completely surrounding you. It is absolutely secure and cannot be penetrated. You will complete the next challenge or you will both die.”
“So the rules have changed?” Brennan asked quietly. He reached over and grasped my hand in an effort to comfort me. I was so furious that I didn’t even really even need comforting. I wasn’t upset or sad or distressed- I was unbelievably pissed off. I could feel the anger pulsing through my veins, flooding through my heart and flushing my cheeks. Zeus smiled.
“Such spirit,” he said, gazing upon me. “Use it now, little one. Your challenge, your test, is to fight each other. You wished to stand against me? That is not going to happen. But you can use your skills against each other. Only one of you will leave this clearing. When a victor emerges, the mortals in the gauntlet will be released unharmed. The mortal world will continue as before. I will accept the death of one of you as repentance from the mortal world.”
“The mortal world never knew that you were imprisoned!” I snapped. I was so angry that my vision almost blurred. “They never knew- it wasn’t their fault. It was Hades and the Fates. The blame should rest directly on their shoulders.”
“And your mother, Hecate,” Zeus pointed out. “She participated, as well. And that, young one, is why I am allowing this game. You should know by now that the best way to seek retribution from a god is to gain it from those who they love. You are Hecate’s most valued treasure. You are correct. The rules and object of this game have changed. No matter who wins here in this clearing, you or Brennan, I will consider your mother’s transgression against me wiped clean. If Brennan dies, you will forever live in misery. If you die, your mother will. Either way, justice will have been served.”
“Justice?” I spit. “Justice is not sick and twisted. You are.”
“Such spirit,” Zeus repeated, shaking his head. “If only you had chosen to use it for me, rather than against me.”
“You speak as if I ever had a chance!” I lashed out. “I never did. I’ve been cursed by the man I thought was my father and you never interfered on my behalf. And now I will pay a debt that isn’t mine.”
“The life of a god is never fair,” Zeus leveled a silver gaze at me. “You should know that by now.” He turned to Brennan.
“If you are the victor here, I will grant you immortality. You will reside in Olympus with all of the glory that you deserve. If you lose valiantly, you will live in the Underworld in the Isles of the Blessed. Either way, you future will not be unpleasant.”
“If I lose valiantly?” Brennan asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means if you lose after fighting me with everything that you’ve got,” I interrupted. “Zeus wants us to fight to the death. He wants to see blood.”
“I deserve to see blood,” Zeus replied angrily. “Do not forget that.”
“Perhaps,” I acknowledged. “But not ours. We did nothing to deserve this.”
“It is no matter,” Zeus answered, once again calm and impassive. “Haven’t we already discussed that? This is your lot. Now, the new rules have been explained to you. They are simple. One of you will survive. You will remain in this clearing until one of you is dead. I have taken away Empusa’s immortality. If she wins, I will restore it and I will remove her curse. No one can assist you. You will each stand alone.” He waved a hand toward our right and the arena in Olympus appeared to us.
“We will be seated in the Arena watching you,” Zeus continued. “You will be able to see us, as well. Unfortunately, no one can interact with you or offer you advice. You will each be completely on your own. Do you understand these rules as I’ve explained them to you?”
Brennan nodded silently.
“I understand the rules,” I answered coldly. I gazed at the vision of Olympus. My mother sat next to an empty seat, her shoulders slumped. I assumed the empty seat was Zeus’ since Hera sat on the other side.
“My mother?” I asked. “What will happen to her?”
“Why nothing of course,” Zeus answered. “You will pay her debt. Your mother is a unique goddess in that her magic is very, very powerful-“
“More powerful than yours!” I interrupted.
Zeus continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “But she will not use it against me or to assist you since she knows that you are at my mercy right now. With my whim, you will live or die.”
At his words, pain like I’d never experienced ripped through my body, causing me to drop to my knees and writhe in the dirt. It literally felt like someone was using a hot poker to rip my internal organs to shreds and pull them out through my belly button. It was so intense that I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t breathe…I couldn’t see. Everything turned to black and then nothing.
When I opened my eyes again, I found Brennan clutching me to him, murmuring anxiously to me. Zeus stood to the side and observed us. I realized that I had passed out from the pain and then just as quickly realized that the horrible pain was gone.
“Do we understand each other?” Zeus asked quietly. I nodded silently. His message was clear. He could annihilate me or Brennan in the blink of an eye if he so chose. We were nothing to him, no more than a speck of dirt beneath his heel. He nodded at my thought, confirming it, and then he was gone.
Brennan and I were left alone or as alone as we could be with the Olympians watching us from the arena. I turned my back on them and faced Brennan, focusing solely on him and ignoring the fact that any of the Olympians could be watching us this very minute.
