hades eyed him then.

  “Would it please you to know?” Hades asked.

  “Yes,” he responded, annoyed. His jaw ticked, and he stretched out his fingers to loosen the tension building within him.

  “She’s here to serve.”

  Cerberus’s eyes shot to Hades. It was the perfect answer, the worst answer, and the best answer.

  For the first time in his long existence, he wanted to draw his sword, his many starving heads, all to strike his lord to the ground.

  Hades would never tell him what he truly wanted to know.

  Several thousand years ago, Cerberus had been little more than a monstrous animal, although sentient and powerful. Maybe he didn’t know what it was like to be purely humanoid. His body had changed, grown substance, and given the form of an ideal man at Hades’ hand.

  It had been no small feat. His lord had extended himself on Cerberus’s behalf, far beyond anyone ever before. Hades had only gone to such great lengths for two others: Persephone and his brother, Zeus, during the Titanomachy.

  Cerberus was and always would be eternally loyal to Hades. No god, not above nor below, could boast of having a more loyal guardian than Hades.

  He turned back toward the ballroom to find Cyane gone. He scanned the crowd searching for her. His other eyes—piercing through Erebus’ twilight—roved as well.

  “You’ve never had a consort, have you?” Hades asked.

  Cerberus found Cyane before his hounds. She was half-hidden, perched against a wall, catching her breath.

  “No, I’ve never taken a consort,” Cerberus muttered.

  “No, I suppose you haven’t.”

  Cerberus cocked his head, and silence fell between them. He’d never considered taking a consort, had never had the inclination. The few with the power to tempt him, those female goddesses of desire and love, had never encountered him, or he they.

  What would he do with a consort if he had one? Lay with her in a bed? He wasn’t willing to shackle himself to a weakness if factions arose against his lord. How could he knowingly place anything above his loyalty to Hades?

  Cerberus swept his eyes over the ballroom. There were lamiae, with their serpentine tails and naked torsos, wrapped themselves around the men below, seeding desire. He found nothing enticing about those who took the form of his mother.

  The mormolykeiai weaved in and out of the crowd, taking on the bodies of the most beautiful human forms over the centuries and offering them up for perverse delight. Their cold eyes were as hard and deep as his own. He couldn’t look at them without seeing himself.

  And then everyone else, who had a name in the pantheon of his choices for consorts, were never appealing enough to bend his loyalty for, at least not long enough to form a bond.

  He saw Hermes break away from the dance and float towards Cyane. Cerberus’s eyes narrowed.

  She’d moved away from the wall.

  He took a step forward, slowly placing his hand on the hilt of his sword but stopped when Hades stood up. The music h
alted, and Hades spoke.

  “Our Queen Persephone captivated me when she spun in the dappled sunlight above.”

  A soft laugh could be heard from the guests.

  Hades smiled wickedly. “On this day we honor our queen with such a dance, as we have from the start. This festival echoes her story. As many of you have noticed, our gifts change like the seasons each year, and my gifts change as well.”

  Cerberus eyed the Lord of the Dead warily.

  “Melinoe,” Hades said.

  Melinoe stepped out from the shadowed curtains behind them to kneel before her father. She wore a sheer chiton dress that hung from her slight curves, draping from her pointed nipples and hips. The goddesses’ hair was woven into the fabric, becoming apart of the dress as well. The waves of soft linen floated like smoke down her legs.

  “My daughter”—Hades didn’t spare her a glimpse—“and Cerberus, my most loyal guardian, will now come together like my queen and I had, so many eons ago.”

  Cerberus stilled. The guests clapped. Exuberance followed by all but him. He slowly tore his gaze from Hades to settle on Melinoe, who rose up and looked at Cerberus with an adoration that sickened him.

  Hades retook his seat.

  Melinoe wasn’t Cerberus’s to deal with. Anger burned through him. She was a blight, a tarnish to Hades’s power and his rule. She was everything Cerberus would never be: betrayal manifested in physical form.

  Regardless, Melinoe waited for him to take her hand and lead her to the dancefloor.

  The other guests cleared from the floor, drifting to the darker reaches of the room.

  They waited for him. Cerberus glared at Hades and was met with a bored smile.

  Furious, Cerberus stepped from the dais, near shaking with disgust.

  “Sweet Cerberus, I’m thrilled,” Melinoe whispered up at him with even more apparent devotion than before.

  He bowed his head and took her hand. Melinoe’s long nails grazed him. She froze his skin, even through his glove—a stark contrast to the mortal’s heated touch.

  Melinoe beamed up at him, delighted to have a willing dance partner for once (none of the others would dare), and his face went blank. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cyane hesitantly accept a cup of nectar from Hermes.

  The music roared back to life, and Cerberus pulled the daughter of Hades close.

  “Are you certain we haven’t met before?” Hermes said.

  Cyane watched through a blurry haze as Cerberus brought Melinoe close and sharply moved with the goddess to the slow-building drum of music. His armor, paired against Melinoe’s revealing dress was in as sharp opposition as the beautiful music was to the terrible men who forced Cyane to dance with them against her will.

  A snap and pull, a push and tug.

  Melinoe laughed, and the sound of it twinkled through the room.

  Envy filled Cyane. She didn’t understand why. But she hadn’t laughed that way when she’d been thrown into the dance. Instead, she had been passed off from one groping disturbing man to the next, knowing she had no one to rescue her as they contorted her body into unwanted shapes. They pressed up against her, took away her space with glee, and laughed when she struggled to pull away.

  Men with wings, men with dripping horns, men that smelled like rotten death, and others that smelled of vinegar and roses. She still hadn’t caught her breath from their brutality. Her skin crawled with molestation.

