Subj: Family Life, chapter 3
Date: 6/4/00 1:09:40 AM Central Daylight Time
From: Beverly LaCroix

Chapter 3
The Fires of Olympus

The game of hide-and-seek had been his idea, because of Angelique. Angelique usually stayed with her mother and grandmother when Nicholas came to play with him, but today she had wanted to go everywhere her older brother went. To please the goddess Hecate he had to present Nicholas to her today for her plan to work. Hecate had been a favorite of the young boy since he was four years-old. She had visited him for the first time, and had given him power in his hand, albeit very little power even for a child his age, but it had whetted his appetite for power and control over others.

He knew that Hecate was the major goddess of enchantment, sorcery, and witchcraft, and that forbidden darkness appealed to him. Hecate was also regarded by some as the creator of the vampire or the unnatural blood sucker who lived off human blood, shunned Apollo, and lived forever.   Listening to his father and his father's friends talk about the vampires, and why they were cursed to walk the night, and drink blood, he learned that Hades literally spit their cursed bodies from the very bosom of Tartarus, thereby dooming them to forever walk the earth as tortured beings who had made secret pacts for immortality with Hecate.

Andreus had shown Nicholas the swirling vortex that was a portal of time, and the boy had been fascinated by it. He had wanted to try it, but Andreus wouldn't let him, cautioning him in the way of a child, that his father would be very angry with both of them, and might not let them play together anymore. The explanation had quieted the young prince godling. Although, Nicholas and Angelique were children of gods, their powers had not yet developed, and they didn't know how to develop them yet. Hades had explained to Nicholas the time would come, and if he tried to utilize his powers before time, it would diminish his powers as a mature god, causing him to be ineffective for a god in his position. Nicholas had been satisfied with his father's explanation, and was soon distracted by something else. Nicholas had shared this knowledge with Andreus when he had asked him to use his powers one time to take them to Olympus.

Today Nicholas would get his wish, and the bonus was Hades' daughter. Andreus smiled a big wide smile thinking of how happy Hecate was going to be when she saw their were two sacrifices instead of one. They approached the vortex that Hecate had taught him how to spot it by a displacement in the air, and there it was. Andreus could hear Hecate's pleasure in his mind as he took the two children towards the swirling opening. It sounded like a loud windstorm, and it begin to pull the two children in, Andreus had the hand of Hecate holding him back. They were gone, and Hecate was gone. For the first time, Andreus wondered if he had done something very bad, and he felt scared.

Hades had known the moment his children were no more of his world. The tags he had placed on his children to know where they were or if they were in trouble were gone. Their essence had been jerked out of his divine being so abruptly, he felt pain. He had never felt pain, and it shook him to the core, and he screamed a scream that resounded through the entire underworld and reached Olympus.

The gods of Olympus reacted immediately, and instanteously were with Hades in his palace, and Persephone was also there and inconsolable.

Zeus, as king of the gods found the ripple in time and replayed time up to the disappearance of the two children. Hesphasteus chained Hecate with a thought, and Zeus cursed Lycaon with a curse that would follow him and his descendants for eternity. Zeus had heard rumours of the evil king sacrificing and eating human children, and that was strictly forbidden by the King of the Gods. Zeus had tricked the king, and was angered when the king had tried to trick him, and feed him human flesh. Zeus had decided what he was going to do then at the beginning of the next full moon, but that was three days away. Zeus, now had no choice but to invoke the curse to begin right away. The moment the curse was invoked, King Lycaon changed into a werewolf, and would remain in the wolf-man form forever or until he was destroyed. His descendants would change only during the full moon. Lycaon would be forced to live like an animal in hiding, and fear, and Zeus thought the punishment just and deserving.

Morpheus held the form of Andreus Petofi Lycaon in a prison of nightmares he could not escape. When the young boy began to have the nightmares, he had called on the goddess Hecate, whom he worshipped in secret, but she remained silent.   Andreus lay in a state between life and death, and there seemed to be no one who would help him. His screams were silent, and only answered by the hideous laughter of the vengeful Furies.

Hypnos, the god of Sleep and Dream, and the younger brother of Thanatos. also known as Death, and Nyx, the night was mother to them both. Sleep resembling Death, it was ordained that Hypnos and Thanatos should have all things in common. He can fashion shapes that seem to be true forms, and in his art he receives help from his sons. Hypnos, lay sleeping in his abode within a hollow mountain in Cimmeria, which is to the north of the Black Sea. In this place silence and twilight shadows reign, and from the bottom of the cave there flows the stream of Lethe, whose murmuring waves invite to slumber, and it was where Hades with one blow of his dark fiery breath dried up the stream of Lethe causing oblivion to be replaced by chaos.

Simutaneously, Demeter, Persephone's mother, goddess of the harvest and season, caused the poppies that bloomed, and all other sleep inducing herbs at the entrance of Hypnos' cave to shrivel up and die, just as she withdrew the seasons, and the earth became lifeless, cold and bleak, ten-fold what it had been when Hades had taken Persephone from her. Persephone's tears quenched the fires of the Styx, her cries could be heard in Olympus. Her children were gone, and no one could find them. With all the powers of Olympus they were impotent to find the two children. They had disappeared.

