Page 60 of Marked

Twenty

When consciousness comes back to me, I’m lying on familiar fine, pale green sand. Rolling over onto my side, I see a massive three-headed black dog beside me. Each set of ears is perked up in alert and facing a different direction. Their noses twitch occasionally, scenting the air for something, but what?

“Cerberus?” I ask softly, getting to my knees.

All three heads swing my way, studying me. With a wisp of black smoke, he separates into the three identical triplets I’m used to. “Valkyrie,” they greet.

My brow furrows in confusion as I look at them. “What’s going on? Why am I here?”

“For protection.” One of them says as he approaches me, the other two crossing their arms over their chests to watch.

“Protection from what?” I look at the one who squats down in front of me. “What are you doing?”

He touches my calf and I wince. “Your soul is reflecting the wound on your human body, like I thought.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He stands and cocks his head at me. “The thing that bit you, the bite is reflected on your soul.”

“Look at your leg,” another prompts.

I do as told and look at my leg. Jack wasn’t kidding when he said it looked like I stepped into a trap. All the way around my calf are almost perfectly spaced holes. No, “holes” isn’t the right word. They’re puncture marks; teeth marks. Just like a shark…or a crocodile. The night catches up to me. and I rub at my face.

“The thing that bit me.”

“Yes. You should have run sooner,” they all say with disapproval, red eyes narrowing into a glare.

“I get that,” I deadpan. “Again, protection from what?”

The triplets standing off to the side clasp their hands behind their back. “As we said, the creature that attacked you is from the underworld.”

I blink and look at my leg once again. “I’ve never seen a chimera like that before.” A shiver makes the hair on my arms stand. “It was terrifying.”

The Cerberus who examined my leg nods. “That’s because there is only one of her kind.”

My arms cross over my chest as I rub at the chilled skin. “Where does she come from? Here? The Greek side?”

They tense and glance at one another before one of them speaks. “We don’t speak of other factions.”

I pick up on their emphasis. “So that’s a no.” Their following silence is answer enough. “Can I ask why you don’t speak about each other?”

They shrug simultaneously, once again acting as a single entity in three different bodies. “It’s an agreement that we have come to. In essence they are our competition. You must understand that most of us have a counterpart in other domains.”

“Even you?” I purse my lips together, trying to think of examples. “Would that be like Satan and Hades? Osiris? Dis Pater?”

They nod. “Yes, those are all gods of the underworld. And yes, even we have counterparts.”

“But you said this thing that attacked me is one of a kind. Does that mean it doesn’t have a counterpart in any other underworld?” Bringing the question up makes my calf twitch with an echo of pain.

“Correct,” one of them says.

“All underworlds have their own beasts and monsters. Their own different types of demons,” another adds in.

The third one’s eyes stay on mine, and he tilts his head as I bite my lip. “You have another question.”

“I do,” I agree, looking at my leg again. The bite marks remind me of those on John Doe. “Is this thing the one causing my murders? The thing you told me to mark?”

Again, they fall silent and look at each other in question. I’ve never seen Cerberus like this before, and it’s both amusing and concerning.

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