  She’d hoped against hope, as her world had spun, that Cerberus would take her hand and guide her from the maelstrom. To tell her not to be afraid like he had before.

  “What?” she said distractedly. Hermes had asked her something?

  But why would Cerberus save her? Or even say such comforting words to her ever again? He wasn’t beholden to her. What distinguished him from all the others in the room was that he didn’t look at her like she was a piece of entertaining meat, and he’d been there when she was at her most vulnerable. When her last ember of resistance had finally been quenched by the unforgiving river, it had been his hand that had come out of nowhere and returned her to the surface.

  The memory fueled her envy.

  Melinoe pressed herself against Cerberus. Those around her barked out another wave of snickers. A flash of red light bled from the openings of Cerberus’s helmet.

  Did it mean anger? Lust? Did the fire in his eyes even have meaning? Or was it chaotic, like everything else?

  Why do I care? Cyane frowned. But as she watched Melinoe, in blooming mirth, the goddess’s beauty beyond earthly description, so joyous—living each moment in Cerberus’s attention—Cyane didn’t think she could ever compare. Not in a billion years.

  A human’s never won over a goddess in anything.

  Something nudged her thigh, and she peered down to see one of the dogs from earlier. It sat regally next to her leg, its head level with her waist, and stared out over the dancefloor. She tentatively trailed her fingers over one of its pointed ears. The dog growled, and its nostrils flared. She yanked her hand away.

  Maybe it doesn’t like to be touched?

  “I said, I swear I’ve met you before,” Hermes said.

  Cyane startled and finally turned her face toward him. He was studying her curiously.

  His golden beauty and honed muscles were hard to look at, especially next to the shadows and formless darkness that seemed to drift over every surface. The miasma touched him too, but in an eerie, incomplete way, like rustling bushes blocking a distant fire.

  “It’s not possible,” she said, fiddling with the cup of nectar he’d given her. She’d know if she’d met a god before. She was sure of it. Doubt began to creep forward. But would she? The things she had seen in the last day made her question reality. Sometimes sanity needed to be put on the backburner when there was something larger at stake.

  “Perhaps it is not, but it does lend to why Lord Hades requested my help in bringing you here.”

  The dance, the music, Cerberus and his warrior’s armor, and Melinoe’s damselled allure fell from her mind.

  “You?” Cyane said. “You know why I’m here?”

  The corners of Hermes’s lips lifted. “No. I don’t know why, only that you are.”

  “But I was brought here for a reason? It wasn’t a mistake?” She needed to hear directly, from someone, that she didn’t just end up in hell by accident.

  “A mistake? I’m hurt.” Hermes laughed, turned, and raised his glass towards Hades before swallowing the rest of the contents down. “Gods don’t make mistakes. Lord Hades came to me and offered me latitude for allowance of your crossing between the realms. It was a most unusual request.”

  Cyane’s head spun. It was like Cerberus had said. Hades had brought her here purposefully. She hadn’t wanted to believe it—hadn’t wanted to believe him. But now, unsolicited, Hermes had confirmed it.

  Hermes turned back to her and continued. “It’s happened before. Mortals, half-mortals and the like, being brought to Olympus, Tartarus, even Poseidon’s watery graveyard, but not in a very, very long time.”

  Cyane looked at Hades still sitting on his throne. The dark god forced a shiver down her back. The God of the Dead. The ruler of all this darkness. With just one sideways glance, she was prepared to lay down at his booted feet and genuflect, if only to protect her immortal soul—while at the same time, she wanted to run in the opposite direction.

  No, she really didn’t want to talk and ask him directly. Call me a fucking coward. But if what Hermes said was true, she knew she’d have to talk to him eventually.

  Hades did not look back at her. The god’s eyes were fixated on the dancing couple, the same god who had involved other gods in his endeavor to bring Cyane here.

  There was nothing special about her. She tried to think back on her entire life for an occurrence, for anything that would put someone like her in a situation like this, but nothing came to mind. Nothing.

  She’d grown up in an orphanage in America, although it hadn’t been called an orp
hanage officially—they’d been phased out in states long before her birth. But within the walls of Claudette Skies School for Children, it was known as such. She’d always preferred to call a spade a spade.

  Her name, Cyane, had been written within the note left with her as a baby, and that was what the nuns had called her, and they had raised her like an obedient but willful daughter. She’d always known that her parents were out there because of that note. She completed her elementary schooling, she’d been moved to a transitional center for children and the courts took an interest in her.

  They placed her into the foster care system, where she was taken in by an older couple. They never adopted her, but she’d lived with them through high school. She studied and earned herself a scholarship, and with the help of governmental assistance, she was able to go to state college and secure her autonomy.

  There are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of lost children who have suffered far stranger and more terrible circumstances than me.

  I’m not a victim.

  She hesitantly raised her cup to her mouth.

  She’d never done anything growing up that would make anyone, let alone a god, take notice of her. Cyane knew she was fortunate that she could believe her real parents were out there, waiting for her when all the other kids she’d grown up with knew for certain their parents were dead, abusive, or had chosen drugs over them.

  With the note, Cyane could believe that her parents had given her up for a reason.

  I’ll never know that reason if I don’t get out of here…

  Tears sprung in her eyes. She’d felt cursed, doomed to wonder why for her whole life, and now, when she was about to get answers, something thwarted her.

  Fuck this place. Fuck these gods. They weren’t hers.

  She turned to Hermes. “If you helped bring me here, would you be able to help me get out?”

  The dog growled at her side.

  “I am the God of Crossings,” he said.

  Suddenly, the snide laughter of the crowd returned.

  She snapped her eyes to the dancefloor.

  Cerberus no longer held Melinoe in his arms. The goddess fruitlessly tried to get his attention back.