Wonder if the news had forecast cloudy with a chance of reanimated dead.
Every step I took was a new form of punishment on my body. Cade and Leo were running, with Cade shouting out what we were looking for—a pink two-story house that would be on a corner lot—as we moved with single-minded purpose.
We made it a block and a half without incident, long enough I tricked myself into thinking we might make it the whole way.
I was doing my limited version of hauling ass as Cade dragged me down the block, when the ground below us began to rumble. It reminded me of the tremors I felt when a lick of thunder would shake everything around me, the only difference being this didn’t make me feel good.
In fact, as the street began to creak and groan like the asphalt was being shredded from below, an ominous feeling came over me.
Not many things lived below the surface. Aside from the water gods, whose domain was strictly aqueous, and the mountain goddesses buried beneath the rock, there was a very small subset of gods who lurked in kingdoms below.
Only one immediately sprang to mind who would jump at the chance to aid the goddess of death.
If Hades was involved, then this battle was already over. The reach of the underworld king was boundless, and once he had his eyes on us—or a thousand eyes if he was seeing us through Manea’s minions—then I really didn’t know how we were going to get out of this.
A huge fracture ripped down the middle of the street, swallowing a parked car a few feet ahead of us.
We skidded to a stop, and I yanked Leo back a moment before the crack split the ground where he’d been standing.
“Whoa.” His breath was shaky, but all told he was handling this situation a lot better than I had expected.
The real bitch of it was, I could see the pink two-story house only two blocks ahead, beckoning to us from the corner. On any other day, in any other circumstances, we could have easily made it there at a sprint.
Except I couldn’t run, and there was an enormous chasm now blocking our path.
Heat wafted up through the new hole in the ground, making me take a few steps backwards instinctively. I wanted nothing to do with whatever was down there. Some gods I didn’t need to meet. In fact, the fewer the better at this point was my opinion.
The rain started to fall harder, blackening the sidewalk and creating rising licks of steam where it met the hot air coming from within the fissure. A half block down two figures emerged from the cemetery, ambling slowly. Glancing behind me, I spotted the body we’d hit with my car dragging itself in our direction. Soon the street was filled with bodies, all moving towards us with a steady, unhurried gait.
Curtains shifted in a nearby window, and I spotted someone staring out at the scene on the street with a mixture of amazement and horror. The second the woman saw me looking at her, she shut the blinds and off went all her lights. Similarly, other houses up and down the block drew their curtains and went dark.
People knew better than to get involved in the messy business of divinity.
The outlet temple still had its front-porch light on, a beacon through the falling rain and incumbent darkness. All we had to do was make our way through dozens of the undead and a hole that led directly to the underworld.
More rumbling shook the ground below us, and Cade pulled me back a few steps onto the sidewalk as we watched two more cars vanish into the steaming-hot abyss in front of us.
“We have to run,” Cade urged. “If we stand here, it’s just going to keep opening wider.”
Eventually it would reach the houses to get to us, and I couldn’t let that happen. The people inside might not be willing to help us, but that was their right. I wouldn’t fault someone for trusting their survival instinct rather than saving a stranger from angry gods.
I also wouldn’t make them suffer just because I was public enemy number one with the divine set.
Two blocks.
We could run two blocks.
I took hold of Cade’s arm, squeezing it hard until he looked at me. His face glowed in the orange light from below, skin glistening as rain streaked down his cheeks.
He was so handsome I wanted to kiss him right then and there, but this was hardly a moment for sweeping romantic gestures. There was nothing sexy about getting sucked into the underworld because you decided to waste thirty seconds making out with a dude.
“Whatever happens, you keep running with him, you understand?”
His jaw flexed, and a war waged across his features as he struggled with whether or not to say whatever he was thinking. Eventually he gave a sharp nod and said, “I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” The asphalt made a terrible noise, somewhere between a shriek and a growl. I’d never heard an inanimate object sound like that before. It made me feel sick to my stomach, like somehow the street itself was in pain.
Everything shifted, and we all staggered at the same time. It was as though the world had suddenly stopped spinning, and we were trying desperately to stay grounded when all of nature wanted us to shoot off into space.