Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [130]
In the town the creature entered, a pale inferno consumed each it looked upon. Cleopatra could easily see the flames surrounding each victim, though the victims did not notice them until they began to writhe with pain. They collapsed in the streets, in their doorways, in their beds, and they burned until they were dead.
“This creature aboveground, and the things it has wrought? They are your doing,” the Lord of the Dead told Cleopatra. “You brought them to my country.” She knew he was right.
“You must repair it,” said Persephone.
“She cannot repair it,” her husband said. “It is done. Her goddess will do as she wishes. We do as we wish, do we not?”
“Not always,” said Persephone, and bit into her fruit again, the crimson juice flooding out over her hands. “We do not always do as we wish.”
Hades gazed on his wife for a moment, as though thinking of an old argument.
“I would give everything I have to undo what I have done. I would be free,” Cleopatra said.
Antony looked at Cleopatra. His face was grief-stricken.
“Give her what is left of my strength. I would have her take it.”
Persephone looked at her, glanced at her husband, who nodded, and then she reached down and gave Antony a droplet of the juice she drank. A change came over him. His body became more solid, and his skin flushed.
He turned to Cleopatra, and he was her Antony again, completely, a solid, living man.
He kissed her, and she felt all that he had been in that kiss, all that he had wanted, all that he had dreamed. She felt his strength flowing into her and tried to pull away. It was as though she drank his blood.
Then it was done and she was alone again, in the hand of Persephone. Antony had disappeared. Cleopatra could not keep from crying out.
“Do not fear for him. He has gone back to the Fields of Mourning,” said Persephone.
Cleopatra was startled. “What do you mean? Why isn’t he where the heroes are?”
Hades looked at her. “He did not go to Elysium. He killed himself.”
“For love of you,” Persephone said. “He made Hades ring with crying your name.”
Cleopatra held herself tightly. She would have died of love for Antony, and now their love had kept him from his heaven.
“And I?” Cleopatra managed.
“You go back into the world, dreamer,” said Hades. “You waken.”
“I would ask a favor, then,” said Cleopatra.
The god of the Underworld leaned forward, his eyebrows raised. “There are no favors here. If I do something, I do it because something has been done for me.”
His lady stood up, shaking her head slightly, her face unreadable, and drifted from the throne room.
“You are a strange woman to seek to gamble again with a god after losing so much. A brave woman. Or a fool, perhaps,” said Hades.
“I know what I ask,” said Cleopatra. “And I ask it anyway.”
Hades nodded. “What are your terms?” he asked.
“I will give you Sekhmet’s Slaughterer,” Cleopatra said.
“What use have I for such a creature?” said the god. “It fills my realm with unmourned souls. Death comes for all mortals.”
“Mortals will outwit death,” Cleopatra told him. “You will have need of a servant to bring you citizens. Hades will empty as time passes. The dead will go elsewhere. They will cease to sacrifice to this realm. It is happening in my country. It happened to Sekhmet. I visited her temple, and it was falling to dust. The other temples cannot be far behind. Once, the rituals of mourning were greater, were they not? Blood and honey poured into the earth to feed the dead. Now the shades here languish, starving. Your realm is shrunken. The gods of Egypt are fading because of you and your kind, and the gods of Rome will fade for some other. The Slaughterer will bring you souls when that time comes. It will be a useful servant for you.”
“And if you bring me the Slaughterer, what do you desire in return?” asked Hades,