Chapter 2
Wasted and Shattered
1
The Villa
At long last, the villa fell silent. The lamias were shut up in the guestroom for the day, Cory and Mel were asleep on Clio’s bed, and
Clio stood at the top of the staircase that led to the basement. Everything around her magnified, the worn risers beneath her feet, the banister rubbed smooth from years of use. The basement reeked of dryer lint, laundry detergent, mothballs, and dank. Now there was something else, she somehow imagined she could smell her sister’s corpse, a sweet, pungent smell that reminded her of overripe fruit. Clio knew it was her imagination because Calliope was in the freezer, still the ghost smell lingered.
At the bottom of the stairs, she eyed the freezer carefully. A long white tomb.
Calliope is in the freezer! No amount of painkillers would quiet her mind. Calliope is in the freezer! Clio had eventually given up on sleeping and decided to see her sister for herself. Calliope is in the freezer, the freezer, Clee, she’s in the goddamned freezer! Her hands clapped over her ears and she squeezed her eyes tight.
“Shut up!” She exclaimed.
She cracked an eye open, silence. With a hush across the concrete, she drifted over to the freezer and rested her palm on its lid. For one crazy moment, she thought she would open the freezer and Calliope would crossly demand why she had been locked in a freezer. They would all laugh and laugh about this for years to come.
A sigh of resignation escaped her lips and she lifted the lid. Calliope was as still as her last breath and Clio let the lid drop. The thunk echoed in the basement.
Clio refused to cry, if she cried she would be giving into the reality of all this. No more crying over this, they would to bring Calliope back.
Her hands lingered on the freezer’s lid and she felt the temperature in the room remarkably rise. His heat warmed her shoulders from where he stood behind her. Her breath came in small gasps as she struggled not to turn.
Clio could turn and beat him until she didn’t hurt anymore. He wouldn’t stop her. Alternatively, she could also fall into his warm, comforting embrace and bawl her eyes out, something she had just promised herself she wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t stop her. In the end, she decided to ignore him.
“What’s the plan?” Ares finally asked from behind her.
With her back to him, she said, “I’m going back to the Underworld. You’re done here, aren’t you? I thought you left.”
“I’m not done until I take you and Calliope back to Big Zed.” Shifting his weight from one foot to another, he said, “’Sides, I made a promise, didn’t I?”
Clio turned to face him and her expression colored with surprise. Ares was covered with soot and sweat. He looked as though he had been in a forest fire all night.
“You look awful,” she said.
“I had business to tend to.”
“You’re coming with?” She asked him.
“Let’s just say my job’s not done yet, pet.” Ares cocked his head at her and his ice blue eyes met her cold silver ones.
Her gaze fled from his and focused on the simple cotton nightgown she wore as she picked at some imaginary lint. “Do you believe we can get her back?”
His dirty hand passed through his peroxide locks and he shifted his weight again before he grumbled, “I’m bloody well goin’, aren’t I? I’ll be up in the shower.” He loped up the stairs.
Clio turned around and looked at the freezer one last time, she laid her hand on it again and said, “I won’t leave there without you, Calliope, I promise.”
2
“Mrs.
“I’m not a prisoner here and I feel fine, get the papers together, I’m leaving,” Miranda said.
“I’m not signing any papers to release you.” His face was turning red, having been at this argument for well over an hour.
“Fine, then the hospital assumes no liability for me once I leave. I understand that, but I have somewhere important to be. Papers or no, I’m walking out of here.” Miranda was dressed and ready to leave.
“Mrs.
After they signed out,
A forty-five minute drive later, they pulled up to a bank and Miranda Navarre plucked at a key on her keychain. “Let’s go get this thing,” she said.
Inside the bank’s security box room, Miranda dug around in the box. “When I got married to Rene, in 1954, I received a gift with no card. It was a small black box with a white ribbon. Inside was this,” she said as she placed the jewelry box in
“I think Persephone did, after all, she originally gave it to me. I can’t imagine why she’d want me to have it back. My mother had given it back to them in exchange for Father’s soul.
By the time I married Rene, I had already suspected many things. Before he went to war, he was a Professor of Classical Mythology. I met him in the stacks of the New York Public Library.
