Page 85 of Hades

“Eris and Harleena are gone,” Thanatos snarled back at him, his face darkening and silver irises transforming into a flickering glowing blue. Calindria rubbed his arm, trying to comfort and calm him in much the same way Persephone was trying to with Hades. His deep voice still held a dark growl as he added, “Not only them either. Several demigods are missing, and three hundred and twenty-four daemons.”

That was a lot of daemons.

“Do we know their breeds?” Hades looked from Thanatos to Keras, who leafed through a stack of papers on the table.

Keras raked his dirty fingers through his black hair, tousling it, and huffed. “Wraiths… illusionists… some vampires and shifter breeds… and at least four valkyries are missing too.”

This was only getting worse.

Valkyries were powerful warrioresses, hard to defeat in battle because they were protected by a charm that made them invulnerable to death. Any foe they fought often lost their heads before they managed to figure out what was protecting them and break it. On top of that, they could fly. If they had joined Mnemosyne, the fight ahead would be far harder than she had first thought.

Although, they weren’t the things in the sky she was worried about.

“Harleena had control of many Keres,” Persephone put in and Hades wrenched his hand free of hers and swept his arm across the table, scattering the papers and almost upending it. She reached for him and laid her hand on his back as he gripped the edge of the table and bent over it, a feral snarl pealing from his lips. She kept her tone soft, hoping to soothe rather than aggravate him as she said, “It might be that she cannot reach them before the battle begins.”

The female death spirits were dangerous, driven wild by an unending thirst for blood and created for battle, where they flew above the warriors seeking out anyone who bled. They would descend on their victims to rip them apart and feast on them, and the more blood they drank, the more their thirst grew.

Calindria rubbed her arms through her supple leather shirt.

Thanatos stepped up behind her and wrapped her in his arms, bent his head and murmured against her golden hair, “I will not let them near you.”

Calindria and Thanatos had been forced to fend off a pack of Keres when Thanatos had gone to find her in a distant realm in the Underworld, and the two of them had come dangerously close to losing their lives to the pale, winged death spirits.

“We need to plan.” Hades glared at the table and the map on it. “Where will Mnemosyne attack? She has enough men now to mount an assault.”

“What about Tokyo?” Persephone’s brow furrowed as she looked from Hades to her children. “I want to go there. I need to let Esher, Marek and Calistos know that I am all right and I need to make sure they are too. I fear Mnemosyne will target them now. Perhaps it is best we begin by shoring up our defences there?”

Hades had gone dreadfully still.

“We want to check out Tartarus one more time and check the roster again to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.” Keras stooped and started to pick up the papers Hades had strewn across the floor and then shrugged and gave up, rising to his feet again. “Thanatos and I will go.”

“I will go too,” Hades rumbled.

Persephone shook her head. “You should remain at the palace.”

He turned cold crimson eyes on her. “As should you… yet you wish to leave.”

Her face fell. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. He was twisting her words, warping them into something else. Not him, she realised as scarlet fire emerged in his pupils, but the darkness. What poison was it spreading through his mind, ravaging it with thoughts she wanted to leave him? She intended to stamp it out before it could do more harm.

“I do not—” she started.

He rounded on her, seized her wrist and pulled her close to him, his face a dark mask as he growled, “I will not let you out of my sight.”

She softened, her anger abating as warmth curled through her, drawn up by his words and how he was acting. Her reaction caused a ripple of confusion to run through the room, in particular Megan and Eva. She could understand that. They saw his reaction and his words as cold and controlling, maybe even cruel.

She saw something else.

She saw his fear and his pain, and how the thought of losing her was tearing him apart.

Rather than twisting free of his grip or stepping away from him, she moved towards him instead, closing the scant distance between them down to nothing, and gazed up into his eyes.

A smile tugged at her lips.

“You sound as you did when we first met,” she murmured.

Hades transformed again before her eyes, the scarlet fire that filled his gaze becoming the heat of desire.

On a wicked growl, he tugged her into his arms and claimed her lips. Her hands flew to his shoulders, tightly gripping them, her nails pressing into his muscles as he breached her lips to madden her with fierce strokes of his tongue along hers.

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