And I’d have a cat that curled in my lap, a fat tabby that ate Aiden’s leftover sandwich buns. We’d have a deck where we’d sit out on the evenings. Aiden would be reading a comic or some boring historical text written in Latin, and I’d be doing everything in my power to distract him.
I could get behind a future like that.
“What are you thinking?” Aiden’s quiet voice startled me.
“How did you know I was awake?”
There was a pause. “I just did. So tell me…?”
Feeling a bit foolish, I told him about my fantasy future. Aiden didn’t laugh. He didn’t poke fun at it or ask why a cat would be eating sandwich buns. He looked at me—looked at me so long I started to worry about crashing. Then he looked away, a muscle popping along his jaw.
“What?” I asked, squirming in the seat. “Did I divulge a little TMI?”
“No.” That single word was hoarse.
“Then what?”
Aiden’s eyes were so bright and luminous when they met mine again—shiny and strong like the titanium daggers we wore. “Only that I love you.”
CHAPTER 19
Kansas was… flat and grassy.
As far as the eye could see, was nothing more than flat fields with yellowish grass and tall reeds. In the distance, the horizon seemed to meet the land, a dark and ominous blue-gray as night neared, bleeding onto the brownish tall grass and white wildflowers.
“Prairie land”, according to Aiden’s impromptu history lesson, but what I picked up was that we were driving straight into Tornado Alley. All things considering, probably not the best place to be, especially when I got an eyeful of some of the most recent destruction caused by the bipolar gods.
Entire towns leveled. Debris-strewn fields and streets. The aftermath of so many lives uprooted, and knowing that it had something to do with me—the response to my initial inability to fight Seth’s influence.
It was hard to look past that, but I knew I couldn’t drown in the guilt right now or analyze the dream I’d just had like I was rocking a mad case of OCD. I needed my A-game. We were too close to Stull Cemetery.
Nervous energy hummed through both of us. Even with Apollo’s insight on the gates and the Underworld, neither of us really knew what we were going to face.
About ten miles west of Lawrence, we came upon the small, unincorporated town of Stull. I sat up straighter, eyes glued to the window.
At dusk, the main street, which appeared to be the only street, was completely abandoned. None of the businesses were open. People didn’t stroll down the sidewalks. There was nothing. Man, we were definitely in rural Kansas.
“So creepy,” I whispered.
“What?”
“There’s not a single soul on the street.” I shivered in full heebie-jeebies mode.
“Maybe they’re all in the cemetery.” When I shot him a dirty look, he laughed. “Alex, we’re about to go to the Underworld. A seemingly empty town can’t scare you that much.”
We came to a three-way stop and Aiden hung a right. “You know, Luke was saying that there’s only like twenty people who live here and that it’s believed they aren’t from Earth,” I said, glancing at Aiden. “Do you think they’re gods?”
“Could be. Maybe Stull is their summer home.”
I took another look at the squat, ancient-looking houses. “Pretty odd vacation spot, but hey, the gods are weird.”
“That they are.” Aiden leaned toward the steering wheel, eyes squinting. “There it is.”
Following his gaze, I sucked in a soft gasp. A dozen or so feet down the road, up on the right hand side, was Stull Cemetery. Not a gateway to hell, but one to the Underworld.
And in the fading sun and gathering darkness, it was creepy as hell.
“I hope no one tries to kick us out,” I murmured as Aiden coaxed the Hummer through the narrow entrance in the chain link fence. We were planning to leave the Hummer inside the cemetery. It wouldn’t be there very long; time in the Underworld moved differently. Hours there were half-seconds here. Days would be minutes. Weeks would be hours.
“For some reason, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.” Aiden pulled the vehicle to the side and killed the engine. Off went the lights.
Staring at the tombstones, I shuddered.
“Are you going to get out?” Aiden already had his door open.
A tumbleweed rolled down a walkway that had seen better days and my eyes widened as I followed it until it came to a rest against the fence. “Do I have to?”
Aiden chuckled as he closed the door, disappearing around the back of the Hummer. Not wanting to reenact a scene from Night of the Living Dead, I hopped out and quickly followed him. I found him sliding his arms through the straps of the heavy backpack.
By the time he closed the Hummer and hit the security system—who in the hell was going to steal the car here?—the cemetery had been plunged into dark shadows. Thick, dark-as-oil clouds blocked the moon, but my eyes adjusted quickly and I almost wished they hadn’t.
Thrusting out of the swaying weeds and overgrown prairie grass were fewer than a hundred gravestones. Scattered among the newer tombstones were ancient ones whose inscriptions had faded long ago. Some were square; others reminded me of mini-Washington Monuments, and a few were old crosses that tipped heavily to one side or another.
At the very cusp of the cemetery was a crumbled stone foundation edged by a few trees. Two mounds of sandy brick marked where the church had once stood, before the gods had burned it down due to Hades’ untimely midnight showing.
The pathway was nothing more than a dirt track about a foot wide, and I was almost a hundred percent positive I was strolling on unmarked graves.
