The guy’s undercarriage had to be a literal sauna in that getup. His upper body was wrapped in a loose shirt of pure white linen and decorated with elaborate gold embroidery that shimmered in the light. Despite its intricacy, the pattern had to have been hand-sewn. A dark brown vest made of a beaded leather very similar to imp skin finished the eccentric outfit. Anyone else would look ridiculous, but Hades conveyed such an aura of menace that Adonis couldn’t help but be intimidated, even as he fought to ignore the feeling.
“Where is Seph?” He was proud of himself when his voice didn’t waver. “What are you doing to her?”
“Nothing. Yet.” Hades tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowed like a bird of prey sighting a lone mouse in the grass. “It’s not what I’ve done, but what I will do that should concern you.”
“Seph is stronger than you think.” Adonis scoffed. “You might have her running your little maze like a lab rat, but she’s going to wipe the floor with you.”
“So you say.” A strange expression briefly twisted Hades’s features, giving him an air of almost childlike eagerness. Then it was gone, and only arrogant amusement remained. “Tell me more about this strength, since you seem to know her so well.”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
“I am only expressing interest in polite conversation. You can provide it,” Hades mused. “Or I can return you to the dungeons and find other ways to amuse myself. My imps have expressed great interest in the uses of human flesh, so I might leave you to their care. And perhaps I should check on dear Persephone’s progress through my realm.”
His tone made it obvious that his amusements involved something terrible and sexual.
“Fine,” Adonis bit out. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me how you first met.”
Something about this made Adonis uncomfortable, like he was spilling Seph’s secrets. But it wasn’t as if he would tell Hades anything important, and the longer he kept the man talking, the less time he would have to torture Seph.
“We’re both students of a small theater program. We probably ran into each other for the first time at orientation, I don’t remember.”
“You can’t lie to me, boy.” Hades’s eyes narrowed. “You saw her first, didn’t you?”
How could this asshole possibly know he was lying? But the longer Hades stared at him, the more compelled Adonis felt to give him the truth.
“Fine, yes. Jesus. I heard about her when she was still an undergraduate. This brilliant girl who was one of the most amazing playwrights that the program had ever seen. And even though people said she was gorgeous, she had absolutely no interest in ever being on the stage. That’s not normal, at least not like most of the girls who come through the program. Her name was on everybody’s lips, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
Hades leaned forward, his gaze unreadable. “Go on.”
“The first time I actually laid eyes on her was in one of her classes. It was my first semester as a grad student, and I had to step in to TA because the professor was out. It was a small capstone class where the students worked on individual projects. Seph had just started working on her play . . .”
His voice drifted off as it occurred to him that the subject of that play was sitting across from him in a place that shouldn’t exist.
“And then?” Hades seemed profoundly interested, in a way that made Adonis distinctly uncomfortable if he thought too much about it. “What did you notice about her?”
Clearing his throat, Adonis continued as it felt more and more like he had no choice. “Obviously, I noticed how pretty she was, but that’s always the first thing you notice about people even when you know it’s not the most important. She was the only one in the class who was writing fantasy, most of the other students were obsessed with gritty realism. I had to listen to a lot of crap about guys drinking alone at bars while they contemplated the meaning of life. Seph was more whimsical than that. But it was a sad sort of whimsy which, combined with her talent, only made her stand out more. She was the first person I ever met who seemed both entirely comfortable with themselves but also lost at the same time. I wanted to know more.”
“Describe the expression on her face when your gazes first met. Did she smile or blush?”
Adonis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t know. C’mon, man. Do you remember everything that’s ever happened to you with perfect clarity?”
Hades’s response was clipped. “Yes.”
What the fuck was there to say to that?
“It’s hard to describe,” Adonis admitted. “People who don’t know her very well sometimes assume that Seph is standoffish when really she just spends a lot of time in her own world. She’s not the type to smile at someone she doesn’t know. But she hung back after class to ask a question, and we got to talking.”
“How interesting. You must have made an impression.”
“Or she just had a question about the assignment that made up her entire grade in the class.”
“Of the substitute instructor? I doubt it.” Hades’s gaze flicked over his face, expression mocking. “And did she fall at your feet like a silly lovesick girl? I’m sure that’s what you expected when she approached you.”
“Wrong on both counts,” Adonis snapped, unsure why the thought offended him so much. “I already knew she’d been accepted in the graduate program and hoped she might want to collaborate. Just because I thought she was pretty didn’t mean I was trying to get into her pants. Not all guys think with their dicks.”
“How noble,” Hades commented, voice droll. His leg shifted off the arm of his throne, not even wincing as thorns dug into his thigh. He planted both feet on the ground and leaned forward until bare inches separated them, staring into Adonis’s eyes as if searching for the answer to whatever question he actually asked with this interrogation. “Tell me that you didn’t feel your gaze drawn to her even as you forced yourself to look away. You wanted her from the moment you first laid eyes on her.”
There was no way he was going to admit anything to this fancifully dressed douchebag. “Fuck off, asshole.”
