Medusa's Desire (The Fate of Eros #1) (The Fate of Eros Series) (11 page)

"Nothing is more beautiful than watching a creature take its last breath." He lifted the man in his arms as if he was a baby and rocked him back and forth as he stroked his hair.

Hecate entered after him. "You call that cleaning?" When she spoke, her three voices echoed everywhere in unison. "You killed him, yes, with your death touch, but you haven't actually cleaned up anything."

Thanatos glared at her. "Do not come in here and interrupt something as holy as death!"

Cerberus stood behind Hecate. He snarled at Thanatos.

"Stupid dog!" Thanatos kicked him and raised his foot again as the dog whimpered.

"Stop!" Hades yelled.

Thanatos obeyed.

"You're not allowed to kill the king's dog," Hecate said. "No matter how much he pisses you off. Now, let me show you how the cleaning is truly done."

Her spirit dogs were following her as well. They, along with Cerberus, licked the man's remains off the walls and floor. They also licked the faces of the Furies who growled and nipped.

"My most responsible subject is a Titan," Hades said. "Who would have thought that was possible?"

Hecate was one of the few Titans that hadn't been imprisoned in Tartarus. In fact, Hades trusted her so much, he allowed her to roam the entire underworld freely. She stuck her nose in the air and smirked at Thanatos. He tensed, his muscles readying to charge.

"Be calm, brother." A man with large droopy eyelids and rings under his eyes entered into the room. His voice was so quiet, it was barely above a whisper. Medusa was surprised any of them could hear him at all.

"This doesn't concern you, Hypnos," Thanatos said.

"Everything my brother does concerns me," Hypnos replied. "My touch brings sleep, which is why so many welcome me into their homes, but yours brings death. People are frightened by what your powers can do, which is why they misunderstand you. Don't let it get to you."

Thanatos was usually treated like the freak of the underworld because of his hair fetish. He cut the hair from all his victims and kept it with him in a giant braid, flung over his shoulder. He masturbated using it. He made quick work, cutting a chunk from the man.

Hypnos was Medusa's favorite deity. He was the only one who seemed to care for anyone but himself.

He walked to Persephone. He picked up the plate of pomegranate seeds that had fallen on the ground and offered them to Persephone. "Why aren't you eating?" He wasn't mocking her. He knew this was the only thing Hades would allow her to eat when he was angry and he was always concerned about how slender she was.

She turned her nose up at his offer. He sighed. "All of you are so worried about making the castle neat and tidy, but who is going to pick up the pieces of the emotional trauma you cause?"

Hypnos could see into the subconscious and used it to help people deal with their problems. Medusa hated the dreams she would have on occasion about being turned into a monster, but knew that Hypnos only gave them to her so that she could move past it.

Hypnos stroked Persephone's arm and her eyelids grew heavy. His caress was usually light, but with Persephone it was administered with even more care. Everyone could see by the look on his face that he was madly in love with the queen.

"That's quite enough, Hypnos," Hades said. "The two of us were doing just fine before the rest of you interrupted our conversation."

Hypnos bowed. "You have my apologies."

Hades would later take the queen to his bed, hopefully after she awoke. He'd make sure everyone was watching as he removed her clothes and entered her. They all needed to know who Persephone belonged to.

Few things were done in the shadows of the underworld because even in the dark, they were still being watched-Nyx watched everyone. Medusa could tell by the hints of the smile she saw in every blackened corner or when she felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. She whirled around sometimes to catch a glimpse of her dark dress and pale skin melting back into the shadows. No one sought privacy because there was none to be had. She was the night and she was everywhere.

Hypnos didn't need to be reminded of who Persephone belonged to. He couldn't have a relationship at all because of his curse. Every time he touched someone, they fell asleep and couldn't return his caress.

Whenever Persephone first entered the underworld after each spring, her hair was bright with flowers. Her skin was the color of wheat and her eyes like violets, almost as if she had been harvested from the ground herself. Looking at her was painful after staring at the dreariness of the rest of the place, but it faded over time. She'd stop eating and succumb to depression.

