The Forest Gods' Reign

by Alexandria Hook

  “Thanks a bunch,” I replied sarcastically, and Alec let out a soft chuckle. It made me smile, even though I was trying hard not to.

  We had returned to a state of silence, my stormy eyes locked with his dazzling blue ones. As he held out his hand for me, Alec softened his voice and said in Greek, “Are you sure you can’t stay out here just a little longer? It’s beautiful.”

  I knew he was using Greek to his advantage. After all, Alec was the only one of us Sighted beings who spoke in Greek outside the forest, except for me when I was speaking to him, because we had agreed to it. Speaking in Greek helped me to forget whatever drama was going on in my regular life, and Alec didn’t know me as Ashley anyway. To be honest, I didn’t think he needed to know Ashley. I didn’t really want him to.

  For a split second, I stood there on the roof like a statue, silently debating my options. I finally sighed, trying to sound as annoyed as possible, and sat back down again on the roof, avoiding taking his hand. Alec smiled, though, and he sat next to me before looking back out at the sparkling sky, listening to the crickets chirp softly below.

  “So, how is Cole?” Alec asked me hesitantly after a minute of silence, and I thought I caught a hint of jealousy in his tone while he twiddled his thumbs nonchalantly. “That was a nice punch, by the way.” His face brightened as he recalled a couple of days ago, when I had knocked out Cole to keep him from seeing Alec in the forest.

  I frowned at the sky, then cleared my throat and answered honestly, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen him since we left him lying unconscious by Main Street.” I turned to look Alec in the eye and confessed glumly, “I keep thinking that I should stop by his house, but I wouldn’t know what to say. I don’t know what he remembers … and what he doesn’t, if you know what I mean.”

  I bit my lip and put my head in my hands as my mind flashed back to when Cole had tried to kiss me, and the burning feeling on my hips returned for a split second. Alec tried to look concerned, but at the back of his mind, I knew he was secretly happy that I hadn’t talked to Cole yet.

  “Who cares what Cole thinks anyway?” he asked, trying to cheer me up.

  “Alec, he’s my friend,” I tried to explain, like I had the day before, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. Honestly, there wasn’t much to say about Cole and me to begin with.

  “Yeah, well, Poseidon’s your friend too, and you don’t care what he thinks,” Alec argued, playfully nudging me in the side with his elbow. I rolled my eyes, and he grinned at me. “Babe, you’re too good for Cole.” He paused to think for a moment, then added, “Poseidon too, actually.”

  I rolled my eyes yet again and watched Alec chuckle to himself, but we were suddenly interrupted by Artemis’s panicked voice coming from the walkie-talkie on Alec’s belt loop. “This is Artemis, calling in an emergency. I’m being attacked by a group of monsters by the north edge of the meadow. Help!”

  And then she was cut off, but Alec and I didn’t waste another second. We leaped off the roof and onto my balcony, where I quickly grabbed my own walkie-talkie and my trusty pocketknife before jumping to the ground. We raced into the forest and threw on our shiny bronze armor, tightening the straps the best we could as we sprinted through the thick brush and tall pine trees. It seemed like ages had passed before we reached the meadow, but this was probably due to the fact that we were worried and impatient. As soon as we broke out of the trees, however, we caught sight of the blonde Artemis shooting arrows right and left as fast as she could, and a monstrous golden lion was crouched a few feet in front of her, threatening to tackle her and rip her to pieces. The way her arrows bounced off its shiny hide could only mean that this was the Nemean lion, a beast with invincible skin.

  Alec and I were still racing across the open meadow when a black shape flying low in the sky caught my eye, and I could tell immediately that it was a harpy—the very same pale harpy that had been the Monster Watch’s first kill. I guessed she had finally been sent back from the dead, like most monsters were. Some came back to life sooner than others, however.

  Meanwhile, the oblivious Artemis was still sending arrows aimlessly at the Nemean lion, which was about twice the size of a regular lion and still looked ready to pounce. Nevertheless, I knew the harpy was the bigger danger to her at the moment, so I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Artemis! Heads up!”

