Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

The Fury next to me nodded proudly. “Just doing my job, sir.” She wrapped an arm about my shoulders and gave me an encouraging squeeze.

  Hades reached out a long, elegant hand and dipped it into a puddle of red goo, leftovers of the Shadow Assassin. He closed his eyes, and for a few moments, nothing happened.

  “It’s fresh,” he noted. He took a deep breath.

  Another few moments passed, and I thought that he was communicating with the dead in his mind through his touch and we wouldn't be able to see. Then the lights flickered and went out, throwing us into darkness. A blue light emanated from the center of the room, next to Hades, growing in size until it was so bright, I had to blink. Standing there was a little boy, no older than five, who was shivering, looking at the God of the Underworld. My blood ran cold.

  They used a boy to try and kill me?

  “I want my mommy,” the boy said brokenly. “Where’s Mommy?” His voice quivered as if he was the on the verge of tears. I was on the verge of throwing up. I’d seen some sick things as a cop, but I’d never talked to the victim like this before.

  “What’s your name?” Hades gently asked. His fingers never left the corpse at his feet.

  “Preston,” the boy sniffled. “Preston Woods.”

  “Preston.” Hades said that reverently, like he was respecting the dead. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  The boy stilled and considered the question. “I was at the playground with Sarah and Shane—they’re my best friends.” He started crying. “We were playing. I was at the top of the slide, the big one Mommy doesn’t like me going down, when the kid behind me didn’t wait for my turn. No...” His voice trailed off. “It was a grown-up. And they pushed me off and...” He went silent again, tears running down his face.

  “And?” Hades prompted.

  “And I fell off. Please, I want my mommy,” Preston sniffled.

  “What happened then?” Hades pressed.

  Preston’s eyes widened. “I...I hit the ground. And...and...” The boy’s face went feral, the eyes changing into those pits of coal. The blue light surrounding the boy went dark, and smoke started pouring out. What was left of the boy opened its mouth, impossibly wide, and it lunged at Hades. Some of the servants cried out in surprise at the change in the boy.

  As quickly as it happened, Hades removed his fingers from the remains and the entity immediately disappeared. He flung the gunk from his fingers in distaste. “So the boy didn’t know who killed him either,” he nearly spat.

  “Whoever it is...killed the boy to get to me?” I said with a thick voice. I was going to be sick. I was going to retch all over everything.

  “Yes,” said Hades flatly.

  Okay, now I really was going to throw up. I might’ve imagined it, but it felt like Plutus stroked my hand with his thumb, avoiding the wound.

  “I’m here,” a new voice announced.

  I looked up to see a man with a head full of curly hair and an equally curly beard enter my room. He was dressed in a pair of scrubs with a stethoscope hanging from his neck. He looked like he would have been in his late fifties, yet I knew he was a god and probably older than I could even guess. However, that knowledge was at odds with what I was seeing; he looked like he could have stepped off the set of Grey’s Anatomy.

  “Hello Asclepius,” Hades said. He gestured to me. “Please help our guest.”

  Asclepius sat next to me on my bed. He gingerly removed Plutus’ hand from on top of mine and for a split second, I felt the world swim underneath me. Asclepius closed his eyes and touched my wound. I grimaced at the initial contact. Warmth, stronger this time, spread throughout me, and I began feeling far better.

  Another man stepped into the room. He appeared younger than Asclepius, with a clean-shaven face and a pair of glasses with thick brown frames. He reminded me of a biology teaching assistant I’d once had a crush on at college. He looked scholarly, like anything he said would have been backed up by reams of published papers, most of which he’d written. His eyes fell on me, and he nodded crisply.

  “Hello,” he acknowledged.

  “Apollo,” Hades said stiffly. “I wasn’t expecting you.” Ah, so an Olympian was standing in my room. As if this entire thing wasn’t strange enough.

  “Milady,” Apollo said, nodding to Persephone.

  As usual, she snorted derisively. “Apollo.”

