Enraptured

Chapter 22

Orpheus skidded to a stop at the edge of the trees. The horror of the scene sucked the air from his lungs. Gryphon dropped his head back between his shoulder blades and howled in pain.

Lift your legs, damn it! Why wouldn’t he lift his legs away from the snakes striking out at him again and again?

“Gryphon!” He called out several times, but Gryphon didn’t respond. The snakes formed a carpet of writhing bodies on the ground beneath him, blocking Orpheus’s path.

“Holy gods.” Skyla drew up beside him, her bow at the ready, her chest rising and falling with her labored breaths. “There could be anyone hiding in these trees.”

“I don’t care what’s in the fucking trees. I care about getting Gryphon down.” He waved the sword over his head. Jumped up and down and hollered to distract the snakes.

Skyla lined up her arrow and fired at the snake coiled to strike at Gryphon’s bare, bloody toes. The arrow sliced right through the snake’s neck, dropping it to the ground. As if they’d just taken notice that something else hunted their prey, the snakes on the edge of the mass turned and hissed in their direction.

Skyla took a step back. Orpheus followed. Three snakes with beady eyes, yellow markings, and heads like cobras wriggled across the ground right for them.

“Um, Orpheus?”

He swung out with his blade, decapitating one, and angled to the second. The third snake shot after Skyla.

“Orpheus!” She lifted her bow, fired. The arrow sailed through the air and sliced into the neck of the charging snake but didn’t slow its pursuit.

There wasn’t time for Orpheus to conjure a spell, wasn’t even time to reach her with his blade and try to help. Some internal voice said, Use the vial.

He dug the vial from his pocket. Inside, the liquid glowed an eerie blue-green. The stranger had told them it was ambrosia. In the human world, ambrosia gifted immortality. If it worked differently down here…

“Here!” He threw the vial to Skyla, then struck out with his blade toward the snake still trying to snack on his flesh.

She caught the glass vial with one hand, twisted the lid. Then she tossed the contents toward the snake, reached for her arrow again, and lined up her shot.

Orpheus decapitated the snake in front of him, turned to help her, but realized he didn’t need to. The glowing liquid hit the snake and immediately stopped its forward momentum. As if it had struck a wall, it jerked back, then a hissing sound echoed and smoke rose up around it. Seconds later nothing but ash littered the ground where the snake had been.

Skyla darted a look his way. “Whoa.”

Whoa was right. But not enough. Orpheus looked back at Gryphon and the thousands of snakes below him. “Give it to me.”

Skyla handed it over. Inside the glass, the blue-green liquid glowed bright, refilled to the top as if she’d never used it.

He ran toward the mass of writhing bodies and in the same motion Skyla had made, flicked the liquid out across the snakes.

Hisses roses up to meld with Gryphon’s cries of pain, followed by the acrid scent of flesh burning and smoke rising up to fill the woods. The snakes, the whole lot of them, were reduced to nothing but smoldering ash.

He crossed the smoking remains, scaled the tree, and eased out on the branch to unhook the chains. “Hold on, Gryphon.”

Gryphon’s body dropped to the ground with a thud. Heart in his throat, Orpheus picked his way down the tree trunk to find Skyla already kneeling next to his brother, her backpack on the ground at her side, the blanket from inside it wrapped around Gryphon’s shaking shoulders.

“Wh-who are you?” Gryphon asked, clutching the blanket to his bloody body, shivering as if he were in the Arctic.

“I came with Orpheus,” Skyla said. “We’re here to help you.”

Gryphon’s head shifted in Orpheus’s direction but confusion creased his forehead. And in his light blue eyes there wasn’t a single shred of recognition.

Orpheus knelt next to his brother. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“No!” Gryphon’s eyes flew wide and he lurched to his feet, knocking Skyla back to the ground. “I have to get back to the city.” His wild eyes searched right and left. Beneath the blanket he clutched tightly to his chest, shivers racked his body again.

Orpheus eased slowly to his feet. Held up his hands in surrender. “Easy, Gryph. No one’s here to hurt you.” From his peripheral vision he saw Skyla push herself up and circle around to Gryphon’s other side.

“No,” Gryphon said, backing up a step, his bloody bare feet scuffing over ash and razor-sharp rocks. “This is a trap. This is more torture. I won’t stay. You can’t make me stay! I’ll find my way back to the city.”

Orpheus didn’t know what city his brother was talking about, but the pain in Gryphon’s voice told him he’d seen and been through horrors no one should have to endure. He took a cautious step closer to his brother. “There’s no trap. And no more torture. I promise. We’re here to rescue you.”

