Prison of Hope (36 page)

There was no big explosion or catastrophic failure of the rock. The sphere bore through it like a mole through soft earth. I fell to the ground, managing to use enough air magic to keep me from making a splat, but not enough to stop my ribs and wrist from breaking. I glanced over at Cronus just in time to see the sphere exit the rock near his chest. The Titan didn’t stand a chance. It stuck him as if it were a sniper rifle round, tearing into his body and through the other side with enough force to lift him off his feet and throw him twenty feet back into one of the giant stones. The barrier of the well stopped the sphere; otherwise, I had no idea where it would have ended up.

The massive stone column crumpled to the ground before Cronus and shook the earth beneath my feet. Cronus had fallen to his knees. I was almost out of my krampus soul, and my body was beginning to tell me that enough was enough. I remembered reading something in Zeus’s grimoire, a piece of magic he’d used time and again with devastating results, but a trick so dangerous that one wrong move would cause him terrible pain. Considering I was already in pain, I figured there wasn’t a lot to lose and stood up.

I raised one hand to the night sky and concentrated, creating a blade of lightning that stretched up five feet above my head. I gathered my magic inside me and pushed it out toward my extended fingers. I held the magic in place with incredible concentration and hoped to whatever gods happened to be around that I knew what I was doing, and then I pushed the magic out of my hand, up toward the sky.

The rumble of thunder was deafening to the point of making me want to clamp my hands over my ears, although with one hand being broken and the other covered in magical lightning, it probably wasn’t a good idea. Lightning, natural and terrible, flew down the magic well toward my fingers. I’d anticipated the power surge, but it was like nothing I’d ever felt. The lightning mixed with my magic, and power grew inside of me, a dark, horrific power whose sole purpose was to destroy. There was no creation in the mixing of real lightning with magic, only ruin and chaos. I extended my broken hand toward Cronus, and the lightning left my body in one giant agonizing push.

It destroyed the stone that Cronus had been kneeling in front of, pretty much vaporizing a large portion of the surrounding area too, and I crashed to my knees. I was as close to spent as possible. Using the lightning had taken a huge amount out of me. I’d used the remainder of the krampus’s soul to ensure it didn’t fry me on the way through, and I was pretty certain it was a trick I wouldn’t be trying anytime soon, but it had worked. Cronus was no more. It was a shame he’d had to die, but there’d been no other—

Cronus stood up out of the wreckage of stone and earth.

Heat poured off him. Parts of his clothes were melted to his skin, and other parts were on fire. His skin was bright pink, blisters formed around his mouth and forehead, and one arm hung loosely by his side, the skin barely recognizable as belonging to anything that was once human in appearance.

He took another step and stopped. The skin on his arms began to heal before my eyes. His face returned to normal, and the look of rage in his eyes stopped me from opening my mouth.

“You
dare
!” he shouted. “You dare use my son’s own magic against me?”

I’d taken an idea from Zeus and thought I’d won the battle, but all I’d done was make it much, much worse.

CHAPTER
35

T
here are times in my life when I just wish I hadn’t bothered. Kneeling before an exceptionally angry Titan who’d just gone from looking like someone who’d been strapped to a sun bed for six months, to his normal healthy glow, was probably not going to bode well for me.

I was pretty much spent. The lightning had taken almost the last of my reserves, and the only thing I had left was to pour as much magic out of me as possible in the hope that the nightmare took over before I died. It wasn’t exactly the best plan, but I’d skipped over “best plan” some time ago and was now happily settling for “desperation.”

I got back to my feet, ready to fight, and created a blade of fire. If I was going to lose, I was going to fucking well give Cronus something to remember me by.

The fist-sized rocks hit me in the chest with the speed of an aircraft, flinging me back to the ground. I scrambled up, but a second squadron of the little bastards smashed into me, and my shield of air only managed to deflect half. The rest hit me in the chest and head, knocking me silly for a moment. I felt blood flow into my eye, half-blinding me. I was unable to stop the pissed off Titan from grabbing my throat and head-butting me on the nose, breaking it.

The next few minutes were a blur as Cronus kicked the shit out of me in the middle of Stonehenge. I tried to fight back, but every time I used magic, it was weaker and he was somehow stronger. I crashed to my knees in front of a stone column and wondered how much longer I had to wait.

“Magic wells are wonderful things,” he said and lifted my hand toward me. The hand that was supposed to have my rune inscribed on it. When I’d fallen from the column, just before the sphere had struck Cronus, something had cut through my hand, severing the rune.

“You understand now, yes?” he asked. “I was amazed that you even had enough magic to access the lightning. By the way, for that, I’m going to kill you. I can’t have people use my own son’s magic against me.”

I spat blood onto the ground. “You’re healed.”

“The well—again, you kept piling on the pressure, but you never severed my link to it, and the whole time you were fighting me, I was getting stronger and stronger. The sphere was a nice touch, though. I’ve never seen that before. Maybe Zeus and Hades were right about you. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

Cronus picked me up off the ground and held me by my throat, my feet dangling helplessly.

