by P. J. Hoover
Chapter 13
Acheron
I’m not sure what to say. It’s like I’m a part of an elaborate hoax, but there’s no way Shayne and Charon could make up this world. I want to turn and run away, but I can’t imagine where I would go; I sank through the ground to get here. But the image of Chloe’s pale body haunts me.
“I should get back. Chloe needs me.”
Shayne puts a hand under my chin and looks me directly in the eyes. It’s like he wants to draw my discomfort away and into himself. Like he would relieve my burden at the cost of his own. He rubs my chin with his thumb, and chills spill down my neck. “I stopped time.”
“You can do that?” My anxiety begins to dissipate at the edges.
Shayne releases my chin. “My father’s the god of time. It’s an inherited thing.”
“So you stopped it now?” I ask. I ignore the father-being-the-god-of-time thing, because it’s just too much to process right now.
“Yeah, I stopped it now. I need to show you what Chloe could have.”
I look out at the frothing river. “You mean if she dies.”
Shayne nods. “You can see her place here in the Underworld, and then you can decide.”
“Decide if she lives or dies?” I shake my head. “I don’t need to see the Underworld. I want Chloe alive.”
“It’s not all monsters, Piper. Just give it a chance. That’s all I ask.”
I’ve already made my decision. If I really do have a choice here—if this isn’t some bizarre dream—I won’t let Chloe die. And I did see time stop. Chloe is fine, and Chloe will live. But…
The Underworld beckons me and draws me toward it. I want to see it. It wraps its tendrils around my body and calls to me with a voice I can’t ignore. So I smile at Shayne. “Okay. I’ll give it a chance.”
And his smile brightens the darkness around me.
We walk to the boat, and I get in. It’s large enough to carry at least ten people, and I move to a seat at the front—next to Shayne. Charon follows us in and heads to the back, picking up a long pole which leans against the smooth black wood. I watch Charon, and he catches my eye and smiles. The lines crinkle around his face again, and it infects me, forcing me to smile back. Letting me accept the mythical world around me and live in it for the moment. Helping ease my mind of worries about Chloe.
Charon unties the boat, and it begins to drift. Though the light brightens as we move, I can’t see the opposite shore. The water bubbles and laps against the sides, and something jumps out of the water, catching a bubble in its mouth and swallowing it.
Hell. I’m in Hell. And Shayne is the Lord of the Underworld.
“Are you the devil?”
Shayne puts his hand on the inside of my bare leg, below the line of my shorts. Goose bumps break out on my legs, and he grins. “Do you want me to be?”
Charon chuckles from the back of the boat, and Shayne laughs, too.
It seems like a reasonable question to me, and I know what answer I want. “No.”
Shayne rubs my thigh, smoothing the goose bumps. But it’s futile. His rubbing only causes more goose bumps. I separate my legs the tiniest amount, giving his hand more room.
“Good. I am not the devil.”
“You get asked that a lot?”
“Almost every soul who comes here. It’s that whole Hell and devil association thing.”
I put my hand on his, and he stops rubbing my leg. “So is there a devil?”
Shayne sighs. “Piper, let me tell you something. The devil is everywhere. Above ground. Down here. He’s evil. And he’s always looking for a way in.”
Just when my goose bumps were about to disappear. “A way in where?”
Shayne lifts his hand, waving it across the river. “A way in anywhere. Hell. Earth. Souls. Any tiny crack or crevice. Evil is trying to seep inside and take over.”
I’ve been fortunate so far that evil has stayed away from my life, but I think about how the crime rate exploded during the last heat bubble. I turn back to the water to where he’s pointing—to the voices I hear there.
Send me back to my baby.
At last.
Please don’t let me fall.
I’m so young.
I can almost picture faces behind the words. The water bubbles with the sound of each one, and soon they blend together. I lean over and try to get a closer look, to see the things swimming below the surface.
I didn’t do it.
My daughter. Don’t let my daughter die.
Each voice is different but the same. It takes me a few minutes to realize why, but then it hits me. Sorrow. Anguish for a life which will never come back.
Help us.
I want to reach in. To release the grief in the voices. I lean over and put my hands on the side of the boat. Water splashes up and sprinkles my face. I stand and try to reach further, but my hand slips, and I fall.
A hand grabs me on the arm and catches me, guiding me back to my seat.
“Careful, my love.”
I face Shayne. Or Hades. But he looks straight ahead, like he hasn’t said a thing.
My love. The words had been as soft as a whisper, and I wonder if I made them up. I hope not.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Voices of the dead. The last thoughts and wishes of those leaving the land of the living. They stay here in the River Acheron.”
They continue to call out to me, as the monsters devour them with their long snouts, some with a single gulp, some slipping through the teeth of one only to be grabbed by another. They jump out of the water every so often exposing spikes on their backs and fins that look sharp as razors. “How can you stand to listen?” I ask.
Shayne shrugs. “Better for the dead to leave their sorrows here than live with them for all eternity. It helps keep evil away.”
“You mean they aren’t sad after this?”