Rene had a ridiculous amount of books on the Greek Pantheon in his private collection, artifacts, too. That was how he won me over, he was brilliant. I had begun to discover my mother and aunt’s faces among his collection of scrolls and artifacts. Rene gave me the bust of Clio on the harpsichord as a wedding present.
It consumed me, the riddle of my mother. I had a bank account that somebody made large deposits into. My life has always been a mystery I’ve tried to unravel. Only recently have I been convinced of the truth. But, I do believe Persephone sent me that key on my wedding day.”
“Why do you think she returned it? Didn’t they say it was good for one soul?”
“I think I was too little when it was taken from me. I never had the opportunity to use it. That was why my mother was punished with not being able to find my father’s soul. I believe I can have one soul back with the key now.” Miranda gazed at it sorrowfully, “It’s too bad I did not know it’s true power when your mother died.” With regret, she said, “We have the chance to make things right for Calliope with this.”
“We’re going to help Clio?”
Miranda stared at the small key, the key that never fit any of the doors in her life until now. Her irrational, irresponsible, insufferably beautiful aunt needed her. With a wistful sigh, she said, “Calliope is an Immortal,
“Okay, we’re going, but I don’t have to like it or be nice to that woman,”
3
The Villa
She’s not dead! Her mind screamed back at her, she’s just in the freezer! Clio shook her head to get it to quiet down, before they all thought her mad. They wouldn’t be far from the truth, she had been pacing the hall trying to blot out the accusing voice that besieged her nonstop for an hour now.
She wiped her palms on her nightgown and felt the tile through the carpet runner on her bare feet. None of them stopped her pacing, only Ares stood a silent sentry at the end of the hall, watching her carefully.
From her place on the second floor, she could see another car in the street, trying to find parking, the drive having long since been filled. It was a silver BMW and Clio mentally counted her small group in her mind – they were all here, she didn’t know who the newcomer was. She slowly descended the stairs and padded into the entry hall. She watched from the broken front door as
Crow’s grandmother! Not now, not now, she thought wildly. Twisting around, she ran back into the house. “Crow! Crow, you’d better get out here!” She cried as she disappeared into her room to change.
Crow had been talking to the still silent Cory in the atrium when he heard Clio.
“I can walk fine,” Miranda snapped.
“The parking sucks,”
His grandmother cleared her throat and asked, “Where is Clio?”
“She went upstairs to change, why?” Crow said.
“I brought something that may help, that’s why.”
The guestroom door opened and shut quietly and Mel drifted down to meet them. A plum velvet dress fell to her ankles and her feet were bare as she glided down the staircase. Her hair was mussed from sleeping but her short little scooped bangs were perfectly smooth.
She gathered Miranda’s hands into her own and Mel asked, “I know you, sweet, don’t I?”
“Melpomene, this is my grandmother, Miranda Navarre,” Crow said from behind Mel.
“You have your mother’s hands, Miranda,” Mel said. “You awoke last night. You felt her slip into the darkness.”
“Yes.” Miranda breathed.
“
“Oh, this is something the whole of us. I will gather everyone in the atrium and you can share your precious gift with all of us,” Mel said and she slipped away from the silver-eyed trio.
Clio stood on the landing looking at the three below, her brow furrowed in anticipation. Grief haunted her ethereal face and she looked as though she couldn’t possibly have the strength to make it down the stairs. She had changed into her regular clamdiggers, button-down shirt, and a pair of slip-in Keds. Her long, chestnut locks hadn’t been brushed, but instead hastily tied up into a haphazard bun, with ringlets escaping in every direction.
Crow smiled his support and she came down the stairs to meet him. He put his arms around her and kissed her deeply. She lingered there while he held his lips to her forehead. “It’ll be okay, Clee, I promise, Mel wants you to accept the key in the atrium so all of us can see,” he said.
Clio nodded, took a deep breath, and greeted her guest. “It’s good to see you’re alright,” she said as she held her hands out to Miranda.
“I was sorry to hear about Calliope, she was visiting with me when I had the heart attack,” Miranda said as she greedily captured Clio’s hands into her own.
