The Forest Gods' Reign

by Alexandria Hook

  I knew what Alec’s response was going to be before the words were even out of his mouth. With a quick glance around me and at the laptop, I could tell by the determined looks on their faces that a few of the other gods with similar hot-headed temperaments, namely Ares, Poseidon, Dionysus, and Zeus, were in agreement with his idea. I, however, only shook my head in disagreement, knowing that if I had been in Alec’s position, I would have had a much better chance of preventing what was about to happen and creating an alternative option for the future.

  Maybe this new era of cooperation will have to be renamed the Not-So-Golden Age of the Forest Gods, I thought to myself darkly. And with a gulp, I turned back to watch the screen again.

  “Then there will be a war,” Alec proclaimed fearlessly, his voice harsh. “The gods may be ruthless and a bit ignorant, but they know how to protect and care for their people much better than you ever will.”

  Still keeping a tight hold on the butt of his sword, Alec gave one last small bow before he abruptly turned on his heel to stride out of Hades’s menacing palace with a swagger in his step and without being formally excused. Then my little hero sprinted all the way back out of the Underworld before anything could stop him.

  ___________________

  I heard the sound of a heavy rock rolling over, and the rest of the gods and I whirled around to see Alec’s face emerge from the darkness as he heaved himself up and out of the small entrance to the Underworld. When the sweaty Alec stood all the way up to his full height, the boulder magically, of its own accord, sealed the never-ending hole once again.

  Grinning proudly, I walked over to him and started to take the hidden camera and microphone off his shiny chest plate. “See? I told you that you would come back out,” I whispered into his ear.

  Alec smiled, looking more than relieved, but Zeus pulled us right off of our high horse again when he said loudly, “Our problems aren’t over yet, you know. We can’t fight this war on our own, not if Hades is going to use every single monster that’s under his control.”

  Then Zeus’s blue eyes met Alec’s, and they finished in perfect unison, “We need the Knowing.”

  It looked as if we were going to have to carry out Alec’s hero ceremony some other time.

  Chapter 13:

  LEAVING THE WOODS

  Zach, Connor, Luke, and I were biking down Main Street toward the Fire Pit, eager for delicious lemonade to help cool us down on the sweltering summer day. It had been only one week since Alec had gone down into the Underworld, but it felt like much longer. Most of my days had been filled with playing reverse hide-and-seek with the rest of the Monster Watch, and I spent long nights training with Alec and sometimes hunting with Artemis. Hades had made no other threats so far, although there were a few more monsters roaming the forest than normal.

  When the four of us reached the restaurant, we lazily dropped our bikes on the burning sidewalk and walked into the Fire Pit, where old electric fans were humming, plugged into every available outlet in the entire building. Not many of the old buildings in our town had air-conditioning, after all, and just sitting outside in the summer could make you break out in a sweat.

  Martha looked up to see us walk through the swinging door, and her blue eyes immediately brightened. We sat down at the bar seats, since we weren’t planning on staying for long, and waited while she happily made us four fresh lemonades. While Zach and Luke were bickering about what to do after lunch, I glanced around the room to see who else had stopped in for a bite to eat.

  First I saw Becca sitting at a small table across from Matt. She was flipping her golden hair, obviously flirting, while Matt was gazing at her in some sort of dreamlike state with his big brown eyes. It looked kind of funny, since Matt, who dressed like a stereotypical buff guy from a biker gang and happened to be the complete opposite of the gorgeous Becca, was totally falling for her, nodding his head like he was in love with everything she said.

  I rolled my eyes in amusement and continued to look around the room, noticing Shane and Jack chatting at the Monster Watch’s usual booth in the back. Perhaps they had been waiting for us to join their party of two, because no one ever dared to steal our table; ever since the Monster Watch had come out of the forest unscathed for the first time, we were considered almost untouchable by the townsfolk. Confirming my suspicions, Shane saw me looking over and waved, eagerly offering to make room at the booth, but Jack was too busy gulping down an entire glass of lemonade in just three huge sips to notice me.