Hypnos would kiss her to sleep when she was at her worst. She could never move her lips or return the sentiment and you could see the pain in his eyes because of this, but the fact that she was so miserable in the underworld hurt him much worse. He was nothing like Hades. If it had been up to him, even though he loved Persephone, he would rather her stay up on Earth with her mother than be tortured down here, even though it meant him never seeing her again. Medusa knew this because she heard him speak to his brother about it one day.

Instead, Persephone was forced into Hades' bed every night. Regardless of what some people believed, what he was doing to her was rape. If she had had any doubts, she wouldn't after she saw the dead look in Persephone's eyes every time Hades thrust into her. It was the same as her own when she had been raped by Poseidon and finally given up on the fight. It was the look someone got when they wanted whatever was happening to them to be done and over with.

Medusa planned her revenge every day. She wanted to chop off his penis, but knew it might grow back the next day because he was immortal. The fantasies comforted her, though. Someday, the victims like her would get their revenge. The Olympians couldn't get away with it forever.

Medusa could never stand watching the gods bicker with one another for long. She always wound up moving on and visiting the three women who were the reason why she went down into the underworld: the Grey Sisters.

They lived near the entrance of Tartarus in a cavern. Few knew of the location because they covered the door with a mirage spell that made it look like solid rock. Medusa looked right and left, and then waltzed through it.

From afar, they were beautiful. They had long gray hair that shone in the moonlight. Their eyes were usually closed in ecstasy and their mouths pouty, but all that was an illusion.

When she neared, their eyelids would open and reveal empty holes where their eyes should have been. The light would grow clearer and show that their hair was actually nappy. They were so wrinkly that they looked older than any other creature that existed in the underworld.

They shared an eye and a tooth. When she approached, they'd hide the eye behind their back to prevent any of them from turning into stone. For once, their deformity worked to their advantage. Medusa loved the blind.

Many people believed that the Grey Sisters were actually siblings of the Gorgons. That was only partly true. All six of them were related, but the Grey Sisters were their ancestors. They were the only humans who had ever been born immortal and they had been kicked out of the world out of fear because they couldn't die. They had lived thousands of years, telling Medusa about how the eyes and the teeth were always the first to go. Their brains, on the other hand, had improved, developing until they possessed the ability to see the future.

Because Medusa was related to them, she was one of the few people not afraid to approach the Gray Sisters. They became good friends and spoke to one another freely.

The youngest sister raised her eyebrows. "Funny that you should come and visit us at this time."

"Should we tell her?" another of the sisters asked.

Medusa raised an eyebrow. "Tell me what?" Their news often wasn't good.

"No, we can't," the last sister protested. "We should let her enjoy what time she has left before it's all taken."

Medusa's heart pounded. "What else is there to lose?"

The first one glared at the third sister with her empty eye sockets. "Now look what you've done. She's worried."

The second one sighed. "She'll be so unhappy once she learns about our visitor."

"Visitor?" Medusa crossed her arms. "Hardly anyone comes to see you but me."

"Today we were unlucky," the third one replied.

"Stop speaking in riddles," Medusa said. "Just tell me what happened."

"All right," the second sister said. "One has come to us. He is looking for you."

Medusa's eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead. "Who?"

The third one licked her lips. "He was a handsome man. If I were young again, I would have loved to be with one like him."

Medusa crossed her arms. "What would a gorgeous guy want to do with me?"

The first sister shuddered. "Oh, it's bad. Athena sent him."

Medusa's world lurched.

"His name is Perseus," the second sister added. "He stole our eye. He demanded the endless wallet from us and made us tell him where the Helm of Darkness was so he could be invisible."

"Not even Hades could get us to tell him where that thing was," the third sister interrupted. "But Perseus is a bad boy. He said he wouldn't give us back our eye unless we told him."

