Asphodel
By
Lauren Hammond
Copyright © Lauren Hammond 2011
Smashwords Edition
Asphodel Copyright© Lauren Hammond 2011.
This book is a work of fiction. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for quotations embedded in articles and reviews.
For information contact info@sbaddisonbooks.com
Portions of this novel are fictitious and drawn completely from the author's imagination. Those portions including, dialogue, incidents, and characters are not to be construed as real.
Cover design by: Jeremy West
ISBN:9780983868163
This book is dedicated to all the amazing book bloggers in the world who take the time to promote and spread the word about their favorite books and support authors they love. Many, many thanks to all of you.
Prologue
Mount Olympus, Ancient Greece
Hades barreled into Zeus, knocking him to the ground. The clash of their bodies sent a rippling clap of thunder through the sky. Zeus rose to his feet and with one flick of his finger, sent Hades flying through the air. Hades hit the ground with a thud. “You promised,” he growled, picking himself up. “You aren’t about to go back on your word, are you?”
“I know you want a queen, but maybe now isn’t the right time,” said Zeus.
“We had a deal,” Hades said, taking a few steps closer.
“I know we did and I am not going back on it.”
Hades knew exactly where this was going. Either Zeus had grown attached to this child or he had not yet informed the mother of his arrangement with Hades. “So, what are you suggesting?”
“I want you to wait for my next born.”
Hades shook his head. “I’ve waited seventeen years already. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be alone all the time?”
“I know you have been patient and your patience will not go unrewarded.”
This was bold of Zeus, but Hades could not be bargained with. “Perhaps you need more time to think it over.”
“My decision has been made, Hades. There is nothing to think about.”
Hades was about to explode when Demeter walked into the Hall of the Gods.
“Come Persephone,” she said, extending her hand behind her. Persephone grabbed Demeter’s hand and walked alongside her mother.
Hades lingered in the back of the room next a marble column and watched the young maiden. She was delicate and beautiful, with long willowy limbs, reddish-brown hair, and stunning jade green eyes.
He observed her for a while, smitten. Then assumed that she must be the child Zeus promised to him. He’d only been watching her for minutes and already this woman had his mind in a blunder. Closing his eyes, he listened attentively to the sound of her sweet voice and smiled to himself when her infectious laugh echoed through the hall.
Upon his descent to the underworld Hades came up with a plan. If Zeus wasn’t going to give him the girl, he was simply going to take her. And he’d make Zeus aware because in reality there was nothing he could do to stop him.
Hades
Present Day
Sirens howled in the distance followed by honking car horns and tires peeling out. Hades propped himself up against a building, invisible to the human eye, and watched with a blank expression as an ambulance hurled around the street corner, it’s white and red lights turning in a circular motion.
A man lied in the middle of the street. His limbs were twisted and broken and blood oozed from every opening on the man’s face. His chest rose up lightly and even though he was feet away, Hades heard the man’s raspy, wheezing breaths. The Commander of the Dead felt the man’s life slipping away. With every weak breath that escaped the man’s lungs, he crept closer and closer to Hades’ grasp.
The man was hit by a bus. It was tragic, really. Hades had seen it happen, yet he did nothing to prevent it. That was the way the world worked. Mortals were born and died every day. It was not his place to interfere, even though he could if he really wanted to.
Police blocked off the scene of the accident with bright orange cones and yellow caution tape and a crowd of onlookers had formed to watch as the paramedics placed the unknown man on a gurney. Women cried out and a few of them were being comforted by their male partners. Hades closed his eyes and began to feel bits and pieces of the man’s life flash before his eyes. This occurred every time a soul was about to cross into his realm. This gave the God of the Dead the ability to administer proper judgment and proper placement once the souls of the departed reached him.
Using his invisibility cloak, Hades faded into the chaos of the crowd and hovered over the dying man. He reached out, prepared to latch onto the man’s wrist and pull him under when he’d heard a wild shriek in the crowd. “Jake! Jake!” Hades straightened up and looked over his shoulder as a woman sprinted through the crowd of onlookers, pushing and shoving the ones in her way. Her strands of chestnut hair slapped against her face, her ivory cheeks were flushed and her eyes were rimmed in red. She howled out another painful shriek. “Jake! No! No!”
Hades stepped back as the woman reached the gurney and hurled her body over the dying man’s. Agony flashed in the woman’s hazel eyes as she ran her trembling fingers over the man’s mangled face. She sobbed, her voice strangled as the paramedics and police officers tried to pull her off the man. “No! No!” She fought them off, her arms flailing, her legs jetting out as she tried to kick the cops and paramedics. “Don’t die on me, Jake! Don’t die on me! I love…I love you!”
“Ma’am, we have to get him to a hospital!” a paramedic cried. “He needs medical attention!”
After a few more strenuous attempts the cops were able to pry the woman off of the man, they escorted her to the ambulance and helped her into the back. And she sat there, sobbing into her palms while the paramedics loaded the body. Once the gurney was secure, the woman laced her fingers through the man’s, lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the man’s fingertips.
Hades waited until the paramedics closed the ambulance door before appearing inside. He watched the woman, a fierce loving look in her eyes as she brushed her thumb against the man’s limp hand. Her emotion struck Hades in a way he hadn’t been struck in centuries. He felt for her. Normally when he witnessed death he remained indifferent and just accepted what had occurred, but for some reason he couldn’t understand why this situation seemed different.
Maybe because he knew what it was like to love someone and watch them slip through grasp eternally. He’d been after his love for at least five thousand years. Chasing her from state to state, city to city, and from continent to continent. He’d suffered in pain every time he lost her. And he’d lost her a lot.