Shayne smiles, and reaches up, brushing his fingers against my tattoo. It’s hard to see in the dim light around us, but I feel his fingers stopping on the scar of it. “The sorrows remain here, and the souls are free to go to their place of eternal rest. Why be burdened with dying thoughts when no one can ever go back?”
“Ever?”
“No. Never.”
And Chloe had almost died.
Shayne puts his arm around me, and I lean against him because his presence makes me never want to be anywhere else. I push the sorrows of the dead from my mind.
But then I hear Charon clear his throat.
Shayne turns back and looks. “Do you have something to say, Charon?”
I swivel around also so I can see him there in the back of the boat, poling us across.
“It just seems you may want to explain.” And then Charon looks at Shayne, and a lazy smirk covers his big, weathered face.
“Explain? What?” I ask.
Charon raises an eyebrow. “The exceptions. I just think they should be mentioned.”
“Charon. My rule follower.”
I look at Shayne, waiting, knowing he’ll go on.
He puts up his hands. “Every rule has exceptions. It’s the way of the world. One or two exceptions do not mean people can come back from the dead.” Shayne’s eyes blacken, and I see the red flashes. “People cannot leave Hell. That is the rule. But of course, as Charon has been so kind as to point out, there have been a couple exceptions over time.” He looks back at Charon. “A long time. And we never make a habit of it. And there are always consequences.”
I begin to ask the question I’ve been thinking, but the words won’t come out. I think it’s because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.
“What?” Shayne tilts his head.
I shake my head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
But he persists. “Tell me.”
I take a deep breath and force the words out, realizing even as I say them I will be in the Underworld forever. Even if I haven’t died, I will remain here. No one leaves. And the thought hardly fazes m
e except I’ll have to leave Chloe. “Am I dead instead of Chloe? Will I be able to leave?”
Shayne surprises me. I figure he’d break it to me gently. But he starts laughing. “Do you want to leave?”
I glance back again at Charon who’s also smiling. “Maybe,” I say.
Shayne stops laughing. “Maybe.” He licks his lips and squeezes my hand. “Well then maybe you can leave. Unless we decide to keep you here forever.”
I’m not sure I’d mind. Anywhere forever with Shayne sounds like paradise. But I think of Chloe. How close she came to dying. And Shayne had saved her.
“But why Chloe?”
“It was her time.”
“No!” I push his arm off my shoulder and turn toward him. “It was not her time.”
He meets my gaze. Again, I see the red flashes in the brown of his eyes; they’ve started back up. Fire behind the darkness of Hell. “Yes. It was. Fate told you so herself.”
“Tanni? So she is real?”
Shayne nods.
“But you saved her.”
He nods and glances back at Charon. I look back, and Charon turns away. He’s avoiding the conversation.
Shayne’s voice is quiet. “I know.”
He did save her. “So what happens now? What if I choose to have Chloe live?” Which I know I will. It’s not even a choice.
“It will be an exception,” Shayne says.
What would Chloe’s sorrow have been had she died? What would she have left for the monsters to devour?
Shayne pulls me back toward him, erasing the distance I’ve put between us. “Just give the Underworld a chance, Piper. Letting Chloe die may be the better choice.”
“I doubt it.”
Shayne cocks his head. “Maybe so. But try to be open-minded.”
There’s a magnetic ball in the pit of my stomach drawing me to the Underworld. I want to see it and I want to be with Shayne. But as I sit there, something else about mythology doesn’t settle. Something I’m not sure I want to ask about or even face. Everything I know about the Underworld has made one thing clear. Hades is married to Persephone. And they rule the Underworld together.
I open my mouth, but I’m not sure how to bring it up.
“What?” Shayne says.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“No really,” he says. “You were going to say something.”
I let out a long breath and finally let the question come. “I’ve studied mythology in school. I always thought…”
“She’s gone,” he says. “She’s gone and she’s not coming back.”
And I don’t know how to respond because whatever happened, it’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I was, too,” he says. “But I’ve moved on.”
With the interest he’s showing in me, I have to believe he’s telling the truth. I decide I won’t question him anymore and risk him changing his mind. Maybe he’s left his sorrows here in the river, too. I settle against him and watch the feasting of the monsters, and push Shayne’s past romances out of my mind.
We travel from the dark cavern and then through a swamp so hazy and gray I can’t see the front of the boat. The haze dissipates, and we’re out into the middle of an ocean with a sky overhead that sparkles like a crystal. Two suns pound down from above, but unlike my Earth, the heat they generate finds that perfect in between space of warmth and cool. It’s like what my mom told me spring used to be like, back before the Global Heating Crisis started. She’d said autumn was a season of dying and winter brought horrible temperatures so cold people froze to death, but that each spring, life returned to the earth.
I don’t realize we’re approaching the far shore until clouds form in the crystal sky and the monsters in the water diminish. The voices weaken, as if no sorrow is permitted to reach the banks. And then I see the trees and feel the humidity. Limbs twist over the water, dripping below, and as we pass under the weeping willows, droplets rain down on me, falling in my thick hair. Far above, crows call out, talking amongst themselves, jumping from branch to branch. And when I see the cerulean blue sky complete with clouds, I know we’re no longer in a cavern but in some other world entirely.
