Hades (The God Chronicles #3) (6 page)

“When all goes as I have planned, it will not
matter,” he said, looking up from the jewelry. “If I were you, I
would be more worried about what’s going to happen if you don’t
follow through on your part of the deal.”

“My part?” I laughed at him, not caring that he
could easily destroy me for my rudeness. “What about your part?
It’s been a day! I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen anything in the way
of what you promised me and I don’t think you should be coming to
collect on your end without having filled yours.”

“Do not think to order me around,” he said, his
voice dangerously low, the darkness around me thickening slightly.
“You who are weak and nothing! I come to you with an offer of
royalty and it is not good enough for you?”

I could feel his anger growing around me and
took a step back, tripping slightly and stumbling.

“I am not required to fill my end of the deal
until yours is taken care of as well. It would do you good to
remember that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice shaky. “I just
don’t know why you want me to do this. What could you possibly gain
from it?”

“That is my business,” he said, his voice
cooling some. “To appease you though, go home. Look in the back
window and then tell me what you see.”

He leaned back against another tree, spinning
the ring in his palm, apparently content to wait for me.

I hesitated for a moment, not really sure if I
was supposed to leave or not. After he continued to ignore me,
though, I started moving forward, passing by him and making my way
back through the woods.

As I walked the unbeaten path, my mind tried to
make sense of what was happening. In the space of a day, I’d been
thrown into a world that didn’t exist. If that wasn’t enough, I was
in trouble in my own world because of it. And now I was supposed to
go in deeper? How was I supposed to trick a god, let alone the
master of the Underworld? What would happen to me if I refused? Or
worse—what would happen to me if I did go and was found
out?

I shuddered, remembering feelings of my almost
rape. Hades had raped his own wife after kidnapping her, hadn’t he?
Would he do the same to me?

The lights from the house appeared before me in
the distance, the warm feeling of my home pushing out some of my
scared thoughts. If I stayed home, Daddy would take care of me.
There couldn’t be enough evidence for them to pin the murder on me,
could there? But going back on my deal with Erebos . . .

Finally, I left the tree line and walked up to
the back of the house, ready to go in the back door and put all the
nightmares out of my mind. Reaching for the doorknob, I looked in
the back window and stopped.

Mom.

She was sitting at the dining table with Daddy,
crying as he rubbed her back with one hand and held her hand with
the other. A coffee mug sat in front of her, some of her tears
falling into it as her shoulders shook. Daddy was muttering
something to her, placing kisses on her forehead after every few
words.

Shocked, I turned and headed back into the
woods, my head spinning with the image of my parent’s apparent
making up.

“My mom is here,” I said as soon as Erebos was
back in my sight. “Did you do that?”

“Not directly,” he said from the spot I’d left
him in. “But she is here because of my actions, yes.”

“I thought you were going to make her pay? I
don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I removed the darkness from her that was
causing her drinking problem,” he said smoothly, still playing with
the ring in his hand. “She now feels the pain and suffering of
knowing that she destroyed her family. She left the only man who
ever really loved her. She acted terribly as a mother. She let
herself be overcome by a drink. Trust me, she feels pain. She knows
the suffering you wished for her to discover.”

“You did your part of the deal,” I said slowly,
closing my eyes briefly as a sick feeling overcame me. “I can’t
back out of mine.”

“That’s what I was hoping you would say,” he
said, his gaze finally turning to me, the sick smile contorting his
features.

He stood up and held a hand out to me,
beckoning for me to come closer. I did as he asked, a knot growing
ever larger in my stomach.

“This ring,” he said, sliding it onto my
finger. “It will cast the image of Persephone over you as soon as
we have entered into the Underworld. To everyone there, you will
appear as the goddess.”

“Will it fool Hades?” I asked nervously. “I
mean, he was married to her. Won’t he recognize the differences,
like I did with my copy?”

“That is the joy of it being Persephone,” he
said gleefully. “She hated Hades, therefore her darkest self was
always displayed to him. You will look just as she always
did.”

I nodded, gulping down a few quick breaths as
he released my hand after examining the ring once more.

“Do not break the stone,” he warned. “You will
have no cover if that happens. I will not come to save
you.”

“What am I supposed to do while I’m there?” I
asked, my feet automatically following him as he began to leave our
spot and head further into the woods.

“I need you to find something for me,” he said
over his shoulder. “Because of my current, uh, status, I am not
free to wander around looking for it myself.”

“What is it?” I sped up my pace as we entered a
part of the woods I hadn’t ever really explored.

“A helmet.”

“Hades helmet?”

“Of course.”

“I read about that online,” I said, happy to
finally know something again. “It makes the wearer invisible,
doesn’t it? And it creates fear, or something like
that.”

“Just a few of the things it can do,” he said,
turning sharply and heading towards a small hill.

“Why do you need it?”

“That is my business.”

Silence fell between us and we moved through
the foliage and came upon the hill.

“This is where we part ways,” he said, turning
towards me finally.

“It is?”

I looked around in confusion. For some reason,
I’d been expecting some grand spectacle, big black gates, a winged
guard, something. But everything looked exactly the same, nothing
special about the place at all.

“Listen very carefully,” he said seriously.
“You have until the end of winter to find the helmet, no longer.
The Underworld is a massive place, take care to not get lost. I
would hate for all of my planning and hard work to be for
naught.”

“I understand,” I said, a sudden thrill of
excitement shooting through me. I felt bad for it, because I knew
what I was doing was crazy and stupid, but it felt like I was
finally taking part in the adventure I’d always wanted.

