Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  Please don't let me be too late.

  I sprinted down the hallways, unsure of where I was going. I ran off, yelling both Plutus' and Stephen's names. This was going against everything I'd learned in police academy, where stealth and planning were the rules. I didn't care if I gave away my position, I just didn't want to be too late.

  “Plutus!” I screamed. “Plutus!”

  Doorways blurred as I rushed through the palace. I lost all sense of direction but I forged ahead, determined to save Plutus. I had let down so many people I loved in my life. I couldn't save my dad; I couldn't save so many victims of my past cases; I couldn't save my relationship with Ben. I was going to save him. I just didn't know how.

  “Plutus!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  I barreled into a solid form, cursing myself when I looked down at the person I had knocked onto his butt.

  “You're not much for saving me if you keep running into me,” Plutus commented. His voice was low, accusing. “I thought you were leaving.”

  I wanted to cry in relief. He was still alive, even if he didn’t lookhappy to see me. I held out a hand for him to get up which he begrudgingly accepted. I pulled him to his feet.

  “You have to get out of here,” I said. “You have to leave.”

  “What happened, Callista?”

  I swallowed, not even bothering to correct him. I could give him the short story, so long as I could drag him down the hallway with me where I could lock a door and keep Stephen out.

  “I tried leaving,” I said softly under my breath. “I went to Minos and—”

  He jerked his head around. “You went to Minos?” His grip on my hand tightened and I fought the urge to cry out. “Callista, that's so illegal!”

  “Stephen Cross came through. He—” My throat constricted around the rest of the sentence. My express orders not to tell Plutus who was trying to kill him silenced me. I shouted a stream of obscenities at his father at that moment, wanting to strangle him for being such an arrogant prick. “Please, you just have to trust me.”

  “So says the person who stupidly left before she was supposed to,” Plutus said bitterly.

  I chewed on my bottom lip and wrapped an arm about his shoulders, trying to usher him to safety. Not for the first time, I was secretly glad that I was nearly his height. “I need to keep you safe.”

  He let out a derisive snort, but didn't say anything else as I helped him walk back the way I came. We were in the wing of the palace near his rooms. Even though I had been frantic, I had run straight there first, so I could hole us up and keep him safe. I closed my eyes and gave a silent prayer of thanks.

  “What is the meaning of this?” another voice asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  I glared up at Hades, who was blocking our path. “You have no idea how to control anything,” I told him. “You are an asshole.”

  Hades' cheeks flushed with anger. I didn’t give a shit.

  “Let me take Plutus to a safe place,” I told him. “Stephen passed through to the Underworld using my portal.”

  A look of disbelief flashed across Hades' face.

  “I was going to go back through illegal means,” I explained.

  I reached down to my jeans, meaning to grab my God Gun, and remembered with a stab of fear that I had left it in my room. My heart quickened when I realized that we were totally exposed and defenseless. I needed to arm myself or I wouldn't be of use to anyone. My room was two doors down and I hoped my weapon was still where I’d left it. “You can punish me later. I'm here to protect Plutus.”

  “You two are acting like I can't take care of myself,” Plutus spat.

  I looked at him, my heart breaking. “Plutus, I—”

  An invisible wall hit me from behind me, sprawling me on the floor of the hallway towards Hades. I cried out as pain hit me, threatening to throw me into unconsciousness. I fought it like a wild beast, but it left me weak and breathless.

  Hades held out a hand, and I felt the whoosh of a similar wall blow past me with a crack, although it wasn't as strong as the blast that sent me flying. Hades wasn't fighting to hurt, only to subdue. Laughter sounded, so familiar to me now.

  “Father,” Stephen said, emerging from the corner, “is that any way to treat your long lost son?”

  I looked up in time to see Plutus whip his head around to his half-brother. “What?” he asked, turning even paler.

  Stephen sneered and threw another burst of power toward the god. Plutus crossed his arms in front of him, shielding himself from the blast. It pushed him back about two feet, displaying the power behind the blast. He turned his head slightly to me, while I was broken on the floor, and then turned back to the demigod with a roar, and ran headfirst into a battle with Stephen. The demigod was only too happy to oblige.

