Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa (19 page)
Read Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa Online
Authors: Michelle Madow
ELEMENTALS
THE PORTAL TO KERBEROS
Book four in the Elementals series
COMING SEPTEMBER 2016
Turn the page for a sneak peak!
CHAPTER ONE
I stared at the empty spot where Ethan and Blake had stood a few minutes earlier. I felt empty, as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
Blake was gone. Ethan had turned on us, and he’d taken him into Kerberos—the prison world the Titans had been forced into after losing in their Second Rebellion against the Olympians.
The portal to Kerberos had been sealed for thousands of years, until the Olympian comet had appeared in the sky a few months ago. Now, the portal was weakening, and less powerful monsters had been slipping through. Including the soul of the most dangerous monster himself—Typhon. Zeus had split Typhon’s soul from his body to punish him after the Rebellion, locking his soul in Kerberos and trapping his body under Mount Etna in Sicily. That was supposed to make it nearly impossible for Typhon to rise again. But now that Typhon’s soul escaped Kerberos, it wouldn’t be long until he reached his body. And on the day of the spring equinox—about six days from now—his mind and body would join and become one again. He would rampage the Earth, destroying all creatures in his path. Then on the summer solstice, the portal to Kerberos would open and
all
of the monsters locked within there—including the Titans—would be free to rule again.
According to Nyx—the primordial deity of night itself who was able to travel between worlds and see all possible futures—whether or not we were able to stop Typhon was a pivotal moment in future events. If we stopped him, we would go on to seal the portal to Kerberos, and the Titans and all the other monsters would remain locked inside. If we failed to stop him, war with the Titans would be inevitable—and after being driven crazy in Kerberos for thousands of years, the Titans were more dangerous than ever. If they escaped, the world might never recover from the devastation the war would bring.
The only way we could stop Typhon was by bringing the head of Medusa with us to Sicily, and forcing him to look into her eyes so he would turn to stone. Getting Medusa’s head was difficult, and we’d lost one of our own—Kate—in the fight. She’d been turned to stone by Medusa. But we
did
get the head. And once we used it to destroy Typhon, we would close the portal, and then we could focus on researching to discover if there was any possible way to reverse Medusa’s curse. Because Kate was one of us, and we wouldn’t give up on her until we’d explored every possible way to save her.
But now Ethan had turned on us, taking Medusa’s head—and Blake—with him to Kerberos. He’d made some kind of deal with the Titan Helios that if he stole the head from us and brought it to the Titans, Helios would bring back Ethan’s twin sister Rachael from the dead and would protect him and his family when the Titans rose again.
All I knew about the prison world, I’d learned from the primordial deity Nyx. Kerberos was supposedly so terrible that just being there could drive someone insane in weeks—or days.
Now I stood there, saying nothing and staring at the muddy portal, waiting for Blake to emerge. He would be holding Medusa’s head and smiling, and then he would ask us when the next plane flight to Italy was, since we needed to get over to Mount Etna so we could turn Typhon to stone.
I waited for what felt like an eternity. But the spot in front of the portal remained empty.
Blake wasn’t coming out. Which meant I was going to go in there and get him myself.
CHAPTER TWO
I ran toward the portal, but suddenly the air itself pushed against me, and no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t move. I ran harder, but it was hopeless.
“Chris!” I yelled. “Stop using your power. Let me go.”
“No,” he said, and the wind grew stronger, rushing against my ears. “You know what Nyx—and Darius—told us. We can’t go in there. It’s not safe.”
“What if we go in there and can’t get out?” Danielle added.
“This is
Blake
we’re talking about.” I stopped trying to run—I was hopeless against Chris’s power—and I turned around to glare at Danielle. “He’s in there, and who knows what he’s facing? We can’t let him go at it alone.”
“I know,” Danielle said. “I agree with you.”
“Oh.” I stared at her, confused. “Then why weren’t you trying to come with me?”
“Because we can’t just run in there unprepared, with barely any weapons and no idea what we’ll be up against,” she said. “We need a plan.”
“Right.” I nodded, since what she’d said made sense. “But we can’t just leave Blake in there with Ethan. The longer he’s in there… who
knows
what’s happening to him in there? If it were me Ethan pulled in there, Blake would have followed us in a second.”
“I would have held him back, just like I did to you,” Chris said.
“What if it were
Kate
?” I shot back, feeling a punch in my gut the moment I said her name. I pressed my lips together, shocked at myself for what I’d said. “I’m sorry…” I told him, although from the empty look in his eyes, I could tell there was no taking it back. “I didn’t mean it.”
“No.” He ran his hand through his hair. “You did. And I get why you said it. Because if it were Kate, I would try running in there after her, too. But I’m sure that one of you would do everything you could to hold me back also. Because Danielle’s right. We need a plan. So…” he said, looking around at both of us. “What’s the plan?”
“Darius, Hypatia, and Jason are all back at Darius’s,” Danielle said. “We should go back there and tell them what happened. They
have
to know more about Kerberos than we do. They’ll help prepare us, and we’ll get the weapons we need so we’re ready for what we’ll face in there.”