Gryphon’s spine hit a blackened tree trunk. The whites of his eyes could be seen all around his blue irises. “And who’s going to save you?”

Orpheus darted a look at Skyla. The one she sent back said Good question.

Orpheus took another step closer. “Gryphon—”

“Daemon,” Skyla whispered. “These forests have eyes. I feel it. We need to get out of here quick.”

Orpheus felt it too. The hair on his nape stood straight up. “Look, Gryph, we have to go. I promise nothing bad will happen.”

Gryphon held up both blanketed forearms and slammed into Orpheus, knocking him hard to the ground. “No!” He darted past Orpheus and took off into the field.

He was real. Down here, at least, his soul took on a solid form. Orpheus’s head spun from the hit and he rolled to his stomach, then pushed himself up. Skyla dashed after Gryphon and caught him just as he hit the knee-high grasses they’d crossed earlier. She hurled herself forward and grasped him by the waist. The two hit the ground with a smack, then disappeared from view.

Orpheus scrambled to his feet and tore after them. When he reached the grasses, Skyla had one knee pressed into Gryphon’s bare chest to hold him down, her hands pinning his to the ground.

Orpheus’s feet slowed, and in shock and disbelief he approached the pair, his heart in a fog, his head unable to grasp what he was seeing.

His strong, proud, invincible Argonaut brother was weeping.

Skyla glared up at Orpheus. “Help me here! He’s freakin’ strong.”

Orpheus knelt at her side, grasped Gryphon’s wrists with shaking hands. Gods…those damn gods. “We’re gonna help you, Gryphon,” he said, his own voice quaking. “I promise, adelfos. I promise nothing else will happen to you. We’re here to get you out. I swear it.”

Gryphon’s eyes shot wide and he stopped his struggle. His terror-filled gaze darted right and left. “She’s coming. She’s coming. They’re both coming…”

His words echoed in the air around them. Orpheus shot Skyla a look. In her holy shit look he saw the same thing he was thinking reflected back at him. Whatever she was or they were, they needed to be long gone before anyone showed up.

Together they hauled Gryphon to his feet. He whispered frantic, crazed words that made no sense as they wrapped the blanket around his body, darted nervous looks in every direction. Since there was nothing to be done about his bleeding feet, Orpheus slid an arm around Gryphon’s waist, propped Gryphon’s arm over his shoulder, and held him up. Skyla took the lead, her bow and arrow at the ready as they crossed the plains and headed back the way they’d come.

After only twenty minutes, Gryphon’s shuffling and incoherent mutterings turned to thrashing and fighting. He tried to push away from Orpheus and screamed, “No! I won’t let you take me!”

The blanket fell to the ground. Gryphon wrenched free of Orpheus’s hold and turned to run back to the trees, but his legs gave out beneath him and he slammed face-first into the dirt.

“Skyla!”

Orpheus was at Gryphon’s side in a flash, rolling him onto his back, trying to grasp his flailing arms. Gryphon was a big guy but he was weak, and the crazed, almost hysterical look in his eyes said he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Gods, who could think straight in this hellhole?

“Gryphon, stop. Stop!” Orpheus grasped both wrists and pinned them over Gryphon’s head. “I said stop!”

Gryphon lifted his head off the ground, struggled against Orpheus’s grip, and through clenched teeth growled, “I won’t let you take me!”

Skyla skidded to a stop at Orpheus’s side, dropped her bow. “He doesn’t know who you are.”

“Holy fuck, how the hell are we supposed to get him out of here when he’s fighting us? He’ll have every daemon in the realm on us in minutes.”

Skyla fell to her knees and began humming. A soft lullaby, like the one she’d tamed Cerberus with earlier. Gryphon stopped his frantic thrashing. He looked all around to see where the music was coming from.

The lullaby morphed into a gentle ballad, one about hope and promises and finding where you belonged. And as she sang, as her clear, entrancing voice rang out across the plain, Gryphon slowly relaxed his muscles. One by one. Until he sank against the ground and his eyes drifted closed.

Orpheus was too stunned to say anything. He could only watch as she picked up her bow and pushed to her feet. “Let’s go before something we definitely don’t want to meet comes after us.”

Chest warm, and not from the Orb, Orpheus hefted Gryphon into his arms. His brother was deadweight now, but that was okay. So long as he wasn’t fighting them and drawing attention, Orpheus could handle it. And carrying the two-hundred-fifty-pound Argonaut kept his mind off other things. Like what a surprise the Siren had turned out to be and what he was going to do about her when they got out of this mess.