  Having heard my abrupt warning, Artemis’s head snapped up, and she sent an arrow flying into the dark sky. After soaring in a perfect arc, the arrow pierced the black-haired harpy squarely in the chest, and the harpy seemed to hang in midair for a moment. Then she gasped for air one more time, flapping her wings uselessly as she fell and crumbled to dust. She had been sent back to the Underworld once again.

  But the battle wasn’t over yet, because the giant lion suddenly lunged at Artemis, although, luckily, Alec and I reached them just in time. Without bothering to stab the lion, since his sword would have only been deflected off its hide, Alec did a full-body slam into its thick neck. The huge cat stumbled and shook his head, giving Artemis just enough time to dive out of the way of the lion’s powerful jaws.

  I saw Artemis pull out another arrow from her worn leather quiver, ready to shoot the Nemean lion again, but I shook my head and told her with a sigh, “It’s no use.”

  Alec, Artemis, and I slowly backed away from the lion, but it just followed us, stalking us like prey, with a terrible gleam in its huge brown eyes. Normally we gods would simply laugh and eagerly toy around with monsters for fun before we killed them, but we wanted to kill this particular beast as quickly as possible in order to start discussing why the monsters had suddenly decided to team up against a god.

  “How did Heracles defeat the Nemean lion again?” Artemis asked me, her voice shaking slightly as she recalled the legend of the twelve labors of Heracles.

  “He strangled it,” I said, just before Alec could respond. Of course, I knew all the Greek myths by heart, and it seemed as if Alec knew all the myths pretty well too. I was betting that the children at the Knowing camps studied a lot of mythology, which would definitely come in handy for strategies to defeat specific monsters.

  Frowning thoughtfully, Alec tightened his grip on his shiny sword, which he kept pointed at the lion’s head. “No offense to you ladies, but I’m not sure any of us are strong enough to strangle that thing,” he stated worriedly.

  I smirked and informed him, “You don’t know everything about us gods. There’s a reason you don’t get to take part in battle practices.”

  And it was true. Although we gods weren’t immortal because we were reincarnations, we still had the ability to jump higher, run faster, withstand more force, and become a lot stronger than a regular human, as well as being much better-looking than the average person. Most of those qualities came in awfully handy during battle practice, when more often than not we were struck by lightning or pounded by ocean waves spurting up from a crack in the earth, and would definitely come in handy during a war. But Alec didn’t know a lot about that because he was forced to sit out of our battle practices, lest he be seriously injured or even killed. And to be perfectly honest, we didn’t want him to know every single thing about us.

  “Distract the lion. I have an idea,” I whispered to Alec and Artemis.

  Alec nodded obediently before darting to our right, and the Nemean lion turned on its heels to face Alec again, ready to pounce at any second. Taking the opportunity while the lion was looking away, I ran a couple steps before taking a giant leap into the air and landing firmly on the lion’s wide back, straddling it like a horse. I smiled when I saw the surprised look on Alec’s handsome face, but I became momentarily distracted when the lion reared up in the air, throwing its head and letting out a huge roar, so I grabbed its thick, curly golden mane.

  The lion reared up again on its powerful hind legs, desperately trying to throw me off, though I was determined to stay on. Artemis shot an arrow at the lion, hitting it on its lower left hind leg, but of course it didn’t e
ven leave a mark; I knew this was meant only to distract the lion with the unbreakable skin. As planned, the Nemean lion whirled around again, this time to face Artemis, but simultaneously gave a huge shake in another effort to throw me off. I twisted my fingers in its mane to get an even tighter grip, and when the lion had calmed down slightly, I stretched my arms lower, sliding them around its thick neck to form a chokehold. I quickly closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then yanked back on the lion’s neck as hard as I possibly could.

  The magnificent beast let out a low moan and tried to open its jaws to take in more air, but it was much too late. Alec saw a brilliant opportunity for him to take, and so he ran straight toward the lion at full speed before kicking it in the throat, hard enough to collapse its esophagus. Finally, after the skin on its neck folded inwardly, the golden monster stumbled and fell to its knees, and I hopped off it, landing firmly on solid ground.

