Daimon’s blood was on her hands.
“No.” She shook her head now that his weapon was away from her throat, leaned forwards and clasped her hands in front of her, opened them again and held them out to him. “I was bringing him back. Blood magic. I would never hurt Daimon. It killed me when I thought I had lost him.”
His jaw flexed.
He didn’t look as if he believed her.
A delicate pale hand slid over his left shoulder and he stiffened, his scarlet gaze edging towards it. Fingers brushed over the ornate clasps that fixed his red cloak to his shoulders and then drifted lower, skating down his arm.
“The witch speaks true, my love.” The softest female voice Cass had ever heard danced in the air, full of light and warmth, and seriously out of place in the dark realm.
A slender female clad in layers of black that formed a flowing dress over her curves stepped around the god, the smile that curled her lips far from fitting given the dire situation. Her green eyes softened as she lifted her right hand and cupped Hades’s cheek. Around her bare feet, poppies bloomed, the same colour as her scarlet hair.
Hades began to lean into her touch and then pulled away, drawing a frown from the goddess.
“No,” he boomed. “She murdered our son.”
“I didn’t,” Cass snapped and lunged forwards, desperate for him to believe her.
“She did not,” Persephone said and touched his cheek again, her caress like black magic, more powerful than anything Cass had at her disposal.
The god softened again, looked unsure for the first time but it was there and gone in the blink of an eye.
“I felt him die,” Hades growled and lifted the bident to Cass’s throat again, forcing her to lean back.
“He’s alive. He’s fighting right now to protect the gate. If you’d just listen for five seconds and let me explain.” She held her hands up when his eyes darkened, his handsome face twisting in a thunderous look.
Perhaps demanding a god-king listen to her and ordering him around had been a bad idea.
“Let the witch speak, my love.” Persephone worked her magic again, stroking his cheek, softening the hard edges of his expression.
When Hades didn’t try to kill Cass and didn’t speak, she took it as a chance to tell her side of the story.
“Esher was called for penitence and Daimon went. He didn’t come back though. I was worried about him.” She rushed each word out, unsure how long she was going to be given before Hades decided to go ahead and kill her. Now was not the time for lengthy and detailed explanations. Now was the time for speed. “The brothers… your sons… we feared the enemy had him. The Erinyes know which gate is bound to who so we went to New York, and I used a spell to track Daimon. When I found him, he had encased himself in ice. He was almost dead when Ares got him free, and I used…”
She hesitated. Was it wise to tell a god-king that you used necromancy to save his dying son?
Hades gave her a look that demanded she continue, his bident backing him up as he pressed it forwards, prodding her throat with the sharp tips.
“I used a healing spell and the basic theory of necromancy to—”
“Necromancy?” he barked and she leaned back as he pressed forwards.
Persephone gently placed a hand on his arm and lowered the bident from Cass’s throat. “It would explain the sensation of death you felt.”
Hades cast her a withering look, one that made it abundantly clear he wanted to argue with her.
Yet he didn’t.
He huffed and eased back, scowling at Cass. “Continue.”
“Well, he’s alive now and he confirmed what we had suspected. Nemesis is involved in this.” Cass froze up when Hades’s eyes blazed so brightly she was surprised she didn’t get burned.
“Nemesis,” he growled, and Cass really hoped that murderous look in his eyes was for the traitorous goddess now.
“Why would she?” Persephone looked worried as she gazed at her husband.
“Many reasons,” Hades snarled, his deep voice rolling across the land like thunder. “Power. Revenge. She believes I forced her into a life of servitude here after the last rebellion, when the roles of the gods and goddesses in these lands altered. I had her replace the Erinyes as punishment for her disobedience.”
“Disobedience?” Cass couldn’t hold back that question.
Hades narrowed his crimson eyes on her. “I sent a summons to Nemesis but she refused to answer. Rumours spread that she had sided with my enemy, but when we found her, she was bound and caged, and said that she had been captured by the enemy when she had tried to come to aid me.”
Hades growled, the sound a vicious black snarl as his lips peeled back off his fangs.
“You believed her?” Cass said what he wouldn’t, because she needed to know what had happened.
He nodded. “The rebellion had been crushed and the realm was safe, but I wanted someone to punish any who would attempt to break one of my rules. I moved her into a position I thought would suit her, allowing her to dispense justice. My justice. At first, she seemed to enjoy it, but then I noticed things. Small things. I began to feel she wasn’t satisfied and when I approached her, she spoke of how her small realm felt like another cage. Wanting my people to be happy, I gave her more freedom, allowing her to come and go from that realm as she pleased.”
Well, Cass could see why Nemesis hadn’t exactly been happy about her new station. Putting someone who had been held captive in a cage into a realm she couldn’t leave was just moving her into a new cage.
“Do you think now that the rumours had been true? She had been working with your enemy and when you had been close to discovering it, she had faked it all?” She caught the flicker of confusion in his eyes, there and gone, hidden before anyone could really notice it. This god didn’t like to look uneducated. He had pride. Possibly too much of it. That was never a good thing, but she wasn’t about to call him on the fact she needed to explain what she meant by ‘faked it’. “Maybe she had her people harm her and lock her away to make it look like she was still on your side.”
