Changing the Future

Chapter 66

I sliced through more dead bodies than most morticians would ever encounter during their entire career. It didn't help matters that whenever I chopped off an arm or knocked out a couple of teeth onto the ground, the separated body part would quiver for a moment before flying back into place, reattaching itself to its owner.

I growled in frustration as I decapitated one vrykolaka and dodged another's chain whip, narrowly avoiding getting my foot torn off. From the end of my blades, I sent tongues of fire, my frustration only growing when I realized that all I was doing was expending my energy without any real benefits.

Maybe regular fire wouldn't work, I thought to myself, eyeing the highly flammable curtains that hung from the cave's stalactites, but another type of flame might. With one gut wrenching cry, I hopped onto one of Mellinoe's dressers and pointed my knives towards the curtains, feeling my insides tighten as the color of my flames transformed from a warm orange to lime green, quickly burning through the blood red fabric and racing down the sides of the abandoned cave.

The vrykolakas continued to chatter menacingly, but after the first few fell victim to the Greek fire, quickly being reduced to a pile of ash, the undead warriors seemed less keen to attack, especially now that I had surrounded myself in the middle of my own firenado.

"Who's next?" I yelled, goading the flames to engulf another nearby vrykolaka, his bow clattering out of his hands, burning right next to his rotting flesh and bones.

But either these vrykolakas were very brave or very stupid, because they still charged anyways, the black pits that were their eyes gleaming sadistically in the light of the Greek fire.

Knowing that I was running out of time, I moved the Greek fire off the walls of the cave and surrounded the vrykolakas in a ring of fire, bringing my hands together until there were multiple pillars of flame in front of me, each one of them chattering their teeth until they were nothing more than dust and ash underfoot.

Once I was sure the last undead warrior had been destroyed, I dropped the Greek fire, wiping away the sweat on my face with the back of my hand. My insides felt like they'd been liquefied, and my legs trembled like Jell-O, having burned through the energy that Nico had given me through his sacrifices.

The thought of Nico di Angelo hit me like a freight train. I almost fell to the ground right then and there, shocked at how soon he'd fallen into Tartarus, but I couldn't afford to wait around here any longer, not with so many of Gaea's minions around. Not to mention that I still had no idea where Bob was, something which worried me greatly.

Fumbling with my bag, I popped two squares of ambrosia into my mouth, pulled my hair back, and set off deeper into the Underworld in search of my Titan friend.

0o0o

You know, you'd think that finding a seven-foot-tall, glowing silver Titan would be easy in a place that's pretty much all different shades of black. But I felt like I was currently an extra in a Where's Waldo? book, except this Waldo was hidden among the dead.

I ran through Elysium, Asphodel, and Punishment to no avail, shouting, "Bob! Bob!" at the top of my lungs, only to have different shades curse me out in every language imaginable.

I'd even got Cerberus to try and help, giving each of his heads some of Bob's spare janitorial clothes to smell, but he only led me to as far as the entrance of the palace, where I'd last seen Bob. I sighed in frustration but still rewarded Cerberus by tossing up three red, rubber balls the size of a tractor's wheel for each of his heads, watching him excitedly chew on the toy.

I almost gave up, too, deciding that it would be better to inform Hades about what was going on than continuing to handle this by myself, but I found two familiar shades standing close to the River Styx, people who I hadn't expected to ever see again.