Fallen (Dark God Saga) (2 page)

“I do not want you, Aphrodite. I highly doubt that I will ever want you. Now, if that is all, there are important things that I have to do, so if you will—.”

Soft but strong arms grabbed the lapels of his jacket, effectively molding her body to his. Peaked nipples pushed against the silk of his shirt.

“Who do you think you are to refuse
me
, the divine goddess Aphrodite?” she demanded furiously. “I am wanted by many! Gods would give up their godhood to have me lie with them! Humans worship at my temples! You are nothing! My father could wipe you and your lowly family out in the span of one breath, do you understand—?”

She was prevented from finishing when Thanatos caught her by the arms and had her against the nearest wall in under a second.

“What did you say about my family?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice.

His family was among the few to survive the epic shift from Titans to Olympians. It was not that Zeus particularly harbored any genuine feelings for them, but Thanatos’s parents, Nyx and Erebos, were two of the gods that no god, no matter how strong, wanted to piss off. As the goddess of night, Nyx could plunge everything into permanent night, and Erebos, foul tempered god of darkness around everyone save his wife, could flood Mount Olympus with plagues and things beyond Zeus’s wildest dreams. And the two dark gods hadn’t stopped there. Their children included Moros, the god of doom, and his twin Oizys, goddess of misery; Clotho, Lashesis and Atropos, known to god and man alike as the Fates; Nemesis, the weapon wielding goddess of justice; Keres, goddess of violent death, who at times understood Thanatos even more than his own twin; and Thanatos, incarnation of death, and Hypnos, who lorded over the subconscious.

Despite Zeus’s ascent to power, the Olympian god acknowledged the necessity of the dark gods and recognized, unlike his foolish daughter, that the repercussions of taking them on as enemies far outweighed the benefits.

Aphrodite gasped when his eyes bled to black, the energy around his body seemed to triple, and a wave of coldness blanketed the room.

“You can’t kill me, Thanatos,” she said, but there was uncertainty in her voice. Because she was a divine goddess, a descendant of the original Olympians, he was not supposed to kill her. It did not mean that he could not kill her. Just that he wasn’t supposed to.

Thanatos repeated his question, waiting patiently for the goddess to either accept his challenge or withdraw her own.

“I said you’re nothing, Thanatos! Release me—let me go. I swear I’ll have my father come down here, and blast you into so many pieces—.” She tried to break his hold, but only ended up wearing herself out.

Taking her chin between his fingers, he lifted her head and fixed her with a deadly glare.

“I don’t ever want to hear you talking about my family again—.”

“You can’t order me around! I outrank you!”

“They call me the Bringer of Death, Appy,” he said softly, using the nickname she’d hated from the moment she hit puberty, and had turned into the spoiled goddess before him. “Would you like to find out why?”

She did not move for a long while, but her eyes flashed with anger and humiliation. Thanatos repeated his question. A defiant shake of her head was his answer.

“Good,” he said as if he’d just finished scolding a child. The amount of times that he’d gone through similar scenarios with Aphrodite had made her childlike in his eyes centuries ago. “Now, go back to Mount Olympus, and be the good wife that your husband thinks you are.”

Her lips tightened at the mention of Hephaestus, who despite his lameness, was a decent god and did not deserve to be saddled with a whiny, unappreciative witch of a wife. Why Hephaestus still claimed her, Thanatos could only guess, and even then he came up with little. Aphrodite had a pretty face and form, but she was a shrew. Her father was king of the gods, but she was disloyal. He decided Hephaestus was either very patient and loved his wife, or incredibly stupid.

 Moving to the other side of the room, Thanatos closed his eyes, put all thoughts of Aphrodite from his mind and searched them out. Like pinpricks across his skin, he could feel them. The dying, the dead. Their souls were still in their respective realms, waiting for him. When humans died, their souls remained  anchored to their bodies until he released them. The immortals, children or creations of the gods, were different. Their souls left their bodies instantly and were transported to Realm of the Dead in Tartarus. It was his job to escort both to their respective places of rest; the Elysian Fields for the good and Pits of Hades for those who had committed enough wrongs to end up there.

Thanatos felt his body grow weightless like air, and then he was travelling. Death would be collecting tonight, as he always did.

                                      ***

He delivered the souls as he’d done countless times over, taking the sad, weeping and sometimes relieved across the river Styxx, and leaving them to Hades, god of the underworld and overseer of the Pits and the Fields. Despite his status as an Olympian, Hades seemed to fit more with the dark gods, and unlike most of his kin, Thanatos did not despise him. Outside of the souls he delivered to the god, they hardly saw each other. Hades spent his time in his own domain with his wife, Persephone, when she was actually there, while Thanatos spent his becoming better acquainted with  handmaidens and goddesses, and bringing souls to the underworld. Exhausted, he returned to his bedchambers, stripped out of his clothing, and drifted to sleep.

Thanatos awoke to the sound of someone approaching. His body was instantly alert, his powers singing under his skin as he  prepared  for an attack. One never knew when it was coming, especially with the reigning Olympians.

Instead of an attacker, a luscious dark haired beauty with large eyes, and even larger breasts—he noted the breasts first—wearing a loose, cream gown with a slight slit that bared toned arms and calves, and holding a straw basket, moved to stand just inside his bedchamber. Mentally he undressed her, wondering if she was handmaiden or demi-god? While handmaidens were mostly the children of Gods and humans—
druids
was the name given to those who remained in the human world—demi-gods were purebred but with lesser powers than the other gods.