“When you go through this door,” he said,
pointing at the hill. “You will be in a maze of tunnels. These
tunnels lead to a door to the Underworld. You will then get on the
ferry, which will take you to the palace. It is all waiting for
you—for Persephone. The ring won’t work until you’re through the
maze.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
piece of paper, handing it to me quickly as he looked around,
apparently nervous for some reason.

“Don’t let anyone see you in the maze. This
will feel more difficult than it sounds, you’ll understand why once
you’re in there. You will know if someone is really coming or not
because the voices will disappear.”

“Voices?” Things were not making sense again
and I looked down at the paper he’d handed me. I had the words left
and right written on it, arranged in a straight line down the
paper.

“Are these directions?” I asked, still looking
at it.

“I must go,” he said, his voice fading away.
“It’s not safe to be this close to the gate.”

I looked up in time to see the smoke drifting
away on the breeze, barely discernible in the moonlight.

“Wait,” I called out. “What do I do if I get
caught?”

There was no answer. He was already
gone.

I turned back to the hill, looking at it in
confusion. There was no door anywhere that I saw.

Turning in a circle, I looked around for a sign
or clue, anything that would enlighten me to how I was supposed to
get into the maze as I’d been instructed. I found nothing though,
which didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t like they’d erect a huge sign
that read “this way to the Underworld.”

Frustrated, I put the paper in my pocket and
stepped towards the hill. Maybe there was a secret rock or branch I
had to move.

Good grief. I’d put myself in an action
movie.

Regardless, I started moving things around, but
still to no avail. In frustration, I sat myself down on the ground
and leaned back against the tiny rise. To my surprise, the ground
fell away from behind my back and I tumbled backwards into dirt,
coughing as I disturbed dust up into the air.

As the space cleared, I looked around, trying
to figure out what had happened. The more I took in, the more I was
certain.

I was in the maze.

Chapter Six

I looked around, trying to find the door that I
had apparently fallen through, but there was no sign of it
anywhere. The tendrils of the cave around me stretched out in every
direction, seemingly leaving a million passages for one to wander
into and never return from. Escaping the way I’d come was
completely out of the question.

I checked the ring on my finger, making sure it
hadn’t been damaged in the fall. The last thing I wanted was to be
stuck somewhere I shouldn’t be with no way to hide. Thankfully, it
looked fine, the milky blackness of the smoke inside giving the
glossy outside a matte finish look.

The thrill of excitement shot through me again
as I stood up, brushing myself off. This time it was mingled with
potent fear though, the idea that I stood on the brink between the
land of the living and of the dead lodged in the front of my
conciseness. Life after death could be filled with anything—no
story, horrific or otherwise, that I’d ever heard before was off
limits as a possibility in this place.

I cocked my head to the side in the dim light,
having thought I heard someone whispering beside me. As soon as I
tried to listen though, it disappeared, a figment of my over
excited and active imagination.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, a face
peered at me from around one of the many corners, grim and
menacing. Turning quickly, I raised my fists, the only defense I
had, and waited to see who had discovered me. Again, nothing was
there.

An uneasy knot began to form in the pit of my
stomach, Erebos’s warning of being caught ringing in my ears as
more whispers floated towards me from unknown origins. I needed to
get moving and fast.

Fingers trembling slightly, I pulled the
directions from my pocket and looked at the first word.

Right.

There were three tunnels branching off to my
right, two to the left, one behind me, and a solid wall in front of
me. Panic gripped at my chest and I felt like fainting as I looked
to my right, wondering which passage I was supposed to
take.

“Take a deep breath and clam down, Hurricane,”
I coached myself, closing my eyes and resisting the urge to cover
my ears as the voices grew around me. “It’s going to be simple. You
fell in here and now you’re going to go . . .”

My eyes snapped open and I looked at the wall
in front of me. I’d fallen in here . . .
backwards.
Turning,
I put the wall at my back, looking in the direction I was really
supposed to go this time. I hadn’t noticed before, but one of the
two tunnels bent more forward facing, though the opening was more
to the side as I’d originally seen. That left just one tunnel that
fit the direction I was supposed to go.

“See, simple,” I muttered again, feeling a
chill come over me as another face appeared and vanished in my
peripheral vision.

Apparently, the Underworld wasn’t the only
place spirits roamed around here. I guess that made sense, since
there were ghost stories and such. If they had been gods, wouldn’t
they have come to get me by now anyway? Erebos had said something
about voices, I was just going to have to trust this was what he
meant.

Taking a deep breath, I decided it was time to
move on. I didn’t like being stared at any more than the next
person and there was always a chance I would get caught if I stayed
longer. Did someone, or something, patrol the maze looking for
intruders like me?

As an extra measure and last minute thought, I
picked up on of the smaller, loose rocks next to the wall and
scratched a medium sized “x” on the wall I’d somehow come through.
It was my security feature, something to look for if I did end up
lost in here.

Dropping the stone as soon as I’d finished, I
moved down the tunnel my instructions said without another look
back. The whispers and incoherent voices followed after me, growing
in number and volume the further I walked. It was enough to make me
feel crazy, to want to turn around and shout at them to be quiet.
Everywhere I didn’t look directly, eyes devoured me, slipping back
into the shadows if I tried to match their gazes. Finally, I came
to another break, several tunnels to choose from. With a quick
check of my paper, I moved to the right again, resisting the urge
to run from the sounds bearing down on me.