Pitchfork Read online

  The rooms in between the two great doors where they dwelled were in decay, but through Hades’ and Keres’ tireless work, it had transformed into something almost homey. Their home was nothing like the devastation they found here. These distant sections of the fortress no longer resembled the structure it once was. Walls had deteriorated to dust, doors wrenched in half, and debris littered the floor in blankets of carnage, baring their path with nearly impenetrable obstructions. The ancient ceiling had long ago collapsed, the air above nothing but a vast, eternal blackness.

  Their descent into the depths was endless, the twists and turns the wreckage forced them to take confusing Alkaios’ sense of direction, and when they passed a scorched wall, déjà vu washed over him. His fingers brushed over the scoured stone. Its pattern struck him as familiar, and Alkaios’ eyes shot to the flanks of the beast before him. Was the dog lost, or was he leading them in circles on purpose?

  “Kerberos?” Alkaios started, but the words caught in his throat and the god-killer froze, massive paw hovering mid-step. They felt it before they heard it. The air shifted causing gooseflesh to rear its ugly head over their skin. Something darker than this pitch-black night was manifesting here, creeping through the corridors, its icy fingers clawing the air for something to latch on to. A guttural woman’s voice stalked through the corridors. Harsh and primitive, it was unlike any language Alkaios had ever heard, but the voice that uttered it… that voice he would recognize even if he had not heard it in centuries.

  Both god and beast bolted, vaulting over the debris toward the sound. Their feet stumbled over the crumbling stone at a breakneck speed, but despite his raw power, Alkaios strained to keep pace with the hellhound’s bulging thighs. Kerberos surged over the fallen walls, refusing to slow for his king, and with surging muscles, the god bounded after him. The voice beckoned them, a demonic siren in the night, and they plunged onward until they came to a remarkably preserved room. A dead end that forced them to a skidding halt.

  “Hades?” Alkaios whispered. She stood before him, undisturbed by their sudden entrance. She faced the wall, only her back visible. Her hands flew with furious purpose, although what they were doing, he could not tell. “Hades?” he repeated a little louder as he crept forward, but Hades continued her shaking movements. Her body gave no sign she heard him, her actions that of a woman who believed she was alone.

  “Wife?” But Alkaios’ words died on his lips. He saw with sudden clarity what she was doing. Bile rose in his throat. It threatened to spew from his lips, and despite his desperation to look away and erase the sight before him, his mud-blue eyes remain locked on her moving figure. Alkaios sensed Kerberos freeze, and the dog’s alarm crackled over his skin like a stream freezing solid in the dead of winter. For there Hades stood, muttering in an archaic tongue, carving those cursed prophecy symbols into the stone… with her own bloody fingers.

  Hades’ nails ripped from her fingers, and even in the darkness, Alkaios could see the deep red blood running down her perfect skin and over the wall. She carved in a frenzy as her voice escaped in low demonic tones. Bloody fingertips traced and retraced the symbols, her body deaf and blind to all but her crazed mind. Alkaios closed his eyes, desperate to keep the vomit from heaving itself onto the floor.

  “Hades?” Alkaios ventured slowly, reaching a calloused hand toward her. He was afraid to touch her but could not watch her carve her fingers down to stumps. “Hades?” he brushed a tentative palm over her shoulder.

  With alarming speed, Hades turned, the force shoving him off balance. The whites of her eyes bore down on him. Her irises rolled into her skull. Dirt and blood streaked her face and chest, and her palms reached for Alkaios with clawing fingers. Her unintelligible words grew aggressive, and before Alkaios could stop her, Hades clutched his throat in a vice grip. Iron fist constricting, Alkaios’ trachea began to collapse in an explosion of pain. Her strength always rivaled his, but in this moment she was stronger as she crushed him in her bloody palm. Her blank eyes twitched, voice thundering through the fortress, and as black consumed Alkaios’ vision, Kerberos let out an unearthly snarl and lunged for Hades. Shock rippled through his addled brain, and Alkaios watched through clouded sight as Kerberos surged to protect him. The dog’ massive shoulder blade barreled into Hades’ hip, and the jarring impact wrenched her hand from her husband’s throat before cracking her head against the wall. The harsh sound reverberated throughout the stone, and Hades’ collapsed in a boneless heap.