Standing there in the ambulance, persuaded by his own feelings Hades did something he rarely ever did. He leaned over the dying man’s mouth, sucked in a deep breath, and breathed life back into him. The man’s eyes flew open and he coughed out, gasping for air. The woman’s eyes bulged out and she cried tears of joy as she kissed every bruise on the man’s face.
A soft smile crawled across Hades’ lips as he vanished from the ambulance and returned to his realm. He sat down rigidly still on his throne and gazed out into the black abyss of nothingness known as the underworld. The realm in which he was the tyrannical ruler of. He peered over his should to his right, then to his left. The quiet engulfed him until all he heard were his own thoughts.
At times he cursed Zeus for damning him to a realm of nothingness, death, and despair, but then again there were times where he’d also praised Zeus. Hades had never been like the other God’s and Goddesses that previously dwelled on Mount Olympus. The wicked and despicable things he was capable of would haunt them to the core. He was sure of it.
Through the centuries, the tasks of running his realm had become tedious and repetitive to Hades. The task of damning the souls that had crossed the river Styx into his domain was becoming tiresome for the deceitful king. Of course he still had Cerberus, his dog, man’s best friend. Cerberus had proven to be extremely loyal. At times the three headed beast’s howling and barking would annoy Hades to the point, where he considered cutting off all three of Cerberus’s heads. But that was only a mere thought.
The gentle yet fierce guardian hobbled into the throne room, all three tongues hanging out. The dog whimpered and let out a soothing yelp as Hades gently stroked the dog’s middle head. “Good boy.”
The God of the Dead’s attention averted to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room and Cerberus’s spine stiffened as Hades rose up from his throne. “Stay,” he commanded the three headed dog that Hades called his only loyal companion over the last five thousand years. Cerberus howled and lied down on the floor, lowering all three of his heads in a gesture of obedience.
Hades lips turned up into a wry smile as he walked out of his throne room. Perhaps his kindness today was a sign. Perhaps he was close to getting her. The one and only person he’d ever been enamored with. The Goddess he’d been chasing for the last five thousand years.
****
It was fifteen minutes to midnight and Hades, God of death and destruction, paced along the banks of the river Styx with his hands balled into fists at his sides. Charon was late with today’s shipment of souls and that left Hades feeling uneasy. Hades didn’t like uncertainty. He ran a tight schedule in the realm of the dead and when the impervious schedule was interrupted, well, he knew Charon would be wise to stay away from him for the rest of the day.
He stopped mid-pace, kicking grey sand and focused on the fog, rising from the brownish, green murky waters of the Styx. There was an internal clock in his brain, ticking and as Hades closed his eyes he envisioned the hands of the clock moving as the minutes dwindled by. Filled with worry and impatience, Hades tapped his foot, folding his arms and drummed his fingers against his elbow. Anxiousness unfurled beneath his skin like a flesh-eating parasite. “The one day that I need him to be on time and he’s late,” Hades growled as he began pacing again.
Sand crunched as the rubber soles of his boots smashed it down and the noise ricocheted off the walls of the cavern—the opening—the crossing where the land of the living met with the land of the dead. The slick brown stone walls glistened with sludge, a slimy residue from the Styx’s choppy waters. Hades’ eyes centered on that sludge as he thought about all the punishment’s he’d have in store for Charon if he took any longer. But, before he came up with one, the soft plunking of wooden oars throbbed in his ears. Then the plunking intensified turning into slapping. Charon was close.
Hades stood on the edge of the dock as the old, feeble ferryman parked his ship, full of the dearly departed and descended down the rope ladder. Charon stood before his master clutching the brim of his hat, his fingers trembling. “I’m sorry master. So sorry.” Charon lowered his head and few wisps of white hair stood up while the lighting bounced off the bald parts.
“What was the hold-up?” Hades asked, gruffly.
Charon kept his head low, talking at his feet. “We had an indecisive soul, sire.”
An indecisive soul was the soul of a mortal who was stuck in the between, not quite in the land of the living, but still not able to cross fully into the land of the unliving. Hades scanned the row of occupants on the ferry, infuriated. “Which one was it?” His tone was flat and cold.
Charon lifted his head and nodded at a teenage boy in the back of the ship. “Him.”
Hades glared at the boy pre-adult boy, whose hazel eyes glistened with tears. Seconds later, Hades disappeared, reappearing in front of the boy. Fear crept up the mortal’s spine and he stiffened, unable to move. Then he started shaking. Hades examined him, hoping to scorch him with his gaze. Rage bubbled inside of the mighty God and Hades boomed, “Aren’t you a man?” The boy lowered his head and Hades blanched as he sniffled. But the boy did not answer.
“Answer me!” Hades screamed, shaking the entire ferry. The other passengers turned, eyeing Hades, fearfully.
“I’m, I’m only fifffteen,” the boy whimpered, stuttering at the same time.
Hades exhaled as the rage inside of him died down. He relaxed his stance slouching over, slightly. Even though, the young boy had taken too much of his time and Hades contemplated sending him to the depths of Tartarus, he knew couldn’t. Not because he wasn’t able to, but because despite his cold demeanor and mischievous ways, He had always been a fair and just God. And the boy didn’t deserve to spend an eternity being tortured endlessly. “Stand up,” He instructed the teen, calmly.
The boy rose from his seat, trying desperately to lock his trembling knees in place. Hades placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and the young teen blanched, turning away. “Do not fear me,” Hades said boldly. Slowly, the boy turned toward Hades, peaking up at him from the corner of his eye. Then the God of the Dead closed his eyes and recited the same thing he’d recited for the last five-thousand years. “The realm of the dead welcomes you. Go forth and find your home in the Field of Asphodel so that you may live out your eternity in peace.”
