P. Hoover - Solstice

“Cerberus!”

Cerberus keeps licking. I’m laughing so hard, I can’t do anything but move my head from side to side, trying to evade the three sloppy tongues. Completely unsuccessfully.

“Cerberus! Stop right now!”

Cerberus stops licking, but his paws stay on my shoulders. One of his heads swivels in Shayne’s direction. I manage to stop laughing long enough to speak. “It’s okay. He’s a good dog.”

Cerberus wags his tail, and moves his heads back to start licking again.

“Cerberus!”

Shayne grabs hold of Cerberus around the middle and lifts him. I can breathe again with the giant dog now off me. Shayne walks to a rocky wall, still holding Cerberus, and takes something out of one of the wooden supply chests stacked there. He tosses it across the way and releases Cerberus who bounds off after it, disappearing into a pitch black tunnel. Shayne comes back over to me. I’ve managed to stand up and brush some of the dirt and slobber off myself. It’s gotten everywhere, even inside my ears.

“Nice dog.” I laugh when I say it, trying to shake my ears clean.

Shayne combs his hand through my hair. A clump of dirt falls to the ground. I must be covered in it. How can he look so clean? He’s been slammed in the mud, also.

“He’s a bit on the excitable side. But there’s no better dog,” Shayne says.

I look into the dark cave and then take a few steps back so I can see more of the rocky wall. There are ten tunnels cut into the rock that look identical.

“Where do they go?” I ask.

“Different parts of the Underworld.”

I point to the one where Cerberus just disappeared. “So this one leads to…”

“My home. But not anymore.” He reaches for my hand and moves it so it’s pointing to the tunnel on the far left now. “Now my home is down that one.”

“So it changes?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“Security. Only I know where they lead at any given time.”

“You and Cerberus,” I venture.

Shayne laughs. “Yeah, me and Cerberus.” He points one tunnel over from where we stand. “And now it’s down there.”

I step up to the tunnel he’s pointing at and look inside. A chill of excitement runs though me. My eyes adjust, and I see there’s nothing but blackness ahead, and I know that’s the way we’re going.

We start down the tunnel. There’s a breeze blowing through it, and each time it touches my arm, it caresses me. Even though I can hardly see him, I feel Shayne walking next to me, almost like he has some sort of energy field. I sidle closer to him, and he stops walking, and then I’m up against the cave wall in the darkness.

“Piper.” His voice catches when he says my name.

He’s pressing against me, his warmth at my front, and the cold, hard stone wall behind me. His breath covers my face, and I’m tempted to move forward and kiss him.

But he puts a hand on my cheek. “I need to ask you something.”

“What?” I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer. I run my hands up his back, under his shirt, feeling his hard muscles which shiver at my touch. Shayne puts me in a place of comfort I’ve never known existed.

“Do you want to be here?”

I nod in the darkness.

“Do you want to see my world?”

I do. For reasons beyond my explanation, I am drawn to Shayne. To Hell. Even the stones in this tunnel seem to draw me in, making me feel like I belong.

“You have to answer me. Even if you weren’t here for Chloe, would you want to be here?”

“Yes.” And I lean my head forward again, and this time, our lips meet, and we kiss, and his mouth tastes like burning sweetness. There is no way I’ve only known Shayne a week. Our kiss screams volumes in my mind, making me sure I’ve known him forever. I trace my fingers up his spine, and he lets out a small groan. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he pushes himself closer until every bit of our bodies touches. Against my chest, his heart beats, joining the pounding of my own. His hands are at my shoulders, then my neck, then down at my waist.

They start to travel downward to my hips, but then he stops, pulling his head away and pushing back from me, leaving me unsatisfied and wanting more. He gasps and steps backward, taking deep breaths matching my own. I can’t move, because I can’t get enough air to make my mind think, and we stand there in silence in the dark of the tunnel.

“That’s nice,” he says when his breathing has slowed.

I still can’t move, though if I could, it would be back to him. “Yeah, nice.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For trusting me. And being with me.”

“I might never leave,” I say.

He lets out a laugh. “And I might never let you.”

He takes my hand, and we again walk down the tunnel. The warmth grows with every step we take, but the breeze continues, making it almost balmy. Soon the tunnel begins to grow lighter, and I see flickering, like flames of a fire, ahead in the distance.

“We’re almost there.” His hand snakes up to my neck, and he gives it a quick squeeze. And then we turn a final corner, and the world erupts in light ahead of us.

I turn to Shayne and laugh. “You live here?” When I thought of Hell in the past, I always figured it to be black and fiery.

He leads me down a couple steps into the room before me. The smooth, white walls look like they get polished hourly. The pristine floor is decorated with a giant mosaic in tiny black and red tiles stretching the entire distance of the room. It’s a design of red flowers growing off black vines. A design which reminds me of drawings I made as a child. In the center of the room sits a coffee table with cut gems inlaid in the circular top and red and black chairs surrounding it. The colored gems of the table are arranged in bouquets of flowers—lotuses and orchids, with stems twisting around each other, forming a continuous design.

“Did you expect something else?” Shayne asks.

I turn to him, dragging my eyes away from the table and the amazing mosaic floor. “Well, yeah. Look at this place.”

He looks around. “You don’t like it?”

“Of course I like it. How could I not like it? I mean, it’s fantastic.”

Shayne smiles and sits on a black chair. “Someone with impeccable taste designed it.”

An enormous pang of jealousy rockets through me when I realize he must be talking about Persephone. And I think that even if she is gone like he’s said, I may never be able to compete with any memories of her. I close my eyes and stem the envy running through me.

He gestures at a red chair, and I sit down, sinking into the plush leather, letting it swallow me like I want this whole world to do with each second that passes. Shayne waves his hand over the table, and a bottle of wine and two glasses appear on the bed of colored flowers.

“Isn’t there some myth about eating or drinking in the Underworld?”

Shayne picks up the bottle. He uncorks it and fills the two red crystal wine goblets halfway. At this point, I don’t mind drinking it if it means I could stay here with Shayne forever.

“Yes, a myth.” He smiles and hands me my glass.

I take it but don’t put it to my lips. “Is it true?”

“Do you want it to be?”

I smile and put the glass to my mouth, taking a long drink. “Yes. I want it to be.” I think about my mom for some reason, right as I drink it, and try to imagine her reaction to what I’m doing. Sitting with Hades in the Underworld drinking wine. And she told me to stay in all weekend.

“Something funny?”

It’s not really funny. “I was just thinking about my mom.”

Shayne takes a sip of his own wine. “Your mom has issues.”

It’s funny he should realize this after knowing me for such a short period of time. But it’s not like I can deny it. “She’s not that bad.”