Clio bit her lip and, again, only nodded.
“I have something for you.”
“Come, they’re waiting,” Clio said as she took Miranda’s hand and led her into the atrium.
Miranda stared with mixed feelings at the three muses in the room. They were her mother and aunts, and the only one who sensed anything about her was Melpomene, even her own mother hadn’t.
Clio looked around before she sat and told Miranda, “The man in the corner, smoking where I told him he couldn’t smoke, I might add, is Ares. Trent and Bliss are upstairs, staying out of the sun, and I think you’ve met my sisters, Melpomene and Terpsichore.”
Mel and Cory sat on one of the couches and Crow and
“I understand, Mrs.
Miranda handed her the velvet jewelry box, Clio’s heart slammed in her throat. Her shaking hand reached out and she took the box. She hadn’t believed she would ever see such a thing as this ever again and yet, there it was, wrapped in black velvet.
Clio opened the box. It was true.
“The Key to the Gates of Hades,” Clio whispered. “Where did you get it?”
Miranda took hold of her mother’s wrists even as Clio still clutched the box with both hands. She took a deep, shaky breath and said, “I received it on the day I was named, Mother, you know that.”
Clio stared at Miranda for what seemed like eternity. Cory noticed her lips turning a peculiar color and leapt from her place on the futon.
With a mighty swing, she slapped Clio on the back and said, “Breathe!”
And breathe she did, Clio took great gulps of burning air as though she had been drowning. Her hyperventilation caused Mel concern and she moved to where Clio and Cory were. She tried to wrap a blanket around Clio and
Mel and Alice hovered about Clio, with Miranda desperately trying to calm down herself.
No one noticed Crow backing away, his face the color of paste.
“Back off, you sodding twits, she can’t bloody well breathe with all of you crowdin’ her like this!” Ares said as he pulled Mel and Alice back and shoved a pillow beneath Clio’s head. “Who’s fucking idea was it to drop all of this on her now?” He demanded.
“I had no idea it would effect her this way,” Miranda said with wide eyes. Crow was staring insanely at the whole scene.
“Well, how else would she react? She just shot her own sister to death and she’s been shagging her great-grandson! This is becoming a bleedin’ Greek tragedy!”
At the mention of this, Clio shot up from her position on the couch. “Crow,” she whispered.
“No-no way, no fuckin’ way this is happening,” Crow whispered and bolted for the door, his sister fast on his heels.
“Crow!” Clio called and ran out after them.
Halfway out of the drive,
“Crow! Stop! Crow, stop!” Clio cried after him. The two tear-stained women were left behind in his dusty wake.
“I should’ve told him, I should’ve told him,”
“You knew?” Clio asked between heavy breaths, and then backhanded her granddaughter hard across the mouth. “You knew? You knew, and you didn’t tell us!” Her expression murderous, she turned and stormed up the drive.
This will not break me, this will abso-fucking-lutely not break me. Clio pounded through her garden.
Once in her room, she resumed her pacing. “Okay, okay, we can work this, let’s not think about Crow right now. Hades fucked me this time. Okay, we have the key, we have the key and that’s all that matters, he won’t let me use it this time, but that’s okay, Miranda wants to use it. Miranda!” She said aloud. Clio suddenly remembered her daughter downstairs, “Miranda! Miranda!” She stopped and whirled around.
At the top of the staircase, she bellowed for her daughter, “Miranda!”
The older woman stood at the bottom of the stairs staring up at her mother like a chided schoolgirl. “Yes?”
“Come up here,” Clio said, went back into her room, and pulled out her desk chair. When Miranda came in, she pointed to it, “Sit there, please.”
Miranda did as she was told. It was as though no time had passed between them, as though Miranda were still six-years-old.
They were both silent for a quarter of an hour, the mother pacing the carpeted tile and the child staring at her own feet. In a low voice, Clio finally said, “I suppose you want an explanation on why I didn’t come back after that night.”
“No, mother, I don’t.” She meant it, she truly meant she didn’t want any explanations. It was far too late for explanations.
