SWNOVELS Neon Gods: Chapter 29
She’s gone.
I sit in my bedroom as dawn first begins to steal across the sky and stare at the empty bed. The room never felt this large before, this deserted. I feel her absence in my home like a missing limb. It hurts, but there’s no source. There’s no fix.
I lean forward and press the heels of my hands to my eyes. I watched the security feeds. I saw her leave with Hermes. If it was only that, I might chalk it up to Persephone changing her mind, to her wanting nothing to do with this war and me after what happened tonight.
But she left her sister here.
And she was wearing a black dress.
I’m not a man to look for signs when there are none, but she wore a black dress earlier, too. Tonight represented a turning point for us, one of the latest in a long line of many. She stood at my side in black and we all but admitted our feelings for each other. If Persephone didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t be dressed as my dark queen when she left. She wouldn’t have left Eurydice here, sending a silent message that she trusts me to ensure her sister’s safety.
She’s making a statement.
I push to my feet and cross to the bed. There will be no time for sleeping, but I need to take a shower and try to clear my head. Things are moving too quickly. I can’t afford to let something slip.
I see the paper the moment I walk into the bathroom. It’s torn on one side and as I pick it up, I recognize the title of the book Persephone was reading when I saw her last. Her scrawl is almost illegible, which makes me smile despite everything. It’s one part of her that isn’t perfectly poised. The note is short, but it steals my breath all the same.
Hades,
I’m sorry. This will look bad, but I promise that I’m doing it for you. It’s unforgivable to say it this way, but I don’t know if I’ll get another chance. I love you. I made this mess, and now I’ll fix it.
Yours,
P
I read it again. And then a third time. “Godsdamn it.” If she’d left me to save herself or her sisters, that would be easier to swallow. I’d suspected, but suspecting and knowing the truth are two very different things.
Something inside me goes cold and barbed as I pull out my phone and check the gossip sites. Persephone’s only been gone a few hours, but her photos are already all over them. Her in that black dress at Zeus’s party. Zeus with his arm possessively around her waist. Her giving him that sunny smile that is fake and sweet enough to make my teeth ache.
She walked back into his waiting arms to save me. I can’t wrap my mind around it. She’s seen my preparations. She knows what I’m capable of. My people and I can weather anything Zeus throws at us. It won’t be pretty, but we can do it.
Persephone just stepped in front of a bullet meant for me.
The thought makes the cold feeling inside me go positively frigid. Zeus will make her pay for leaving, for letting me have my hands all over her in front of his peers. For soiling her, in his mind. He’ll take his rage out on her, and not even Persephone can survive that indefinitely. Maybe her body will, but he’ll fracture her soul, the strength that makes her her. Zeus isn’t the type of man to tolerate any resistance.
I promised I’d protect her.
I fucking love her.
I tuck the note exactly back where I found it and walk out of the bathroom. I’ve ghosted through these hallways often enough that it’s child’s play to avoid my people and the cameras. Charon will lose his shit when he realizes what I’ve done. Andreas will never forgive me. None of it matters. Nothing but doing whatever it takes to ensure Persephone is safe.
Even if it means she runs as far and fast from Olympus as she can. As far and fast from me as she can. Even knowing that her freedom means I lose her forever. Better that she be lost to me in favor of the world and her freedom than submitting to Zeus to pay the price for sins real and imagined.
I’m going to kill him.
I make it a single block from my house when a dark sedan cruises around the corner and slows next to me. The passenger-side window rolls down, and Hermes gives me a shadow of her normal grin. “You’re about to do something stupid.”
Dionysus is in the driver’s seat, and he looks as exhausted as if he’s gone on a weeklong bender. “Hades always did have a noble streak.”
“I wouldn’t want you to get in the middle. I know how you both hate that.” It comes out far harsher than I intend, but I can’t help it. Against my better judgment, I started considering her and Dionysus friends and look where that got me. Betrayal. Endless fucking betrayal.
Her smile drops. “We’re all playing the roles set out for us. I knew the script when I accepted the title.” She glances at Dionysus. “We both did.”
“Not all of us had that kind of choice.” I can’t keep the bitterness, the anger, from my voice. I never asked to be Hades. The decision was taken out of my hands the first moment I drew breath. A heavy mantle to lay on a newborn’s head, but no one cared what I wanted. Not my parents. Certainly not Zeus when he made me an orphan and the youngest Hades in the history of Olympus.
She sighs. “Get in the car. It’ll be faster than walking, and you don’t want to show up to Zeus’s all rumpled and messy. Presentation is eighty percent of negotiations.”
I stop. The car stops next to me. “Who said I was going to Zeus?”
“Give us a little credit.” Dionysus chuckles. “The love of your life just made a deal to save your skin, so naturally you’re going to pull a very romantic, very impulsive move to save her right back.”
