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Where there is Heart, there is Hope

Jared

I couldn’t move.

I just couldn’t seem to force myself to leave this place. The sight of my defeat. The proof of all I had lost. My heart ripped to shreds and was left barely beating.

The battle was over and neither side could claim victory. But the loss for me was immeasurable. Not only had I lost Ella once again, but this time the cost of my failure had been my brother. And for the first time in my life…

I didn’t know what to do.

Because I had always been a planner. I had always been the one to fix the unfixable. To plot out the next course of action, where most others were still questioning what had happened. I had been the one with the next step already in motion. But this time…

I had nothing.

The broken remains of the statue of Hades were nothing more than a cruel irony for what I felt now.

Because I had been so sure that it would work.

So sure, that once she had felt the branch connecting with her, that she would come back to me.

But bitterness was my only reward for my foolish hope.

Bitterness and heartache. As I would never forget the hatred I had seen in her eyes.

The moment she wanted to end my life, as if her mind had been poisoned against me. Against everyone but that fuck, Garmr!

And now, he not only had my woman, but he also had my brother. My vow to rip his head off was growing stronger by the second and was the reason why I said sharply,

“I am not in the mood for company,” as I felt the presence of two others joining me on the mountain ridge. The same one that Lucius’s brother, Dariush, had returned me to. The one I had been unable to bring my own brother back to.

“That may be so, but you will have it all the same,” Dom replied before coming to sit next to me.

“And I am here to witness Dom receive a punch to the face when he tries to offer you words of wisdom,” Lucius replied, taking my other side and making me scoff when Dom growled at him.

“I can’t believe it didn’t work,” I said, despite my earlier comment about not being in the mood to talk.

“That is not to say that nothing will, we must not lose hope, Jared,” Dom replied, making me grit my teeth, my hand fisting where it was resting at my bent knee.

“That’s easy for you to say, your Chosen One didn’t just try to kill you,” I snapped, making Lucius laugh.

“Then you missed the amusing show of Keira trying to do just that at the War of Souls and as for me, well, I had my own little Hellion to deal with,” Lucius replied.

I sighed, realizing that when fighting Garmr at that same battle, I had indeed missed that part.

“Don’t forget, Jared, neither of us had an easy path to walk when it came to our Fated and keeping them safe,” Dom added, making me shake my head before pointing out,

“And how does that help me now? Because last time I checked, your Fated Ones are still safely by your sides.”

“That may be so, but even you know this was not always the case. You were there, Jared, you know what I went through and as for Lucius, how many times did he have to search Hell to find my daughter?” Dom replied, making Lucius grumble,

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“The point is, our prophecies came to the natural end the Fates had planned for us, and as hard as it is for you to face now, they are not yet done with you.”

I gritted my teeth, knowing Dom was right, despite how hard it was to face what had just happened.

“Then what am I to do?” I asked, now looking to him, seeing he was no longer wearing his demonic battle gear but casual attire like Lucius and me.

The material was similar to what I wore, and it held a leathery appearance.

Only his wide black pants were more in the style of Hakama, a traditional Japanese attire, which he wore with a tunic shirt in dark purple.

As for Lucius, like myself, his pants resembled the leather of fire salamander, that were tighter on the skin and offered more protection.

I could tell that his long sleeve T-shirt was made from a creature known as a Vipera.

A Hellish grass snake that spent most of its time burrowed underground.

And like the fire salamander, it was the softer underbellies that were used for material.

Shit kicker, plated boots completed the look for both of us, ones scuffed and covered in battle dirt like Dom’s were.

“What am I to do when Fate seems as if it is only against me?” I asked again, making Dom sigh at my outburst.

“What us Kings always do, fight for our people, fight for our way of life, and most of all, fight for the woman we love. We fight for our Fate,” he replied firmly.

Gesturing to the destruction in the valley with a flick of my wrist, I asked, “And the battle?”

“We may not have been victorious, just as we expected not to be, but the war is far from over. More legions are on their way to fight with us.”

“And what will be the point of our numbers, if Ella can just bring back the dead and control their souls?” I said, reminding him of our greatest challenge, and the one likely to cost us any chance of victory.

“Our goal remains the same, we just have to find another way to bring her back,” Lucius said, making me stand up in my anger.

“Don’t you think that is exactly what I have been trying to do?

! Why would Fate lead me to Hades if giving her that fucking branch wouldn’t work?

! We are fucking engrained with the belief that everything that happens is Fated to be, but that belief is falling pretty flat on its fucking face right now!

” I ranted, making both Lucius and Dom sigh before they too got to their feet.

“She is not lost to us completely, there has to be a way,” Dom argued.

“You didn’t see what I did, Dom. I handed her that branch and there was nothing!” I argued, pausing long enough to run a rough hand through my hair in frustration.

“She uttered the word mother , like offering me some cruel shred of hope before snapping the thing in two like it meant nothing to her!” I told them, making Dom sigh, whilst Lucius looked deep in thought.

“Perhaps that’s because it didn’t,” he said, making me narrow my gaze at him. Yet despite this, the seed he planted quickly started to grow before I finally uttered,

“It wasn’t her mother.”

“What do you mean?” Dom asked as Lucius started to smirk.

“Fuck!” I snarled, feeling like a fucking idiot!

“Think about it, we are not trying to get the memories back to her first soul but that of Ella… human Ella, the one whose parents are Frank and Libby, the one filled with dancing, riding her bike, working on trucks with her dad, climbing trees in the woods and pretending to be a wolf. That is the Ella we are trying to bring home,” I said, casting a dawning light to Dom’s features.

“The anchor was wrong,” he muttered as if to himself.

“Exactly! That branch might have worked before, but why would it work now when our Ella has no real memories of the mother we were trying to reconnect her with… it all makes perfect sense why it didn’t work!

” I said, feeling my heart racing with the possibility that we finally had the answer on how to get her back.

“And what of you?” Dom asked, and although it pained me to think that I wasn’t enough to bring her back, I couldn’t let that factor in to how I was going to achieve this. Which was I why I could only try and make sense of it.

“All I can think of is that I haven’t been in Ella’s life long enough.

That our memories made together are still too fresh, especially when we are trying to get to the core of her.

That’s why just having Lerna there and back when she was first taken, wasn’t enough either.

It’s core memories of where she came from.

That’s what we must need,” I said, now feeling hope bloom once more.

“That makes sense, which now begs the question of how we can accomplish this,” Dom said, his thoughtful expression now mirroring my own.

“There has to be a way to link her back to her mortal life,” I said, making Lucius say,

“What about Frank?”

Dom and I both looked at him at the same time.

“Frank?” I asked.

“Well, he is her father,” Lucius pointed out in an obvious tone.

“He is also an Angel,” Dom was quick to point out.

“Yeah, and I don’t think handing her a wrench from his garage is going to cut it,” I added.

“Nor is there a possibility to get him into Hell,” Dom said with a frown, one which Lucius smirked at. And it was one of those cunning, ruthless kind of smirks that usually came with pain and blood. Which in the end wasn’t that far off when he told us…

“Not if I turn him into a Vampire.”