Page 41

Chapter

Thirty-Five

P ersephone

The ground rushes toward me. Wind screams as it whips by, lashing at sun stung skin.

Black dots dance in my vision.

Just when I think they’ll claim all my vision, I see Ares’ head snap up as though pulled by the string of my scream. From the blown red of his pupilless eyes, a misty aura of red and black leaks into the air. In seconds, that aura is bleeding ominous ribbons into the space around him.

A massive hand whips out to hook one of the gladiators around the ankle, dragging him close. Athena snaps her arms around me, halting my fall in time for me to see Ares rip the man in two, right down the middle. Entrails burst from within his body to begin a scene of utter horror.

Ares grabs hold of another body. The man screams as his arm is ripped from him and tossed to the other side of the arena. A leg follows. A head rolls.

Bile rises.

Athena squeezes me around the middle as she holds us hovering above the devastating scene and I taste the bubbling acid of my bile on the back of my tongue.

Gladiators, grown men trained to maim, scream as Ares finds his feet.

He no longer looks human at all. His change is nothing like when Hades changed for me, cleanly and of his will.

This had been forced, the flesh stripped from him in ribbons.

Some still hangs in tatters from the stone flesh of his Gods’ Form.

The loose flesh slaps against his body as he moves, forcing one foot in front of the other.

I’m not even sure he feels the pain of the beating he suffered any longer. He’s consumed by the bloodlust they forced him into. I realize with a kind of devastation that bludgeons the soul inside me that bleeds for Ares, that this is normal for him. This is something he suffers often.

Like so many others, he suffers in silence the atrocities of Zeus.

I didn’t think I could hate the Golden God any more than I did before. But I do. I hate him with every piece that crafts the soul that feeds my body. I hate him with every breath I breathe, every dream I dream.

And I vow now to see his destruction, after he pays penance.

Chaos whirls inside me now. The spirit of the House of Judgement, from which the blood of my innocence birthed it from the depths of an ancient primordial God born of the first mother, hums with the hunger to bestow her eternal judgement on the God of Thunder.

It is a hunger that will not die, will grow in demand until it is sated.

It is a hunger I will see filled if it is the last thing I do. Because I know that if I don’t, there will be no safe world for my daughters to live in. No safe world for the children who already are or who will come.

A battle cry rips from Ares as he charges the men who beat him with whips and chains, toothy hooks and war hammers.

A sword arcs high as Ares lifts one of the gladiators by his throat, squeezing until the man’s eyes burst red and finally pop.

Blood pours from his nostrils and between his lips, running in rivers from his ears to pour over Ares’ hand that squeezes his throat even tighter.

I gasp in shocked horror when the man’s head simply pops off. His head bobs in the sand as his limp body drops to a heap of flesh and bones at Ares’ feet.

The sword, having landed in the sand blade tip down is pulled from the earth by the man who’d been fighting for his life in the arena. The man who, until now, was pinned to the stone wall as he watched the impossibility of the scene play out before him.

And now, I watch another impossibility as the man lifts the blade and drives it cleanly through the gladiator charging Ares with a hammer swung high over his head, ready to connect with Ares’ spine.

Ares spins at the sound of a blade slicing through flesh to find the man gasping in shock as he yanks the blade from the belly of the gladiator, watching as he falls to his knees in the sand.

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” The man’s voice shakes. “Don’t know what the fuck you are—but after that, I’ll help you.”

Ares growls one word, “Name?”

“Gideon.”

“You will die here today, Gideon,” Ares tells him matter of fact as he swings down to grip the fallen war hammer. “But my soul will owe yours a blood debt.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Gideon’s voice— hell, all of him —trembles.

Ares’ beastly face morphs into what I’m certain is meant to be a smile as he swings the hammer over Gideon’s head, narrowly missing him and instead connecting with the gladiator Gideon has been initially fighting.

The body with the now shattered head thuds to the ground in the same moment Gideon lets out a girlishly high scream that would have been funny, if it all weren’t so grotesque.

Ares tips his head back once more, swirling mist of red and black concealing the features of his face as he frees a high whistle that pierces the sky.

And then he refocuses on the battle, dropping one hundred men in less than five minutes with Gideon fighting at his back.

From the arena doors in the amphitheatre, more men spill.

Overhead, I see four spots of burning color with wings of blazing gold.

Lightning strikes at them, but it’s met with a flame that devours the bolts one after the other as they charge toward the battle.

