Except back then, it was “between Scylla and Charybdis”.
Long story short, one was a sea serpent, the other a sentient whirlpool. While trying to avoid one, ships would unwittingly end up in the clutches of the other. Either devoured by the sea or devoured by a giant snake.
And they’d both been female.
“You’re serious? They share a male body now?” That should be . . . interesting, to say the least.
“Yes. And there’s something else I can’t quite . . . a frenzy of some sort, but it’s too volatile for me to make sense of what their shared mindstate is. Meg, do me a favor.” Hand on the back of my neck—that proprietary hold that’s both inappropriate and hot as hell—he spins me to face the mills. “Focus. Expand your senses. Tell me if you see or hear anything.”
What is he talking about?
Slapping his distracting hand off me, I do as he says nonetheless, picking up nothing but the traces of light human activi—
“More. More. More water. More flesh. We. Need. More.”
The shock of those two female voices booming into my mind sends me rearing back into Kles.
He catches me against him, hands on my hips. “What is it, Meg? Did you hear something?”
How do I explain to him that I’m not just hearing them, but that the hunger and thirst consuming them is beginning to echo in my gut? I’ve always been able to pick up on snippets of tactical data as an Erinye, anything that would be useful to whatever mission I was on.
This isn’t that.
“Megara?”
“It—it’s them. I-I . . .”
“You can hear them, too, can’t you?”
I nod wordlessly, trembling at the force of thirst and hunger starting to take over.
He rubs his hands up and down my sides, trying to soothe me. “What else, Meg? What I hear is too violent, too disjointed.”
“I’m sensing—feeling—their hunger. Their thirst. Water. Meat.”
“What they used to consume in their past lives.”
I don’t care, just don’t want to be overcome with these sensations anymore! Spinning around to face him, I close my eyes, like a child trying to block out a nightmare, and try to close whatever door just opened in my mind. “What the fuck was that? Why could I hear and feel them?”
“They’re somewhere in those mills,” is Kles’ only reply.
No. Shit.
I frown up at him. He’s focused on the buildings again, black fractures beginning to appear across his irises. “They’re more than consumed with that. Since they’re united, one desire is exacerbating the other.”
Again: no. Shit.
Just as I’m about to fist his shirt and shake him for answers, a voice calls out.
“There you are!”
I know that male.
Kles and I turn together, watching the four male’s jogging to us. Dark hair and hazel eyed, Theseus, the male who would become the founder of Athens, is staring at me with a burgeoning look of awe and happiness.
Instantly—unexpectedly—tears flood my eyes. I’m taken back eons, to those days when we’d all been a family . . .
Speaking of family, there’s a blond behind him. Another black haired, brown eyed one.
And him. The auburn haired one that had welcomed me like a daughter.
Theseus reaches us first, swooping down on me with open arms. “Holy shit. It really, really is you!” I’m swept into a bear hug against his chest and spun in a dizzying circle. “He really did find you!”
“And we had a hell of a time tracking you two down with how fast you’ve been moving through the planet,” the blond—Hylas—says, smiling ear to ear. “Now put her down so we can all have a turn welcoming her back.”
That’s exactly what happens. I’m deposited on my feet, in a state of sheer emotional shock, and find myself in Hylas’ arms next.
The once Prince of the Dryopis tribes and half-incubus himself, son of the nymph Menodice, releases me with a sharp hiss.
His incubus side just picked up on just how much I’ve changed. That I am now one of his kind.
Elacatas, the black-haired Spartan teen now fully grown into a man—and clearly immortal as well—wraps me in a hug before Hylas can announce his discovery.
It doesn’t last long until he’s being tapped on the shoulder. “Come now, Elacatas. That’s my adopted daughter you’re holding. Allow me my turn.”
Oh gods, he did it. He said it. He went there.
By the time Elacatas eases me away from his chest gently, I’ve lost the battle, tears beginning to streak down my cheek as I’m turned in his direction.
Philoctetes. The forty-year old male that had been like a father figure to us all.
But especially, an orphan like me.
“Come here, child.” Smiling that patient smile of his, he opens his arms and waits for me to decide if I’m going to him or not.
And I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t. I don’t even deserve this welcome from them. I’m not the same Megara they once knew, I’ve been changed on a molecular level since . . .
Philoctetes is still grinning at me, arms wide open, and regardless of the pit of darkness in me, I just can’t leave him waiting.
I can’t.
Openly sobbing now, I rush into his embrace. My chest is torn open anew, my heart in tatters, and every ounce of loss is as fresh as the moment it happened.
The moment I was left behind and not even allowed to stay with them, the family I’d never had growing up.
All because I’d made a deal with a female that might be worse than the devil and hadn’t known it at the time.
“There. There. It’s okay. We’ve all missed you, too,” Philoctetes murmurs, rocking me back and forth.
That only makes me cry harder and, dear gods, it’s pathetic.
The big, bad succubus Erinye, sobbing like a lost child in her pseudo-father’s arms. He cups the back of my head soothingly, hugging me tighter, and that’s when I can’t take it anymore.
I can’t.
Wiping at my useless tears, I exit his arms—only to come face to face with the expression on Kles’ face.