Clio ignored her and decided to explain anyway, because it was pertinent in what she meant to do to get Calliope back. “When I went to the Land of the Dead to get your father back,” she said as she bit her lip, trying to contain her emotions, she didn’t want to lose it now, and she could easily unravel now. “I returned only somewhat successful, and time moves... differently there then it does here. Things and people are different there. When I returned you were already married. I would’ve been a fool to confront you then.”
Clio kneeled in front of her daughter and buried her head in her lap. “I was a fool, Miranda. I had no idea I would lose you, too, I thought that when I returned it would have only been a few days, like before, but time bends to the Dark God who rules it. I was tricked, Miranda, I tried to use a stolen gift, and he taught me a valuable lesson. I am sorry.”
Miranda stroked her mother’s hair. It had come loose from the bun and now lay in every direction.
“I am sorry your father died. I am sorry I couldn’t bring him back to you. But, mostly I am so, so sorry I abandoned you,” Clio mumbled into Miranda’s lap.
“Mother, I forgave you long ago.” Miranda said without hesitation. “You need to forgive yourself.”
Clio’s dam burst and she sobbed with exhaustion.
4
The Underworld
Chateau d’Sommeil
When Calliope’s throat was raw and sore, and she was reduced to pitiful whimpering, the crows settled back into the trees. Hypnos’ face was lined with concern for the grieving, inconsolable muse, and he wondered what, if anything, he should do.
“Calli, you can stay here as long as you like. I’ll have a room made up for you near mine,” he said carefully.
“You don’t get it, do you?” She said, her voice hoarse and ragged, “You’re not dead, and you’ll never get it. I can’t go home, Nos, I mean, I can’t go home! No more inspiring, no more mortal trysts, no more music, no more warmth, no more sun, no more of my sisters’ laughter, no more Clio taking care of me after a hard night out! None of it, it’s all been ripped away from me!” Calliope dissolved into sobbing again.
Hypnos called his attendant, a shade named Sojourn, and asked her to make up a room for Calliope.
Sojourn entered the room, tall and dark, her posture indicating some kind of nobility. “It’s good to see you again, Wordsmith,” she said and offered Calliope a handkerchief.
Calliope accepted it gratefully and Sojourn moved to take her leave. She turned only once, twisting her long dark skirt as she did so and disappeared up the winding staircase.
“If you put your arms around me, would I feel them?” Calliope asked.
Hypnos drew his eyebrows together, “Did you feel me outside on the road?”
“Yes.”
“Then, yes, you would.” He didn’t bother to tell her that what she was feeling was a memory, like an amputated limb that could still ache. If he told her, she would not feel his arms around her any longer. She felt merely like mist to him, but because he could see her, he knew where to pretend to touch. After all, as a resident of the Underworld, he had a lot of practice with shades. His heart ached to see her suffer and he opened his arms to her.
“Tell me you love me, Nos. I need to hear it, to feel alive. Even if it’s a lie, tell me you love me,” she whispered.
With a shake of his head, he slid a knuckle beneath her little clefted chin, and made her look at him. “I love you, Calli,” he said. “Gods know, there’s been times when I wish I didn’t.”
Her eyes shone with fleeting happiness and she kissed him.
Hypnos didn’t know if it was his own memory of when she had kissed him before, but he could feel her lips on his. All he knew was that when she kissed him, time froze and all of life was forgotten but for the feel of her soft, wonderful lips.
Calliope did not love him and he knew this. He knew her heart belonged to only one, but still, when she kissed, she made him feel like the only man alive.
Her ghostly fingers ran through his long, black hair. They whispered across his face as she touched him, and he shivered with her memory. His dark gaze searched her face, “I have missed you so much, Calliope, I feel as though it has been an eternity since I last heard my name on your lips. Time goes by at an excruciating pace in this place.”
“You could’ve come to see me, Nos, you are not a prisoner here.”
“But I did come to see you, you never had to suffer an unpleasant dream, did you? I loved you the only way I knew how, I loved you in your dreams.”
From his sad expression, she knew that he had been afraid of her rejection and that is why he kept his torturous distance.
“You are so beautiful,” she finally sighed. His face was pale and feminine with large, black eyes like pools of ink. He was a dream himself, his beauty boundless.
