Chapter 17
The world fell away, blurring into streams of green and muddy brown, with Fay only vaguely aware of the river. She leapt from shadow to shadow, sprinting along the forest floor, her paws barely touching the ground. When she caught the scent of blood, lots of it, she stopped and danced restlessly in a circle with her nose in the air. A resonant growl rumbled from her chest, echoing amongst the trees eerily. It was quiet, too quiet.
Following the scent of blood, she caught sight of blood trails where Mel had dragged herself to the water. Fay hurried on, nose to ground, sniffing as the trees thinned around her. The blood mingled with droplets of another – Ben. She lifted her head and froze, just for a second. Through the trees Ben lay sprawled on the ground, naked in human form, still, covered in blood. Fay rushed to his side and nudged him, hard, with her nose into his shoulder, which looked shredded and dark with dried blood. she heard his heart but it was slow, barely beating at all.
A sharp whine, panicked, tore from her chest.
Come on, Ben. You can’t die, she thought, shoving him harder. Get up.
His chest drew in a shallow breath as a groan, scarcely louder than a whisper, fell from his mouth. Using her nose, she gingerly rolled him onto his side, then nudged his hands and crouched low. His eyes flickered wearily open, meeting her owlish eyes. Without speaking he reached out and grabbed her fur, tight. Slowly, she awkwardly shimmied and rolled him onto her back. She hated to think if she was doing more damage but she couldn’t take him to a hospital – it’d be impossible to explain his injuries, let alone treat him properly. That, and she was stronger in hound form.
“Fay…” He mumbled, collapsing completely against her back, his grip loosening. By some miracle he remained draped across her back.
Carefully, she set off and dissolved into shadow.
Mel stood at the back step, looking showered but heavily bandaged, half-propped against a post as Fay stumbled, exhausted, back to the cabin. She collapsed to the ground, her legs shaky beneath her, darkness threatening to pull her under. Mel shot forward in a weary sort of stumble and gathered her arms around Ben, lifting him with her inhuman strength. She stumbled back inside the cabin but left the door open.
Fay closed her eyes with a groan as she shifted back, her bones shattering and reforming. For a moment she lay naked on the ground, her body drained, before she dragged herself to her feet and stumbled inside to the spare bedroom. She couldn’t even think as she collapsed onto the bed and felt the pull of a vision drag her under.
Gone was the cabin; instead, she stood by a row of olive trees in a farm, the full sun beating down on her. It was blinding, dizzying with its intensity. She raised a hand over her face and looked around, freezing as two people turned down the row she was on – Andromeda and Abe. They walked side by side, close but not as close as Fay expected. Andromeda stared ahead, her mind a world away, whilst Abe stared at her, longingly but worried.
“You have not spoken a word since we returned to Cyrene,” he began. “You seem further from me than when I was in the Underworld.”
She blinked and seemed to balloon slowly back to reality. A tension lingered in her shoulders. “I am thinking.”
He laughed, softly but there was still that whisper of sadness. “I can tell – hence, my concern. My love, speak to me, what troubles you?”
The tension snapped. She stopped and spun around him, her eyes flashing. Energy burst off her in bolts. Abe flinched back. She froze, flinching at his own reaction, then looked down at her hands, sighing deeply.
“I have all this power and yet I am human. The second Eris’s protection fades he’ll see me and come for me,” she said waspishly. “Then all I have done will be for nothing.”
Abe was silent for a moment; then, he stepped forward and drew her into his arms. She was stiff before she seemed to crumple into his embrace, closing her eyes as she buried her head in the crook of his neck. He did the same. Fay felt the sudden urge to look away as she intruded on their intimate moment, mingling with the sting of jealousy.
“You will find a way; were this path easy it would not offer the position it does. Do you know how I know this?” He asked, pulling away a little.
She lifted her eyes to his, searching. “How?”
“Because I have seen Gods cower in fear at the mention of your name, their ranks rattled by the whisper of your arrival. No mere human strikes such fear. You are touched by the essence of Chaos, from which all was made, destined to rule and the woman who is the love of my life.”
