Chapter 29 Hades
Hades
The moment we cross the perimeter, my power dies.
Not fades. Not weakens.
Dies.
Just like it did when the cultists descended upon the penthouse.
One second I'm pulling shadows around myself like armor, preparing for the fight ahead. The next, there's nothing. Just the cold, terrible emptiness of mortality.
"Looks like Demeter has this place warded." Poseidon stumbles beside me. "I've got nothing."
"My magic is also gone." Hecate's voice is tight with barely controlled panic.
"We knew to expect this," I remind her.
Athena flexes her fingers. "Maybe it's a device. If we find it, we can destroy it."
"That would be the best option," Hecate mutters.
I focus on Hermes. "You said fortified. You didn't say impenetrable."
"I told you they've gathered immense military might."
Gunfire erupts from the darkness.
"Fuck!" Poseidon hits the deck. "Looks like they know we're here."
"Fan out," Athena orders, turning into the general she'd been during ancient times. "We take out as many as possible."
We scatter, diving behind the rocky outcroppings that dot the desert landscape. Without our powers, we're as vulnerable as any mortal. More vulnerable, maybe, because we're not used to fragility.
A bullet whizzes past my head, so close I feel the displacement of air.
"Fuck," I mutter.
"How many?" Athena shouts from behind a boulder.
I risk a glance around the edge of my cover.
Dozens.
Cultists pour from the temple compound like ants from a disturbed nest. White robes. Automatic weapons. Military formation.
"Too many," I call back. "We were way off on the numbers." I curse Thanatos. He should be here, but I called him to the Underworld, just in case I perished. He would need to be prepared for that.
"No shit." Poseidon fires back with a gun he must have packed, picking off cultists with surprising accuracy. "What's the plan?"
The plan was to get to Ophelia and Zeus before they could fuck. I didn't have specifics on how.
"We get to that temple."
Poseidon groans.
"We'll die before we reach the door," Hecate points out.
"Then we die." I step out from cover, shadows rising around me on instinct before I remember I've got nothing. I'm simply flesh, bone, and desperation. "But I'm getting to Ophelia if I need to take every single one of these assholes with me."
I don't make it ten feet before they're on us.
Cultists swarm from every direction. I fight with fists and fury, taking down two before a rifle butt catches me in the ribs. Pain explodes through my chest. I don't allow it to stop me for more than a moment.
I reach out, grab the gun, and yank it from the man, using the momentum to take him down.
Another blow lands across my forearm, and I go down hard.
Around me, the others start to fall. Hecate fights like a demon with a knife she pulled from somewhere, but is overpowered by several cultists at once.
Athena uses strategy and precision even without her divine gifts, faring well until one of the men cracks her with the butt of his gun.
Poseidon laughs like a madman as he trades blows with cultists twice his size.
Blood stains his teeth, and I can tell he's getting tired.
Hermes tries to run.
They shoot him in the leg.
Good. Fucker.
He goes down screaming, and I feel a cold satisfaction. He deserves worse.
I try to move forward, but I'm dazed from the blow, and as multiple hands grab at me, I feel myself being taken down. My hands are pulled behind my back, and I'm zip-tied.
Looking around, I realize I'm not the only one. Everyone is on their knees, bound. But from what I can see, everyone is still alive.
They aren't killing us.
Interesting.
"Move." A cultist shoves me forward, and I stumble over the uneven ground.
They herd us toward the temple like cattle. All here. All captured. All mortal-weak and bleeding from the brief, brutal fight.
The temple looms ahead, ancient stone incongruous against the modern desert compound surrounding it. Torchlight flickers through the open doorway. Inside, I can hear voices.
"Hell of a plan," Poseidon quips. He groans as a cultist hits him.
I smirk. It isn't how I planned it, but we're in the temple. Exactly where I want to be.
They drag us through, and I see her.
Ophelia.
She's on the floor near the altar, clothes disheveled, jeans barely fastened. Her face is streaked with tears and blood. Her hair is a mess. The pomegranate necklace I gave her is missing, and her neck is red with love bites and suction marks.
Zeus stands a few feet away, equally disheveled, his shirt torn and hanging open. Scratch marks cross his face and chest.
He looks ill.
And I immediately know what occurred.
Rage explodes through me, white-hot and absolute. I lunge for Zeus, zip-ties be damned, ready to tear his throat out with my teeth if I have to—
A cultist slams the butt of his rifle into my kidney, and I go down gasping, the pain nearly blinding.
"Hades." Ophelia's voice cuts through the haze. "You came." Tears stream faster down her face. She's sobbing, shaking, body curled inward, trying to hold the tatters of her clothing against herself.
I want nothing more than to go to her and take her in my arms and promise to never let her go.
"I'll always come for you."