My internal debate only lasts a moment. At the end of the day, they’re right. They both have a role to play, just like the rest of us. Holding that against them is like being angry at the wind for unexpectedly changing direction. I walk around the car and slide into the passenger seat. “You helped her leave, Hermes.”
“She contracted my services.” Hermes twists to look at me as Dionysus pulls back onto the right side of the street and heads north. “Even if she hadn’t, I still would have helped.” She taps her fingers on the armrest of her seat, not able to be still even for a moment. “I like her. I like you when you’re with her.”
“I’m not with her right now.”
Dionysus shrugs, his eyes on the road. “Relationships are complicated. You love her. She obviously loves you, or she wouldn’t be riding off to save you from Zeus and the rest of the Thirteen. You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to her because of this.” I’ll never forgive myself for not protecting her like I promised.
“Something was already happening to her before you met her, Hades. She was fleeing Zeus when she stumbled into your comforting arms. That has nothing to do with you.” Hermes laughs a little. “Well, it didn’t used to have anything to do with you, but if there’s anyone Zeus hates more than you, it’s your father. He’ll do whatever he can to annihilate the Hades position. Just grind it to dust with the force of his fury and damaged pride.”
There was a time when the vendetta Zeus nurtures made me tired. I want revenge for the deaths of my parents, yes, but hating him for making me an orphan makes sense. His hatred for me does not. Fuck, his hatred for my parents doesn’t, either. “He should have let it go.”
“Yes.” Tap, tap, tap go her fingers. “But he’s got it all wrapped up in his head that a son for a son for a son makes sense, so here we are.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
“What am I ever talking about?” Hermes waves that away. “He won’t stop, you know. Even if you manage to negotiate your way out of this mess, he’ll be there with a knife aimed at your back for as long as that evil old heart of his keeps ticking.”
I want to press her on the son-for-a-son bit. Zeus has four children, two sons and two daughters—that are officially acknowledged, at least—that range from my age to their early twenties. Perseus will take the Zeus title when his father dies. He’s just as bad as his father, driven by power and ambition and ready to crush anyone who gets in his way. By all accounts, Zeus’s other son was a better kind of man. He fought his father and lost, and he fought his way out of Olympus and never looked back. “Is Hercules dead?”
“What? No. Of course not. By all accounts, he’s very happy right now.” Hermes doesn’t look at me. “Don’t worry about riddles, Hades. Worry about what today will bring.”
That’s the problem. I don’t know what today will bring. I stare out the window, watching the Cypress Bridge appear. Crossing it feels like entering another world, at least in my head. I can count how many times I’ve entered the upper city on one hand and still have four fingers left over. Before last night, the last time was when I officially took the title Hades. I stood in that cold room, Andreas at my back while I faced down the rest of the Thirteen. They were whole then, Zeus’s first wife still alive.
I was only a child and they handed me a role I had no choice but to grow into.
Now they have to reckon with the monster they created.
I don’t speak again until Dionysus pulls up to the curb on a block full of skyscrapers. Even with all the wealth pouring out of the buildings around us, there’s no mistaking which one belongs to Zeus. It’s taller than the rest by a significant amount, and while beautiful, it’s cold and soulless. Fitting.
I pause with my hand on the door. “This feels like walking onto a battlefield I won’t survive.”
“Mmm.” Hermes clears her throat. “Funny story, that. I have a message for you.”
“Now? Why didn’t you give it to me the second you saw me?”
Hermes rolls her eyes. “Because, Hades, you needed a ride. Priorities, my friend.” Before I can work up an answer to that, she gives herself a shake and Demeter’s voice emerges. “You have the support of myself, Hermes, Dionysus, Athena…and Poseidon.” She leans over and presses a gun into my hand. “Do what you have to do.”
Shock freezes me in place. I can barely draw a breath. “She just named half the Thirteen.” There is a power structure within the Thirteen and most of the major players have thrown their might in with Zeus—Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo. But Poseidon is siding with Demeter? That levels the field considerably. I do a quick count. “We have the majority.”
“Yes, we do. Make sure you don’t waste this chance.” She jerks her chin at the building. “The back door’s unlocked. Your window of opportunity won’t last long.”
I can’t trust her. Not completely. Hermes has vowed to deliver messages as they’re given to her, but that doesn’t mean the originator is required to tell the truth. This could be a trap. I look at the building one last time. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. Persephone is in danger, and I can’t turn back now.
If it’s not a trap, then Demeter just all but gave me the green light to go forward with my plan to kill Zeus. She’s clearly signaled her support of it, and she has half the Thirteen behind her.
If I do this, there’s a chance Persephone will never forgive me. I saw her face after I beat Zeus’s man. She was shocked by the violence of it. Committing murder puts me firmly in the monster category with Zeus, no matter how much he deserves a bullet between his eyes.
I take a slow breath. Yes, I might lose her, but at least she’ll be safe.
I’ll happily pay any price to make that happen.
