Cybermancy by Kelly McCullough Read Free Book Online

froze as heat seemed to shimmer above the surface of the screen, opening an instant-messaging box in the thin air between me and the monitor. Hello, little hacker, read the IM, or would you prefer that I called you Raven?
     

CHAPTER THREE
    “I think we have a problem,” I said, staring at the words hovering above the screen.
    Mel looked over my shoulder and whistled. It began as a note of alarm but quickly changed into the binary line of an escape spell. Nothing happened. It was like he hadn’t even run the program. He tried again. Ditto. Before I could think to do anything else, the office door opened. I reached for my gun, but my hand stopped halfway.
    A goddess stood in the doorway. Persephone, daughter of the Earth and Hades’ consort, the queen of the damned. Hades, the place, is not Hell any more than Hades, the god, is Lucifer. And yet . . .
    No one comes to Hades for fun, and only the desperate few visit by choice. Persephone wasn’t one of the latter. Long ago Hades stole her from her mother, Demeter, the Goddess of the Corn and one of the many faces of Gaia. In those days, Persephone was the very embodiment of spring, its beauty made flesh. Hades saw her walking in the world above and kidnapped her, raped her, made her his wife. For Persephone, Hades is indeed Hell. Perhaps all the more so because she is free to leave for nine months each year.
    When Demeter discovered that her daughter had been stolen, she ended summer, calling down an eternal winter where no seed could be sown in the frozen ground, no flower would grow on the vine, and no fruit might ripen in the tree. Finally, Zeus forced Hades to give Persephone up to her mother so that winter might end, but not before Hades made her eat three pomegranate seeds from one of the trees of the underworld and bound her to spend three months of each year at his side.
    When Persephone returned to Demeter in the youth of the year, she brought the spring with her. When Hades summoned her back to the underworld, winter reigned again.
    It’s one of the darker, starker tales of the gods. There’s no sugarcoating it, and even I can’t bear to joke about it. It makes me ashamed that Hades shares my blood. Now I discovered that the scariest part of the whole thing is that you can read the story in her face.
    She was every bit as beautiful as ever. Tall, lissome, long dark hair and perfect skin, the classical Greek goddess, only more so. None of that mattered once you’d seen her eyes. They were winter and sorrow bound into living tissue. Ever-changing, yet eternally frozen and monochrome. Gray and bottomless, like the leaden clouds of December one moment, the white that brings ice-blindness the next, and as black as a frozen lake in between. It took a huge effort of will to look away. When I did, all thoughts of weapons had fled. Adding to her pain was something I would not, could not, do. Instead, I placed my hands flat on the desk in front of me.
    Long seconds slid past in silence. The Goddess entered the room and closed the door behind her, then leaned against it. More silence. I tried not to meet her eyes but knew it was only a matter of time. The tension visible in her body made me want to see what her face was doing. I glanced toward the screen, hoping to distract myself. Words appeared in the floating IM box, wiping away the older ones.
    About time , they said. I was beginning to think you’d never look.
    “I . . . What do you want from me?” I asked, keeping my gaze fixed on the box that hovered between me and the screen.
    What do I want, little Raven? Why don’t you tell me?
    “I’m not Raven,” I said, anger drawing the words from me before I could think. I almost looked at her again but remembered not to just in time. “Fate gave me that name, and Fate is my enemy.”
    Even Clotho, who took your side against your grandmother and Atropos? The Goddess’s words splattered across the IM box. The name was a mighty gift. Do you not want it?
    “I want