I will.
“You left.” Her voice is a cousin to excusing but her eyes have gone wide with anxiety. “What’s happening? Did they get inside?”
Persephone, saying this last bit to Oliver like she has every right to demand things of the head of security. She does have that right. I didn’t expect her to step into it this fully, but apparently she thrives under desperate situations. I’d rather see her desperate and writhing in my bed instead of standing here in the harsh light of the factory floor. I’ll deny myself that if it means keeping the mountain intact.
The mountain. My people. Persephone.
They’re the ones I have to keep in focus now and not the coiling, shredding pain already looking for ways to burrow into my brain and seed itself there until I’m a useless wreck.
Oliver’s right.
“We’re going to let them in.”
Persephone’s mouth drops open. “No.”
“Yes.” I take one step toward her to remind her where she is. I shove away the desperate urge to agree with her, to sweep her up in my arms and get her the fuck out of here, to hell with all these other people.
She stands her ground. “You can’t do that.” Her whisper dissolves into the air around us. “You could die. We could all die.”
The possibility of it settles around all the people in the room, men shifting their weight from side to side. Persephone has no idea how close we’ve come to that reality. Death crowds in like the sun finding its way through a crack in the wall. You can cover your face with your hands but it will still light up the blood vessels and work its way through.
“Open the door.”
Oliver moves without hesitation, but so does Persephone. I put an arm out and she runs into it, all the air going out of her. “Please,” she gasps. “Don’t do this. Oliver—”
He’s been with me longer than he’s been with her, and his stride doesn’t falter. All the way into the big, carved-out tunnel that leads to the mine. And all the way to the thick gates just beyond the line of shadow. There’s the unmistakable metallic click of a key in a lock, and then Oliver comes back out, his gun in his hands and the safety off. “Should I go in and meet them?”
A suicide mission. “No. We’ll wait here.” Let Zeus and his men exhaust themselves trying to feel their way through the pitch-dark mines.
It doesn’t take as long as I’d hoped.
They’re motivated. He’s paid them well.
But I’ve paid my people, too, and they line themselves up at the back of the factory.
Energy surges, lighting up my veins from my heart to my fingertips, and for the first time in hours I see this clearly. They can’t fucking stand there. If anyone’s going to meet my brother, it’s going to be me.
I take Persephone by the arm and push her toward Oliver. “Get her out of here.”
“No,” she shouts, voice sharp. “I’m not going.”
“You are, and so is everybody else. Back up.” The footsteps haven’t stopped coming. They will never stop coming. Conor barks by my side, his only warning. “Get back. I’m not fucking kidding. At least three tables back—”
I’ve paid them better than Zeus would dream of, and they’ve got more binding contracts, which is how I end up in front of everyone else just as the first enemies arrive out of the shadows.
They’re barely into the light before they start shooting and all I have is this fucking pistol.
Two of them go down, a hail of bullets in both directions, and it’s only then that everyone, all at once, recognizes the absurdity of shooting guns in the fucking factory. Any stray bullet will ricochet and we’ll all end up dead. Four of them down. I don’t miss. Five. Six. The gap between us and them closes. Between me and the rest of these people, who my brother has hired as killers. They all have the same focused, haunted look in their eyes that Zeus used to wear when he was younger, before he learned to hide it.
People with nothing to lose.
One of them knocks the pistol from my hand and it’s gone, underneath one of the work tables.
There’s a certain pleasure in violence.
In the crack of a cheekbone against knuckle. The give of a nose against the heel of a hand. The snap of a neck. Some of them have worn bulletproof vests but they were planning on shooting their way through, not dragging me down. Someone is screaming no, no, no. Oliver hasn’t managed to get her out then.
The facts:
There are too many people. Too many hands to crush. Too many punches to block. Too many blows to absorb. At some point, they’ve decided to come for me. Zeus told them not to bother with anyone else, and they’re following his orders.
My men are following mine.
If Oliver is smart, he’ll have told them that they need to stay back so that they can put themselves between these fucks and the rest of the people in the mountain. They’re doing their best to pick them off from the doorway, but they’re outnumbered. I keep a lean force. I don’t need a team of hundreds.
I didn’t need that, until now.
There are too many people, and it’s too fucking bright. The blood becomes a haze. One of my feet slips in it, and it’s enough for them to get hold of one arm. It takes three of them and Conor isn’t having it. But he can only sink his teeth into so much flesh.
I’ve been here before. More than once. I was weaker then, but I’m still not strong enough now for ten of them.
Twelve of them.
Conor howls in my ear and a splitting pain almost takes me to my knees. Almost. I get a wrist free and send a man into the sharp corner of a work table, every sound magnified, up to the ceiling and back again. I’ve never been so bruised in my life, so utterly fucked up, and yet my heart beats with wild rage. I won’t stop until she’s safe or I’m dead.
“Enough, enough,” someone says. “Leave some for me.”
3
Persephone
My voice is hoarse by the time Zeus steps out from the cavern leading to the factory floor, fresh and clean. He’s had a haircut, which has had the effect of making his hair several shades lighter somehow, and he walks onto the floor with his hands loosely in his pockets and a big grin on his face. As if he’s not walking into the one place he’s not supposed to be. He could be hosting a party here. Sick rage tightens my hands into fists—pointlessly, because Oliver has braced himself against one of the tables and locked his arms around my waist. I’d fight him harder but I can’t turn away to use my fingernails against his face. I can’t stop watching for an instant, not when Hades is bleeding.
Bleeding.
Like any other man would.
Blood and bruises, everywhere I can see. Someone has torn his shirt. The tear in the fabric is as shocking as the tears in his skin. I’ve never seen him like this and I’m not supposed to see him like this. There’s no comparison. I thought I knew fear before this. I thought I knew what it meant to have the breath squeezed out of my lungs in an iron vise. I didn’t know anything. Conor has his body pressed tight to Hades's knee. It’s hard to say which one of them is trembling but it has to be Conor, because Hades wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
I kick at Oliver’s shin and he doesn’t flinch. “You can’t go near them.”