Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (27 page)

He turned back to Erias. “Well, we’re listening now. And you were the last one to see her, pal. That makes you the number one suspect.”

“Suspect of what exactly?” Erias quipped. “The o
n
ly thing I’m guilty of is showing her a go
od time. Now, if you don’t mind”—
h
e motioned to the open
door— “I
was in the middle of something
important,
and you all need to leave.”

“Oh yeah?” Kris said.
“You have something to hide?”

Erias and Behr shared a look that said Kris was grating on both of their
nerves,
and it wouldn’t be long b
e
fore one of them shoved their shiny black boot so far up his
sphincter,
he’d been tasting shoe polish for years to come.

“You got it all wrong, pal,” he mocked, turning his back on him and returning to the map. He didn’t have time for this nonsense. Cheyenne was being held in Tartarus, the worst kind of prison
imaginable,
and it was only a matter of time before she met with a horrific end. Assuming she hadn’t already. “I don’t have anything to hide,” he lied smoothly. “But this doesn’t concern you
,
so there’s the door.”

Kris wasn’t accepting his absent dismissal even though the others seemed to take it for what it was and were now quietly filing out
. Whatever. L
et them leave. He wasn’t about to give up so easily. Something inside was telling him that this man knew exactly where Cheyenne
was,
and he wasn’t leaving until he got some answers.

“Well, if you got nothing to hide, then I’m sure you won’t mind telling me what’s so
important.”
He mu
s
cled his way up to the table and stared down at what must have been an ancient scroll of some type.

Dull brown ink detailed the neighboring mountai
n
side complete with
tree-lined 
villages, including the one they were in, and some that he knew for
a
fact no longer existed. Forests so dense and thick they nearly blotted out the landscape took up the majority of the map, but what caught his eyes most was the intricate tunnel
system
ru
n
ning below the earth floor.

“What’s that?”
he
asked, ignoring the turbulent look on the men’s faces as they stared down on him as if he’d lost his damned mind.

Whatever, he didn’t really care. They could string him up and beat the life out of him, but he wasn’t leaving until he got some answers.

He was vexed.
Totally,
and completely vexed. It was as if this boy had a death wish. He truly wanted to die. Flashes of what he might do to him given the opportunity rolling through his mind, Erias stared him down for several long moments.

It was Behr that broke the silence. Kris followed along as he pointed a thick finger at a long winding path at the far bottom of the yellowed scroll.

“That is the river Acheron. The river of sorrow,” he began. It wasn’t a concern if the man called Kris knew what the map said, he was
human,
and it wouldn’t even o
c
cur to him the significance of the map or the connection it had to his missing friend. To him, it was the quickest way to satisfy his curiosity and get him on his way and off their
backs,
so they could get on with saving the damsel in di
s
tress.

“The River Styx flows parallel
,
as well as the rivers Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe. They become one in the Marsh where Cheron guides souls to their final resting place.” He pointed to a small grouping of islands. “Elysian fields, where the virtuous of the dead
resides."
His finger leapt to the opposite end of the map to a large structure hidden in shadows. “Tartarus, the most feared of all pri
s
ons.”

Behr looked back and forth between the men
,
from
Kris,
who was completely absorbed in the brief history le
s
son, then to Erias for permission to continue.

He heaved a heavy breath in preparation and crossed his fingers the guy, Kris, was dumber than he came off.

“It is said that during the war of the Titans, Cyclops gave three gifts. One to Zeus, one to Poseidon, and one to Hades.”

“You’re talking about the thunderbolt, the trident, and the helm, right?” Kris interjected. "Basic Greek m
y
thology."

“Yes,” Behr stretched the word out, becoming war
i
er by the second at his astuteness. Returning to the map, he pointed out Hade’s palace to the far north of the rivers and Persephone’s Grove to the south. “As you can see, if som
e
one wanted to navigate the underworld undetected, t
hey’d benefit greatly from the
Helm, which
would render them virtually undetectable.”

“Virtually?” Erias raised a questioning brow.

“Well,” Behr hedged. “Nothing is ever one hundred
percent,
and from what I can tell, the Helm has never been out of Hades possession since the war.”

“So you’re saying…” H
e looked to
Kris,
who now had his full attention trained on them, and chose his words carefully so as not to arouse suspicion. “If one was to travel into Hell and needed to get to, oh, let’s say…Tartarus, he would first have to go to,
oh; I
don’t know…
Hades’s
pa
l
ace to track down the Helm first?”

Behr nodded. “And all this while completely vis
i
ble. Not to mention, we’d have to catch a ride on Charon’s boat, try not to rouse suspicion through the demon fields and perform a little B and E on the palace and hightail it back to the prison to perform, um, certain tasks.”

Erias didn’t like the sound of this plan. It sounded like a death trap
,
actually, but if he were going to go
out,
then it might as well be in a blaze of glory doing what he did best.

Killing some demons.

