Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (30 page)

Not several dogs, but one. One really huge, really ugly dog with three heads. They growled in succession, their heads swaying and coiling around one another in an eerie dance that he couldn’t make sense of. With one swift movement, it leapt forward, knocking his legs out from u
n
der him.

Erias landed on his knees and immediately rolled away, narrowly missing the crushing foot that stomped down where he had just laid.

“You are an ugly bastard,” Erias growled, side-stepping another blast from his foot.

They went on dancing like that for what seemed like hours, parrying each other’s moves until they were both weak and breathless. Cerberus dropped his oversized butt to the ground and lolled his tongue, panting and oozing drool that sizzled as it hit the dirt.

Not sure what to do next and unwilling to let down his guard, Erias stood at the ready, his sword clutched in both hands, raised at his side, his muscles bunched and ready for the unexpected.

Dehstroy walked onto the field. He studied the now
half-asleep 
Cerberus with narrowed eyes, then turned to Erias with a smug look of
satisfaction.

“Congratulations, you’ve passed the test.”

Breathless, Erias said, “Oh? How’s that?” He hadn’t killed the hound as he figured was expected. Merely worn it down. In his homeland, that would have spelled wea
k
ness and the warrior would have been expected to fight a
n
other until either him or the other guy was dead.

“You lived.” He walked away, leaving Erias stan
d
ing there.

Looking up, he caught the briefest flash of heat from Persephone before she too spun off in a whirl of sil
k
en robes.

Only later he would find out that he was the first of the Brotherhood to survive the trial against the hound Ce
r
berus
and,
therefore, the first true member. Always one for a man of strength and ferocity, Persephone had had her eyes on him from that day forward. She’d appointed him the unofficial
leader,
and he trained the new recruits alon
g
side Dehstroy for a century thereafter, ensuring their su
c
cess in the trials until their numbers had increased to five and was relocated to the world of light and land and clean air, left to fend for himself until he was called upon once
again.

The palace loomed ahead, appearing out of the hazy fog like a dark, soul sucking beast. “That’s it,” Behr whi
s
pered as they crouched low behind a stand of gnarled, thin, leaf bare trees, careful to remain unseen and unheard. “The Palace of Hades, aka, the Palace of Death, aka, the bitch
goddesses'
fortress of doom, aka—”

“Yeah, we get it,” Kris snapped with an exasperated look.

“Aka, the place where Kris is going to be beaten to death if he doesn’t shut his smart mouth and keep his fuc
k
ing opinions to himself, Palace.” Behr’s eyes held a da
n
gerous
intent. His
lips pulled back from his teeth revealing his distended
fangs.

“Quit the fucking posturing, gentlemen, we have a treasure to steal.” Erias moved ahead, slinking silently through the shadows, Kris and Behr flanking him.

The guards were easily dispatched. A well-placed hand over the mouth and a quick slip of the blade across their throat, and they were inside.

“That’s one piece of shit,” Kris said, admiring the Helm as they stood in the expansive, round, empty hall.

It stood on a podium resting on top of a purple cushion with gold fringe hanging from the sides and a light shining on it from above. The dented metal was a dull bronze and scratched across every inch. It had a few holes where it had been punctured by the arrows, marks from when the Fallen who had worn it fought valiantly with his brothers and sisters during a time immemorial. Other than that, Erias thought it was a
beaut, but
that was it. No guards. No lasers crosshatching the walls or floors or air in between to make it a
challenge.

“This seems way too easy.”

“Yeah.” Behr scratched the stubble on his chin. This was too easy.

“I don’t know,” Kris said after a moment. “Maybe the guy is just so cock sure that he figures no one would have the balls to steal from him.”

Which was a pretty good assumption. The guy who could walk the Earth any day or night of the week picking off the weak-willed, naïve,  and vulnerable with a crook of his finger probably wouldn’t bother with security beyond what they’d just encountered.

“One way to find out.” Erias stepped up to the p
o
dium, hesitated, looked around for any threat ready to pounce, and when he
saw
none, he placed his hands on e
i
ther side of the
helmet.

The coolness of the metal shocked his heated skin.
It literally
shocked him, but it wasn’t unpleasant, just une
x
pected. He started to lift it from its cushion when a loud clapping echoed off the chamber
walls.

“How exciting. Visitors!” Hades appeared out of nowhere, as if he had just stepped out of thin air. Which he probably had. The guy was a practically a god, after all. His smile was radiant as he approached, the fathomless depths of his obsidian eyes soaking them in with each step.

Erias jerked back reflexively when Hades reached out his hand. He laughed a warm, rich laugh that reverbe
r
ated off the walls. “Fear not, warriors.” He cast a fleeting glance at Kris as if to say he was not included in that stat
e
ment. “I only wish to shake the hands of the men who so fearlessly entered my realm and successfully relieved me of my men.” He turned and paced the floors, circling the p
o
dium with a thoughtful expression.

Kris thought he was going to have a heart attack. When…Hades?...the devil? Jesus what had he gotten hi
m
self into?...just
appeared
like fucking Houdini, he went slack-jawed. He was so fucking beautiful it had to be a sin. And considering he was the biggest sinner of all
time; it
probably was. But when he had rested those freaky ass eyes on him, he’d wanted to crawl into a hole. They were sou
l
less, bottomless ink wells. They reminded him of a shark. Glassy, unmoved by emotions, he would devour you and pick his teeth clean with your
bones.