Men scream as Ares’ four Pegasus land in the sand, breathing hot flames into the amphitheatre.

The flames chase the gladiators, melting flesh from bone as screams tear into the darkening sky.

Ares says something I can’t begin to understand as the white horse—Phobos, I remember from my last introduction pauses in front of Gideon.

I’m not sure the man has ever ridden a horse in his life, but he still climbs atop the winged beast. His fingers dig deep into the golden mane as the Pegasus shoots up into the sky.

The three other Pegasus soar high to where Hydra growls and roars inside her lightning cage. Together, the three release flames of gold that devour the lightning prison as Hydra looses her own flames, rich with the screams of the darkest Pits of Tartarus.

Hell is well and truly unleased then as the Gods and Goddesses, and souls of the dead trapped within the hijacked realm that is the Golden City of Gods descends into chaos.

Screams tear through the stands and gladiators turn on one another.

Inky shadows come to life in the black smoke that survives the dying of Hydra’s flame.

“I am coming, my Persephone!” Hydra roars in my mind, but even I can hear the surprise that taints her voice when she speaks.

“What is this?” Athena hisses in my ear, and I think I feel the sharp slide of her canine against the lobe. When I don’t answer, she screams again, “What is this, you witch!”

She’s too busy looking at the inky spill of shadows that wreak havoc on the crowd now fighting to escape to notice Ares stop fighting.

His head tips back, blood red eyes lusting for battle as they lock on me and Athena.

He roars a savage roar of pain as a spray of blood bursts from his back where the black obsidian of his bone shines with the blood he’d allowed the gladiators to spill.

A black bone skeleton of sharply pointed wings unfolds from his spine, spilling acidic blood that rains on the ground as he throws his head back once again and screams a scream of male rage and agony as the space between the bones begins to fill with a leathery flesh.

Between the two wings, a leathery pouch forms—and black spears of Gods’ bone , I realise—pokes out the top.

The whole thing takes only seconds, and then Ares bursts from the arena where flames lick at him—keeping him from the violence of the gladiators that continue to spill from the now open arena doors.

He soars straight for me and Athena, one massive arm swinging back to connect with the pointed spears that sit in the pouch between his wings.

Teeth gnash in pain as he yanks a spear free, releasing another vicious spray of blood as he arcs his hand and, reaching for me with one, he shoves the Gods’ bone spear down through Athena’s open mouth.

She’d let me go, her gun metal wings fluttering fast as she tried to surge herself up and away from Ares’ attack.

She only served to thrust herself into his attack.

I can’t say I’m sorry when I see the tip of Ares’ spear appear from the base of her belly. Her dark eyes snap wide and her wings give a quick flutter before she is falling to the arena, unmoving.

Zeus roars, but I pay it no mind as Ares grunts, locking his arms around me.

I realize they tremble with exhaustion, not fear when he shoves us higher into the sky.

Still, I can’t take my eyes off the scene below as the gladiators descend on Athena.

It’s then I realize as she screams that she wasn’t dead.

They tear into her, ripping flesh in ribbons and scattering her bones. Her screams have ended, but they seem to echo in the amphitheatre alongside Zeus’ cries until Ares flies me too far for the sound of any of the chaos to reach.

I say nothing, too shocked and afraid to speak as Ares clings to me with a strength that quickly weakens.

I don’t have the faintest idea where he is taking me until we land outside the massive wood door adorned with metal in the side of the mountain.

The landing is so rough, that I spill painfully against the gravel, shards digging deep into my palms and knees.

Ares simply collapses, his open wounds collecting debris in his fall.

Pain bites my hands and knees as I crawl toward him, screaming his name. “Ares!” I reach him, afraid to touch him as I cry. “Wake up. Wake up! ”

When he doesn’t open his stone covered eyes, I scramble to my feet. My knees quake, threatening to give out with every step I take. Adrenaline is in overdrive, but I manage to get myself to the door.

I throw my entire body into the wood, uncertain that I can summon the energy to beat it with my fists. Blackness hovers at the edge of my vision. It doesn’t seem to matter how many breaths I gasp into the deep of my lungs, I can’t seem to fill them. Can’t satisfy their craving for more.

“Help,” I think I scream.

The blackness creeps over my vision until there is little more than a pinprick. My body lurches forward. Something hard connects with the side of my face. Maybe my face connects with something hard.

In the pinhole that remains of my vision, I see a girl.

Everything turns black.