"We didn't want to betray you," the first one apologized. "But we'd never get to see again if we didn't tell him. We hope the nymphs rip him in half–nothing makes them more violent than being robbed. But in case the worst happens, this is our warning to you."

Medusa nodded her head. "I understand and I forgive you."

"Good." The third sister wrung her hands. "Because he's coming to kill you. He wants to chop off your head. We would prefer one of our best friends to remain alive."

When Medusa was human, she loved to look into mirrors. Her mother owned one whose frame was encased in ivory and gold. Athena's, Aphrodite's, and Hera's faces had been carved into the back. She used to stare at them and trace their features while she daydreamed she was another person in another place. She looked in the mirror and her features would warp in her mind to fit her dreams.

She knew if she gazed in a mirror now the last thing she'd see before she died was how hideous she was. She didn't want to know the truth. Looking down at her mutilated body and seeing lizard skin where she had once been soft was bad enough.

She hated her reflection so much that when she'd drink water from a stream, she'd close her eyes as she sipped.

One ghost's family had buried her with many riches. She wobbled around the Acheron shore, overwhelmed by their weight. Euryale and Stheno couldn't resist when they found her. They took the rings that glittered on her fingers, a necklace wrapped around her slender neck, and a gold mirror she held in her hand.

Charon arrived and she paid him extra to get her possessions back. He chuckled and rowed her away as she shrieked, keeping the rest as a tip.

Euryale and Stheno wanted to use the mirror for a new game. They would hide it to try to trick each other into gazing upon it and turning themselves into stone. They were already waving the mirror above their heads like a trophy.

That night, they piled the riches in the corner of the cave where they slept. Medusa saw the mirror glittering. She shook and clenched her fists. It reminded her of all she'd lost, including little things most took for granted, like the knowledge of her own appearance.

As soon as her sisters fell asleep, she tiptoed past them, grasped the mirror, and shattered it into tiny pieces. She was lucky Stheno and Euryale were heavy sleepers-if gorgons weren't, then the snakes that squirmed on their heads would always be waking them-or they would have jumped up and yelled at her.

One of the glass pieces embedded itself in her hand. It didn't hurt because of her thick skin, but she wanted to feel pain. She shoved her palms in the glass until all the little pieces had inched beneath her scales and were inside her.

Plants and bugs grew in a trail across the ground from the blood that flowed out of her as she flew towards her destination. Her claw-like hands were tough enough for her to dig a deep hole. She ripped apart the ground with her fingers, and then ripped each glass piece clumsily from her palm to bury it. She ate or smashed all the plants that she created as she flew back. Her sisters never found out what happened to the mirror. They blamed each other for losing it.

The warning the Grey Sisters gave her kept echoing through her mind. She had trouble sleeping most nights.

She wanted to believe that her curse made her strong enough to fight any mortal, but she knew Athena was giving Perseus presents that would leave her at a disadvantage. If he had successfully taken the Helm of Darkness from the nymphs, then he'd be able to turn invisible whenever he wore it. He could kill her before she even knew he was in the same room.

She heard a scuffling noise inside the cave one night and jumped. She touched her heart as her sisters entered into the room. She couldn't allow herself to give in to fear this way. This was the kind of insanity Athena was hoping to drive her into.

Her sisters curled up together to fall asleep. Because Gorgons were so thick-skinned, rocks felt as soft as pillows to them. She liked watching her sisters breathe evenly while they dreamed. She wondered what color their eyes were beneath those closed lids.

Tears dripped down her cheeks as she realized that she had no future with them. How would they handle her death? She considered warning them of the truth, but decided against it as she remembered some of the words the Grey Sisters had spoken to her. It was better they enjoyed the time they had left with her rather than worry every moment about whether or not it would be her last. She hoped because they had each other that they wouldn't miss her too much.

She also stroked her belly. The baby would probably die along with her. It made her sad. As horrible as her life was, at least she had been given the chance for a short while to live. This child would never be given the same opportunity.