Wrath of Hades (16 page)

She shoved her hair away from her face. Whatever had infected Ethan was definitely worse now.

“Raven, are you okay?” asked Bree.

Raven nodded, but didn’t say anything. The next minute she found herself suddenly surrounded by all three girls. “Guys, you have to quit hugging me so tight. I can’t breathe.”

The girls laughed but released her.

“Thanks,” said Raven.

“Maybe we should stay here with you,” said Bree.

“No!” Raven almost shouted. “There’s no point in you missing the dance too. Besides, I want you to go so you can give me a detailed report tomorrow when you come over.”

Ari smiled. “We can do that. One detailed report tomorrow. It’s at the top of my priority to do list.”

“You’re priority—don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” Raven shook her head.

“Okay, we’ve got to get to Bree’s house and pick up her dress. And then to your house,” Ari said to Leslie. “To get your dress, and finally to my house and I’ll do everyone’s makeup while mom does our hair. Everything will be perfect. Well, almost perfect.” She gave Raven a quickly hug, and walked to the front door followed by Bree.

Leslie turned to Raven. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

Raven nodded.

“Okay, I guess I’ll get going.” She turned to follow Ari and Bree.

“Leslie, could you wait a minute?” Raven closed the distance between them in a few steps. “Have you heard anything back from your cousin or Eros?” she asked as she chewed on her bottom lip.

“No, I haven’t. It’s kind of strange too.”

“What do you mean strange?”

Leslie sighed. “My family’s very close, and I don’t just mean the mom, dad, and me. I mean the entire extended family is close. We’re constantly talking to each other, going to each other’s homes, helping each other. You know. All the stuff a family does, except it’s my entire family doing it.”

Raven nodded. “I get it. So, what’s so strange?”

“No one’s heard from my cousin. I don’t know if it has something to do with the fact she’s married to Eros, or if it has something to do with what’s going on here.”

Raven sighed and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Leslie. I never meant for anyone in your family to get hurt because of me.”

“Raven, don’t you get it. What’s happening is not because of you. It would have happened anyway. But you are the one who can stop it. I didn’t mean to put any pressure on you or make you upset.”

“You didn’t,” said Raven. “You had better get going or those two are going to come back in here and drag you out kicking and screaming.”

Leslie smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Raven nodded and watched her leave the house. Slowly she turned her attention back to the kitchen and frowned. It was quiet. Too quiet! Raven walked back to the kitchen only to find it empty.

“It’s Friday night, and I’ve got the house to myself. I wonder if anyone realizes there’s no one here with me,” Raven said softly. She snorted.
“Party for one in the attic.”

She went around the house, checking all the doors and windows. Everything was locked like it was supposed to be. Raven sighed and slowly went upstairs to the attic.

CHAPTER 15

I think someone’s trying to drive me crazy.

And he or she is doing a good job!

But who is it?

The past few weeks I’ve noticed little, strange things happening. It started in the attic with cushions being moved around. The only other people, who go into the attic, only go when I’m in there. Everyone else avoids it. There have been a couple of times I left the attic to get something out of my room and when I returned the cushions were moved. That quick.

But now it’s escalated.

Things in my room started moving on their own. You know, supposed to be in one place, but I find it on the other side of the room. Now small things are totally disappearing. It’s not funny!

I don’t know who’s behind all of this, but I’m going to catch them!

                            --Raven Weir’s journal

Raven stared at the wall covered with the ocean painting. It really didn’t look like a painting but more like a photograph. The water actually glittered where the rays from the sun hit it. The dolphins and the whales looked too realistic to have been painted. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn she was looking at a huge video monitor and all she had to do was hit play to set the movie into motion.

The whole painting looked so peaceful—so serene.

She sighed.

If only her life could be that way.

A cold draft made her shiver. Raven turned and looked behind her and shook her head as she scanned the room. “Definitely got to get the heat checked out.” She walked over to a huge pile of oversized and overstuffed, multicolored pillows, and plopped down on one of them. Leaning over to her left, she ran her hand along the side of a square pillow.

A soft clicking noise filled the room and followed by a soft pop as the top slid to one side. “These boxes are so cool,” she said and put her hand into the opening. She pulled out a well-worn, leather bound book she had put in there a couple of days ago. Raven’s face lit up as she gently cradled it. Memories of Douglas Weir flooded her mind, bringing tears to her eyes.

Poseidon was her biological father and she may have called him Dad while she was injured, but Douglas Weir was the one she called Daddy. He was the one who raised her, took care of her injuries, and understood her. Raven did have to give Poseidon credit though. He was trying to be a father even though he was rather clueless. It was obvious he cared about her. He took the time to help her practice her powers, and he brought her home when she was injured even though it was a huge risk for him to do so.

