Cursed

࿏Chapter Thirty-Two࿏

Hades

Once all of my undead slaves come back from their mission I summon them to me so that I may relish in their success. One of the dead men that I killed in the bar comes forward holding two severed heads by fistfuls of hair. He bows down ceremoniously at my feet and offers them to me. The sight of their necks dripping in blood causes my mouth to salivate. I open my mouth, unhinging my jaw like a cobra, and devour the heads. Their death tastes delicious. The potency of their deaths only intensifies my powers. Neon-green veins travel up my arms, crawling their way across my entire body in a web-like pattern. I'm at full strength now, I'm ready.

"Look at me now my undead army, and you will see your true Lord of the Underworld with unlimited power!"

Oh's and ah's are shared amongst the crowd as they watch in amazement as the rest of my human shell vanishes. My black eyes reflect their horror and amazement. It brings me great joy to be feared by them. Knowing that at any moment I can relinquish them of their pitiful afterlives.

"Now it is time-"

Before I can finish addressing my army, a tsunami of wind rushes through the forest. It causes everyone standing to be knocked flat to the ground. Brittle tree branches snap off and shoot into the soft earth. The leaves crumble off the trees. The atmosphere is like that of a tornado, raining dirt and debris down on us. I dig my heels into the ground in an effort to stabilize myself but this sudden surge of energy is more than I can take. Then just as quickly as the wind arrived, with no warning, everything goes still.

"Get up now!"

The undead scramble to get themselves off the ground and back at attention. Some of them pull tree limbs out of their already decaying bodies. Nothing can hurt them now, at least nothing that's natural.

"What was that master?"

"It knocked you down, oh powerful one."

"How is that possible?"

"How can anything be more powerful than you?"

As a measure of retribution for their insolence, I summon the earth to crack open and swallow several of them back into the Underworld. The screams of their tortured souls echo through the forest even without bodies to accompany them.

"Is there anyone else who dares to question me?"

Silence. That's better. Now I can turn my attention to locate where that energy field emerged from. I whip out my tongue and dial in on the energy that's come through here. There's magic in the air, I can taste it. Bringing out the girl's scarf that I grabbed from the apartment, I inhale its scent deeply. My inner sight shows me an image of a two-story white farmhouse. I see fields of corn and a tractor that's harvesting them. I take another inhalation of the scarf to search deeper. Then I see them. The boy and the girl. Except they're no longer in their human shells. I turn towards the rest of my pathetic army who are looking at me desperate for instructions.

"It looks like we will have some company. My brother Zeus has joined Aphrodite. I'm sick of Zeus always getting what I want. This ends now!"

"Kill Zeus. Kill Zeus. Kill Zeus."

The undead all shout in an uproar. Now that I know where the power source is coming from I can teleport all of us easily to Aphrodite and Zeus's location. I set my mind on the farmhouse while throwing green balls of electricity out at each minion. One by one I zap their dead bodies out of the forest and into the cornfield next to the house. We will have them surrounded.

I wait until the last body is gone to close my eyes and vanish in my own electric green magical current. When I open them I'm standing in the front yard of a white house with navy shutters on the windows. So this is where they've been hiding. The grass looks like it needs mowing but I assume that chore belonged to one of the humans whose heads I ate for breakfast.

I signal for my minions to remain hidden in the cornstalks while I approach the house. On my way to the house, my body is abruptly halted by an invisible barrier. I yell angrily and throw my own magic up at the shield but it doesn't budge.

"I see you're continuing to hide behind your magic, brother. Are you too scared to come out and face me like a man?"

The front door flies open. Out of it emerges the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite. She is blindingly beautiful and it stuns me for a moment. She wears the traditional garb of a Roman maiden. Every curve of her body is accentuated by white silks. Her wrists glimmer as the sunlight hits the solid gold of her bangles.

"I'm here Hades. Facing you, like a woman."

"I have no quarrel with you goddess, it's Zeus who's head I want."

"Zeus and I are one. If you wish to hurt him then you will have to go through me."

Their union must've been the cause of the power surge. Of course, Zeus would come up with the only way he knows how to finish me off for good. Combining two gods into one body has never been achieved successfully before. A lump sits in my throat as I realize that even though I'm only seeing one of them, that she possesses power equal to twice that of a normal immortal. She could actually defeat me. Luckily for me, I have the element of surprise.