  However, Josh and his best friend, Cole, happened to walk into the restaurant at exactly that moment. Cole’s soft brown eyes locked onto me, and hoping to avoid an awkward conversation, I quickly turned away from him to pretend that I was actually paying attention to what Connor was saying. Unfortunately, my plan didn’t work out as well as I hoped.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and hid a grimace as I reluctantly swiveled around on the bar stool to face Cole. “Um, hi,” he said awkwardly, scratching his head. “Can I talk to you for a minute? In private.”

  Part of me wanted to say no and run into the woods as fast as I could, but the guiltier half got the better of me. I just glanced at Zach for permission to leave the Watch discussion, and he nodded curiously. Sighing, I walked with Cole out of the restaurant and onto the street. “What is it?” I asked him, with more of an edge to my voice than I meant to have.

  “What happened in the forest two weeks ago?” he whispered to me, sounding quite frightened. “The only thing I remember is waking up by the side of the road. And you never came to talk to me about it.”

  I bit my lip, rapidly trying to think of what to say. There was no way I was going to tell him what had really happened. He never would have forgiven me. Not that I would ever forgive myself, either.

  “We walked about twenty yards in before you just blacked out. It was weird. I thought you were seriously ill or something, so Zach helped me drag you out here,” I lied fluently, keeping my expression calm. “Zach and I didn’t want to get in trouble by telling someone you had been in the woods, so we just … ran back in.”

  Cole frowned, scratching his head as if deciding whether to believe me or not. Eventually he just shrugged it off and started to ask, “Um, okay. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the movies or—”

  “Look, dude, I have to go. I think my lemonade’s ready,” I told him apologetically, and I brushed past him and headed back into the Fire Pit without another word, my heart racing nervously. Cole was a great guy, but I couldn’t date him in this universe, and I definitely did not want to make things any more awkward and tenser than they already were. Even if Alec really did like me, he knew that he couldn’t have me, so I was sure he would eventually get over it. He had to.

  Martha had just delivered the lemonades when I reached the bar stools. The rest of the Monster Watch and I said a quick goodbye as we grabbed our drinks, plus an extra one. We told Martha that it was for my mother, but it was really for Alec. Then, waving to Josh and Cole, the four of us finally left the restaurant and picked up our bikes off the scorching hot pavement, ready to go home.

  A few long minutes later, Connor and I were drinking our lemonades and sitting in ancient wooden rocking chairs next to Zach and Luke on their large porch overlooking our quiet street and Main Street. On the other side of Main Street, just inside the forest, Alec slurped his own lemonade in a safe spot where he could see us but no one could see him. We were chatting with him in low voices through our walkie-talkies, mostly about monsters and whatnot. Luckily, Zach and Luke’s parents were still working at the busy restaurant. It didn’t close until late at night.

  “So what did Cole want?” Poseidon asked me in Greek. “It was kind of weird how he, like, dragged you away from us.”

  I shrugged indifferently. “He doesn’t remember what happened that day I took him into the woods, and he wanted to know,” I told the boys. “I lied, of course.” Poseidon nodded in approval and satisfaction, and then he took a long, slow s
ip of lemonade.

  Silence took over the lull in our conversation for a few seconds as we all paused to catch our breaths in the tiring heat, and I wished Zeus would send a couple of clouds to hide the hot sun for a while. We had powers for a reason, after all, and they were meant to be used in one way or another. Therefore, I could only shake my head in amazement when I noticed that the ice in our lemonades had already almost melted completely, even though it had only been a couple of minutes since we got them. But Zeus was seemingly oblivious to this fact, and he actually appeared quite comfortable with the abnormally high temperature.

  Frowning, I swatted away a small fly that seemed to have no sense of direction whatsoever, and I automatically looked over at the edge of the trees when Alec’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. “What are we going to do about getting help from the Knowing?” he asked no one in particular. “There is no address for the camp, so I’m not sure how to send them a message. It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I think I’ll have to go all the way back.”