  Choking for air, Alkaios doubled over and stumbled to his crumbled wife. Kerberos beat him to her and with tentative care, nudged Hades toward her coughing husband. Through the gagging pain, Alkaios fell to his knees, ignoring the sting the impact shot through his bones, and scooped Hades into his arms. A groan escaped her lips, and with fluttering eyelids, she blinked slowly as he enveloped her in his embrace.

  “Alkaios? Why am I on the floor?” Hades looked around, but the effort it took to move her eyes burned through her skull, and she clenched them shut, collapsing against his broad chest.

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “Where are we?” Hades ignored Alkaios’ question and reached a hand out to Kerberos. His three heads eyed her with wariness, but his love propelled him to her side, an unseen tether woven into the fabric of his heart. His lumbering limbs collapsed beneath him the moment Hades’ fingers landed on his leathery hide, and Kerberos curled his hulking frame around the couple to envelop them in his warmth.

  “You remember nothing?” Alkaios asked.

  “I remember going to bed… then bloodshed and chaos? There was a massacre,” Hades whispered. “It felt real. I could smell the blood and taste the death and then nothing. Only blackness.” Her gaze swept up to meet her husband’s, and she saw the concern hovering in his face. “What did I do?”

  Alkaios shifted his eyes to the bloodstained wall, and Hades followed his gaze. The color drained from her face at the site of the gruesome letters, and suddenly the thudding ache in her fingers registered in her brain

  “What is happening?” she whispered, voice stumbling in panic. “I have no control over my mind. Every time I close my eyes, I see the same massacre. I wake in places I did not fall asleep in… and now this. Why this prophecy?”

  “I think we might have to consider telling Zeus,” Alkaios said, cringing at the idea even as the words left his mouth.

  “Absolutely not,” Hades insisted as she unstably pushed herself to her feet. Kerberos, seeing her teeter, shoved his side against the back of her legs for support, and Hades clutched his spikes, thankful for the aid. “We cannot tell him.”

  “Hades,” Alkaios interrupted. “Something is happening, and neither of us knows what. Perhaps he can help.”

  “He can help?” Hades asked incredulously. “Alkaios, he tried to kill you, to destroy your soul. Is that who you truly wish to turn to?”

  “Of course not.” Alkaios rose from the floor to return her stare. “I do not want his aid nor his advice, but I cannot help you. Hades, this is killing me. When we met, I was mortal, and you always came to my aid, but now I am a god. I am supposed to be all-powerful, yet the one person in this entire world I would move mountains for is struggling, and I can do nothing. You are not the same. No one is ever truly fearless, but to me you were. Now there is fear in your eyes, and it terrifies me.”

  “I do not know what is happening,” Hades said, voice softening. She took Alkaios’ face in her bloody hands and looked deep into his mud-blue eyes, eyes she loved. “But we must not tell him. We cannot give him anything to hold over us. If Zeus finds out, imagine how he could use this against us. I almost lost you when he forced Hermes to curse you with the Touch of the Gods. What else is he capable of?”

  “Very well,” Alkaios said, leaning in and kissing her lips with a love so deep the air shifted, the oppressive evil lifting. “We will not tell him. I only wish to help.” He gathered her into his arms and pulled her against his chest, and Hades could feel the thunderin
g beat of his heart beneath his skin. “I love you more than I know how to admit.”

  Hades smiled against his broad chest, Alkaios’ bare flesh hot against her lips.

  “I love you.”

  “If you will not tell Zeus, there is another we might speak to,” Alkaios murmured into her hair. “I think it is time we paid the Oracle a visit.”

  V

  “I wondered when the king of death would grace my halls,” the Oracle crooned, her back turned to what had been an empty room only moments before. “That is a darkness I have yet to feel.” She swiveled on her stool before standing to greet her visitors. “Hades, god of the Underworld, and his queen Persephone… I had heard you were more beautiful than Aphrodite herself,” The Oracle said, body drifting toward the raven-haired guest, “I thought it could only be blasphemy, but as you stand before me, queen of Hell, I must agree. You are exquisite.”