"How touching." Demeter steps into view, and I finally see her restored form. Young. Beautiful. Radiant with stolen power. And yet she is not whole. Her skin is flaking in places. Gray streaks run through her hair, and age spots show at her chest.
She walks toward us, snickering. "The God of Death, reduced to mortal weakness. How the mighty have fallen."
"Let her go." I force myself to my knees, ignoring the cultists who move to shove me back down. "This is between us, Demeter. It's always been between us. Let Ophelia go."
"Ophelia." Demeter laughs, the sound sharp and cruel. "Is that what you're calling her? This poor imitation? This shade you and the Fates cobbled together from scraps of my daughter's soul?"
"She's not a shade."
Demeter circles me like a predator. "Persephone was mine. Mine to raise. Mine to love. Mine to protect. She should have been with me always: not just six months of the year while you hoarded her in your dark kingdom."
"That was the arrangement—"
"The arrangement was theft!" Demeter's voice rises, power crackling around her. Still divine while the rest of us flounder in mortality. "You stole my daughter!"
"I loved her. I love her." The words come out raw.
Demeter's hand cracks across my face.
Stars explode across my vision. I taste blood.
"You know nothing." Her voice shakes with rage. "You took everything from me. And now—" She gestures at Ophelia. "You have the audacity to create this mockery. This replacement. As if my daughter could be replicated like some cheap trinket."
Ophelia is crying, and I hate that she has to hear this.
"She's not a replacement." I turn my head to look at Ophelia. "She is everything she was always meant to be."
"No." Demeter moves toward Ophelia. "She's nothing but a vessel. She'll bring me back, and then I'll bring my Persephone home."
"That's not how reincarnation works," Zeus says.
His voice is rough, and he won't meet my eyes.
Good. He shouldn't. "Demeter, listen to me.
The gods who faded are gone. I've tried: you have no idea how many times I've tried to bring them back.
Apollo. Artemis. All of them. But once divine essence disperses, it's over.
There's no gathering it back. No resurrection. "
"You're wrong." Demeter pulls something from her robes: a ceremonial knife, its blade black as obsidian and carved with symbols that hurt to look at. "You have no idea why they faded. Why we lost our power. But I know. I've spent two thousand years learning the truth."
"Demeter—" Athena starts. "Times have changed. You spent your time as a shade—"
"You know nothing!" Demeter's eyes are wild, fanatical. "Life and death, mother and daughter, bound together through divine ritual. When Hades murdered me, he broke the cycle."
"You're insane," Poseidon says flatly. "The fade had nothing to do with that."
"Am I?" Demeter smiles. "Then watch. Watch as I steal back my divine power. Watch as I anchor myself permanently to this world." She turns the knife over in her hands, torchlight glinting off the black blade. "I'm tired of your doubts. Tired of your limitations. Tired of gods who lack vision."
She looks at me.
"Most of all," she says softly, "I'm tired of you."
The knife moves faster than I can track.
One moment she's standing three feet away.
The next, the blade is buried in my chest.
Not mortal pain. Worse. Divine pain. The kind that reaches past flesh and bone to the very essence of what I am. It reaches into the soul I sometimes wonder if I even possess.
The blade infects me, poisoning what little power I have left, attaching to every last scrap of it and tearing it free. I scream in agony. Shadows pour from the wound, spreading across the floor like spilled ink.
"No!" Ophelia's voice, distant through the roaring in my ears. "No, no, no—"
I press my hands to the wound, but I can't stem the shadows pouring out of my body. They're pulling from somewhere deep inside, from the core of my divine essence, from the part of me that is Death itself.
"Hades!" Ophelia is beside me. I don't know how she got free, don't know if anyone tried to stop her. She presses her hands against mine, trying to staunch the flow of magic leaking from me.
Her green eyes are filled with tears. I reach up to cup her face. "Please, stay with me. Please—"
I try to speak, to reassure her, but I can't.
It's like my essence is being subsumed.
I am fading, and I can't stop it.
My shadows spiral out of control, responding to my dying essence. They fill the temple, destroying everything they touch. Stone cracks. Torches extinguish. Cultists scream and scatter.
Too much power. Too much death magic contained in mortal flesh. It's tearing itself free, taking me with it.
Again I try to speak. Try to tell Ophelia that I love her. That she needs to run, save herself from this.
The words don't come. I watch in something like astonishment as the hand cupping her cheek starts to dissolve into nothingness.
The shadows consume me from the inside out, and I feel my physical body breaking down. Turning to ash. Returning to the darkness I've ruled for millennia.
"No!" Ophelia's scream tears through the chaos. "You can't leave me! Hades, please—"
But I'm already gone.
The last thing I see is her face.
The last thing I feel is her hands on my chest.
The last thing I think is—
I'm sorry.
Then nothing.
Darkness.
Not the comfortable darkness of my realm.
The absolute darkness of ending.
I fade.
And then I smell it: lilies. Funeral flowers.