II. Gods and Monsters

21. Gone

Oli woke to Carter dabbing a wet towel on his forehead. He could feel the pillow behind his head and the sofa supporting his body.

"Gave us quite a scare Bonehead."

"What... What happened?... Where am I?..." he asked groggily, his head still fuzzy.

"Exactly where you were when you were knocked unconscious. The 'safe house"," Carter replied bitterly.

Oli's head thumped back against the pillow. It was slowly coming back to him now.

"Don't beat yourself up too much, Hades' powers far outweigh your own, and his mastery of them will be unrivalled."

Oli sat bolt upright, he'd only just processed that Hades had actually been here.

"Where is he?!" He cried.

His head began to swim after his sudden movement, causing Oli to lose all sense of balance and stumble to the floor. The sudden impact on his hands and knees sent a jarring sensation through his body, but Oli felt sick when parts of his body felt nothing. The back portion of his brain, the pit of his stomach, the base of his heart. They all felt empty.

"He's gone..." he and Carter both said in unison.

"Why did you ask if you knew?" Carter grumbled.

"Huh?"

Carter paused for a moment, silence filling the room.

"You weren't talking about Hades, were you?"

"No. Zarathos. I can't feel him anymore."

Charlotte

Charlotte slowly lifted her head off the concrete floor, it's cold touch bringing her back to consciousness. Even from her low position, she could tell she was in some sort of transparent container.

"Welcome back to the land of the living Charlotte Taylor," came a voice she didn't recognise.

She looked up to find a muscle-bound man dressed in something resembling Hades' armour. The breast-plate was missing, as was the helmet and signature cape, but the gauntlets, boots and everything else were almost identical. Thinly cropped, dirt brown hair clung to his scalp, while a matching beard covered some of his face. His voice was deep and rasping, with an accent like nothing she had heard before. It seemed to be a mixture of many. Piercing blue eyes were the only part of him that seemed to hint at any form of life. The rest of him seemed so... dead.

"Another one of Hades' lackeys. What a surprise, he still doesn't have the balls to come face me himself. Instead, he sends some idiot in a knock-off armour."

He smiled at that, inspecting his clawed hand. He seemed almost bored.

"I will never understand you. Even when knocking at death's door, you still try and mock... him. Why is that?"

"Because I'm not afraid of a coward. From what I've seen, he appears, makes a huge scene and leaves again. He leaves his servants to do the important stuff. Like that poor Amadeus guy! Where's he?"

"Recovering. And staying as far away from you and your friends as possible," the man replied, venom dripping from every word.

"What happened to him?"

"That is not of importance. What is important, is what will happen to you."

"Oooooo, I'm quaking in my boots."

The man took a second to look down at her footwear before continuing. Had Charlotte been paying more attention to him and less on veiling her fear, she would have seen a flicker of confusion run across his face.

"You honestly believe Hades keeps his hands clean?"

"First of all, for a guy who apparently killed every Ghost Rider before, he sure as hell doesn't do much killing now. Secondly, he can't kill me, he needs me for leverage," she announced a little too smugly than what she intended. This entire time she'd allowed her words to get ahead of her.

It was then that she looked into his eyes once more and realised her mistake. It wasn't life she had seen glowing behind his eyes. It was fire. Hellfire. It spread from his pupils and from his widening grin, bursting onto his skin and running across his entire body. Within seconds, he was engulfed in flames, his skin vaporised as soon as the flames touched it. Then his body grew, the metal of the armour screeching as it attempted to contain its master's new form. Hades breathed a sigh as he reared to his full height. His true height. He paced slowly towards Charlotte's transparent cage, a ring of fire allowing him to move into it un-interrupted.

"You're right..." Hades growled slowly. "I can't kill you... But that doesn't mean you need to undergo this experience unharmed. Pain, torture, suffering, these can still befall you. Besides... it would do you good to learn some manners!"

Hades emphasised this last word further by striking Charlotte with the back of his hand. The force of which sent her sprawling onto the floor. He grumbled in sadistic pleasure as he clasped her hair with one hand before standing her upright once more.

"I have walked this very Earth, and other realms you couldn't even begin to imagine, for millennia. You would be wise to respect your elders. Your superiors!"

His palm struck her this time, sending her sprawling against the wall. She crawled toward the centre of the cube before attempting to rise. But before she could complete her act of defiance, Hades' boot struck her in the chest, lifting her off the floor.

Charlotte landed on her back, blood pouring from her burst lip. He was toying with her. She knew it. The monster had enough power to snap her in two a dozen times over. He could incinerate her very soul with a single touch. But instead, he beat her, cackling quietly to himself as he did so. He raised his left gauntlet up, a blade sprouting from his forearm.

"I do admit, I do not indulge in such... intimate means of violence... But for you, I shall make an exception..." he snarled, his slow drawl of a speech pattern continuing.

He slowly wrapped the claws of his right hand around her throat, the blades digging into her flesh and drawing ever more blood. His towering form loomed over her casting a blue glow over her now pale skin.

"You shall experience the true extent of what I am capable of..."

Two robed men stood outside as they heard her scream. Even in their brainwashed state, her cries made their blood run cold, their guts wrench and their hearts stop. Their breath caught in their throats until after what felt like an eternity, when her shrieks finally stopped.

Oliver

"Oliver, this is suicide. You don't have your power anymore. How can you hope to stop him?"

"What else do I do? Leave her to die?!" He asked, brandishing a small scrap of parchment in his hand. Hades had left an address on the floor before he left.

"No, we stay, and we plan. He clearly wants you to go to him so he can finish you off while your power is depleted."

"It's not depleted! Zarathos is gone! Finished! Dead! It's not a case of waiting for him to come trundling back, Slade, he's not coming back because Hades killed him!"

"If that's the case, then that's all the more reason! Hades said he'd come for us at first light, so we don't exactly have long."

First light. First light. Why did those two words stick in Oli's mind? Then his vision returned. Snapshots of the room, windows without glass, and a single sliver of light crossing the room, heading towards two people. One the object of his hate, the other, the woman who had his heart.

"No... He's not coming for us..."

And with that, he was out of the door before anyone could object.