Corrupted by Bella Klaus

Chapter Fifteen

The pain intensified, a twisting, churning sensation that felt like someone burrowing through my insides with a rusty fork. I scrambled off Hades’ lap and onto my hands and knees.

“Bloody hell.” My palms sank into the moist, warm soil, which absorbed some of the unpleasant sensations but not nearly enough. A rapid pulse resounded through my insides, making my bones rattle.

Hades grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me to my feet. “Focus.”

“On someone skewering my guts?” I said from between ragged breaths.

“The connection you and Persephone share is unlike any other,” he said, his fingers tightening around my flesh and bringing my attention to him. “It will be deeper than the ones shared by identical twins.”

“But my soul isn’t the same as it was before,” I said through clenched teeth.

“There’s enough of the original Persephone inside you to connect with her body.” The command in his voice was clear. “Connect to that part of yourself and locate her.”

Another surge of agony hit, making me fall against his chest.

“How?” I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Focus on the source of the pain. It’s at your umbilicus, right?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I’ve torn enough souls from enough bodies to know how they connect.” He knelt beside me and pulled me into his chest, lending me his warmth and strength. “Now, fall into the pain and slide out through the other end. That’s where you will find Persephone.”

“Anything’s worth a try.” I sucked in a deep breath, filling my lungs with air.

It was like a meditation exercise where I concentrated on one part of my body. This time, instead of trying to fall asleep to the sound of a thunderstorm, I concentrated on the agony raging behind my belly button. Instead of shoving the feelings away or trying to suppress them, I pushed my consciousness down to the source of the pain and allowed myself to get sucked in.

Fire spread across my vision. A single flame at first, then I floated backward to find it was part of a larger ring. A larger ring that surrounded an idyllic collection of plants arranged around a pristine pool.

“She’s in Persephone’s garden,” I hissed.

“Take me there.”

My eyes snapped open, and I scrambled to my feet. “My teleportation skills are nowhere as accurate as yours.”

“But you need to learn how to activate them under pressure.” He placed his hands on my shoulders, staring down at me with piercing eyes. “Take us above the garden and float down on your wings.”

I swallowed hard. “They’re not good for flying.”

“The Fifth is under threat, and its queen needs to level up. Try to make them hold both our weight. If you fall, I will catch you.”

My stomach flip-flopped. I wasn’t even sure I could keep myself airborne, let alone a huge man who was six-four, twice as heavy as me, and with a broad, muscular frame.

“Alright.” I pictured the peaceful garden how it had looked when Hades had first brought me there, but my mind kept remembering how it currently appeared on fire.

After pushing my consciousness into that space, the rest of my body followed, dragging Hades along for the ride.

My stomach plummeted, and the wind roared between my ears. I opened my eyes, staring out at a darkened landscape illuminated by fiery mountains that spewed out the rivers of lava. My muscles seized. We were falling. Tumbling through the air toward our deaths.

“Hades,” I shrieked.

He tightened his grip around my waist. “Use your wings,” he spoke over the wind. “If you can’t, then teleport us to the surface.”

“What happened to catching me if I fell?” My voice trembled.

He gave me a hearty slap on the ass. “Hurry up, or we’ll both end up as messes across the landscape.”

“Bloody hell!” I unfurled my wings, which flared out like the spokes of an electric parasol and filled the air with lightning.

Our free-fall slowed, but we were still drifting downward at a rapid pace. “Hades,” I hissed. “This isn’t working.”

“Persephone has ginkgo leaves and you have lightning,” he said in a voice far too casual for a man about to crash face-first into a burning garden. “Work out something that will keep us intact.”

I thickened the wing bones with more lightning, but it only made me descend faster. Pulling back the power, I imagined the tiny strings of magic I’d created with the help of the needles from my metal gloves.

Without having to weave them myself, tiny tendrils of lightning wove between the thicker wing bones, trapping the currents and suspending us in the air.

“Well done,” Hades said. “I knew you could do it.”

“No, you didn’t.” I gave him a hard nudge in the ribs.

“What was that for?” he asked with a laugh.

“Because that first time you saw my wings, you didn’t want me to use them to fly,” I said. “You mentioned something about connecting our magic so you could teach me how to create a nice feathery pair.”

Hades shook his head. “After seeing what those wings can do, I never want you to fly with anything else. Lightning is a devastating attack that kept a wanker like Zeus in power when there were better gods to take his place.”

