Page 33 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

“Yes.”

“With no wind.” I nod again. His lips curl as desire flashes in his eyes. “I want a woman.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“How long have I been alone, Hades? Centuries? Millenia?” His voice grows quiet even as the hatred in his eyes screams louder. “Pull one of the souls from Tartarus. A human soul, I don’t care. As long as she is a woman,” his weak wishes are plagued with desperation, “I don’t care.”

“No.”

His jaw hardens. Hatred spills from his eyes, seeping between chapped lips. “Then we don’t have a deal.”

“Very well.” I turn to leave as the wind picks up.

The wood of the hut creaks and groans under the violence, and a frantic note fills Hyperion’s call. “Wait!”

I stop, but don’t turn. “I get one hundred years in my new world. One hundred years of warmth.”

“You have yourself a deal.” I turn back to face him. “If you answer every question I have here today with complete honesty.”

Hyperion falls to his knees, taking the ancient stance to complete a deal with the God of Death. I move closer, feeling the God lurking close to the surface of my human flesh. It’s been so long since I let him free, let him loose. Even now, I won’t offer him that freedom. Not in its entirety, at least.

I lift my hand, and Hyperion’s faded eyes fall to my thumb where the skin splits, making room for the long, obsidian claw to slide free. I have no doubt, it is the baser form of a God in which bred the legends of monsters. Shifters, and vampires, and skin walkers, and more.

I touch him with nothing but the tip of my bone-claw, watching hungrily as obsidian meets the pale flesh of a depleted Titan. He tips his head back and to the side in an offering I take as I slide the blade of my claw into the offered artery, slicing a thin, clean, deep line.

Red beads the surface of his flesh before trickling down the thin skin of his throat. The ancient God I shelter inside hums his hunger, ravenous for the thing which we haven’t tasted in far too long. The blood of a God must be offered freely, lest it turn rancid on my tongue, tasting little better than poison in my veins.

As the first son of Cronos, the first male to be devoured by him, it is little wonder that the God under my flesh formed this blood-hungry beast. It makes sense that my sister, Hestia, the firstborn child of Cronos, and the first to be devoured by him, became the Goddess of virginity and sacrificial flame, the first of the Olympians to claim her sacrifices during the ancient times of worship. Where my God craved the consumption of another’s blood, the Goddess who formed under Hestia’s human flesh became selfish with her blood after far too long where it spilled into the belly of our father. It is because of this she chose to remain untouched, the blood of her virginity remaining unspilled to this day.

Such a thing doesn’t mean she does not hunger for blood in her own way. Hestia, as the Goddess of virginity has a spectral beast under her flesh in which is present to collect the sacrifice each virgin offers, devouring the innocence and cherishing it close to her own—feeding her own.

If humanity knew of the Gods who lurk within the shadows of these modern times, they would surely rebel. And they would surely be crushed.

My burning eyes track the dribble of blood as it slides the length of Hyperion’s pulsing artery. As soon as I touch my tongue to the life which drains from his veins, the deal will be sealed. He will be contained by the binds of our agreement as his blood settles in my belly, unable to resist fulfillinghis end. As I will be bound to the deal, under threat of his blood turning into the very poison that could damn me if broken.

Hyperion angles his head further to the side, urging me to taste. To take.

Saliva coats my tongue as the scent of his blood, powerful even in his wasted state, taunts me. I bend low, feeling the pressure of my God’s fangs sliding over my human canines, pushing at my lips. It still makes me grin, the name my God’s beast crafted into modern legends:Vampire.

I haven’t allowed my beast to drink from the vein of a living creature, Titan, God, human, or animal in millennia. The gift of blood from a God is a rare thing, for the power it offers is massive. Same for a Titan.

Humans, although there is a burst of power, have a more aphrodisiac quality to their blood. The same is true for the Nymphs, and the like.

After the loss of my wife in such a heinous way, to the agony of my God, I abstained.

Now, though, the urge to seal a deal only heightens the desperate hunger that sears inside me. I dip low, the tip of my tongue connecting with the spill of hot blood. I loose a sound of starvation as I dip my fangs into the flesh around his vein, puncturing it on either side of the cut my claw made. Venom spills into his flesh as I pull his blood into my own, with deep, binding swallows. I can feel the bars of our binding deal slamming into place with each long swallow I draw from his vein. When his hand slams into mychest, a wall trying to push me from him, I grip the back of his head with both hands to keep him pinned in place. We’re beyond the draw needed to seal a deal, and well into the ancient desire for power. It is the same desire that led Cronos to devour his children. The internal desire all Gods war with to possess the all the power that we can. To consume.

A gargling noise meets my ear as Hyperion’s hand slides from my chest to land, slick with sickly sweat, against the cracked earth.

The struggle within my body is violent as I withdraw my fangs from his flesh, watching as Hyperion, a Titan once known for his bright strength, falls to the dust of the earth.

My fangs continue to drip venom, for my hunger hasn’t been nearly sated as I watch the Titan gasp shallow breaths. He is kept, like the others within my prisons, on the brink of life. Their eternal soul taunted with glimpses of power to remind them of what they were, and the power they will never again know.

“Tell me, Hyperion,” I begin, sounding more God than man. “Did you father a child with Demeter, Goddess of Harvest and Fertility?”

Hyperion looses a low gurgling moan. “No.”

I sense no lie. The blood that surges hot in my belly would alert me to an untruth, as per the binds of our deal. But I don’t know how it is possible, then, that she possess the gifts of this Titan. Of the light of all life, the sun.

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