“Gods, I hate cemeteries.”
Aiden placed a hand on my back. “Dead people can’t hurt you.”
“Unless they’re zombies.”
“I doubt there are any zombies around here.”
I huffed, hitting the button on the sickle blade. It extended, one end forming a sharp point, the other a nasty, reaper-looking scythe. “One can never be too safe.”
Aiden shook his head, but kept on trekking up the narrow path. Eventually the walkway faded, overgrown by brush weeds and itchy grass that clung to my cargos. A prickly feeling skated across my neck and down my spine as we neared the foundation of the church. I wanted to look behind me, but I seriously expected to find a horde of brain-eating zombies standing there.
I edged around one lonely-looking tombstone and stepped beside Aiden. We were no more than a foot away from the crushed stone.
Aiden straightened the straps on the bag as he cocked his head to the side. “So, you see anything—?”
Suddenly, the wind stopped. Like, completely.
An unnatural stillness permeated the air, raising the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck. Under the black thermal, tiny bumps stole across my flesh. A stale, musky scent seeped in from nowhere. I let out a ragged breath and a small, frothy white cloud formed.
“Okay,” I whispered, tightening my hold on the blade. “Not normal.”
Aiden’s breath lingered in the air, too. Holding a hand between us, he nodded toward the thick stand of trees crowding the remains of the church. Two darker shadows stood a few feet in, almost indistinguishable among the foliage.
My muscles tensed. Guards? Ghosts? I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Showtime,” Aiden said, silently slipping off the backpack. He placed it near a rickety stone cross.
I nodded. “Yeppers peppers.”
The two figures drifted forward. They were hooded and shapeless, and I realized that their feet—if they had feet, which was up in the air—didn’t touch the ground. Their dark-red robes trailed an inch above the grass.
Slowly, their arms rose and the material slipped back. A weird creaking noise followed the motion. Slender, pale-white fingers reached for the hoods, drawing them back.
Oh… oh, wow.
Under the hoods were nothing but bones. Pale white bones and empty, vast blackness where eye sockets and nostrils would’ve been. The mouths… the jaws hinged on loose joints, so the mouths gaped open. There was no skin, no meat or hair. They were skeletons—floating, freaking skeletons.
Not as frightening or dangerous as zombies, but still, they were creepy.
I stared at them, wanting to look away but unable. It was eerie… their eyes. They were just holes, but the longer I stared at them, something… something moved deep inside them, teeny, tiny dots of flickering light.
My fingers loosened around the sickle blade. “I could just… blast them with akasha.”
“Your idea has been noted and discarded.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Using akasha tires you out, right?” he said evenly, keeping his eyes on the things. “Why not use it for something other than a bag of bones?”
“Oh. Good point.”
Those “bags of bones” reached into their robes at the same moment.
I arched a brow. “I hope they don’t flash us. Really don’t want to see a skeleton pe—”
And then they withdrew two thick and shiny handles. Wondering if they were going to chuck the handles at us, I admitted I was quite disappointed by the guards. No wonder mortals had discovered the gateway when all that stood between them and the portal were two walking Halloween decorations.
“Alex,” Aiden murmured.
My chin jerked up, just as sparks flew from the handles, bright and intense in the darkness. Fire spread rapidly, fiery red and powerful, each forming a shape of a long, deadly blade.
“What the…?” My eyes widened.
They flew at us, bones rattling and knocking in a gruesome chorus. Aiden ducked under the first burning blade. Pivoting around cleanly, he planted a foot in the back of one skeleton.
The other lurched toward me, swiping the blade so close to my neck that I felt the heat. Darting to the side, I swung the sickle in a wide arc. The deadly sharp blade sliced through the robe and bone.
In a flash of light, the sword fizzled out and the bones collapsed into a smoldering heap. Taking a step back, I caught the sight of the same thing happening with Aiden’s opponent. The fire-sword disappeared, and then nothing remained but bone and wisps of smoke.
I waited for them to get back up and do something, maybe even an entertaining jig, but nothing. Lowering the sickle, I frowned. “That was way, way too easy.”
Aiden stalked toward me, his eyes darting over the landscape. “You’re telling me. Stay close, because I have a feeling they were just meant to distract us.”
A low growl rippled through the silent cemetery, and my stomach dropped all the way to my toes. Together, Aiden and I turned. I don’t know who reacted first. Whether it was Aiden’s explosive curse or my groan, it didn’t matter.
Crouched in the ruined remains of the church was one big, mean, ticked-off-looking hellhound.
Stone crumbled under meaty paws the size of Aiden’s hands. Claws, as sharp as the blades we held, gleamed like onyx. The body was huge, about the size of one of those energy-efficient deathtrap cars, but the heads—those were three of the biggest, ugliest things I’d ever seen. It was like taking a mutant sewer rat and mixing it with a pit bull. And the teeth… they belonged in a shark’s mouth—white, wet and very, very sharp. Drool foamed under pink gums and dripped onto the ground, where the soil burned as if splashed with acid.