My brows rose. “Did you ever challenge Zeus?”

Hades snorted. “After battling overground together for ten years straight against the titans, I was sick of Zeus, his sycophants, and Mount Olympus.”

I stretched out my wings. “You never wanted to leave the Underworld to rule?”

“Maybe not back then,” he muttered. “But I’ve had to step out of my comfort zone the past two thousand years. Leadership isn’t so bad with the right lieutenants.”

My wings sliced through the air, propelling us toward the blazing garden. “I can’t imagine what it was like to lose your domain, everything else you knew, and your wife.”

“The first century, Caria and I were too focused on putting Persephone together to bristle at the upheaval,” he murmured. “We had no idea Demeter and her coven were also searching for her so intently.”

“Did you ever talk to Mother?” I asked.

Hades shook his head. “You saw how she reacted to seeing me on the doorstep.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. “She cut her hand with her short sword and threatened you with her blood.”

“She would have had no qualms about striking me dead.”

I shook my head. “The more I learn about Mother, the more surprised I am that she went to so much trouble to put me back together again.”

“This is why I’m pushing you to grow.” He wrapped his arms tighter around my middle. “There’s more to her than being a possessive mother, and I don’t want you unprepared if she ever gets near.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I muttered.

Hades chuckled. “You can be ferocious when necessary, I suppose.”

“I could beat you anytime.”

He fell silent for several heartbeats as we flew across the patch of land that linked the Asphodel Meadows to Persephone’s Garden. “I seem to recall sucking a certain young woman’s toes and rendering her completely docile.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Hades pressed a kiss on my cheek and pulled me closer to his chest. “Now, swoop down.”

Tilting forward, I pulled back my wings and descended toward the garden. “How are we going to capture Persephone?”

“If I can get close enough and make her stand still, I’ll put her to sleep.”

“That’s all?” I asked.

“That’s the best we can do without hurting her,” he said, sounding grave. “Be careful. Persephone will most likely have glutted herself on power. And her plants will give her a greater range of combat power than your lightning. Once we’ve subdued her, we can look for a more permanent arrangement.”

The scent of smoke rising from the burning garden filled my nostrils, making them twitch. “What if you find a soul in that body?”

Hades blew out a long breath. “Then she should know better than to tear up the Fifth Faction with her mass-murdering creations. At the rate of her destruction, there would be no need for the likes of Samael to slide the dagger in our backs.”

“I wish there was a way to strengthen the wards without giving her access to that power.”

“That’s why we stop her,” Hades muttered.

“Right.” I raised my wings the way I’d seen eagles do on nature shows, and swooped down toward the burning garden.

Hades still clung to my side, but by now, I barely noticed the extra weight. My gaze dropped down to the flames, which spread across the plants like a plague. Sorrow squeezed my heart in a tight grip. What a waste of innocent souls. Had she started this fire, or had it been an accident?

A shock of red hair caught my eye, followed by the sight of a blackened figure darting through a patch of trees whose canopies were ablaze. My heart stuttered. This had to be Persephone. Who else had access to her garden but the dryads and me?

I pointed down into the direction of the movement. “There she is.”

“This is the closest anyone has gotten to her since the shock of her awakening,” Hades said. “There’s no telling when she’ll resurface, so we can’t afford to let her escape.”

“Can you erect a wall around the garden?” I asked.

“I would need to make it a perfect dome, which will be impossible because of the roots.”

“Right.” I nodded, realizing that some of them could be hollow. Persephone could have used the ancient trees to walk around the Fifth undetected. “Alright, but you don’t want me to electrocute her?”

“Only as a means of self-defense,” he said, his voice tight.

The heat from the fire radiated from below, drying all the moisture from my face. I turned my gaze to Hades and asked, “If you don’t need my attack power, what can I do to help?”

“Stay close and let her come to you.”

“Fine.” I clapped my hands together. “I’ll act as the bait.”

We landed in the garden within one of its many clearings. Most of the plants had succumbed to the fire, leaving only the barest of stalks. My chest tightened at seeing the carnage in such close quarters. Most people didn’t realize this, but plants could feel both physical and emotional pain.

The flames surrounding our clearing were over seven feet tall in places, presumably from plants with a high content of oil. My gaze caught a lane of dwarf palm trees that the fire had completely consumed, and I shuddered.

“There.” Hades pointed at a blur dashing through the flames.

“Let’s go.” I raced after her, my hands balled into fists.

