Poison Fruit

She looked mildly annoyed, but she nodded at the mercenary assisting her. “Bring her to me.”

Two mercenaries escorted me to the goddess. The rest worked industriously at unloading arms and equipment I couldn’t even begin to identify from the vehicles and setting it all up along the edge of the basin.

“What do you want, pretty Daisy?” Persephone looked me up and down. “As you can see, I’m quite busy. Also, you’re trespassing,” she added. “Though I’m willing to overlook it just the once.”

“I’ve come to beg,” I said simply.

She brightened. “Oh, well, then! Go right ahead.”

“Please don’t—”

With a faint scowl, Persephone flattened one hand, and I was driven to my knees in the sand as though struck by a pile driver. “You said you came to beg, pretty Daisy. Do so.”

A rill of anger ran through me, but I quashed it mercilessly. I’d spoken bold words to Hel about offering up my pride, and I needed to make good on them. Gazing up at Persephone, I clasped my hands together. If it was begging she wanted, it was begging she would get. “Wise and beautiful goddess, I humbly implore—”

Her scowl deepened. “Don’t make a mockery of it. Just speak from the heart, Daisy.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Daniel Dufreyne emerging from one of the vehicles, his long coat and business suit contrasting incongruously with the armor-clad mercenaries. Bowing my head, I squelched another surge of anger.

In front of me, one delicate, sandal-shod foot tapped the sand impatiently beneath the hem of a diaphanous gown. “I’m waiting.”

I looked up at Persephone’s beautiful face. “Please don’t do this,” I said. “If you claim Hel’s demesne, you’ll be destroying a place I and many others call home. The world is growing too small. For many of the eldritch, there’s nowhere left for them to go. And my lady . . . there’s a chance that you could break the skein of time if you kill the Norns. There’s a chance that you could unravel the entirety of existence. So I’m begging you, on behalf of everyone and everything that I hold dear, please, please don’t do this.”

Persephone’s expression turned thoughtful. “How badly do you desire this boon, pretty Daisy? Would you be willing to renounce Hel’s service for mine?” She stooped before me, her face close to mine. Her warm breath smelled of honey and pomegranates, and motes of sunlight danced around us both. “Would you renounce your family and friends, all that you hold dear, everything you’ve ever loved, and pledge yourself to serve me, and me alone?”

Somewhere in the background, Dufreyne coughed.

Blinking away tears, I whispered, “Yes. If that’s what you require, my lady, yes.”

“Let me consider it.” Persephone tilted her head, sunlight pouring down the shining curtain of her hair. “No.”

“My lady—”

“You haven’t been listening to me,” she interrupted me, holding up one finger. Hectic glints of gold shimmered in her eyes. “I want my own demesne!”

Emphasizing her point, Persephone jabbed me in the chest with her finger, driving the breath from my lungs and sending me flying backward, over the rim of the basin. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I tumbled head over heels down the steep slope, scrabbling at the loose sand, my chest heaving in a futile effort to suck in air. Below me, Garm gave a full-throated howl and headed for the slope.

Crap, no!

I managed to break my momentum. Breath or no breath, I scrambled up the face of the dune. There was shouting at the top. Someone grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and hauled me over the crest.

“You’re welcome, Daisy,” Dufreyne’s smooth voice said.

I spat sand out of my mouth and drew in a wheezing breath redolent with his wrongness. “Fuck you!”

“You might want to cover your ears,” he advised me.

Someone shouted, “Fire!”

I clapped my hands over my ears and whirled just in time to see one of the mercenaries launch a rocket-propelled grenade from a long tube over his shoulder at the charging figure of Garm, halfway up the slope and no longer looking anything less than massive.

My throat closed, but the missile veered unexpectedly away from the hellhound, exploding on the east side of the basin in a geyser of sand. Garm paused with an uncertain whine to gaze in the direction of the explosion, slobber dripping from either side of his jowls.

The mercenary examined the sight on his launcher. “What the fuck? Sorry, my lady,” he added.

Persephone’s dainty nostrils flared with disdain. “Mortal magic.” She waved one careless hand like someone whisking away a fly, and there was a tinkling, splintering sound as the coven’s hastily performed protection spell shattered. “There.” She pointed across the basin toward our encampment, then rounded on me. “What manner of forces have you mustered?”

“Go to hell,” I spat at her.

“No matter.” Persephone tapped her lush lips in thought. “Send half your men to root them out,” she said to the commander of the mercenaries. “Give no quarter. Meanwhile, proceed here as discussed and prepare the drones.”

He saluted her. “My lady.”

“Reload and fire on the hellhound,” she said to the mercenary with the RPG. “Your missiles will fly true now.”

After that, a lot of things happened, all of which I watched with helpless horror.