Page 65 of Hades

He stormed into the gate and strode out the other side, onto a patch of rough tan ground near a quiet cove overlooking an azure sea. The moment the others were through, he took hold of them and teleported everyone to the cape.

Just as it had in Olympus, the sea grew turbulent and the sky dark, great thunderclouds gathering to turn day into night. The pills and the limiters were working, but they still weren’t enough to stop him from affecting this realm. He studied the swirling black clouds. He didn’t have long before his being here began to cause natural disasters that might kill thousands.

Wind scoured the barren coastline, and he raised his hand to shield his eyes as he peered into the distance, towards the cape.

“I do not see anything.” He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it looked as dead and forbidding as it had before he had met Persephone, before she had created a secret forest here that was long gone now.

The hope that had been building inside him rapidly deflated. He had been so convinced she would be here, that meeting him was a fond memory of hers. Perhaps he had been right about that after all, and she hated how they had met.

How he had abducted her.

Calindria stepped past him, removing her long black gloves at the same time, and then eased down onto her knees on the rocky shore. She pressed her bare hands to the ground and closed her eyes, her head hanging forwards. Hades waited, trying to be patient, aware that using this gift was new to her and that there was also a chance it was deeply tied to the Underworld as Thanatos believed, and she wouldn’t be able to employ her powers over nature to sense anything in this world.

“My love,” Thanatos murmured when her shoulders shook and her muscles bunched and tensed, and reached for her, clearly intending to stop her before she hurt herself.

Her head shot up, her golden hair falling away from her face. “There.”

“Where?” Hades bit out, impatient again now that hope surged anew in his heart, flooding him with a violent need to reach Persephone.

To feel her in his arms again.

Calindria pointed in the direction of the point of the cape. “There.”

“There is nothing there,” he growled.

“It must be warded.” Keras moved up beside Calindria and she quickly donned her gloves again, her fingers trembling as she fumbled with them in her haste to cover her skin now that her brother was near her.

Thanatos hunkered down and helped her with them, gaining an appreciative glance from her.

“That means we will not see it until we are upon it,” Enyo put in, a hint of worry in her voice as she looked from Keras to Hades. “We will need to be prepared for a fight from the start. We will not know how many Mnemosyne has guarding Persephone.”

“Ten men or ten thousand, nothing is stopping me from reaching her,” Hades snarled and pulled his bident from the sheath on his back. He had more than enough firepower to handle whatever was on the other side of the barrier.

Keras looked at Hades’s other hand, a calculating edge to his green eyes, and then he nodded and lifted his gaze to lock with Hades’s.

“The four of us will be the diversion while you slip in unnoticed using your helmet. If Mother is being held there, she will be guarded. Mnemosyne will be expecting her children to come for her.” Keras looked at Enyo, Thanatos and Calindria in turn, and then settled back on Hades. “We can buy you time to get to her.”

Hades nodded. “A sound plan.”

A dangerous one too, but he didn’t need to tell them that. The grim looks laced with determination that settled on all their faces said they knew how dangerous this was but that they weren’t going to back down and delay going in until they had a better plan or more people on their side. Hades glanced at the sky as lightning split it, casting a bright flash that threw everything into stark relief, and then rain hammered down, throwing the scent of earth into the cooling air.

Keras was right and this had to happen now.

Mnemosyne would know this change in the weather wasn’t natural.

If they didn’t act now, she might move Persephone to another location.

Hades was damned if he was going to let that happen.

Darkness poured through him like an oily tide, smothering the light, and his claws lengthened as he gripped his bident. His mind filled with a hunger for violence that had him shifting one hard, stilted step forwards and then another as it overwhelmed him, drawing him towards the cape.

To where he knew he could satisfy it.

Persephone was there.

Waiting for him.

And he would tear this world asunder to take her back.

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