14. Medusa

B enji was going to give me a heart attack. And the rest of my coven wasn't much better. I knew damned well there wasn't anything I could do to stop Cerberus from ripping Benji apart, but I was going to damn well try. Cas grabbed me and refused to let me even try. He warned me about getting in between two predators and that Benji would be just fine. He just got stupid around dogs and cats, too, despite what he said about them being degenerates.

And he was. Fucking hybrid. And after Persephone called Cerberus off and Benji broke out the treats, Cerberus really wanted to play with Benji's shadow powers. It was sweet. Benji was running ahead of us poofing everywhere so Cerberus could chase him and I'd been around that dog long enough to know he was enjoying every minute of it.

I was focusing on that and the feeling of Pax and Cas's hands in mine instead of what was eventually going to happen. Persephone was tight with them, but there was a time everyone who wasn't a god feared the furies. For good reason. They punished bad people, but every bad person had a perfectly logical explanation for what they did. Most of them didn't think they were evil.

And they didn't exactly go after all evildoers. They never punished the gods. They let them do the same things they'd drive the rest of us mad for. I never got that and Persephone couldn't exactly answer that, either. The furies liked the big mystery surrounding them.

I didn't even know if they planned on giving me any answers. If I was a fury, I certainly wasn't a very good one. I went through various stages of trauma after everything with Poseidon and Athena. Anger was one of them. I wanted them to pay. I thought up plenty of fucke—up ways to do it, but didn't act on them because they'd never work.

I certainly didn't get some new superpowers when I was raging about how I wanted them to pay. They might think I was some defective fury they couldn't be bothered with.

And I hated feeling like that. I was a survivor. I was thousands of years old and my trauma didn't kill me. I was in a pretty unique situation that I wasn't fully embracing because it was a lot of change.

I couldn't do a damned thing to Poseidon because of what he did to me. But I might actually be fated to take down the Coalition. They hurt me and I could stop them from hurting anyone else.

I needed to ovary up and face the three women that everyone was terrified of back when I was a much younger woman.

"Steer clear of the water," Hades warned. "Cerberus guards the entrance because the living kept trying to break in. First of all, this is my home, but if it wasn't some dumbass hero on a quest, it was someone trying to fetch the soul of their loved one.

"There is safe water in the Underworld, but you have to know where it is. The dead don't need to eat or drink. They do because

they like the memories. The rivers here fuck with the dead, but it eventually wears off. They do it on purpose because they think they deserve to be punished.

"The effects of the water here on the living are permanent. The rivers and what they do are well known, but people would break in unprepared and think it was an urban legend so they'd stop to drink. Or some of the shades would amuse themselves by startling them so they fell in.

"So, I'd have this conundrum. There would be the living who were too damaged to send back, and it wasn't time for them to die yet. Mental illness was unheard of back then so there was no one to care for them. So, I got a big, scary dog to cut down on that. The shades aren't going to mess with you while Persephone or I are around, but yeah, don't drink any water unless it's bottled, or it's in my house or the furies."

Hades must have given me that speech a million times until he was sure it had sunken in. If my mates came back here, he'd probably repeat it until they got it. I didn't particularly want them damaged by the rivers here. Hades was looking pretty hard at Benji, who was joyfully playing with his dog, but I didn't think it was needed.

Benji still heard him and would listen. It was just different around dogs. And Cerberus was a very good boy who knew these rivers. He was herding Benji away from them and would stop him if it looked like he wanted to go swimming.

Which I didn't think he would. Benji knew this was important.

"It's actually beautiful down here," Cas said.

It really was. Once you got past the entrance, it was gorgeous. The Underworld didn't have a sun, just twin moons, but it wasn't dark. When it would have been day time, there were phosphorescent flowers that glowed and lit things up. They were on the ground, in the trees, and growing up the walls.

It wasn't just people down here either. People were attached to their pets just like they were now. A lot of them buried them with a coin in their mouth like they would have a person so they could meet them again when they died.

Charon was a capitalist before that was even a thing. If you paid him, he took you to the entrance. That meant pets, demigods, and people who wanted to steal a shade and bring them back to life. Hades hated it, but Charon also brought Persephone and told her to mind his dog, so he forgave him.

I'd never been to the furies' house before, but I didn't even need Hades or Persephone to point it out to me in the distance. It was exactly how I pictured a house in the Underworld occupied by the three scariest women of my twenties and thirties would be, but they'd painted it purple.

The eaves were ornate and gorgeous, but painted black. There were gargoyles everywhere and all the bushes and hedges had been trimmed like Greek monsters.

"The bushes are magnificent," Benji said. "I love a good bush."

Pax elbowed Benji in the stomach.

"You might not want to bring that up in front of the furies."

Persephone laughed.

"You should. The bushes are Alecto's hobby and she's probably made more bush jokes than you can even think up."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Don't worry about the furies. They're hilarious if you didn't do anything wrong and if Medusa really is a fury, I think they'll be really excited about it. There are only three of them."

Yeah. Except I thought I was one of three Gorgons and the other two didn't really want anything to do with me. It was going to suck if I was the fourth fury and they didn't want me to be a part of their club.

Still, I hadn't lived this long being afraid to try anything. Here went nothing.