The werewolf stops before an elevator that opens to allow us in.
Megara aims a look back at me, purple eyes glittering—
Behind her back, she materializes the Harpe in its united form and throws it to me.
I catch it right as the werewolf turns within the elevator to see if we’re following.
By the time his eyes land on me, I’ve summoned one of those invisible shields, envisioning what I want him to see. Namely, me without Meg’s weapon as he leads us to wherever Hydra is.
The elevator is state of the art, descending in a smooth, noiseless glide, and arriving at our destination in mere seconds.
Fifth subterranean level.
The lowest floor.
Just like Cyclops; the vermin burrows as deep into the ground as it can go.
The werewolf motions for us to go ahead. Keeping my distance to avoid him realizing I’m hiding something under this invisible shield, I exit ahead of Meg.
Into an empty, warehouse-like space.
Megara steps out after me and the werewolf doesn’t waste time. The doors slide closed instantly, leaving us down here alone.
Not for long.
A male form comes to view far into the shadows, walking leisurely as he approaches. With my immortal eyesight, the details aren’t hard to pick up on.
Long white hair draped over his shoulder, the side of his skull shaved clean. A thick tattoo covering the shaved side. Red-rimmed eyes, a shade of gray so light that they seem almost white like his hair.
But it’s his lower jaw and neck that truly grab my attention.
Pure, solid stone, although the top of his head from the upper lip onward is definitely hominoid.
The satisfaction—the sheer delirious happiness—in his smile is the only proof I need of who we’re looking at.
Before he even starts speaking.
“It is true what they say. Prayers are eventually answered, when one has the patience to wait.”
“Oh no,” Megara grouses. “Please don’t tell me we’re doing this.”
Hydra disregards her, obsessive attention on me.
As predicted. I sought him out, did him dirty, as the humans now say, and left nothing but his head in the dirt to waste away until finally immortality loosened its hold and allowed his soul to pass. “How long did it take?” I ask him, because sometimes I’m a special type of asshole like that. “How long were you trapped in that grave?”
Megara exhales a slow, stunned breath.
Hydra’s happiness vanishes, replaced by the malevolence I was expecting. “Hera was correct to want a spawn like you destroyed. Never deserved an ounce of glory, nor a moment of joy.”
A long sigh leaves Meg. “We’re definitely doing this. He’s a fucking rhymer.”
“If anyone is a spawn that deserved to be destroyed, it was you. Did you ever catch your reflection in your last form? Forget the multiple heads. But each one was uglier than the last.” I normally don’t goad my adversaries like this, but his hatred of me is a weakness I plan to use.
It weakens him.
Obsesses him.
Spent all this time fantasizing about your end.
It’s not only his psychological state coming at me. Other snippets begin to form, too small for me to make sense yet. However, they’re important. Something I desperately need to know. Just need a little more time so that I can make sense of it.
Hydra stops mere feet from us, fleshy upper lip curling in disgust. His monstrous, fanged teeth are clenching down into the stone of his lower jaw, and seeing them is enough to ruin the vision of attractiveness the rest of his face might now possess. “You cut off my heads once. You ended my reign. But now . . . now I am legion. And you, Herakles, are still a lost boy with something to regain.” His stare bounces toward Meg.
“Still a lost boy with something to regain.”
Immediate, brutal conclusions. I’m galvanized straight into action. With a shout of her name, I throw her sword at her.
He’s going for her first.
He, like everyone aware of why I left Olympus and my family to their tragic fate, knows what’s most important to him.
What I’d kill indiscriminately to regain.
Her.
Megara catches that sword like she was born to, without even looking away from him—
Figures, three of them, shuffle out of the shadows from whence he came.
“Now I am legion.”
That stone jaw and neck.
Not regular stone. No way it is. It’s impenetrable protection of some sort, its purpose to stop anyone from parting his head from his body.
A lesson he learned after dealing with me.
And as for him being legion? This is what he means. No longer heads, but actual beings under his command.
When I cut off his heads last time, two more would sprout in the place of each one I took. Now he gets three extensions to himself.
Humans. Easily killed.
What? Why? Why would he choose such weak minions to aid him? It makes absolutely no sense and I have a feeling that’s the morsel for info my power have yet to grasp. That far off whisper in the back of my mind that hasn’t taken full form.
“You can’t be this foolish.” Megara’s clothing phases, vibrating on her form—
And going nowhere.
Absolutely nowhere.
As a new suspicion begins to take hold, I make my own attempt to switch into my armor.
Nothing.
Had Megara not handed me that sword prior to us arriving here, she wouldn’t have been able to materialize it either.
Fuck.
“No escape, Herakles. You will face this. You will bleed. And in the end, I will take from you this thing you’ve most missed.”
I bare my teeth on a savage snarl. “Threaten her one more fucking time.”
“I can take care of myself.” Slamming her hands along the sides of the hilt, she activates whatever it is that separates that sword in two, and in another breath-stealing, perfect display, she arches them over her head. “Thanks.”
