He catches me in his arms, saying nothing. I’m laughing too hard to do anything about it, swallowing the sound, putting my knuckles to my lips to keep it in. Better to let him think I’m crying. At least he likes that.
I like how it feels to be carried by him. Everything else is in terrible motion, but he’s steady.
A door opens on a draft of air, and a spike of panic drives deep into my mind. The bedroom, the bedroom. I land on the bed—a firm mattress, I’ve always wished for a firm mattress—and try to catch sight of him in the dim light coming in at an angle from the rest of the train car.
“What now? Is it time to pay more of my debt?”
Hades laughs. “You’re so noble, Persephone. But I don’t want noble from you.”
“What do you want?” My lips are numb, useless, my eyelids heavier by the second. I reach for a pillow, tug it down under my cheek. Let him stop me. Let him do whatever he’s going to do.
“Hmmm.” He’s above me, beside me, everywhere. “I want you to cry. I want you to beg. I want to watch your face go red with the shame you’ll carry all your life.”
“I’ve done all that.” My own voice sounds far away.
“You’ll understand soon enough.”
“I want to understand now.”
He leans close. “You’ll beg, because you want it.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.”
“You will. Now go to sleep. I’m done with you for tonight.”
8
Hades
Giving in to urges comes with a certain amount of pleasure, but nothing compares to denial. Denial of the body. Denial of the soul. Persephone is going to destroy what’s left of my soul. I have no doubt.
I thought there was nothing left, nowhere more depraved and wasted to go.
Yet here we are.
The train hurtles through the night. Persephone makes no move from the bed. After a minute her breathing turns soft and even. She must know how defenseless she is, falling asleep here. She must also know it doesn’t matter. Persephone could have all the defenses in the world, and I’d still get to her.
Everything is different now. Every fucking thing.
I hold out a hand to shake her awake and hesitate. She is a tumble of curls and linen. Pink-cheeked from what I did to her. Soft and warm.
There’s no need to rush this, other than the insistent throb between my legs.
I made it clear I could kill her. She knows it down to her bones. What I know is that I never will. Even if it would snap the tension winding through my ribs. Her heartbeat matters too much to me now.
I could break her now. Reduce her to a little puddle of a woman. I have the skills to do it. But I won’t. I can’t.
She’d be alive, but not really living.
Denying myself her body is like wrapping my cock in barbed wire. I’m not into that, but I can’t resist waiting. She wants me to get on with it so badly. I could, but I’d lose all those delicious tears, and the begging, and the way she fights so hard not to cry.
If I break her now, all those tears will dry up. It would be such a pity.
I run my hands over my mouth and listen to her breathe. The shadows in here are far more tolerable than the lamp I left on outside. It almost seems plausible to lie down next to her and drift away.
Almost, but not quite.
I am more practiced in denial than most people I know, including and especially my brother Zeus.
Zeus, who owns the city’s most upscale and notorious brothel. He’s taken our father’s place at the helm—or, as Zeus prefers, at the center of its largest room, where he can hold court like a fucked-up king. He loves to toy with people. All the factions in the city jostle for his attention. I know why they bother. He knows everyone’s business. He keeps their secrets. Takes their money. Sells them women.
I go back out into the main section of the train car, turning that over in my mind. Surely Zeus knows about Demeter’s daughter. Surely he’s seen her or knows what she looks like. I have no explanation for why he hasn’t tried to use Persephone to his advantage. He must need Demeter more than I assumed.
My lips curl into a snarl. There’s nothing I loathe more than needing something from someone else. I’ve devoted my life to exorcising every possible weakness, save the one I can’t cut out.
I wave a hand over the light and it turns off, plunging the train car into darkness. That’s better. I let myself sit heavily on the couch and press at my chest, trying to get that odd, painful sensation to go away.
It’s not a heart attack. Deeper than that. Maybe an overabundance of lust. Or perhaps it’s extra adrenaline, held back from when I almost killed that fucker but denied myself the pleasure. If I’m honest in the privacy of my own mind, I’m glad I didn’t kill him tonight. I hate the humanity of that gladness. It exists nonetheless.
Should I turn the train around? I consider the question instead of assessing adrenaline-soaked emotions. I taste the sweetness of giving in to what I want and imagine every detail of what it would be like. The way the train would slow, the tracks rearranging themselves in front of us. Most people know there are provisions to change direction. It can be done in an emergency. It would be well within my rights. I own it from start to finish. A tenuous agreement with Zeus keeps it running smoothly through his city. It would throw off his timetables, which would be delightful.
No. It’s too simple a taste for me, that sweetness. I won’t turn the train around. I’ll let myself want Persephone while we go through the city and back into the dark, let it scratch at my skin, let my cock pulse against my pants.
I’ll let myself suffer while she sleeps.
The communications unit pings on my desk. It’s built to blend in with the surface and can generate secure lines, if I needed them. Its most convenient feature is its connection with my head of security, even when the train loses access to wi-fi.
“Answer,” I tell it. Conor comes over and puts his head on my knee. I absently rub behind his ears. He whines a little, tensing. “I’m fine. Settle down.”
My dog believes me for the moment. Conor has been with me for ten years. For a decade, I’ve kept him safe and well—not that I place a high priority on saving anyone or anything. It’s almost always a pointless expenditure of valuable resources. My brother Zeus has a fetish for pointless expenditures. I hold a special well of hatred for him in my heart. The fucker wouldn’t know what to do with a good dog if it bit him, which a good dog would.
I’ve tried not to become attached to Conor. He’s only a dog, but he’s good at what he does. He keeps me from wasting energy when it matters. And he has the virtue of being mine. He huffs, letting his head rest against me.
The call connects.
“Mr. Hades, Callahan here.”
I hired Oliver Callahan almost directly off the streets, where he’d been living until the moment he decided to hitch a ride on the train and come raid the mountain. Never mind the audacity of attempting to perform petty theft in a fortress guarded by private security and by me—the motherfucker watched as the tracks split to send the train car into my seldom-used private entrance, let himself get three electric shocks, and balanced on one of the connectors until he could get inside. I wasn’t the one who gave him the long scar down his face. He survived that and the electric shocks. Anyone with that kind of willpower is best kept loyal to me.