  The Oracle of Delphi was neither young nor old, ageless with her silver hair yet perfect skin. She was tall and lean, and her legs appeared to drift over the ground rather than walk. Her eyes were impossibly light, and the dark marks inked beneath her flesh showed through the sheer cloth of her dress.

  “What is it I can do for you, god of death?” The Oracle asked, turning her gaze upon Alkaios.

  “We are here about the prophecy,” Alkaios answered, pitchfork in one hand, Hades’ fingers in the other. At his words, the Oracle’s eyes darkened.

  “There is nothing I can tell you that I have not already told Zeus.” She backed away, a flicker of fear rippling across her face. “I do not know who spoke through me, and I have no memory of that night. If it were not for my blood on the floor and my handmaid’s account, I would have never known I prophesied.”

  “We have not come to question you about it,” Alkaios said, dropping Hades’ hand and moving closer to the Oracle. “We came to ask for help.”

  “Help?”

  “For my wife, Persephone,” he explained stumbling over the name. Alkaios had not called Hades by the name Persephone since they first met years ago when he believed her to be merely a mortal woman in need of aid. “Zeus told us that the parchment you gave him was ink and paper.”

  “That is the truth.”

  “Ink and paper hold no power, yet the moment my wife touched it something happened,” Alkaios continued. “It is as if a curse descended upon her. A violent insanity has taken over her sleep, and I do not know how to help.”

  “My ink would not have caused that,” the Oracle said defensively, “and as for the words I wrote, who knows what power they hold.”

  “I understand…”

  “Then how is it you think I can help?” Her eyes flicking to Hades as if for an explanation.

  “All Oracles have divine sight, a connection to the supernatural,” Alkaios answered. “Perhaps you might see something in Persephone I cannot.”

  “You want me to do a reading for your wife?” The Oracle asked, raising her eyebrows. “What could I possibly perceive that a god cannot?”

  “It is not about what he cannot detect,” Hades said, speaking for the first time since their arrival. “Rather what is out of place. My husband knows me. We need fresh sight. Someone who can distinguish from his darkness and my own, and being that you and I seem to be the only ones this prophecy affected, it would appear you are our best hope.”

  “Very well, I will do this.” The Oracle stepped toward Hades. “May I take your hands?” Hades reached out her palms in agreement, and the Oracle took a deep breath before shutting her eyes and pressing her skin against Hades’.

  “Who are you?” the Oracle demanded, her voice colored with alarm as she snatched her arms back with the speed of a woman scorched by burning coals. Her eyes grew wide with terror, and she leapt backward, placing distance between herself and the Underworld’s Queen. “Who are you?”

  “I am Persephone…” Hades started

  “Do not lie to me,” the Oracle spat. “There is a dark power within you that a mere immortal would not possess, even one of the Underworld.” Hades and Alkaios shared a look, and it was if an entire conversation passed between their eyes. After a moment, Alkaios sighed and nodded slightly; an answer to his wife’s unspoken question.

  “I am Hades.”

  “I thought he was the god of the Underworld?” The Oracle’s head swiveled rapidly between her guests.

  “He is now,” Hades explained, “but was not always. My name is Hades. It is the name I was born with. I am the one who broke the seal and tamed the evil trapped behind that door. My husband is Alkaios. He was a mortal when we met, but there was turmoil between the gods of Olympus and myself, and Alkaios paid the price for it. They cursed him with the Touch of the Gods. You have heard of that I assume?” The Oracle nodded, and Hades continued. “No man nor beast can survive it, only a god. So I did the only thing I could think of. I transferred my power and made him god of the Underworld. He assumed my place. I could endure the loss of power, but I refused to lose him.” Hades turned to Alkaios, and the Oracle saw the fierce love between them. A twinge of both joy and jealousy stung her heart as she watched Alkaios reach out to grip Hades’ fingers.

  “He adopted your name?”