Hypnos kissed her and this time he swore it was no memory he kissed, he could taste her, smell her, and feel her beneath his lips. Her long, delicate fingers tangled into his silky hair and pulled him closer to her, not letting him back away or be gentle.
Calliope’s eyes widened as she glimpsed her hands in his hair and she abruptly pulled back.
“My hands!” She said.
“What about them?”
“They were ruined, they were useless, mangled things hanging from my wrists!” Calliope whispered as though terrified that saying it aloud would make it true. “He took my hands from me!”
“Who did, my love?” Hypnos was concerned with the horrified look on her face.
“He destroyed my hands so I couldn’t play anymore!” Her stare penetrated her beautiful, perfect hands as though she could see the ruin that they had become in her real body. “Annie did, I trusted him, I gave him everything he wanted, I gave him the world,” she said with some detachment.
“Was he the one that brought you to me?” Hypnos wanted to know who had destroyed his precious muse.
“I don’t know, I don’t think so.” Her voice cracked and choked her. “I’m afraid of what’s happened to me, Nos, I’m afraid, and I’m not supposed to be afraid of anything!”
“We’re all afraid of something, all of us,” he said with absolute conviction.
Calliope looked at him from where her head lay upon his chest and began kissing his neck. When she came back around to his mouth again, she nibbled his bottom lip.
Hypnos felt it, he was sure he felt it.
“I can’t be alone here, Hypnos, you alone know how I fear this sad, dark place. Don’t leave me alone here in the dark, promise me.”
His lips trailed up her chin, her cheeks, her forehead, and he looked into her bewitching, beguiling eyes. Hypnos had no words for how she made him feel. He wondered if he was dreaming her sudden return to the Underworld, if he would wake from this later.
Hypnos gathered her in his arms and carried her to the giant stone staircase, “Never mind her room, Sojourn,” he told the passing shade, and he carried her to his own.
5
Crow sat on the living room carpet of his grandmother’s house, photo albums strewn all around him. He hadn’t cried since his parent’s funeral when he was nine years old. Not like this, this heart wrenching, gut-aching sobbing that he felt was being physically ripped from him.
Crow felt filthy, he had been lied to, he had been a pawn in some giant game, and he felt cheated. Amidst the photos of his love, his heart and soul, he saw Clio in picture after picture with his grandmother on her knee.
“Is this the one you’re looking for?”
The accent itself was enough to make Crow lose it. He jumped to a crouching position from where he had been sitting cross-legged on the floor and tackled Ares’ legs, knocking the picture from his hands. Ares landed with a grunt on the floor and instantly Crow was on him, trying to beat his face in.
“Here now, mate, I can appreciate you being upset and all, but there’s no call for this,” Ares tried to warn him.
“Bastard! You knew! You knew!” Crow roared. With Ares’ shirt balled into one fist, he punched Ares in his right eye with the other.
Ares rolled Crow off him and retaliated with a right cross of his own to Crow’s nose, which blossomed into a bloody mess. “I did not know!”
“Liar!” Crow hit him again.
This was getting ridiculous. Ares grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “I knew something was all over the gaff, but I didn’t know what! How was I supposed to know that was your bloody grandmum in the picture?”
Crow stopped for a moment, breathing heavily, taking in the broken table and two lamps they had knocked over. He bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Ares, I swear to whoever is god, if you’re lying to me, man –”
“I’m not lyin’ to you, I didn’t know.” Ares knew he’d have a black eye from the fast tackle Crow threw him for.
“Why us, man, why did they have to fuck with us?” Crow asked, his voice cracking with emotion.
“The only thing I can think of is she pissed him off, I don’t know the whole story, mate, honest, I don’t. Neither do you, obviously.”
“Pissed who off?” Crow sat on the couch, his head in his hands, his fingers pinching his nose to get the bleeding to stop.
“Hades, mate, bloody fuckin’ hell Hades! He’s a sodding prick, that one. I’d steer clear of him when we go to the Underworld, if I were you.” Ares lit a cigarette and inhaled with certain thoughtfulness.
“I’m not going. I can’t see her now, it’s disgusting what we did, we’re disgusting!” Crow howled and unashamedly burst into tears in front of the war god.