“You’ve come for the woman.” It hadn’t been a question, but then this was Hades’s realm so it wasn’t a surprise that he would know everything that happened
here, but
Erias had been hoping for a small chance to slip in u
n
der the radar and slip back out again. Of course, nothing was ever that
easy.

He nodded.

“And you need the
Helm,
do you?” When Erias and Behr nodded together, he regarded them with something akin to curiosity. “Do you love her?” he asked Erias, though his eyes were once again on the artifact, his finger sweeping over the bridge of the nose and circling the eye
holes.

He raised his chin higher. “Yes,” Erias told him confidently.

“And you would risk everything for her would you?”

“Yes.”

A cruel smile tilted his thin lips. “Then come with me. No, you two stay here,” he commanded Behr and Kris when they started to follow as well. “Just him, we have business to discuss.”

He wasn’t sure how long they had been walking. It seemed like an
eternity,
and at the same time it felt like they had made it in record time. Erias crouched alongside Behr behind a large boulder, Kris looming just behind him. They looked ahead to the towering pyramid shrouded in ethereal shadows that shimmered and quaked with an u
n
quenchable thirst for
life.

“This is it? Tartarus?” Kris asked in a low, hoarse whisper.

“The one and only,” Behr confirmed. “Home to thousands of lost souls damned to eternal punishment for sins committed against humanity. The lowest of the low. The most dangerous of them all.”

Behr shook his head in disgust. “What the hell made Seph think this was the appropriate place to bring a female like Cheyenne?”

“The woman is whacked,” Behr said simply. “I don’t think she thinks beyond much of anything besides how she is going to get her way. Cheyenne was in her way, so she made sure she wasn’t.”

Erias nodded. It made sense. Persephone was the most selfish creature he had ever had the misfortune to meet. Once she dug her claws into you, you were hers for eternity. Much like the souls her husband coveted. No ma
t
ter their punishment or crimes, once they had served their time and were ready to be recycled out for another shot at
life; he
was reluctant to let them go. They were property to him. He could only imagine how the two might clash being so much
alike, but
then, they deserved each
other.

He hoped she was as miserable as she made ever
y
one else who encountered her.

“Let’s move, we don’t have much time.” He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that Cheyenne was in trouble. And if she wasn’t, she was going to be very, very soon.

Rushing forward, keeping to the shadows and ta
k
ing cover behind one of the large stone walls, the men plo
t
ted their next course of action.

“Stick together, don’t make a sound. Once we’re i
n
side, only hand signals and keep your eyes peeled. This place is as nasty as they come.” Behr stared pointedly at Kris. “Think Alcatraz but with more
guards,
and they’re all thirsting for blood.
Yours.”

Kris shook all the way to his core. He wanted to run, but where would he go? He didn’t know how they’d gotten here exactly.
One
minute they had been in an all-out rumble in the hotel room, the next they were giving him funny looks and out of nowhere he found himself standing on a shoreline waiting for a ferry. And to top it off, he’d met the God. Damned. Freaking. Devil. In the flesh! He had to get out of here, only problem
being; he
wouldn’t know the first thing about how to
leave.

Struggling to keep the shaking from his voice, Kris mustered a small voice. “What if…I mean, how do you know…” He cleared his throat under the scrutiny of their disturbingly blue gazes. “How can you be sure she’s even in there?” Shit, if he had taken any of this seriously in the first place, he would have thought to ask this question ages ago. Heck, he would have asked a shit ton of
questions,
and then he might have not even come. He’d be home right now waiting for word on how it went. Not sitting on the front lines ready to get his knee caps blown
off.

He was not a fighter!
Just a simple explorer and mathematician who liked to drink some beers and have a good time. He shouldn’t be here right now.

Erias could read the kid like an open book. He was ready to shit his pants over all this, but there was nothing he could do for him now. Kris had volunteered to go. I
n
sisted actually. Fought for his place alongside them, and now he’d have to deal with his choices like a man.

“There’s only one way to find out.” Leaping to his feet, Erias shot out an arm, his scimitar glinting in the dim light just as one of the demon guards appeared from around the corner, and took his head with one swift, precise cut across the throat.

He was like poetry in motion as he cut a swath through the gates and opened a path for them to filter into the so-called impenetrable prison of Tartarus.

Chapter 23

Navigating the weakly lit corridors was a piece of cake for Behr and Erias and their enhanced hunter sight. It was Kris that was bumping into walls and stumbling over his own feet every other foot. Erias rolled his eyes at the man’s inability to walk.

“Watch your step there, Grace.” He laughed as Kris fell yet again, grappling for the wall to hold himself u
p
right.

He was probably being a jerk, but he had good re
a
son
not to
like the guy. He had a thing for
Cheyenne,
and Erias never had learned to share. So watching the guy get a few self–inflicted scrapes and bruises was just good fun. Especially since he knew he couldn’t lay a finger on the guy without permanently sealing his
fate.

Cheyenne would never forgive him if she knew that he had intentionally injured her friend. It was going to be hard enough to get her to forget about that little mishap back at the hotel room.