Neither he nor Skyla spoke as they made their way down the steep ridge and past the Cursed Marshes. Anytime Gryphon so much as stirred, Skyla would start humming again and he’d relax back against Orpheus’s shoulder. Once, when they passed a soul being tortured—one tied to a stake being shot at by arrow after arrow—she stopped, stared in horror. But when Orpheus called out for her, she quickly picked up her pace and followed. It wasn’t until hours later, when they reached the base of the jagged mountains that separated Tartarus from the Fields of Asphodel, that they paused to rest.

Orpheus eased Gryphon down to lean against a rock. His head fell against Orpheus’s shoulder. The blanket was wrapped around his lean waist, his bare unmarked chest as muscular as it had always been, but the Argonaut Orpheus had known was nowhere to be found.

Orpheus’s pulse pounded hard. He kept seeing Gryphon in that field, wild-eyed and crazed, scared out of his mind, afraid even of his brother. He swiped a hand down his sweaty face, dropped it against his chest. His fingers fell against the earth element.

“Don’t even think about it.” Skyla’s bow was at her feet, a water bottle resting in her hand.

“Don’t think about what?”

“The element. You can’t give it to him.”

“He needs it. He’s weaker than—”

She stepped in front of him, blocking his view. “He’s a soul, Orpheus. One who’s been tortured by Hades and gods know what else down here. Giving it to him might be just what they want.” Her gaze jumped from rock to rock in the jagged terrain. “Something watches us. And waits. I can feel it.”

He turned to look around. He could feel it too. He just didn’t know what that something was.

Her fingers closing around his brought his attention back to her. Fingers that were warm and alive and reassuring. “Keep it on. Let it give you strength. Can you continue carrying him or do you need to rest?”

“No rest,” he said, his throat thick. “We keep moving. I want out of this hellhole.”

She nodded in agreement, let go of his hand, and handed him the water bottle. The loss of her touch was as stark as the barren wind blowing hot across the land. “I figure six, maybe seven more hours until we reach the River Styx. If we can keep up this pace, that is.”

Again he turned and scanned the hills, the feeling that eyes were watching sending tingles all along his spine.

That and a sense of déjà vu that he’d been here before. That he’d done this before. That failure was imminent.

Skyla’s heart had been in her throat since she’d seen Orpheus’s brother hanging from that gnarled and decrepit tree. And it had picked up speed when she’d seen the female tied to that post, being shot at with those arrows. The female she was sure she recognized as a former Siren. But it was the sensation they were being followed that put the urgency in her step and pushed her on even when her muscles ached from exhaustion.

Orpheus had barely spoken since they’d found Gryphon. Thankfully, her singing was keeping the guardian relaxed, but that didn’t ease Skyla’s anxiety. She wanted out of this shop of horrors as much as Orpheus did. And she never wanted to come back.

They climbed the mountain in silence, descended the other side as day shifted to night. But night here wasn’t anything more than a darker version of a swirling red sky of gloom, so there was still plenty of light to push them on. At the base of the mighty mountains they passed into the Fields of Asphodel, the black, barren, and dead landscape of Tartarus replaced with shades of gray as if from a black-and-white movie.

Souls immediately rushed in their direction, floated around them as they crossed the fields of waist-high wheat, curious as they looked from face to face. Unlike the souls in Tartarus, these craved interaction. The ghostlike apparitions could almost be considered human if, that is, one ignored the depression and longing radiating from them like heat from a baking stone.

Skyla kept a keen eye out for any surprises. Twice she pulled her bow and arrow only to realize what she’d thought was a threat turned out to be nothing more than another curious soul.

The wheat fields ended as they reached the barren knoll and started their ascent to the top of the ridge where they’d run into Cerberus. She was ready with her arrow. Ready to sing again if she had to. But the three-headed dog was nowhere to be seen.

Orpheus leaned down to her ear. “His absence doesn’t make me feel any more reassured.”

Her either.

They crossed to the dock. Beneath their feet the River Styx swirled in shades of red and black.

“Will Charon come back or should we start swimming?” Skyla asked, eyeing the water, not sure she wanted to touch it. She was pretty sure she saw an arm floating by.

“He’ll come back,” Orpheus answered, hefting Gryphon’s motionless body higher on his shoulder.

“How do you know?”

For a moment Orpheus said nothing, then his brow lowered. “I just…know.”

Skyla’s stomach tightened as she searched the distance for Charon and his ferry. Closing her eyes, she fought back the nausea. And for the first time she thought about what could have been, and probably was, done to Orpheus when he’d been trapped down here.

Nearly two thousand years. Gryphon was a muttering, blubbering mess and he’d only been here three months. What must Orpheus have endured?

“Look. There.” Orpheus pointed upriver. A light shone far off in the distance, growing brighter with every second.