“Well,” he sighed, gathering the map up, “sounds like fun.” He turned to Kris and gave him fake smile. “Looks like you got tons of answers, huh?" he said caust
i
cally. "I guess it’s time for you to run along so you can find the next red herring to chase.”

Kris regarded Behr steadily, giving no indication that he even heard a word Erias said. But he had. “You said ‘we
.
’ What did you mean exactly?
‘
Cause I’ll tell you what it sounded like to me. It sounded like
you two believe in all of this.
”
H
e motioned to the map that Erias held in a fist that clenched tighter with each accusing word he uttered. “And it sounds like you two are planning some kind of trip. A trip that somehow involves that there map.”

“Wow.
” Erias laughed. “If that doesn’t sound cr
a
zy…”

Behr caught on a
second later and gave a half
–hearted laugh. “Yeah, real crazy.” He rolled his eyes and made a spinning motion with his finger to indicate how crazy Kris supposedly was.

“Uh
,
huh,” Kris said, eyeing them suspiciously. “Where ever you two are
going; you
can bet I’m going to be right there with you.”

Erias could see that Kris was too astute for his own good. There was no way he was going to sway him from this. The man’s heart was too wrapped up in a woman who didn’t return his feelings
,
but was too stupid to cut his los
s
es.

Kind of like what he was doing. Huh. What did that say for him?

‘Well,” he looked over at
Behr,
who was giving him an is-this-guy-for-real look. “You get the
rope,
and I’ll hold him down?”

“Deal.”

Chapter 21

The darkness was like looking into oblivion and
yet; she
could swear there was something unseen lurking about just beyond the reaches of the impermeable
night. 
 

The only tangible thing she could hold onto was the thick rope of chain above her that connected the heavy metal cuffs around her wrists to a solid circle of metal ju
t
ting from the dampen wall behind her.

Shifting her weight to her right foot in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on her heel, Cheyenne felt the burning tingle that had set in begin to dissipate, only to begin again in her other foot. She shifted again.

Her body was sore and aching from the prolonged stance she was forced to hold. Her arms had long since gone
numb,
and her head was throbbing with a fatigue so great she wanted to scream from the torture of
it, but
she wouldn’t scream for fear that
it
would come
back.

She’d lost count of how many times Leseot, the strange half man half demon creature, had visited her and certainly had no idea how many times he had bitten her since the first time.
She
didn’t relish the experience,
ther
e
fore,
wasn’t about to do anything to gain his undue atte
n
tion.

Reclining her head back, she closed her eyes out of habit and tried to get a little rest before feeding time. It was the only time she got to see light of any kind, but with it came unspeakable horrors that made her crave darkness where others might pray for light.

Off in the distance she heard the familiar clang of metal as a door banged shut. Someone was
coming,
and she had no doubts as to who that someone was. His cheery whistle gave him away every
time.

This time, as it always was when he came for her, he was whistling the tune “You Are My Sunshine.” She hated that song now.

The first bit of light filtered into her cell just m
o
ments before revealing a face so beautiful it was incongr
u
ous
with
the hideous monstrosity of his body. His hooves clacked against the stone, the keys jangling at his hip where they hung from a leather belt alongside various blades that glinted against the flickering flames of his torch. Opening the door, he stepped inside and went about his usual ritual of first locking the door behind him, then lighting the torches mounted in the corners of each
wall.

Once they were all lit, he turned to face her with a serene, deceptively sincere look conveyed through large, wholly black eyes.

He reminded her of a shark–deadly and soulless.

“How are we feeling today, love? Still in pain are we?” His voice was soft and a direct paradox to his actions as he selected a curved knife from his belt and ran a finger over the sharpened edge.

She didn’t want to answer. He might try to cut her tongue out like he’d done to Atheros, the guy hanging on the opposite wall. She looked to him now seeing his fearful black eyes trained on her. He was as much a demon as the rest of them down here, but he was a prisoner like her and, because of that common ground, she had found an ally. Sometimes, he was the only thing that kept her sanity among the endless night.

At
least,
he had, until Leseot had removed his tongue. Now she held the conversations for the both of
them.

She hated that he had to witness her
humiliation,
just as she knew he hated her falling witness to his own. With a tight smile of support, he turned his head away just as the blade of Leseot’s knife skimmed the inside of her
thigh.

He was silently freaking out. The bubble in his throat was probably the only thing keeping him from screaming like a sissy and jumping ship. That and the p
u
trid, boiling red water that Erias and Behr claimed would eat the flesh right off your bones.

Peering over the side, Kris shuddered at the thought and slunk a little lower between the men and a little further away from the enormous skeletal figure manning the helm. He’d thought all the talk about Charon and
Hell,
and the five rivers were just that, talk. Joke was on him
,
because here he was, in the middle of a ragged, falling down, sorry excuse for a ship that appeared to be made from the bones of the victims
who
probably fell
overboard.