Hades teleported to the other side of the fire, making me shake my head. What happened to our plan to use me as bait?

A high-pitched scream pierced the air, the sound hitting me like a punch to the gut.

The dryads.

I turned in a circle, staring through the flames and trying to find the source of the sound, but it seemed to be coming from all directions. There was no sign of Hades. Now that he was in pursuit of Persephone, he probably wouldn’t make the effort to save the innocent little creatures.

My heart thundered, and the smoke burned the back of my throat. Where were they? Could they even leave the confines of the garden? I coughed into my hand. What if they were trapped here? When another shriek sounded from my left, I raised my forearms to my face and darted through the fire.

Practically every plant in the garden was aflame, the damage too extensive to do anything but let it burn. I raced through paths of smoldering raspberry canes, my ears ringing with tiny screams that made me stumble over my feet.

I was hearing the plants.

“No,” said a little voice from the other direction. “Please, stop.”

I whirled back toward the wall of fire.

Another voice wailed like a child, making my heart lurch. Even if plants could scream—which I hadn’t realized until now—they couldn’t form words. This had to be the dryads.

As I raced back through the wall of fire and out the other side, a tall tree fell into my path followed by another and another, filling the air with the scent of menthol. I staggered back, my mouth gaping open. What I was smelling wasn’t mint. It was eucalyptus, a tree known for exploding in forest fires.

I placed a hand over my mouth, not knowing how to proceed.

“Hades?”I said into our link.

“Kora.” Frustration filled his voice. “Do you see her?”

“No, but I can hear the dryads.”

“Where?” he asked.

I glanced around my surroundings, taking in the fire’s orange and red haze. Everything was a blur of burning plants. “Difficult to describe, but watch out for exploding trees.”

Hades didn’t reply for several heartbeats, and I wondered if he’d gotten distracted by another sighting of Persephone. I was about to send another message through our link again, when he said, “I’m going airborne. See if you can fly over the fire. Teleport away if you can’t.”

“Right.”I raced back to the other side of the garden, where the plants were smaller, mostly burned out, and less likely to explode.

I spread out my wings and tried to launch myself into the sky, but the landscape around me changed. Even though I knew I was standing still, I was also looking through another set of eyes.

Rage burned through my veins. Rage and excitement and a touch of lust, but it wasn’t mine. My throat dried, and I remembered the erotic dream I once saw through Persephone’s point of view.

Hades hadn’t sent it.

Somehow, even back then, I had connected with Persephone. I pushed my magic to her surroundings, allowing the teleportation process to drag the rest of my body.

She crouched on the ground with her back turned to me, her red hair a matted and tangled mess from behind. Mud-streaked arms stretched out to the floor. In each hand, she pinned down a dryad by the throat, who whimpered and cried and writhed within her grip.

Tears streaked the childlike creatures’ faces, their delicate features twisted with agony.

I clenched my teeth, rushed at her from behind, and grabbed her mass of hair.

With an agonized howl, Persephone released their necks, her eyes blazing an inhuman green. Cold shock spread through my insides, turning my veins to sludge. Was she in control of the plants, or were they in control of her? From the looks of things, something other than a soul was animating her body.

She bared brilliant white teeth and hissed, and spat a liquid that landed on my armor with a sizzle.

“Hades,” I screamed out loud and through the bond.

Vines leaped from Persephone’s tangled hair like snakes, winding around my neck, tighter than any imagined noose. I jumped back, my hands grasping at the garrote, trying to burn through them with my lightning.

“Kora?” Hades’ voice filled my head.

“She’s here,”I said. “Come.”

Persephone rose from her crouch, leaving the dryads still lying on the ground. She advanced on me with her hands outstretched, her eyes unseeing. Vines wrapped around her body, forming a replica of my armor. Whatever intelligence lurked beneath those green eyes knew that we had once been the same.

Or at least it knew that I was the one Persephone had twice failed to kill.

I tore the vines from my neck, only for another set to snap back into place. “Bloody hell,” I screamed into my mind. “If you don’t show yourself this instant, I’m going to fry Persephone!”

Behind her, the tallest of the dryads rolled onto her side and coughed.

“You two.” My voice shook. “Find somewhere to run and hide.”

The little creatures scrambled to their feet, took each other’s hands, and darted down a path of burning bushes.

Persephone advanced toward me with shuffling steps, her plants still forming her armor. Huge green appendages sprouted from her back, no longer taking the shape of gingko leaves.

