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.