The Road to Hell

From the moment Cougar stormed into the room, fire in his eyes and snow laced in his hair, Chatoya knew they were going to argue.

 All he did was stand there, his head cocked slightly to one side, his eyes as gold and lustrous as the stars of heaven, his foot tapping on the floor and nothing but a heavy silence billowing out from him like clouds of steam.

 This isn't going to be fun, she thought, and sat up straighter.

 Lisa and Vaje knew it too. The coyote put down his mug so fast that tea slopped onto the table. "Lisa, m'darlin'," he said brightly, "seems to me that now's a good time for me to take you out to a long, peaceful dinner at that Italian you keep muttering about."

 The made vampire took one look at Cougar's clenched jaw and scrambled out of Vaje's arms. "Now you mention it, I've got a craving for parmesan."

In a flurry of limbs and in record time, the pair of them exited, the door snapping shut behind them.

She expected the harangue to start then, but it didn't. Cougar just hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and glared. His mouth had a surly twist to it, but that was nothing to the sheer rancour that curdled in his eyes. With his black hair ruffled by the wind and lashed by snow, and that immobile, striking face, he had the appearance of a fallen angel who had stepped right out of a hell that had indeed frozen over.

 "Well?" she said finally, standing up so she felt less like a condemned woman waiting for the electric chair. "I've obviously done something you don't agree with."

 Fury blazed across his face. "You've done a lot of things I don't agree with. But even Aspen Martin thinks going to Hades is crazy!"

 Hades. She should have known Aspen wouldn't keep quiet about that. She had no choice though; her fragile control of Pursang was slipping away from her bit by bit as the Furies decided they were unwilling to be ruled by a witch who hadn't even been trained by them.

 "I have to go," she told him, clamping her hands to her sides so he wouldn't see how they shook whenever she thought too much about making that long, sinister journey.

 "You don't have to do anything!" he shouted. "My god, Toya, do you know what that place was? No, no, of course you don't." His hands raked through his hair, mussing it further, his fingers hooking into his scalp as if he was trying to resist the urge to rip her head off. "Blasted humans and your lying legends. Hades wasn't a myth, Toya, it's a real place - a big cave network under Greece, and a long time ago, something ruled there. My father used to call it a dragon, but I think even dragons would be spooked by Hades."

 "Aspen's told me about Hades - he tried to talk me out of it. I didn't listen to him either."

 We think of Hades as hell, Aspen had said, and that's truer than anyone knows.

 A monster raised a court of the undead there - corpses danced for him, the flesh sloughing from their bones, and in the grasping shadows, the dead and the dying huddled together, praying for release. He could snuff out life with a pinch of his pale and clawed fingers, and hook out a man's heart to wear as a trophy. No one knew what he was, and no one ever found out. In Hades, he ruled supreme, invincible and immovable, kept only from the living world by bribery and sacrifice.

 A few fools went to worship him, thinking to gain power and position: they screamed like the rest, and when their bodies collapsed on the floor, he breathed back their life and butchered them again, and melded new creatures from their misshapen bodies, many-armed, many-legged shambling things.

 As time passed, criminals were no longer executed but sent sobbing into the caves of Hades. Knowing their fate, they sought escape, and so the few thin trees outside the entrance became known as the Wood of Suicides. Even a noose was better than an infinity of deaths. Sometimes, Aspen had said, his eyes enormous and almost thrilled, the monster would walk forth under the cover of night to wake the hanged ones and make them dance for him once more, twitching all night on the end of a noose that would never quite tighten enough.

 Hades became quiet, eventually, and nothing remained in human lore except the romanticised Greek legends that spoke little of horror. It became a place of quiet pain, ringed by the gushing rivers.

 The rivers were the key. It was said the rivers in Hades were not water but magic, and to drink of them was understand the shadowed stains of evil. When the Furies first chose their apprentices, they drank of the Archon, the river of woe, and knew despair. If they could bear the bleak weight of it, as only one in two did, they leanred the art of death. For the rest...well, the Furies always needed carrion to practice their arts on.

 Chatoya had not drunk of the Acheron, yet she thought she knew despair.

 When they completed their training, they returned to Hades. And as a test, the Furies would leave their initiates there, to survive a night in the underworld. And if they dared - and few did, after the Acheron - they drank from the Phlegethon, the river of fire, which seared the last traces of weakness from them, but razed deep paths on their souls. Fire destroyed and it purified, but Chatoya thought too that she had had her trial of fire.

 It was the third river that interested her most: only three Furies had drunk from it recent times, and so it was a powerful symbol to those who had not dared. It had been the only reason Aspen, Therese and Blue had led the Furies so young without contest.  

The Styx was the river of hate, and if she drank from it, as she had to, if she could taste it and live, no one would question her leadership. She didn't really understand why it awed them so, and Aspen would not say.

 But Chatoya knew if she didn't, her thin control would crumble beneath her hands, and not even Bhari's cunning and powers would save her from dying in a mess of gore and shrieks.

 Aspen had argued it was too dangerous, and now, apparently, he had called in the cavalry.

 "Aspen's got the willpower of a gnat," snapped Cougar. "He's too damn scared of you to throw you into the basement and lock you in there until you change your mind!"

 She gawped at him. "You wouldn't dare."

 His smile was wide and lazy and scornful. "Wouldn't I?"

 He would. She'd seen that steely gleam in his eyes before: she'd heard that anguished rage before, too, more recently than she'd wanted. "Cougar, I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing it because I have to."

