Eventide (PAPERBACK, LBGT)

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ONE

HUGH DE FERRERS HAD lived many lives. He’d visited far-flung lands—both earthly and ethereal—and tried his hand at a myriad of skills over the centuries. Somehow, none of it had adequately prepared him for the prospect of becoming a front-line combatant in a war between gods.

Returning to his secluded little cottage in the waking world after the Grim Reaper’s revelation about Morpheus’ lost sister, the Goddess of Hope, had seemed the natural thing to do. Perhaps it had been foolish, though, since the cottage was a wreck, and Hugh’s physical body wasn’t in much better shape.

As an immortal, he’d volunteered to die so he could take an important message to Morpheus’ uncle in Tartarus, for all the good that had done. In the end, Morpheus had been forced to go and visit Death himself, while Hugh and Iridaceae—Morpheus’ shape-shifting owl familiar—had been left behind on Earth to deal with the ugly aftermath.

Remaining with Morpheus in the Night Lands, where the gods resided, would have been far more comfortable than coming back here. In the real world, Hugh’s head still hurt from the bottle of vodka he’d swilled to knock himself out, while his chest still hurt from allowing Iridaceae to suffocate him to death with a pillow once he was unconscious.

But after his brief, tempestuous stint as a mortal, Morpheus seemed, oddly, to find some comfort in the rhythms of the Sublunary. Things like the making of tea and the familiarity of a battered kitchen table… at least, once Hugh had swept all the bits of fallen plaster from the floor, counters, and table into a dustpan.

For his part, Hugh had to force himself not to look at the splintered door of the corner pantry, where Morpheus had trapped Iridaceae long enough that he could abscond with Hugh’s best kitchen knife and off himself in the woods nearby. He set a mug of tea down in front of his thankfully very-much-living lover and tugged a chair around, so his back was to the broken pantry door.

“I will have to return to my realm,” Morpheus said, frowning down at the steaming mug.

He sounded exhausted. As exhausted as Hugh himself felt, despite the hours of sleep he’d had while his soul gallivanted around the Night Lands with his lover.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Hugh asked, still feeling out this tenuous new reality where Morpheus treated him like a true partner instead of a subject.

The God of Dreams was silent for a moment, twisting the warm mug back and forth between his palms.

“It is not necessary,” he said at last. “You may join me there whenever you sleep next, if that is amenable.”

Hugh sighed. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me, Morpheus. This thing between us is… new, I know. And I still have no idea how it’s going to work, day by day. But I’ve got things to do here in the cottage—not to mention, I could use a bit of time to think.”

He didn’t add that he also needed to find out what had happened to the nearby village after some psychotic arsehole had set off a bomb in the old church. Morpheus felt enough guilt over allowing things in the Sublunary to deteriorate under his brother Phobetor’s influence, without also reminding him about this latest horror.

His companion nodded slowly. “Very well. I have ensured that your dreams will be lucid unless you wish them not to be. If I am not with you immediately once you fall asleep, come to the palace.”

“Palace, got it,” Hugh said gamely, hoping the actual logistics of moving around in his dreams would make more sense once he was back in Morpheus’ realm.

His lover’s crystal-blue gaze settled on him; the noble brow furrowed delicately in worry. “I suppose I do not need to exhort you to take care in the waking world. The danger here grows every day that my brother is allowed to continue unchecked.

“I’m still immortal, leof,” Hugh reminded him tiredly. “But don’t worry. The only thing on my agenda today is cleaning up cracked ceiling plaster and doing some research. Go home. Get your oneiri back in line, if Iridaceae hasn’t done it for you already.”

“Indeed.” Morpheus lifted the mug of tea to his lips and took a long sip, his graceful throat working as he swallowed. Then, to Hugh’s surprise, he rose and leaned down, resting his forehead against Hugh’s for several seconds. “I am cognizant of the pain I have caused you,” he said into their shared air. “I wish never to do that again. However, I am also not so naïve as to believe my efforts going forward will be without their failures.”