Every soul on the ferry vanished. They’d been assigned to their forever. And then Hades vanished, appearing in his throne room. Walls of black and matching black marble tile floors engulfed him and he sat back on the red, velvet cushioned throne. He looked up at a cast-iron clock on the wall. Seven minutes to midnight. In seven minutes, he’d have another opportunity to take her, hopefully his last.
He recalled the first time saw her in the Hall of the Gods, trailing behind Demeter. Her mahogany hair glistened red in the sunlight. Her skin was a creamy peach color. And her eyes were the most stunning shade of Jade-green he’d ever seen.
Hades had been chasing Demeter and her daughter for five-thousand years. He hadn’t been chasing them for his own purposes, either. Well, his own purpose was a small part of why he’d been chasing them. There were two other main reasons why he’d been after Demeter and her daughter for the last five thousand years; the first was he wanted to teach Zeus a lesson for going back on their deal. The second, because he felt something the first time he saw her that was too powerful to deny.
In the past, Demeter was always able to out-smart him. Demeter had always kept her daughter close—too close. But with every passing century, Hades felt himself getting closer and closer.
Hades had a feeling that during this seventeen year span it would be different. He would finally get what he’d always longed for, a queen. Or who he’d always longed for Persephone.
Demeter
It was five minutes until midnight and Demeter knew there was no way that she’d be able to sleep. Red burned into her eyes from the digital clock on the nightstand. 11:56 another minute slipped away.
One day every seventeen years Demeter suffered through a sleepless night. She couldn’t sleep before midnight because she was too worried about what she knew would happen to her daughter. And she couldn’t sleep afterwards because she feared that when she woke up in the morning, he might have visited her daughter in the night and stole her from her bed.
Demeter had tried for thousands of years to out-run Hades. She was smart, moving with her daughter like a nomad from place to place—from century to century, but Hades was smarter. He always found them. It didn’t matter how discreet they were or what continent they were living on. Hades found them every time.
Demeter had even tried using transformation magic to shield her appearance and her child’s from death himself, but not even some of her powers were of any use because he was that much more powerful. One time, on an off year Hades had visited Demeter while her child was at school. She had been at the kitchen sink, washing dishes and she didn’t even need to look up to know he was behind her. The moment he entered the room a slight chill whipped through the lavender curtains right above the kitchen sink. Demeter tensed up, gripping onto the tan ceramic plate in her left hand and let go of the dish sponge. “What do you want, Hades?”
He crept closer to her, the sound of his footsteps pounded into the hardwood floor. “I think you know what I want, Demeter,” he stated calmly. “I think you’ve always known what I want.”
Demeter spun around, pressing her back into the crème counter-top, facing the commander of all things unliving and sneered. “You won’t ever get what you want, Hades. I will never let you have her.”
Hades laughed, his rich deep voice bordered along the lines wickedness and insanity as it filled the confined rectangular room. “Oh, I will get her, Demeter.” Hades glided closer, snatching her wrist and squeezed it hard. So hard, that Demeter’s knees buckled and slammed into the hardwood floor. Hades wasn’t able to kill her, but he was able to cause her agonizing pain.
At first, the pain felt like a mild bug bite, irritating, but tolerable. Then as it spread through her body, the pain became so excruciating, Demeter couldn’t breathe. She panted, trying to be strong, but it was no use. As Hades squeezed her wrist tighter, she felt like her limbs were being ripped from her by a pack of hungry hyenas. “Stop!” she cried. “Stop! Releasing her from his grasp, Hades backed away as Demeter hunched over, curling up into the fetal position. As the pain subsided a swirl of coldness flourished through her and her breathing returned to normal.
She glared at Hades giving him a look full of hatred and brutality. Hades smiled, amused. “I knew you’d see things my way. Perhaps, Demeter, we can come to some sort of arrangement.”
Demeter knew better than to bargain with the master of deceit. She struggled to pick herself up and lost her balance, slamming both of her palms into the floor. She pushed herself up again, with more force and knelt down. Then she gripped the counter and hoisted herself up, clutching the edge of the counter tightly as she steadied herself.
“So,” said Hades as her examined his hands. “Do we have a deal then?”
She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, and spun around full of so much anger that she trembled. “Never,” Demeter growled, half-rasping half-whispering.
Hades charged toward her. “Oh, apparently I haven’t persuaded you to see things my way enough.”
He was centimeters away, but Demeter was ready for him. She snapped her arms back and clasped her hands together as a gust of wind unfurled from her fingertips. A gust of wind so forceful that it knocked Hades backwards and blew him out the front door.
Exhausted, Demeter crouched down against the cherry-stained wooden cabinets and slouched. She hated using her powers while living in close proximity with the mortals, but Hades gave her no choice.
From that moment on, she knew that she hadn’t been protecting her daughter to the best of her abilities. She had to step up her game because Hades would not and probably would never take no for an answer.
The next day she’d packed up their belongings. “Time to move,” she said, taping up a box full of dishes.
“What no!” Persephone cried. “But we haven’t even been here a year!” She sat down with a slouch, whimpering softly.
It broke Demeter’s heart to see her daughter so upset. She knew how much Persephone wanted normalcy. And sadly Demeter wished their situation was different, but it wasn’t. She and her daughter were who they were, immortal goddesses. Not only that, but they were immortal goddesses on the run from death himself. They weren’t a normal family and never would be.
One minute to midnight and Demeter rose from her bed, creeping toward her bedroom door. In sixty seconds all hell would break loose like it had so many times before.
Persephone
“Persephone,” he hisses. “Come to me.”
A shrill, deafening cry escapes from my lips. My lungs expand as I suck in more air and my throat is raw—chafed, flakes of dry skin being peeled away after a sun burn.
I bolt upright in my bed as my mother bursts through the door. Hysteria washes over me. I gasp and choke on a ball of air wedged in the middle of my esophagus. Fighting. I’m fighting for the oxygen to leave my lungs.
