“Don’t suppose that book has any key phrases that’ll open it?”
She shrugged out of the pack, reached in, and grasped the book. After flipping pages she frowned. “No, nothing.”
One corner of Orpheus’s lips curled, just a touch. “You could charm it with that Siren voice.”
“My voice calms things. It doesn’t destroy them like…” Her eyes widened. “Where’s the vial?”
He reached into his pocket and handed her the glass vial the mystery guy in the marshes had given them. Skyla twisted the lid and flicked the glowing water at the rocks.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and then stone began to crumble.
“Get back,” Orpheus called.
Skyla grabbed her pack and scrambled backward. The wall gave way with a crash of rock and debris until light shone in from the other side.
Light from lanterns inside the Cave of Psychro.
Relief rippled through her chest as she picked her way over the rocks and through the narrow opening. And when she reached the other side, when she set foot on the solid, dirt-strewn earth, she felt like dropping to her knees and kissing the soil.
They’d made it. They’d ventured to the Underworld, rescued a soul, and survived. How many people could say they’d done that?
Not many.
Rocks slipped and scraped one another as Orpheus stumbled through the opening, his brother still deadweight in his arms. “Thank the Fates,” he breathed.
Skyla’s gaze shifted to Gryphon. “Look, Orpheus.”
Gryphon no longer appeared solid, but ethereal, the only thing concrete about him the blanket still wrapped around his naked hips.
“Let’s get him back to Demetrius. Quick.”
She nodded. Headed for the arched doorway that had led into the next room. Too late she realized there were no tourists around. No people milling through the birthplace of Zeus.
In a poof of smoke, Hades appeared on the stairs that led to the bridge that would take them to freedom, all towering menace and malevolent doom. At his side stood Persephone, dressed in a gown as black as her soulless eyes, looking less than thrilled.
Skyla’s feet drew to a stop. At her back, she heard Orpheus’s steps still as well.
“What do you think, wife of mine,” Hades said to Persephone without taking his eyes off Skyla. “That looks like stealing, don’t you think?”
Persephone wrapped her long, clawlike fingers around the handrail at her side. “I would say that’s most definitely stealing.” Heat flared in her eyes. “Hello, Orpheus. It’s good to see you again.” Then to her husband, “Whatever shall we do with them?”
A wicked, sinister grin curled the right side of Hades’s mouth, and dread dropped like a rock into the pit of Skyla’s stomach. “I can think of several things.”
Chapter 23
Gryphon came awake with a start. The foul energy he felt in the air pulled him from the brink of unconsciousness where he’d been hovering for…he didn’t know how long.
The snakes came back to squirm through his mind. He tried to push up, to get away, but couldn’t. They were eating him, biting his skin, injecting their venom deep into his veins. Gods, the pain. There was so much pain. There was…
His mind stopped its frantic spin cycle. And he realized in a daze there were no snakes. Just the lingering memory of their striking, biting, slithering away only to strike again. Of spiders crawling over his flesh. Of vultures tearing at his muscles. Of monsters he couldn’t name ripping his limbs from his body as if he were a rag doll. And burning. There’d been burning. He could smell the charred flesh as if it were happening now. But over it all, floating in every single memory, there was Atalanta. What she’d made him do. What she and Krónos had done when…
Agony churned inside him. Melded with shame and a sickness he couldn’t ignore. He needed to run. He had to get away. He—
“Skata.”
The voice, a voice he recognized, brought him back around. He turned his head and saw the profile of his brother’s face. Orpheus’s strong nose, the solid cheekbones, the square jaw covered in what had to be three or four days’ worth of stubble.
“O?” he whispered. Panic rushed in. No, no, no. His brother couldn’t be here. Not in the Underworld. No one could be here. No one—
“The vial?” a voice just past Orpheus whispered. A female voice.
Gryphon realized he was sitting on the ground. He looked up past Orpheus but couldn’t see more than watery shapes, one haloed in gold.
“They’re immortal, remember?” Orpheus muttered.
“What about your spells?” the female whispered.
“They’d be as useful as your singing against these two,” Orpheus said. “Skata, we get all the way back to the human realm and this is where it ends?”
Growls echoed somewhere close. Growls Gryphon recognized as hellhounds waiting to feast.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Orpheus warned.