Fallen (Dark God Saga) (15 page)

He didn’t know how much time had passed since his last encounter with Marissa but the next time he became aware of voices, he was certain that none belonged to his captor.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this? What if she comes back and finds out we let him go? What if she tells him?” She was female and young. The voice sounded whiny and unsure.

 “I didn’t ask you to come with me. Go back if you’re scared.” This voice belonged to another female. Although it trembled slightly, it was still commanding.

Fear was something he’d never felt in his centuries of living, and despite the fact that he was bound with Hephaestus’s chains and powerless, at the mercy of whoever, he still could not muster the emotion. If this was to be his end, then that was it. His parents and siblings—especially Thanatos, his twin and bringer of Death—would avenge him.

Soft light hit his face and his retinas exploded in pain. Immediately, he closed his eyes. Marissa kept the room dark, and although he wanted to wrap his hands around the bitch’s neck more than he wanted his next breath, he was grateful for it.

“Oh sweet gods!”

Simultaneously, the younger one let out a high-pitched squeak that ripped at his eardrums, followed by, “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” At this rate, he was going to be permanently deaf and blind if these two didn’t get on with whatever it was they were doing.

“Quiet, Rae! You trying to get us caught?”

“That—that’s supposed to be a god?” Rae whispered in a voice that could only be described as loud. Hypnos might have snorted had he the strength. He could only image how he looked to a teenage girl, which he suspected she was. His once healthy body was now emaciated. Weak. ‘Skeletal’ would probably be the better adjective. “I thought they were supposed to be cute.”

“Go home, Rae!”

“Sorry—sorry,” she lowered her voice, and he flinched as fingers touched a protruding rib. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Ssh!” She paused after directing that command to the girl.

“Can you hear me?” she asked cautiously, a tremor in her voice.

She was speaking to him. Unsure of her agenda, Hypnos neither answered nor moved. He badly wished he could see, or even read, her emotions.

“We didn’t have anything to do with—this...and if—if you swear that you and your kind won’t harm those of us who had nothing to do with it, I’ll undo your chains.”

“What was that?”

He heard it then, a cacophony of laughter coming from somewhere else. It sounded like a larger group.

“We have to hurry, Rae.”

“No, someone’s coming. It’s probably her. Leave him, Amara! She’ll have us killed if she finds him.”

He heard the jingling of keys and then a loud click before his hands were being lowered to his side. Immediately, the boulder sized weight on his body fell away, and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath. The chains had been removed. In a fraction of a second, his life had been changed, and he was too damn weak to do anything about it.

“Ohmigod! He’s naked!” This bright observation was from Rae, again.

“Hurry, we have to get him out of here,” Amara said, pulling him up, and cracking a few ribs in the process. He bit his lip in pain, but kept his cry in as she pulled him to his feet and draped the sheet around his body. Rae moved to his other side, and they began to lead him to the door. At his usual height and weight of six feet five inches and two hundred thirty pounds, leaning on two tiny females, despite their succubae nature, would have been impossible. But with the significant drop in his weight, these two were making it look doable.

“Please don’t spite us all for the actions of one,” Amara murmured, her voice trembling even more as she did so. She had good reason to fear him. He was a god who’d been chained for however long to feed a succubus. Hypnos wanted his revenge. Still, he would not kill mindlessly for the actions of one raging bitch of a succubus. No, he fully intended on torturing and killing Marissa, and whoever it was who’d aided her in getting those chains!

As they moved, the cloudy haze over his eyes fell away. He could make out wooden walls. Once, he’d seen wooden walls like these before—in hunting lodges and cottages that humans kept. The stuffed head of a deer hung against a wall. A bearskin rug sat before the fireplace—and then they were approaching a door.

The chill bit through his skin as soon as they stepped through, but despite it all, he inhaled deeply. Fresh air. It had been snowing, and a thick coating of white sprawled before him. There were trees in the distance, a thick cluster of them covered with snow.

“What now, Amara?” Rae whispered frantically, finally mastering the art of the task. It had only taken her a good fifteen minutes.

“I know you’re tired,” Hypnos blinked and looked down at her after realizing that he was being addressed, “but can you call someone to get you? I don’t know how it works.” Amara broke off and looked back to the door from which they’d exited. “She’s gonna notice you’re gone soon, and she’ll search for you.”

Hypnos nodded once. His ears perked as the voices grew closer. Amara must have heard them too because she suddenly tugged him forward.

“The trees. That should buy us some time.”

He tried to concentrate, to summon even a small amount of his power. It was all he had to do to get Thanatos to pick up on their connection. Hypnos had to have been gone for weeks or months, and after having all connection completely severed from his twin, as Marissa had done when she used Hephaestus’s chains on him, Thanatos would feel it if Hypnos could summon his powers. It would be the equivalence of switching a light bulb on. As it was, his body was still very human-like, even without the bindings of the chain.

Hypnos tried and failed, breathing harshly as he erupted into cold sweat and chills. He needed to eat. It wasn’t just that Marissa had sucked most of his life from him, killing him countless times over. His body also needed nourishment—ambrosia, food of the gods, and lots of it!

A loud, angry scream broke through the night, and Amara gasped as Rae looked back to the house frantically. “Hurry, Rae! The trees!”

They began moving once more, and as his bare feet sunk into the cold snow and froze, he kept another tortured groan to himself. As the two women hurried to get him to the trees, which seemed so far, he reached inside and tried to summon his powers again. It seemed almost pointless, but he continued, praying that Thanatos would feel something and find him. He hated Marissa, and would revel at the chance to meet her again, but not in this weakened state. In this state, she’d shackle him back to that bed without much of a fight.

As they reached the trees, he felt them. Without preamble, Hypnos collapsed forward onto the cold snow, sinking face first into it.

“Ohmigod! He’s dead!” Rae muttered hysterically. He really hoped she grew out of that by adulthood. “They’re going to kill us—wipe out our race just like they say almost happened in the past all because of Davey’s stupid girlfriend.”

“He can’t be dead—gods aren’t supposed to die,” Amara muttered, joining her sister before she realized that two men dressed in black and looking like...death and painful death, were walking towards them. When she saw them, she grabbed for Rae, and took two steps back.

Thanatos was the first to reach him, hoisting him up much like one lifts a baby. If he wasn’t so tired and completely weakened, Hypnos would have demanded to be put down. His twin did not speak, and Hypnos could sense nothing from him. He heard a scream and opened his eyes to find Amara clutching Rae to her as Moros, the eldest of his siblings and aptly named god of doom, advanced on them.

“No,” he managed to croak out, certain that the word alone would result in blisters in his throat. Moros was fast and lethal, a silent and efficient killer when need be, and if he waited seconds more, the two women would be dead. “Friends. No.” Thanatos spoke to Moros rapidly, telling him what Hypnos had said.

Looking up at his brother, Hypnos drew a breath, and channeled the remainder of his strength. “Marissa—is—mine.” Those were his last words before he succumbed to sleep. With his brothers there, he knew he was safe. They would take him back to his domain on Tartarus, and once there, he would heal. He would give himself time to fully recover, and then he would return. He would find her. He would torture her until she ran mad—or perhaps just before she ran mad—and only then would he kill her.

With happy dreams like those to keep him company, Hypnos patiently waited for his body to recover.

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