Chapter 20 Persephone
Persephone
Iraised my eyebrows as Hades stood before me, his words reverberating around my fuzzy brain.
“I'll show you mine and you show me yours?” I said, staring at him. He was so beautiful. The strong lines of his jaw, his sharp cheekbones and angular nose, the dark stubble - it was like he had been designed with as much 'man' as was available from the ingredients.
“Yes. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.” A wicked smile was pulling at his lips and his silver eyes were dark.
“Seriously? Like we're teenagers?”
“Yes. And I guarantee I'll ruin any memory you have of anything you saw as a teenager. Or since.” I gulped. I didn't doubt it.
I wasn't exactly shy when it came to be being nude, but he was Hades, King of the Underworld. Did one just strip casually in front of an all-powerful god?
But my word, did I want to see him without those jeans on.
The thought had my hands moving before I could stop them, and I slowly drew the thin straps of my camisole off my shoulders. Without them to hold the top up, it slid down to my hips, catching on the little shorts and leaving my breasts and stomach completely exposed.
I kept my eyes on his, drinking in his change in expression as his eyes raked over me. My nipples hardened as desire pulsed through my body. The all-powerful god wanted me, and it couldn't be more obvious. Or confidence-inducing.
I let a coy smile dance over my lips as I ran my fingers inside the waistband of my shorts, delighting in how his breath quickened.
“I think it's your turn to lose a shirt,” I breathed.
His black shirt dissolved instantly, the hard planes of his abs utterly perfect, his huge shoulders and the V of his stomach prompting shivers of pleasure through me.
Please don't drool, please don't drool, I chanted drunkenly in my head as I pictured those divine arms lifting me, my legs wrapping around his solid waist.
I inched the shorts down.
His hand moved to the top button of his dark jeans.
Yes. Yes. Unbutton the jeans.
I wiggled my hips, easing the shorts down further. He deftly undid the first button, then the next. I realized with a small moan that he wasn't wearing underwear. Another couple of buttons, and I would see him.
My hands began to shake as I moved one side of the shorts down another inch.
A resounding crash from outside my room snapped both our attentions to the bedroom door, my lust and booze addled brain protesting wildly at the sudden interruption. But before I could even consider what to do next, Hades had shifted into something unrecognizable.
He grew in size, muscles bulging, electric blue light glowing from him, and I saw his face, twisted with unbridled fury before he whirled around.
My bedroom door blew apart as he raised his arms, black smoke shooting from him in curling tendrils and snaking through the open door.
“You won't escape me this time,” he hissed, and his voice was like knives slicing through flesh. Who was out there?
A distant screaming began to grow louder in my ears, and the tang of blood crept into my nostrils as the temperature plummeted.
No, I could stop his power affecting me, I thought as I hoisted my top back up. I dug deep inside me, hunting for my power, trying to drag it up to the surface.
Vines slowly emerged from my palms as Hades stalked to the door, following after his streams of smoke. The vines were gold, and they only grew about ten inches, but a light seemed to emanate from them, and the blood and the screams died away.
“Well done, vines,” I muttered, and hurried after Hades.
He had stopped in the doorway, and was standing frozen, still pulsing with blue light and dark smoke. I ducked under his arm and stepped out into the corridor.
There, against the rocky wall, was a huge broken mirror. I frowned as I looked into it. I couldn't see Hades behind me. Just my own reflection, skin flushed and silky nightwear disheveled, the image distorted by the many cracks.
“What—” I started to ask, but my words caught in my throat.
I was bleeding. Scarlet red blood was seeping from my reflection’s eyes.
Nausea rose in my gut and my hands flew to my face, my vines brushing my cheeks as I touched them. I looked down at my fingers. There was nothing. But... When I looked back at my reflection it wasn't just my eyes that were bleeding.
Blood poured from me, my skin cracking like the glass in front of me, the thick ooze gushing onto the floor.
Words began to appear across the mirror. “You will drown in the river of blood you created.”
I stumbled backwards, starting when I hit something ice cold and solid. I whirled, tearing my eyes from the hideous mirror and staring up into Hades’ furious eyes.
He was almost harder to look at than the mirror was. His beautiful features were torn and ragged, his eyes filled with black fire, the silver gone completely.
Pure fury poured from him, and I could see the shapes of bodies forming in the blue light around him. Screams crept back into my ears, primal fear trickling through my whole body and forcing me to step back from him.
His rage-fueled power this close up was too strong for my defenses.