Brennan’s face reflected all of the horror that I felt inside. He was silent, his expression tortured. He reached over and wiped a tear from my cheek. I hadn’t even realized that I was crying. I leaned into his hand and he pulled me close.
“I will never harm you,” he whispered. “I will not do it. They cannot force me.”
Pain seemed to shatter my heart into a million jagged pieces.
“They have ways,” I whispered to him. It was difficult to speak past the lump that had formed in my throat. “Trust me, they have ways.”
Brennan held me for the longest time. I listened to his heart beat in his chest, slow and rhythmic. I felt his warmth, smelled his masculine scent, felt the softness of his skin and the rigidity of his muscles. I could stay within his embrace forever. But it couldn’t happen.
I knew that if we didn’t act, they would find ways to force us into action. It was simply how Zeus operated. I glanced at the vision of the arena and found Zeus smiling in reaction to my thought. It appeared that even though we were isolated from the world and could not hear them, they could still read our minds. And from his knowing smile, I could see that I was right.
Zeus would eventually force us to act. We couldn’t hide here forever. It would be better for everyone if we just got it over with right now and didn’t drag it out.
I pushed away from Brennan and took a ragged breath, watching it form in the air in a puff as I breathed it out in the cold night. After a thousand years of running and hiding in self-preservation, I couldn’t believe the words that came out of my mouth next.
“Brennan, I want you to kill me right now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Brennan stared at me in disbelief, then shock, then horror, and then finally back to shock. His mouth was slack, his eyes wide. He stood motionlessly, his arms limp at his side. I could hear the jumble of thoughts in his head as he tried to make sense of my words and my intentions.
“No.”
One word, spoken with finality as he finally came to his senses.
“I can’t believe you would expect that out of me,” he added in a hurt tone. “I could no more hurt you then I could kill an infant with my bare hands. I never want to live without you. I want you to kill me instead. Right now. Do it.”
He held his hands up, palms up to the sky, his eyes fixated on me. “I love you, Emmie. Just do it. Please let me save you.”
I only thought my heart had broken before. I had been wrong. Because it was breaking now, all over again, as
painful as anything I’d ever felt. It was excruciating. I shook my head from side to side, not able to breathe enough to speak.
“Then what will we do?” Brennan asked softly. “I can’t kill you and you can’t kill me. But we’re trapped here until one of us is dead.”
“Well, they took away my immortality,” I said. “Perhaps we can just see who starves to death first.”
Brennan shook his head. “I doubt that will be enough for him. He will force us to act—somehow.”
Brennan was a fast learner. That was exactly what would happen.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted in a whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”
My shoulders slumped as though the weight of the entire world was on them. It was a heavy, heavy weight.
“We need to think on this,” Brennan said firmly. “There has to be a way. There has to be something we can do. Nothing is ever hopeless, Em.”
He pulled me into his arm and we sank to the ground together with me in his lap. I rested my head against his chest. I should be trying to think of a way out of this mess, some possible way that I could save the man that I loved, but all I could do was lay limply in his arms, inhaling his scent and absorbing his warmth.
The night closed in around us and I could smell the dew in the air. I could hear the fire continually burning, the screams still emanating from the village. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
I closed my eyes.
Chapter Nineteen
Blackness
Chapter Twenty
Blackness
Chapter Twenty-One
“Empusa, you’ve got to wake up.”
Gaia’s clear voice penetrated the black fog of my sleep. I had been dreamless and peaceful until she interrupted my solitude. I growled and tried to ignore my ghostly friend.
“Seriously, Empusa. Listen to me. If you don’t wake up, Zeus will kill you and Brennan both. Wake. UP.”
I opened my eyes.
At first it was difficult to focus and I couldn’t see. Everything around me was blurry. A golden shape formed in front of my face and I focused sharply on it, trying to see what it was.
“Empusa?”
Brennan’s voice came from the shape and he was concerned, relieved… and slightly empty. Hollow.
I quickly tried harder to see and Brennan’s anxious face came into focus, directly in front of my own. He grabbed me to him before I could even think.
“Oh, my god. Thank god. Thank god. Thank god.”
He was talking into my neck, his voice muffled and I couldn’t understand why he was so upset. What horrible, catastrophic thing had happened?
I pulled away and stared at him.
“What happened, Bren?”
He looked at me, completely shocked.
“Empusa, do you know how long you’ve been asleep?”
I stared at him again, confused.
“All night?”
He shook his head. “No. You’ve been asleep for at least two months. Maybe longer. I can’t tell- time runs together nowadays. It’s like you were in a coma. I didn’t know what to do.”
Shock slammed into me. A month?
Brennan held onto me tightly. “I did everything I could think of. I even tried appealing to Zeus, but that clearly didn’t help.”