It’s there, all of it, in the twisted pain showing along his brow. In his glittering, saddened eyes. In that boyish frown that always looked adorable and odd on such manly features.
This is what I lost in the name of my love for him. When I sacrificed my freedom for his glory. Not just my life, my dignity, and my sanity, but the family I’d finally gained during those days.
I pray he can read my facial expression as clearly as I’m reading his. I hate you. I don’t know how to not hate you. Not when I’m justified in ways no enemy of you ever was. When you deserve every bit of my loathing. When. You’ve. Earned. It.
Needing some privacy, I dematerialize away from them, but remain close enough to hear their exchange.
“How the hell did you find us?” Kles asks.
“Ingenuity, my friend,” Theseus replies.
“Your energy signature kept bouncing from one location to another. It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.” Elacatas.
“As far as I know, Hades only assigned this task to us. As grateful as I am for your willingness to help, I don’t know if it counts. I’m the one that signed up to do this.”
Hylas cuts to the chase in a low, somber tone. “What exactly did you sign up to do, Kles?”
“She’s an Erinye.”
I tense at Kles’ response. Is he going to announce what else happened to me? What Hylas already knows but hasn’t said outloud yet? Although, Hylas only knows about the species change. It’s only a matter of time before those other males also pick up on my succubus pull. Kles is aware of everything else . . .
“This is how I get her released from his service. Period.” Ah, his “don’t you dare argue” voice. That bossy one that always irked and turned me on.
I’m actually gratefult to hear it, for once.
“Alright, since we can’t communicate with Hades�
��”
Kles interrupts Theseus. “And I also don’t think it’d be very smart to let him know that you of all males is here.”
He’s right. Hades will add him to the “kill list” in a heartbeat.
“Then we go in with you, but stay out of the main fighting. Sounds fair?” Philoctetes inquires.
Their back and forth is reminiscent of our shared past and I hate how I’m left blinking back tears again.
Like I’m some kind of softie.
Never was; definitely not supposed to be one now.
“Alright. Fine. They come in with us. But enough messing around,” I bark at them. “We go in now.” When I look at them, I find five pairs of eyes staring me all sappy and shit.
Expressions melting as if I’m the cutest thing they’ve ever seen.
The hell?
“Damn, it’s good to see you again, Meg,” Elacatas mumbles happily.
Philoctetes’ grin widens. “Indeed.”
Oh, no. No. No. They aren’t doing this to me again.
Grinding my jaw to control my emotions, I spin away from them and begin walking toward the mills.
They catch up within seconds, Kles at the forefront. “They’ve been turned into apartment complexes.”
“And he’s living right beneath these humans feet,” I say.
“Who is he, again?” Hylas asks.
“Scylla and Charybdis. They’re sharing a male body now according to Kles.”
Hylas stares at me as if I must be joking, then turns to Kles. “What the fuck do we call them, then? SC?”
That’s a good point, actually.
“We call him dead. That’s what we’re here to do. Now quiet while I try to locate—”
That’s easy. As much as their appearance distracted me, that unsettling connection didn’t really dissipate. “I sense him down there.” I pause and stare at the brick road we’re walking on. “Like, down, down there.”
Kles stops inches from me. “Are you saying he’s in the basement of that complex?”
“Perhaps even lower than that. The old sewers, I think.”
“Jesus. No wonder there’s no escaping one of Hades’ assassins. They can sense anything,” Elacatas comments wryly. “Theseus, how did you manage to not get one of these sent after you again?”
“Oh, I did get one sent after me. Actually lived to tell the tale,” Theseus says in a tone that states there shall be no further discussion on the subject.
As curious as I am about that story, I wouldn’t really know anything about it. There’s two other assassins in Hades’ service, yet we were always kept separate from each other. Secret to each to other. I’ve never met them, never found out their names, nor do I know what kind of missions they’ve been sent on.
“There’s going to be cameras now that humans live here.” Kles glances about as he seeks a way for us to get inside.
“The canal tunnels.” I point back toward the body of water we walked away from. “We can dematerialize through there.”
Hylas’ lip curls in disgust. “Aw, man. So we’re really taking the sewage route.”
Kles claps him on the back as he passes. “No time for complaints. Meg, let’s do this.”
He’s so fucking hot when he takes charge.
Don’t you freaking start, I warn the nymph in me.
Hylas, the half-incubus of the group, eyes me knowingly as I go by.
At the waters’ edge, after each of us extending our senses to confirm there’s only a few cameras, each pointing away, we break apart as a group, aiming for the round openings peeking above the surface of the water and cutting into the base of the mill complex.
Of course, we reform in a sewage road, in what would be brutal darkness to human eyes. Thankfully, our vision works just as well in this conditions, and it isn’t long till we emerge in the main catacombs beneath the mills.
Centuries of rancid waste and aged water lay beneath our feet, the stench overpowering.
But not enough to hide that other smell.
The one we know very well.
Elacatas goes past, nose scrunched. “Aw, man. That’s decaying flesh, isn’t it?”
“Hunger. More. They come. We’ll devour them, too.”
