“Not all water. If we stay away from the rivers, we’ll be okay. This could be regular water. Just don’t get any in your mouth.”
“Right. Okay, here goes. I’m going to scoot around and drop in feet first. It’s not far.”
The landing did jolt my ankles some and my hiking boots were instantly soaked. There was a scent of musky decay here, but I was so happy to have a bit of light and to not be crawling on that creepy surface I didn’t care. I looked up as Phro’s legs came into view. She dangled from what looked like the rocky ceiling of the cave. Whatever we’d been touching in there wasn’t on this side.
Phro dropped down beside me, but my gaze had moved on to the shafts in the rock ceiling. Inside, some kind of stone I wasn’t at all familiar with reflected light. It wasn’t a lot, but we could see where we were going in here. Thick rock formations rose from the shallow stream and out of the walls.
The lilin had already gone ahead and because there was only one direction she could have disappeared, we followed, sticking to the drier sides as much as possible. Each step became more and more precarious because of the slippery, wet limestone. At least, I assumed it was limestone. It could be something not of my world, for all I knew. I glanced up at the light shafts. In my dimension, I’d been in a cave house once where the owners had coated light shafts in reflective materials. The light in this place was natural and while everything down here was a grim, dreary gray, those shafts were surprisingly bright with colors of blue and green.
“I can hear her up ahead,” Phro said. “We have to catch her. We’ll need her as a bargaining chip.”
“Why would anyone want her?”
“Great party tricks? She can make people sing, who in turn make the audience go into a frenzy. It’s got to be boring down here and even these gods will like to party.” She slipped off the rocks and grunted when her feet went into the water. “I can’t believe I’m actually missing my spirit body right now.”
At one point, the cave narrowed and the only way we could continue was to wade through waist-high water. I peered into the darkness ahead and thought seriously about going back. But the elemental wasn’t there. Even thinking about how we were going to get back caused fear to rise up so sharp and fast I had to close my eyes and take a few deep, calming breaths. I’d figure it out. Once I had Nikolos.
“Keep your eye on the prize, Beri,” I murmured.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Phro wrapped her arms around her waist and stared into the dark tunnel. “There are a few gods and other creatures down here who have it out for me.”
“Have I said I appreciate you coming?” I shivered. “Thought this place was going to be hot, but I’m freezing.”
“There will be places of heat. The elementals live in a river of fire here.”
The thought of unbound elementals in plural made me shudder. “We’ll just be avoiding that stretch of hell dimension, ’kay?”
A faint smile pulled up one corner of her mouth. She had no makeup, her hair was a lank, wet mass of tangles down her back, and whatever muck we’d been crawling through had left streaks on her clothes. Yet she still looked like she could step onto the cover of a magazine. Must be all those supernatural genes.
“Uh, Phro, you’re a goddess again here, right? Don’t you have some kind of powers?”
She lifted a slim eyebrow. “I can make you fall in love with me.”
“Yeah, no thanks. That’s obviously covered or we wouldn’t be in a freezing cave and about to step into dark water. Have I ever mentioned that though I love water, I’ve never been fond of wading in it in the dark?”
“We might as well go. We do need to catch that lilin.”
I took a deep breath and splashed into the water. While it was cooler than I expected, the farther we moved into the dark chamber, the warmer it became. I stepped through pockets of warm and it reminded me of swimming in a public pool as a kid and coming upon a
pocket of warm
. I froze. Oh, ew. “Phro,” I whispered, but my voice echoed off the walls making the sound a lot louder than I’d planned. “I think there are things living in this water.”
There was an immediate scrambling noise as Phro obviously tried to crawl up a wall. I wanted to laugh at a goddess being afraid of some underwater creature, but then I thought about all those myths I’d read and the crazy creatures in them.
Phro screeched and splashed. “Something swam by my leg.”
