Book of Revels: Aphrodite's Boys

“Stana, darling. Mama needs you.” Delilah’s voice coated Stana’s soul, the young woman’s gaze locked on this approximation of love as if it were the truest level of adoration. As if constellations played charades for the cosmically significant bond. Mouth working, Stana stood and pulled the ereader from her pocket and flicked on the screen. 
Eyes the colour of the Aegean flickered to the two women. Aphrodite snorted and let the rest of her glass splash down her throat. “Now this, this is pure profanity. Coming into my house and using a girl’s dying need for a mother’s love to twist her till she shouts? Oh, sunshine.” 
Pursed lips clucked once as Aphrodite swung the glass as hard as she could into Delilah’s forehead. It shattered against the orbital bone, fragments and shards of glass sunk into Delilah’s skin, hair and clothes. She shrieked, hand off Stana, who shuddered and stumbled back until her thighs hit a low retaining wall holding back a fountain. 
“You, using love? In my presence!?” Aphrodite stalked Delilah, who stumbled and shrieked, hands to her face. The daughter of Ouranos’ fall kicked the enchantress’ jaw, to crumple her body. “Not even honest love, but an enchantress’ approximation?” 
A fistful of Delilah’s raven hair clenched in Aphrodite’s fingers, the goddess pulled back until Delilah flopped to her knees. Shock induced shrieks shuddered out with every exhale, one hand spread against her ruined face. 
“Love is all sorts of things, none of which I see in you.” Aphrodite peered into Delilah’s bloodied face, the perfect eyebrows, sculpted cheekbones and filled under eyes. Her straight nose, broader than it ought for the ‘fashion of the times’ was split with a chunk of fine glass. Within the pupils of her wide-eyed gaze, Aphrodite saw thousands of missed chance. Loves entangled around her soul in unrequited spurts, hundreds of heart-chords spanned to Delilah’s control. “Do just enough good in the world for any negatives people see to be washed away in ‘aw, she’s a good woman’. I see it, sweetie pie. Ain’t been anyone you’ve loved… I’ve never known you.” 
“Let… go.” 
A single thread of meagre golden light pulsed from Delilah’s belly button to the ether. Aphrodite plucked at it, felt the timbre of its’ anemic song.
“Can’t even afford to let your little one in, can you? No. You’re not that kind of woman. You’re the kind of woman who hates being alone, but can’t stand losing control. Going around, making people love you then ripping it away, gods you’re more fickle than Hera back in the day and that’s a feat. But to use magic to… to wrench a girl’s heart about in Thrace?”
The hand which stroked Delilah’s cheek was as gentle as a calm sea in a slumbering babe’s ears. It rocked into her, all consuming and temperate. 
In the periphery, a growing aura of bleak crimson released into the sky like dye in water. Delilah’s heart thudded within her, Stana groped at her throat in an attempt to find a word, any word against the burgeoning onslaught.
Aphrodite bore Ares many children over their centuries. Eros, known elsewhere as Cupid, Heimeros, Anteros, the gentle Harmonia. Not all were as ubiquitously soaked in their mother’s adoration; To Ares she bore twins of horror and twisted mind. Sons to accompany their father to the realms of war, most suited to the off-shoots of Aphrodite’s panic when she and Ares were caught in Hephaestus’ cuckolded web. 
“Buckle up, buttercup. Play with love? It’s my turn.” 
Delilah stuttered and fell limp, as a radiant love settled into each atom of her soul. Every strand of unrequited affection purged and in their places, an affection so strong in Delilah’s chest, her ribcage burned for the longing. To Stana too, an adamantine link tempered by her irascible longing for a mother long dead as collateral damage. Aphrodite walked back to her chaise-longe and picked up a fresh champagne flute, the sensations of her most nefarious sons a roaring tide. Writhing on the ground, Delilah gasped and reached futilely for Stana. 
“B-baby… Mama needs you, baby girl…” The timbre of the voice shifted, a matronly plea Stana felt stab into her ribs and linger. Magni slumped in Ares’ hold until the god dumped him on the ground unconscious. Delilah whinnied and shook to touch her bleeding face. Stana stuttered and reached for the ereader in her pocket, as Aphrodite sipped brut and Ares dragged Magni by his leg toward the lake. 
“Wish you’d given me a fight. Frick… Dite! Hold on I’m coming.” 
‘Danger. Danger! STANA DANGER. THIS IS WHERE YOU RUN.’ The ereader lit up, words fluctuated across the screen. Two legendary gods busied about their battles with her captor, with Delilah. For Stana, it was as if she no longer mattered. As if she were one in a legion of humans who filtered through their vision unseen everyday. This was why old gods required fresh graves, why Stana tripped upon the book, which whispered in muffled triumph in her pocket after too long cast away into the silent basement of an elderly man’s necrotic collection of musty ancient things. 
