The bitches had been hiding in this room all along, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Waiting for her to reveal she could use necromancy and for Daimon to be free of his ice and revived, his blood ready for them to use against the gate.
Keras seized hold of Ares as the male collared Valen and Valen grabbed Marek.
The moment everyone was in contact, darkness devoured them.
Cass grunted when she was dumped unceremoniously on the damp grass of Central Park and Daimon landed on her, his back slamming into her legs. She rolled as Keras dropped out of the air too, narrowly avoiding being crushed by him. He crashed into the grass, breathing hard, sweat dotting his brow.
Ares bit out a curse and rushed to check on him. “Teleporting so many was dangerous. I had Valen and Marek.”
Keras shook violently as he pushed onto his knees, his breath sawing from between his lips. His right hand had burns on it and his left was marred with black bruises, his fingers reddened by cold, telling her that the spell she had used on Daimon had faded but had done its job while it had lasted. That gave her something to go on, built hope that she could do something to help Ares and Daimon with their powers.
Cass touched Keras’s arm and funnelled a healing spell into him as she looked up at Ares. “We need to move.”
“Can’t.” That single word leaving Daimon’s lips had everyone looking at him and cold stealing through her.
Dread pooled inside her. “What do you mean, can’t?”
Remorse shone in his eyes as he glanced at her. “They’ve been in contact with me. They can open the gate. I can’t let them near it.”
“You’re in no fit state to fight!” she barked and froze, her anger rushing from her as her eyes darted around the dimly lit field.
Portals opened in all directions, daemons spilling from them.
Ares turned his back to her, facing a group of twenty daemons as they charged towards them. Valen moved to stand on the other side of her, his fingers flexing around his blade as lightning arced along the metal.
Keras lumbered onto his feet, shaking his head.
“I’m getting you out of here. Your brothers can handle this.” Cass formed the incantation in her mind, heart racing as she hurried to complete it before Daimon could do something reckless like launching into the fray as a fight erupted around them.
“Get her out of here.” Daimon pulled her hand from his arm, and she had never heard him so afraid or so desperate.
“You need me here,” she snapped and tried to seize him again, determined to stay with him if he wasn’t going to let her take him away from the fight.
Before she could grab him, someone grabbed her.
Darkness whirled around her.
Fury poured through her.
No damned way she was being benched.
She hit Marek with the first spell that rose to her fingertips, one that blasted him away from her, and screamed as she fell into the abyss.
Hit something very solid.
Cass wheezed, struggling to get air into her lungs as her entire body ached, and pushed onto her hands and knees.
Was she back in Tokyo?
Or Central Park?
She stood on wobbly legs.
Her blood chilled as she took in her surroundings.
Black lands stretched in all directions, rising into sharp mountains ahead of her.
Beyond an enormous obsidian Greek temple.
Cass swallowed hard.
The Underworld.
She froze as metal clanked and air shifted around her, and edged her hands up in front of her. The four males clad in black armour only jerked the pointed tips of their onyx spears closer to her head.
This wasn’t good.
She re-evaluated that thought as a crushing wave of dark power pressed down on her, driving her to her knees on the basalt.
Cass fought the power, resisted it enough to lift her head, and wished she hadn’t as her stomach dropped.
Before her towered a man with malice in his crimson eyes, a god whose crown rose in jagged onyx spikes from his black hair. The warm light of his realm reflected off the black metal plates of his armour as he shifted slightly, a breeze catching the heavy blood-red cloak fixed to his shoulders.
He lowered the bident he gripped and pointed it at her chest and then lifted it, so the cold metal kissed her skin and she had to tip her head back to avoid being cut.
Cass stared up at him, her breath lodged in her throat as his scarlet eyes burned with rage.
Hades pressed forwards, his voice a black snarl.
“A life for a life.”
Chapter 35
Daimon’s entire body ached, felt as if a gatekeeper had pummelled him, given him a five minute breather, and then gone in for another round. Memories flickered across his mind as he fought a group of daemons, four adult males who were attempting to breach the barrier he and his brothers formed between the portals and the gate. He remembered the cold. The fear.
The painful thought that he would never see Cass again.
The last thing he could remember was thinking of her, and she had been the first thing he had seen upon being revived.
Gods, he had never beheld a sweeter sight than her sitting beside him.
Fighting to bring him back to her.
He owed her a thousand apologies when they were back together.
And they would be back together.
Lightning crashed down just off to this left, spraying black blood and pieces of daemon across the slick grass. To his right, flames blazed a path through another group of males, filling the air with the stench of burning flesh.
Shadows rushed across the ground, blending with the night before they shot upwards to impale a male and dragged him down as he screamed and writhed, fighting their hold.
Beyond the first wave of daemons, a second wave spilled out of the portals.
He cursed.
Marek appeared beside him.
A wall of baked earth rose up, encircling the field, cutting off the daemons he and his brothers were fighting from the next wave. Those daemons growled and snarled