Ares sat next to him on the couch, pulled another cigarette out of his pack, lit it, and held it out to Crow. “I know, mate, it bloody sucks, believe me, I know.”
Crow accepted the cigarette and said, “I have to go, don’t I?”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but I wouldn’t want my women goin’ to the Underworld without me. Well, not my women, they’re all war goddesses and Amazons and the such, they’d be perfectly fine, but you’ve got two mortals and a bloody historian,” Ares said and looked at the distraught mortal thoughtfully.
“Did she send you?” Crow finally asked.
“Do you think she’d send me? I didn’t want you to do something daft and make her even more insufferable to be around. She’s been hurt enough in the last twenty-four, anyway.” He looked at Crow with his cold blue eyes and said, “You’re going to have to face her, mate, one way or another, but I’ll tell her to give you a li’l space until you’re ready, if you’d like.”
“Yeah, you’d better.” Crow replied with an uncertainty in his voice.
“Right then,” he said as he stood, “back to the Estrogen Convention?” He asked and strode out the door.
Crow gave one last look at the room, the photo albums, and the pictures. Crouching down, he slipped the photo Ares gave him into his pocket and followed him out.
6
The Villa
“What do you mean he doesn’t want to see me?”
Ares hated seeing the wounded expression on her face as he told her for the second time that Crow needed some space.
“I don’t understand, I need him right now, he’s not the only one suffering!” Clio said.
“If you force yourself on him, he’ll only leave, muse.”
“God! I feel helpless,” she said and bit her lip in her distraction.
Ares found it fascinating to watch the range of emotions course through her, her anger being the most alluring prize of all.
Clio plucked a bud vase from its place on her desk and sent it sailing through the air only to explode above the mantel of the fireplace in her room. She shrieked and kicked the desk in frustration.
“Why is this happening now? We have to get Calli now! I don’t have time for this! He did this to me, Hades did this to me.” Clio shuddered with acute anxiety. She talked with animated hand gestures as she paced the room. Ares remained enduring inside the eye of her emotional maelstrom.
They both turned at the knock on the door.
“What is it,
“I’m worried about what this trip will do to Grandma.”
“What do you mean?” Clio asked as Ares moved to a chair on the balcony to smoke a cigarette.
“She just came out of the hospital and this trip sounds as though it may be a little... rigorous and I don’t know if she’s up to it yet.”
“She’ll be fine,
“What do you know?” Clio balked at the accusation.
“I’m saying your judgment may be off because of the trauma that you’re going through right now, and my grandmother was a casualty of this irrationality of yours before.”
The two women regarded one another bitterly before Clio finally said, “Sit down,
Clio raised her eyebrows and said, “I want to see if we can just sit in the same room together without arguing. I don’t know anything about you, I know you live in
“I’m a tattoo artist.”
“A tattoo artist, well, that’s...” Clio tried to think of what to say, “not what I had in my mind for children’s children.” She decided to finish honestly and smiled at
“I guess most people would think it’s gross,”
“Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?” Clio asked.
“No, but I have a roommate, we share this great apartment in the French Quarter. Grammy found it for me.”
She was opening up, Clio thought as she continued to book their flight, “What’s your roommate’s name? Are you friends or do you just live with her? Or him?”
“Her name’s Sundae and we, you know, hang out and stuff.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s an artist. She rents the store space below us for a gallery or studio or whatever she’s into this week.”
Clio became aware of the beauty that was her great-granddaughter and felt her heart soften. She had merely thought of the girl as Crow’s sister before and she was much more than that now. “What’s the painting of?”
“It’s a painting of me lying atop a tomb in one of the cemeteries there in
“See, is this that hard?” Clio asked.
“What?”
“Just talking. You’ve had it in for me since you got to town. We’re family, can’t we act like family?”
“You’re only saying that now because you know what it’s like to lose a member of your family now,” the same old bitterness crept back into
“You don’t know anything about loss until you’ve lived a few lifetimes!” Clio yelled after her, “Immortality is all about losing family!”
“Shit!” Clio said.