My mother sweeps me up into her arms and whispers comforting words into my ears. “Hush, darling. It’s all right.”
I let out long ragged breaths, finally able to breathe. Tears matriculate in my eyes. I bite them back as beads of sweat drizzle down my forehead and my arms and legs begin to convulse.
Mom squeezes me tighter, controlling my flailing limbs. “Calm down, sweetheart,” she consoles me. “It was only a dream.”
But this isn’t a dream. This is a voice, life-like and real. A voice that has been coming to me on my seventeenth birthday for as long as I can remember. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, every seventeen years he comes to me, taunting me. And it’s always the same thing, Persephone. Come to me. The reality of it haunts me. This is not a figment of my imagination.
“It feels so real,” I mumble, suddenly exhausted.
“Sometimes dreams feel more real than not,” my mother says, tucking me underneath the covers. “Go back to sleep, love.”
“Persephone,” he hisses again. “Come to me. Come to me. Come to me.”
The voice blurs and fades, like a faint cry riding on the tails of the wind. I yawn and stretch, rolling over. I fold my pillow under my head and wait for the voice to return. When I hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing I allow myself to drift back into a dreamless slumber.
****
“Happy Birthday!” my mother squeals. Her face inches away from mine.
I open one eye squinting, still half asleep. “Thanks,” I grumble and roll over.
“No way, young lady.” She rips my comforter off me. “Time to wake up.”
“Ugh. Isn’t it supposed to be my day?” I whine. “Can’t you let me sleep a little longer?”
She smirks, shaking her head. “Nope. You have school.”
Hurling my legs over the side of the bed, I rise slowly and my eyes adjust to the bright lighting in my room. My mother observes me for a second then tears well up in her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Mom.” It bothers me seeing her so emotional.
“I can’t help it,” she sniffles. “My baby is almost an adult.”
I roll my eyes. “Mom, do you have to do this every seventeen years? My real seventeenth birthday was like forever ago.”
She pulls a tissue out of the pocket of her violet cardigan and blows her nose. “That’s the beauty of being immortal my dear. You never run out of seventeenth birthdays.”
Most of the time I thought of our immortality as being more of a curse than a blessing. I imagine most humans would cherish the opportunity to never grow old. In the beginning of my life, I have to say it was fascinating. But living forever does become tiresome, when a person has been around as long as I have.
“Get ready for school, honey,” she commands. “After you get home, I’ve got a fun day planned for us.”
“Ugh,” I groan. “Can’t I just have a quiet, low-key birthday for once?”
She tucks a loose piece of her auburn hair behind her ear. “Now what kind of mother would I be if we did that?”
A mother who actually listens to what her daughter wants. “Fine,” I say, defeated. “I’ll be downstairs in a little bit.”
She kisses my forehead gently. “Good.” Then she walks out of my room.
At my dresser, I slide open the top drawer. The cherry stained wooden container is relatively new and the smell of fresh cedar hasn’t faded yet. I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the musky scent and I adore it. Any scent reminding me of the outdoors is something that I’ll never get tired of. Being the Goddess of Springtime probably has something to do with that.
Reaching into the drawer, I fumble through my assortment of underwear and inch my fingers toward the bottom. I graze my fingertips over a smooth flat object. My journal. I retrieve it and set it on top of my dresser. Another year. Another birthday. Keeping track of all of my birthdays is something I’ve done for ages. In fact, I’ve got about twenty crates in our attic reminding me of how many birthdays have accrued over the years.
We left Greece five-thousand years ago and have never looked back.
“Why are we leaving?” I’d once asked.
My mother didn’t elaborate. “Don’t ask questions. Just gather your things.”
I have it on good authority that my mother had a reason for making me flee the only home I knew. But I never asked her any questions about why we were leaving after that. I simply did as I was told.
Flipping through the pages of my journal, I found the spot where I’d written in it last. Three more pages to go. Two more birthdays, then I’ll need a new one.
“Hurry up in there!” Mom’s voice has a nagging tone to it. “You’re going to be late!”
“I’m coming!”
I pick up a pen off my dresser and write down the same thing I write every seventeen years.
My Seventeenth Birthday-April 25, 2011
Location-Klamath Falls, Oregon.
The voice came again.
The first time I heard the voice was shortly after we had left Greece. Back then, when it came to me, it was a soft, rhythmic, seductive voice that wrapped around me like crushed velvet, a deep tone that caressed me, making my spine tingle. I felt drawn to it. Curiosity plagued me. I knew it was a man. The all-around over-powering, voice didn’t belong to a woman.
For centuries, the whole complexity of this situation puzzled me. Who exactly was this person? Why was he trying to reach out to me? What did he want from me?
After hearing the voice for five seventeenth birthdays in a row, I went to my mother and told her about it. I don’t really know what I had expected from her but, it wasn’t laughter. After she contained herself, she had me convinced that I was dreaming this voice up. Until seventeen years later, it came again. And after mentioning it to her once well, her reaction made me never mention it again.
****
I enter the kitchen. An incessant plunking noise echoes from the sink as droplets of water from the faucet drip into the metal basin. Other than that, it’s silent. My eyes dart around the empty, organized room. “Mom, where are you?”
No answer.
In the middle of the kitchen table is a bowl of fruit. A loud, rolling rumble escapes my belly. I stare at the fruit, thinking it looks vaguely familiar. The round reddish fruit resembles a plum, but slightly larger. I’m starving and it looks delicious. Pulling out a chair I plop down in front of the bowl. Buried in the center, tucked between the balls of round deliciousness is a white card. “Hmm.” I pick the card up and scan it.
Happy Birthday.
Love,
H
“H? Who is H?”
I shrug and toss the card aside. Maybe he knows my mother. It has to be someone she knows and I think that them sending me a bowl of fruit for my birthday is an awfully kind gesture.