“Baby girl…” Delilah croaked. Stana ground her teeth and flicked through the pages of the book, dipped her hand in the water of the pool behind her. Gasping in an eldritch panic, Stana groaned out great gulps of air, her feet clamped in place by a sensation so pure and terrifying she recognized only the shadow of it in her Balkan childhood. Maybe when Aphrodite was impaled through with a shard of ice, or Ares was swallowed by the earth, they would see her. The sensation would cease. A brisk gust of wind rocked Stana’s borrowed clothes. Two shadows flooded either side, the stark smell of gunpowder and sweaty canvas caked the air. The grip Stana held on the ereader clenched, her breath little more than a hyperventilated angst. 
“You raaaang, my liege.” A lanky man with tanned skin and deep brown hair flopped into a bow before Aphrodite’s chaise-longe. Beside him, another man of similar build but hair dyed blue punched his shoulder. 
“The heck you say, Deimos! We were going to do the other bit!” 
“Don’t tell me what to do, Phobos! Mater called, we’re here, how’s our favourite person in the world?” Frigid and electric, the atmosphere twisted in a gut-punch without a release of the increasing tensions at the presence of the twins. Aphrodite spread a pert smile on her face, downed the rest of her Brut from the bottle and opened her arms to her boys. 
“Deimos, Phobos! Come give Mama a hug!” 
The men swamped Aphrodite in their arms, and despite her bravado, Stana shrieked at the thrill of horror on Aphrodite’s face hidden from her sons. Her ereader slid to her pocket, as a sensation akin to spiders running a marathon along her arms and neck bathed Stana in pure terror. Each of the men turned, their docile grins as lack-jawed as a man with shell shock holding the corpses of their fragmented kin. 
“Hullo!” 
“Oh, you’re the one making trouble in the Realms. A pretty Balkan! Oy, Pater!” 
"Wait... you." Deimos grit his teeth until they cracked, bits of enamel expelled with each syllable struck from his lolling, bleeding mouth. "You killed Tuija." 
"Ooohhhhh Pater, please? Please!" 
“Open season on the Keeper. Bring that ereader of hers to the Judge, do what you will with the rest.” Ares hucked Magni into the small boat, which rocked on the sand as its’ aft bobbed in the water. 
Aphrodite settled herself back on the side wall of the garden and grabbed another bottle of brut. Wrestled with the cork, jolted as it flew off the glass top as the gleeful glow to her face descended to a horrified parent who knew precisely what Deimos and Phobos, Panic and Fear brought to the Realms. 
“Best father in the universe, our Dad.” Phobos swerved as the grin on his face widened beyond human anatomy, until the teeth in his mouth became the mandibles of a predator so vile no culture named it for it ate any which came close enough to discover it at all. 
“Baby…” Delilah whimpered, rolled to her knees. Stana screamed and thrust her hands outward, incanting words in a throat-caught voice. The twins stalked her, and with them a feeling of unadulterated panic. Hand thrust into the pool, Stana hazarded a few mumbled words and flung sheets of ice, which formed weak spikes into the gods’ faces. Deimos balked, while Phobos grunted through the barrage with his shoulder against the spears of frozen rose-scented pond water. 
Stana shrieked and scampered backward, a dark tear behind her back as she roared in words beyond any comprehension. Slick, oily against the air as a piece of the veil between the realms slit like animal skin under Orion’s blade. Diving through it, Stana left the whimpering Delilah and comatose Magni to their fates. 
“After her, boys! Give the Keeper no quarter.” Ares grunted as the twins rushed off in loping yelps, Aphrodite’s hands pressed against her cheeks at the terror their sons elicited. "Too much to ask for a challenge? Dite? Oh, Honey I've got you."
Behind him, two armoured guards flung Delilah’s moaning body on top of Magni’s, and shoved the boat back from whence it came with a burst from Zephyr’s billowing wind. 
(Some Time Later)
A man loved his sons. This seemingly universal truth was as complicated as Ares' Olympian history. It was to Thrace Ares swept his beloved Consort and soulmate Aphrodite after Hephaestus' invisible trap. After the Olympian gods threw flagons of wine as Aphrodite and Ares entwined naked in their stolen bed. He roared and spat and covered Aphrodite with the sheets to hide the wide humiliation in her eyes. Punished for loving him, by the man his father chose for her. His hobbled brother. The children conceived from their fear and anger, Phobos and Deimos, were less given to the world as the gift of love as Eros, and instead released screaming and spread panic upon the mighty and fallen alike. Eons after the fallen net, Ares sat on the chaise long in Aphrodite’s garden, the sleeves of his long grey t-shirt pulled up to his elbows. Forearms on his thighs shook from the disappointing threat of Magni and battle diffused too soon, as Aphrodite curled around him in a drunken stupor.
“I’ve got you, Dite, breathe. It’ll pass.” Numb fingers stroked her hair, the twins' sensational terror and panic receded with the wind. Off to cure the Realms of Stana's infamy; Caleb was taking too long. “It always passes.”