Hugh had to pick through that rather convoluted declaration for a moment to make certain he’d understood the gist.
“Hey.” He lifted a hand to cradle the back of his lover’s neck, threading his fingers through the fine hair. “I know you’re hurting, too. How about we both just do the best we can for now. We’ll iron out the details once the rest of this mess is sorted.”

Morpheus straightened with a nearly inaudible huff, and Hugh let him go. “‘Once the rest of this mess is sorted,’” he echoed wryly. “As always, I admire your faith, my hunter.”
“Hope’s what got us into this situation, right?” Hugh said, keeping his tone light. “Maybe hope’s what will get us back out, as well.”

“There is a pleasing symmetry to the idea,” Morpheus agreed. “Goodbye Hugh—until we meet in dreams.”
And with that, he stepped into the veil separating the realms, disappearing from view.

* * *

One thing about cleaning up the debris in the cottage, it was a pleasantly mindless task. He’d tackled the news reports first, since the uncertainty would only continue to nag at him if he put it off. There was precious little clarity when it came to the death toll in the village. The reporting only said that deaths were confirmed to be in the dozens, with the toll expected to rise over the coming days.

Some of the fires were still burning, as of the most recent updates. Hugh had to forcefully remind himself that from an objective standpoint, very little time had passed since the explosion. Add to that the sorry state of emergency services in a world where emergencies were becoming the norm, and it was no real surprise that answers and factual information were thin on the ground.

The urge to drive down and see if he could help somehow was nearly overwhelming. The idea of a village on fire tugged at the medieval peasant in him, whispering that he should be standing in a bucket line somewhere rather than sweeping and vacuuming up bits of fallen ceiling from his floors.

It murmured that he could be out there making a difference, even if that difference was small. Save one person, it said. Bind one bandage. Put out one fire.

Ignoring that little voice went against eight hundred years of instinct, because he’d never been the strategist in any of the wars he’d fought in. He’d always been the foot soldier. He was the cog, while others turned the wheel.

The idea that he was currently the only human on Earth with insight into the root cause of the madness was sobering in the extreme. His job now was not to scurry around in the chaos, trying to put small things right after the fact. It was to fix the underlying issue, cutting the madness off at its source.

He couldn’t imagine anyone worse suited to the task. Too bad that trying to explain the situation to people who might be better suited—scientists, philosophers, the news media—would probably get him sectioned for suspected mental health issues.

“They might not even be wrong about me,” he muttered, dumping another heaping dustpan full of plaster bits into the rubbish bin.

The entire thing sounded utterly mad. The Goddess of Hope had reneged on her duties and run away to live with a human lover, long before even Hugh had been born. She’d hidden her divinity in a clay jar so she could become mortal, just as Morpheus had foolishly done with an opal pendant not so very long ago.

And then, someone had come along and broken the jar, scattering its contents into the ether… leaving the mortal realm without Hope’s avatar. Hugh idly swept up another dustpan full of debris, wondering if the clay jar had been broken purposely or accidentally. Had the goddess Elpis done it herself, to sever ties with the Night Lands for good? Or had someone done it against her will?

Whoever it was that destroyed the jar, had they understood what would happen with hope gone from the world?
He picked up the dustpan and headed back to the bin. “Hope escaping from a jar? It’s like bloody Pandora’s box in reverse,” he grumbled.

Abruptly, his brain registered what he’d just said, galloping ahead down the tenuous chain of logic.

The Greek gods were real. They were fucking real. He’d bedded one of them, for god’s—

For… someone’s sake.

The dustpan slipped from his slack grip and clattered to the floor, plaster dust billowing out of it to spatter his trouser legs in white powder.

“Holy shit. Pandora’s box was real,” he whispered, standing frozen in place for a moment before tearing himself free and lurching toward the bathroom.

He needed the strongest sleeping pills in the house, and he needed them now.

-End of excerpt