Her lips twisted into a smile at the last of his words. “You simply had to utter those words, didn’t you?”
“It is true, so I shall declare it,” he said and stepped back, tilting his face to the sky, bellowing to the sky: “Andromeda is the love of my life!”
She rushed forward and put her hand over his mouth. He quickly dragged her hand away, yanking her close, silencing her laughter with a kiss. With a deep groan she tore herself away and gently punched him in the chest.
“I am trying to defeat the Gods and you jest! Honestly, I don’t even know why I love you,” she said and spun around. “Gods know why the fates paired me with you!”
He hurried after her. “Something to do with how charming and handsome I imagine.”
Andromeda huffed and stalked off, throwing her hands up in the air. “Come, Abe, we best not keep Eris and Antiope waiting."
Fay smiled as the vision dissolved and she floated gently back up to the realm of consciousness. As her eyes flickered open she felt the lingering dullness of exhaustion but she pushed through it and stood, stretching out. Thinking of Ben and Mel she hurried off in search; following the smell of blood she found them in Ben’s room. Ben lay sprawled atop his bed, several sheets spread beneath him, heavily bandaged but he was awake, sitting up. Mel was curled up in a recliner next to his bed, asleep but still heavily bandaged herself. Ben was going through a phone, a new one by the looks of it, or perhaps a backup, and looked up as Fay walked in, relieved to see the both of them alive.
“Mel said I had you to thank for finding me,” he said quietly, his gaze searching – for what, though? That she’d absolved him of his guilt in something he had no control over? It wasn’t something she had the power to do. Whatever her feelings the act of betrayal lay with Ryan, not Ben, which by rights, should’ve absolved Ben’s consciousness.
Fay glanced at Mel, uneasy before Ben’s piercing gaze. “Mel just told me where you were. We’re a team now, so I need you in this mission. It was practicality.”
As soon as the words were out Fay realised how cold they sounded, dismissive almost of Ben. Like he’d reached a hand towards her and she’d slapped it away.
“Whatever the reasoning, thank you.”
Something within Fay, something she didn’t want to label or dissect, pulled taut and snapped. She rounded on him with flashing eyes, her lips pressed tight. “Don’t mistake my actions for sentimentality.”
Ben flinched and looked away, and Fay felt the sting of her own barb. She wanted to say sorry, that she didn’t mean it. Whatever calm had dwelled after the vision had evaporated when she saw Ben, healed and alive, yet recovering from an attack she felt, partially, she ought to have stopped before. Had she figured out the elixir situation earlier, caught the culprit, then Ben would be safe – and her whole life might be a fraction less of a mess.
“How’s Mel?” Fay asked, walking over to the siren.
“Healing. She was pretty drained when she stabilized me. It’s been a rotation of healing each other and sleeping. The worst of its over, though,” he said quietly, guarded almost.
The air grew thick and silent. Fay shifted on her feet, unsure of what to say next, how she might absolve the tension. An apology burned her lips but went no further. She felt cowardly about it, ashamed as she walked from the room, leaving Ben behind with Mel to rest.
Out the back of the cabin she slumped against a tree and closed her eyes. Whatever fragile bridges she had were burning before her, one by one. She was snapping when she didn’t know why, arguing when she didn’t need to, seeing conflict where there wasn’t. All those feelings she didn’t understand. She’d assumed for so long it was because she was a hellhound. Dismissed it as no more than that, yet she wondered if there was more to it. As her visions intensified and grew longer she felt herself becoming wired, her emotions increasingly erratic. She was slowly losing control and there was no one to stop from drowning, no one she trusted anyway.
She’d been afraid to turn to Abe about the visions, concerned he’d Command her back to HQ and have her put under a microscope. It had felt too soon to dump Mel and Ben with her visions, too. As such, she was alone on the matter, helpless as the visions continued and she fell deeper and deeper into Andromeda’s tragic tale.
As she opened her eyes and looked down, about to push off the tree, she caught sight of a black letter at her feet. It was bound in a black ribbon, glossy in the sun. A chill snaked down her spine as she plucked it from the ground, wasting no time to pull the ribbon free and open the letter. In a rigid writing, as though forced into simple English, a message was inscribed.
