As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“That’s not ominous at all,” I remarked as the rear of the boat emerged from the bank of mist to reveal a solitary hooded figure, slowly working a pole that guided the boat to where we waited.

“I think that’s the point, actually,” Vir supplied helpfully.

I glared up at him, wondering where the suddenly chipper mood had come from. “Thank you for that insight,” I said dryly, doing my best not to sigh.

“My pleasure.”

Lor–someone, give me strength, I thought, once more correcting myself.

It was unlikely that my thoughts could be read, but it probably was best not to tempt fate over this. If Hades was touchy about that other place where the dead went, then maybe I should just try and not think or say anything about it. Just in case.

The boat came to us with unerring accuracy. The ferryman didn’t seem to notice the current. Slow as it was, the boat had to be thirty feet long. A keel that long would gather up lots of current in the real world and would easily be swept downstream. Not so in the Underworld. In a few minutes, the prow beached itself.

I waited, but nothing more happened.

“So, we just get on now, is that it?” I asked uncomfortably, looking around for some advice.

I was, after all, the newbie here. All of the others had been here before. Fred hadn’t come out and said so, but I got the impression that of my trio of traveling companions, he was the most at ease here. Yet, he wasn’t interested in having any say in things. Fred was just here to follow orders.

Orders which I was apparently supposed to be giving.

How am I supposed to order these men to go deeper into the center of Hades’s realm, just to help me out?

I didn’t like it. Never in my life had I been the one in command. I’d always looked to others to tell me what to do, and for the most part, I’d been okay with that. Not everyone wanted to be in charge, and that wasn’t something I was going to let myself be ashamed of. The pressure to be a good leader was immense, and I was only twenty-one. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have enough experience to be a good leader. Yet.

But right now, with Charon’s Ferry staring me in the face, I wasn’t being given a choice. The others were waiting for me to order them onto the boat. Order them. Because they didn’t want to go willingly.

Could I do it? Did I have the strength to tell them to get in the boat, even though I knew, without them saying anything, that they didn’t want to?

I forced myself to remember why we were here. To gather the thing we needed to rescue my parents. Not just any random people, but Thomas and Alexandra Wetter. They might be my adopted parents, true, but they had loved and cared for me more than many biological parents out there had for their kids. I was lucky to have been raised by them, and I was fully aware of that.

It still bothered me that all this time I’d been searching for them, thinking they had left me for some reason, they’d been held captive at the hands of one of the most despicable men I’d ever met. Nearly ten months now since they’d gone missing. Ten months for Lars Aldridge to torture them.

Fury burned brightly in me. I missed my dad’s booming laugh and his nerdy love for history that we both shared. I missed my mom’s cooking, her love for tea, and her willingness to help anyone who needed it. They were good people and did not deserve what had happened to them.

“Get in the boat,” I growled. If I had to order these men forward in order to rescue my parents, then that’s what I would do.

And I would lead the way. I strode forward, grabbed the edge of the gunwale, and hauled myself up into the longboat with as much grace as I could muster.

Fred used one hand to pull himself up and over with far more ease than I had managed, and he promptly sat in the front before anyone else could take the position.

Vir sat in a seat next to me while Aaron moved closer to the rear. I expected him to glare at Vir as he passed us, but he didn’t. He simply took up a position two rows in front of our ferryman and sat quietly.

Was he that focused on what we were doing? Or had something passed between the two of them? I almost got up to sit next to Aaron, but the boat lurched and took off from the red sand beach before I could move.

“This was a bad idea,” Aaron muttered from behind Vir and me.

“You shouldn’t have given the Idol to the big guy,” I pointed out.

Beside me, Vir opened his mouth.

“And you shouldn’t have let me get Soulbound to you,” I said, shutting Vir up before he could pile on to Aaron.

Something was bugging the vampire, and I didn’t want Vir to make it worse. Not now. We needed to be on the same team until we got out of the Underworld. Then maybe Aaron would return to his usual self.

Vir’s mouth snapped shut, but only for a moment. “I didn’t let it happen,” he ground out. “I was protecting you. Stopping Johnathan from rebinding his link with yours, if you recall. This wasn’t what I wanted, Dani. I didn’t know it was possible. It shouldn’t have been.”

There was a long pause as he stared at me.

Then he looked away. “I’m sorry.”

My eyebrows shot up in line with my guilt. Now I felt bad because I’d been shitting on Vir for the Soulbound business when I’d known he hadn’t intended for this to happen. I was just covering up my insecurities.

Feeling bad, I started to tell Vir that I was sorry as well. And that we should probably talk about what had happened. Figure out what we were going to do going forward since there was no way it was actually going to work between a mortal and an immortal.

“You should see this.”

My head swiveled to the front of the boat. Fred was standing, his finger twitching nervously at his side, going slowly for the knife at his hip, then dropping away.

I glanced back at Vir. Fred never spoke up like that. He usually only spoke to one of us when we addressed him. He was content to come along and help as needed. If he was interrupting us, however…

All three of us rushed to the front of the boat.

“What is it?” I asked, not seeing anything in front of us. The mist blocked everything beyond twenty feet or so from sight. I wondered briefly how the ferryman could see.

“There.”

I followed Fred’s finger down into the murky waters just in time to see a body go past, the legs ending in cloven hoofs. A moment later, another passed, and then another.

“Um,” I said uncomfortably. “Experienced realm traveler dudes. Is this normal?”

“No.” I got the answer back in unison from all three of them.

“So, what, uh, what are we looking at? Why are there bodies in the water?”

“A battle,” Fred said quietly. “Fighting happened here. Those are Axotl. Minor demons, foot soldiers, you might call them.”

“Who would they be fighting?” I asked nervously.

At that moment, the mists cleared, revealing the far side of the River Styx. It was covered in bodies. A carpet of dead bodies that stretched out to either side and a few hundred feet up the slope.

Many of the bodies were human. They were all soldiers, I could tell. Some of them wore modern-looking army gear. Mottled camouflage, bucket helmets, rifles strapped to their bodies. Others on the banks wore silver suits of armor, straight out of medieval times. To my left, a company of British redcoats lay slaughtered. Elsewhere, soldiers from the bronze and iron ages were present as well. I thought some of them looked like Romans, but I wasn’t certain.

Mixed in among them were the bodies of the Axotl, as Fred called them, beast men with a human body, cloven hoof feet, and a face covered in fur. Two tusk-like fangs jutted up from their bottom lips, and their noses were smushed flat. Not a pleasant sight. Oh, and they had tails.

Other beings were mixed in, some larger. Some smaller. All of them dead. As far as I could see, nothing moved. It was beyond eerie. If I’d been scared before, I was terrified now.

“What are all those other creatures?” I asked. “The non-humans.”

“Demons,” Fred replied quietly. “Different types.”

“What were they fighting?”

“Each other, by the looks of it,” Aaron said as the ferry bumped hard against the bodies in the water, pushing its way through with more force than the single pole the ferryman had could ever generate.

“Wait a minute,” I said nervously. “Are you telling me that the demons were defending hell from invaders?”

“It looks that way,” Aaron agreed.

I inched closer to Vir.

“This is bad, guys,” I said. “Really bad, isn’t it? What the hell is going on in…hell?”