The group turns a corner, Kles the only one that lingers to search me out. “Meg?”
Shit. I’d closed my eyes and didn’t realize. When I open them, he’s in front of me, concerned. “They’re close.”
An unnatural wheezing sound reverberates around us. The entire group spins as they try to locate it, semi-crouched, ready for whatever comes, yet it’s futile.
They aren’t here.
They’re waiting for us just beyond the next archway, where the lack of light becomes even more pervasive.
“I think they want to eat us,” I confess to Kles, my own stomach cramping with what must be their unrelenting hunger.
“Of course they do.” His head tilts upward and back as he engages in his own analysis of our surroundings. “They plan to—”
Close us in, as Cyclops did at ANAXE.
Stone scrapes against stone, unseen gates closing us off from any of the corridors we could possibly go through.
All but one.
The one directly in front of us. That archway.
Philoctetes arches his brows and looks at Kles. “I guess we just go on through and get this over with?”
“No. We go through. You can stay out here and watch our backs from here. We don’t know the rules of Hades’ mission. I’m not going to allow any of you to fuck up my chances of freeing Meg from his service.” His order is accompanied by that “I’m the leader of all you fucks” glower.
Hands are thrown up in acquiescence, a smirk or two thrown my way. Then we’re left to traverse the path into those shadows on our own. “Get those swords ready,” Kles advises me, his hand easing toward my back.
Is he planning on guiding me? The woman in me is flattered, that horny, weak hoe. The warrior, as I successfully became in the thousands of years without him, is straight offended at his nerve.
Side-stepping away from his grip, I take the lead. “What are you hearing from them?”
“They’re fucking insane. I’m sure it was bad when they were separate entities, but this is outrageous. That hunger doesn’t even make sense.”
The voice of Power in him is telling him this? Although, it’d make sense. That instinct exists to help him better identify strength in others . . . and how to best weaken them. “That thirst is, too,” I mumble, although admitting I’m still feeling them to this extent freaks me out. Not something I can analyze at this moment, either. “So how do we use it against them?”
“I . . . don’t know. Meg, I’m not hearing this because of, you know . . . Power.”
I almost stumble at his admission. “Excuse me. Then what?”
“There’s something else in here with us, Meg. You know it as much as I do. These markings are coming from whatever it is.”
His soft tone behind me makes the heart I swore had hardened squeeze painfully in my chest. When he says “us”, he’s not talking about him and I. He’s speaking of himself and the force that originally made him the God of Power. He’s claiming there’s a third entity inhabiting his body.
Taking control.
And Kles is right. I knew. Hades claims I’ll get to kill Kles once this is over, yet for some reason he wants to also see his nephew become lost to whatever evil phantom is also prowling through his veins.
Does that mean there’s something else in me, as well? Is that why I can hear them so clearly? Feel their twisted desires as if they’re my own? A fucking petrifying thought. Maybe Hades does mean to free me from his service as an assassin, but what if he’s also working on mutating me into something more?
I barely adjusted to one transformation—barely—and I can’t fathom handling another.
Kles is the one that told me to expand my senses. Did he know this would happen? I want to spin on him and ask, yet the narrow tunn
el we’re in comes to an end.
Out of nowhere, we’re in what looks like an underground processing plant, lights blazing overhead.
No, not a processing plant. A meat plant.
What I’m seeing refuses to process in my mind and I jerk to a stop. The scent is enough to make me gag, more concentrated than I could imagine. Kles curses, flashing to cover my view with his large body, yet it’s too late.
I already saw it. Every gruesome inch of it.
The chunks of blood, meat, and bone dripping down the walls.
Covering every bit of the floor.
The ceiling.
Every bit of space on those steel tables. There’s several electric meat bone saws strewn throughout, dripping with it as well.
What’s even worse? I’m convinced that’s human flesh I smell.
The streams of water pouring in through the open spouts along the sides of the ceiling. Part of the reasons the stench of that meat is that potent.
There’s a short shout from the other end of the tunnel, where we left the others waiting, followed by dozens of chill-inducing groans.
Hungry groans that have a distinct undertone.
“Thank you for bringing us more food. We’ve been running short lately.”
As soon as I hear that double-female voice, I know who is here with us.
Scylla and Charybdis.
They’re exactly as Kles claimed they are—a lanky male stands near the East wall, aqua gaze both locked on us, and not focused on us at all. It’s the stare of the insane, disjointed, half-present, yet brimming with that hunger.
Shirtless, his concave stomach and stark ribcage resemble that of a walking corpse. The dark, military-style pants he’s wearing are soaked through and it isn’t hard to guess with what.
Skull-trimmed, dark hair.
Like Hydra, an abnormal jaw, but this one is made out of . . . some kind of steel?
I heave as I realize why; that steel lower jaw makes chewing through meat and bones easier, doesn’t it?
As if he’s reading my thoughts, he grins at me, baring his steel upper teeth, too.
In the background, I still hear those dead moans.
Then, confirmation of my worst suspicions in the form of Hylas’ yell. “Are those fucking zombies? Tell me those aren’t fucking zombies! You don’t understand, I freaking hate zombies!”
Sacrifice Page 16