  “By that time, earth had already acknowledged the arrival of a new god, a god of the Underworld named Hades. Many believed Hades to be a woman, but many had also seen Alkaios and I in public together. Zeus had tried to convince mortals to kill Alkaios, cementing in their minds his importance to me. When I pulled a child’s shade from the Underworld, returning life to her, Alkaios stood beside me. It was not difficult to persuade earth he was a god, and I was merely his queen. It would have been a greater challenge to change the name people prayed to than the god’s gender. Publicly, he is now Hades, and I am his immortal wife, Persephone. In the privacy of our lives, though, I am the true Hades, and he is Alkaios.”

  “She retains a residual of her power,” Alkaios added. “The pitchfork and the beasts of Hell still answer to her.”

  “Most children prefer their mother.” The Oracle blinked as she looked back and forth between her guests. “That would explain what I witnessed. I understand your deception, but if you come to me for help, please do not lie. You forget I recognize more than most.” She raised her eyebrows. “Shall we try again then?” Hades nodded and stretched out her palms, pressing them against the Oracle’s.

  The Oracle’s eyelids drifted shut, fingers gripping Hades’ hands in tight fists. After a few silent moments, a grimace plagued her face, yet she remained rooted in place. Her mind began to hum, and with a sudden viciousness, the Oracle recoiled as if an unseen hand had struck her cheek. Her grimace deepened, the humming rattling her brain with increasing madness, and as her eyelids clenched harshly, she flinched again. Pain emanated from her figure. Her breath jerked in ragged huffs, and then without warning, The Oracle’s body wrenched backward, the demand of the jolt forcing her to drop Hades’ hands.

  “There is a great darkness lurking beneath your surface,” the Oracle finally shuddered, eyes haunted. “Some of it is remnant from your position as god of the Underworld, but there is something else fighting to emerge from the depths. It feels violent and powerful, the likes of which I have never felt before. It is subtle at the moment but will not remain so for long. It is chomping at the bit, begging to surge and grow. Whatever is within you, Hades, is not like anything I have ever experienced. I can neither say what is happening to you nor how it connects to the prophecy, but I will say this. Both the prophecy and what awakens within you are strong, dark, and ancient.”

  “What could that be?” Alkaios asked, turning to Hades, concern lacing his voice.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I am sorry,” the Oracle said. “There is something simmering beneath your surface, but truthfully, I have no answers. I realize it is not much, but in my limited ability, it is all I can see.”

  “Thank you,” Hades said. “It’s more than we knew when we came today.”

  �
��Of course.” The Oracle turned to Alkaios. “I am here to serve the gods.”

  “Thank you. We will not take up any more of your day.” Tentacles of inky smoke began to twist and grow from Alkaios’ body, the curling darkness weaving around Hades like a starving snake. Fascinated, the Oracle watched before working up the courage to reach out and plunge her fingers into a strand of the black vapor that ensnared Hades’ arm. The contact sent an electric jolt burning through her body, and her eyes locked with the queens with wide-eyed revelation.

  “Wait.” She seized Hades’ wrist to halt their departure. “There is something else… a woman of snakes. I cannot explain it, but I believe she is somehow tied to you.”

  “A woman of snakes?” Hades said sharing a look with her husband. “Hydra?”

  “Who is Hydra?” The Oracle asked.

  “She is one of the Underworld’s three god-killers,” Alkaios said.

  “No.” The Oracle’ words dripped from her mouth with slow consideration. “It would be no one you know. If it were, you would have had no reason to seek my counsel. No, this woman is something far older than you or I.”

  “A woman of snakes who has come before us?” Alkaios asked looking from the Oracle to his wife. “Who could that be?”

  “I do not know,” both Hades and the Oracle answered in unison, but Hades’ voice trailed off halfway through her words. Her eyes went wide, and she stared at Alkaios, disbelief leaking from her pores.

  “No.” Hades shook her head. “No… it cannot be her.”

  “Medusa?” Alkaios asked. “Who is Medusa?”

  “A myth,” Hades answered, pacing back and forth over the planks of the boathouse. Both Charon and Alkaios leaned against the wall, tracking her movements with flickering eyes while Keres, Ioanna, and Hydra sat around the room watching the exchange. “Or at least she is believed to be a myth. She is a bedtime story, something to frighten children with so they behave. Even the Olympians believe her to only exist in lore.”