Instead of being angered by the insult, a vicious smirk played at Hades’s lips as he leaned back on his wretched throne. He seemed more pleased than he should have been considering the circumstances.
Adonis couldn’t stop himself from asking the obvious question. “Why do you want to know all of this?”
For a moment, he assumed Hades wasn’t going to respond. And when he did, he seemed to be talking about something else altogether.
“I loved a woman once. And we suffered together, for that love. Until she left me here to rot.” An orb appeared in Hades’s hand with only a twist of his wrist. He twirled it on his fingers with impossible dexterity, gaze never leaving Adonis’s tight-lipped face. “It may seem like I hold this realm in the palm of my hand, but the Underworld controls me as much as I do it. And I will be here alone when it falls down around me unless I fix what has been broken.”
Adonis opened his mouth to speak, but found that his throat had gone dry and incapable of producing sound. Unspoken words choked him, like an invisible hand wrapped around his neck. He wanted to know what this unearthly man could possibly know about love, but there was no air left in his lungs to ask the question.
Somewhere deep in the castle, the bells of an unseen clock tolled. Once. Twice. Then there was near silence, even as the sound echoed in his ears and set his bones shaking.
“Two hours left,” Hades mused. “And then we shall see who will prevail.”
Light refracted through the orb, momentarily blinding him, but Adonis could have sworn that for an instant, he saw Seph’s sleeping face. Without warning, Hades rose gracefully to his feet and tossed the orb out the window behind him.
Adonis couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since he’d been dragged into the room by imps. He understood Hades deliberately messed with his perception of it. But outside, the sky had darkened.
Through the windows, a reddened sun set against a forest backdrop. Adonis could see little of what existed out there, most of it drowned in a shifting halo of light. Then it occurred to him that light shouldn’t move that way, creeping along the ground as if it had a mind of his own. He realized that it wasn’t light, it was fog. So dense that he couldn’t see anything through it.
He fought to stand but his body suddenly felt heavy as if he’d been glued down to the heavy chair underneath him. His limbs hung like weights from his sides and it took every ounce of strength in his body to lift his head.
Hades stood in front of the large window, framed by the red-gold light in a way that made him seem even more unnaturally dangerous. Another crystal orb had appeared in his hand, and he lazily twirled it on his finger as he watched Adonis struggle, expression pensive.
“Perhaps if I understood what she sees in you . . .” Hades murmured, almost to himself.
Fog crept along Adonis’s legs and oozed past the imposing throne of thorns. It didn’t hurt or burn, but he really didn’t want to breathe it in. He struggled against the invisible bindings keeping him trapped in the chair, setting it rocking back and forth. But he only managed to offset his balance enough to tip the chair over and his body with it.
Adonis was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Chapter Fourteen
An expanse of verdant fields stretched out around me. Flowers of every color and type sprouted around my feet, seeming to grow thicker with each step forward that I take.
Peace washed over me.
The sound of shouting shattered the silence. I looked up to see a black coach, driven by horses the color of night with blazing red eyes, bearing down on me. The man who drove the coach was too far away for me to make out any of his features.
I knew that he was coming for me.
He had come to take me away.
A house appeared on the horizon and I raced toward it, somehow recognizing that this place represented safety. But with each step that I took, the black carriage advanced the distance of many more.
I reached the door of the house just as the heavy breathing of the demonic horses came from just over my shoulder.
Something grabbed me from behind and I screamed, expecting to be yanked away just before reaching safety.
My vision went black.
I snapped back to myself, alone standing in my warm and bright kitchen. My hand rested on the Formica countertop as I tried to remember what I had just been doing.
The oven timer went off, and I rushed to remove a perfectly-prepared roast before it burned. The handwoven pot holders on the counter were done in rainbow colors, like a child’s project from summer camp. I grabbed them quickly to remove the roast, inhaling the delicious aroma that filled the kitchen.
What would my husband think if he had come home from work and caught me daydreaming while our dinner burned?
I looked out the window that was covered in frothy lace curtains to see a bright-green lawn lined with immaculately maintained flowers that were all in bloom. A surge of pride moved through me as I regarded it because I knew our yard was the prettiest in the entire neighborhood.
Wiping my hands on the tiny white apron wrapped around my waist, I bent to pick up my baby from its highchair at the table and cooed nonsense in its ear. My lips pressed against one sweetly-scented cheek. Nothing compared to the smell of a freshly bathed and swaddled baby, like warm milk and spun sugar.
With this perfect home and my even more perfect family, I had to be the luckiest woman on earth. My heels clicked on the linoleum floor as my red plaid skirt spun around me while I moved around the kitchen. My hair was done up in neatly pinned curls, and I didn’t need to check a mirror to know that my makeup was perfect, not even a smudge in my pink lipstick.
I would be the picture of perfection when my husband walked through the door just in time for dinner like a good housewife should be.
The front door opened and slammed shut. I twirled around to greet my beloved husband, a wide smile on my face.
Adonis grinned back at me as he always did, happiness suffusing his features as he laid eyes on his family after a long day at the office. “How is my favorite girl?”
