Authors: Nicole Hamlett
Arms grabbed me and tried pulling me back. There was yelling and chaos all around me. I watched my son's limp form - hoping for something, anything. Rage and Dread filled me with something I'd never in my life felt before this moment.
The air around me shimmered with irrepressible heat and the smell of burnt flesh met my nostrils. I didn't want to look away from Dylan's still form. My sight became ultra-focused on his neck, willing the flesh to knit together.
"Heal him!" I screamed.
"Grace, I'm working on it, you have to let him go. You're going to burn him to a cinder if you don't
calm down
!"
I turned to face Zeus and he stepped back, uncertainty marring his face as he tried to stare me down.
"Grace," Drew's calm voice penetrated the chaos. "You have to let him go. We can't help him until you let him go."
"He's your son," I bawled. "Would
you
let him go?!"
Suddenly I didn't have a choice. Massive tree trunks wrapped themselves around my body and jerked me around. I screamed and kicked my arms and legs flailing against this inescapable force.
"Take him!" This new voice bellowed close to my ears. Bodies went into motion picking up my child's inert body and blinking out of my sight. It drove me to madness. I howled with rage and the temperature of my body went nuclear.
Lips moved close to my ear and I realized that Heph had left his compound yet again and was whispering to me. I twisted in his arms and met his gaze. He winced briefly and then renewed his cause.
"Listen to me," he whispered.
I shook my head at him, stubborn. I was going to find where they'd taken my son and then I was going to kill them all for daring to remove him from my presence.
Persephone's words came back to haunt me in that moment.
“He won't have to make a choice.”
Did that mean he was going to die? Did that traitorous bitch know that he was going to die and didn't warn us out of spite and jealousy? She was next on my list. If I never did anything else but hunt her down and kill her, it would be a good life.
Large hands cupped my face and pulled me close. His gaze penetrated my madness and I stilled as I watched the fire dance in his eyes. "Are you listening to me?"
I nodded once.
"You can't heal him. You've done all you could. Right now you're causing more harm than good. You've burned Adonis, Athena and nearly incinerated Zeus. He's the only one powerful enough here to fully heal your son. Do you want to kill that only chance?"
I shook my head in the negative, still caught in his gaze.
"You have a job to do. What is it?"
"Find that sick bitch and end her life." My voice was dead, without emotion.
He nodded at me. "That's one goal. But what is your
primary
goal? Who is the one person who can make this all right?"
Realization dawned on me. My mother could heal him. She could heal anything, anyone. I believed that, if given the chance, she could bring anyone back from the dead.
"I don't even know if she's still alive. It's been so long since she left us."
"You just had a nuclear blast of power hit you. Does anything feel different?"
I stopped for a moment and felt the air around me. Beyond the shimmering heat, I felt something different. A wavering of reality hovered a few feet away. If I focused on it, I could see the small tear and realization dawned on me. This was the start of a Rift.
My brain frantically started remembering all of the times I'd seen Hope call down Rifts. Someone had been bleeding. Blood. It was the Blood that opened them, along with Will.
There was plenty of blood, my blood no less, to go around. All I needed to do now was Will it to open. I took a step toward the small gap and slashed my hand down through it, opening the tear further. She'd made a terrible mistake in leaving such an easy trail to follow her by.
My lips curled up in derision. Whatever it was that my father had done to her, it was nothing compared to what she was going to suffer at my hands.
I took a step further and was stopped by someone calling out to me. I turned my head and saw them side by side. Drew was reaching for me, his face a mask of desperate horror. He knew me. He knew what I was going to do.
Heph simply stood back and nodded. He knew me, too. He knew what I needed to do. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back, waiting for me to make my next move.
In that moment I knew that I was losing something precious and dear to me. It didn't matter though. Nothing mattered more than vengeance for my son's life. "I'm so sorry for this," I whispered. Then I closed my eyes and stepped through the Rift.
I expected some kind of wormhole experience. Hey, I was a fan of Stargate. Of course I expected wormhole. But it was like walking through a doorway from one room into another. If I hadn't been so full of rage, it might have disappointed me. But no, I was full of rage. The air around me shimmered from the heat weaving off of my skin.
I forced myself to cool down and take in my surroundings before calling in my kukri. Darkness surrounded me. Wavering blue lights were parceled throughout the room to keep it from being an inky pit. I think I would have preferred the inky pit.
