Hades shrugged, but acted like he was expecting that question. I am not in my true form, he answered.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
It means that I am simply a projection of myself. My true self lies buried in a canyon deep within the bosom of this planet. It is surrounded by impenetrable magma and lava rock. I am sleeping the thousand-year sleep.
“Then how did you manage to appear here right now?” I inquired.
You called to me and my subconscious mind replied.
“What do you mean, I called to you?” I asked, eyeing him narrowly. “I have no recollection of praying to Hades for help or guidance.”
No, your subconscious mind alerted me. And my subconscious mind is that which you see and hear now.
“I don’t know what to make of all of this,” I said honestly.
Hades sighed, sounding almost sad before he held out his hand. The ghostly skin began fading, exposing a black skeleton beneath. A light formed in his palm, a reddish-orange bulb that glowed like a wick of fire.
Accept this, he said. It will heal you and restore your strength.
The bulb drifted up and toward me, entering my chest with a flare of white fire, while a shock like lightning and cold mercury struck me. Boiling tar and lava filled my veins until I was burning right down to my soul—Hades’s unconditional blessing, his green light, his patronage. His power flowed inside me now.
Then the apparition vanished. I took a deep breath as I crept silently into the hallway.
The lights were dim and the floor was cold—beige marble veined in pink and gold. On the paneled walls of dark wood hung a series of small seascapes and portraits, as well as lanterns that twinkled like stars. And in case you missed it, I still didn’t have any clothes to replace the shirt and pants Meg shredded to pieces with her teeth. So I was very naked and cold.
Actually, I was fucking freezing.
Interesting, said Hades, appearing again in a silent swirl of smoke beside me—either he was incapable of actually walking, or he just liked to show off. Dematerialization was not an idle spell, even for creatures that inherently possessed magic.
What? I growled in thought, trying not to draw attention to my effort at escaping.
I didn’t know that.
Know what?
That it shrinks when it gets cold. Fascinating …
Shut up, I replied mentally as I paused outside the first closed door I came across. Putting my ear up to it, I listened for any sounds on the other side.
What are you doing? Hades inquired.
I’m trying to locate Dulcie.
That woman is not your concern.
Yes. She is, I said, my temper flaring. As a matter of fact, she’s my number one concern.
I should be your only concern, he started.
Well, you’re not. Neither you nor your fucking crusade, I finished after searching for the right word. I’m not leaving without her.
Yes, you are.
The hell I am! I protested furiously. You are not my god. Do you understand that? You allowed Meg to … and Dulcie to … I made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. You are nothing! I feel zero obligation to help you.
Hades chuckled, like he hadn’t even heard me. You’re naked, unarmed, and hilariously outnumbered. What exactly is your plan? He paused for a moment. And shall I remind you that as soon as this woman, Dulcie, sees you outside of your prison, she will simply alert the others? She is not in her right frame of mind.
My plan is to kill Meg, I answered loudly. If Meg put Dulcie under some kind of trance, killing Meg would surely break it to pieces. Of course, that kind of instantaneous unraveling wouldn’t be exactly kind to Dulcie’s mind, but she’d already survived much worse.
Your plan is foolhardy, Hades answered. It is ill-conceived. In your current state, you are incapable of destroying Meg. All you will manage to do is get captured, yet again, and become her prisoner.
I’m not leaving without …
You will have your chance, Hades interrupted, nearly spitting his reply at me. You will have the opportunity to save your lover and destroy her keeper. But now is not the time.
Hades took a deep breath—his shoulders rose and fell to the sound of an inhale. He performed it with perfect mimicry of the action, even though he had no lungs. Now you must serve a very different errand.
What errand would that be?
You must go to the Mountain in the Deep, he said, to the Shadow Places. From there, you will call your brethren together and feast on the bounty located in the heart of the mountain. Prepare yourselves for war with the Abyss—
I don’t take my orders from you, I said, turning on him and getting right in his face. Hades didn’t flinch. I don’t care what you are or what you think you’re here for, my job is to save Dulcie. Yours is to stay out of my way.