Raven wiped away the moisture surrounding her eyes. The time for tears was over
. She couldn’t cry for all the could haves and should haves. She had to think about the here and now. And right now she had several pressing problems in the form of zombies, one missing Claire Westing, and Ethan’s off-the-chart behavior. She rolled her eyes. Even Cerberus had to be included in that list, especially after his attack.

Raven thought about the possibilities of who was behind everything. It all came back to Persephone. Hadn’t she warned Raven about Hades? Persephone said he was up to something, she just didn’t know what.

“Hades,” she said the name aloud. “What is it you want?” There was only one answer—Atlantis. Why wasn’t he after the necklace like everyone else? He didn’t know it wasn’t the key. Why was he sending zombies to kill her? Why kidnap Claire. Why infect Ethan with one of Eros’s arrows to make him turn any love or affection he felt for her into hate?

The last two things just didn’t add up. What was the purpose?

“I probably need to quit trying to make sense of everything, because some things just don’t make sense.” Raven grabbed a blanket from behind one of the pillows and wrapped it around her. She unbuckled the strap keeping the journal closed and opened the book.

Her dad’s scratchy, almost spidery, handwriting jumped off the page at her. Raven chewed on her bottom lip as she looked for the thin leather strap marking the place she had stopped reading. She skimmed down the page until she came across an entry she hadn’t read.

This morning I left Raven playing in the attic, but when I went up to tell her it was time to come down for lunch, she wasn’t there. I searched the entire room and then I searched her bedroom. I searched the guestroom and mine and Suzanne’s room, but Raven wasn’t anywhere. Suzanne and I tore the house apart looking for her. The only place left for us to look was the woods behind the house. For several hours Suzanne and I combed the woods. It started raining and by the time we got back to the house, both Suzanne and I were soaked through to the bone.

Suzanne was hysterical. She was absolutely sure someone had somehow kidnapped Raven. I couldn’t convince her otherwise, nor could I tell where Raven was.

I had no clue.

I was as worried as Suzanne, if not more so. I knew exactly how dangerous it really was for Raven to be out alone, because her abilities were only beginning to show themselves. She had no way of protecting herself.

We went in through the backdoor and Suzanne screamed, but it wasn’t a scream of terror—just the opposite in fact.

Sitting at the kitchen table was Raven, munching happily on a plateful of veggies.

Raven told a hugely, imagination filled story about going swimming in the sea with Wally the humpback whale. She told us about how she played with this boy who lived deep in the depths of the sea. But the real kicker was when she said the boy told her she needed to keep the key with her at a
ll times. When I asked her what key the boy was talking about, Raven said the key to Atlantis and the key to all the other secrets she was going to have to protect.

Raven’s frown deepened each time she reread the passage, and she reread it five times.
She looked over at the ocean painting. Wally, the humpback whale, was looking directly at her. Raven picked up the silver disc hanging from the chain around her neck and twirled it. She was absolutely positive Wally was laughing at her.

His eyes—there was definitely something different about his eyes.

An over-active imagination is what Suzanne always told her every time Raven tried to talk to her about Wally, the ocean, and all the other fading bits and pieces of memories Raven thought were just her imagination like her mom told her. But it wasn’t her imagination. They were memories of things that really happened to her.

And Douglas Weir knew.

If he knew, then Suzanne had to have known too. But she denied it.

Why?

Raven sighed. “She denied it because she didn’t want me to be in the situation I’m in right now. She wanted me to have a normal life away from all this craziness.” She closed the journal and put it back into the pillow with the hidden compartment. Tossing the blanket aside, she got up and went to stand in front of the ocean painting.

“How does this work?” she asked Wally.

A warm breeze caressed her cheek and then it was gone so quickly, Raven wasn’t sure if it really happened or if it really was her imagination this time. She shook her head. “This is totally ridiculous. I had to have dreamed it because there’s no way anyone can actually go into a picture. It’s just no possible.”

Raven wasn’t really convinced that it was impossible to enter a picture or a painting, it was just she was almost afraid to hope she really could.

Water crashed to the floor on Raven’s right causing her to look in that direction. “Okay, that’s different. Paintings don’t normally do that.” She looked back at the painting.

Her eyes widened.

She bit down hard on her bottom lip to keep from screaming.

Everything in the picture was moving, and swimming in front of her were two dolphins; the same two dolphins that had been on the other side of Wally just a minute ago. They kept bobbing their heads at her. The dolphins took turns swimming away to do loops and twists before returning to swim right in front of Raven.

