Page 14 of Monster Song
“As much as I love the idea of Demeter ending up in one of Hell’s famous torture dungeons, Olympians aren’t the type you can keep in the dungeon. We have speed healing. She’d eventually break free and start hurting people. As far as any of us know, there’s no way to kill us. We have to trap her with the Titans,” Hades said.
“Actually, that’s not true,” Hephaestus said. “That knife I made River will kill an Olympian.”
“See? The sexy God knows what he’s doing. We can capture the Goddess bitch and portal her to Bael’s dungeon. Bael and I will have our fun, then whoever she pissed off the most here can visit with the knife and kill her for good.”
“It’s not a good idea, Solron,” Barbatos said. “We haven’t had many dealings with the Olympians. I know my dungeon doesn’t have a ward for them, and I don’t think Bael’s does either.”
My father had a torture dungeon? Did everyone in Hell have some mysterious dungeon in their house? If I moved to Hell, could I opt out of a dungeon in my home? I couldn’t even sit through the firstSawmovie, and I was already pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy it as Solron seemed to.
“Charley and Finn can make a ward.”
Finn just shook his head.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“The same people created all the known wards. They are meant to make people powerless. They were created to be used in prisons. Unless Hades or Hephaestus has one they can give us, we can’t just whip one up because we don’t know enough about them.”
Solron sighed.
“Can I at least kill some bad people while I’m here? Bael said I could play.”
Pavlina just grinned.
“I like her.”
Solron slammed her finger down on the enter key and leaned back in her chair.
“See? I told you I didn’t need a lot of time. The fight is going down between Demos and Stheno. What’s a Stheno?”
Everyone groaned, and that wasn’t really covered in my college course on Greek mythology. I didn’t know either, just that no one seemed thrilled that was who Demos was fighting.
“She’s the most vicious of the Gorgon sisters. All the Gorgon sisters are pretty angry about what Athena did to them. They acted out a lot when they got down here,” Hades said.
“They stick together, and they hate everyone,” Kimon said.
Pavlina just shrugged.
“They like me. Athena was the one that turned me into a Black Widow. Every time Mercury goes into retrograde, we have a beer and talk shit about Athena. I can talk to her.”
“Finally, something good comes out of Pavlina’s epic bitchiness,” Demos snapped.
“You might want to back down there, Ginger,” Solron said. “Don’t fuck with a bitch who owns it. We usually team up when someone needs to go down. I would have brought my friend, Serafina, with me to set shit on fire, but she just found out she was pregnant, and all her husbands said no.”
Well, Solron certainly wasn’t wrong about that, and if her friend had more than one husband, that would explain why my father didn’t even blink when he found so many people in my bed, even if we were just snuggling.
Still, we had a plan coming together, and Pavlina and Demos could deal with their issues later. Especially since it looked like Solron wanted to play in this realm, and if that meant beating the shit out of Demos because she felt a kinship with Pavlina, she’d take it. Did I mention I kind of liked Solron, even if I didn’t want her touching Demos?
Thankfully, my father was a bit of a diplomat.
“I think we’re forgetting we’re all on the same team. Now, we’ve got my entire legion and a few other dukes too waiting for a portal to open. We’re forming a plan here, and it needs to be solid or innocent people will die. We need every single monster in that pit on our side. I don’t know them, so how do we do that?”
“Carefully,” Hades said. “I worked hard to make sure every monster that ended up here felt welcome. If they aren’t totally beaten down, they are angry at me for not protecting them enough. I met with all of them when they got here and promised them this was a safe place from curses and Olympian nonsense. I kept that promise until Demeter totally lost it.”
“I still think you should let me play with her, but you need a multi-part approach. First, you need to let everyone in here go in so they can see you have a solution. Let Pavlina talk to her Gorgon friend. Hades can rally the troops and let them know he has help. Show the rest of us then. Bring Hephaestus in last with his key.”
Yeah, I definitely liked Solron. She got shit done. We had a plan. I just had one question.
“When do we do all this?”