“This was fun,” I wheezed. “We should do it again sometime.”

“No.” Magma covered his hand again, extending out to form a blade of pure lava. I struggled slightly, but it was no use. “I’ll make it quick.”

“Release him,” said a woman’s voice from somewhere
behind Cronus.

Cronus sighed and let go of me. I fell to the ground coughing and hacking, but otherwise okay.

“Persephone,” Cronus said. “This isn’t your fight.”

I rolled away, finally stopping by a small group of rocks near the edge of the well. Persephone wore a pair of Lycra shorts and a loose T-shirt. Both appeared to be dark in color, although to be honest, I wasn’t really paying much attention.

Persephone wasn’t wearing shoes. As she was an earth elemental, it was something that should have struck Cronus too. It should have been enough for him to run like the damn wind, but he was arrogant and stubborn and had just kicked my ass, so he probably thought very highly of himself. He was about to be proven wrong.

“Look, woman, go back to being Hades’s trophy wife and let me do what I need to do.”

Persephone put herself into a fighting stance, and I noticed the rune on the back of her hand for the first time. She’d come here to fight, and Persephone was not someone who did that lightly. I tried to get to my feet, but my body protested, and I collapsed back to the ground.

Cronus threw a ball of fire at her in a halfhearted way, but she just swayed to one side and avoided it. It was then that I noticed that wherever Persephone stood, the grass actually appeared to grow and was brighter in color, curling up over her feet and ankles.

“You sure you want to do this,
girl
?”

Persephone stretched one arm out in front of her and moved her hand so that the back of it was facing her opponent, and then she motioned for Cronus to come get some. Cronus created a massive bolder of rock and threw it at Persephone with no care for whether she lived or died.

Persephone didn’t even move. She just turned her hand around, and the ground leapt up and grabbed the rock before it was even close, vanishing back under the dirt as if it were never there. Cronus’s smile faltered just a little bit.

The big difference between sorcerers and elementals is that sorcerers use a magical version of the element they’re throwing around. We create it from nothing, and it molds to our will. But once we’ve created it, it’s as real as any other element. Elementals are
one
with the element. They’re part of it, the real thing. And that means any sorcerer who throws an elemental’s own element against them is basically pissing in the wind.

Persephone shifted her foot, and the grass grew around
Cronus’
s feet. The first he knew was when they tugged him into the ground itself. He tried to use his earth magic in
desperation
, but elemental trumps magic when it comes to commanding
non-magica
lly created nature.

Cronus tore himself free and charged, throwing balls of fire at Persephone, who blocked each of them with rocks pulled fr
om th
e ground. When she’d finished, over a dozen rocks, each about the size of my head, spun slowly in the air. And then they rushed toward Cronus in an instant, forcing the Titan to dive aside after he finally got free of the ground. Persephone shifted her foot again and vanished from view before jumping out of the ground beside Cronus and catching him in the jaw with an uppercut that almost took his head off.

Cronus fell back onto the ground but was on his feet before Persephone’s stamp reached his head. He punched up with a lava-wrapped fist that Persephone avoided by head-butting him as hard as anyone could possibly be head-butted. Another uppercut to the jaw and Cronus staggered back, blood streaming from his ruined nose. He threw another punch, but Persephone vanished once again, reappearing an instant later at his side. She broke his arm in one fluid movement, stepped around him, and snapped his knee with a vicious kick before driving her own knee into the mask of blood that was his face, as he dropped forward.

I would have cheered her on, but it was probably i
nappropriate.

Cronus threw a plume of fire at Persephone, who was forced to move aside, into a second plume, which engulfed her. Just as I thought that she’d been hurt, she appeared out of the ground, behind Cronus, who caught a punch to the jaw when he realized where she was and turned to look.

From there it was only a matter of time. Although the magic well was helping him heal quickly, there was no way his body could keep up with the excess of punishment that Persephone was dealing out. A few more punches—her fists wrapped in solid rock—and one particularly nasty kick to his head ended Cronus’s fight.

Persephone grabbed his legs and dragged him to the edge of the well. He couldn’t be taken out of it while the marks connecting him to it were still on him, so she created a blade of stone in her hand and cut through the runes across his chest. The well spluttered for a second and then vanished.

I struggled back to my feet as my magic rushed back into me. Several LOA agents placed on a semiconscious Cronus a sorcerer’s band—a small band with runes carved into it designed to stop a person’s access to their abilities, and rigged with magical napalm to go off should anyone try to remove it. Then they transferred him to a spinal board and carried him away. Persephone came over and offered me her hand, which I took.

“You know I warmed him up for you, yes?” I said with a smile.

“Oh, heavens, yes,” Persephone said, grinning. “Clearly you did all the hard work. I just stepped in and finished it. A bit like when someone tries to open a jar. You just loosened it up for me.”

“See? I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

Persephone kissed me on the forehead. “Are you okay?”

“Magic is fixing me.” My hand was completely healed, although the rune was still incomplete.

“I saw what you did with the lightning.”