He motioned toward the vision of Olympus. A smattering of Olympians, including Zeus, were seated in the arena seats. They were all watching us, with varying expressions in their silver eyes. My mother sat next to Zeus, and although she was calm, I could see the concern in her eyes. Her gaze held mine and I saw a million things in it. But nothing that she could put a voice to. An invisible wall saw to that.
“What was wrong with you?” Brennan asked anxiously, patting down my arms as though he was checking for broken bones. I stared at him.
“Nothing’s broken,” I told him wryly. He actually smiled, a sight that made my heart flutter. How I had missed that…his beautiful face.
He actually had a beard now, a blonde scruff, which I was sure was a result of our being trapped in this clearing. I was not normally a fan of beards, but Brennan could even pull that off.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked again. His eyes were still full of worry and concern. “Are you alright now?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Nothing like that has ever happened before. I was so overwhelmed, so sad at the thought that things are not going to end well for us that I just wanted to sleep.”
“Well, you certainly did that,” Brennan answered, shaking his own head. “I guess we see now what happens when a goddess becomes depressed. You get your own personal coma-like getaway.”
“Don’t knock it,” I told him as I shakily got to my feet. My muscles felt like they hadn’t moved in a year, slightly like gelatin. “I’d like to go back. I had no worry there, no pain. I wonder if that is what death is like…true death? Because I somehow doubt that Zeus will allow me to live in the Isles of the Blessed if I lose. I’d like an eternity of nothingness instead.”
“Don’t talk like that!” Brennan snapped. “Do you have any idea how hard it is has been for me all of this time? I couldn’t reach you, I couldn’t help you. No one would help me, we’re trapped in this god-forsaken clearing. To hear you talk about giving up, when I haven’t given up on you this entire time, it’s a slap in the face, Empusa!”
He turned his back on me and crossed the clearing, sitting on the edge of the stone altar. He stubbornly refused to look at me, glaring at the ground. If looks could kill, the grass beneath his feet would be dead. And he was right. I had no idea what it had been like for him, but I could imagine how it would have been for me if the tables had been turned. Seeing him in a coma-like state for months without being able to help would have been excruciating.
I weakly crossed the clearing, my legs shaking the entire way, and sank to my knees between his. Cupping his face in my hands, I stared him in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” I said simply. “I didn’t mean to leave you and I didn’t mean to belittle it. You are everything to me. It kills me that I left you alone.”
“It’s alright,” Brennan said gruffly. “You’re back now and that’s what matters.”
“It’s not all that matters,” I argued. “But it’s what we have to work with right now. We’ve got to form a plan. No one can come to our assistance here. It’s just you and me.”
“And me,” a small voice announced.
I spun around, leaping to my feet as I looked for the voice.
“I’m here,” it said softly. I narrowed my eyes as I looked for it, for her. The voice was female.
And then I saw her. So transparent that she was almost invisible, Gaia hovered by the edge of the clearing, just inside the invisible wall. She was so faded that she almost blended into the backdrop of trees and I realized that she was purposely camouflaging herself to avoid detection by the Olympians.
I quickly tore my eyes away from her so that Zeus didn’t see me looking at her and I knelt once again in front of Brennan. Trying to be inconspicuous, I spoke to her from the corner of my mouth.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed. “If Zeus sees you, you’re dead.”
“I’m already dead,” she answered calmly.
“Fine. You’ll be worse than dead.”
“Impossible,” she answered. “Do you want my help or not?”
“How are you even here?” I asked. “Did my mother send you? How did you get through the wall?”
“Ghosts can’t be contained,” she sniffed. “I’m here to bring you news. Zeus is keeping your mother close to him at all times. She will not be able to help you. He has threatened your life if she tries. Your father sent me.”
Instantly, Mormo’s face clashed into my eyes and I cringed.
“Hades,” Gaia clarified. “Your true father.”
I expelled a breath slowly. It was going to take me quite a while to get used to that, I could tell. Mormo had been my ‘father’ for a thou
sand years. Old habits died hard.
“What did he have you risk your life to tell me?” I asked quietly. I glanced up at the vision of Olympus. Zeus was engaged in a conversation with Apollo and was not even looking in our direction. I felt a brief feeling of relief. “Why exactly are you here?”
“Well, he had me wake you up for one thing,” she pointed out. “If you hadn’t, Zeus was going to kill you today.”
Her entire tone had changed when she mentioned Hades’ name and I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t tell me that you trust Hades now,” I rolled my eyes and then glanced up at Zeus again. He was still speaking with Apollo, who was waving his arms around. Apparently, Apollo wasn’t enjoying their conversation. I imagined that he was probably trying to get Zeus to just kill me outright rather than allowing this game to