The entire area reminded me of a bad horror flick filmed entirely under water. If Jaws popped out at me, I would lose my shit. This tempered the rage and made me think. It's not easy to shut down emotions. Okay, it's not easy for
me
to shut down emotions. My brain was whirling with the turmoil, even with the knowledge that I needed to be careful or I'd get myself killed. In a perfect world, I'd be able to compartmentalize. But it wasn't a perfect world. I had a baby who was lying somewhere possibly bleeding out. He deserved justice.
She
deserved to pay. So, she was going to fucking pay.
I crouched down and moved silently down the hallway, the blue lights casting shadows across my skin.
Voices drifted down a dark hallway. I had to stop breathing for a moment to catch what they were saying, it was so quiet.
"So you've done it then?"
"Yes my lady. I've slain the child." Hope's voice took on a dreamy quality. It sounded like she was on drugs. If she was high, I wasn't going to kill her quick. I was going to make it slow and painful so she could sober up enough to feel the skin slicing off of her flesh with each swipe of my blades.
"Good girl," the stranger replied. "You've been
such
a good girl. I think that tonight, you get to have sweet dreams as a reward. Wouldn't you like that, Hope? I've hated giving you those nightmares, but it's so important to follow through with your threats."
"Yes Lyssa," she replied softly. "It would be good to sleep at peace. Will you send me my beloved?"
"Don't get greedy," Lyssa huffed. "I'd hate to have to rescind your reward."
I came to a complete halt in the hallway, stunned by the conversation I'd just heard. Who was this Lyssa person, and why would she send Hope to kill my son? The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and I crouched at the last second as a blade whispered past my ear. Shit. I really needed to start paying attention. This anger was going to get my head chopped off.
I reversed the hold on my kukri and stabbed backwards before spinning around to meet my attacker. "Well, now. That's not nice, trying to take a woman's head off before you've even properly introduced yourself," I said.
"I was wondering when you'd notice me. Hunter training has become completely inadequate if you didn't even hear me clomping down the hall," he said with a leer. This was my first good look at my would-be opponent. Thin, without being emaciated and a shock of white hair that haloed his head in spiky lengths. A rapier rested in his long, tapered fingers, swishing back and forth as he mocked me.
I rolled my eyes at him and replied, "C'mon. Less talk, more fighting."
"Oh, I can fight and talk at the same time," he said with a lunge.
"Bully for you," I replied with another roll of my eyes as I batted the tip of his sword away with one kukri, slashing down with the other at the same time. I caught his rapier at the hilt and broke the blade away. It clattered to the floor and I stepped back, raising a mocking brow.
I should have just killed him right there, but I was in the mood for a fight, and he'd have to do. "What you got now?"
His smile was slow and filled with malice. "I have so much more in store for you. I am going to have such fun cutting strips of skin off of that pretty little body of yours. I may even keep you around for a bit after I've cut your head off." Then he winked at me. Ew.
What do you say to that? If he wanted to monologue, that was fine. I was spoiling for a good old fashioned ruckus, though. He could talk all he wanted, as long as I got to beat the shit out of him in the end. I shrugged and whirled, slashing with both swords. One arm shot for his neck, the other for his abdomen. He moved impossibly fast, dodging my swings with a laugh.
He called in a pair of kukri that were twins of mine and bowed with a flourish. I didn't even wait for him to start talking. I spun, slashing downwards toward the back of his neck, my swords a blur. The move threw him off balance and he frowned at me for the first time.
"Well, that was unsportsmanlike," he complained.
I shrugged and jabbed. My food shot out and caught his hip, spinning him with enough force to put him off balance. My swords didn't stop. They were extensions of my arms, flowing outward in a beautiful dance of blood and pain. I slashed again and struck out, flaying skin from his arm. Without stopping I asked, "
Whose
skin did you say?"
His blade whipped up in anger, cutting through my tunic and scraping along the ribs on my left side. I shut down the need to cry out with the pain and kept moving. "Food isn't supposed to talk," he spat angrily.
"You know, according to the X-Files – eating human flesh makes you crazy. I'm just saying, maybe you should lay off." I ducked a slice and parried the other sword, crossing mine together and shoving forward. He bounced off a light fixture and growled at me before lunging.
Yeah, I could get into this. I held off on using my new powers. I wanted a brutal sword fight that was slow and dirty. The more pain I felt physically, the less I'd feel emotionally, right?
I wasn't thinking about Dylan or Drew right now. I was thinking about the dick in front of me who'd nearly sliced off an ear and wanted to eat the rest for breakfast. "What's wrong, big boy? Can't take it when someone talks back?"