Page 95 of Hades

Thanatos, Calindria and Valen moved further away to his right, luring warriors towards them. To his left, Enyo, Keras and Ares had already cut down close to a dozen of the enemy.

Hades pressed onwards, ducking beneath swords and dodging kicks and wild swings of fists, letting his shadows tear into those who were foolish enough to step into his path and fight him. He passed the body of the daemon who had been responsible for feeding him and his family the vision that had almost allowed Mnemosyne to win without really trying, and his shadows swept over her, flaying the flesh from her bones as he growled at how easily she had deceived them.

Mnemosyne’s head slowly swivelled towards him. Her silver eyes landed on him and she said, “Continue.”

The witch beside her nodded and moved her hand. Light followed her fingertip, forming a symbol she enclosed with a circle, and then she added three more symbols. Whatever she was doing, he needed to stop it from happening. The pulsing grew faster and the power lacing the air heavier, and the gate distorted.

He snarled and bared his fangs when the centre of it suddenly grew as clear as glass, allowing him to see through it into the mortal realm to a storm-battered coast. He smelled the sea and the earth, and had to brace himself as wind blasted through the gate to slam against him.

And stumbled forwards when the pressure suddenly ceased and the gate stabilised again.

Hades readied his bident and summoned his shadows, wrapping them around himself as he charged towards Mnemosyne. Two large men came to flank her and he sneered at them. Demigods. Their power was no match for his.

He proved that by thrusting his bident towards the one on the right. The shadows around the male’s feet rose against him, spearing his legs and dragging him to his knees. They snaked over his shoulders as he frantically tried to brush them away, his hand passing through them, and he bellowed as their sharp tips plunged through his neck. Blood sprayed, splashing Mnemosyne’s legs, and her face twisted in disgust and rage as she pressed her booted foot against his chest and kicked him away from her.

The second male was no wiser than the first. He ran at Hades, hefting his double-bladed axe high into the air, his bare chest rippling with strength as he roared. Thanatos swept down from the sky and seized hold of the weapon, and then beat his wings, lifting the male into the air with him.

Mnemosyne came at Hades, her lips a thin line and hatred burning in her eyes.

He dodged her first blow and knocked her second aside, and lashed at her with his shadows. He whirled and struck as he came around her, slicing down the back of her gold-edged crimson breastplate. She arched forwards, her foot skidding on the loose earth as she braced herself to maintain her balance and then twisted towards him. Her sword came up fast and he nimbly ducked backwards, narrowly avoiding being hit. As he recovered his footing, he lunged with his bident and clipped her arm, cutting a deeper wound above the one Persephone had dealt her.

She hissed in a breath and backed off, her silver eyes darting around, panic mounting in them now. She knew she was no match for him.

He launched his shadows at her, but they hit a barrier, an invisible one that shimmered to life before his eyes, created by a series of interlocking hexagons filled with a familiar glyph. That was what the witch had been doing. She had been constructing a barrier around Mnemosyne to protect her. His gaze swung towards her and he glared at her as she lowered her hand to her side again and turned away from Mnemosyne, returning her focus to the gate.

But she had left herself vulnerable.

On a vicious snarl, Hades kicked off, putting all his strength into it to hurl himself at the witch. He was too fast for her to track, was on her before she could react, and had his bident buried deep in her back in the space of a heartbeat. She gasped and staggered forwards as his body collided with hers, and then tried to turn towards him. He tightened his grip on his bident and shoved her down into the dirt face-first, baring his teeth at her as a dark hunger to savour her death swept through him.

He warred with it, battling to deny his need to make her suffer, to relish her fear and her pain as he carved her life from her piece by piece.

Mnemosyne made it easier for him to focus on dealing the witch a swift death.

She sprinted past him, heading for the gate.

Hades twisted his bident in the witch’s back, killing her, and wrenched it free and sent his shadows after Mnemosyne. They swept around her and rose in front of her, forming a wall before her. She noticed them and tried to go around, but he expanded them in an arc around her, enclosing her.

Capturing her.

The shadows thickened, becoming solid and like a barrier around her, caging her within them.

Or so he had thought.

The feeling of victory building inside him shattered like his shadows as Mnemosyne burst from them, the spell the witch had cast shimmering around her. He growled as frustration rolled through him, dredging up the darkness to give it a firmer hold over him as his prey escaped him, and he sprinted after her. The spell had to counteract his shadows rather than merely stopping them, rendering her invulnerable to them in a way because it allowed her to use the barrier against his shadows. The moment she neared them, the spell would activate and destroy them.

Mnemosyne reached the gate and leaped through it before he could stop her.

Hades skidded to a halt before the shimmering disc of the gate, breathing hard and fighting to hold himself back. He couldn’t follow her. Not as he was. The gate was already affecting the mortal realm. If he went through as he was now—without limiters and Keras’s pills to dampen his powers—he was liable to rip that realm apart and only make things worse.

The only thing he could do now was try to close the gate.

Hades pulled his left gauntlet off and ran his bare wrist across the sharp tip of one of his bident’s prongs, slicing deep into it.

Blood streamed from the wound and he held it out towards the gate, over the spot where Cerberus had bled, and focused. Behind him, the sounds of battle continued to ring out and he could hear his children and his allies barking orders and checking on each other. They slowly closed in on him, forming a semicircle around him as he stilled his mind and quelled the darkness.

He willed the gate to respond to his command to close, but it continued to ripple with colour and light. He spilled more blood, remembering what his sons had told him—the fewer gates there had been around the world, the more blood they’d had to spill to close them and seal them shut. Crimson splashed across the black dirt and he narrowed his gaze on the gate, mentally ordering it to close.

It didn’t.

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