“Megara, try leaving,” I command, watching the humans begin to approach. Two men and one woman, each sporting the same exact expression as Hydra.
Without a doubt, extensions of him.
“What? No fucking way!” she yells at me.
Cracking my knuckles, I scan all four possible opponents, waiting for that whisper to crystallize. For my powers to give me the ultimate advantage in the form of priceless knowledge. “Just do it!”
I don’t know what finally gets through to her, but she does as I ask, trying to flash out of here.
Just like with her clothing, her body phases in the attempt to dematerialize, but she isn’t going anywhere.
Neither one of us are.
Hydra smiles again, the three humans grinning in synchronized mimicry, and when he holds his hands out to the side, they once again join in the movement. “Now, useless child of sin. Shall we begin?”
The humans come at us.
Meg bypasses them in a few quick strides.
Smart move.
A pointless one, too.
He has no problem dematerializing and he’s gone in the blink of an eye.
The humans are no match for me. Even with only my super speed, I crack each of their necks in quick succession, watching as each one drops to the ground.
Eyes unseeing.
Chest unmoving.
Souls gone.
No. Mistake. More shall rise.
A horrific lightbulb goes off in my mind, even before Megara curses nearby.
Turning, I see why she’s reacted that way.
For the three humans I just killed, six more are limping toward us like some fucked-up version of zombies.
There it is. The answer to my unasked question. This is what he meant when he said he’s legion.
“They’re dressed like the partygoers upstairs.” Megara walks backward and stops next to me, swords gripped in her hands. “He replaces t
he ones killed with them. How the fuck do we end this?”
“Kill him, of course.” I tilt my head back, searching for any possible place Hydra can be. There isn’t any walkways above us. No balconies. In front of us, it’s empty, unlit space, which means he has to be somewhere in that darkness. “He can’t be far from here, else they wouldn’t still be connected to him like this. We need to find him.”
As one, those humans cry out and run straight to us.
We evade them together, too fast for them to hopefully keep up, yet as we search further into the space, that doesn’t stop them from following. They become nothing but background noise, their feeble lungs gasping for air as they try to keep up with us running through the shadows, Meg on one side and I on the other.
I suspect Hydra is evading us even quicker than we’re chasing him, and it quickly becomes a futile exercise. We’re left right back where we started, in the middle of this space, searching for signs of that creature.
There’s an inhuman groan and I hear Megara hiss in response. I whirl to face her as a wet, gurgling sound reaches my ears next.
She’s pulling one of her swords out of a human man, cursing to hell and back. The man’s hands slide along the bloodied blade, blood also gushing from his open mouth. “He came out of nowhere and grabbed the blade. Stabbed his own damned self.” He falls in a dying pile near her heels.
New shuffling steps head our way; three more humans to replace the one that just killed himself on Meg’s blade.
Fuck.
It doesn’t matter if we willingly end them or not. As long as they die by “our” hand, that’s all that’s needed to trigger the replacements.
A fact that Hydra seems determined to abuse.
“He’s definitely still in here somewhere,” I tell Meg. We walk backward away from the eight mortals running at us, hands outstretched, mouths open in war cries they couldn’t possibly understand if they’d been cognizant. None of them are warriors. They aren’t built like it. Don’t have the posture or attack skills of a fighter.
They’re just partiers from upstairs, dressed in their clubbing outfits, being dragged unwillingly to the slaughter.
And for what? What the fuck does he plan to gain from us killing these mortals?
“You profit off them and sacrifice their lives so callously?” I shout into the space, knowing he can hear me.
Hydra laughs at that, a booming sound, like my comment is the most amusing thing in the world to him.
Megara bumps into me while avoiding a human that throws herself at her.
Two men come for me next.
We duck and swerve, using our supernatural speed to avoid their grasp. It goes on forever, with the humans being whipped into a frenzy as their weaker biologies attempt to catch us in vain.
It isn’t long ‘till we become sick of this senseless game.
We aren’t the only ones, either.
Hydra materializes near Meg, prompting her swords to arch on instinct.
Smiling, he grabs a scantily clad woman by the back of her neck, as one a baby kitten, and slams her chest-first into the end of one of Meg’s blades.
His new plan is more than obvious. I growl and throw myself at him, yet he flashes away before I can wrap my hands around that stone neck of his. The next three humans that join the fray head straight for me, as do the others, and suddenly I’m outrunning all ten of them, flashing randomly to avoid their mindless folly.
I search for Hydra as I do, eyes also seeking out Megara in her own search, and I don’t see one of the humans until it’s too late.
As I spin to avoid her, this woman flings herself unthinkingly to catch me, but all she’s met with is the wall.
At full speed.
Almost inhuman speed.
She collides with a sickening crack, her forehead bouncing off hard enough to make her head almost wiggle on her neck.
A splatter of blood is left smeared on the wall’s surface.
Stare unseeing, she topples to the ground.
Gone, just like that. As their fragile species is wont to do.