  I'd never seen Plutus fight before. Whatever handicap the gods thought he had being blind and lame was nonexistent—he fought with the fury of a demon. He unleashed a few quick blasts in succession and physically sparred with Stephen. Even so, Stephen evenly matched him.

  “You're his true born son?” Stephen asked him disbelief. “A blind cripple?”

  Plutus roared, letting his anger fuel his actions. I scrambled to my feet, rushed to my room, and grabbed my God Gun. I came back out to see that the half-brothers were still fighting furiously. Their bodies were a blur and I couldn't even separate one from the other, let alone get a clean shot. And with how destructive this gun was, I didn't want to risk hurting Plutus.

  Hades stood by, watching in disbelief. Doing nothing.

  “Why aren't you helping?” I screamed at him, trying to aim for an opening.

  “He's my son, too, Callie,” Hades said. He visibly shook himself. “I shouldn't get in the middle of this.”

  “Plutus is in trouble, and you're just going to let him get hurt?”

  “I can't decide the outcome of this,” he answered, his voice strangled. “Only Fate can do that.”

  “Plutus is going to die if you don't do something!”

  “And they could both get hurt if I interfere,” Hades said sharply.

  Fucking gods.

  The fight was vicious. Both of them fought with everything—Stephen with the doggedness of a man without anything left to lose, Plutus with the tenacity of someone who had to prove himself—and between their punches and magic blasts, one of them was going to get hurt. I hoped it wasn’t Plutus.

  With a sound like a clap of thunder, the two brothers separated. I took aim at Stephen and squeezed the trigger. My gun fired in his chest, my own heart soaring with hope.

  Two things happened at once. Stephen's chest didn't explode into a spray of red. He staggered backwards while Plutus collapsed to the ground, wheezing heavily. He was clutching his neck, and when he turned his head in pain, I saw a dart sticking out from his throat.

  Oh, God. I knew exactly what that was.

  Stephen started laughing with huge, heaving breaths, despite the gaping hole in his chest cavity. “You underestimated me, Brother.” He looked over at us victoriously. “He's turning mortal now. And he can't survive here as a mortal, you know that, Father.”

  Plutus' breath went ragged, and he was taking short, shallow breaths. He was dying. Tiny slivers of golden light were escaping him and winding their way towards Stephen.

  He smirked at me, as if expecting me to give up. I raised my gun, aiming higher this time, and I shot the bastard in the face. Stephen's body collapsed like a rag doll.

  I didn't wait to see if he was dead. I suspected he wasn't, but he was stunned. I knelt by Plutus and raised him into a sitting position. I looked back at Hades.

  “Do something!” I screamed. “Do something or you're going to lose Plutus!”

  Hades knelt next to me and put his hands over his son's heart. Plutus' breath was becoming increasingly shallow. Hades closed his eyes and murmured something, a bluish, glowing light emanating from his hands. Nothing happened. If anything, Plutus was getting worse.

  “
It's not working,” Hades said in disbelief. “I don't know what's happening.”

  I could've lectured him on how it was proven that he really didn't have it under control. I could've held a long, laundry list of things against him. But right now, my entire being was consumed with the need to save Plutus. I risked a glance back at Stephen, whose body lay crumpled in a growing sea of red. I didn't know what that meant, only that we didn't have much time for Plutus.

  “He can't survive here, can he?” I demanded. Hades started shaking his head as I was talking. He looked like he was in shock. “Because he's mortal, right?”

  Hades gave a slight nod.

  “What if we dipped him in the Styx?”

  “I won't risk it.”

  You risked me, I wanted to say. I was strong and partly dead when I had been dipped into the Styx. Not like Plutus right now. I stroked the side of his face. If it was possible for him to look worse, it was happening. The man I loved was dying. Unless...

  “Send us back,” I whispered.

  That snapped Hades out of his stupor. “What?”