I held out my crackling palm. “Stay back. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

Persephone roared.

A dark figure swooped down, making Persephone’s head snap up. She hissed at Hades, materialized a brown ball into her hand, and flung it in his direction. Hades swerved, just as it exploded into a mass of sycamore seeds that flew toward him on transparent wings.

Hades set them alight, and Persephone floated a dozen more and hurled them all at him with her magic.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “What kind of plant warfare is this?”

Persephone’s gaze snapped to mine, and she stared at me, her mouth slack and spilling strings of drool. I gulped, hoping she wasn’t thinking of turning me into one of her monstrous beanstalks.

Pushing enough electricity through my fingers to jumpstart the dead, I snarled at her to stay back.

She flinched, and snapped her head up to find that Hades was advancing on her from the sky, having already burned down her latest attack. With one almighty leap, she flew away from Hades only to swoop down into the fire and snatch the smaller of the dryads.

“Shit.” I flared out my wings and jumped.

Hades grabbed me from behind. “What are you doing?”

“Going after Persephone.”

“Not with your armor half melted.”

I glanced down at my red leather, only to find it blackened, with holes deep enough to expose patches of skin. “Bloody hell.”

“How did that happen?” Hades asked. “That leather is immune to hellfire.”

“But not to acids.” There was no time to tell him about the plants that could produce corrosive substances like cashew fruit. Or about carnivorous leaves that digested small animals. “She’s taken a dryad. Please save her.”

“Teleport back to the palace,” Hades said. “If Persephone is throwing acid, there’s no telling how permanent she can make the damage.”

“There’s another dryad—”

“Kora.” He gripped my arms. “You are the only thing that matters to me—more than the Fifth Faction, and more than the murderous shell of my first wife. Go to the palace, wash that acid off your body, and wait for me.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.” He teleported away.

I clenched my teeth and said into the bond, “If you think you can give me orders like you do with Captain Caria—”

“Kora,” he said in a voice sharper than a dagger. “Do not incite my wrath.”

Shaking off a tremor, I materialized my lightning wings, making sure to equip them with as many fine strands as I could muster. They crackled with light, looking like a tapestry of white magic.

I jumped, using the appendages to launch myself into the sky, and flew in the direction where I’d seen the dryad. The fire beneath me raged, and there was no sight of Persephone or Hades or anyone else.

Since the wards of Persephone’s garden allowed nobody but her to enter, it was no surprise the other residents of Hell hadn’t come to apprehend her.

A eucalyptus tree exploded with a boom louder than any crack of thunder.

My heart jumped to the back of my throat, and I raised my arms to cover my face. White smoke and chunks of eucalyptus wood flew through the air, filling the garden with its unique scent.

I kept my head low, flapping to keep myself airborne, and straining my senses for signs of the other dryad.

As the smoke beneath me cleared, another tree fell to the ground with a creak, followed by a moan that sounded too defeated to have come from a plant. Retracting my wings, I lowered myself to the ground and waved the smoke from my path to find a small hand protruding from beneath the tree.

I rolled it off to reveal the taller dryad lying face-down and unmoving in the dirt.

“Are you alive?” I stretched out a trembling hand, skimming her warm skin with my fingers, but she didn’t move.

My throat thickened. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. After rolling her to the side, I placed a hand on her little chest, which barely moved.

“Please stay alive.” I scooped her into my arms and launched myself into the sky.

Something wrapped around my ankle—a stringy tendril that tried to pull me back to the ground. I glanced down, finding a tulip-shaped flower surging from beneath the pile of burned vegetation.

“Shit,” I muttered. “They’re back.”

Its petals opened, revealing a two-foot-wide maw of sharp teeth. My heart lurched, and I flapped harder. The wretched thing was large enough to swallow us whole.

When a vine the size of a tree trunk reared from beneath me, my blood turned to sludge. My mind conjured up the last place I had visited, and I teleported to my greenhouse.

Warm water rained down on us. I hugged the dryad tighter and exhaled a relieved breath. If Hades hadn’t spent time making sure I could teleport, that plant would have devoured us both. I shuddered at the thought of becoming like Minthe, so consumed by the plant that it had reduced her body to a husk.

A few heartbeats later, the little creature in my arms wheezed and coughed, her little hands grasping at her neck.

I stared down at her face, which paled from a rich green to something closer to white. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and pointed at her mouth, her huge eyes bulging.

“You can’t breathe?” I asked.