“Wow,” she whispered. Slowly she reached out with her hand, but stopped about an inch away from the painting.

One of the dolphins pushed forward and out of the painting, and touched her fingertips with its snout.

“Cool!”

The dolphin pulled back into the painting and nodded its head at Raven as if it was trying to tell her to follow it. Fascinated, Raven put her hand on the painting only to have it go through the painting and into the ocean. The dolphin moved with the speed of lightning. It grabbed Raven’s hand in its mouth and jerked her into the painting.

Raven’s scream ended in a gurgle when her mouth filled with ocean water.

The dolphin, instead of letting go of her hand, clamped down a little tighter and sped straight up. Just as the dolphin broke through the surface of the water, it opened its mouth, freeing Raven. Two seconds later, she broke through the surface, coughing and spitting out salt water until she was able to suck air into her lungs. Kicking to keep herself afloat, Raven surveyed her surroundings.

There was no land anywhere in sight, just water.

Lots and lots of water.

She was in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of nowhere.

Panic set in.

Raven’s first thoughts were of how she was going to get home when she had absolutely no idea where on the planet she was. At least she hoped she was still on earth.

A dolphin’s head broke the water’s surface next to her. Before Raven could react, a second dolphin’s head popped up on the other side of her. The two dolphins proceed to chirp and whistle at her.

“Bad dolphins!” Raven shook her finger first at one dolphin and then at the other. “Bad dolphins!” she said again.

The dolphins just chattered at her, almost like they were laughing, and then dove into the water, only to resurface next to her. One of the dolphins nudged Raven with its snout.

“And what do you want? Haven’t you done enough?” asked Raven.

The dolphin nudged her again. It swam a short distance away. The other dolphin pushed Raven from behind.

“Okay, okay. I get the idea. You want me to follow you, but what about the whole not being able to breathe underwater thing?” Raven shook her head as she treaded water.

One of the dolphins came up beside her and blew out a strong blast of air through his blowhole.

“Okay, I get it. I need to take a deep breath and hold it. I think I could really use some scuba equipment about right now because I really doubt I’ll be able to hold my breath as long as you do,” she said to the dolphins. Raven took a deep breath and dove underwater.

A dolphin swam slowly by her and she grabbed a hold of its dorsal fin. As soon as she did the dolphin took off at a shockingly fast speed. Startled, she almost lost her grip, but managed to hold on. She gazed at the different types of fish they zoomed past.

And then the dolphins surfaced to get a breath of air. Raven sucked in a deep breath too. She laughed and giggled as the dolphins jumped and played around her. Taking another deep breath, Raven let herself sink under the water’s surface again. This time the other dolphin came up to her and again as soon as she grabbed its dorsal fin, it took off. For what seemed like forever the two dolphins took turns at taking Raven to a destination only they seemed to know about.

The dolphins surfaced again, bringing Raven with them. She took a deep breath and looked around. They were no longer in the middle of vast ocean, but in a cove with a small beach not far from her. She could hear the waves crashing up on the shore.

“I guess that’s where we’re going?” Raven jerked her head in the direction of the beach.

The dolphins looked like they were nodding their heads yes in response to her question.

“Okay, let’s go.” Raven took off swimming toward the beach. The dolphins followed her until she was halfway there, then they stopped, but kept watch over her progress.

The waves weren’t rough, but if she
had been a weaker swimmer, she would have been tossed about the closer she got to the land. As soon as her feet hit bottom, Raven stood up and walked to shore and plopped down on the beach. Oddly, she didn’t feel tired. In fact she felt just the opposite. She was sure she had traveled hundreds of miles, but she felt great, like she could run a marathon.

It was odd.

Getting to her feet, Raven looked around. The beach gently sloped up toward a thick line of palm trees. She couldn’t see anything beyond them. Overhead, several seagulls flew past, squawking as they went. She looked out to sea. The dolphins were no longer there.

“Great. You bring me here and leave. How am I supposed to get back home?”

“It’s not the destination that’s important. It’s the journey you must take to get there.”

Raven spun around to find herself face to face with a tall, muscular guy. His broad shoulders and arms were covered with the muscles of an athlete who worked out daily. He was wearing only a pair of light blue swim trunks.  Raven couldn’t help but stare. Ethan was really good looking, but this guy had him beat by miles. The only thing odd about the guy was his hair, which fell to his shoulders, was a shade of dark black blue, just like hers except it was streaked with green. The same shade of green as his eyes which were glowing.