  Apollo leaned over. With all the people around me, I was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic. Tisiphone must have noticed my discomfort and she patted Plutus’ leg. “Up,” she ordered. “Let’s give the girl some room.”

  Plutus silently limped out of my room. Tisiphone met my eyes and raised a curious eyebrow. I was about to say something to him—what, I wasn’t sure—but Asclepius yanked my hand closer to him.

  “Ow!”

  The doctor gave me a grim smile. “Don’t interrupt when I’m trying to diagnose the problem.”

  “How is it?” Apollo asked quietly.

  “Bad,” Asclepius muttered. “We might be too late.”

  Apollo frowned and my heart leaped into my throat.

  Too late?!

  “What are you doing here, Apollo?” Hades demanded. “You know you’re not allowed in my realm without my permission.”

  Apollo looked up at the God of the Underworld, unwavering under his angry gaze. The two of them held a staring contest for a few moments before Apollo sighed and looked back at my hand.

  “I heard that a Shadow Assassin bit your new homicide detective,” he said. “And considering how nasty those bites can get, I wanted to make sure that I was here in case my son couldn’t handle it. I figured that her safety was worth a little trespassing to you.”

  Son? There wasn’t anyone here who could be his son, unless he meant Asclepius. And now, looking at them, there was a family resemblance, from their dark curly hair to their blue eyes. Asclepius was older. Or at least, he looked older, so that didn't make sense.

  My shock must have been evident on my face, because Asclepius smiled at me and gave me a wink. “We get that all the time,” he said good-naturedly.

  I watched him, bewildered, as he continued working. He bent over my hand, waving his own hands over my wound. I was feeling better, but I could feel the venom rippling underneath it. I swallowed.

  “Please make it better,” I pleaded.

  “Allow me,” Apollo said calmly.

  He placed his hand over Asclepius’ and I felt the warmth spread throughout my entire body. My cheeks burned with a sudden fever. Sweat broke out on both gods’ faces.

  “Wow,” Apollo muttered, his eyes closed. “It is bad.” His brow furrowed even more.

  I was burning up, my insides felt like they were smoldering with the heat. I sucked in a deep breath.

  Please be all right. Please be all right.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Apollo and Asclepius sat back with a relieved sigh. I inspected my hand, now taut with pink, scarred skin in the shape of a half moon. I flexed my hand, feeling the healed-over wound stretch a bit. It was going to ache for a long while but the upside was I wasn’t going to die.

  “Thanks.”

  Tisiphone smirked at me. “Ugly scar.” I frowned at her, although her smirk quickly turned into a smile.

  Asclepius insisted on checking my vitals to make sure that I was okay. He finally got to use that big stethoscope around his neck.

  Despite having just survived a murder attempt, my ticker was working just fine.

  “We'll have to conduct a search to see if there's any evidence,” Hades said tiredly. He looked about as pale as I felt. “I can't have assassins threatening our guests. And my son.”

  I struggled to my feet. “I'll help...” I started to say, but Asclepius put a hand to my chest.

  “You won't be doing anything for a few days, Miss,” he said. “As your doctor—” Tisiphone snorted derisively, “—I am prescribing bed rest. We got most of the venom out, but we can't have you running around and spreading what's
left around. You'll get sick again.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” Apollo commanded, as he stood up. “Doctor's orders. Hades, if I may have a word?”

  Hades stood to leave. “Tisiphone, can you help Callie to another guestroom?”

  “Of course,” she snickered.

  “Persephone, would you like to join us?” Apollo offered. Persephone gave me one last glare as she silently stood and followed them out the door. “Nice to meet you, Callista,” Apollo said, and he and Asclepius left me alone with the Fury and the servants.

  Tisiphone gave my shoulder a squeeze as she helped me to my feet. She wasn't very good at it though. Her diminutive height made it difficult to help. She clucked her tongue and three more sets of hands from the servants grasped me as they helped me out of the room. I was a lot weaker than I thought I was. That simple bite on my hand took a lot more out of me than I expected. I carried the God Gun with me, because I didn't want to be without it. Not if Shadow Assassins were going to try and kill me in my sleep.

