Chapter Seventeen

I was miserable. For days—I lost track of how many—Gregory and Alex fetched me from my room or my kitchen or wherever in the jail cell of an apartment I was waiting. My schedule was all train, shower, sleep, repeat since I stormed out of my heart to heart with Hector.

Alex, my savior, had been waiting for me at the portal, as if she knew that meeting wouldn't go well. Gregory didn't show his face until the next day but when he got down to business, he was ruthless. They hardly let me sleep in between trainings, which wasn't getting any easier in that strange place thanks in no small part to the looming unknown deadline. Lucky for me I had a handy-dandy lamia with super weird mind control and the ability to make people take naps.

Not that I was grateful to him for it. On the bright side he hadn't tried to mind control me into doing anything nefarious. Yet.

I avoided thinking about Hector almost as fervently as I avoided seeing him. It was easier than avoiding my mother: Hector stayed out of my room if I yelled at him to stay out, which I may have done when we returned from his dungeon. Hector left me alone when I demanded it. Mom would give me five minutes and then knock softly on the door in an attempt to talk it out, as if all I needed were a few spare moments to collect myself and then I could be an adult again and stop throwing whatever was in reach at her.

Or was I confusing her with Jasper, who kept trying to feed me, who never offered to talk but constantly told me to grow up? Maybe Mom hadn't tried; I wasn't altogether sure. After Jasper had so quickly bent my will to his, I spent as much time as possible out of earshot. With no information about the extent of his freaky mind control abilities, not to mention his creepy I-eat-children deal, I wanted as much space between us as humanly possible.

Though the evidence of his presence stood out too plainly to dispute. Jasper left those plastic-wrapped bars everywhere I was sure to see them: next to the sink, on the bed, stacked up on the kitchen counter. I don't remember when I started eating them. Maybe day three or four—it was hard to tell. They tasted like chocolate covered cardboard.

Jasper made sure to replenish the stash daily. He was not thanked or acknowledged for his efforts.

Hector didn't visit at all after our conversation. Before practically running away from his study, I rudely told him to take his war and shove it somewhere unpretty. Every the masochist, I had visions of Hector telling his good friend Lindsay about the look on my face when he answered that there was nothing special about me. I had to force myself not to think about where they were, if they were together, whether or not she had learned to dress herself in real clothes.

I didn't bother wondering if Hector was feeling better. I really didn't want to know if Lindsay was helping him regain his energy they way she had in the dungeon or if she was nursing him back to health in other ways. Or what was wrong with him in the first place. He had seemed so drained when he came to see me after Jasper put me to bed and the only thing that perked him up had been Lindsay and her magic healing lips.

I didn't want to know if she was with him when she should have been training me. I certainly wasn't worried about his ability to feed on the realm's energy. Not even a little. I swear.

Thinking about him had me distracted. Unfortunately for me, Hector wasn't the only one with energy deficiency in the Underworld and all of Jasper's attempts at keeping me healthy didn't seem to be helping any. The difference was that Hector definitely wasn't getting his ass handed to him daily by some hot guy with an attitude.

Clear evidence that I had been hit in the head too many times: I thought Gregory was hot. A nerd with muscles, the kind of guy who got more attractive when he took his glasses off; he had serious Clark Kent potential.

To remind me to focus Gregory forced me to be on the defensive. I threw up my arms to stop a well-aimed kick from hitting my face. He never told me what exactly he was, but I was sure Gregory was not human. He jumped too high to be human.

"You'll feel better if you actually do something, Autumn. Don't just block me, strike back. I promise if you land one good hit we'll take a break." His condescending words taunted me. He had hit the ground with grace, spinning away from my block and too far away to strangle. I growled.

So not in the mood.

"What's wrong with Hector?" I demanded, a well-aimed jab missing Gregory's nose by a mile.

"Wrong with him? Nothing. Unless you count his all-too-human body that calls for the necessity of the missing Nectar which we may never get to him in time. Without the elixir he will die and we may not be so lucky in the next replacement."

"Lucky?"

Gregory stopped a blow inches from my throat, chastisement in his gaze. "We have been lucky that this Hades wants Hades, the Underworld, to thrive and is not a homicidal maniac bent on world domination. A few of those reside in the pits of Tartarus and they would make poor gods."

Alex, on my other side, instructed me to get my head in the game and start focusing on the attack. If this was a battle, I would have been dead before it started, blah, blah, blah. If I had been paying more attention to what was happening in front of me and less attention to Hector's well-being, I could have blocked Gregory's incoming fist. Maybe.

It caught me in the kidney, not hard enough to be painful, but close enough, and I forgot all about Hector's god-style. Gregory had an incredible control over his fists. Then his hand grabbed my left calf and yanked it out from under me, in a gentle, not-hot, big-brother way. There went the budding attraction I'd developed as a result of repeated head trauma. I hit the mat and my ass screamed as the sting of the fall vibrated through my body.

Pain is a great motivator.

Just get up. Get up!

"Stay down, Autumn." I obeyed Gregory's order this time; the floor was my friend. The floor didn't hit me or knock me down. "Take five and we'll start over—your human body is weary and I can see it in your movements. There has to be a better way to bring out the Fury in you but violence has been the only trigger, historically." Gregory left me on the padded floor in favor of a rapier from the closet in the wall. The blade trusted and jabbed in quick combinations.

Don't you ever stop fighting?

"Has anybody ever told you that you talk too much?" I asked sarcastically from the floor. "I think that's the most you've ever spoken to me at one time. Are we bonding today?"