“Who are you?” His voice was low, a seductive purr, used whenever he intended to make another conquest. Before the night was out, she would be crying, screaming or moaning his name. Perhaps all three.

“Prescipita, my lord. I have come to bathe you.” Her voice was husky, and there was no mistaking the way her breasts rose and fell quickly with each pull of air into her lungs. Centuries of practice had given him the ability to read women as easily as he took souls. Instinct told him Prescipita would be wet to his touch if he undressed her.

But she’d said she was there to bathe him? Thanatos smirked. He’d been bathing himself for centuries without mishap.

As her gaze drifted down his sheet-covered body, he grinned. The things handmaidens said when they obviously meant come to fuck his brains out or have their brains fucked out. Whichever way, he enjoyed. Sex was a sport at which he excelled. Some,
most
, might even say he’d perfected it.

“You’re a handmaiden?”

“Yes, my lord.” She edged closer, until she was near his bed. Thanatos always slept in the nude, and he knew the moment her eyes found his cock under the thin, now tented sheet. Tartarus was one stable temper, warm, so there was no need for thicker covers.

Prescipita cleared her throat, and licked at her pink lips. She had thin lips, and while he preferred fuller, they suited her face.

“Are you really here to bathe me, handmaiden?” he asked in a tone rank with seductive innuendo. A light blushed stained cheeks almost the color of the gown that robed her, and she lowered her eyes coyly. Thanatos might have laughed at her attempt at innocence, because the handmaiden before him certainly was not.

“I want to ease you, my lord.”

That was better, closer to honesty than the last statement. 

He smiled and used his powers to toss the sheet from the bed, revealing his nakedness to her. Her eyes were drawn to his length, and she stared at it in wide-eyed fascination until he drew her down, and showed her just why he was rumored to be the best lover on both Mount Olympus and Tartarus. As he slaked his lust, Thanatos forgot to query exactly how she’d entered his domain.

***

“I demand retribution!”

The voice to which he awoke was definitely not the soft, urgent one of the pretty handmaiden. Thanatos rolled onto his back, and blinked in shock when his lids open to reveal a horde of deities in his room. By the Gods, had someone died?

A stoic Nyx stood next to cool Erebos on one side of the room, while Hera and Zeus seemed to be arguing at the other. In the background, he could see Hypnos, his twin, and his older brother, Moros, shaking their heads at each other, and then him.

“What is going on here?” he immediately demanded. What the hell were they all doing in his domain? And without invitation too? Especially Hera and Zeus. 

Hera came forward, her champagne colored hair blowing about her sharply elegant face as if foreshadowing her fury. “You have taken one of my sacred handmaidens!”

Blinking, Thanatos remembered Rachel and Prescipita, neither of which were sacred as none were virgins. He avoided sacred handmaidens like the plague, especially when their mistresses were goddesses with tempers as foul as Hera’s, who at times made Aphrodite seem nice.

“I have not—.”

“Then what is this?” Hera demanded, holding her hand over a spot and pointing to something on his sheets. Thanatos recoiled in horror. A portion of his black sheets had turned white and stark in the middle was a red stain! Blood? On his sheets? 

He shook his head. No. He would remember if he’d bedded a virgin. It wasn’t as if he made it a habit to go around deflowering maidens! Hell, he was Death. An innocent wouldn’t satisfy him the way a trained lover could.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered lamely. Maybe she’d cut herself? Maybe she’d cut him? Even as those thoughts entered his mind, they fled. Thanatos was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. If either had been cut, he would have known. He hadn’t felt her pain once.

“Prescipita!” Hera called, clapping pearl colored hands together. The handmaiden appeared, this time dressed in a black gown that covered almost every portion of her body. Immediately, she kneeled before her goddess, bowing her head. “Who was the foul beast who deflowered you?”

Thanatos watched in growing anger as Prescipita lifted a slim arm and pointed to him.

“I did not—.” He had not been drunk, only tired. He would have remembered.

“Did you tell him that you were mine? That you were not to be touched?” Hera’s voice cut in. Her eyes were like daggers, punching holes through his body with their fury.

“Yes, goddess.” Prescipita sounded pitiful, and the tears building in her reddened eyes were certainly convincing. “He took me anyway.”

“This is madness,” Thanatos yelled, pushing from the bed and approaching both Hera and the lying strumpet on the ground. “If she is your sacred handmaiden, then she was touched by another long before coming to my bed.”

“You dare accuse my handmaiden of impurity?” Hera raged, taking a step forward, her hand poised as if to strike. Heat blasted him, and Thanatos knew Hera was calling her powers. He was doing the same when from the corner of his  eye, Thanatos saw his mother move forward. Without question, Erebos did the same. He didn’t need to look to see that Hypnos and Moros do the same. Despite their differences, his family always stood together. Their loyalties to the ruling gods might waver, but never the allegiance they gave each other.

 Zeus, feeling the tension was about to give way to something extreme, put a restraining hand on his wife.  

“I want him punished!” Hera exclaimed, green eyes flashing fire. “Kill him! Or maim him!” She looked down to his shaft and Thanatos crossed his arms over his chest, defiance clinging to his body as he glared at her. He should cover himself but he would be damned if he let Hera feel as if she was intimidating him in his own domain! There was no way he’d allow her to maim him. She would have to kill him, and probably his entire family, first.