  “Don't worry,” she whispered. “I'll see if I can find how our assassin got in.”

  They deposited me in a guestroom across the hall. Close enough to still be of help to Plutus, but away from the tainted room. I felt marginally better moving, but bed rest was going to drive me nuts. What if there was evidence that Tisiphone didn't catch? Something she missed? What if another Shadow Assassin snuck in right now to kill Plutus? I was in no shape to fight another one off.

  Speaking of, where was Plutus?

  Tisiphone tucked me in and checked the security of the room. When she was satisfied that I was safe, she gave me a rare warm smile. “Try to get some sleep,” she offered. “You'll be useless if you don't.”

  Like I was going to be able to sleep after what I saw but I laid down like I was going to try.

  Tisiphone left me alone then, and in the dark, I focused on my breathing.

  That was close. And I was really weak at the moment. How was I supposed to protect someone else when I couldn't protect myself? How could I conduct an investigation with Shadows and mythical creatures most of whom I didn’t even understand?

  My thoughts trailed back to Plutus. Was he worried? Why did I care?

  Somehow, I managed to fall back to sleep. And while I'm not quite sure, I think that at one point in the middle of the night, the door cracked open a bit and someone poked their head in. Maybe it was to check on me.

  Then again, maybe not.

  9

  Bed rest was worse than watching paint dry. The magazines in the Underworld were very dated and they’d never heard of Harry Potter. After I'd spent years of my life always working and never stopping, it seemed weird to take an actual vacation.

  Even though I was mostly dead, it felt good to take a rest and refocus on who Callista Saunders really was. I guess getting hit by a bus really does that for you. You start to look back on your life and wonder what you could have done better, what you could’ve done differently and how you were going to get over the big screw-ups.

  I had two big regrets: breaking up with Ben and not staying close to my mom. I knew that Ben and I were very different, but I also knew I never allowed myself the chance to get close to him. I kept a strong wall between us and I wondered if I’d missed out on the love of my life because I’d been too stubborn to let him in.

  I stayed close to my mother until I went away to college. By then she’d remarried and I figured that I was in her past, and Seth, her new husband, was in her future. I didn't want to get in the way. But now I realized that it probably hurt her that her daughter became distant. I wanted to be close to her again. I missed her sharp wit and her warm laugh, but most of all I missed her stories.

  Were both Ben and Mom mourning over my comatose body right now? I could imagine Ben sitting by my bedside, sleepless, my mother sobbing her eyes out as Seth stood stoically behind her in his strange, quiet way.

  I was actually fairly certain that something similar was indeed happening on the surface, and I didn't know if there was a way of reaching them.

  I'll be safe, guys, I mentally told them.

  There was nothing to do about it now, except get to work.

  Even while I was resting, I was reviewing files of all the suspects. Hades' secretary had been kind enough to email me all of their prior investigations, along with any notes. I looked at them on my tablet, thumbing through photos, possible motives, and creating further questions.

  Sure, there were people, gods, and immortals that wanted to hurt the Royal Family of the Underworld. The only thing that didn't make sense was the timing. Why now?

  I believed that once I could answer that question, I could get to the bottom of who was trying to kill Plutus.

  True to her word, Tisiphone emailed me all the information she had about the former Cerberus and his death. The dog was found in his kennel one morning. Originally, they thought it died from old age but Hades had ordered an autopsy because the foam coming from the animal’s mouth suggested poison. No one could figure out where the poison came from or how it had been administered to the hellhound. Transcripts of interviews with Barnabas revealed that he was incredibly distraught over the whole thing.

  Other than that, there was very little information about it, and based on her notes and write-ups, Tisiphone was very thorough in her assessment. I couldn't see anything that she missed. Sure, I was going interview the new dog handler, but there wasn't going to be much more for me to find.

  Yet another cold case.

