A Bad Time

Hades saw his head of security from a long way off. The ancient Titan glowed red as the river he came from, his black hair slicked into a long tail on the nape of his neck. Hades had always thought Acheron closer to a monster meant to scare children than an immortal, towering over him by a full head and carrying sigils all over his skin, carved tattoos in a language older than his own kind.

Acheron wasted no time on explanations. He merely lifted a muscled arm and pointed across the river. Hades turned and saw the dead swarming over one another like bees in a hive. They’d formed a tight circle, pushing over each other to get at whatever unlucky thing had found itself in the middle of the throng. That it had survived long enough for him to arrive from the palace confirmed Acheron’s guess—it had powers. Strong ones.

Hades directed the boatman to pull him alongside the shore where Acheron stood, peering across the water.

The Titan fixed Hades in his black stare. “I would have investigated if I could.”

Hades shrugged away the closest thing Acheron would get to an apology. “There’s too many for me to fight them all at once. I need something to take their attention.”

“I can try, but I suspect I will not be able to give you much. They’re attracted to the living. Those of us who call this kingdom home do not give them much in the way of satisfaction.”

“I’ll only need a moment. Whatever you can give me will be enough.”

With a nod of his great head, Acheron began to run down the riverbank. Hades didn’t know what he had planned, since he’d burn to ashes if he tried to cross the river—one in a long line of new enforcements Zeus enacted after the war.

Hades called for the driver to take the boat to the opposite shore. As he neared, the ghostly sensation of disjointed fingers danced across his memory. His heart rate kicked up, and he did his best to ignore the sweat that started at his hairline.

Slowly, several of the dead lifted themselves and turned their gangly heads. One drifted the way Acheron had gone, then another and two more.

But not enough. Dozens still clustered, and to Hades’s horror, they began to turn their empty eyes on him.

He readied himself to jump on the rocks, felt for the ground with his power and told himself that at the worst case, he would rip it open and bury the dead. A fate worse than the one they already endured, but he couldn’t let them take whatever they’d mauled already.

A flash on the hill stopped him from having to make that decision. The ground shook, then green erupted from the earth, tendrils as thick around as his torso shooting from between the rocks and rising fifteen feet into the sky. Leaves unfurled themselves, and jagged thorns half a foot in diameter and two long. The foliage curled itself around like vines, forming a wall of protection around the center of the circle.

Alarms clanged in Hades’s head. Whatever had made that, in a realm where nothing grew, held power he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Hades watched as the vines whipped around, sweeping the dead clean off their feet by the dozens and sending them flying across the shore. Bodies stuck fast to the thorns, flailing like gruesome trophies as they writhed. The tendrils slammed into the rock, crushing the dead and sending their bony parts skittering.

What was happening?

The wall of vines parted enough for Hades to make out the short, curvy stature of a woman. She turned in his direction, eyes finding him, and he almost forgot he was meant to be saving her. When he remembered himself, he waved his arms over his head.

The woman nodded in his direction, and Hades hoped that meant she understood. She threw her hands out from her body, which sent the vines whipping around her. They twisted through each other, forming a kind of tunnel, and she dove into it, sprinting for him. The dead clawed after her, grasping through the gaps in her living shield. The woman stumbled, but she pushed them off and kept going.

Hades jumped from the boat, his shoes splashing in the water. Immediate, excruciating pain seared up his leg, but he grit his teeth and readied himself. The woman skidded on the rocks, crashing into him, and Hades used her momentum to heave her over his head onto the boat. He grabbed blindly onto the wale and scrambled up after.

The boatman didn’t wait for him to right himself. He shoved away from the shore, and only once they had made it to the middle of the river and the safety of the swifter currents did he stop his frantic paddling.

Hades righted himself from the heap he’d landed in. He attempted to quiet his ragged breathing to little success, and lifted the leg of his pants. The golden, bloody mess underneath confirmed the sting of the water he’d felt. He flexed his ankle, taking stock of the pain as he did. It would scar, but with a wash of relief, he doubted he’d injured anything permanently.

“You’re hurt.” The woman’s voice drew his attention. Her chest rose and fell in uneven pants too, but she seemed too fixated on him to notice. “Are you okay?”

Hades dropped the fabric. He took in her wild mass of black curls and the piercing green of her eyes, the brown face and the soft cheeks making up a shape he did not recognize. She wore clothes that could have belonged to another century, a long dress covering her from neck to ankle and sandals that hadn’t been in fashion since he’d been worshiped in the streets.

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He’d never seen her before, and that scared him.

Gold dripped from her side, spreading across the white fabric of her dress. He pointed to it. “You’re hurt, too.”

The woman looked down. The cut didn’t seem deep, luckily, probably caught by a stray bony claw, or maybe snagged on something when he’d thrown her on the boat. When she raised her face again, flowers, bright and yellow and impossible, sprouted through the ringlets of her hair.

The sudden image of vine tentacles bursting through the boat and sending them all into the water struck him. “It’s okay,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “The dead can’t cross the water. You’re safe now.”

If his words registered, she didn’t show it.

“What’s your name?” he tried again.

The woman looked at him like he’d asked her how many heads she had. “Where am I?”

Hades doubted she’d like the answer, but he told her anyway. “Welcome to the Underworld.”