  Wordlessly, the three of us faced the giant lion, which was now lying in a humongous heap in the tall grass, and watched with wide eyes as it took its last painful gasps of air. A few long minutes later, the huge animal broke into tiny pieces and crumbled to a mere pile of dust, which then disappeared into the soft soil. The Nemean lion had been killed once again.

  Alec ran one hand slowly through his dark hair and cleared his throat. “Well, since no one else is saying it, I guess I will … nice job, A Team.” I only smiled along with Artemis. “Hey, why does something like this always seem to happen to the three of us?” Alec wondered aloud.

  I simply ignored his question, since this was only the second time a weird event had occurred when the three of us were alone—not quite enough to support a pattern, in my opinion. Then I turned to Artemis, who was straightening her loose bun, and asked her gravely, “How many monsters did you kill before we got here?”

  Artemis frowned. “The Minotaur and another harpy.”

  Alec gulped, obviously thinking the same thing as Artemis and I. There was no reason for four monsters to attack a single god in one day, especially not at the same time. As of late, it was a rare occurrence for even one monster to actively try to kill one of us (except for Alec). Which meant that Hades had to have sent the monsters here himself, I realized. But why? Just the day before, there were no monsters to be found anywhere in the forest, although now it looked like they had returned in full force.

  “You need to get back to Pan and Persephone. They might get attacked too, and they don’t really have any weapons,” I ordered to Alec, and suddenly we all became more serious. Without another word, Alec nodded in agreement and turned on his heel, racing northwest toward the hideout. Artemis and I followed slowly behind; we had decided to stay in the forest for a while, just to make sure everyone was completely safe.

  Around midnight, Artemis and I decided it would be fine to leave Alec, Pan, and Persephone alone with a couple of extra weapons, and the two of us headed home right after a few more nymphs and satyrs stopped by to see what was going on. We ran into a small, green, leathery-skinned dragon called the Python, which was about twice the size of the Nemean lion, but Artemis shot it with a few arrows and I threw my spear into its gut for good measure. The poor dragon was dead before it even got close enough to spit fire onto us.

  ___________________

  The next morning I woke up only a little later than normal and had a nice breakfast at Luke and Zach’s house, along with Connor, before we headed into the woods for a patrol meet, where all four of the patrols were going to discuss the events that had happened the previous night. By then, Hermes had informed all the gods about the return of the monsters to the forest.

  As soon as we reached the meadow, the rest of the Monster Watch and I sat down in the long grass, talking about monsters and the weather, while the rest of the gods started showing up one by one. We did have to wait quite a long time, since the rest of the gods had to sneak out of their houses at non-suspicious intervals to meet. If people knew that a bunch of kids besides the Monster Watch had survived a trip into the treacherous forest, our town would have had to suffer through yet another epidemic of regular, Sightless people going in and never coming back out.

  Eventually, most of the gods showed up, and we were just waiting for Alec, Pan, and Persephone to arrive, assuming they had survived the night. But as the minutes passed and still none of them had appeared in the meadow, we were all getting more and more worried.

  “Maybe we should go check—” Hera started, but suddenly Alec, sweating and fully clad in his armor, burst out alone into the open meadow. This was a very bad sign.

  Sure enough, with panic in his bright blue eyes, Alec continued to sprint toward us as he yelled breathlessly in Greek something not one of us expected: “Persephone’s gone!”

  And then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 12:

  THE LITTLE HERO EMERGES

  All of the gods’ jaws dropped as they stared at the hyperventilating Alec, and Zeus demanded instantly, “Tell me what happened.”

  Alec put both of his hands on top of his dark hair, taking deep breaths and trying to slow his heart rate down again. “Persephone went out to collect some berries about half an hour ago, and she hasn’t come back,” Alec managed to gasp between deep breaths, his eyebrows knit together with worry. “She was only supposed to be gone for a couple of minutes. There aren’t any signs of her anywhere.”

  “I’m going to kill Hades,” Demeter growled, anger clouding her normally cheerful mind.