 A low, harsh snarl burst from his lips. "Bullshit."

 "Are you even going to listen to me?" Words had to be her weapons, here, she had to convince him. If he tried to stop her...

 I can't use dragonfire on him. I've already broken his heart, but that will break our friendship and I don't know what I'd do without him.

 The admission startled her. Somehow, his dry slashing humour, his raging temper, the sweet streak he tried and failed to conceal, all of them were dear to her.

 As it was, their friendship had become tense and edgy: no matter how hard they tried to recapture the bond they'd had before Blue had slid between them like a sheet of glass, severing the intimacy she hadn't known she'd treasured, too many words lingered unspoken. And now, in his eyes, she saw the marks her refusal had left, and sadder yet, she saw the promise of love that might have been, something violent and astounding and stalwart.

 He hissed between his teeth. "Fine. Explain to me why getting slaughtered in Hades is a sane, rational decision."

 She took his agreement to hear her out as a victory, if a miniscule one. "I can't hold Pursang, Cougar. Not like this. I need to convince them that I'm powerful enough to lead them, but more than that, I need to understand them, I need them to support me. And I need to do it quickly. At the moment, I'm an outsider. If I go into Hades and I live..." She shrugged. "They'll accept me then."

 "Yeah? Have you got that in writing?"

 "I've got it on good authority," she retorted.

 "Aspen Martin doesn't have an ounce of authority in his body," the lamia pointed out in tones that sounded almost reasonable, belied by the taut line of his mouth.

 She met his eyes, jolted by the raw emotions she saw there. That low, strong longing made her breath shorten, but she couldn't afford to be distracted. "Vaje does. So does Lance, and even Ross gave it his seal of approval."

 "Yeah. And they all proved themselves upstanding sensible characters when they, you know, took on four goddamn dragons and got made into mincemeat." His voice was rising, each word spat out. "Anyone who thinks a hair curler is going to hold back the forces of darkness is obviously suited to help you make your life and death decisions, but free hint, Hades is a death decision."

  There had to be something she could say to make him understand. "Maybe, but if I don't win over Pursang, I'll die anyway." She took a deep breath. "Cougar, they're assassins. I had a few months' grace because I had Blue's backing and because they were curious. Last month, Vaje drank a glass of wine that was meant for me, and if I hadn't got to him in time, he'd have been dead. It was poison, and it was supposed to be for me."

 All the colour seeped from his face. "You didn't mention this." Dangerously quiet, that voice.

 Because I knew this would happen, she thought. Because I can do nothing to change it. I have magic and status and power, but unless I have their loyalty and their respect, they will envy me, and they will destroy me.

 "It wasn't anybody's business but mine," she answered, knowing the instant the words were out that they were wrong.

"You're my damn business!" he yelled, and shook her. Not hard, no, he was always so cautious about her now, but the contact shocked her. Breathing hard, he looked down at her. How many times would she have to hurt him like this, how much more must the Furies take from her? "No more, Toya. You...you can't keep treating us like this. You can't keep us in the dark about the Furies, and you can't keep them from finding out about us."

 She had to. Friends were leverage, they were a blade against her heart, and she didn't think she could bear to lose another friend. Not this one, strange and heated as he was. Not Jepar, not Lisa, not any of these lonely, lost people who had slowly built their lives about one another.

 "I can try."

 "You think they don't know about me? About us? C'mon, do you honestly think all those people who want Blue dead - and there's a lot, can't imagine why - haven't tried to use his family to hurt him?"

 She had no answer to that.

 "And," he continued, that dark head lowering towards her, the scent of him filling her lungs, cologne and the tang of the air before a storm. "Do you honestly think we can't take care of ourselves? We've survived dragons and assassins and psychopaths, sometimes all three at once, and we've even survived a blasted apocalypse. So please, babe, don't give me crap about how we need protecting. We don't. I definitely don't."

 She had to smile at that deft arrogance. Clever of him, and typical too.
 
  He let out his breath in a sigh. "Toya..." Wondrously tender his eyes, the wounds in them open and bleeding and due to her. How that gnawed at her.

 "I have to go to Hades," she told him. "I know it's dangerous, but..."

 She shouldn't ask this, she shouldn't be putting him in danger this way. She already knew his answer, and part of her wondered if she merely plaited his pain into a leash to bind him to her, using his love to her own ends.

 "...maybe it'd be safer if you were with me."

 He opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it. Shut it. Then the lamia recovered himself. "You really mean to do this, don't you?" He searched her face and she wondered what he saw, and some doubting part of her wondered if he saw what was really there, or just the crafted mask she presented. "Yeah. Yeah, you do. You're crazy, babe."

 Yes. True.

 "And I must be even crazier, because I'm coming with you," he said grimly. A jagged smiled spread over his face. "My father always said I was on a straight road to hell. Little did he know."

 So I will drink from the river of hate. I will come out changed, if I come out at all, and...and...you, who know hate so well, you will walk with me to the very depths of the underworld, a guardian angel with a devil's ferocity.

 Will you still love me when we have passed through Hades together? Will you love me when you realise how I have exploited your hurting heart?

 She thought she knew the taste of hate already: it was bitter and acid on her tongue, and directed at herself.

 I am afraid...I'm so afraid.

 But knowing you're there, I'm less afraid. And I don't know if I hate that or cherish it.