Styxx (Dark-Hunter 22)

Epithymia swallowed. "What was I supposed to do? You heard the girls when they spoke. They proclaimed him to be the death of us all."

"And you thought the humans would kill him in their efforts to possess him?"

A tear slid down Epithymia's cheek. "I was only trying to protect all of us."

"He was your nephew," Apollymi spat.

"I know and I'm sorry."

Not as sorry as she was going to be.

Apollymi curled her lip. "So am I. I'm sorry I ever trusted you with the one thing you knew I loved above all others. You ungrateful bitch. I hope your actions haunt you into eternity."

She blasted her sister.

"What have you done?"

Apollymi turned at the sound of Symfora's question. She sent the force of her winds to knock both Symfora and her daughter back into the foyer. She flashed herself outside to stalk them like the predator she was. "What did you do? You hunted my son! And you killed him. All of you!"

"We didn't kill him. He still lives."

Apollymi shook her head. "He was slaughtered this morning by the Greek god you invited into my lands."

Symfora's eyes widened in terror. "I never welcomed Apollo here. That was a decision made by you and Archon."

"Shut up!" Apollymi blasted her for speaking a truth that speared her with guilt.

Bethany pulled every bit of power she could from her mother and from her Egyptian blood as she faced the older, primal goddess.

Apollymi hesitated as she realized Bethany was pregnant.

"I did not incarcerate you or hunt your son, Apollymi. You know this. The one time I thought I'd stumbled upon him, I came to you with that information and not the others. I never breathed a word to them against either of you." Tears choked her. "You know it's true. I came here today to leave this pantheon forever so that I could have my own baby in peace. Please, do not do to me what I did not do to you."

Apollymi hesitated. No matter how much she wanted Bet'anya's blood, she couldn't kill another innocent baby. Not when she understood how much it hurt to lose one. "Who among the gods is the father?"

"The father's mortal. Human."

Human. There was something Apollymi would have never suspected from a goddess she knew hated humans even more than Apollymi did. "His name?"

"Styxx of Didymos."

Uncontrolled fury consumed her. Of all the mortals, that was not the name to give her. Not after she'd seen through her son's own eyes the life he'd lived and what had been done to him because of Styxx.

Bethany held her breath as she saw Apollymi's eyes turn from silver to red. "Please, Apollymi ... don't hurt me. My baby's innocent."

"So. Was. Mine!" The goddess lunged at her then and ripped Bethany's son out of her.

Bethany staggered back as unmitigated pain tore through her. Gasping, she stared at her unmoving son in Apollymi's cruel hand. The very image of his father, he was so tiny and defenseless ...

And far too young to survive on his own.

Blinded by tears, she reached to touch him. Just once.

The older goddess blasted her back then everything went completely dark.

* * *

Styxx stood on the human side of the River Acheron in the Underworld, watching as Charon took Ryssa and Apollodorus across to their final resting place in the Elysian Fields. Unable to speak as shades, he'd tried his best to get her attention. But she'd refused him even in death.

She wouldn't even look at him.

Alone now, he wandered along the banks, hoping that his father would soon place an obolos coin in the mouth of his corpse so that he could pay to cross, too. Otherwise, he'd be damned to wander the banks here as a dismal shade, trapped between this world and the human one.

And as long as he was on this side, he wouldn't be able to drink from the Lethe and forget the pain of having lost Bethany and his son. He wouldn't be able to take his place with Galen and all the others who'd fought under his banner and died for Didymos.

He glanced back as Charon's skiff holding Ryssa and Apollodorus vanished into the mists. His father had given them coins. Was it possible that his father had intentionally withheld his as a final punishment?

Surely not even his father would be so cold.

Who are you kidding? Of course he would. It'd been Styxx's fault that his sister and nephew had died. Like Acheron, he'd been too drunk and high to help them.

This is the best I deserve. But what hurt most was the knowledge that Bethany would never join him here. She would go to Anubis when she died. Most likely his son would, too.

So here he would stay, alone, unable to forget them, with the knowledge that even in the end, his father hadn't cared enough to tend his corpse.

Styxx was so cold his hands shook, but there was no way to warm himself. So he sat down to wait and to hope. But as more time passed and more and more people were ferried across, he had no choice except to accept the fact that he would never cross over.

And he would never forget.

June 25, 9527 BC

Mount Olympus

Thin and small in stature with dark hair and eyes, Hermes flew through the hall of the gods until he stood before his father, Zeus. Hermes wasn't sure what was going on here, but most of the gods were gathered and lounging about as if the world was not about to end.

They ignored Hermes until he spoke. "You know the saying, don't kill the messenger? Hold that thought, really, really close to your hearts."

Zeus scowled at him as he stood up from the chair where he'd been playing chess with Poseidon. Dressed in a flowing white stola and chlamys, Zeus had short blond hair and vividly blue eyes. "What's going on?"

Hermes gestured toward the wall of windows that looked down onto the human realm. "Have any of you taken a look out at Greece in the last, say, hour or so?"

Sitting at a banquet table with Aphrodite, Athena, and Artemis, Apollo rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively at Hermes's panic. "What? Are they reacting to the fact I cursed the Apollites for murdering my mistress and son? It's none of their business."

Hermes shook his head in a gesture of sarcastic denial. "I don't think that bothers them nearly as much as the fact that the island of Atlantis is now gone and the Atlantean goddess Apollymi is cutting a swathe through our country, laying waste to everyone and everything that she comes into contact with."

The messenger god turned a smug look to Apollo. "And in case you're curious, she's headed straight for us, screaming your name. I could be really wrong here, but I'm guessing the goddess of destruction is extremely pissed ... at you."

Apollo gaped at that disclosure. Why should Apollymi be gunning for him?

Zeus turned on Apollo. "What have you done?"

Sputtering, Apollo blanched. "I cursed my people, not hers. I didn't do anything to the Atlanteans, Papa. Unless their blood was mixed with my Apollites, they were unharmed by my curse. This is not my fault."

Suddenly, he had a bad feeling as he faced his twin sister who sat across from him.

Artemis covered her mouth as she realized what pantheon Acheron must have belonged to. While she'd known he'd received god powers on his twenty-first birthday, she'd had no idea where they'd come from.

Terrified of what she and Apollo had unknowingly set into motion, she left the hall while the gods prepared for war, and went to her temple so that she could think through this without their angry shouts in her ears.

"What can I do?" She had absolutely no idea.

Just as Artemis was about to summon her koris to her, the three Fates appeared in her room. As triplets in the height of youthful beauty, their faces were perfect duplicates of each other. But that was the only thing they shared. The eldest, Atropos, had red hair, while Clotho was blond and the youngest, Lachesis, had dark hair. Daughters of the goddess of justice, no one was sure who their father was, but many suspected Zeus.