Hades' anger pulled Hypnos out of his usual lethargic state, as he usually lies with heavy eyelids on a high couch of ebony in the cavern's central space, surrounded by empty dream-shapes, which mimick many forms. When Hades left, Hypnos summoned his sons, first Morpheus who was expert with the human form, speech, clothing, even accustomed words. Hypnos conveyed to Morpheus with a thought what he was to do, and to whom, and the human he was to place in the dreams, and most importantly to be relentless or Hades would show him no mercy. Phobetor, he needed because he represented the forms of beasts or birds or serpents in men's dreams. Hades had told him of the curse Zeus had placed on the boy's father, and it would pass down to his son. And Phobetor would cause Andreus' dreams to be filled with a beast who was a beast and a man, and he would know the man was him. Phantasus, his son who was in charge of putting deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees or other lifeless things in the dreams of men, would become very important as the shape of a pentagram would grow and threaten to consume the foolish boy who had been consumed with jealousy of the children of Hades.

Hecate lay helpless in Hephasteus' chains, as she heard Andreus' silent pleas for help. Then she felt the power of Apollo, he used his brilliance to illuminate the place where she was, and he had with him Ares, and Ares was handing him his Sword of War, and unearthly flames shot out of the sword, as War stood and smiled at her fear, drawing power that would take a hundred mortal wars to strengthen him. Apollo begin to flay her, and because of Hephasteus' chains she could feel the pain, and then Apollo stopped, and Hades appeared.

Flames leapt from his finger tips, his entire aura was fire from Tartarus where there was no relief, and Hecate felt the fire, and was frightened. She felt War's rage, and Apollo's divine light was blinding her, she had never known this kind of pain, and fear was something she caused not something she knew. She exalted in the fear she had caused her victims, it excited her to such pleasure that she would have to withdraw from mortals, not wanting to get the attention of Zeus, because of the carnage her unreigned pleasure would bring.

"Soreceress, where are my children?" Hades whispered in her ear, and she felt his fiery breath, and it was reaching her mind, and inside her was burning.

"Hades, please, I'm burning. Put your fire out." Hecate pleaded.

"Tell me where my children are, and I will not ask you again." Hades said, as the fire got hotter, and Apollo's heat was becoming unbearable. She felt a new fire, it was frightening, stabbing her, and she glimpsed the dark fierce god of war, holding his sword out, pointed at her, and the sword looked alive as deadly flames came out of it, and attacked her heart.

Then it stopped. Hecate thought for an instant maybe her powers were coming back, she could hear the boy screaming silently for her.

Apollo was coming at her again with Ares' Sword, and he begin the methodical flaying, explaining as only the God of Healing and Medicine could, slow and patient. She begin to scream, as she watched her skin being removed from her now helpless body. The pain and fear were entering her soul, and she was readying herself to embrace it, when she felt Zeus' powerful hand on her mind, wrenching away the barriers that would let her find the relief she so badly needed. Now, she was exposed, no way out. Why had she ever plotted revenge on Persephone for deserting her. They had been so close at one time, and then Hades had taken the beautiful young goddess from her, and had forbidden her to have anything to do with her witchcraft. Hecate had vowed revenge, and thought she had found the perfect revenge with the children of Hades.

Again, Apollo pulled away, as soon as she thought she couldn't stand it any longer.

"POSEIDON!" Hades roared throughout the aether, and Hecate knew she was beat.

"Hecate, I command you to tell me exactly where the children of Hades are immediately." Zeus said in a voice that was the king of the gods and heavens, and the creator of all living things. Not giving the evil Titaness, witch, sorceress a chance to breathe, he began to throw lightening bolts around her, and lightening bolts that burned threw her heart and her womb, before Poseidon come to claim his prisoner.

"They are in 1969, Quentin Collins, the one who will end the reign of Petofi Lycaon, and the cousin, Barnabas, that I cursed through the daughter of Hades to walk the earth craving blood for an eternity. Angelique, the daughter of Persephone will never be loved, and it is the curse of her mother's love for your brother, Hades. And Nicholas will find the one he loves in that time, and will lose everything, even your love, Hades." Hecate said it all sorrowfully, and painfully as she heard Poseidon himself coming for her.

Zeus looked at Hades who immediately went to Hypnos and his sons, and Andreus Petofi Lycaon begin to see his executioner, and he knew his name, and he screamed it over and over, "Quentin Collins leave me alone!" Quentin would wear a pentagram, and it made him nauseus, and he knew if he touched it, it would burn him. Then he would beg Morpheous to let him sleep in peace. He was a little boy who had been infected by evil.

The moment Andreus knew Quentin Collins was his enemy, in another time two strangely dressed children walked up the stairs of an Old Mansion, and knocked.

Barnabas looked down at the two unusually beautiful children, and for some reason felt he knew them. Before he got a chance to ask them what he could do for them, Quentin walked up behind them readying to enter the Old House, and stared at the boy and girl, almost mesmerized, when he heard them say they were lost and wanted their mommy and daddy. Quentin noticed the boy was the older of the two, and held the girl's hand protectively. The little girl's eyes were so familiar, he had seen those eyes somewhere.

He stood patiently waiting for them to answer Barnabas' question, and Barnabas had to repeat the question, "what are your names?"

"I'm Nicholas, and this is my sister, Angelique."

next