“Go faster.” I worked to fight the water. My costume wasn’t meant to be wet and it hung heavily on my body. I’d take off the top part, but I didn’t really want to be wandering the underworld in a black push-up bra. When I felt a solid bump on my hip, absolute fear sent my muscles into overdrive. I reached out, hooked an arm around Phro’s chest and yanked her to me. “I can move quicker, so just hang on.”
“No problem. Can I ride on your shoulders?”
“Very funny.”
Her weight slowed me down. Waiting for her would have taken even more time, so I held on to Phro and pushed through the water. My sigh of relief was loud when I saw a rock outcropping. A soaked and furious lilin sat perched on it. I helped Phro climb onto the ledge before I followed.
The lilin suddenly screeched and dove at me with her fingers curled like claws. Her power hit me before her hands did. Hungry, sucking power that felt like she’d stuck a spoon down my throat to scoop my heart back out.
I gasped and flailed and nearly went flying back off the rock. I managed to clutch a protruding stone coming out of the wall and shoved her off me. Air seared my throat as I tried to breathe. With stars dancing around my peripheral vision, I made a fist and punched the shit out of her face.
The crack of her nose echoed in the stone chamber. She screamed, flew backward and grabbed hold of the rock with both arms to keep from sliding off the other side.
I growled at her. “You try that again and I’ll do more than break your nose.” The pain was gone, but my ribs ached—especially the one that had already taken a beating by the Kuru-Pira. Unfortunately, the wound in my leg had started to burn.
Something big moved through the chamber, making the water splash as whatever it was slid along both sides.
“Whatever is in that water is huge,” Phro whispered.
“Hey.” I kicked the lilin. “Do you know what’s in the water?”
She rolled onto her back, shook her head, then pulled wet strands of black hair off her cheeks.
“Didn’t you come this way when the Dweller and the elemental opened the portal?”
She grunted and sat up. “The Dweller? We called him the Dark One.”
“Still not original,” Phro muttered as she peered over the side of the rock.
The lilin sneered at Aphrodite. “There are supposed to be only a few ways out of the Realm of the Discarded. Charon who will take you along the River Styx is one. But we all know the elementals have different portals.”
“Gods, I knew that’s where we were.” Phro, shivering, leaned against the rock wall behind her. She was breathing hard. “I know who to avoid now.”
I frowned at her. “You knew before. When I told you about the water in the buckets.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was hoping I was wrong.”
“Well, I wish you hadn’t been wrong about my cord and the labyrinth.”
She started to answer, then sucked in a breath as the water slushed against the sides of the rock. It was too dark to see what moved down there, but I heard the faint rippling sounds, the slide of something solid against a limestone wall.
“I think it’s some kind of snake,” I murmured.
“Good.” Phro breathed in relief. “Do your snake mojo thing and charm it into letting us pass. Call it.”
I fought back the urge to poke the goddess with my knife. “I can’t call them. I’ve tried. They just follow me around. But I don’t know if it
is
a snake.”
“Stick your leg in the water and see if it tries to cuddle.”
I pulled out my knife. Then I felt a tug on my chest I recognized instantly. I narrowed my gaze on the lilin. “Really? You’re trying to feed on me again?” I didn’t wait for an answer, just set my knife down, curled my hand into a fist and let it fly into her face. She made a strangled, yelping sound and fell back into the water. When she didn’t struggle to get back on the rock, I rolled my eyes. “For a supposedly scary underworld creature, she sure is a wuss.”
“She only gets power when she has a crowd, and mostly through song. She was probably just hungry and looking for a snack. With the way she fed in your world, she needs a lot to survive.”
“I don’t give a shit. I’m nobody’s food.” But I sighed and reached into the water to grasp her hair and pull her back onto the rock. If she’d been awake, that would have hurt.
Too bad she wasn’t
. “We have to keep going. Whatever it is didn’t try to eat us before—it just swam next to us. Maybe it’s friendly.”
