Only a few shards remain when the flap of wings fills the air again, along with the rhythmic clatter of Cerberus’ claws running across the bridge toward me.
“Report,” I say when Campe shifts while still airborne and drops to land on her feet at my side. Cerberus settles on my other side sending a trio of low, accusatory “woofs” in Pan’s direction.
“I don’t think you’ll like what we found,” Campe says.
“I don’t fucking like any of this. Time is wasting, and I still have to go give Chaos the bad news.”
Erebus’ shadow still spans the gap left in the gates, extending dark tendrils that begin levitating the remaining shards. It takes some of the burden off, and I smile grimly in appreciation.
Campe’s attention shifts to the box holding the opportunistic ass I had to go drag home. Of course he had something to do with it.
“We found satyr semen at the bottom, Vesh,” she says. “It was mixed up in the roots of the vine that grew out of their waste.”
I growl at the news. Impatient with the pace of the repairs, I summon all my power and stretch my hands out at my sides, palms facing forward with chaos magic surging through my fingertips. Erebus wisely evacuates the doorway, materializing beside me as I let out a roar. The broken pieces of the doors rise into the air and snap back into the opening. Then with a loud groan, arms shaking from the effort, I fling all my power at the doors. The fissures between the shards glow with ultraviolet light as they fuse. When the light fades it’s as if the escape never happened, the doors once more a solid barrier of dark glass.
The entire prison shudders from the force, but the doors hold, the echoing howl of the void on the other side falling silent. As an afterthought, I push an extra layer of power at them. This is the first escape attempt that’s ever succeeded, and it’ll damn sure be the last.
With the last ounce of energy I have, I haul the box over and the sides drop open with a reverberating clang. Pan huddles in the center, arms wrapped around his knees, and peers up at me.
I frown, registering for the first time that something is off about his appearance.
“Where the fuck are your horns?”
He lifts his hands and drifts his fingers over the nubs growing from his skull. They used to be enormous, majestic coils, but now are now no bigger than his thumbs. I’m surprised I didn’t notice their absence earlier, but I was too distracted by the lure of Nemea’s lush bottom and the scent of her arousal to care much about Pan’s appearance.
“Hopefully still buried in Hyperion’s stomach. I suppose it’s too much to hope the bastard dies of sepsis.”
“Are you sure you didn’t negotiate a ride out with them and just use your horns as payment?”
His eyes widen and he shoots to his feet. “Fuck no! I tried to hold them back, but I’m no match for all four Titans. Where were the rest of you when I called?” He shoots an accusatory glare at the others.
“We’re still short-handed while Typhon heals,” Asterius says. “We were all patrolling our sectors.”
“Cerberus got here a split-second too late,” Alcides says. “You were already gone. Where did you wind up, anyway? Did you see where Hyperion and his brothers went?”
“I didn’t go to the same place as them. The second I went through those gates, I got pulled elsewhere. You know exactly where I landed, Vesh.”
Cerberus pads over, all three noses lifted and alert. One head sniffs in Pan’s general direction while another aims at me. The third lets out a gruff, inquisitive bark.
Campe chuckles. “You wanna tell us where you were, boss? Because Cerby seems to think you were both in the same place.”
“Retrieving his lecherous ass.” I cross my arms. “Explain to me how your semen wound up at the bottom of the Titans’ pit.”
He glances at the others, jaw clenched. His gaze shifts to the floor after a second, his cheeks reddening with shame. He spreads his hands in supplication. “I know this is going to sound like I’m passing blame. I’m not; it was all my stupid fault for getting distracted and stopping where I did to jerk off. There aren’t exactly an abundance of options for sexual release here, you know. No offense, Campe.”
“Sweetie, if I wanted your dick, you know I’d have had it many times over by now. But I also know you aren’t that particular about who or what you stick yours into.” She eyes three of the other guards. Cerberus is studiously ignoring her, one head licking some nonexistent wound on his front paw, while Asterius and Chrysaor are both more interested in their fingernails. I don’t police my guards in their free time, but it isn’t lost on me that the more randy of them wind up in one another’s beds on occasion, out of necessity more than any particular affection.
Pan looks indignant. “I don’t fuck the prisoners.”
“Who said I was talking about prisoners? What you boys get up to in your time off is none of my business, but I don’t need Cerby’s noses to be able to tell who’s been fucked recently. I am still a dragon.”
“Enough, you two,” I snap. “Get on with it.”