It feels like my life has been moving toward this moment for a very long time. Since the night of the fire. Maybe even before then. For better or worse, this chapter ends today.
I check to make sure the gun is loaded and slip it into the back of my pants. The back door of the building opens easily. I step inside and wait, but no one appears to attack or force me out. If anything, the looming hallways feel deserted. Abandoned. I’m not sure if this is Zeus’s people being sloppy or Demeter clearing the way, but I can’t take this opportunity for granted. I slip down the hallway to the door to the stairs. When I was twenty-one, I researched and planned a full-scale attack on this building—on Zeus. I had blueprints, security cards, and every bit of information I needed to get to Zeus and put a bullet in his brain.
I almost went through with it.
It didn’t matter that it was a suicide mission at the time, that even if I survived, the might of the Thirteen would come down on my head. All I could think of was revenge.
Until Andreas gave me a verbal beating to end all beatings. He forced me to see who would really pay the cost for my recklessness. He forced me to learn patience, no matter how much it killed me to wait.
I thought all that effort and planning wasted. I was wrong.
There’s a service elevator that goes up from the third floor. It doesn’t have the same amount of security as the normal elevators, since the only people who use it are employees who are vetted. I don’t come across anyone as I move silently through Zeus’s territory. Again, I have the feeling that someone cleared the way for me, even if there’s no sign of violence. My tension grows higher and higher with every empty hallway, with every vacant room.
Is the entire building devoid of security?
The top floor is dominated by a modern ballroom of sorts that showcases wall-to-wall windows overlooking a balcony set above Olympus and larger-than-life portraits of the Thirteen on the two walls opposite. The River Styx cuts a dark swath through the city, and I don’t miss the fact that the lights almost seem dimmer on my side of the river. They would to this fucking crowd, wouldn’t they?
They don’t bother to see the value in the history written over every surface in the lower city. Why would they when they’ve systematically purged it from the area around Dodona Tower?
Fools, every single one of them.
I leave the ballroom and walk down the hall. It’s double the width it needs to be, the entire space practically flashing a neon sign announcing Zeus’s net worth. I poke my head in the next door and find a room full of statues. Like the paintings in the ballroom, they’re larger than life, each depicting the sculptor’s version of human perfection. These must be the same ones Persephone mentioned right after she arrived in the lower city. The temptation to walk to mine and pull the sheet from it is almost too much to resist, but it doesn’t matter what this Hades looks like. He sure as hell won’t have my scars, won’t have any of the traits that make me the man I am.
Persephone’s voice echoes through my mind, soft and sure. You’re beautiful to me, Hades. The scars are part of that, part of you. They’re a mark of everything you’ve survived, of how strong you are.
I release a pent-up breath and close the door softly. There’s nothing for me here.
The final door at the end of the hall is a massive thing, designed to intimidate. It stretches nearly floor to ceiling and appears to be coated with actual gold. Holy fuck, Zeus really is unbearable on every level, isn’t he?
Like everything else in this place, it speaks to the ego of this man that he keeps his private office on the same floor where the upper tiers of Olympus come and go with regularity. Yeah, he has security, but anyone with a little skill can bypass it. For someone like Hermes? Laughably simple.
After how easy this has been, I half expect to walk through the doors and find the room full of security, ready to shoot me full of bullets. Surely Zeus wouldn’t leave himself this open?
I slip through the door and pause to get my bearings. The office is about what I expect—heavy in glass and steel and dark wood, with gold accents everywhere. It’s undoubtedly expensive, but it feels just as soulless as the rest of the building.
A grunt comes from the partially open door in the back corner, and I draw the gun Hermes gave me. It takes a few seconds for me to recognize the source of the sound when paired with the rhythmic slapping of flesh against flesh.
My heart stops in my chest. He’s fucking someone in that bathroom. I can’t tell if the sounds are sex sounds or pained sounds, and the thought that it might be Persephone in there…
Thoughts cease. All strategy goes out the window. A numb fury steals over me as I move to the door and edge it open. I’m so busy preparing to save the woman I love that it takes several long moments to understand that it’s not Persephone bent over the sink. I don’t recognize the woman, but she at least seems to be enjoying herself. Neither of them notice me as I step back into shadows.
I can’t quite get my racing heart under control as I take up a position in the corner near the door, tucked back into the shadows where neither will see me when they exit the bathroom.
It wasn’t Persephone.
But if I play this wrong, next time it might be.
If she chose him, it would stick in my throat like broken glass, but I’d respect her choice. But she won’t choose him. Not willingly. He’ll take pleasure in breaking her, and that I cannot allow.
It takes them only a few minutes to finish. I don’t know why I’m shocked when they barely exchange a word before leaving the bathroom. The woman comes out first and scurries across the office to the door. Zeus takes longer. I’m bristling with impatience by the time he walks out and drops into the chair behind his desk.
That’s when I step out of my hiding spot and level the gun at him. “Good morning, Zeus.”