After grabbing the biggest piece, I bring the plump, fruit to my lips. I open my mouth to take a bite when I hear my mom scream. I face her, my mouth still hanging open, the fruit still in my hand.
“What are you doing?” she shrieks, races toward me, and slaps the fruit out of my hand. It hits the floor with a thud and rolls under the kitchen table. “What were you thinking?” She’s panicking, fumbling as she tries to move a chair, and mumbling incoherent words under her breath. Her face twitches and she scrambles to pick the fruit up off the floor.
I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve never seen her so unglued. “What’s wrong with you?” I’m so confused and concerned. Why is she freaking out over a piece of fruit?
She palms the fruit and waves it my face. “What were you trying to do with this?”
“Trying to do with it? I was gonna eat it. I’m hungry.”
Her eyes widen and the rosy color fades from her cheeks. “You do not eat this, you hear me!”
I’m puzzled by her wild and crazy antics. “It’s just a piece of fruit.”
She exhales and a calm look forms on her face. Then she places the fruit in her hand on top of the pile and carries the bowl over to the counter. “If you’re hungry I’ll make you some oatmeal.”
Something is going on. She’s keeping something from me. “What’s going on, Mom? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“There is nothing going on, Persephone. I just don’t want you to eat the fruit, okay. We don’t know where it came from.”
I snatch the index card from the table. “I do. Someone named H.”
Her head turns slowly, her eyes slant. She’s silent for a moment, then her turquoise eyes widen, burning into my jade-green ones. “Who?”
She walks toward me as I flip the card over and stare at my name. “All it says is Happy Birthday, love H.”
A worried look appears on her face aging her youthful features in a matter of seconds. She rips the card from my hand and crumbles it in her palm.
“Hey!” I protest. “That was mine!”
“You’re going to be late for school.” Her tone is vacant and she stares off in a trance.
Standing, I fling my back pack over my shoulder. She’s right. I do have to get to school, but I’m not going to just forget about what happened. And I have every intention of bringing this up again when I get home.
Persephone
As I walk down my porch steps, thoughts involving my mother’s erratic behavior remain constant. I just don’t understand. What’s with all the craziness? What kind of fruit was she keeping me from eating? I know I’ve seen the fruit somewhere before. But where? Ugh. I rack my brain, trying to remember, but five thousand years of memories are way too many to sort through at one time.
What bothers me more than anything is, no matter what mom tells me, I know she’s lying to me about something.
For the last five thousand years we’ve been on the run, moving every decade sometimes less than a decade. The shortest amount of time we’ve spent in one place is six months. In all, I’ve lived on every continent, in at least seventy five thousand cities, sometimes more than once, and all fifty states. And I’ve never known what or who we’ve been running from.
Mom blames it on the mortals. She says we have to blend. But eventually blending isn’t enough. Then we move and begin the blending process all over again.
Even though mom says the mortals are why we move so often I’ve always had this gut feeling that it’s more than that. There’s another reason because mom knows as well as I do that the mortals aren’t the reason why we left Greece. We left for another reason, something mom refuses to explain. Her vagueness makes me questions her methods every time we pack up and globe trot.
Could we be running from the man behind the voice?
I’m so involved in my theories, talking to myself, and keeping my eyes on the ground that I don’t even see him coming. Before I can stop myself, I run into him and stumble. He grabs both of my arms and steadies me. “Hey, you.” His voice is full of warmth. “You feeling okay?”
I lift my head and gaze at him. My head spins. I’m dizzy. “Hi, Adonis,” I say and greet him with a nervous smile. “I’m fine. I’m just a little ticked at my Mom.”
Adonis moved next door a few months ago. Him moving here was strange, almost like he blew in with the wind. I could have sworn I saw Mrs. Darwin, the kind little old lady who’d lived there her entire life out in the front yard, gardening a week before he moved in. Then one day, a few days before he showed up she was gone. But I just shrugged it off. She was old and I figured she either died or her kids put her in a home.
Adonis is a year older than me and he usually walks with me to school in the morning. He flashes me a brilliant smile and I quietly take a deep breath. I’ve never in all my years living seen a teenage boy that looked like him. He’s too beautiful for words.
His touch makes me sizzle and I feel like I’m starting to grow limp. He releases me and backs away. The early morning sun kisses his bronzed skin and he looks like he’s shimmering. A sinful smirk and two dimples later and I feel like I can’t breathe.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
We start walking and Adonis reaches into his book bag and hands me a piece of paper. “Happy Birthday,” he says.
My heart flutters and my pulse races. Perspiration forms on my hands. I try to find words, but I’m flustered. As he looks away I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants. “Adonis, you didn’t have to get me anything.”
Sometimes he does little things like this that make me wonder if he’s interested in us being more than just friends who walk to school together. One time he picked me a bouquet of wildflowers. Another time he’d sent me a get well card when I lied about being home with the flu. School isn’t that important to someone like me. I can’t even count how many times I’ve actually graduated high school. The only reason I go at all is because of mom and her blending routine. So I fake being sick a lot.
Adonis is always smiling at me and I catch him staring at me every day during lunch even though he has a dozen girls at his table swooning over him.
On top of that, he’s a gentleman, always holding the door open for me when we leave school. He offers to carry my back pack or books or whatever I’m holding at the time and he always asks me if I want to hang out. And it rips me open inside when I have to refuse.
Mom doesn’t let me have friends. And she definitely wouldn’t let me have a boyfriend. A boyfriend would earn me a round trip ticket to another state. I remember one of our debates a few years back when we were living in Massachusetts. A kid from my class who I sort of had a crush on, kissed me and I’d let him. The kiss took place on the front steps of the school, in front of the entire student body, and in front of mom who had been watching it unfold from her mini-van. I took my time walking to the car that day because I could see her face, twisted and bunched up from the school steps. She was furious.
