Orpheus was at Gryphon’s side in a flash, rolling him onto his back, trying to grasp his flailing arms. Gryphon was a big guy but he was weak, and the crazed, almost hysterical look in his eyes said he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Gods, who could think straight in this hellhole?
“Gryphon, stop. Stop!” Orpheus grasped both wrists and pinned them over Gryphon’s head. “I said stop!”
Gryphon lifted his head off the ground, struggled against Orpheus’s grip, and through clenched teeth growled, “I won’t let you take me!”
Skyla skidded to a stop at Orpheus’s side, dropped her bow. “He doesn’t know who you are.”
“Holy fuck, how the hell are we supposed to get him out of here when he’s fighting us? He’ll have every daemon in the realm on us in minutes.”
Skyla fell to her knees and began humming. A soft lullaby, like the one she’d tamed Cerberus with earlier. Gryphon stopped his frantic thrashing. He looked all around to see where the music was coming from.
The lullaby morphed into a gentle ballad, one about hope and promises and finding where you belonged. And as she sang, as her clear, entrancing voice rang out across the plain, Gryphon slowly relaxed his muscles. One by one. Until he sank against the ground and his eyes drifted closed.
Orpheus was too stunned to say anything. He could only watch as she picked up her bow and pushed to her feet. “Let’s go before something we definitely don’t want to meet comes after us.”
Chest warm, and not from the Orb, Orpheus hefted Gryphon into his arms. His brother was deadweight now, but that was okay. So long as he wasn’t fighting them and drawing attention, Orpheus could handle it. And carrying the two-hundred-fifty-pound Argonaut kept his mind off other things. Like what a surprise the Siren had turned out to be and what he was going to do about her when they got out of this mess.
Neither he nor Skyla spoke as they made their way down the steep ridge and past the Cursed Marshes. Anytime Gryphon so much as stirred, Skyla would start humming again and he’d relax back against Orpheus’s shoulder. Once, when they passed a soul being tortured—one tied to a stake being shot at by arrow after arrow—she stopped, stared in horror. But when Orpheus called out for her, she quickly picked up her pace and followed. It wasn’t until hours later, when they reached the base of the jagged mountains that separated Tartarus from the Fields of Asphodel, that they paused to rest.
Orpheus eased Gryphon down to lean against a rock. His head fell against Orpheus’s shoulder. The blanket was wrapped around his lean waist, his bare unmarked chest as muscular as it had always been, but the Argonaut Orpheus had known was nowhere to be found.
Orpheus’s pulse pounded hard. He kept seeing Gryphon in that field, wild-eyed and crazed, scared out of his mind, afraid even of his brother. He swiped a hand down his sweaty face, dropped it against his chest. His fingers fell against the earth element.
“Don’t even think about it.” Skyla’s bow was at her feet, a water bottle resting in her hand.
“Don’t think about what?”
“The element. You can’t give it to him.”
“He needs it. He’s weaker than—”
She stepped in front of him, blocking his view. “He’s a soul, Orpheus. One who’s been tortured by Hades and gods know what else down here. Giving it to him might be just what they want.” Her gaze jumped from rock to rock in the jagged terrain. “Something watches us. And waits. I can feel it.”
He turned to look around. He could feel it too. He just didn’t know what that something was.
Her fingers closing around his brought his attention back to her. Fingers that were warm and alive and reassuring. “Keep it on. Let it give you strength. Can you continue carrying him or do you need to rest?”
“No rest,” he said, his throat thick. “We keep moving. I want out of this hellhole.”
She nodded in agreement, let go of his hand, and handed him the water bottle. The loss of her touch was as stark as the barren wind blowing hot across the land. “I figure six, maybe seven more hours until we reach the River Styx. If we can keep up this pace, that is.”
Again he turned and scanned the hills, the feeling that eyes were watching sending tingles all along his spine.
That and a sense of déjà vu that he’d been here before. That he’d done this before. That failure was imminent.
***
Skyla’s heart had been in her throat since she’d seen Orpheus’s brother hanging from that gnarled and decrepit tree. And it had picked up speed when she’d seen the female tied to that post, being shot at with those arrows. The female she was sure she recognized as a former Siren. But it was the sensation they were being followed that put the urgency in her step and pushed her on even when her muscles ached from exhaustion.