  Zeus sighed and answered him, “Well, we obviously can’t send you all the way back to Kentucky alone. Hades probably has a price on your head already, and half of the Knowing might not even believe you when you tell them everything that’s happened so far.” Apollo, Poseidon, and I nodded in agreement before taking another sip of cold lemonade in unison.

  “No, I don’t think anyone in the Knowing will believe me, let alone half of them,” Alec muttered darkly, more to himself than to the rest of us, and I raised my eyebrows.

  “What did you just say?” Zeus asked in surprise and confusion.

  “Nothing,” Alec recovered, and I frowned dubiously. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Okay, so who’s going with Alec and how are they getting all the way out to Kentucky?” Apollo wondered aloud, running his fingers through his golden hair.

  “They’ll have to take a plane at least part of the way, if we have any hope of finishing this war before the end of summer. And for that, we need a cover story … and money. A lot of it,” I added, still keeping an eye out for that perseverant fly that kept coming back to annoy me.

  Zeus leaned back in his rocking chair in thought, and the porch floorboards creaked under him as he took another sip of lemonade. “Well, which one of the gods might actually be allowed to travel almost all the way across the country without warning?” he asked all of us.

  I sighed as I ran through all the gods in my head. Zeus and Poseidon were a definite no; same with Apollo, as they were needed here in the Woods. Aphrodite would never agree to do something like this, not even for Alec, since there was no telling when she would be able to stop for a shower or a change of clothes. The unforgiving Ares probably wouldn’t even care about helping to protect Alec, and Hera and Demeter were out, as their policeman father would be too suspicious of them. The quiet Hestia’s parents were way too overprotective, and Hephaestus wouldn’t be much of a help to Alec anyway. Dionysus just wasn’t the best god for the job. Hermes might have been okay, but he would be needed in the Woods as well, since he was the only other one of us besides Alec who could go down to the Underworld to talk to Hades. That left only two gods.

  “It has to be me or Camille,” I told them, switching back to English. “Whichever one of us can come up with a good enough cover story so that our parents will agree to it.”

  Zach, Connor, and Luke nodded in agreement with my conclusion, but Alec’s confused voice asked, “Camille?”

  “Artemis,” I translated for him, since Alec didn’t know all of our human names. I was about to add something else, but my cell phone suddenly rang from inside my jeans pocket, and I frowned in confusion because no one ever called me. There was never any real reason to, since house calls were more common in small towns like mine.

  I pulled out the old black flip phone and squinted at the small screen, reading the caller ID. Shaking my head, I cursed under my breath and forced myself up out of the chair. When Zach, Luke, and Connor looked at me questioningly, I explained simply, “It’s my dad.” I walked into their house, where I could speak to my father privately, and answered the phone rather harshly, “What do you want now?”

  I heard my father sigh, and he said, “I’m sorry, Ashley. I should’ve left a note or something—” Surprisingly, he didn’t even sound drunk, yet his voice seemed to cut off all of a sudden, and as he cleared his throat, I could have sworn that I heard him frowning. “It just wasn’t working—things between your mother and I, that is. I don’t know if you knew.”

  “Of course I knew!” I interrupted loudly as I paced back and forth through Zach and Luke’s kitchen, walking in circles around their dining room table and chairs. “How could I not know, after so many years?” I paused to think for a moment and asked suddenly, “Wait, where are you anyway?”

  “Paris,” he responded blandly, and I sighed, thinking about the painting of my parents in front of the Eiffel Tower that I had found a few weeks earlier.

  “Are you ever coming back?” I asked quietly.

  But he only ignored my question and continued, “Just tell your mother that I’m sorry, because she won’t pick up my calls, but she probably should’ve known this was coming. Oh, and if she really doesn’t want all of those paintings I got her over the years, just send them back to me.”