“That’s it!” she’d shouted. Pack up. We’re moving.”
“Mom, no!” I’d protested. “It was just a kiss.”
“Persephone,” she’d said sternly. “You know we’re not like the mortals. If we stay in one place for too long or get too close they’ll start to suspect something. Don’t whine. Pack your things. We leave tomorrow morning.”
I like Oregon. I’m not ready to leave yet.
Adonis gazes into my eyes. “I wanted to. It’s nothing much. Just something I saw in a department store downtown that I thought you’d like. And don’t get mad,” he says. “I know you said you hate celebrating your birthday, but it reminded me of you.”
I beam and laugh giddily. “I’m not mad. I’m just saying you didn’t have to.”
He stops in front of me and I come to a halt. “Open it.” His amber eyes shimmer like topaz gems in the sunlight and are filled with excitement.
Eagerly, I rip into the paper and my breathing stops. “Oh my. Adonis, it’s beautiful.” Fanned out along the heel of my hand is a delicate silver bracelet with an ornate rose charm dangling from it.
“Let me put it on you,” he says with a smile.
After I shove the excess wrapping paper in my book bag, I hold my wrist out and he fastens the bracelet. Lifting my hand, I marvel at the gift and as the sun catches the charm, it glistens.
I shoot him a patronizing look. “Seriously though, how much did something like this cost?”
“Don’t you worry about it. It’s your birthday.”
“Still. You could have spent your money on something you wanted or needed. Instead you spend it on a gift me.”
He shakes his head as a smile spans across his lips. “I have all I want and need. Just do me a favor and enjoy the gift.”
A flicker of light reflecting off the bracelet catches my eye and I look down at it again. Then I glimpse at Adonis, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. He’s staring straight ahead, his amber eyes sparkling, and a radiant smile as bright as the sun on his lips. An uneasy feeling swirls around in my gut. This is not a friendly gift. This is a gift that says he wants to be more than friends and that scares the Goddess out of me.
****
Klamath Falls high isn’t a school that holds very many secrets. Every morning as I walk to my locker, I know what to expect. I know that Kate Perry and Grant Pierce will me making out in front of the mass of black metal and I know that I’ll have to shove them aside with my shoulder just to get my books. I know that Mr. Doyle, the gym teacher will be standing at the end of the hall checking his watch periodically to make sure there aren’t any stragglers lingering in the halls after the bell rings. And I also know that the popular kids will stroll past me flashing me scowls before they break out into a hymn of whispers.
I’ve been here since I was a freshman and despite my efforts to be friendly, they’ve never warmed to me. When we’d first moved here, I knew trying to talk to people would be difficult. Klamath Falls is a small town and the townspeople and students have been sorted into their own social circles since they were children. There’s no room for someone like me in those existing cliques. There’s no room for a freak anywhere.
One of the cheerleaders in my biology class labeled me a freak about three months after I’d started high school. During biology, I had a weak moment where I noticed a dying rose on the teacher’s desk. Just the sight of the rotting petals and wilted stem made my heart ache. So when the teacher wasn’t looking, I touched the flower and it magically came back to life. The vibrant red petals regained their full color and the wrinkles in the stem faded away.
Sasha Ferrar’s mouth had dropped open and her emerald eyes followed me back to my seat and then she looked over her shoulder. “What did you do, freak?”
All of the Immortal Olympians are gifted with special powers. In my opinion, I’ve been cursed with the lousiest one. The only thing I can do is revive dead plants. My dad, Zeus can shift into any animal he wants or shoot bolts of lightning from his fingertips. Why can’t I do something like that?
Ever since that day, I never slipped up again. My façade of normalcy is too precious and I prayed every day that my mom would never find out about the incident. She didn’t. Sasha eventually forgot about the rose, but the freak name stuck to me like a sign on the back that says ‘kick me’.
I enter my first period class—which is English and this semester we are studying Mythology. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Mrs. Kirk, the petite mousy teacher leans against her desk as I slide into my seat. A strand of my mahogany hair breaks free from my ponytail. At first I try blowing the strand out of my face. I give up when the reddish brown strip only moves a centimeter so I tuck it behind my ear.
Marisol Nicholls plops down next to me. Red flushes her ivory cheeks as she fumbles through her folders. She mumbles a string of choice words under her breath and nervously brushes her curly orange hair over her shoulder. I smile amused. “You okay, Mar?”
“Argh. I can’t find that print-out Mrs. Kirk gave us yesterday,” she whines. “I have a hard enough time in this class as it is.”
Marisol flips through her textbook. She’s the only person I can call an acquaintance. We talk in school and sometimes we text and there have been a few times where we’ve wrote on each other’s Facebook walls, but that’s all our relationship consists of. I wish she could be my friend. I wish we could do all the things I’ve seen other girl best friends do. Have sleepovers, go shopping, and maybe even crash a few parties. But every time I think about it, a vivid picture of mom holding out two plane tickets pops into my head and I remember that I’m lucky we haven’t moved yet.
Marisol pulls a sheet of paper out of the back of her text book. She kisses it and I laugh. “Thank the Gods,” she jokes. After she lays the paper flat on her desk, she turns toward me. “Hey! I almost forgot. Happy Birthday, P!”
The bell rings and Mrs. Kirk’s head snaps to her left. Her beady grey eyes zoom in on Marisol. “Miss Nicholls, is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”
Marisol drops her head and slinks down in her seat. “No,” Marisol answers quietly.
Her eyes flash over to mine as Mrs. Kirk faces the class. “Thank you,” I mouth with a smile.