“But how long will that take?” I said, although she had a good point, since the only weapons we had on us were the knives we each carried in our boots. “We’ll have to get there, tell them the whole story… and then who knows what they’ll say or do? Every minute we waste is more time that Blake’s in Kerberos.”
“And it’s more time that Ethan has to deliver Medusa’s head to the Titans,” Chris chimed in. “We
have
to get that head.”
“I know.” Danielle bit her lip, pacing around the cave. She kept crossing in front of the Cyclops, who was now a stone statue in the center. His face was twisted in agony, his eye wide, his mouth open mid-scream. My stomach twisted from looking at him, so I turned away. That Cyclops should have been delivered to the Cyclops’s island in the Aegean Sea in Greece.
Instead, we’d let Ethan take control and test out the head on the Cyclops. It worked. But then, when our eyes were closed he’d grabbed Blake and threatened to use the head on us if we opened our eyes to try to stop him.
I felt like an idiot for trusting him.
“What if you asked your dad for help?” Danielle stopped pacing, her eyes focused on me.
“Apollo?” I reached for the sun pendant on my necklace, and she nodded, since of course she meant Apollo. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve tried so many times since he sent the necklace to me, and it’s never worked. I don’t think he actually wants to help us.”
It was either that or he just didn’t want anything to do with me. Or maybe he was so disappointed in me that he’d given up on me. If I felt like an idiot for trusting Ethan, then Apollo probably thought I was an idiot, too.
“Just try one more time,” Chris said. “It’ll only take a few seconds, right? If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. But you
have
the necklace, so it’s worth it to at least give it a shot.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll try. But don’t get your hopes up.”
I wrapped my fingers around the pendant, feelings the dents of the metal against my palm.
Apollo
, I thought, but then I corrected myself.
Dad
. It felt strange to think of him as that when I’d never actually met him, but maybe a personal touch would encourage him to actually listen to me this time.
We—Danielle, Chris, and I—need your help. Ethan just grabbed the head of Medusa and forced Blake to go with him through the portal to Kerberos. He made some deal with Helios where Helios will revive his sister and keep him and his family safe in the upcoming war if he delivers the head to the Titans. He forced Blake with him because he wanted revenge against me for Rachael’s death in the hydra’s cave. I know her death wasn’t my fault, but Ethan still blames me. Now we want to go into Kerberos to stop him, but we don’t want to go in unprepared. I know you’re busy, but if there’s anything you can do to help us, we would really appreciate it.
Unable to think of anything else I wanted to add, I let go of the pendant and opened my eyes.
“Well?” Danielle asked, watching me expectantly.
Before I could answer, a huge orb of light as bright as the sun filled the room. I squinted, wanting to see what was happening, but it was so bright that I had to shield my eyes and turn away. After a few seconds, the light faded away. Figuring it was safe to look, I lowered my hand, turning back to where the light had been.
Standing in its place was a man as tall as a model, with a lean, sculpted body and hair as blond as mine. In tight jeans, a casual blazer, and a designer scarf, he looked like he’d stepped off a runway for a hipster fashion show. He had a bag slung over his shoulder that was large enough to hold sports equipment. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, but his skin was so smooth that he could have been ageless.
I dropped my arms to my sides, shocked that he was here. “Apollo?” I said, my voice cracking when I said his name. “Dad?”
* * *
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Elementals 4: The Portal to Kerberos
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ALSO BY MICHELLE MADOW
The Elementals Series
The Portal to Kerberos
(coming September 2016)
The Transcend Time Saga
The Secret Diamond Sisters Trilogy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you so much for reading the third book in the Elementals series! I’m releasing the books in this series quickly—a new one every 3 months—so since not much has changed since writing the acknowledgements for Elementals 2, I’m going to keep this brief.
If I’ve thanked you in a previous book in the series, then thank you again
!
Thanks
always
to my family and friends! Your support means the world to me. Special shout out to my dad for reading the books early to help me with editing. I know you’re super busy, and I really appreciate that you take the time to look over my books.
Raye Wagner and the Myth Sisters—thank you so much for inviting me to be a Myth 101 author! I love being part of the group <3 (If you’re reading this and don’t know what I’m talking about, then check out the
Myth 101 Facebook group
. It’s a fun place for readers to chat with authors who write YA mythology books.)
And of course, thank you to my Street Team, for loving my books and helping to spread the word about them!
xoxo,
Michelle
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Madow writes fast-paced YA (young adult) fiction that will leave you turning the pages wanting more!
She grew up in Baltimore, and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where she writes books for young adults. Some of her favorite things are: reading, pizza, traveling, shopping, time travel, Broadway musicals, and spending time with friends and family. Michelle went on a cross-country road trip from Florida to California and back to promote her books and to encourage high school students to embrace reading and writing. Someday, she hopes to travel the world for a year on a cruise ship.
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ELEMENTALS
THE HEAD OF MEDUSA
Published by Dreamscape Publishing
Copyright © 2016 Michelle Madow
This book is a work of fiction. Though some actual towns, cities, and locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author. Any similarities of characters or names used within to any person past, present, or future is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles or reviews.