I looked around me for something with which to test my theory. I reached for a tiny fragment of black rock lying off to the side, and I tossed it directly onto the smoothest section of the path.
The effect was immediate.
Snakes the size of my forearm tore through holes I’d not seen before. Their fangs were sharply curved sickles and leaked a clear fluid. I bit my tongue to keep from yelping. I bloody hated snakes.
I watched as they scrambled around the bit of rock, flicking at it with their tail, testing it with their bright pink tongues, before surmising it was not food after all. The writhing mass began to slink off, burrowing deep into the holes. The sand covered up the openings, and magically, the markings of their passage vanished.
“Balls,” I muttered.
I glanced at my flute. Any creature big or small was mine to command so long as I played. The problem was that there was at least a half-mile distance between me and safety. While I could hold my breath for five or six minutes, I’d never once attempted to hold it that long while also being forced to march along a death trail.
Those damned reptiles had come out in such massive numbers that I knew I couldn’t afford to break my concentration or release my breath, not even once. Walking this path would take me at least a dozen minutes, maybe more. Running would take me five at minimum, which meant there’d be zero room for error.
“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. Am I really about to do this?” I asked myself even as I began to roll my neck from side to side to give it a good crack. Lleweyn, being part wolf, had developed a ritual he went through any time he ran. First, he’d crack his neck, as I did. Then, he’d roll his shoulders, so I rolled mine. Next, he’d take three deep breaths, not one less or more. So I took three breaths, feeling the nerves in my stomach start to ease a very little. Last, he’d twist from one side to the other until his spine gave one good craaack, so I did the same. I’d always teased him for his silly quirks, but he’d always been able to endure more terrain than I had.
Shaking out my limbs one last time to get the blood flowing, I shook my head. “You’re an arsehole, Rayale. A stupid, bloody arsehole.”
But there was no going back. My presence in the Underworld was already known. Hades had sensed me from the very moment I’d crossed the threshold from the land of the living to that of the dead. He was testing my mettle, and by damn, I wasn’t losing this race. Lleweyn had always told me my pride would one day be my downfall. Damn bastard had been right.
Wetting my lips, I stuck the reed into my sand-coated mouth. I was going to be either a hero or the biggest loser in all the realms.
Squeezing my eyes shut, ignoring the nerves that stretched and screamed inside me, telling me I needed to turn back before I became adder feed, I took an infinitesimal step to the very start of the trail, my toe a hair’s breadth away from disaster.
“Gods, I lost my mind the day I fell in love with you, wolf,” I growled. Then I stopped thinking altogether, and with one enormous inhale of breath, I played and ran like my life depended on it because it literally did.
The snakes came out in a churning, writhing ball of hissing death. But the moment they heard my song, they became my prey.
I focused on the song and moving carefully around any potential pitfalls, skirting obstacles I’d not seen from my earlier vantage point, and hopping over any impediment that could slow me down. I felt my lungs start to struggle just two minutes in, and I pushed myself harder and harder, fighting the urge to give in to the panic.
Sweat was now running in waves down my spine and chest as I heard the mass of death growing larger and larger behind me. I was halfway through when I began to see black spots dancing in my vision.
Oh gods, oh gods, I chanted mentally as I weaved a tapestry of sound that was my only means of salvation.
With each step I took, my lungs ached more and more fiercely. As the blackness filled my mind, I began to remember events I’d shoved into the darkest corner of my heart because they’d been too painful, events from when I’d been trapped in time before Ty and Petra had rescued me.
Trees whipping past me, their blossoming branches reaching out toward me like a lover’s hands as I race in and around them, the wolf hot on my heels.
My heart racing and my lungs burning with the constant need to prove my mettle to him, prove I am just as fierce as any female shifter, that in all ways, I am better.
Watching his sleek, white-furred body race past me like a ghost, streaking through my peripheral vision.
Pushing and pushing myself harder and harder each time. Always failing. Always coming in just ten steps behind. Then five. Four. Three. Until one day I finally, finally make it to the finish line first.
Bending over, heaving for oxygen, dizzy and delirious with victory.
That had been the first day he’d grabbed me, the first day he’d run his nose through my hair and whispered in a heated drawl, “Ye are fiercer than any female I’ve ever known before, Rayale.”
That’d been the day I’d first known just how much I loved him…
I blinked, eyes watering. Yanked back to the present, I realized I was very nearly out of oxygen. My music wavered, and the snakes started to hiss and spit. Globs of clear fluid struck the path before me, and the dirt sizzled as the acid in the fluid ate through the dust at my feet.
I was only a few feet away from the riverbank.
But a world that was normally full of color was nothing but a pinprick of blue encircled by a swath of black.
My lungs screamed in protest, begging me to take a breath.
I wouldn’t look back. I would not look back.
I looked back.
The ball of snakes had become a rolling tower of death, heads aimed at my back, mouths open, fangs glistening.
“Ayeee!” I screamed, forced to take the desperately needed breath that, unfortunately, cut off the music.
The snakes moved like lightning, striking out as one. I fell and rolled, feeling the very breath of them rush over me. I was flat on my back, banged up from sharp rocks that’d cut into my cheeks, staring up at the darkness beyond, too exhausted to do anything other than await death’s kiss.