Skyla swallowed around the lump in her throat and told herself not to think about what might have been done to him. He was alive, with her now. If he remembered anything she would have noticed. She glanced at his chest where the earth element lay hidden beneath the shirt he’d put back on, then up to his strong jaw and chiseled cheekbones, and finally to those eyes like melted silver. She’d do whatever she had to do to make sure it never happened again.

“Get out your coins,” Orpheus said.

Skyla rifled through her pockets for the coins he’d given her earlier. The ferry approached, bumped against the dock. Charon didn’t speak, but this time, unlike before, there was a pitying, almost sad look in his eyes.

Her hands shook as she handed him three coins, stepped onto the boat. Orpheus moved on after her, spread his legs to balance Gryphon’s weight as the ferry pushed off and turned in the swirling red water. No one spoke as they traveled upriver. And though she tried not to notice, that feeling they were being watched lingered. As did the feeling everything was about to come crashing down.

They’ll strike when you think you’re free.

Her pulse picked up as they reached the dock, as the ferry bumped its way to a stop. Heart thumping beneath her breast, she climbed off the boat and reached for her bow and arrow again. The tunnel they’d ventured into at the start loomed ahead. Empty. Dark. The perfect hiding place for something or someone waiting to attack.

“Get my light,” Orpheus said as the ferry pulled away and Charon disappeared into darkness.

Skyla reached into his pack, grasped the flashlight and flicked it on. Orpheus held out his hand. “I’ll light the way. You just stay ready.”

He was thinking the same thing as she. For some reason, that put her at ease. She nodded, brought her bow up, readied her arrow. They headed into the tunnel without a word.

A chill spread down her spine, the heat of Tartarus long gone. As they picked their way around stalagmites and eased through narrow corners, then passed pools of murky white liquid, she imagined the worst: Cerberus jumping out at them, Hades appearing in a poof of smoke, a fire daemon swirling in a vortex. But none of those scenarios came true. No apparitions, no interference, not even a sound, other than their boots scraping rock and their rapid breaths as they moved.

The tunnel came to an abrupt halt. Skyla stared at the wall of rock, the uneven edges and mottled stone, as Orpheus ran the light from floor to ceiling to look for an opening.

“There has to be a way through,” she said.

“Don’t suppose that book has any key phrases that’ll open it?”

She shrugged out of the pack, reached in, and grasped the book. After flipping pages she frowned. “No, nothing.”

One corner of Orpheus’s lips curled, just a touch. “You could charm it with that Siren voice.”

“My voice calms things. It doesn’t destroy them like…” Her eyes widened. “Where’s the vial?”

He reached into his pocket and handed her the glass vial the mystery guy in the marshes had given them. Skyla twisted the lid and flicked the glowing water at the rocks.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then stone began to crumble.

“Get back,” Orpheus called.

Skyla grabbed her pack and scrambled backward. The wall gave way with a crash of rock and debris until light shone in from the other side.

Light from lanterns inside the Cave of Psychro.

Relief rippled through her chest as she picked her way over the rocks and through the narrow opening. And when she reached the other side, when she set foot on the solid, dirt-strewn earth, she felt like dropping to her knees and kissing the soil.

They’d made it. They’d ventured to the Underworld, rescued a soul, and survived. How many people could say they’d done that?

Not many.

Rocks slipped and scraped one another as Orpheus stumbled through the opening, his brother still deadweight in his arms. “Thank the Fates,” he breathed.

Skyla’s gaze shifted to Gryphon. “Look, Orpheus.”

Gryphon no longer appeared solid, but ethereal, the only thing concrete about him the blanket still wrapped around his naked hips.

“Let’s get him back to Demetrius. Quick.”

She nodded. Headed for the arched doorway that had led into the next room. Too late she realized there were no tourists around. No people milling through the birthplace of Zeus.

In a poof of smoke, Hades appeared on the stairs that led to the bridge that would take them to freedom, all towering menace and malevolent doom. At his side stood Persephone, dressed in a gown as black as her soulless eyes, looking less than thrilled.

Skyla’s feet drew to a stop. At her back, she heard Orpheus’s steps still as well.

“What do you think, wife of mine,” Hades said to Persephone without taking his eyes off Skyla. “That looks like stealing, don’t you think?”

Persephone wrapped her long, clawlike fingers around the handrail at her side. “I would say that’s most definitely stealing.” Heat flared in her eyes. “Hello, Orpheus. It’s good to see you again.” Then to her husband, “Whatever shall we do with them?”

A wicked, sinister grin curled the right side of Hades’s mouth, and dread dropped like a rock into the pit of Skyla’s stomach. “I can think of several things.”