Awakening (Book One of the Eklektos Series)

Chapter Forty

Apollo grimaced, strain clear on his usually perfect features, and snapped "Why can't you find her?"

"Why can't you?" Hades replied quietly. Too quietly. Apollo knew all too well the rage that simmered behind his expressionless face, and he paled.

Hades hadn't said a word when he had suddenly risen partway through the council meeting. Zeus had blustered and flapped until Hades had told him, very reasonably, where he could shove his "propriety". At the first syllable of Hades' calm and controlled words, the room had gone silent. He had fixed his empty gaze on Apollo and the two of them had melted away in a storm of shadows. Apollo still didn't know how he could do that from the sealed room, without any contact.

"My divination can't reach her..." He admitted, taking half a step back in case Hades loosed the tether shackling his emotions. "Last night, if she wasn't dreaming through the gates, that means someone else slipped past you and hijacked her mind. I don't know anyone with that kind of power."

Through clenched teeth, Hades grunted "There is no guarantee this is related."

"And there's no guarantee it isn't!" Apollo cried, desperately. "Someone triggered that mark. They would have known there was only one place she'd go to find answers!"

Icy blue eyes bore into him. The response was still in that quiet deadly tone that made the God of the Sun's blood run cold. "You had better hope I find her soon. Do not forget that you sent her there, friend."

Throwing caution to the wind, he whispered "You aren't the most powerful being around, Hades. What if you can't find her?"

Apollo knew that he had gone too far when Hades' eyes shifted from their usual blue to a solid black. Darkness poured out of him and Apollo instinctively threw up his strongest shields. His radiance was snuffed out in an instant. For one humiliating moment, Apollo was reminded of the power that Hades commanded. The power Hades locked away.

The all consuming darkness from the depths of Tartarus.

A heartbeat was all it took to reduce the god to a shivering wreck on the floor of Kali's living room. And he remained that way for a long time once Hades had vanished once more.

This time, Hades' shadows crackled with black lightning and he arrived with a resounding boom in the middle of the Immortals club. The electricity sizzled over his skin as he strode towards the man he had come for. Ignoring the cries of those scrambling to get away from him, he fixed his eyes on a man he may have called brother in another life.

"Where is Kali?" His aura of calm was deteriorating more and more each second. His words came out in more of a snarl than a question.

"Kali?" He frowned in mock concentration and then gasped "Oh, your Persephone."

Hades snapped. In an instant, his hand was at the Stargazer's throat and they were on the other side of the club. He slammed the man against the wall and growled "Don't...call her that."

"Why not? That's what the myths said, isn't it? You fell in love with someone you could never hope would love you back, and then tricked her into being with you?" His empty grin widened to show all of his teeth, even as his feet dangled uselessly beneath him, and he exclaimed innocently "Who'd have thought they'd be prophets? I figured it fit pretty well when I saw her wearing your mark. No way in hell a girl like that could be chained to a monster like you."

Hades' hand tightened around his throat and he all but roared. "You truly think it wise to bait me? You would do well to remember that I am not so bound by your laws as the rest of your brethren."