  After my third day of rest, I shakily got to my feet, dressed in my t-shirt and jeans, and stumbled out in the hallway. Luckily no one was around to turn me back to my room, so I used the wall as a support and I leaned heavily against it to walk down the hall. I didn't have anywhere in mind but I had to get out of bed. The walls of my room were closing in on me and it was making me a little crazy.

  I still wasn’t myself. I easily got winded and each step was harder than the last.

  All of this from one bite? These Shadow Assassins were really bad news.

  God, I was getting tired.

  I leaned back on the wall and slid down into a crouch, trying to catch my breath. I put my head in my hands and focused on getting my breathing under control.

  Some bodyguard I am.

  “You okay there, Callista?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

  “It's Callie,” I grumbled, refusing to groan.

  “Oooh, you're feisty,” the voice laughed, tinged with genuine laughter.

  A pair of red high-heeled feet came into my line of vision, I looked up at who was talking to me. My jaw dropped. Grinning down at me was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. This woman put Persephone in the shade.

  The woman in front of me was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. The color of her hair was constantly changing, flickering from brilliant color to brilliant color. Her eyes did the same thing. She was a combination of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Beyonce Knowles, and Miss America. She was about five six but her shiny red heels made her as tall as me. She wore a designer outfit, which was probably cost more than my entire year's salary. On anyone else, the haute couture piece would have looked ridiculous; on her it looked flawless.

  “H...hello?” My tongue felt too large for my too small mouth.

  Was being a goddess really just some sort of beauty contest?

  “Here,” she said with a genuine movie-star grin, extending a hand down to me. “Let me help you up.”

  I took her proffered hand and she hauled me to my feet, somehow managing not to topple over in her six-inch stilettos. I was more wobbly than her and I was barefoot.

  “You need to take it easy, Callie,” she giggled. “You're going to fully kill yourself if you don't.”

  So enthralled I was by her, I felt like an immediate dork for not taking it easy. “Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling like a scolded five-year-old.

  She regarded me with her crystalline blue-green-brown-hazel eyes. “So you're the wom
an my uncle hired to protect Plutus,” she said.

  Uncle? I blinked, trying to place her based on that bit of information. The Greek family of gods was so big and incestuous that I couldn't figure her identity out from that one statement. It also didn't help that my brain was mush just by looking at her.

  “Yeah, Hades hired me to figure out who's trying to kill Plutus.” I said. I was trying to be conversational, but I was just parroting what she’d already said. Her beauty was scrambling my brain and I had to get away from her.

  It was the first time that I realized that beauty could be as dangerous as hate or anger. If I had to do anything complex around her, I wouldn't be able to.

  She kept watching me, like she was conducting a science experiment with a mouse in a maze. I swallowed nervously.

  “Can I...help you?” I asked when I felt way too uncomfortable.

  “Nope, just looking at you,” she said cryptically. “You're kinda cute.”

  She reached out, as if to touch my hair, and I recoiled, stumbling back in the wall with a thud. Normal people don't touch a stranger’s hair, right? Not that she was normal—she was too pretty for that. She blinked at me, then started laughing.

  “Oh, you're so transparent, hun,” she chided, clapping her hands as if she were applauding something. “I can see through you as easily as if you were glass.”

  I didn't quite know what to say. Thankfully, I noticed some movement on the corner and turned my head to see Plutus standing there, leaning heavily on his cane.

  I'm sure they both heard the sigh of relief escape my throat.

  “Aphrodite, leave her alone,” he said tiredly.

  The woman—Aphrodite, I now knew—pouted. She crossed her arms and made a point to stand with her feet shoulder-width apart as she cocked her hips, faced her cousin and stared him down.

  “I was trying to get to know her,” she whined. “I wasn't doing anything to her.”

  Plutus didn't look impressed. “Leave her alone.”

  Waves of anger emanated off of Aphrodite. Apparently, she wasn't used to things not going her way. She glared at her cousin for a few seconds more before unexpectedly wrapping an arm around me and giving me a hug. I squeaked in something kind of like horror at the overly friendly gesture.