“No,” she said with a gasp.

My heart flipped. Why did I ever think a creature who had spent thousands of years in the world of the dead would survive the world of the living? I squeezed my eyes shut and teleported into one of the rooms in the palace.

The dryad’s entire body relaxed in my arms, and she sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“What happened?”

Tears gathered in her eyes, and she convulsed in my arms with several hiccuping sobs. I bit down on my bottom lip, my heart aching. “You’re worried about your friend?”

She nodded. “My sister.”

I lowered her to the floor, took her hand, and walked her to one of the sofas. “Hades is chasing after Persephone. I told him to save your sister.”

The dryad dipped her head. “Her Majesty was never this cruel to us.”

“There’s something wrong with her mind,” I murmured, not knowing if such a childlike creature could understand the concept of souls. “How long have you been serving her?”

“I don’t know.” She sniffled. “A very long time.”

I patted her on the shoulder. “Let me see if I can contact Hades.”

The dryad stared up at me, her eyes bright. “Please make sure he finds my sister.”

I offered her a tight smile. “Hades?”

“Kora?”he said. “Where the hell did you go?”

“Greenhouse,”I replied. “Why?”

“I followed your magic there, but you’d already gone.”His words slurred.

“Are you alright?”I asked.

“She struck me with some kind of poison,”he said. “Where are you?”

“In the palace.”I glanced at my surroundings. “Remember that room where I sat on your face—"

Hades materialized, his armor torn, and carrying the smallest dryad over his shoulder. He swayed on his feet, his eyes unfocused.

I scrambled off the sofa and rushed to his side. “What on earth happened?”

“Persephone is even more powerful than I imagined.” Hades lowered the dryad to the marble floor, letting her sister wrap her arms around her neck. “Shit. When I looked into her eyes, there wasn’t a trace of anything I recognized.”

“It was more like the intelligence of a plant,” I whispered.

“A demonic one,” Hades muttered.

“Where do you think it came from?” I asked.

He shook his head. “But there’s one thing for certain. We need to extract it from Persephone’s body before it wreaks even more havoc.”

As the little dryads hugged and cried on the rug, I pulled Hades to the sofa and made him sit. “You need some of that panacea plant. Have you called for a healer?”

“Already on her way.” He gave me an absent nod and pointed in the vague direction of the rug where the dryads lay. “We need to put these two in the earth or they’ll never heal from their injuries.”

I placed a hand on his cheek and winced at his clammy skin. “The only secure place I know is the greenhouse above the penthouse, and the living world doesn’t agree with them.”

He slid off the sofa, knelt by the dryads, scooped them up with one arm, and held out a hand to me. “Come. I’ve just told the healers to meet us in the cacao orchard.”

Hades transported us to a huge patch of land filled with dwarf cacao trees arranged in straight rows. Red and orange cacao pods hung from their branches, filling the air with the sweet scent of fruit.

The old healer I had met on my first day in Hell stepped out from behind a tree, her brows rising to her horns. “Your Majesty?”

“Help these two.” Hades deposited the dryads on the ground.

I gaped at him, my mouth falling slack. “What about you?”

“A few glasses of panacea water will negate the poison.” He rose to his feet and stepped back.

The healer knelt beside the dryads and placed her palms on the ground, creating two small holes.

I jogged around them and grabbed Hades’ arm. “Are you sure the water is all you need? When I got poisoned, you rubbed that plant over my skin.”

He offered me a crooked smile. “Are you trying to get me naked?”

Somewhere in his words was the admission that he could have given me the water when those plants had attacked, but he’d taken the opportunity to strip me of my clothes. His antics no longer mattered. Not when Persephone was out there on a rampage.

Hades materialized a bottle of liquid, flipped off its top and placed it to his lips. He stared at me through unfocussed eyes. “Would Demeter really go as far as to corrupt Persephone’s body? How would she even have access to it?”

“I don’t know, but she’s an expert at turning plants into weapons. She enhanced trees in St. James’s Park to attack those with Greek blood. One of them even tried to swallow me the day I teleported into the Living World.”

He finished draining the bottle and winced. “If that’s true, Demeter has stooped to a new low.”

“She once made a tree swallow an owl when she thought the owl was spying on us.”

His features tightened. “So that’s what she did to Screech?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We need to stop her.”

Hades nodded. “But first, we must capture Persephone. The time for gentle treatment has ended. Now we must apprehend her with force.”