Your witch has struck again. We must meet, now.
N
Fay glanced instinctively at the cabin, as though Ben or Mel might appear. She wasn’t sure what she’d say, if anything at all. Nebiru called and though she hated being summoned she was glad he was offering information. She had decided, however, to treat his information cautiously, if not a little optimistically. She realised, belatedly, that she hadn’t told them about the first meeting and that she really should. It wasn’t like it was a secret but the thought of talking to Ben so soon after their last chat left a knife buried in her gut.
So, she took the coward’s option and set off, letting herself be swallowed whole by the shadows. The oblivion, brief as it was, made her feel free.
Nebiru was waiting for her as she stepped out from the shadows. He stood in a band of sunlight, his face tilted towards the sun, relaxed, out of place. With his gleaming, polished uniform, that golden insignia bright on his chest, he seemed every bit the warrior, refined. In one way, in one fleeting moment, he looked human and at home; in the next, there was a whisper about him, a flicker of something inhuman that made him seem intrusive, alien. He dropped his head and looked to her with eyes ice blue. The human side bled away and it was the hellhound who stared back, clinical but grim. A hard, resolute mouth.
“She sent her hound into the Underworld again but we were prepared. My junior trackers caught her but she fought and badly injured my men. At the same time there was a break in to the palace itself. Some weapons were stolen, as well as some scrolls. Hades, as you can imagine, is livid to say the least. My generals believe that the hound was the diversion, that the theft was the main aim,” he said, drawing a deep breath to pause. “I believe otherwise.”
She felt as though they’d reached the point at which she was to be drawn into his theory. The information from that point to be specifically useful in some profound way.
“Amanda was at the gate for a reason.”
Nebiru nodded, gravely. “I think she was looking for a way in.”
Fay felt a shiver whisper through her, followed by a stirring of admiration. Many had gone mad looking at the Gates of Tartarus. To know Amanda had gone to them, perhaps reluctantly, seemed inspiring, for a moment anyway. Then Fay felt pity for her, knowing that in all likelihood, Amanda had been compelled to act.
“Do you have any idea who she was after?”
Nebiru’s eyes grew guarded and Fay had the uneasy feeling that he knew – or deeply suspected, anyway – who Amanda might’ve been after. He looked away, shadows of the past deep in his eyes.
“There are Gods and Goddesses trapped there…Hellhounds, too.”
“Humans?” Fay asked, a face already in her mind.
His hands curled into fists, as though he was trying to force something from his mind. After a moment he sighed and turned from her completely.
“Just one.”
He didn’t have to say her name but Fay had seen enough in her vision. It didn’t take a genius to realise Hades would never let such a dangerous soul to exist in the Underworld, least of all Elysium. Even in death, the Gods feared Andromeda’s name. That, it seemed, was sufficient to condemn her, even in death.
“I wonder why the witch and the hound would go after a God or Goddess. Anyone of interest?” Fay asked, trying to sound as dismissive of one human imprisoned in Tartarus as she could.
It wasn’t so much a dishonest act. Really, there was only the visions inclining Fay to Andromeda. There were plenty of dangerous souls trapped in that place, ones that would useful if someone wanted to start a war, kill someone, curse someone.
Nebiru shook his head. “They’re all equally dangerous.” He closed his eyes suddenly, drawing in a sharp breath. As his eyes flickered open he exhaled, slowly, measured and firm. “I have to go.”
“Wait!” She said, stepping forward.
He turned to her, eyes guarded. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry I don’t have any useful information for you,” she said, scorning how clumsy and awkward she sounded.
He frowned. “All I want is for this case to be solved, then for you to return to your world. The sooner this mess is done with, the better.”
As he dissolved into shadows Fay felt the sting of his words; then, anger. Why the hell was she wounded by his dismissal of her, like she needed his damn approval?
Weary, she turned herself to the nearest shadow and willed herself away. In her mind it was Andromeda’s face she saw, staring at her, searching.
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