  “Send both of us back to Life. And I'll protect him there and find a way to send him back to the Underworld.”

  Heh. Just when I was about to leave, something like this had to happen and I was sucked back into service.

  “There's no guarantee that you will be able to help him in the Land of the Living,” Hades was saying. “He could arrive as a vegetable. Or worse.”

  I opened my eyes and glared at him. “It's a chance to survive, which is better than dying here,” I snapped. “And regardless of whatever happened between us, I think...deep down, that I do love your son.” Even as I said it, I knew it was true. Aphrodite or not, he had burrowed a spot deep in my heart. “Please tell Aphrodite to back off and let me make my own choices.”

  Hades watched me for a few heartbeats before making a decision in his mind. He then placed a hand on both of our foreheads. “You'll be returning directly back to your body,” he said softly. “Plutus will end up...somewhere else. I'll try to get him as close to you as possible, but there are no guarantees. Please, find Plutus and find a way to bring him back to being a god.” He took in another ragged breath, considering. “Your best chance is to find the prophet Tiresias, in Hunts Point, New York. He'll know how to turn Plutus back to a god.”

  I dimly heard him, mentally storing that information for later. For now, I was worried about Plutus dying while we talked.

  He noticed my worry and murmured some low words in Greek, so I couldn't understand what he was saying. Instinctively, I closed my eyes because of Minos' request. I felt lightheaded, like I was losing consciousness. He continued murmuring, and the feeling spread throughout my body. I clutched Plutus' hand. I'll find you, I told him fervently. I'll find you and I'll send you back to the Underworld.

  The feeling spread over me like a warm liquid. Everything felt fuzzy, like I was wrapped up in a wool world. My reality was fading, being replaced by something else. Home.

  I felt a hand grip my ankle and I risked a glance down to my feet. Stephen's half-skeleton, half-hamburger meat face grinned hollowly back at me. The bastard was still alive.

  And then darkness submerged me and I remembered nothing more.

  14

  I was floating, flying through space. My entire body hurt almost as badly as when Charon had stabbed me with his spear. Sure, I'd been through worse mental trauma, being dipped in the Styx ranking up there pretty high. Now I just felt awful.

  I was tired. Really, really tired.

  The next moment, I sat straight up in a hospital bed, taking in a loud, shuddering breath. Alarms from monitors blared beside me as my pulse and vital signs sky rocketed. I blinked furiously in the darkness all around me. I held my hand up, noted the outline of it, and then looked around with fresh eyes.

  I wasn't in the Underworld anymore; I was in UCSF Medical Center. I’d been here before for a gunshot wound, and I’d recognize the drab gray interior anywhere.

  I sighed and leaned my head back against the pillow. An overwhelming sense of weakness took over me and I felt that I needed some well-deserved rest. I didn’t want to fight it. I wanted to sleep like the Dead.

  Dead.

  The thought of that made me force my head up again. How long had I been here? Already my time in the Underworld seemed like a distant dream.

  All except for one man’s face.

  “Plutus,” I rasped through a mouth that felt like it had gauze in it. I had to find him. I had no idea where he’d be, yet I had to find him. Hades' face had indicated that he doubted I would find him here, but I wasn’t going to let the man I loved die. I had no idea where to start looking for him, but I wouldn’t find him sitting in a hospital bed. The doctors would come, leave me here for further testing, and insist that I didn't do the things I usually did. They'd make me stay in the hospital for observation or further testing to make sure I wasn't going to go into seizures or die the second I was in public.

  I didn't have time for that. Plutus didn't have time for that. And Stephen Cross certainly wouldn't give us enough time for that.

  I was going AMA—against medical advice.

  Thankfully I had woken up in the middle of the night when the hospital ran on a skeleton crew, so they weren't yet tuned into the fact that I had woken up. With a grunt, I unplugged the monitors so they would stop beeping, but that still didn’t give me a long time to get out of here. I probably had less than thirty seconds before a nurse or a doctor came in.