Hades roared, the sound deafening, and the ground bucked and shook so hard that one of the guards to her right landed on his backside and Persephone clung to her husband, casting fearful green eyes around her as fault lines spread across the black earth.
And Cass had thought his sons had serious tempers.
Hades did not like to be crossed.
“I will murder her with my own hands.” He raised his right black gauntlet and curled his talons into a fist. He turned a glare on his guards. “Dispatch three legions immediately. She cannot leave these lands with the gates closed. Find her!”
Hades pivoted on his heel, his red cloak swirling outwards with the sharp action, and Cass lunged onto her feet as her heart lurched.
“Wait!” She held a hand out to him, desperation flooding her, making her limbs shake.
He stopped and looked back at her.
“I need to get back to Daimon. Marek tried to take me from the fight but Daimon needs me there… I need to be there.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she thought about him fighting when he was weak, her mind filling with the reckless things he might do to fulfil his duty.
Like bleeding himself dry to seal a gate.
He wouldn’t survive it.
“You worry about him,” Persephone said, her voice the first soft kiss of morning light.
“I don’t think worry is a strong enough word.” Cass shook her head and smiled solemnly. “Daimon is in bad shape, but I know he won’t leave. He’ll stay and fight and do his duty, and it will get him killed. Valen, Keras, Ares and Marek are there, but… I’m afraid… I don’t want to lose him. I need to be there.”
Hades turned to face her, a calculating edge to his crimson eyes. “She speaks true. The gate is in danger. I will send you to my son.”
Persephone looked pleased to hear that, smiled up at her husband with relief and love glittering in her green eyes. When she turned that sa
me look on Cass, Cass had the feeling it was partly because she had just said without so many words that she was in love with Daimon.
She waited for the restriction on her magic to lift.
When it didn’t, she looked at Hades. How was he intending to send her back to Daimon?
He lifted a gauntleted hand above his head.
Between them, a violet pinprick of light sparked to life, and she couldn’t believe her eyes as it rapidly expanded into a disc that faced her. It pulsed and a ring appeared around it, growing in size as glyphs shimmered and chased along the curve of it. It rotated swiftly and another ring appeared inside it, this one spinning counter-clockwise, glowing with rainbow colours.
A gate.
This was dangerous.
She felt that in her bones.
The enemy wanted a gate open and Hades was doing it for them.
She looked at him through the shimmering form of the gate. There was a gleam in his eyes as he watched it, fire that shone so brightly that she couldn’t miss it. He wanted this opportunity to draw the enemy to him.
He wanted to fight too.
Beside him, Persephone cast him a worried look. Cass was inclined to agree with the goddess. Hades’s hunger for battle was not a good thing. It was better that the enemy was kept away from this world and from him, and that he let his sons do their duties and complete the mission he had given to them.
A scream rolled up her throat and she stumbled backwards as the ground shook beneath her and a huge bipedal beast appeared out of the gloom, thundering towards the gate. Mottled stony grey skin stretched tight over the powerful muscles of the five-storey tall monstrosity. It shook its head and roared, the grey-blue horns that covered the top of its head seeming to grow before her eyes as its silver irises glowed brighter.
“Go now,” Hades barked and turned towards the beast, grinning at it.
Cass realised that the hunger for violence that shone in his eyes hadn’t been about drawing the enemy to him—it had been about preparing to face this beast.
A gatekeeper.
Cass’s pulse pounded as she ran for the gate, determined to make it there before the monster could reach Hades.
Daimon needed her.
She leaped into the sparkling violet disc of the gate, screamed as colours twisted around her and she felt as if someone had thrown her into a psychedelic blender. Up and down blurred as she spun. Bile rose up her throat.
Her feet suddenly hit solid ground and she jerked forwards as they stuck to it like glue, flailed her arms to stop herself from falling flat on her face and breathed a sigh of relief when she straightened.
That relief was short-lived as she was lifted upwards.
It turned to horror as the colourful light receded.
Revealing Daimon where he knelt at the edge of the horizontal rings of the gate.
About to have his throat slit.
Cass launched her hands forwards, relief blasting through her when twin orbs of magic shot from her palms.
“Get your damned hands off my man!” she snarled as the spell struck the furie who had been holding him and sent her flying through the air.
Daimon’s ice-blue eyes widened, shock dancing in them as he stared at her.
His white eyebrows lifted slightly.
She knew what he was thinking.
He was her man.
And she was damned if she was going to let someone take him from her.
His eyes sparkled with warmth as she finished rising out of the gate, as she walked on unsteady legs towards him, trying to ignore the fact she was levitating a good two feet above the rings of the gate.
“How the hell…” He took her hand when she was close enough, helped her down but swept her up into his arms before she could touch the ground. “What happened?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” She hugged him and then made him release her, because she hadn’t missed the fact he was bleeding everywhere and that he looked tired, on the verge of collapse.
