Rise of the Blood

Then I spotted something. “Right there,” I said. “Expand that.” He shot me a dark look at the order, but he gestured the screen to zoom in on the section to which I’d pointed. I thought I’d seen a person-sized figure running ahead of the crowd. On expansion, I saw that I’d been right. What’s more, I knew that figure.

Christie. It occurred to me now that I hadn’t seen her at the meeting in the bridal suite. But…how had she gotten here? How had she paid the ferryman? However she’d gotten in, how would she ever get out alive? Hades, so far as I knew, had a one hundred percent success rate. Souls checked in but they never checked out. What would that mean for Christie? Or me? Something I’d carefully not thought about on my way down. But Hades had sent Charon for us. Apollo and I were invited guests now. That had to count for something.

Beside me, Hades froze the screen on the image of Christie. “I recognize her,” he said ominously. “A split second seen in a certain hotel room in San Francisco.” He turned on me. “A friend of yours?”

I met his gaze dead on. Oh, poor choice of words. There was no use in pretending. “Yes,” I admitted, “a friend. But not acting on her own. Rhea’s got to be controlling her.”

“First you steal my bride Persephone away from me. Then your friend breaches my security and leads an escape.” He lashed out on the last word and grabbed me by the throat. I never even saw it coming before I was on my tiptoes trying to ease the pressure on my neck to breathe.

I hated to think how the king of the Underworld would collect. My soul forfeit? Condemned to Tartarus in place of the titans? My innards pecked out every day like Prometheus or like Sisyphus forced ever to roll a boulder uphill only to have it slide back down again.

“Let go of her,” Apollo demanded, rising from behind Hades. My distress must have reached him right through his unconsciousness.

Hades swiveled his head, owl-like, to look at Apollo with a leer, and then pointedly turned back to me, dismissing Apollo as less than a threat, which, given the way he was swaying on his feet, still weak from his own destruction, wasn’t unreasonable.

“The two of you owe me,” he said, his eyes burning like hot coals. He took a minute to savor the situation. “I have it. If I help you stop the titans and defeat Rhea, you will watch over my kingdom while I take an extended vacation. Oh, the things I could do.”

I couldn’t have heard right. Oxygen deprivation had to have me hallucinating. He could not have just blackmailed us into housesitting. He shook me like a dog shakes its favorite chew toy before loosening his grip just enough for me to gasp the air to respond.

“What about them?” I asked in a whisper. Even that hurt. I indicated them with a flick of my eyes—Thanatos, Hypnos, Hecate.

He didn’t follow my gaze, but brought his face in close to mine and then murmured in my ear, “They might not return my kingdom. You, on the other hand…”

“We’ll do it,” Apollo said for us both. “Just…let her go.”

Hades’s hand opened, and I dropped to the floor with the sudden release, coughing as each wonderful breath seemed to saw at my throat. As grateful as I was to breathe again, I didn’t trust Hades. I thought about Atlas tricking Hercules into accepting the weight of the world onto his shoulders and then refusing to take it back, but if Hades was worried about a coup in his absence surely he wasn’t going to stick us with the Underworld for keeps.

Anyway, Apollo had already agreed. My throat ached as I took in air too greedily.

“Done,” Hades said.

Apollo rushed toward me, and I went into his arms, so glad to see him recovered and to be alive myself that I wasn’t worried about signals, mixed or otherwise.

“But no sitting on my throne,” Hades said, fixing us both with a glare from those coal-burning eyes.

Now that he mentioned it, I was a little tempted to play with his things. I could have a ton of fun with his helmet of invisibility on the off chance he left it at home.

“Fine,” Apollo said, though I hadn’t made any promises. “Now, what do you bring to the table?”

His eyes glittered. “Only all the heroes of old.”

Apollo smacked his head. “The Elysian Fields, how could I have forgotten.”

“Paradise sounds great until you have an eternity of it. Truthfully, the heroes have been growing restless. If I don’t do something, like let them out to fight an epic battle, they’ll start fighting each other.”

I was dumbstruck. The heroes of old! Hercules, Perseus, Odysseus, Achilles, Theseus, Jason and the Argonauts… Was I really about to come face to face with them? It was funny that the gods didn’t make me geek out—mostly because I hadn’t even believed in them at first—but the heroes, normal mortals facing overwhelming obstacles… (Okay, maybe some had Olympian parents, but the others…)

“You look like a fan girl,” Apollo said, a little grumpily, I thought. “I’d know, I’ve seen enough of them in my time.”

“Women interested in your on-screen attributes,” I teased, letting my gaze drop so that he’d have no question about the attributes to which I referred. Rumor had it that Apollo had started out in adult films before transitioning to more mainstream theatre.

“Exactly. Maybe if I showed you—”

“Children,” Hades snapped. “Focus.”

He pressed a button on his smart screen and then enlarged the thumbnail picture that came up…The Elysian Fields. Fruitful, lush, perfect, like the concept of the Garden of Eden. Butterflies chased each other in a meadow, and when Hades swept a hand across the screen, the image panned to show two young men wrestling nearly naked in a field—and looking very enthused about it.

A smile lit Hades’s face, and he clicked some kind of link. Then he cleared his throat and the sound seemed to carry through the screen and out across the fields, based on the sudden pause in the wrestling match. “Gather in the Hall of Heroes as soon as possible. Full battle gear. This is not a drill.”

“Drill?” Apollo asked.

Hades’s smile widened. “Keeps them on their toes. Plus, Cerberus likes the workout. Come on.”

“What about the titans?” I asked, looking at a moving picture Hades had relegated to the bottom of his smart screen, the one with Christie and a whole host of monsters who could crush her with a flick of their fingers or… whatever.

“They’re already at the Archeron.”

“The Archeron, but—” Apollo started.

“You see the conundrum,” Hades said.

“I don’t,” I cut in.

Hades turned his burning eyes on me. “Archeron was a god, son of Gaea. He aided the Titans during their first battle against Zeus, and as punishment he was cast into the Underworld and turned into a river. The question is, will he offer them aid again or has he learned his lesson?”

“He’s got nothing left to lose by helping them,” I said, horrified. What was it with the ancients and their crazy punishments? Who turned someone into a river?

“You’d think that,” Hades said, “but never underestimate the power of sulking. He’s had time out of mind to regret his decision and to blame others for the consequences. It will be an interesting experiment, no?”

“Experiment?” I asked, horrified.

“Yes, it all a starts with a theory of mine…”

“We don’t have time for this,” Apollo said. “They’re waiting in the Hall of Heroes.”

Hades’s eyes burned, not with the fire of suns, but with a much more infernal glow, like the molten core of a volcano ready to explode.

“Some day,” Hades told him, “you and I will have a reckoning.”

“I’ll look forward to it. Now, let’s go.”

If Hades had laser vision, Apollo would have been cut in half, but since he didn’t, he had to settle for a glare. Then his gaze swept past Apollo, and he rapped out, “Thanatos, you’re with us. Hecate, you hold half back with you to repair what damage you can and prevent further escapes. Hypnos, you take the rest and meet us at the