Ares had been sitting on her balcony, smoking and listening to the girls. “When are we leavin’, pet?”
“As soon as possible, you’re still coming, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world. Why do you let her rile you up like that? Not that I’m complaining, ‘a little rage is good for the soul,’ is my motto.”
Clio refused to be baited by him. She tapped in her credit card numbers and smacked the Enter key like a fly that needed to be killed.
Ares smiled at her anger, breathed it in, and gained some strength back from it.
They sat in silence, the war god closing his eyes while he sat on the little chair on her balcony. Clio wondered if that was how he slept, in little doses, like a soldier in a foxhole. Her hand smoothed over her face and she pinched the bridge of her nose to keep from crying again.
How could I have been so stupid to think that I could finally be with Julian again? Clio closed her eyes for a few exhausted minutes herself.
7
The Underworld
Chateau d’Sommeil
A great banging on Hypnos’ front door roused Sojourn. She hurried to answer it before it woke the God. Irritated at being called away from the library, having discovered a few dozen texts she had never noticed before, her hair hung in a haphazard
Sojourn straightened her ghostly vestments and spoke aloud as she walked down the long hall to the front door, “Coming, I’m coming for the sake of sweet Jesus!” She swung the door open with a polite smile and said, “Can I help you?”
“Step aside, Sojourn, we know she’s in here,” Tisphone said. The three Erinys stood there, their hands on their hips, imperious as ever.
“Now, ladies, do you know what time it is? He is in bed.”
“We have orders to search the chateau if we have to.” This came from The Grim, her dark, wild hair framing her pale white face. Her eyes were as black as Hypnos’, but with no whites at all and her lips an impossible crimson.
“I propose you come back tomorrow when he is up and about and we can sort this out like civiliz–” She was cut off by Alekto’s blue, glowing blade pushing into her misty form. Her blond curls and innocent baby blue eyes belying her deadly intentions.
Megaera the Grim spoke, “We have orders from the Lady herself, she is to be taken to Tartaros. Persephone does not want her here.” Megaera’s voice had a dark, low quality that commanded respect from whomever she spoke to.
Sojourn reluctantly stepped aside. The blue blade had burned her essence. Megaera entered first, her long, midnight blue skirts trailing behind her, the hem held splashes of mud on it from her journey to the chateau. Her silver girdle embraced the dress’s bodice, a cloak with a hood hovered about her shoulders, and traditional Grecian sandals entwined about her feet and calves. Megaera did not wear a weapon as her sisters did – Tisphone with her bow and Alekto with the sword. Sojourn knew one gaze from The Grim would set her ablaze with the icy, blue fire that could consume her soul.
Megaera looked around the chateau with cold arrogance and advanced on Sojourn. A long, white finger reached out beneath her chin and she said, “Get the muse.”
“Ladies, I did not expect such lovely visitors at this late of an hour or I would have better prepared,” Hypnos said from the staircase.
Unmoved, Megaera regarded him with a bothered expression, she ran her finger along the banister from her place at the foot of the stairs. She inspected her finger for dust and brushed it off with the tip with her thumb. When she was done, she finally recognized his presence, “Hypnos, you are harboring a fugitive, do you want that trouble?”
“Fugitive? She doesn’t even know what she’s doing here! She doesn’t even want to be here!” He descended the stairs, wearing only a pair of black pajama bottoms, and an open robe. “What has she done?”
“She is not supposed to be here, Hypnos, we will come up there and take her by force if we have to. However, it would be undignified for a muse.”
Hypnos blocked her from ascending the staircase, arms crossed in front of him. “This does not have to get ugly, Meg.”
Megaera looked up at him from her place on the riser below him. With closed eyes, she leaned in to smell his bare chest. “Do you fancy her, Hypnos, your little Calliope? She’s lovely, if I remember correctly.”
“You need to leave Meg, you and your sisters.” Hypnos said and pushed her away gently, trying to avoid a fight.
“Orders are orders, My Lord,” she hissed and pushed him aside.
Alekto and Tisphone moved from the front doors to the stairway as well and Hypnos pulled a long, dagger from the back of his robe on the trio.