Shayne jumps out first when the boat pushes its way through the reeds and cattails and hits up against the dock. He grabs the rope and loops it around a post. Above him, the canopy of trees holds back the light from the suns of Hell, and shadows play on the hard wooden surface. Then Shayne extends his hand toward me, and I grab it, letting him help me out.
Charon flips the gold coin which Shayne catches high in its arc. “I can’t take your money,” Charon says.
Shayne laughs and puts the coin back in his pocket. “I know.” And their exchange makes me wonder if Charon is like a father to Shayne.
“You’re going back already?” I ask.
“My work is never done. And when I say never, I do mean never.” Charon laughs, and I imagine him crossing the river thousands of times each day. The same routine over and over again.
The image of the gold coin flashes in my mind. “You must make a lot of money.”
“Not as much as you might think,” Charon says.
“Nobody buries people with money anymore,” Shayne says. “We’ve had to start a donation fund within the assembly of gods.”
“There’s an assembly of gods?” I ask. And I wonder if it’s filled with the same corruption the city council has back home. Does someone like Councilman Rendon lead it and make every decision based on his own gain?
“Everyone needs rules and government,” Shayne says. “Especially immortals.”
“And you’re on it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Shayne says. “I’m on it.” He unties the rope and tosses it back in the boat. Charon uses the pole and turns the boat around, already pushing it through the reeds, toward the other shore, away from the overhanging branches and back into the river of sorrow.
Chapter 14
Crossroads
I’m totally unprepared for what happens next. Something bounds out of a tunnel ahead of us and leaps for Shayne, knocking him flat to the ground and landing on his chest. It’s a black dog the size of a bear with three heads, all of which are licking Shayne’s face, shoving each other out of the way. One begins to growl at another, and pretty soon, Shayne’s pushing the dog off him.
“Cerberus! Be careful!” He looks to me and laughs. “One of these days, he’s going to get carried away and bite my ear off.” He stands up and reaches out with both hands, scratching two of the dog’s heads. The other head nuzzles against his arm until he scratches it behind the ears.
“You have a dog?” I know I’m stating the obvious, but it’s just such a bizarre scene, I’m not sure what else to say. And the word three-headed does not seem to be a necessary descriptor.
“Cerberus guards the entrance to the Underworld.”
Cerberus looks my way, and his tail goes into overdrive. He turns, and I know he’s going to run for me and knock me over. I imagine the three heads licking me, and my lips curl up into a smile I can’t hold back.
But Shayne moves first, grabbing the neck in the middle. “Not yet, Cerberus. Let her get acquainted first.”
Cerberus wriggles and tries to break free. He whines and pulls and tugs, but Shayne holds firm, and I see the muscles in his arms flexing, veins showing, sweat covering them.
“He likes you.”
My smile grows, and I walk toward Cerberus. “And I like him.” I scratch him behind the ears of his left head—like I’d seen Shayne do. His tail flaps back and forth, moving so hard his backside slams into Shayne, knocking him away. And then Cerberus jumps up, placing a paw on either of my shoulders, which sends me flying to the soft, muddy soil. All three heads begin a licking frenzy.
“Cerberus!”
Cerberus keeps licking. I’m laughing so hard, I can’t do anything but move my head from side to side, trying to evade the three sloppy tongues. Completely
unsuccessfully.
“Cerberus! Stop right now!”
Cerberus stops licking, but his paws stay on my shoulders. One of his heads swivels in Shayne’s direction. I manage to stop laughing long enough to speak. “It’s okay. He’s a good dog.”
Cerberus wags his tail, and moves his heads back to start licking again.
“Cerberus!”
Shayne grabs hold of Cerberus around the middle and lifts him. I can breathe again with the giant dog now off me. Shayne walks to a rocky wall, still holding Cerberus, and takes something out of one of the wooden supply chests stacked there. He tosses it across the way and releases Cerberus who bounds off after it, disappearing into a pitch black tunnel. Shayne comes back over to me. I’ve managed to stand up and brush some of the dirt and slobber off myself. It’s gotten everywhere, even inside my ears.
“Nice dog.” I laugh when I say it, trying to shake my ears clean.
Shayne combs his hand through my hair. A clump of dirt falls to the ground. I must be covered in it. How can he look so clean? He’s been slammed in the mud, also.
“He’s a bit on the excitable side. But there’s no better dog,” Shayne says.
I look into the dark cave and then take a few steps back so I can see more of the rocky wall. There are ten tunnels cut into the rock that look identical.
“Where do they go?” I ask.
“Different parts of the Underworld.”
I point to the one where Cerberus just disappeared. “So this one leads to…”
“My home. But not anymore.” He reaches for my hand and moves it so it’s pointing to the tunnel on the far left now. “Now my home is down that one.”
“So it changes?”
He nods.
“Why?”
“Security. Only I know where they lead at any given time.”
“You and Cerberus,” I venture.
Shayne laughs. “Yeah, me and Cerberus.” He points one tunnel over from where we stand. “And now it’s down there.”
I step up to the tunnel he’s pointing at and look inside. A chill of excitement runs though me. My eyes adjust, and I see there’s nothing but blackness ahead, and I know that’s the way we’re going.