My stomach heaved, my body ached, and my head pounded from a lack of oxygen. Gasping frantically, I rolled my neck to the side and saw… nothing.
I frowned and forced myself to a sitting position, staring agog at the smooth trail. They were gone. All of them. Not even a trace of them remained.
And then I realized why—I’d made it through. I sat not on the dust of the trail, but on smooth beach stones, the gentle lapping of water close behind me.
I blinked, and then the stupidest thing happened—my eyes leaked in great big blinding drops. Sniffing, I swiped at my nose. I hated showing weakness. I told myself it was nothing more than adrenaline runoff, but deep in my heart, I knew what it really was.
Something I had absolutely no time for.
With a growl, I scrubbed at my face with my wrists.
“Rayale Pyper.”
I gasped at the deep, hollow-sounding voice. Rolling on my hips, I stared up at the face of death. A skull stared back at me through hollow black eye sockets. But there were markings on his face, gorgeous golden scrollwork that made the macabre halfway pretty.
He wore a black robe that trailed along the rocky bank like slowly crawling fog, moving and undulating with a mind of its own. There was no breeze, and yet, apart from his skeletal structure, everything else on him floated.
I frowned. “And you are?”
“I am Charon, the ferryman of the deceased,” he said with a voice that caused my knees to tremble and me to shiver.
A surge of adrenaline propelled me to my feet, knees still knocking unsteadily. “I’m… I’m not dead.”
I’d not been bitten, though I’d come far too close for comfort. There was no way I was dead, and I’d fight like a hellcat in heat to prove it too.
His mandible dropped into what I hoped was a smile, exposing perfect
ly shaped and immaculate white teeth. “No, indeed you are not.”
When he spoke, there was a strange susurrus, reminding me of dead leaves dancing on the ground. I narrowed my eyes.
I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t more freaked out about talking to a dead man. Maybe I was in shock. Or maybe my sojourn in time had dulled my ability to go into full-on freak-out anymore. A thousand years in suspended animation did that to a person, I guessed.
“Hades awaits you,” he said and raised his bony arm, pointing toward the rowboat—the very boat I couldn’t wait to reach just a couple of minutes ago, but that I recalled had very serious holes and looked nowhere near seaworthy. I knew little of the Underworld’s rules, but I knew that for a living person to touch the waters of the dead was definitely not a good thing.
Charon chuckled, and the sound chilled me to the marrow of my bones. Yep, I was a little freaked out after all. So maybe it was a delayed reaction with me.
He walked toward the boat, stepping into it with more grace than I’d expected from a skeleton. Then he turned and stared at me as the waves rocked the ship up and down. He said nothing to me, but I knew he was waiting for me to make up my mind.
“You sure that thing won’t sink?”
He snorted. “Only one way to find out, Enchantress.”
My brows rose, and I wondered if he’d seen my mad dash across the lava field. I stared over my shoulder, but there was nothing waiting back there for me. No home. No friends. No Lleweyn.
The only choice I had was to keep going.
So I turned, straightened my shoulders, and got into the dead man’s boat. I wasn’t much for water. When the shore dropped away and I saw nothing but a deep bottomless pool of dead floating bodies, I regretted my decision. I gripped tight to the edge of the boat, praying to the gods that this wasn’t how it would end for me.
Charon said nothing as he paddled us into even deeper waters, only whistled a haunting tune that echoed hollowly through the vast cavernous waterway. Somehow the holey boat did not sink, but it dipped plenty, and there was a time or two when the water crept over its edge, forcing me to lift my legs, cringe, and pray that the boat held together just long enough for me to make it to Hades.
“You know the stories, then,” Charon said steadily, never looking down at me as he kept to his steady rowing pace, not one bit winded by the exertion, but then, he was dead and didn’t have lungs. So could he even get tired?
Pretty sure the answer to that was “no.”
I gulped, keeping myself dead center on my seat, even propping my legs on a small wooden plank before me so that I would steer clear of any accidental droplets from the floor of the boat.
“Only a little,” I said softly. “Enough to know not to touch the water, no matter how tempting it might be.”
He nodded.
I heard a thud off in the distance, low and heavy and echoing with the strains of great power. My blood ran cold through my veins, and I glanced over my shoulder. But I saw nothing in the cave around us other than darkness. I wrinkled my nose. The sooner I left this place, the better.
“This is Acheron, the river of pain, where the dead float to meet my master to have their souls weighed,” Charon said, pulling me back from my visions of great destruction bearing down on me and eating me in one fell swoop. Lleweyn was so going to pay for all the drama he’d put me through. Gods, if I didn’t love him so much, I’d kill him myself.
“Sounds like a jolly good time.”
Charon chuckled and continued his rowing.
My words were punctuated by a deep, echoing wail, like that of a thousand souls screaming out as one in agony. And no, it hadn’t been me that had done it.
I wrinkled my nose and tried not to think about the suffering creatures floating just beneath me. I had my own problems.