“Turn around and leave this place. If Persephone wants Calliope out of the Underworld so bad, tell her to come herself,” he said.
The three sisters regarded each other with some amusement, “What do you think you’ll get out of this chivalrous gesture? Do you think she’ll love you, that you’ll live happily ever after in this chateau by the lake?” Megaera taunted him while her sisters clucked and snickered behind her. “She’s only a shade, Hypnos, one of millions of dead mortals. She has committed a crime and now she must pay, she must go to Tartaros.”
“What crime has she committed? I demand to know!” His black eyes bored into her indifferent, amused expression.
“Why, My Lord Hypnos,” her words dripped with poisoned honey, “she gave the mortals evidence of the Pantheon’s existence.”
Fear unfolded across his expression, he shook his head in denial, and the Erinys were mocking him, laughing at him. “You’re lying,” he whispered.
Megaera smiled and opened her mouth. Calliope’s confession to Annie came pouring out of Megaera’s crimson mouth in Calliope’s own voice.
Horror crept onto Hypnos’ pale face as he looked for an escape.
“You see, you can hear for yourself, she told her mortal everything,” The Grim said.
Hypnos turned and raced up the stairs, he could hear them behind him, taking their sweet time, as though they were out for a stroll.
“She’ll never get away from us,” Megaera’s voice echoed up and down the great hall. Outside, the murder of crows beat against the chateau’s windows, screaming to be let in.
Hypnos ran into his room, where Calliope slept in his bed, her ghostly countenance clear and sharp, like a movie projection. She was real to him, not like a human shade at all, like something in-between.
“Calliope, Calliope, love, wake up!” He shook her awake, he knew she could feel him, and he knew that it was no memory. “Calli, we don’t have the time for this, they’re coming for you!”
Calliope shot upright and said, “They’re coming.” She could feel them beating at the windows, she could hear them screaming and laughing at the night. The crows.
Quickly, she pulled a gown over her head and grabbed a cloak from Hypnos’ shaking fingers.
“We have to get you out of here,” he said and pulled her towards the door. The three sisters were halfway down the hall. “Other door,” he said as he slammed the bedchamber’s door shut and locked it into place, motioning Calliope to another door at the chamber’s other end.
They could hear the Erinys’ hacking and cursing at the heavy wooden door as they slipped through one much farther down the hall. A thunderous rattling from above confused Hypnos and he could not fathom what it could be.
Calliope knew. She looked wild and wide-eyed as the crows tapped at the windows with their black beaks.
“Muse!” Megaera called, she had spotted them.
Calliope gambled a peek over her shoulder to see how close they were. The Erinys walked abreast in great confident strides in the pair’s direction, cloaks billowing out from their rapid pace like dark clouds engulfing them. Megaera the Grim in the darkest blue, Alekto in a forest green, and Tisphone in the same ruby that Calli had seen her in earlier. Tisphone was cocking an arrow lit by blue fire in her bow when suddenly the great hall exploded.
Shards of glass came flying at them from both sides and great black birds suddenly filled every empty space in the hall. White curtains blew in all directions, snapping and wrapping around birds and limbs. Crows scratched and pulled her hair, Calliope shrieked and tore at them with her hands.
They assailed the Erinys, though, too, and Hypnos could hear their screams of outrage at the invasion. “This way,” he yelled against the bedlam.
Calliope followed him down the servant’s stairs and out into the night.
He looked behind him and said, “We must hurry, they’ll only be distracted for a few moments.”
Calliope nodded her agreement. Sojourn suddenly appeared with two Nightmares, saddled, and readied to go. The dark lord turned and regarded her. “Thank you, Sojourn, I owe you much,” Hypnos said.
“Just come back in one piece.”
“That’s a promise I hope to keep.”
Calli looked at the two horses. “You’re coming with?”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave you to the darkness, right?” Hypnos said as he helped her onto the beast.
“Where will we go?” Her heart felt like it would explode, her fear so acute she thought it would kill her if she weren’t already dead.
“Where Persephone would never think to look,” he said. “To see Hades.”
Hypnos rode ahead of her, his black hair streaming behind him like a banner. Calliope dug her heels into the mare to follow, her mind reeling at their destination.
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