  “We don’t even know for sure if it was him,” Hestia began calmly, placing her hand lightly on Demeter’s tan arm.

  “Well, who else would it be?! All signs point to him,” Demeter exclaimed, exasperated, shaking off Hestia’s comforting touch. “Hermes, get down to the Underworld right now,” Demeter ordered, even though she didn’t have the authority to do so.

  But Hermes knew this well, so he didn’t move a muscle, and only looked Demeter squarely in the eyes. Demeter let out a frustrated yelp and yanked at her long blonde ponytail, but Zeus just frowned and told her to calm down while he thought. Meanwhile, the other gods whispered worriedly among themselves, discussing what should be done next.

  After a few minutes, Zeus agreed to let Hermes go down into the Underworld to try to reason with Hades. Hermes shot off like a rocket toward the east, heading to one of the tiny cave entrances to the Underworld, but the rest of us stayed right where we were to wait for our leader’s next orders. Most of the gods restlessly paced around in circles and exchanged some stressed shouting matches as Alec groaned guiltily and collapsed on the grass; tension was obviously running very high.

  Eventually, we all came to a decision. Zeus sighed a bit forlornly, then demanded, “Split into patrols. Kill any monsters you see, and warn all nymphs and satyrs of what has happened today. We don’t need anyone else to be killed.”

  We all nodded in agreement and immediately split up. Zeus, Hera, and Hestia headed north, while my A Team, minus Apollo, trudged south. Apollo had agreed to protect Pan and the nymphs and satyrs who couldn’t protect themselves back at the river hideout, as it would be much easier for him than for Alec because the god was armed with a bow instead of a sword. Poseidon and Demeter went east, and Ares, Aphrodite, and Dionysus took off to the west.

  Artemis, Alec, and I walked through the forest on high alert, taking the time to scope out every bush. We didn’t dare to speak; we only listened for the tiniest rustle of brush. We were ready for whatever monster wanted to attack us that day, even though we were still tired from fighting the Nemean lion the night before. However, the three of us had yet to come across anything remotely unusual or out of place. We even stopped to talk to a few nymphs to ask them if they had any information, but they had none to share and hurried off to meet with a few satyrs.

  We had almost reached the loud, rushing river when I spotted something glint in a rare spot of sunlight shining down through the thick tree cover. I wordlessly pointed it out to the others, who only nodded in acknowledgment, and in
a single-file line led by me, we silently made our way toward whatever it was.

  A golden substance was slowly trickling down the rough branch, leaving a thin trail of liquid beads behind. I hesitantly dabbed my index finger in the substance and held it up to my nose, sniffing it. Blood. And it didn’t have the greenish tinge that monster blood had, so I knew it had to be from a god, satyr, or nymph. But considering the circumstances, the blood was most likely, unfortunately, from a god.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I whispered over my shoulder to Alec and Artemis.

  “Persephone,” they replied together in unison, their voices flat.

  I nodded, and we all turned around to look for any more blood or another sign of Persephone having been there. Suddenly, Artemis snapped her fingers, and I looked up to see her pointing a few feet in front of us, where another tiny pool of golden blood lay on the ground, slowly being absorbed by the soft soil. Needless to say, this was definitely not a good sign.

  We cautiously approached the pool of blood, but saw a few more tiny drops ahead of us on another branch. Brows furrowing, the three of us continued to slowly follow the thin trail of blood through the trees and branches that clawed like cats at our tanned skin, which was tough after having spent so much time in the forest and, therefore, did not break under the pricks.

  Finally, the trail ended at a small boulder about fifty feet southwest of the original bloody branch we had found. The three of us stopped in our tracks, staring silently at the rock for a minute and studying the last part of the trail. There were very shallow—almost invisible to people who weren’t looking closely—marks in the ground, which implied that someone had been dragged right up to the large rock, but unfortunately for us, the tracks ended there.

  I exchanged solemn glances with Artemis as she paused to redo the bun in her wavy, blonde hair, which had been pulled apart by the branches we had just walked through. “You don’t think …?” Alec stopped mid-sentence in amazement, bowing his head in deep thought.