A female also stood with them. Dressed in knee-high boots, slim black pants and a tight-fitting top, her bowstring drawn back, arrow ready to release.
“Orpheus?” Theron called.
“I’m on it!” Orpheus called. He held out his hands and began chanting in that witch language of his. The ground rumbled. Hellhounds broke through the cave opening and charged. A blur of black slithered off to the right. While the Argonauts fought the beasts back, Orpheus continued chanting. Through the darkness Hades appeared, walking toward them in a swirl of smoke, with murder shining in his soulless eyes.
Orpheus’s chanting grew stronger and something glowed red against the skin under his shirt. The ground rumbled again as if a great earthquake was building. Then the entire mountain came down, rocks and boulders and tree limbs crashing in to destroy the cave.
Teeth gnashed, a bloodcurdling howl echoed through the air. Gryphon watched as the Argonauts decimated the five or so hellhounds that had come through before the mountain had collapsed. The Argonauts and the female with the bow.
The battle was over in seconds. In the aftermath, shaking began, but this wasn’t from the ground. It came from within. Gryphon could only curl into himself and the blanket. Voices drew close as he ducked his head. Voices of his warrior kin. Kin he couldn’t face.
“Take him and go,” Theron said. “Get him to D and that warlock, then get him the hell home.”
“Hades will figure out a way through,” Orpheus said, his arms sliding under the blanket to lift Gryphon off the ground. “He’ll be pissed and he’ll be coming.”
“We’ll distract until you’re gone. Then we’ll get gone ourselves.”
“How did you know where and when we’d come out?” the female asked.
“The queen,” Titus answered. “She and her sisters used their Horae powers to see what Hades had planned.”
The ground shook again. And Theron added louder, “Get gone, already!
“On foot?” the female—Skyla?—asked somewhere close.
“No,” Orpheus answered. “This time you’re both otherworldly. At least for now. Hold on to me. We’re flashing out of this one.”
Before Gryphon could wonder what sort of “otherworldly” she was, he felt himself flying. Flying across time and space and away from the Underworld and all its horrors. But not away from the darkness that now lived inside him. And not away from the voice he heard cackling faintly on the wind.
Atalanta’s voice.
Now we are both free. But don’t forget you are mine, doulas. Forever, you are now linked to me…
Orpheus hollered as they flashed to the abandoned homestead they’d found in the hills outside Psychro. Rock walls gave way to a thatched roof. Weeds and cacti overtook what used to be a yard.
The door jerked open just as they reached it and Demetrius’s towering body filled the frame, his dark eyes darting to the blanket Orpheus had draped over Gryphon so he could carry him. “You got him?”
“Yeah. Where’s the warlock?”
“In here.” Demetrius led them to the back of the shack into what looked like a bedroom. An iron bed frame void of mattress sat against the wall, but the warlock—in Gryphon’s body—was bound and gagged on the opposite side of the room, leaning against the wall, his eyes growing wide as Orpheus and Skyla stepped in after Demetrius.
The warlock struggled in his bonds, yelled beneath the gag. Fear shone in his too-blue eyes. Eyes that didn’t belong to Gryphon.
“How do we do this?” Demetrius asked.
“I don’t know,” Orpheus answered. “Skyla?”
“This is outside the realm of my expertise, boys, but I think if you put his soul anywhere near his body, it’ll know what to do.”
That sounded like as good a plan as any. Orpheus tugged the blanket from Gryphon’s back then laid him on the dirt-strewn stone floor, opening the blanket so his ethereal body came into view.
None of them spoke as they waited for something to happen. The only sound in the room was the warlock screaming beneath his gag and struggling with whatever strength he had left to break free of the chain holding his arms secured to the wall above his head.
At first, nothing happened. And then slowly Gryphon’s soul began to slink across the floor, floating really, toward his body.
The warlock’s eyes grew even wider. And he screamed so loud Orpheus was sure all Crete could hear him.
Very few moments stuck with Orpheus on a gut level, but that one did. Watching his brother’s soul slide inside his body. Hearing the strangled scream of protest from the warlock. Seeing the warlock’s ethereal spirit as it was forced out. The image of the warlock appeared in the air, his true form—old, wrinkled, with gnarled hands and fingers and the same glowing blue eyes. The fear-filled eyes surveyed the room, then exploded in the warlock’s head. Then his ghostly body was swamped by a dark mist that dragged him down through howls of agony into the cracks in the stone floor until he was gone for good.
In the silence that followed, Skyla’s shot a look at Orpheus. “Okay, that was wicked.”
“Fucking wicked,” Demetrius muttered. “Remind me not to piss off Hades.”
“Too late,” Orpheus told him. “We already pissed him off.”
He knelt by his brother, ran his hand over Gryphon’s cheek. Needed some kind of confirmation his brother’s soul was in there. Gryphon lay slumped against the wall at an odd angle, his eyes still tightly shut. “Gryph, man, can you hear me?”
Gryphon stirred. With his hands still bound above, his body twisted from side to side as if struggling to wake up. Then in a flutter of movement his eyes opened. Those same light blue eyes Orpheus had seen on his brother’s face for over a hundred and fifty years stared up at him. “Or-Orpheus?”
Relief and something else, something he couldn’t define, seeped into Orpheus’s chest. “Thank you, Dimiourgos,” he whispered. He reached for Gryphon’s hands. “Hold on and we’ll unhook you.”
Gryphon looked up at his hands, bound above, then to Skyla and Demetrius, and finally back to Orpheus.
Heart still in his throat, Orpheus helped Demetrius unhook the metal cuff from his wrists. He rubbed at the red marks on Gryphon’s skin. “It’s over now. We’re gonna get you home to Argolea where you can forget this ever happened.”
In a flurry of movement Gryphon’s arms came up, knocking Orpheus’s hands away. He grasped the front of Orpheus’s shirt with a death grip and tugged his brother’s face close. Terror filled his wild eyes. “No. Not Argolea. Don’t take me Argolea. Anywhere but there. I can’t…” His body began to shake. His voice cracked. “Can’t…can’t go there. Not after…Don’t make me go there…”
Heartache tore at Orpheus’s chest. He grabbed Gryphon’s forearms, the ones covered in the Argonaut markings, as they were supposed to be. “No one will make you do anything. You’re safe now. I promise.”
“No, no, no, you don’t understand.” Sobs overtook him. “She’s out there. She’s always out there.” He let go of Orpheus’s shirt, dropped back to the filthy floor, and rolled to his side, curling into himself.
Frantic to do something, Orpheus rubbed his hands against his thighs and whispered, “Who?”
Gryphon’s body shook, a soul-deep tremble. And one word escaped his lips. “Atalanta.”
Disbelief shot to Orpheus’s chest, followed by a moment of clarity that whispered Yes.
He and Demetrius had trapped her in the Fields of Asphodel after they’d rescued Isadora from her lair. It was more than possible she would have recognized Gryphon for who and what he was down there.
Utter and complete helplessness consumed him as Gryphon’s gut-wrenching sobs tore through the quiet.