“Okay, class!” Mrs. Kirk announces as she reaches over her shoulder to grab a wicker basket. “Take a piece of paper from the basket and pass it to the person behind you. And do not open your paper until everyone has one.” She walks over to me and hands me the basket. I take a piece of folded up paper and pass it to the person behind me.
Once everyone has a paper, Mrs. Kirk takes the basket back and sets it on the edge of her desk. “Alright.” She clasps her hands together excitedly. “Open your papers.”
The rustling of paper echoes throughout the classroom. I stare down at my paper as a smug grin crawls across my lips. Marisol hangs out of her desk, straining to see the name on my paper. “Who did you get?”
I hold up the paper so she can get a clear look. “Demeter, you?” Inside an explosion of glee travels through me. I will definitely get an A on this assignment. Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest is my mom. It’s not that I really need to focus on getting good grades; it’s that it makes me feel more normal if I do.
Marisol falls back into her seat, slumping. “Hades,” she grumbles. “How come everyone else always gets the good ones?”
A soft laugh leaves my throat at the sight of Marisol sulking like a child. “I’m sure the God of the Dead could be interesting.”
She rolls her eyes. “More like the God of Dread.
“I’ll help you if you want,” I offer.
Marisol perks up, her eyes glistening with hope. “Would you trade me?”
“You cannot trade!” Mrs. Kirk pipes up.
Marisol exhales and winces. “Bummer.”
“This will be your final essay assignment,” Mrs. Kirk announces as she walks around to sit down at her desk. “It’s going to make up eighty percent of your grade.”
I hiss softly, trying to get Marisol’s attention. I lower my hand with the paper in it, and her eyes meet mine. She drops her head slowly, finally catching on to what I’m doing. A bright smile curls on her lips and she snatches the paper from my hand and replaces it with hers. Mrs. Kirk won’t know we switched. She didn’t ask us who we’d selected. Plus she’s not paying attention at the moment.
The small crumpled up piece of paper with Hades in black permanent marker fills my vision. Surprisingly, Hades is a God I don’t know much about. I’ve never asked about him and on top of that, mom refuses to talk about the commander of the Underworld.
I recall one story she told me about him centuries ago.
“Hades is the master of deception and trickery,” she’d told me. “When Zeus had problems with the mortals, Hades summoned a beast from the depths of Tartarus to teach humanity a lesson. You see he envied Zeus for giving him command of the realm of the dead. So in return he pretended to use his beast to do Zeus’s bidding, but he’d really only intended to use the Kraken for his own selfish reasons.”
“The Kraken?” I’d questioned.
“A monstrous beast over one hundred feet tall, with fangs as long as spears, and slimy skin with scales.” Mom lowered her voice, a frightening look on her face. “The Kraken could eat a hundred mortals with a snap of its’ jaw.”
“That’s terrifying,” I’d gasped. “What did Zeus do?” I remember that she’d told me that story right before bed time.
“Never you mind.” She’d kissed the top of my head. “You just go to sleep and try to dream of pleasant things.” Trying to dream of pleasant things after hearing a story like that was like asking for snow in the desert. I laid awake for half of the night, eyes wide, glued to the ceiling.
During lunch exhaustion creeps over me and I struggle to keep my eyes open. I lay my head on the cool, hard table and close my eyes. All I want to do is sleep away my fears. Sleep right through my birthday and forget about the voice. The voice that I know will pop up randomly at any given moment throughout the rest of the day.
As my slumber deepens, my mind slips away from me. I’m dreaming, lost in a world that I haven’t been to in five thousand years. I am outdoors. I am running and a gust of wind whips through my hair tossing up the scent of freesia. I suck in lungfuls of the smell of wildflowers, and pluck a bouquet from the earth. Shifting, I peek over my shoulder. I know where I am. I’m in one of the most cherished places of my past, in the field at Enna on the outskirts of Mount Olympus.
Marching forward, a garden of yellow daffodils draws me closer to edge of the field. I bend over, reaching for a daffodil to add to my heaping bouquet when I hear it—the voice.
“Persephone,” he hisses. “Come to me.” I’m perplexed and curious, but at the same time fear swallows me, digesting me like a mammal in an anaconda’s stomach. My spine stiffens. A strangled gasp sticks in my throat. My lungs clench and refuse to expand. Straightening up, my attention averts to a willow tree at the edge of the field.
A man with dark hair stands underneath the tree watching me.
Thick saliva coats the lining of my esophagus, sticky like warm molasses. I try to push it down with more saliva, but I can’t. On the outside I appear to be calm, but on the inside I’m a knot of hysteria. Shrieking, trembling, and sobbing. The man’s face is blurred and I can’t make out his features. He’s dressed from head to toe in black. I lurch forward fighting the better half of myself that’s screaming for me to stay put. “Who aaare you?” I stutter.
He doesn’t answer.
As I close the gap between us I can make out his broad, muscular build. The man tilts his head to the side and I swear I can see a set of eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. “Are you the voice?” My own voice goes up an octave.
I’m so close to him now that I can make out his profound jaw-line, high cheek bones, and the slightest bit of stubble on his chin. But then, when I’m only feet away he vanishes into thin air. He’s a particle of matter floating in the atmosphere. Invisible. I’m so confused. “Where did you go?” I pivot in a circle, taking in the whole field, but the mysterious man is nowhere in sight. “Where did you go?”
A finger digs into my shoulder and I pivot again. I’m still alone. “Who’s touching me?” Then a hand clamps down on my shoulder and I’m shaking. My whole body is shaking. “Stop it!” I swat at the invisible hand frantically. “Stop touching me!” The shaking intensifies and I feel my whole body convulsing.
“P!”
“Stop! Get your hands off me!”
“P! Damn it! Wake up!”
My eyes snap open. Marisol is inches away from my face wearing a concerned look. I sit up and stifle a glance around the packed cafeteria. “Mar?”
