That was a mistake. There weren’t any traps on the objects, but the collective aura of power around them seared my awareness as sharply as if I’d jammed a penny in an electrical outlet. I let out a hiss and leaned back, while my thoughts blazed with the energy focused upon those artifacts-a combined aura that made the thrumming power of a roused Amoracchius seem like a low-wattage lightbulb by comparison.
“My God,” I breathed, before I could remember to remain silent. “These are weapons.” I looked slowly around me. “This isn’t a vault. It’s an armory.”
Anna Valmont did not respond.
In fact, she didn’t move at all.
I stepped around the block and found her peering at its rear side, her expression focused in concentration. She was entirely frozen.
I then realized that the quality of the light had changed, and I looked up at the flames in the outstretched hands of the two Hecate statues. The flames had ceased flickering. They hadn’t gone out-they’d simply frozen in place.
The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t go up so much as they let out tiny, hirsute whimpers and started trembling as violently as the rest of me.
“You are, of course, correct,” said a basso rumble of a voice from behind me. “This is an armory.”
Slowly I turned.
A man in an entirely black suit stood on the amphitheater stage behind me. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch, with the proportions of a professional athlete and the noble features of a warrior king. His hair was dark and swept back from his face in a mane that fell to the base of his neck. His beard was equally black, though marked at the chin with a single streak of silver. His eyes. .
I jerked my gaze away from those caverns of utter midnight before I could be drawn into them. My stomach twisted, and I suddenly had to fight not to throw up. Or fall down. Or start weeping.
“Wh-” I stammered. “Wh-wh- Are, uh, y-y-you-”
“In point of fact,” he said, “it is my armory, mortal.”
“I can explain,” I blurted.
But before I could try, Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, Greek god of death, seized the front of my duster, and a cloud of black fire engulfed me.
Forty-one
The black fire faded and left me standing half crouched down with my arms up around my head. It’s possible that I was making a panicked noise, which I strangled abruptly when I realized that the fire had neither burned nor consumed nor otherwise harmed me in any way at all.
My heart beat very loudly in my ears, and I made myself control my breathing and stand up straight. The terror didn’t fade so much as drop to manageable levels. After all, if I wasn’t dead, it was because Hades didn’t want me dead.
He did, however, apparently want to speak to me in a different room, because we were no longer in the vault.
I stood in a chamber that might have belonged to a Spartan king. The furnishings were few, and simple, but they were exquisitely crafted of nothing but the finest materials. A wooden panel, stained with fine smoke and time, framed a fireplace, and was carved with images of the gods and goddesses of Greece scattered about the slopes of Mount Olympus. Two large chairs of deep, polished red wood and rich black leather sat before the fire, with a low wooden table between them, polished to the same gleaming, deep red finish. On the table was a ceramic bottle. A simple, empty wineglass sat next to it.
I looked around the chamber. A bookcase stood against each wall, volumes neatly aligned, and the spines showed a dizzying variety of languages. There were no doors.
I wasn’t alone.
Hades sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire, holding a second wineglass in one negligent hand. His dark eyes gleamed as he stared at the flames. The light was better in here than it had been out in the vault. I could see several dozen tiny objects moving in a steady circular orbit around his head, maybe eight or ten inches out from his skull. Each looked like a small, dark mass of shadow, trailing little tendrils of black and deep purple smoke or mist and. .
Oh, Hell’s bells. It was mordite. A substance so deadly that if it simply touched anything alive, it would all but disintegrate it on the spot, devouring its life energy like a tiny black hole. Hades was wearing a crown made of it.
On the floor next to Hades was a mass of fur and muscle. Lying flat on its belly, the beast’s shoulders still came up over the arms of the chair, and its canine paws would have left prints the size of dinner plates. One of its heads was panting, the way any dog might do during a dream. The other two heads were snoring slightly. The dog’s coat was sleek and black, except for a single blaze of silver-white fur that I could see on one side of its broad chest.
“Sir Harry,” Hades rumbled. “Knight of Winter. Be welcome in my hall.”
That made me blink. With that greeting, Hades had just offered me his hospitality. There are very few hard and fast rules in the supernatural world, but the roles of guest and host come very close to being holy concepts. It wasn’t unheard of for a guest to betray his host, or vice versa, but horrible fates tended to follow those who did, and anything that managed to survive violating that custom would have its name blackened irreversibly.
Hades had just offered me his protection-and with it, the obligations of a good guest. Obligations like not stealing anything from his host, for example. I had to tread very carefully here. Bad Things Would Happen To Me if I dared to violate my guest-right. But I couldn’t help but think that Bad Things Would Happen To Me even faster if I insulted a freaking Greek god by refusing his invitation.
I remember very little of my father, but one thing I do remember is him telling me always to be polite. It costs you nothing but breath, and can buy you as much as your life.
What, don’t look at me like that. I’m only a wiseass to monsters.
And people who really need it.
And when it suits me to be so.
Oh yeah. I was going to have to watch my step very, very carefully here.
“Thank you, Lord Hades,” I said, after a pause. My voice quavered only a little.
He nodded without looking away from the fire, and moved his free hand in a languid gesture toward the other chair. “Please, join me.”
I moved gingerly and sat down slowly in the chair.
Hades gave me a brief smile. He poured wine from the ceramic bottle into the other glass, and I took it with a nod of thanks. I took a sip. I’m not really a wine guy, but this tasted like expensive stuff, dark and rich. “I. .,” I began, then thought better of it and shut my mouth.
Hades’ eyes shifted to me and his head tilted slightly. He nodded.
“I feel that I should ask you about the passage of time,” I said. “It is possible that time-sensitive events are occurring without your knowledge as we speak.”
“Very little in the lives of you or your companions has occurred without my knowledge for the past several days,” Hades replied.
I got that sinking feeling that reminded me of all the times I got called in front of the principal’s desk in junior high. “You, uh. You know?”
He gave me a very mildly long-suffering look.
“Right,” I said quietly. “It’s your realm. Of course you know.”
“Just so,” he said. “That was fairly well-done at the Gate of Ice, by the way. Relatively few who attempt it take the time to watch first.”
“Um,” I said. “Thank you?”
He smiled, briefly. “Do not concern yourself with time. It currently passes very, very slowly for your companions at the vault, as compared to here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. That’s good.”
He nodded. He took a sip of wine, directed his gaze back upon the fire and trailed the fingers of one hand down over the nearest head of the dog sleeping beside his chair. “I am not what the current age of man would call a ‘people person,’” he said, frowning. “I have never been terribly social. If I had the skill, I would say words to you that would put you at ease and assure you that you are in no immediate peril of my wrath.”