Page 15 of Monster Song
“Five minutes ago, because Demeter is heavily advertising this fight, and it goes down tomorrow,” Solron said.
Chapter 11
River
T
his was it. Things were finally falling into place. I had a feeling when Demeter took me to Hephaestus, she had no idea he was making me a weapon that would kill an Olympian for good. He’d probably been researching that for a long time, and I couldn’t blame him. We needed to keep that a secret to protect him until this was over.
I thought we were all going to walk down some more endless stairs to get to this pit, but my father held up his hand. Apparently, there would be some demon testing involved.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t teach River to use her powers while she’s here. I need to work with you on how to access your demonic form, but first, I will teach you to open a portal.”
“Excuse me, a what?”
Barbatos just winked at me.
“I have a feeling you will end up staying here when this is over. This will help you come to Hell when you want to visit. You can go back to Earth when you want to as well. It’s how we got here.”
I hadn’t really thought about how he got here. It sure wasn’t by airplane or train. I wasn’t sure I could do that. I mean, yeah, I could talk to animals and apparently find lost things. I could call that weird green fire, but there was no way in Hell I could realm jump like that.
Everyone was grinning at me like I could do this, but I had my doubts. My monsters surrounded me, and even Hephaestus joined the pile. Tryphon nuzzled my neck.
“You can do this, my pet.”
“We do something similar, River. It’s all focus,” Hephaestus said.
My father came into my line of sight and ran his fingers through his black hair.
“He’s right. It’s all focus. You want to picture where you want to go and feel it in your gut that you want to go there. I chose this moment to teach this to you because I know you really want to help those monsters. It’ll be easier for you. Once you know what it feels like, you can do it again.”
I scratched my nose.
“Why aren’t we just portalling into Demeter’s temple again?”
Solron just laughed.
“You’ll see.”
Yeah, I guess I would. I focused on the feeling of Tryphon pressed against my back. Pavlina was to my left, and Demos was to my right. I knew Hephaestus and Kimon were right there with me. The monsters. We needed to get to the monsters and free them. How did I do that?
I felt this stirring in my gut, so I grabbed onto it and didn’t let go. I tried to strengthen it. I saw this little spark in front of me. It was a bright, orange light. I stared at that light and willed it to get bigger. It became a swirling vortex of whites and oranges. If this was visible on the other side of the portal, then I guess that told me why we weren’t using this to get into Demeter’s temple.
My father clapped his hands.
“Brilliant. After you,” he indicated to Hades.
Hades and Cerberus jumped through.
Pavlina sighed.
“The only reason I’m jumping through that thing is that you made it. If I’m jumping into the unknown, I might as well.”
Pavlina grabbed me and gave me a huge kiss. My lips parted as her tongue darted inside my mouth. We were clawing at each other and pulling hair while we devoured each other. I heard a few throats clear before Pavlina broke away and hopped into the portal. It shocked me I could keep it open after all that. My knees were weak.
My monsters weren’t ones to sit around and let Pavlina one-up them. Demos surprised me.
“That spider isnotgoing to be the only one who gets a kiss,” he growled, crushing his lips down on mine.