“Are you okay?” Marisol gasps. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I must have dozed off and had some kind of nightmare.”
“I’ll say.”
She gives me another apprehensive look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nod and relief floods through me. I’m elated to be in the safe haven of the cafeteria. The dream felt too real and my cheeks are hot, like I’d actually been basking in the warmth of the sun. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” Marisol slides a thick book with a hard cover casing toward me.
I stare at the cover. “Greek Myths for Beginners.”
“I found it in the library,” she tells me. “Remember how you offered to help me?”
“Yeah. My offer still stands.”
“Well, I’m taking it,” she says discouragingly. “I’m terrible in mythology.”
I smile. “Well, luckily for you, I’m not.”
“Of course you’re not. Your name is Persephone for God’s sake. You have to have Greek in you somewhere.”
“Some.” More than she’s aware of.
Flipping through the book, I laugh; amused at how mortals recount the existence of the Olympians if they only knew we could actually vouch for ourselves, I’m sure this would make their literature seem silly. I turn a few more pages and freeze, stopping about half-way through the book. “Oh…” A breath is clogged in the back of my throat. “No.”
Marisol leans over my shoulder, focusing on the image on the page. “What’s the matter?”
I stare at a picture of the fruit I’d received as a birthday gift this morning. The thick reddish skin fills my gaze and I make a shocking discovery. “H is Hades.”
Marisol draws her eyebrows together. “Huh?” She points to the picture, reading the paragraph beneath it. “The book says that’s a pomegranate. Supposedly, it’s the fruit of the dead.”
A queasy feeling ripples through my stomach. “H is Hades,” I repeat robotically.
Rising from the table I can feel my knees trembling. I lock them in place as Marisol follows me with her brown child-like eyes. “What’s going on P?”
I’m numb and a feeling of betrayal surges through me. I picture mom’s panicked look when I placed the pomegranate against my lips. “She knows,” I pant as my breaths come out short and raspy. Backing away from the table, I’m hyperventilating. Shock is a brick sitting in the pit of my stomach. I want to spit it out. I want to throw it up. “I don’t feel so hot. I have to go home,” I mumble.
“P, wait! What’s wrong?”
“Just text me later if you still need help,” I tell her. Then I bolt from the cafeteria, sprinting to the exit.
Persephone
There’s a sledgehammer in my head pounding questions through my cranium.
Mom…. She has moved me from place to place, and she’s never explained why. She was always giving me vague answers or telling me it was because of the mortals, but it’s not. We’ve been moving because of him—because of Hades.
As I storm toward the exit I’m a jumbled mixture of rage and uncertainty. What does Hades want from me? Why has he been chasing me for all this time?
I glance down at the floor, so involved in my own thoughts I trip, bumping into someone. “I’m sorry,” I groan, eyes still on the floor.
Adonis grips my shoulders. “Easy there.” I lift my head and he gives me a warm smile. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
Sometimes I think it’s odd that he pops up at the most unopportune moments and I always manage to do something clumsy in his presence. Last nine weeks he was in my art class and I accidentally dumped an entire can of red paint on him. I’m normally not like that, but around him all of my coordination dwindles away. Maybe it’s because he’s too pretty and way too nice.
Brent McCall was the resident hottie at Klamath Falls High, with rippling muscles, a perfect Crest tooth-paste smile, and a crown of gold a top his head. Well, he was the resident hottie until Adonis arrived and stole the title. The difference between Adonis and Brent is that Brent is an ass; calling students names, shoving the smart kids in lockers, and walking around like he owns the place. And with Adonis it’s almost like he’s naïve, almost like he doesn’t know how attractive he really is.
I inhale deep and exhale slowly. Warmth sears through me from Adonis’s touch and extinguishes the burning rage. “I don’t feel good. I need to go home.” He smirks at me flirtatiously and I look away. My heart hammers nails into my ribcage and part of me wants to stare at his beautiful smile for the rest of my immortal life, but I’m absorbed by my worries and fear to handle my emotions involving him right now. “Adonis,” I whisper, peeling his hands off my shoulders. “I have to go.”
I brush past him, sprinting out the back exit door and I hear him yell, “Are you going to be okay?”
What I want to tell him is no, Adonis, I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay ever again. Right now, my life is a global catastrophe, an asteroid disintegrating the planet, a tsunami wiping out an entire country. For the last five thousand years, I’ve been moved all over the world. For the last five thousand years, I’ve been lied to repeatedly. I’ve been laughed at, tortured by a voice that I was led to believe was an illusion. I’ve had to pretend to be a million different people when all I’ve really wanted to be is myself.
But I don’t tell him any of that. I can’t tell him any of that. I just keep running and running and don’t look back.
I run until I’m standing in front of my house. Shiny black paint fills up my gaze and I scowl at the Ferrari in my driveway. “Freakin great.” My dad is here and I’m one hundred percent sure he’s not here to wish me a happy birthday.
In my eyes, Zeus had earned my respect, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t call him dad and we don’t have any type of father-daughter relationship. Actually, I don’t have any fond memories of him at all. He was just there, hanging around like an antique tapestry hanging on the wall in a person’s home.
Mom had told me once that he never came around because of Hera. Everyone on Olympus knew that her jealous nature could be a vengeful bitch, but I’d always thought that was a lousy excuse, a lousy excuse because Zeus was and always will be the type of God who likes to have his cake and eat it too. As long as I’ve known him, he’s always wanted the best of both worlds. Those worlds being the mortal world and the immortal.
Walking around to the back door, I try to keep all of my emotions in check. I try to tell myself to stay calm, but it’s impossible. Disloyalty, Fury, and ambiguity melt together inside of me and I can hear the crackle from a lit fuse. I can feel the sparks as they scorch my organs. I’m a bomb. In minutes I’m going to explode.