Neon Gods (Dark Olympus 1)

By contrast, everything surrounding Hades is pure myth. No one I know even believes he exists. They all agree that at one point, a Hades did exist but that the family line that held the title has long since died out. That means I have next to no information to pull from about this Hades. I’m not sure he’s the better bet, but at this point, I’d take a man in a bloody trench coat with a hook for a hand over Zeus.

Hades takes me up a winding staircase that looks straight out of a gothic movie. Honestly, the bits of this house I’ve seen are the same. Bold, dark hardwood floors, crown molding that should be overwhelming but somehow just creates the illusion of leaving both time and reality behind. The hallway of the second floor is covered in a thick deep-red carpet.

The better to hide the blood.

I give a hysterical giggle and clamp my hands to my mouth. This is not funny. I should not be laughing. I’m obviously thirty seconds away from losing it completely.

Hades, of course, ignores me.

The second door on the left is our destination, and it’s not until he’s walking through it that my missing self-preservation kicks in. I’m alone with a dangerous stranger in a bedroom. “Put me down.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” He doesn’t drop me on the bed like I expect. He sets me down carefully and takes an equally careful step back. “If you bleed all over my floors trying to escape, I’ll be forced to track you down and haul you back here to clean them.”

I blink. It’s so close to what I was thinking that it’s almost eerie. “You are the strangest man I’ve ever met.”

Now it’s his turn to give me a wary look. “What?”

“Exactly. What? What kind of threat is that? You’re worried about your floors?”

“They’re nice floors.”

Is he joking? I might believe it of anyone else, but Hades looks just as serious as he has since I saw him standing there on the street like some kind of grim reaper. I frown up at him. “I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t have to understand me. Just stay here until morning and try to resist the urge to do anything to injure yourself further.” He nods at the door tucked back in the corner. “Bathroom is through there. Stay off those feet as much as possible.” And then he’s gone, sweeping out the door and shutting it softly behind him.

I count to ten slowly and then do it three more times. When no one rushes in to check on me, I inch up the bed to the phone sitting innocently on the nightstand. Too innocently? Surely there’s no way to make a call without being overheard. With those secret tunnels, Hades doesn’t seem the type to leave anything resembling a security breach just sitting here. It’s probably a trap, something designed to have me spilling secrets or something.

It doesn’t matter.

I’m afraid of Zeus. Angry with my mother. But I can’t leave my sisters frantic for my whereabouts any longer. Psyche will have called Callisto by now, and if there’s anyone in my family who will rampage through Olympus, stepping on toes and making threats until I’m found, it’s my eldest sister. My disappearance will already have set fire to the hornet’s nest. I can’t let my sisters do anything to aggravate a situation that’s already an unmitigated mess.

Taking a deep breath that does nothing to brace me, I pick up the phone and dial Eurydice’s number. She’s the only one of my sisters who will answer an unfamiliar number on the first try. Sure enough, three rings later, her breathless voice comes across the line. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, thank the gods.” Her voice gets a little distant. “It’s Persephone. Yes, yes, I’ll put it on speaker.” A second later, the line gets a little fuzzy as she does exactly that. “I have Callisto and Psyche here, too. Where are you?”

I look around the room. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try.” This from Callisto, a flat statement that says she’s half a second from trying to figure out how to crawl through the telephone line to throttle me.

“If I realized you were going to take off the second I went to get your purse, I wouldn’t have left you alone.” Psyche’s voice wobbles as if she’s on the verge of tears. “Mother is tearing apart the upper city looking for you, and Zeus…”

Callisto cuts her off. “Fuck Zeus. And fuck Mother, too.”

Eurydice gasps. “You can’t say things like that.”

“I just did.”

Against all reason, their squabbling calms me. “I’m okay.” I glance at my bandaged feet. “I’m mostly okay.”

“Where are you?”

I don’t have a plan, but I know I can’t go home. Walking back into my mother’s household is as good as admitting defeat and agreeing to marry Zeus. I can’t do it. I won’t. “That doesn’t matter. I’m not coming home.”