Phro snorted. “There’s nothing friendly here.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my knife out and hope that I’m stronger than whatever it is. You’ll have to move faster on your own because it looks like I’ll be carting her ass through the water.”
Sliding back into the water on the other side of the rock was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. Knowing I’d be carting this creature didn’t help. I’d prefer to have both hands free. Tugging her behind me didn’t work, so I moved to the side of the chamber, hoping for shallower water and when I found it, I swung her around my neck in a fireman’s carry. I’d considered throwing her over my shoulder, but I didn’t know if lilins could drown. I could hold on to her behind one knee this way. I also grasped the sleeve of her ridiculous robe and pulled her arm in toward her knee so it wouldn’t bob around. This left my left hand free to hold the knife, which was a good thing because whatever was in the water picked that moment to come out and greet me.
Glowing yellow eyes appeared before the serpent’s entire head came out of the water. It hissed long and low and I felt a heavy punch of fear in my gut because the mouth that scary noise came out of was bigger than my head.
I dropped the lilin.
She could drown. I wasn’t fighting this thing one-handed. When I raised my knife, the thing backed up its head, but its tail wrapped around my lower body. I expected it to start squeezing, but the wrap was gentle. It tugged lightly and turned its face in the opposite direction before looking back at me. “I think it’s hugging me.” Shock and fear kept my body frozen and my voice high. “And I think it wants us to follow it.”
“See?” Phro muttered from behind me. Far behind me. “Snake mojo. Do you have any idea how handy that’s going to be here? Everybody has a snake fetish here. Do it. Follow.” Phro wasn’t as close as I expected, so I glanced around to find she’d climbed back on the rock.
I turned back to the snake and inclined my head. It stared at the knife, hissed again. The yellow eyes put out a stream of light that glittered on my blade.
“Sorry. I don’t trust that easily, so the knife is staying out. I don’t suppose you have a friend who can carry that floating piece of trash, do you?” I nodded toward the lilin. The huge serpent unwrapped its tail from around me and slapped at the lilin so hard she hit the wall. The sound of her head hitting the rock made me wince, but she did wake up. The tail came back around me, squeezed gently and then the snake swam away from us, keeping its head above the water.
“It’s like headlights,” Phro murmured as she came up beside me.
“You’d better follow us,” I told the lilin. “It doesn’t seem to like you very much and will probably eat you if you aren’t with me.”
She swam awkwardly to me and in the dim light, something dark dripped down her forehead and her nose looked awful, twice the size of before. We followed the serpent until the muscles in my thighs screamed in protest. It’s not easy walking in waist-high water. Both Phro and the lilin breathed hard on either side of me.
I was about to suggest we crawl up on another rock outcropping when I saw real light.
I nearly fell over in relief. Speeding up, I watched as the snake swam in circles. The stream ended in a pool here with two sides flowing on either side of a huge rock slab that looked like it jutted out of the cave. I helped Phro climb onto the rock. She sprawled there, bedraggled and exhausted. The lilin looked at me for help and that made me laugh. She scowled and climbed onto the rock before crawling to the edge. I pulled myself up, my arms feeling like they were made of gelatin. I slipped once and the snake was there to bump me in the ass and help.
When I finally was all the way on the rock, I turned and looked down. Here, even though the light coming in wasn’t that bright, I could see the creature better and was suddenly glad I couldn’t see all of it before. Black with thin red stripes, the snake’s body stretched to fit the entire pool and it looked like had coiled several times under the water’s surface. Yellow eyes stared at me, so I offered it a smile.
“Thank you,” I said softly. It didn’t act like it understood me, but it obviously had earlier when I’d asked for help with the lilin. It only turned and slithered back into the cave. “Well.” I breathed before lying back on the rock. “That was weird.”
“What are you?” the lilin asked. “No one can control the snakes like that. Not even Tisiphone, and they are always all around her.”
“And always hissing mad,” Phro muttered. “Don’t blame them. I can’t stand that goddess either.”