"Gregory doesn't do bonding—he does standoffish, brooding, controlled anger, and sulky. But no bonding. You should have seen him with the other..." Alex's sentence trailed off. The look in her eyes betrayed her relaxed stance: she said something she shouldn't have.

Other what? I stood slowly, not attracting attention to myself.

Gregory's deep tone sounded even deeper with the controlled anger Alex joked about. "Alex, you have a mouth too big for your brain. You'd think by now that you would have learned to keep it shut."

My body protested but I pushed up hard from the ground and regained my feet. I had never heard Gregory threaten her before. For a long time I thought they might be a brother-sister wonder twin team. Though he may have cared for her I watched his face change from concentrated to deadly. He could have killed her and not mourned the loss.

"Well, now that the cat's out of the bag, mind cluing me in on the rest of the secret?" I positioned myself between them, just in case they decided to rip into each other. For the big-picture war I needed them to train me; I couldn't let their struggle turn into a bloodbath.

"No," Gregory ground out pointedly at the same time Alex blurted, "Furies."

"If you're referring to the other Furies who were passed over for the job, I already know about them. Well, sort of." I thought about Lindsay. She was another Fury, she had once thought to lead the army of Hades into war, and now I was in her place. But I didn't know why she wasn't the one in my place now when she could clearly handle the job requirements.

"What happened to them?" My voice was small. I felt small. One of many, just a number, the last in a long line of Furies. Gregory and Alex continued to stare each other down. If looks could kill...

I repeated my question, louder this time. Alex broke eye contact with her adversary first, loosing the battle. Through all of her displays of bravado, of badassness, I had figured Alex for the more dominant of the pair.

I obviously didn't know Gregory very well.

When Alex spoke, her words did not betray any fear or worry. In typical Alex fashion, she said, "Of course you're not the only one—why would you think that? There were two others. The first one became too emotionally attached. And a little mentally detached, too. I think the Fury inside her drove her mad when it tried to manifest and her little human body couldn't take it." Alex smiled a sad smile. I got the feeling that she had liked these other Furies before they'd all gone away. "Tore her apart trying to get out, literally.

"And then there was Lindsay. She gave Hector everything he wanted in a Fury who would lead his army—but she was a bitch and he locked her out. Not for being a bitch; something happened to piss him off and she ended up underground."

Why Alex, aren't you just a fount of knowledge. "Why does everyone keep talking about the Fury manifesting? I thought I was the Fury."

A concentrated blow came flying from the left, low and powerful and aimed for my solar plexus. I jumped backwards narrowly avoiding impact. " The gods and other such important beings of old never really die. So while you are a Fury by blood and have power beyond your imagining, reincarnation of the big three Furies is like the second coming of Christ to Christianity. Looks like in this generation you are the only one to neither manifest strength nor reincarnate." Without missing a beat Alex kept hurtling punches at my body.

Fine, if you want to fight while we talk, let's do it. I snapped my leg out and caught her outstretched fist with my shin.

"So what is it, am I powerless or is Hector waiting for me to turn into some ancient hag?" I landed on Alex's shoulder, ducked beneath her oncoming elbow, and snatched a broad sword from the floor. The hilt fit comfortably in my fist and I beckoned her forward with a smile.

"Shut up, Alex," Gregory hissed. "Story time is over."

But it was just getting started! "No, I think there's more to it. What don't you want me to know, Greg?" I turned the sword towards him, daring them both to come get me.

Too late I realized what I'd done. The man in front of me grew, his skin rippling to reveal the layered chinks of scales that the light bounced off of. Gregory's eyes turned to slits in his head. His tongue flicked out of a mouth not-quite human any longer—his lips grew thinner and spread out further across his face.

"Blood of Harpy is poison to taste but her sister Fury is sweet on the tongue. Quiet yours or meet mine." His voice slithered around the room, filling up the space with drawn out s's, his threat concise and controlled. "Gregory. This is your final warning, Fury. The Lord of the Underworld has a tenuous hold over me and should you forget again I will not hesitate to disobey him."

In one disgusting second, Gregory's body collapsed in on itself. Once again his flesh looked soft and pliable, his eyes no longer reptilian.

"We tease you day in and day out and that is what you latch on to? You are becoming too human, you old snake." Alex rolled her eyes and Gregory almost smirked at her. I think he wanted to but was trying to maintain his frightening façade.

Since I'd met the pair I had never seen them more relaxed. Gone was the tension from Alex, who had apparently been thoroughly reprimanded for her loose lips. They were back on the same team—the kind of team built from years of friendship and mutual respect. Crisis averted.

"So you guys are friends again?" I inquired before I could stop myself. Gregory scared me but my mouth had a mind of its own and a tendency to speak without clearing it with my brain first. "All is well and we can get back to the story?"

"There is no more to the story, Autumn. No Nectar, impending war, Fury try-outs. Furies are crazy and strong and some times reincarnated into a younger, more supple generation. That's all she wrote; we can get back to training though. Your five minutes are up." His voice sounded the same but I would never look at Gregory the same again.

I couldn't help it. I asked, "What are you?"

"He's a dragon. Don't worry; he doesn't have enough magic any more to be able to swallow you whole. The years have not been kind to you, have they old man?" Alex looked fondly at Gregory. "He'd have to cut you up into little pieces so he doesn't choke when he tries to ingest you with his gummy, toothless mouth. He's generally harmless these days... Unless you call him Greg."