Hades inclined his head and sighed. I grow weary now and must return to my body. I will revisit you when you have escaped … that is, assuming you survive your brief detour.
Just fucking go then, I spat, and he disappeared in a flash of black smoke.
Good fucking riddance, I thought, turning my ears to the swirl of sounds now coming from downstairs. Distant rumbling, clinking, and the slither-and-slink of dryad roots and draconian tails—they indicated a substantial crowd.
Fine. I ran the gauntlet through fiercer fires for Dulcie before.
I sighed, taking a step forward, and the air went cold. It seemed to be trembling with energy, like tangible static.
Shit.
Maybe I stepped on something. Or maybe they heard me cursing. Hell, maybe they could smell me; but half a second later, I knew I wasn’t alone. Two vampires emerged from the shadows on the walls, manic grins on both of their faces. They were males, and hysterically thin and old, radiating unholy power. Dark suits and bald heads with rubies for eyes. Emaciated, as though their skin was stretched tautly over sharp bones, I realized they were not vampires, but thralls. Those were half-souls, indentured for their lives to menial tasks like guard duty. Inhuman, sociopathic, and very unfriendly.
The thralls exchanged excited looks, crouching before they pounced.
I didn’t know what I was even expecting them to do. Thralls, generally speaking, are tall, lanky, skeletal creatures that reeked of death. Their odor followed them like a smoky halo, and imbued them with a general sense of foreboding. They possessed a little power that was usually confined to liquified shadows and, occasionally, a small bout of fire. It depended largely on the experience of the necromancer conjuring them. In short, they were about as threatening to me as angry finger puppets.
So I wasn’t prepared when they suddenly exploded.
They left the ground snarling, their long arms outstretched, and were airborne. The first split himself open from throat to groin, splattering me with congealed blood and black muck. It made a blood-curdling shriek before it slammed hard into the floor, its paper-brittle bones shattering on impact.
The second one’s ruby eyes went wide, and suddenly, it also split in two pieces—a torso and two legs, and each chunk began flying in the opposite direction. The legs hit me full force, while the torso sailed over my head. It collided violently with a lamp suspended from the wall. Broken glass rained down on me and I shoved the pair of legs away, scuttling backwards, panting and staring in disbelief.
The thralls were no more than smoking heaps now, blood-smeared black suits, crumpled up on the floor, and the spell binding them here was rapidly leaking into the atmosphere. Then I saw a shadow standing above them. Tall, and remarkably nonplussed, he was clapping all the dust from his hands and wiping the blood from his fingers. He sighed as he shook his head.
Ah, shit. Probably a security guard, summoned when the thralls were destroyed. Meg was, no doubt, on her way, and I couldn’t see how to get around this guy, not if he was that fast.
He stepped over the thralls’ piles of dust and smiled at me, his mouth stretching just enough to expose two sharp canines
. Great.
“Hello,” he said, adjusting a pair of silver cufflinks that needed no adjustment. “Knight, I presume?”
“How do you know my name?” I demanded.
“I see you are quite underdressed for the occasion,” he answered, completely ignoring my question. Steel grey eyes roved over me, along with the suits and the floor. He looked down to a red door at the hall’s end and pressed his lips together as he sighed.
“How do you know me?” I insisted.
“If it’s all the same to you, I think we should delay the formal introductions for the moment in order to fetch Bram. After that, we can make a hasty exit.”
“Bram?” I asked.
“Yes, Bram. Tall, dark, and irritating. He is currently bleeding out at the end of this very hallway. I assume you already know him?” The vampire sighed, clasping his hands together like a businessman on the verge of being late to a dreary meeting. “We should hurry—Bram has perhaps three minutes and thirteen seconds left to live, by my count.” He sounded almost bored.
I frowned at him. Then I stared, no, I gawked, narrowing my eyes warily. “Why aren’t you trying to kill me?”