When he loosened his hold on her, she placed her hand over his stomach and funnelled a healing spell into him, stopping the bleeding and destroying the toxin that tainted his blood. She looked into his eyes, caught the fatigue that still laced them, and decided she could spare a little more of her strength to give him a boost. She quickly pieced together another spell, one that would share some of her energy with him, and funnelled that into him too. His eyes instantly brightened, the dark circles beneath them fading, and she felt his strength returning.
“You opened the gate?” He looked at it, confusion shimmering in his eyes, and then at her.
She shook her head. “Not me. Your father.”
His face fell, the colour draining from it as he pushed her back and looked her over. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She kept the fact he had tried to hurt her to herself. “I landed in the Underworld and we had a talk, and then he opened this gate and here I am. I told him about you, and about Nemesis.”
Daimon caught her jaw and tilted it upwards as he glared at her throat.
As he brushed thumbs over two sore spots on it.
“Just talked, eh?” He frowned at her.
“There might have been a little growling, some poking, and a few misunderstandings. But I’m safe, unharmed, and this really isn’t the place for long conversations.” She hurled a spell to her right without looking and the three daemons who had been charging towards them screamed as it struck them.
Tore them to pieces.
“We need to close this gate,” Daimon said, a note of worry in his voice that relayed his feelings to her.
She was here with him. Together they could do this.
She pressed a brief kiss to Daimon’s lips and then turned her back to him. He pressed his against it as he unleashed a devastating wave of ice spears at a group of daemons. Cass hurled freezing spells at several daemons who were fighting his brothers, picking them off and evening the odds a little for them.
Marek looked at her, relief shining in his dark eyes. She probably owed him an apology.
Cass frowned as she glanced beyond them and spotted more portals opening. How many daemons did the enemy have on their side? She couldn’t even guess at the number of dead that lay on the battlefield around them.
Judging by the state of Daimon’s brothers, it had already been too many.
Valen, Marek and Ares, and even Keras had multiple injuries, were bleeding from several wounds as they fought the daemons and tried to fight the two Erinyes. The twin blondes were too fast, easily dodging fireballs and lightning, spears of earth and shadows as they attempted to get closer to the gate again.
Daimon’s brothers had their hands full.
She looked at the daemons who were piling over the remains of an earthen wall.
Maybe it was time she levelled the playing field a little.
Cass focused on the spell, building the same one she had used in Tokyo, even though she knew it would drain her. Daimon fought at her back, dealing with any daemons who got too close to the gate. Her magic twined around him, drawn to his power, and she held it back, unwilling to draw on him. She could feel he was weak, struggling as it was to fight the enemies and work on the gate.
She muttered the incantation. She clenched her fists as magic surged through her, leaving her trembling in its wake, and exploded from her in a shockwave. It rolled across the land, disintegrating the dead and sending the weaker living daemons flying, leaving only the strongest ones behind. When it neared the wall, it shot upwards, forming a dome over the area.
The daemons outside it immediately began battering it, every strike of their fists feeling like a blow dealt to her. They echoed on her body, faint for now, but if the fight carried on for too long there would be a cumulative effect and she would really start feeling them.
Daimon’s brothers didn’t miss a beat, kept on fighting as the number of daemons they were facing dwindled, giving them more chances to attack the Erinyes.
Sever
al daemons attempted to make a run for it upon seeing the odds were now stacked against them instead.
They hit the edge of the barrier and bounced off it, landing on their backsides.
She smiled wickedly.
Her barriers worked both ways. Nothing got in.
Nothing got out.
Lightning bounced off the dome, tearing a grunt from her lips and a ripe curse from Valen. When the bright white-purple flash came again, it surged up from below, striking several daemons through their legs.
Ares and Marek switched tactics too, drawing the daemons away from the barrier so their attacks wouldn’t strike it.
Keras tore through a group with his shadows and smiled coldly when a feminine shriek pierced the din of battle. Maybe he did resemble his father, had that same darkness within him, as deep and black as an abyss.
The furie he had found shot up into the air, a shadow snaring her leg, and screamed as it twisted with her, bringing her back down in a swift and brutal arc. She smashed into two male daemons, knocking them flying, and rolled across the grass.
Cass launched a spell at her as she struggled onto her feet, and then another and another as the female spotted her and rolled left and right, evading her attacks. The furie pushed onto her knees and then her feet, and sprinted towards her on a low vicious hiss.
The light of the closing gate washed over her face as she thundered towards Cass.
Cass broke away from the gate, hoping to give Daimon time to close it.
She ran at the furie, grunted as they collided and slammed her palm into the female’s stomach. The blonde hissed as she flew backwards, violet light sizzling over her skin, and hit the ground hard.
The second furie whipped to face her, bared fangs and growled as she spotted her sister on the ground.
She lashed out at Marek with her claws, driving him back, and made a break for it, charging towards Cass.
Shadows seized her legs and she hit the ground face-first.
The first furie was on her feet and running at Cass again. Cass launched minor spells at her, ones designed to knock her away and do some damage. They were low level and wouldn’t drain her. She needed to reserve most of her energy for maintaining the barrier.
Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Page 33