Apparently, her dying from just fucking chasing me is also enough to trigger the cycle, and it isn’t long before we hear three more approaching.
Meg appears at my back, glaring out the nearly twenty mortals we now need to avoid. “This is fucking ridiculous, Hydra! Even if you bring every one of those humans upstairs down here, they won’t be enough to kill us! We’ll just keep murdering them and then what? You start bringing in the ones from outsi—” She stops abruptly, wide eyes clashing with mine.
There it is. That’s his plan.
Infection of the human populace of this island through us.
We’re the catalyst. For some reason, us killing these people is the only way for him to take over them, and he knows that eventually we’ll have no choice. Their numbers will overwhelm us and we’ll have to fight back.
They might be inferior, but numbers are fucking numbers, man. Even a thousand coming for us at once warrants our attacking them just to escape.
Hydra’s lack of response at her statement is the only confirmation we need.
Shit. We need a new plan. Evading these people won’t work for long. One by one, they’ll find a way to die while chasing us, and the end result will be the same.
An idea is born, yet I can’t possibly communicate with Megara without us being overheard. Even if Hydra isn’t near, he has the same supernatural hearing we do.
Who am I kidding? He’s connected to these humans on an unnatural level. Most likely, he can see and hear everything they do.
Sonofabitch. How do I tell Meg? How do I . . . my mind jumps back to the two times Hades transferred information to me. The mental invasion that allowed him to accomplish such a feat. He never “showed” me how, but what if I can figure it out? What if I can use that to communicate telepathically with Meg?
How do I fucking figure that out though? How? I wonder as Meg and I continue to run from the mortals, an insult to our kind in and of itself. We move slower this time, careful not to lead them anywhere they might kill themselves. I rack my brain, my powers, anything that can help me magically unlock an ability I didn’t even know existed until maybe two days ago.
Just do it. Grab her and force her to stare into your eyes. DO IT.
Listening to that voice, I grab Megara, run as fast as I can to the other side of the floor, where the humans will have no choice but to catch up to us whenever they can, and herd her against the wall.
“What the—what are you doing?” she shrieks as I cup her face and tilt her head back.
This isn’t the time to get lose in the feel of her, the way her curvy yet muscular little body is pressed to mine. This isn’t the freaking time for my mouth to flood at that succulent scent I can taste in the back of my throat, but I’ll be damned if my knees don’t go weak with desire. If that infamous hot flush isn’t activated by my closeness to this nymph.
Locking eyes with her, I envision the my thoughts transferring into her, hoping my willpower alone can make a miracle occur.
Out of nowhere, it does, and I feel the mental shifting within.
But it’s different this time.
So, so different.
What Hades did to me was mostly controlled. Neat. Calculated on his part, except for that one moment where the vision of Persephone pierced through.
What happens between myself and this succubus is anything but neat. Her eyes widen in sheer alarm at my invasion.
Except, it’s not just mine.
She’s inside me as brutally as I’m inside her, both of us stripped to the core of our psyches and bared before the other in the most intrusive of fashions.
Meg’s seeing it. All of it. The incalculable ages I spent mired in regret. How I missed her. How I hungered for that second chance. What she did mean to me back then and what she continues to mean to me now. How I’m being dismantled by what happened to her after I left her—by the nearly Incubi-like need to get between her
legs and eat her until I’m drowning in her.
But I’m viewing her deepest thoughts, too. Not just what I meant to her, but visions of what was done to her during her imprisonment by my half-sister. Not just her desire-tinged hatred for me now, but the despair at what loving me cost her.
When a single tear leaks out of the corner of her glowing purple eye, I feel another piece of sanity obliterated on the spot. More lines appearing, this time a hot branding along the muscles of my back.
I wipe at that tear with my thumb and somehow send my instructions into her as a loud roar above the chaos of everything else we’re experiencing. At first, I have serious doubts if the words are actually getting through.
Then, she slams her hands into her chest, sending me skidding away, and wipes at her cheeks where I touched her—angry, injured . . . vulnerably confused. “Fine,” she spits, glaring at the approaching mortals. “We do this your way, you bastard. Just don’t touch me or do that to me ever again.”
CHAPTER 12
HERAKLES
The plan I gave her is simple.
Find a way to hide even though she can’t dematerialize. Disappear so the humans and Hydra have only one target left:
Me.
Once that happens, I’ll lure him into the open. Make him show himself.
I know just how, too.
Megara’s form shakes like paper against a strong breeze, but she’s off running in those heels, an unseeing blur to mortal eyes. The reaction of the humans is just what I’m looking for. They spin in momentary circles, searching her out.
Unable to locate her.
Unable to sense her through their connection with their current master.
Which means he’s having a hard time finding her, as well.
Perfect.
It takes them moments to give up their quest for Meg, a sign that Hydra wants them after me while he searches her out himself.
Counting on Meg’s assassin abilities to keep her hidden long enough, I reengage the humans in this meaningless chase. I’m also banking on what my powers have shown me. How eager Hydra is to see me fall.
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