He cracked his fingers and craned his neck to the left, answering like he hadn’t heard me. “Come, we can talk more once we are free of this wretched place.”
“Why are you pretending to help me?”
The vampire stopped and looked over his shoulder, sighing again. “I am helping you, boy, and that should be the only important factor at this moment. Let me remind you that you are in a house filled with your enemies. And you are also naked and unarmed. The odds are stacked against you at present, my friend.”
“You’re right—I am in a house filled with my enemies. So why should I trust you?”
He huffed impatiently, but I held steadfast so he quickly explained. “Suffice to say, I have my own reasons to prevent Meg from achieving her plans for the Netherworld. And I have reason to believe that you are at least slightly capable of helping me stop her. Now can we please save your colleague and leave?” He motioned to the party going on downstairs. “If I have to listen to another draconian explain the nuances of inter-species coitus, I might hurt something.”
I didn’t answer.
“Will you at least follow me to your friend?” he asked, gesturing to the door at the end of the hall. “If my plan were so nefarious, don’t you think I would have done something by now? I could have picked you up by your hair and thrown you back into your room, perhaps?”
I grimaced uncertainly, suspicion radiating from every pore in my body. He hadn’t done anything yet … That was the word that bothered me: yet. Every instinct inside me was on high alert, but he was right: I was surrounded by enemies and naked and unarmed.
“Fine, do what you will.” He turned around and stalked down the hall, a skeletal shadow with a stilted walk.
I followed. Maybe it was stupid, but I did anyway.
At the end of the hall, he took a key out of his pocket—a small, bronze item, conspicuously belonging to the whole establishment and matching the lanterns to the tee. The importance of which Meg would definitely have noticed as soon as it went missing. Maybe he was banking on the party as a distraction—I could hear the voices from it now, hundreds of them, or at least fifty very loud individuals. The kind of voices that echoed with the stolen magic of their ancestors; not quite a hive mind, and not quite possessed either, but ever so slightly fishy. I could hear the sinister hisses of draconians, along with voices that had shortened tongues, which made their words come out all muddy and flat, and voices full of song, and voices that could only scream wordlessly. They were all conveyed to translators that, in turn, told their hostess how very pleased they all were to be there.
Basically, there was a fuck-ton of ridiculously powerful creatures downstairs, all of whom were probably just as keen to kill me as they were Meg, if not more so. If they were keeping Meg company, it was a fair bet that I’d probably helped put more than half of their kind in jail.
The vampire put the key into the lock—and at that moment, we heard someone with a swift gait and loud heels coming up the stairs.
He sighed as he opened the door. “Inside, then,” he said to me wearily. “I’ll take care of this.”
I blinked. “Inside?” I repeated. “What? With a blood-starved vampire?”
The man raised an eyebrow. “You could stay out here if you prefer.” He looked me up and down with obvious distaste. “However, you’ll have to explain to our guest why you are naked and smeared with the blood of a security thrall … or two.”
He had me there—the last thing we needed was more questions, or worse, an argument. A scream, or anything else that might have drawn Meg back upstairs, or any of her equally unpleasant friends, presented too much of a risk. I nodded as I slipped inside, letting the man close the red door with a soft click—followed by the ca-chunk of a bolt sliding into place. I was immediately on high alert. Had I just foolishly allowed myself to get imprisoned again? Well, if I did, it was nothing Hades couldn’t bust me out of … whenever he chose to revisit me. We hadn’t exactly parted on the best terms.
Outside, I heard the man start a conversation with a draconian woman. She was already clearly drunk and twenty yards past horny. The woman wasn’t Dulcie, thankfully, and not Meg, and, therefore, nobody that might give a damn about what lay behind the conspicuous red door.
