The Passion of Hades - Eliza Raine Page 0,51

hair in the sewage, tearing her wooden leg away... A wave of sweet, rotting stench invaded my nostrils, mercifully snapping me out of the brutal vision.

The smell had been caused by the sewage reaching my neck, now only inches from my nose, I realized with a start. I heaved once more as I turned, hardly able to pull myself through the ooze now. Holding the lion carving high, fury and fear making my limbs shake, I lifted my other arm out of the thick black stuff, and fired a vine from my free hand at the handles on the wall. The vine smashed into one of them, and I willed the vine to curl around it.

Just as the sludge edged over my jaw and reached my mouth, I yanked, instructing the vine to retract, and take me with it. I was instantly pulled off my feet, the force of the vine tugging me through the disgusting sewage. It splattered around my face, and my eyes streamed with the acridity of it, but the vine pulled me on, and my head stayed above the surface.

But when I smashed into the wall, I realized with horror that the last hole was submerged. I plunged my hand into the rising muck, feeling frantically for it, but it was too deep.

I would have to put my head under.

A fresh surge of hatred for the people who had put me in here and forced me through this rose inside me and I very nearly smashed the lion carving against the wall in fury.

But I retracted the vine at the last second, rational thoughts forcing their way through the red mist. Put the lion in the hole and it's over!

With a huge breath, I closed my eyes and let myself drop through the heavy sludge.

It was so thick that I instantly panicked, the feeling of being crushed overwhelming. I scrabbled at the wall with my free hand, feeling for the handles to work my way down to the last hole. My heart was hammering so fast I thought my chest might burst, the weight around me pressing in hard, my eyes burning behind my eyelids.

I was going to die here, suffocated in sewage.

My fingers snagged on a sharp edge, and my body tried to take an involuntary breath as I realized it must be the hole. Acrid sludge burned my lips and nostrils as I drew the vine holding the lion desperately to my other hand, which was now gripping the hole. My lungs burned for air, every single instinct in my body warring with my instructions to stay calm and not breathe. I shoved the lion carving into what I prayed was the hole. The stuff was moving further up my nose, starting to fill the back of my throat, and it burned like acid. It was too much. My mouth started to open.

A handle formed under my fingers, and I yanked it.

Twenty-Three

Hades

I gripped the arms of my throne as Persephone appeared in the middle of the throne room floor, covered in the thick black sewage. She fell forward onto her hands and knees, heaving, and white hot fury roared in me, so close to breaking free from my godly constraints. Look what they have done to her. They will all die.

'Can't... breathe...' her words were ragged, and I leapt from my throne, but Poseidon got there first. In a flash he was standing in front of her, a cascade of water pouring from thin air over her body. Her back arched slightly and she began to take deep, shuddering breaths. My coiled muscles relaxed ever so slightly, but I glared at the back of Poseidon's head.

Watching her drown in that shit-hole, the lair of a creature created by Hecate, her only friend here, and supplied with prey by me, had been torture. My own realm had almost killed her, and Zeus had me powerless to help her. The monster inside me was hungry, and my brother was the subject of its attentions. Had she actually died in there...

Suddenly black vines whipped from Persephone's palms and she was staggering to her feet. Her wild eyes were filled with hatred, and the vines blasted towards the thrones. Artemis, Ares and Zeus leapt to their feet as her voice roared through the room, clear and crisp and furious.

'I'm sick of this! You are done playing with me!'

Poseidon threw up his hand and spoke as Zeus and I stepped forward.

'It is the Underworld sewage making her angry. She