Charon resumed his strange whistling song, and soon I found myself settling into a bizarrely comfortable rhythm. I avoided the water even as I watched the swirls of glowing blue souls reach out their hands to the ferryman in desperate supplication.
Maybe it was cold, but I just didn’t care what their issues were. I had no more room in me to add someone else’s burden. One more bit of drama, and I might honestly crack. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to pull this rescue off. Ever since I’d been rescued from time, I felt like I’d physically returned, but an emotional or spiritual part of me remained frozen and sealed off. It was a hard emotion to explain, and even harder to understand. But I felt like a part of me had become as cold and unyielding as the marble that still encased Lleweyn’s form.
I sighed heavily. What would Hades want from me? How was I supposed to enter the ley line to retrieve Ewan and Violet? I had no bloody idea. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I maybe should have thought through this plan further, but then again, Lleweyn’s time was running out, and I had been known to talk a strategy to death if given the opportunity.
I’d done the only thing I could do, and yet I felt sick to my stomach with nerves. I was afraid that all of this effort might prove to be for naught, and that, in the end, I would not be able to convince Ewan and his wife to make the right choices because I had no damned idea what the right choices even were. How the bloody hell was I supposed to be the hero? Who was I to think I could save anyone when I barely had the energy to help myself from day to day?
I glowered, so focused on my own personal demons that it took me a second to realize something strange was happening in the water beneath me.
The currents had frozen. As in, they weren’t moving at all. And there were no souls here. The water was a pure, crisp blue and so unblemished that it was like arctic water. But it sparkled with a soft, delicate, twinkling sheen.
I cocked my head even as my flesh began to tingle. A great rush of incredible power was emanating up from within the very depths itself. The thudding I’d heard earlier was nearer to us now. The booms now sounded like footsteps. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Four steps, a short pause and then… Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
I looked up and down, whipping my head back and forth between the two. The sparkle in the water was growing denser, crisper, forming a shape. The booms were growing louder and louder still.
“Charon, what is—”
“Keep watching, Enchantress,” he said in a reverential whisper. “Just keep your eyes upon the waves.”
“But there are no waves,” I murmured, deciding just to look down as he’d told me to.
He chuckled, as if to say, “Just wait.”
A shape took form and rushed out of the water like a shooting geyser. I screamed and curled in on myself for the second time that day, knowing that I stared down death should even a drop of water touch me.
But it didn’t. Every drop missed me. Water swung in a wide, massive spray all around me, landing all over Charon but missing me.
Looking up, I saw a woman within the geyser. She was crystalline clear, but her features were delicate and breathtaking.
“Calypso, ancient goddess of olde,” Charon called out with worshipful diffidence. “Be ye welcome here.”
Shocked, I felt my jaw go slack and my heart rattle in its cage. I knew all about Calypso—how she’d gone completely mad after the curse had been flung, how she’d attempted to murder her own granddaughter and forgotten her own husband, how she’d hidden within her waters, lost to all.
The Fairy Council was convinced that if the gods could be reached and made to remember their lives before the curse, that the curse could finally be broken and that all the wrongs would eventually be set to rights with the might of their power behind the effort.
But Hades had withdrawn into his dark, brooding shell, and no one knew if he remembered the previous timeline at all. Aphrodite hadn’t been heard from since the curse was flung. And Calypso, it was said, had not only forgotten her family, but had forgotten herself. She’d reverted to her elemental form, nothing but water, seemingly unreachable to all.
And yet now… now she stood before me as a strange
and beautiful woman. Did that mean she was remembering? Did that mean that maybe… maybe the nightmare could finally end?
Hope burned like a small flame in my chest. If she remembered, then maybe she could help me. Maybe she could fix the broken timeline and bring Lleweyn back to me. Maybe the nightmare that was the curse could all be over.
The woman of glass turned her head toward Charon and gave the merest of nods. Then I felt her eyes turn on me, felt them burn right through me even though there was no color in them at all. The mass of her hair undulated like tentacles around her alien yet beautiful face.
“You are not dead,” she stated simply.
Stunned by her lead in, I stared at her dumbly, waiting for her to finish the thought. After several tense seconds, I realized that was all she had to say.
“Um.” I swallowed hard. “Should I be?”
Her eyes narrowed to sharp slits, and the waters beneath her began to froth with her seeming displeasure.
My lips tugged into a tight frown. It would be just my luck to make it all this way and then get killed by a pissy, tantrum-throwing water spout.
The water beneath her started to steam, and then I realized that she was reading my thoughts. I probably shouldn’t have called her a water spout. I grinned crookedly and waggled my fingers at her. Gods, I was so dead.
“Why are you here?” she snapped, and I almost wilted in my seat. But I wasn’t dead, so that was a good start.
I pursed my lips. My business was with Hades, and so far as Calypso remembered after the curse, she was no longer with him, which meant I wasn’t sure whether I should say anything or not. The last thing I needed was to be derailed.
A spear of water as thick as my forearm suddenly formed in her hand and was just as suddenly aimed right at my heart. I gulped.
“Here on business. Want to speak to the King, oh magnanimous fishy one.”
Charon coughed, and I grinned broadly. I was terrible with authority and always had been.