  I winced, using rusty abdominal muscles to pull me out of bed. I had definitely been in a coma long enough for my body to atrophy. Muscles and joints cried out in protest as I plucked my IV out of my arm, wincing at the sharp pain. I pulled out the nose plugs that aided my breathing and then froze when I realized I had a urinary catheter to remove. I had no idea what to do with it, so I'd have to deal with it later, a fact which I wasn't very happy about.

  Some dignified way to wake up.

  Don't think about it.

  I grimaced and swung my too-skinny legs over the edge of the bed. Had I not been exercised the entire time I was in the hospital? Granted, I didn't know too much about comas, but I thought they would have exercised my legs a little bit using electrodes and stuff. My arms certainly did feel a lot less muscular.

  I'd fret over that later.

  My feet hit the ground, unsteady under wobbly knees. I fought the panic as I forced myself to stand. It took way too much mental effort. I grunted and used the bed to support my shuffle. Stars danced across my vision, and it felt like my body was threatening to give out.

  Of course they didn't have any appropriate street clothes for me, only a simple bathrobe draped over the back of a chair. At least it would cover up my butt, so that would have to do for now. I grabbed it and put it on. I had enough foresight to grab my chart and stuff it into the pocket of my robe. If there was anything else wrong with me, I wanted to know.

  The door was easier for me to open, although it still felt too heavy. I padded down the hallway, ducking around windows, trying to get as far away from my room as possible. The further I was away from there, the safer I felt.

  I wove a zigzag pattern throughout the hospital floor, knowing that there were probably security cameras watching my every move, so I didn't stay in one place too long and I didn't take direct routes. I refused to take the elevator, because it was too easy to lock the doors and capture me.

  I made it to the stairwell on the opposite side of the floor and started going down. I was on level 4, so I tore down the stairs, taking two steps and hops at a time.

  With each movement, my legs threatened to give out underneath me. I fought it the entire way. I couldn't take a break, not now. At any moment, they'd notice I was gone and sound some sort of alarm. I had to find and protect Plutus.

  I hit the bottom level and paused at the doors, peering through the window. My breathing was shallow.

  Damn, why did that take so much out of me?

/>   I swallowed, trying to still my erratically beating heart.

  You're not much good to anyone if you're dead, Callie, I mentally chided myself.

  The bottom level housed the emergency ward. Even from the tiny window in the door, I saw people milling about, some frantic, some in shock. There were pregnant women, children, entire families, the elderly, and a mass of doctors and nurses running around with the efficiency of clockwork, combined with the panic of people's lives on their hands. From my vantage point, I saw both the waiting room and the ambulance entrance, where a new patient was being brought in.

  I froze. “Plutus?” I said incredulously.

  Sure enough, Plutus was on the gurney they were wheeling in, covered by a thin sheet. He looked pale and dirty, blood running from a cut on his forehead. What the hell had happened to him? I could guess that he was still groggy from that dart Stephen had shot him with, but that wouldn't explain why he was now bleeding on his head.

  I crouched again, as they passed the door.

  Finding Plutus here, this easily was completely unexpected. I expected a cross-country trek but he was right under my nose. What if I’d left the hospital through another exit? Would I have even known he was here?

  I closed my eyes and tried remembering the god (or goddess) of luck. I hated that the name escaped me. As soon as I found a bookstore, I was going to buy a book on Mythology and memorize it.

  Thank you for bringing him to me.

  Now I had a new problem. I had been hoping to get out of here quickly and quietly before they put the entire hospital on lockdown and found me. Now, Plutus was here, and I had no idea how to get him out. My mind reeled through the possibilities, each one more ludicrous than the next. One thing was certain—I had to get him out now.

  I took a deep, steadying breath and pushed through the doors.

  The group pushing Plutus had passed me and turned a corner. I hurried down the hallway, hugging close to the wall, trying to look like I wasn't. I hoped I didn't meet anyone there because I was pretty sure that I looked like a deranged mental patient.

  I turned another corner in time to see a double door close behind the group. I slowed my jog and watched them through one of the windows.