It must have been too much, because the next thing he knew, her eyes rolled in their sockets and she listed sideways. Hades barely managed to catch her, cradling her head before it could smack into the floor of the boat.

By the time the boat reached the opposite shore, Hades had well and truly begun to panic. Acheron had not returned from whatever he’d done downriver, which Hades took as nothing short of a miracle. He would not have been able to explain away the woman’s presence. An illegal immortal in the Underworld was just what he needed, grounds to start the second Titan war on top of everything else.

More than that, Hades could not place her. He knew every one of his fellow divinities, if not by sight than at least by name. She bled the gold of his kind, and yet Hades could not think of a single one of them who could sprout plants from nothing and use them to beat down an army of the dead too hostile even for him.

So when the boatman asked if Hades wanted to wait until Acheron returned, he politely declined and asked to be taken home instead.

#

The woman still had not woken by the time they reached the island, so Hades gave the ferryman a hefty tip, told him if a word of what he’d seen got breathed to anyone he’d burn in Tartarus for the rest of eternity, and carried the woman up to his house.

Cerberus met him at the door. The dog’s wagging tail stilled when he smelled the woman, and all three heads tilted in different directions.

“No,” Hades said as he kicked the door shut behind him. “Leave her alone until she wakes up, at least.”

The dog didn’t listen. He followed Hades to the couch, watched as Hades set her gingerly on the cushions. He stared all the while Hades retrieved a towel and pressed it firmly to her side, where the golden ichor still leaked from her split skin.

To his dismay, the towel soaked through quickly, gold leaching through the fabric until the dampness reached his hands. Hades realized he’d need to do more to staunch the flow. He pushed the dog aside with a knee as he rose to fetch his first aid kit. He knew—well, he hoped, anyway—the wound would close on its own quickly enough, but the woman seemed to have used whatever energy she had on the beach. She may have had nothing left for her own power to stitch herself together with.

When he came back, Cerberus’s middle head had leaned close to her face. Before Hades could stop him, he gave her a long, sloppy lick.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

Two of Cerberus’s heads turned to look at him. The middle one, however, kept licking. Hades scrambled to pull the dog back, lifting him by his chest and pivoting him away from the couch.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Cerberus stretched his neck to give Hades a lick, too.

“Okay. Okay, I get it. Good boy.” Hades set Cerberus down and nudged him towards the kitchen. “Come on. You want a snack?”

The dog barked. Of course he did.

Hades had made it halfway to the fridge when a growl started from Cerberus’s middle throat. He turned to Hades, his ears folded back. Hades knew that reaction. He cursed under his breath.

He hadn’t even made it to the front door when he heard it open.

“Hades?” Minthe called through the house. “I came to see if you were okay. I didn’t mean for…” she trailed off when she saw him clear the corner to the entryway. “What in the name of Tartarus happened to you? Is that blood?”

Hades glanced at himself. The button-up he’d worn to dinner had indeed become soaked through with ichor, the once-blue fabric now closer to green. “It’s not mine,” he said, then immediately regretted it.

Minthe stared at him. “You left dinner so fast, I was worried something was wrong.”

He should explain before she jumped to her own conclusions, but he couldn’t find the words. He cracked his fingers nervously. “There was an issue on the North Bank.”

“Do you need anything? I can get some ambrosia.” She moved like she meant to make her way into the kitchen.

Hades practically dove in front of her, the screams of gored bodies ringing in his ears. “I’ve got it handled. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Suspicion crawled between her eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’ll be fine.”

Minthe’s eyes glanced over his shoulder. The image of her pushing past him, rounding the corner and finding the woman on the couch, flashed in his mind. What he would say then, he had no idea.

Nymphs talk, she’d said. How would the Underworld react when they found out their own king had broken the very treaty he was meant to protect?

Hades ran a hand over his jaw. “Can I call you later? I have some things I need to take care of.”

Minthe’s eyes narrowed. “Are you kicking me out?”

“Of course not.” He thought about it. Winced. “Well, kind of. A security issue came up. I need to figure out what it is, and I don’t want to put you in danger before I know what I’m dealing with.”

She stared at him. “You’re serious?”

“I want to keep you safe. I promise I’ll tell you everything as soon as I know it.”

“You’d better.”

She paused one more heartbeat, and Hades feared she wouldn’t heed her own bargain. But with a last glance around the room, she turned and let herself out of the house.

For the first time since he’d moved to the island, Hades closed the lock after her. The sound seemed final in the stillness of the house. He allowed himself a deep breath, then two and three and four and pretty soon he found his forehead pressed against the wood and a panic attack clawing its way up his chest.

Something nudged his leg. A whine cut through the rushing in his head.

Hades reached down and felt soft ears. A furry head. A second one, and a tongue, rasping along his arm. Paws landed on his shoulders, twisting Hades until he had to catch the both of them or be knocked off his feet.

Cerberus pressed two of his heads against Hades’s cheek. The smell of hot kibble filled his nose and Hades shuddered, the spell broken.

“Thanks, buddy.”

Cerberus dropped back to the ground. He grumbled and took two steps towards the living room, sneezing when Hades didn’t follow. Hades agreed, pushing himself away from the wall. It was time to find out exactly who he’d brought into his home.