  “No, she wants them,” I said quickly, thinking they could probably be sold at the antique shop for a fair amount of money, if my mom was willing to selling them. But I also knew there was no way all that would happen in just a few days. I would have to find money for plane tickets another way.

  Fortunately for me, I was still on the phone with a disinterested man who trusted me enough and felt guilty enough that he almost never asked questions.

  “Hey, Dad, you wouldn’t mind buying two plane tickets for a flight from here to Kentucky, would you?” I chewed my lip as I waited for his reply.

  He let out another exasperated sigh, and I envisioned him furrowing his brow, scrunching up his hooked nose, and scratching his head, the way he always did when something was bothering him. “Why can’t your mother do it? She knows about this trip, right?”

  “Of course,” I lied. She would know within a few hours, at least. “Mom’s just really stressed out right now, and I thought you could do it for her. I need the tickets as soon as possible. And you should put them under my name somehow, because Mom won’t be taking me to the airport.”

  “Wait—what?” My father sounded like he was getting angrier. “What do you mean Catherine isn’t going? Ashley, what the hell are you trying to pull? I want an explanation. Now.”

  Suddenly, I heard the screen door creak open and slam shut, and then Luke, Zach, and Connor poked their heads around the corner of the wall, looking at me questioningly. They wanted to know what was taking so long. I motioned for them to leave the room again, but they only ignored me and sat down at the kitchen table to listen in on the conversation.

  “I’m feeling very left out right now,” Alec grumbled through the black walkie-talkie on my belt loop from outside in the woods, but Zach just told him to shut up and let me think.

  I pressed the phone harder against my ear. “Remember that college camp I wanted to go to?”

  “No,” my father grumbled, and I smirked.

  “Well, I’m signed up for the summer program at the University of Kentucky. Mom said she needs to stay here and take care of the antique shop, so Martha offered to fly there with me, as long as we paid for her,” I informed him, making the story up as I continued, though I hated how easy it was becoming for me to make up lies spontaneously and worried about the all-too-likely possibility of getting caught. If my father had actually remembered the camp I had wanted to go to, he would have known it was in New York, not Kentucky. Still, it was a plausible story, and I knew Martha, the most loving second mother I could ever hope for, definitely would have gone with me if she were needed.

  “All right, I’ll buy two round-trip tickets and email the link
to you. But you have to promise me that you won’t do anything stupid in Kentucky and that you’ll remember to tell your mother I’m sorry. I don’t know when I’ll call again or if she even wants me to,” my father reluctantly agreed, and I gave the boys at the table a thumbs-up. They exchanged high-fives as I said goodbye to my dad, and after I hung up the phone, we raced back out to the front porch.

  When we all finished our lemonades and told Alec about what my dad was doing for me, the rest of the Monster Watch and I grabbed our bikes again and slowly pedaled back to the restaurant, trying but failing to ignore the sticky heat. We threw our bikes down on the sidewalk almost exactly like before, not caring that they were blocking the path. The boys followed me as I opened the Fire Pit’s door with a loud creak, and I looked inside to see everything almost exactly like the four of us had left it only an hour earlier. Becca was still sitting with Matt, but Jack and Shane had joined Josh and Cole at a different table, nearer to the front of the restaurant.

  Our messenger, Josh, turned around in his chair to see who had walked in, and I quickly met his brown eyes and gave him a look that read, Get over here now. Nodding in understanding, Josh slowly got up out of his chair and started to make his way over to the Monster Watch and me. The rest of the gods in the restaurant noticed this too and followed Josh outside, where we could all talk without being overheard.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked, squinting his dark eyes against the burning sun as he stepped around our bicycles.

  “I can get us the tickets to fly to Kentucky. If Camille is okay with it, I should probably be the one to go with Alec,” I informed Becca, Shane, Josh, Jack, and Matt, who looked very upset that we had interrupted his lovely date.

  Shane frowned, narrowing his eyes at me. “May I ask how you managed to procure these tickets? Or do I even want to know?”