“I will destroy whomever is doing this,” he snarled. “Death is too good for them. They will burn for all eternity.”
“You're scaring me, Hades,” I said, trying to keep the growing terror from my voice. He fixed his eyes on mine, and they were almost black now.
He gripped me by my shoulders, lifting me bodily off my feet and turned, depositing me back in my room. His touch was ice cold and visions of corpses littering the ground flew through my head until he let go.
“I must go,” he said, his voice hard as stone. With a flash he was gone, my bedroom door shimmering back into existence.
I stared at it, my whole body shuddering as my vines vanished. Bile burned hot and acidic in my throat, the cocktails now seeming like a very bad idea. I held my hand up to the wood of the door, feeling its sturdiness. Was the mirror still there, on the other side?
“I hope he gets the bastards. You know, if he didn't keep blocking me out I might have been able to help,” said Skop. His voice was hard too. Warmth was beginning to seep back over me now, and I dropped my hand, taking a step away from the door. The shaking was easing.
“Did you see the mirror?” I asked quietly.
“No. What happened?”
I told the kobaloi what I had seen in the glass, as I poured myself some water and sat down on my bed.
“Who is doing this?”
“Hades will find out,” Skop said reassuringly, jumping up beside me.
“What if I deserve it?” I asked, voicing the question I was finding so hard to bury deep enough to ignore. “What if I did cause rivers of blood?”
“You were born twenty-six years ago, in New York. You didn't do anything,” he said gently.
I let his words comfort me. He was right. Whatever old Persephone did, I didn't know if I would be capable of the same.
Old Persephone had loved Hades. And if I had forgotten it, tonight had reminded me - the King of the Underworld had a monster inside him.
I stayed there on my bed, alert and on edge, for more than an hour before I heard from Hades. My whirring mind was racing through morbid ideas of what I might have done in my previous life, when a tentative voice sounded inside my head.
“Persephone?”
“Hades!”
“I'm sorry, but they got away this time.” I felt my shoulders droop with disappointment. “I want you to stay in your room until Hecate comes for you tomorrow. And no more conservatory or training room visits alone.”
His steely voice gave no room for argument, and although I knew what he said made sense, I bristled at the idea of not being able to visit the conservatory by myself.
“What about Skop?” I asked. There was a long pause.
“When Dionysus volunteered the sprite as a guard, I don't believe he actually thought you would need defending from any threats. Skoptolis is not equipped to deal with this. He can stay with you, of course, but when I say alone, I mean without Hecate, a member of my guard, or me.”
I let out a long breath.
“OK. Do you think whoever is doing this will try to hurt me?” He didn't answer, and a little trickle of fear coiled through my chest. “Fine. I'll add this to the list of things I need to survive,” I said, trying to mask the fear with my casual words, and failing.
“The next Trial is an intelligence test. You'll do great. But I would like to apologize in advance.”
“For what?”
“I strongly suspect you're going to see some of the worst the Underworld has to offer tomorrow.” The tension in his voice made me realize how hard that must be for him. His own realm was going to be used against me.
“I have my magic back. Have you seen those black vines? I'll kick the ass of anything your crappy Virgo throws at me,” I announced as loftily as I could. He didn't laugh, but when he next spoke his voice was soft.
“I don't doubt it, Beautiful.”
My forced bravado deserted me once I was lying in bed though, trying and failing to sleep. Skop's reassuring presence at my feet helped, but not enough to dispel the disappointment that Hades hadn't caught the culprit, or the constant wondering about whether I deserved the awful gifts.
Eventually exhaustion pulled me into an uneasy sleep, and I tossed and turned until I heard the faint sound of birdsong. Slowly, it got louder, and I stepped gratefully out of the darkness of my sleep-induced imagination into the Atlas garden.
“Do you know who is sending me these messages?” I asked almost immediately, inhaling the earthy scent of the stunning garden gratefully.
“I do not. But I do know that you should not rely on Hades to fix this for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are gaining your power back, Little Goddess. One more seed and you will be able to deal with them yourself.”
I knelt and ran my hand through moist soil, the feeling of it on my skin like home.
“But I don't know who it is or how to find them, or even why they are doing it. They say I am a murderer.”
“You have been wrongly blamed for their losses. Regain your memories, and oust the true villain. That is the only way you shall find freedom from this.”
“You said I would know where the river Lethe was when I got more power back. But I don't.”
“Then you must win more seeds, and gain more power.”
I nodded. Maybe it was time to eat the last seed.