over and over again. By the time her body has healed enough for her to stand, the car smashes into her again. Both of them heal at a magical pace, and so they suffer over and over again all day long. There’s a man just out of sight. His hands are cuffed, and he’s abused just the way he abused women in life, by a creature that looks exactly like him. He begs, he pleads, but just as he ignored his victims, his punisher ignores him.
Every day I’m forced to walk the upper levels of Hades’s Underworld. Every day I hear the screams and the suffering of these people. I know that none of them are innocent. I heard the story of the woman who hit a man on the road, dragged him home, and then watched him die, trapped beneath her car. I heard of the molesters, the abusers, the killers, and the rapists. I heard all their stories, and yet, it’s my own kind of hell to see their punishments.
I will never be able to clear these images from my mind. I will always be broken and wrong inside because of what I’ve seen...and been through...and even done. And yet, I’m to have a child. The one thing I had always wanted.
Gods damn it. Now? Now when I can’t be a good father to any child.
I reach the golden gates to the side of this level of the Underworld. As I move closer, the screaming and crying fade away. My feet walk on green grass, and I press a hand to the cold surface. On the other side, those people who had done good in life are experiencing happiness. Their greatest dreams and desires are unfolding, and it all feels real to them.
So many times I wonder if I had died, really died and not been betrayed, would I have ended up in Elysium? Or had I done enough bad in my life to spend my eternity being tortured?
I linger at the gate, pressing my hand against the cool golden surface. When I see no one close by, I let my cheek rest on it and close my eyes. I try to picture what the world beyond looks like, and the image that forms in my mind takes away the screaming and the scent of blood and brimstone for the briefest moment. The heaviness that settles in my heart lifts, ever so slightly, and a shudder moves through my body.
“Sad that you’ll never enter Elysium?”
I jerk and every ounce of peace drains from my body. Slowly, I draw back from the gate and open my eyes.
Hades is standing in a dark robe, left open, with nothing underneath. In one hand, he has a glass with a handle made out of bones. Inside is a golden liquid that could only be ambrosia, and the man radiates drunkenness.
He takes a sip from his glass, his gaze running over me. “You know that you shall always be my gargoyle, right? Another part of the collection of things that no one else has.”
“I’m aware,” I say, keeping my face carefully blank.
“Come,” he gestures, “walk with me.”
We walk up the steps leading to the top of the wall, then stop and stare out over the river of souls. “The witch is pregnant.”
It takes everything inside of me not to react.
“When the child is born, before the bond between mother and baby can be severed, we will kill her, and the child shall gain all her powers. Then, I will gain a willing witch, the likes of which no other god has ever had.”
My stomach turns. Everyone says Hades is an asshole, and it takes a special kind of god to not only think up the tortures he creates, but order his people to execute them. But talking about killing a woman after giving birth to her child is a kind of evil that no one should be capable of.
“Just a few more months. No time at all. And those powers will be mine.”
I keep my face blank, but inside I rage. It’s true that I had never been able to free Hecate, but I would think of a new plan. He would not kill the woman I love and take our child. No matter the price I must pay.
“Now, go see to the witch. Make sure she gives me a healthy child, not something broken and ugly like her daughter.”
My heart aches as I turn away from him. Her daughter, Empusa, escaped a