Grass. He’d laid him in grass. “Stay here, Gryph. I’ll be right back.”
Gryphon’s vision came and went. He focused long enough to look across the rolling field of brown toward a cave surrounded by olive and cypress trees. A cave they must have just run out of. The Argonauts were all there, blades drawn for battle: Theron, Zander, Titus, Cerek, and Phin. The only one missing was Demetrius.
Demetrius…The last time Gryphon had seen the guardian had been in that field outside the colony. After they’d rescued Isadora. When they’d been overrun by daemons. Just after he’d been hit with the warlock’s energy that had sent his soul to the Underworld.
A female also stood with them. Dressed in knee-high boots, slim black pants and a tight-fitting top, her bowstring drawn back, arrow ready to release.
“Orpheus?” Theron called.
“I’m on it!” Orpheus called. He held out his hands and began chanting in that witch language of his. The ground rumbled. Hellhounds broke through the cave opening and charged. A blur of black slithered off to the right. While the Argonauts fought the beasts back, Orpheus continued chanting. Through the darkness Hades appeared, walking toward them in a swirl of smoke, with murder shining in his soulless eyes.
Orpheus’s chanting grew stronger and something glowed red against the skin under his shirt. The ground rumbled again as if a great earthquake was building. Then the entire mountain came down, rocks and boulders and tree limbs crashing in to destroy the cave.
Teeth gnashed, a bloodcurdling howl echoed through the air. Gryphon watched as the Argonauts decimated the five or so hellhounds that had come through before the mountain had collapsed. The Argonauts and the female with the bow.
The battle was over in seconds. In the aftermath, shaking began, but this wasn’t from the ground. It came from within. Gryphon could only curl into himself and the blanket. Voices drew close as he ducked his head. Voices of his warrior kin. Kin he couldn’t face.
“Take him and go,” Theron said. “Get him to D and that warlock, then get him the hell home.”
“Hades will figure out a way through,” Orpheus said, his arms sliding under the blanket to lift Gryphon off the ground. “He’ll be pissed and he’ll be coming.”
“We’ll distract until you’re gone. Then we’ll get gone ourselves.”
“How did you know where and when we’d come out?” the female asked.
“The queen,” Titus answered. “She and her sisters used their Horae powers to see what Hades had planned.”
The ground shook again. And Theron added louder, “Get gone, already!
“On foot?” the female—Skyla?—asked somewhere close.
“No,” Orpheus answered. “This time you’re both otherworldly. At least for now. Hold on to me. We’re flashing out of this one.”
Before Gryphon could wonder what sort of “otherworldly” she was, he felt himself flying. Flying across time and space and away from the Underworld and all its horrors. But not away from the darkness that now lived inside him. And not away from the voice he heard cackling faintly on the wind.
Atalanta’s voice.
Now we are both free. But don’t forget you are mine, doulas. Forever, you are now linked to me…
***
Orpheus hollered as they flashed to the abandoned homestead they’d found in the hills outside Psychro. Rock walls gave way to a thatched roof. Weeds and cacti overtook what used to be a yard.
The door jerked open just as they reached it and Demetrius’s towering body filled the frame, his dark eyes darting to the blanket Orpheus had draped over Gryphon so he could carry him. “You got him?”
“Yeah. Where’s the warlock?”
“In here.” Demetrius led them to the back of the shack into what looked like a bedroom. An iron bed frame void of mattress sat against the wall, but the warlock—in Gryphon’s body—was bound and gagged on the opposite side of the room, leaning against the wall, his eyes growing wide as Orpheus and Skyla stepped in after Demetrius.
The warlock struggled in his bonds, yelled beneath the gag. Fear shone in his too-blue eyes. Eyes that didn’t belong to Gryphon.
“How do we do this?” Demetrius asked.
“I don’t know,” Orpheus answered. “Skyla?”
“This is outside the realm of my expertise, boys, but I think if you put his soul anywhere near his body, it’ll know what to do.”
That sounded like as good a plan as any. Orpheus tugged the blanket from Gryphon’s back then laid him on the dirt-strewn stone floor, opening the blanket so his ethereal body came into view.
None of them spoke as they waited for something to happen. The only sound in the room was the warlock screaming beneath his gag and struggling with whatever strength he had left to break free of the chain holding his arms secured to the wall above his head.
At first, nothing happened. And then slowly Gryphon’s soul began to slink across the floor, floating really, toward his body.