“Waiting for you.” I leaned forward to accept his quick kiss and watched as he nuzzled the baby before turning away and loosening his tie. “Dinner will be on the table in five minutes.”
He winked. “You’re a saint.”
Like always, he dressed in a crisply tailored suit that made him look like an extra out of Mad Men and carried a shiny briefcase that I polished every night so it wouldn’t scratch. It made me so proud to look at him. He worked so hard every day so that I could stay home and take care of our beautiful home and child. I’d always loved seeing him in a suit, ever since our wedding day when we kissed under an arch of roses while our family and closest friends clapped and wept.
This life was like a dream come true.
All of this was like a dream.
I suddenly felt dizzy. Setting the baby down in the high chair, I leaned against the counter so I wouldn’t pass out. For a moment, everything around me seemed hazy as blood rushed to my head. I stared down at the chunk of steaming beef on the counter, surrounded by a bed of potatoes and carrots soaking in its meaty juices. A wave of disgust washed over me as I imagined the farting beast it had come from. Cows were the most disgusting creatures on earth, and greenhouse gases from industrial farming were punching holes in the ozone layer.
Did I even eat pot roast?
“Are you alright?” Adonis asked from me, a concerned smile on his lips when I turned to look at him. “It’s like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine. I just felt strange for a minute.”
But that feeling of strangeness hadn’t gone away.
He watched me with concern for a moment before turning to the cabinet. “I’ll grab the plates so we can set the table.”
“Are we dreaming?”
I only realized that I had spoken the words aloud when he answered.
“I’ve always thought of our lives as a dream.” Adonis gave me a confused smile and leaned over the roast, inhaling deeply. “Dinner smells wonderful. Shall we eat?”
Even as I returned his smile, a strange sensation niggled at the corners of my mind, an awareness that something wasn’t quite right. But what could it be? I looked down at myself, gaze focusing on the checkered pattern of the dress I wore. As I stared, it seemed to lengthen and shift in color to an off-white while the fabric gleamed like silk. Then I blinked, and the image was gone, replaced with the cotton fabric I remembered pushing through a Singer sewing machine as I’d made it.
But even that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t 1958, nobody made their own clothes anymore, myself included. I couldn’t so much as sew the button back on a costume without hurting myself.
Why was I thinking about costumes? Halloween was months away.
Then I looked at the kitchen, really looked at it. Even the most old-fashioned people would have torn out those turquoise blue cabinets and replaced them with something else. The refrigerator was the kind with a locking handle that no self-respecting person would allow a child near in this day and age because of how many times kids had accidentally trapped themselves inside.
This wasn’t my kitchen, it might as well have been a set from Leave it to Beaver.
Something was very wrong.
Through the open archway, I could see into the living room with its floor covered in shag carpeting. A line of framed photographs sat on a mantle above the small fireplace. There were baby pictures, families in studio poses with their hands on each other’s shoulders, and even a wedding photo in the center, the bride dressed in a long white gown that seemed achingly familiar. But in all of them, the faces were blurred and overexposed, so it was impossible to know who the people were.
This was all so definitely wrong.
I rushed to the door and ripped it open. The gorgeous view from my kitchen window was no
where to be seen. Outside, the sky was dark and foreboding while strange fog blanketed everything, so thick that it obscured my view of anything else.
Adonis came up behind me as I slammed the door shut. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I wasn’t married, and I didn’t have a child. Maybe those things were still possible for me, but I had always assumed they weren’t.
Even in my dreams.
“This isn’t real.”
His smile was gone, replaced with real concern. “You seem distraught. Is it your time of the month?”
As if the real Adonis would ever ask me that question. Perhaps he was simply another part of the illusion. “You look like Dick Van Dyke. I have to be dreaming.”
A strange expression twisted his features as Adonis took a step back. His mind was fighting this strange reality, but my words weren’t quite enough. “I think I should call the doctor. You’re scaring me.”
“Do you even know the name of that baby in there? Or if it’s a girl or a boy?” I practically shouted the questions, even as I reminded myself that yelling at him wouldn’t solve anything. “Because I don’t. Think about it. Nothing about what is happening right now makes any sense. You walked in carrying that briefcase that I bet will be empty if we open it. Tell me what you even do for a living.”
His mouth opened and then closed again as his brow furrowed. “I’m not sure.”
“You don’t know because this isn’t real. Why don’t those pictures over there have any faces in them? Why does this place feel like a 1950s fever dream?” I stepped away from the door and closer to him, gripping his hands. His skin was warm and solid underneath mine, too real for him to simply be an illusion. But I couldn’t say the same about everything else around us. “Please just wake up.”
But he shook his head. “I’m calling the doctor. You’re clearly hysterical—”
I slapped him across the face, hard enough to make my palm sting. “Adonis Latimer. You were raised by California hippies. Even if your wife stayed home while you worked, you wouldn’t expect her to wear pearls and heels all day while she vacuumed. Quit this antifeminist bullshit and wake up!”
Tempted by Darkness Page 15