Inside? Inside was Bram. And he didn’t look so hot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Knight
Bram was lying on the ground, propped up against the wall, staring blearily out a window through which the sunlight must have been beating throughout the day. His face was covered in blisters, swathed in the crepe-papery red burns of overexposure. Thin, black cords were poking out of his arms and neck, and they coiled around his body. They all terminated in a heavy, white box the size of a filing cabinet, which was whirring and spitting in the corner. His eyes were wide open, but glazed, and as far as I could tell, he was breathing—which was a really bad sign. A quirky side effect of vampirism is the ultimate calcification of the internal organs, meaning that Bram’s lungs had become no more than solid paperweights. If he were pretending to breathe, he was pretty far gone, enough to think he was human again, and that was more than troubling. It put him past the point of being blood-starved and closer to death.
Ah, shit, Bram … I knew better than to feel pity, but damn …
I knelt in front of him, taking the first cord between my fingers and thumb before slowly pulling it out. I pressed hard on the skin with my thumb once the needle was free. Bram’s mouth popped open and he uttered a small moan, but I really doubted he knew I was there.
“Oui, monsssieur … ma … ma cher poisssont …” said the draconian woman. The vampire chuckled, but the noise sounded like it took a lot of effort.
“‘My cherished fish’? My darling, I do believe you are drunk.”
The woman hissed and gagged—a draconian laugh, guttural and unpleasant. “Dassshan’o!”
“Yes, you are,” he said, “exceedingly.”
I pulled out the second needle, and the third before Bram twitched to the left, like he was trying to get away from me. Maybe he thought I was a bug or something disturbing his sleep.
“Stop moving,” I whispered, grabbing Bram’s arm and holding him against the wall. He was starting to thrash more now, not hard enough to throw me off, but enough to make me worry he could become conscious long enough to feed—and not stop before it was too late. “Fucking fuck, Bram, I’m trying to help you!”
“What’sss in there?” said the woman, and something—presumably she—slammed against the door, sliding to the ground with a vague, scratching sound.
“Nothing, my pet,” the vampire responded with audible boredom. “Why don’t you go back downstairs and lie down, hmm? Or get another drink and throw yourself out the nearest window?”
The woman giggled and said something unintelligible in the throaty language o
f the drakes—I wondered where on earth I could get a drink while I was locked in here. Maybe he expected me to drink the last of Bram’s blood before throwing myself out the barred window he was staring at, which was much too thick and too high to reach. I dropped Bram’s arm, letting him twitch weakly against the wall before falling over like a sack of potatoes. I was thirsty suddenly, parched, and my tongue felt as dry as sandpaper. I needed a drink, something very thick and soothing, something that would blur the whole world from my consciousness. And make the pain go away once I’d thrown myself out the window …
I snapped myself back to the present, gasping. A drink? I don’t need a fucking drink! I need to get out of here. But the thirstiness remained, sharp and dusty, making my throat feel as rough as scorching gravel. I swallowed, my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which seemed like sandpaper.
The door opened, and the tall vampire walked in, blinking away his own influence and shaking his head. My urge to drink instantly evaporated, and I stared at him open-mouthed.
Oh.
“How old are you?” I asked quietly. He’d glamoured me by accident through a closed door; and I’d never met a vampire capable of that. Even Bram, one of the oldest living creatures on record, didn’t have the kind of power required to accidentally convince someone to jump out a window. Not with conventional magic, anyway. Sometimes just talking to Bram was enough to make me consider defenestrating myself. As well as him.
The man chuckled. “Very,” he said. “How fares our friend?”
“Not great,” I said, turning back to Bram. The needles were out of him, and the little red dots where they’d been were starting to dry up, but he was nearly empty of blood. I looked down at my wrist and grimaced, wondering if Bram had enough life left in him to even try to drink …
“Don’t bother,” the man said, shedding his jacket and kneeling beside me. “Your blood is not strong enough.” He rolled up his sleeve and sighed. “This is going to be … remarkedly unpleasant.”
He bit into his wrist, drawing two fine points of blood, and stuck it in front of Bram’s mouth. Bram’s nose twitched, but he didn’t move.