Pan pulls his glare from Campe and looks at me again. “Nemea—the girl on Bear Island—summoned me. She crafted a replica of my cock out of void glass and used it under a full moon. I think she must have started working on it early in the day because I had this feeling I couldn’t shake. I was too pent up to concentrate on my patrol, so I took a short break—a few minutes, no more—just to relieve some tension. I didn’t think I was that close to the Titans’ pit, but I guess I didn’t account for the epic range my dick has.” He shoots a grin at Campe.
Campe scoffs and I eye them both, mentally urging them to behave. Asterius snorts softly and shakes his head, gesturing at Pan. “Despite the gods’ efforts to neutralize the Titans, my grandfather’s power was never fully quenched after the war ended and we locked them up. We just hoped that pit was deep enough and strong enough to contain them. Your seed must have been all Hyperion needed to generate life. And if the others are regaining their power, either Crius or Iapetus could have provided enough moisture and nutrients to grow the vine they used to climb out.”
I nod to the big minotaur then pin my gaze on Pan. The accusatory glare he sends back makes my insides twist. We shared something profound earlier. Something we’ll have to address at some point, but now is not the time. “Cerberus, you’re on patrol while the rest of us come up with a strategy to hunt down and capture those assholes. I’d like to have a strategy for how to manage our visit with Chaos as well.”
Cerberus woofs and lopes off while the rest of us start toward the barracks and the nexus of Tartarus. The prison is a multitude of tall spires resting above a hidden labyrinth of a dungeon, honeycombed with more cells. They’re all situated around a massive circular tower with long bridges extending from the center out to the nearest circle of spires. They web back and forth across the space, extending all the way to the to the floor. Arch-covered bridges divide it into eight sectors, each under the watch of one of the guards.
At least the patrols were divided up between eight guards until three years ago when my most powerful guard, my youngest brother Typhon, was put out of commission in that pointless battle we had to fight on Bear Island.
I don’t question Chaos when he demands I hunt someone on his behalf; I just do the job. That particular job wound up pitting us against a small squad of higher races soldiers—men I’d been friends with once up on a time—and the newest goddess among the ranks of deities. It was a painful, humiliating loss that Chaos just waved off like it was nothing, but thinking about it still stings.
Typhon came when called, only to be soundly spanked by said goddess and all her mates and minions. He’s impossible to kill, but still lost a few heads that have taken ages to grow back. I doubt the Titans would have risked an escape if he’d been the one guarding the gates that day. He shouldn’t have been in this fight, though, despite how energized he may have been after his outing with me. I need him at full strength if we’re going to go head-to-head with the Titans, which at this point is an inevitability.
We need help. The problem is finding trustworthy criminals isn’t an easy task, and considering almost no one is allowed out of this place once they’re in it, it isn’t the type of job I can easily recruit from outside to fill the positions. There are other guards here besides these eight, but none I’m willing to pull away from their current duties. The Furies are too busy meting out justice for those wronged by their loved ones, and the Hecatoncheires are equipped for little more than standing watch over the sole prisoner they’ve been assigned to. I should pick a few of the more well-mannered prisoners to conscript as guards to help pick up some of the slack. Perhaps I’ll consider that after I’ve tackled the meeting with my boss.
Alcides catches up to me ahead of the others as we descend the steps that spiral around the outer wall of the tower. He clears his throat, and I nod to indicate I’m listening.
“Pan said he was summoned by someone named Nemea. Did I hear that right?”
“You did.” The back of my brain tingles, a sign that Pan is alert to our conversation. I don’t want to get into it with him again just yet. I already know what he’ll say.
“Who is she?” Alcides asks, the tightness in his voice making me turn to look at him. He’s focused on the ground ahead of us, but his knuckles have gone white against the hilt of his club. The lion’s head still attached to fur cloak draped over his shoulders stares at me as if daring me to lie.
“No connection to the Nemea of your past, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He nods, but his jaw spasms and suspicion radiates off him. “You know I don’t like to use the F-word here, boss, but I can’t help but wonder if this means something. Pan getting summoned out of Tartarus—to Bear Island, of all places—then you going after him. Both of you reek of sex with the same woman, a woman whose scent is familiar to me, though I have no idea why. All I know is that I know it. How do you know that…” He leans closer and drops his voice to a whisper. “…Fate doesn’t have something to do with this?”
An icy chill runs down my spine at the mention of Fate, despite the conclusion I came to right before joining Pan in Nemea’s bed. There aren’t a lot of ways I could have broken through the barrier and stepped foot on Bear Island after being banned from the place, but I’m not about to admit it to him.
