“Holy Hera,” Gryphon shouted over the battle. “They’re reproducing like rabbits!”
Just about the time Demetrius thought they were losing ground, Orpheus appeared on the landing above, his own sword raised as he drove the remaining witches down. Metal clanked against metal. Shouts resounded. Cries and screams of effort and agony echoed in the vast stone space.
“I leave you boys to do one simple thing.” Orpheus sliced through one witch’s leg. When she howled, he kicked her in the stomach. She tumbled down the staircase to land on a pile of dead and mutilated bodies.
Demetrius wiped a hand across his sweaty brow and peered down at the ruin below. “No way there’s only fifty witches in this freakin’ castle.”
“The witches are the least of our problems right now, boys.” Orpheus’s eyes flared in that strange way of his. “I found her.”
Orpheus turned and skipped steps to get to the top. Blades drawn, Demetrius and Gryphon followed. When they reached the third floor, Orpheus held up a hand, stopping them. Down the long arched corridor, an open doorway at the end glowed with a surreal blue light. Dark magick hovered all around, and a vile evilness coated every inch of space.
Demetrius stared at the blue light, transfixed by the glow, his chest rising and falling as he worked to regulate his breathing. That darkness inside him leaped with excitement.
He swallowed hard, gripped his blade. At his side, Gryphon did the same.
“This is where we separate the men from the boys.” Orpheus’s eyes flicked to his brother. “You wanna run home?”
Gryphon shot him a glare. “And let you have all the fun? I think not.”
Orpheus smirked, looked to Demetrius. “How about you, cowboy? Did you ever wonder what Pandora let out of her box?”
Demetrius tensed. There was no way Orpheus could know who and what Demetrius really was, but the intense expression, coupled with the look in the ándras’s eyes when he tipped his head toward the door, gave Demetrius a strange hitch in his gut, as if Orpheus knew way more than he should.
Orpheus took one step toward Demetrius. “Some things are better left unseen. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Guardian?”
Knowledge and secrets lingered in Orpheus’s words, drifted in his empty eyes. The black mist pounded at Demetrius from every side. The two parts of him he kept locked off from the world, the blackness inside and his so-called gift, strained to be set free. To finally be used.
Temptation was closer than it had ever been. All he had to do was lift his hands, give in to the power…
An ear-shattering scream rent the air. Demetrius looked past Orpheus toward the blue glow. And his chest grew impossibly tight. He knew that voice.
Instinct pushed him forward without a second thought. “Isadora.”
Chapter 4
Isadora thought Hades was the most terrifying immortal being she’d ever faced. She’d been wrong.
Shakes racked her body as she stood in the center of the great hall. Behind her, lightning flashed outside, illuminating the space through three high arching windows. Far below, the crash of waves against rock drifted up in a roar that churned and rolled in time with her fear. But what held Isadora’s attention wasn’t the lights or sounds or even what the witches were muttering. It was the glowing blue being floating across the ground toward her.
Floating.
Holy skata, it was floating.
Her heart pounded like a gong against her ribs. Terror gripped every inch of her soul and urged her to flee, but she couldn’t move. Even if the witches hadn’t been holding her, she’d have been frozen in this space. Because evil hummed and vibrated in front of her—the kind that was on a par with Atalanta and Hades and wasn’t supposed to exist in her realm—and she was powerless to do anything but stare and quake.
“You,” the glowing thing said in a raspy voice that sounded as if it rang out from the dead. “You are…more than I expected.”
Isadora had no idea what he meant. Her gaze was fixed on the silver hair that fell from a part in the middle of his skull and hung to his hips. A gray moustache seemed to rise from two clumps under his nostrils to frame his twisted mouth. Not a single hair swayed; the only thing affected by his movement was the long black robe he wore, which hovered inches above the weathered stone floor.
He stopped mere feet from her. The sallow wrinkles on his face pulsed with energy as he breathed deeply. And as his pupils dilated until there was no white around his irises, just one giant gaping black hole, Isadora knew this thing—whatever it was—had come to steal what was left of her freedom.
“My name is Apophis, wee one. Do you know who I am?”
Terror rendered Isadora speechless. Apophis. The mythological warlock. It couldn’t be. She’d heard stories of him as a child, but she’d never thought he was real. And now he was standing before her? No way.
“Atalanta was wise to hide your true power from me,” he said in that eerie voice when she didn’t answer. “She was also naïve to think I would not find out.”
“My lord?” the witch to Isadora’s left asked.
His glowing gaze stayed locked on Isadora. “With this one at my side, Isis, I will be more powerful than Atalanta. I will rise to the level of the Titans.”
The Titans…shit. They were the gods who had spawned the Olympians. Isadora’s anxiety skyrocketed.
Isis stiffened. “But, my lord, she is nothing more than a weak child.”
“Not a child. And not weak.” His lips twisted into an evil smile. “She is one of the Horae, Isis. Do you know what that means? Atalanta tricked us into thinking she only wanted the princess because she was royal, but this changes everything.” Excitement flared in his eyes. An excitement Isadora knew was going to equal bad things for her. “She has the power to look not only into the past and future, but the present as well.”
Isis gasped. And Isadora’s brow wrinkled as the warlock’s words set in. No, that wasn’t right. Her sister Casey had the gift of hindsight, and Isadora herself had the gift of foresight, but both of their powers were unpredictable. And they’d only recently discovered that Callia, their other sister, was the so-called balance between them, but they didn’t yet know what that meant.
“I thought the Horae needed each other to harness those powers,” Isis said.
“For themselves, yes,” Apophis answered, “but with the power of the dark arts I can harness the strength in this one alone. Imagine what I will be able to do once she and I are joined. I will be able to see everything. Past, present, future. Even what the gods have planned.”
The impact of what he was implying rushed through Isadora like a wave, shutting down all other thought. If he was right, then it meant together she and her sisters had the power to look into the present, to visualize what was happening elsewhere, to tap into the future and see what others had planned, even Atalanta. And it also meant, with the strength of the Argonauts behind them, together they could ensure no one man, creature, or deity disrupted the balance of the world.
Something inside her chest solidified, as if years of wandering finally made sense. Isadora’s father, the king, had once told her she would play an important role in the world—if, that is, she stopped being so darn timid. Could it be this was her role? Not simply to rule over their realm as queen as she’d thought he meant, but to aid the Argonauts as they carried out Zeus’s ancient decree that the Eternal Guardians protect not only Argolea, but the human realm as well?
She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t realize Apophis had moved close until she felt the chill from his hand hovering over her chest. Startled, she looked up to see one bony, gnarled hand with razor-sharp black fingernail-like claws inches from her skin.