I paused, unsure what to say.

“You need to practice that if you plan on using it again. Using real lightning to power your magic is dangerous. Just l
ike using rea
l magma would be for Cronus.”

“I know, but I didn’t have an abundance of options.” The idea of practicing with real lightning over and over until I was good at using it was a fairly scary thought. The fact that I could use my magic to call it was more than enough for me at the moment. “Did you kill him?”

Persephone shook her head and sat on the remains of one of the stones. “No. He’ll live—just not feel too good about it. He always did think women were inferior. Now he’ll remember what happened to him when he mouthed off to one.”

I sat beside her and watched the scurrying of agents as they moved the deceased Vanguard and arrested those still capable of moving under their own power. “You know we sort of trashed a national monument. We destroyed some ancient stones today.”

“You do realize that, by their very definition, quite a lot of stones are ancient. As for the destruction—well, I guess that’s a good thing I’m an Earth elemental. I’ll have all of this back together before morning. No one will ever be able to tell the difference between my creation and that done by those crazy druids.”

“How did you manage to get out of London, by the way?”

“Turns out someone above Lucie was stopping Hades’s entry, but never thought to stop mine. Shockingly, I got a call just before I landed to say that Hades’s entry was allowed. He was about to join Sky on his way here.”

“Whoever stopped it figured there was no point in keeping Hades out now that you’d been allowed through.”

“Someone in Avalon is working against us.”

“Kay?” I asked.

Persephone shrugged. “If it was, I’d imagine he’d be a lot less subtle about it. He’s got the subtlety of a . . . well, one of t
hese rocks.”

Tommy and Olivia came rushing over, both asking how I was at the same time. I explained very nicely that I was fine and that the next time Tommy had the idea to make me jump out of a helicopter, I was going to use him as my parachute.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Now, you rest,” Persephone said. “Because Hades should be on his way, and he’s going to have a million questions.”

“This still doesn’t make sense,” I said, ignoring her incredibly subtle attempt to make me go lie down somewhere. “It wasn’t Hera blood in the vial; we know that much. She didn’t want Cronus dead, not until he’d tried to kill her so she could finish him herself. So, who benefited from the power when Cronus killed Sarah?”

“Didn’t Eos mention that Deimos was punished for trying to kill someone in Hera’s employ?” Tommy asked. “Maybe he’s decided to go after the matriarch himself. If he introduced Sarah to Demeter, then he could have been using Sarah as a spy of sorts.”

“Deimos is a bully and a thug, but he’s not a smart one,” Persephone said. “He’d have tried to blow Hera up or something. Patience isn’t his strong point either.”

“So, someone else? Maybe one of the other big players working with Hera is making a move?” Olivia suggested.

“Demeter wouldn’t dare,” Persephone said. “Ares is a
momma’s
boy through and through. Aphrodite, though, yeah, she’s possible. There are a few others who would take a shot given a chance too.”

“She always has surrounded herself with the most pleasant of people,” I said as a helicopter came in to land by the visitor center.”

“How’d you get here, by the way?” I asked Persephone.

“Helicopter,” she said. “Brutus keeps half a dozen of the things for getting around.”

“Who owns half a dozen helicopters?” I asked. “Isn’t
one enough?”

“Someone rich enough to own a percentage in pretty much every part of London,” she said. By now, the helicopter had landed, and Hades got out, accompanied by Diana, Sky, and Kasey, who ran the few hundred meters to her parents. Olivia was first to receive a gigantic hug, followed by Tommy.

“Heartwarming, isn’t it?” Hades said as he reached us.

“I’m not having kids, Dad,” Sky said with a slight roll of
her eyes.

Hades laughed and kissed his wife. “I hear you helped Nate take down Cronus.” The way he said “helped” made me think he was fully aware of what had happened and was humoring me.

“He did all the heavy lifting,” Persephone said with a chuckle.

“Cronus won’t forget that in a hurry,” Diana said.

“Maybe he’s mellowed with age?” I suggested.

“It only took him, what, a millennia to get over being beaten in the Titan Wars?” Diana said. “I’m sure a minor skirmish like this will only take a few centuries.”

“I’ll add him to the list of people who are angry at me,” I said. “How come you’re here, anyway?”

“I flew the helicopter,” Diana said. “Besides I wanted to say good-bye to my little warrior over there.” She pointed at Kasey, who ran over and gave her a hug.

“You enjoy yourself?” I asked Kasey.

She nodded. “I even got to meet Pandora.”

Olivia glanced at Diana. “Really?”

“She was perfectly safe,” Diana said. “We did it via Skype.”

“So, what did she have to tell you?” I asked.

“I said I’d never been in a helicopter until today, and she told me that maybe Brutus would let Diana take me, Hades, and Sky to mum and dad once Cronus was captured.”

I paused. “It was her idea for all of you to leave Brutus’s building?”

Kasey nodded. “When I said that Persephone had just left to help, she told me that we should leave too. She said it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see a magic well in action.”

From somewhere in my mind, something pinged. “The well.”