Phobos and Deimos loved their mother more than anyone in the cosmos. Showered her with their eternal affections. Terror and panic, the emotions conceived of Hephaestus’ infamous net. A feminine whimper gasped from the goddess, her teeth chattered and body curled around him. He breathed deep, rested his hand on her hair and ran his fingers through the honey-blonde strands. A mother’s love refused escape, when her children reached out. Delilah would no doubt feel such compulsions by now, tossed unceremoniously into the back of her 'god'. Despite the shake to her limbs, the curl of fingernails into Ares’ thigh, Aphrodite kept available for their twins. The problem children, who caused such horrors the world shook and quaked and wept.
“Enough, boys… enough for now. Focus on your work.” Grit teeth eased as Aphrodite’s whimper broke for a smoother capacity for sleep. Ares breathed out a hiss, smiling soft at his hard-won bride. She complained little, a word here and there, a drunken sob. So many of their children were born of the most pure love the earth would see, a battle-hardened and clinging affection.
Once more he drifted both hands along his forearms, as if the invisible net were back, as if he needed to toss it away one more time. “I cannot fathom how you stayed. I love you, Dite.”  
“M’lord? Do we let the trio approach? Do we... Ares! Do we let them approach?” The Hoplite no longer wore a red chiton under laminar armour and leather stranded belt. The old days vanished, for kevlar and canvas. Modernity sat well on the followers of War, who if he were honest, was effortlessly glad the old ways fell arthritic into the nursing home where he left them.
“Bring the Judge and his ilk to me, Thaddeus. We would be ill company if we shot these guests.” Ares gulped down weak coffee, the ice cubes long melted in the Balkan sun. Pulled the handwoven wool blanket over Aphrodite’s shoulders and pressed another kiss on her brow. A glance to his smart watch showed the feed of Caleb, Raynar and a teal haired girl barely old enough to be blessed with teenaged attitude. “So that’s the kid.”  
Another gulp of coffee and Ares watched the trio of roaming Vikings enter his world a pace too late.
“Ares.” Arm around the girl, the Judge walked with the haunted gait of a man at war with sullen and mysterious shades. Bruising, the whiff of Fae Magic echoed off his skin with the scents of hyssop and roses. Aphrodite stirred, mumbled unintelligibly, her hand seeking purchase on Ares’ knee.
“And no invite for the battle? I’d say I’m hurt, but from the looks of you, glad I missed it. You lot look as bedraggled as a pack of hounds who doggie paddled the Rubicon.” Ares’ eyebrow rose.
“This is the guy Finnegan sent us to, Dad?” Lilith scrunched her nose, peeked at the goddess sleeping on the couch. “He looks like a b-movie drug runner who does cross-fit.”
“So you know, then.” Ares let out a gruff rumble and nodded. “Good. A man ought to know his children. And hello, Lilith. I don’t run drugs, but I have been deemed… intoxicating at times.”
“Wait. You know?” Caleb’s hand twitched on Lilith’s shoulder, a shift of his body weight onto his back foot.
“Ah.. yeah, about that, Cale...” Hands in his pockets, Raynar’s shoulders rose. Goatee-covered mouth worked, lips smacked with a heady sigh. “Sister Gaia and…”
“Who the fuck doesn’t?” 
“Someone who didn’t show up.” Ares set his hand on Aphrodite’s shoulder, ran his thumb along her blanketed skin.
“Right. Right! So basically the entire fucking world!” Caleb rubbed his hands over his face and paced the marble path between the low bathing pools. Rose petals streaked the water, lilac so tall and lush it grew like trees breathed upon the air. Cypress trees lined the garden pools, statues poured fresh sweet water into the cisterns, which trickled through spigots and burbled pleasantly to the ear. It was, for all intents, a magnificent and spectacular place to be accosted with the knowledge the entire Mythic realms knew of Lilith’s existence probably before he did.
“Is… that bad?” Biting her lower lip, Lilith’s shoulders rose. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans, wide eyes searching the knots of muscle which betrayed Caleb’s tension as well as his rising tone. Both Raynar and Ares winced in attempts to wait out the fledgeling father.
“What?” Stopping short, Caleb grunted and cast his face to the sky. “No! No, Lily, I…”
“‘Cause you look mad again.”
“No, ah… listen…” A deep breath held, Caleb sat on the nearest marble retaining wall and offered Lilith his open hands. “Lily, there’s not been a lot in this world that was mine. But being your Dad, I… guess I wanted to be the one to announce it when we were ready. When we had more things figured out. Folk are going to be attaching a hundred different meanings to what we are, to who you are supposed to be, and... Hell, we still have to talk to your mother… oh gods… we have to talk to your mother…”
“… do we have to talk to my mother? Cause I can totes not talk to my mother. I’m really good at it.” Folding her diminutive hands into his, Lily cracked a timid smile as Caleb grinned into nervous chuckles.
“By the Carpenter’s nails, I don’t want to talk to your mother either, but we also need to work this out.”

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An early draft on Deimos & Phobos, and what Aphrodite does to people who use love against others.