“If that’s true, it doesn’t change what we need to do right now. Who knows where Hyperion and his brothers are? We need to find them and subdue them before they can do the kind of damage they were set on before we locked them up the first time.”
The worried look in his eyes intensifies. He’s one of the few guards who I can’t easily read unless we’re merged. I still occasionally get the vaguest of impressions of what each of my guards are feeling, though. Alcides’ worries have nothing to do with the Titans and everything to do with the woman I left behind, whose essence still lingers on mine and Pan’s bodies.
“She’s safe as long as she stays where she is—no one but those fated to tread upon Bear Island can get to her. That may not satisfy your concerns, but you saw the results of the battle we fought there. Even if the Titans did manage to access the island somehow, they’d have Deva to contend with. No one in their right minds would want to tangle with a goddess as powerful as her.”
Alcides grunts in agreement. “The Chimera is a fearsome creature. I’ve fought her kind before, and the battles were hard-won. The only fight I ever lost was against you. I believe this is where I was meant to be.”
Despite being soundly beaten, he has never seemed bitter about the fight that landed him in this place. As the half-human son of Zeus, Alcides suffered a multitude of abuses at the hands of the gods. The most tragic of them all is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But as the son of Zeus, he also could not die and be rid of the torment of having been driven mad for sport and forced to murder his own wife and children.
After doing his penance of performing like a trick pony for the gods over several trials, he dropped off the map and could only occasionally be found slumming in the seediest gambling dens on the outskirts of civilization. It was in one of these dens where I was acting as bouncer, ever at Chaos’ beck and call, that I came across him, drunk at a table and barely recognizable. He’d caught another man cheating and picked a fight, but that fight wasn’t enough to satisfy his self-destructive needs. As the peacekeeper at the establishment, I had the job of subduing him. His misery was so profound that when I beat him, he begged for death, sure that if anyone could do the job, I could.
A demigod like him was too valuable to kill, so I made him an offer, and he’s been one of my most loyal guards ever since.
We reach the massive stone doors of the war room and Alcides pushes them open, holding them for the rest of the group to file through into the main chamber. Each of their sleeping quarters take up a floor of the central tower, with mine at the top below the gates and the war room just below. This is the only room with doors. Given the armory’s contained within, it’s a matter of security.
The group circles the round table in the center, and I wave a hand to summon a translucent orb above the table. The violet magic coalesces into a three-dimension image of the Earth spinning slowly on its axis between us.
“When I reached Bear Island, there was no sign of the Titans,” Pan offers. “Nemea hadn’t seen any sign of them, either.”
Alcides lets out a breath, his relief easing some of my own tension, but not much.
“I’m surprised you thought to ask,” Campe says, smirking at the faun who extends his middle finger to her. Campe chuckles.
I disregard the bickering, focusing on zooming in on the island and rotating and lowering the sphere until that one tiny part of it fills the table between us. There are more buildings than there were when we first visited, and more residents. A trio of pitch-black spots coalesce as dragons, patrolling the air above. They have Shadows guarding the place now, in addition to the fate barrier. They aren’t sparing any effort to protect the place. Which makes it all the stranger that Pan and I both managed to get in and out without incident. I zoom out again, viewing it from a distance so we can see the protective barrier of fate magic that encompasses it.
“That only means they’re likely not tied to any of the residents there, so it remains a safe haven from them for now. It rules out only one of millions of potential locations. If you were a Titan, where would you go?” I glance around at each of my guards.
Chrysaor snorts and smirks at the others, his lips pulling back from his short tusks. “If I got out, I’d do exactly what the two of you just did—try to get laid. By the way, next time, you’d better invite me along for the ride.”
I hear murmurs of agreement from the others. Even Cerberus, whose awareness is linked to mine for the meeting while he patrols, chuffs softly.
Having eight horny guards sharing space in my consciousness on a daily basis is hard enough. They don’t always warn me when they’re going to take center stage, so I do my best to maintain a tight hold on my psyche when I have business that keeps me on the outside. Sometimes a man’s business is his alone, after all.
But something tells me this particular business might not be just mine or Pan’s. Typhon’s presence lingers in the back of my mind, more focused on the conversation than he’s been since before his injuries. Alcides’ scowl at the others makes me take another look around at all of them. Each and every one is fixated on the glowing island in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The one place we know the Titans can’t be. Which is also the place I feel drawn to the most.