A grin stretched his lips, splitting a cut on his lower one.
His shadows shot forwards, a seething mass of spikes that snapped at and pierced any who lingered in their way. Keras followed behind them, sprinting towards Enyo, his gaze locked on her. He caught glimpses of her as she battled Nemesis near the gate.
A gate which shone brightly, rainbow colours chasing across its surface as he neared it.
He skidded to a halt.
“Damn it.”
If he went any closer, the gate would open. He wouldn’t get a say in it either. He could try to control it, but it would take effort, and focus, far more than he would have as he tried to battle Nemesis.
It had to be her plan. She had used her whip to snatch Enyo in order to draw him to the gate. He cursed again, spitting the foulest one he knew in the language of the Underworld. This wasn’t good.
He blocked the blade that came flying at him, deflecting it with his vambrace and ducking left, leaning to avoid being cut by it. Another male thrust a dagger at him, and Keras bared his fangs and hit him with his shadows. The thin tendrils pierced his chest and came out the other side, wrapped around him and dragged him down.
Strength flowed through Keras as his shadows devoured the traitor.
Some of these Hellspawn were strong.
If he could kill enough of them and feed them to his shadows, he might be strong enough to control the gate and fight Nemesis at the same time.
It was a good plan. The best one he had.
He turned to call out to Valen and Marek.
Heat bloomed in his shoulder.
He looked down at it, at the silver barb that protruded from it.
“Keras!” Enyo screamed.
He grunted as he shot backwards towards her, the pain in his shoulder blazing outwards as the four points at the base of the tip of Nemesis’s whip dug through his armour and into his flesh.
Not good.
If Nemesis managed to get him near the gate, it would open.
She would win.
Chapter 27
A ripe curse spilled from Nemesis as Keras’s back slammed into something.
Something solid.
A wall?
“I had expected more from the firstborn of Hades.” Thanatos’s deep voice rumbled against Keras’s back.
Relief flooded him.
Pain followed it as Thanatos grabbed the tip of Nemesis’s whip and yanked it forwards, tugging it from Keras’s shoulder. He threw his head back and unleashed an agonised bellow as fire swept through him, his mind blanking as his ears rang and his heart laboured. The pain only grew more intense as the god of death crushed the barbed tip in his gauntleted fist and grabbed the silver metal rope of the whip in his other hand.
And broke it.
Thanatos discarded the barb and released the main length of the whip.
Keras sank against Thanatos’s front, his breath sawing from his lips as he struggled against the fierce waves of fire crashing over him. Thanatos gripped his left shoulder and pushed him forwards, and bile rose up Keras’s throat as the whip slid free of his right shoulder.
“Enyo,” Keras muttered, mustering his strength and battling the pain, aware that he couldn’t afford to rest.
He had to reach Enyo.
“Taken care of. Mother is in a bad mood.” Thanatos chuckled.
It was just like the brutal god of death to laugh on the battlefield.
Keras had never fought beside the towering male before, but his father had told him stories of their battles together.
And of his battles with Nyx at his side.
He turned slowly, coming to face the seven-foot-plus wall of muscle. As always, Thanatos wore black armour only on his lower half and his forearms, leaving the heavy ropes of muscle of his torso exposed. Hades had asked the god of death about his habit of forgoing chest armour in the past, and the black-haired male had blamed his wings.
Keras had to agree with his father’s theory—Thanatos liked all on the battlefield to see his strength and not just feel it.
Amusement shone in the male’s silver eyes as he glanced at the battle, and his huge onyx feathered wings shifted as he turned slightly to block a male who swung a sword at him, the change in his position revealing the gate.
And Nyx.
The beautiful slender female fought fiercely, her navy-to-aqua eyes shining with a battle high as she worked in tandem with Enyo. Both goddesses moved as one, as if they had practiced this fight a thousand times, their silver swords cutting through the air towards Nemesis.
The scarlet-haired goddess lashed out at them with her whip, striking both of their swords, knocking them back as she inched away from them. Her blood-red sandals scraped over the loose ground, her scarlet eyes leaping between Nyx and Enyo as she readied her whip again.
The sheer layers of her black dress parted to flash her thighs as she hurled her whip forwards, her face twisting in a sneer as Enyo batted it away again and advanced.
Determination flashed in Enyo’s jade eyes, and gods, she had never looked so beautiful.
Keras tackled another male who dared to attack him and Thanatos, cutting him down as the god of death went to town on another group, his enormous black broadsword making easy work of even the stronger Hellspawn.
Together, they cut a path through the throng, heading for Nyx and Enyo.
Two of the surviving demonic males and a valkyrie joined Nemesis.
The shift in favour towards Nemesis didn’t deter either Enyo or Nyx.
Nyx’s flowing black hair lifted into the air as she gracefully spun away from the valkyrie, the silver threads in it catching the colourful light of the gate. That light chased over her alabaster skin, painting it with soft hues, and glinted off the swirls of silver-blue metal that formed a breastplate over her long black dress. The sheer layers of it split at the front, flashing her long legs as she dropped beneath the blade the valkyrie aimed at her throat.
Enyo struck that blade with her own, knocking it upwards, sending the blonde female off-balance.
A petite raven-haired female dressed in a gold and black breastplate and skirt leaped on the valkyrie’s back and drove two gold daggers into her shoulders.
Eris.
Apparently, Thanatos wasn’t the only child Nyx had brought with her into battle.
The diminutive goddess of strife was vicious as she clung to the hilt of one dagger and drew the other out of the valkyrie’s shoulder. She stabbed the female again, driving the blade into her neck this time. Blood spurted from beneath the dagger, splattering across Eris’s face and soaking into her twisted braids, turning the threads of gold in them scarlet.
Her amber eyes brightened as she struck again.
And again.
The valkyrie didn’t stand a chance.
A gold and black spear pierced her side and a high battle cry reached Keras’s ears as the one who wielded it drove forwards.
Eris scrambled up onto the valkyrie’s shoulders, gripping her wings to avoid being skewered by the deadly tip of the spear as it punched out of the female’s back.
“Watch it,” Eris snarled.
Apate just grinned at her, a wicked twinkle in her sky-blue eyes as she brushed loose auburn hair back from her face, tucking it behind the thick plait that arced up from her temple to a knot in the back of her head that held the rest of her hair in place.
That hair turned jet black, her eyes following it as her grin widened and she looked at the two male daemons now closing ranks with Nemesis. The colourful sash that hung from her waist, cinching her short black robe in, shone brightly.