E-book: $8.99
Paperback: $10.99
Hardcover: $19.99
Audiobook: $25.99
When gods play at war, humanity loses.
Juno has watched Jupiter dally with mortal women too many times through the centuries—and when she leaves him in a righteous fury, his own godly temper takes hold. Heedless of the consequences, he heaves thunderbolts so mighty that the underworld itself cracks open in fissures reaching all the way down to Tartarus, home of the wicked dead. Freed from eternal punishment, they would return to Earth, challenge Jupiter for power—and doom humanity.
To preserve his cruel rule, to save the mortals he beds but does not respect, Jupiter tasks his fellow gods with guarding the new gates to the underworld he’s created in his reckless rage. But the immortals, as always, care more for their eternal feuds than duty. If humanity is to be saved, demigods and mortals will have to guard the gates too.
Unfortunate, then, that Juno has her own reasons for wanting Tartarus unguarded. Humanity be damned.
2
DIRT. MORE DIRT.
Thisparticular dirt would tell a story, though, if April listened hard enough.
She squinted at the site’s final soil core through her prescription safety glasses, comparing the different shades of brown to her color chart, then noted the sample’s water content, soil plasticity and consistency, grain size and shape, and all the other relevant data on her field form.
No discoloration. No particular odor either, which didn’t surprise her. Solvents would emit a sweet smell, and fuels would smell like—well, fuel. Hydrocarbons. But lead would simply smell like dirt. So would arsenic.
After wiping her gloved hand on the thigh of her jeans, she jotted down her findings.
Normally, she’d be talking to her assistant sampler, Bashir, about their most egregious coworkers or maybe their most recent reality show binge-watches. But by this point in the afternoon, they were both too tired to make idle conversation, so she finished logging the sample silently while he filled out the label for the glass sample jar and completed the chain-of-custody form.
After she filled the jar with soil and wiped her hand on her jeans again, she labeled the container, slipped it into a zip-top bag,and placed it in the ice-filled cooler. One last signature to confirm she was handing off the sample to the waiting lab courier, and they were done for the day. Thank God.
“That’s it?” Bashir asked.
“That’s it.” As they watched the courier leave with the cooler, she blew out a breath. “I can take care of cleanup, if you want to relax for a few minutes.”
He shook his head. “I’ll help.”
Other than their thirty-minute lunch break, they’d been on task and focused since seven that morning, almost nine hours ago. Her feet hurt in her dusty safety boots, her exposed skin stung from too much sun exposure, dehydration had her head throbbing inside her hard hat, and she was ready for a good, long shower back at the hotel.
Her cheek also itched, probably from a stray smear of dirt. Which was unfortunate, because soil-to-skin contact was, in technical terminology, an exposure pathway. Or, as April would put it, a fucking bad idea.
Uncapping her water bottle, she wet a paper towel and swiped until her cheek felt clean again.
“You still have some...” Bashir’s finger scratched at a spot near his temple. “There.”
“Thanks.” Despite her headache, her smile at him was sincere. She could count the number of genuine friends she had at her current firm on one hand, but Bashir was among them. “Good work today.”
After one last swipe and Bashir’s affirmative nod—she’d gotten rid of all the mud this time, apparently—the paper towel ended up in the same garbage bag as her used gloves, and good riddance.
The soil was dirty in more ways than one. Until midcentury, a pesticide factory had operated on the site, polluting the facility’ssurroundings with lead and arsenic. Because of that history, April had spent the last several weeks gathering samples of the soil to analyze for both chemicals. She wanted neither directly on her skin. Or on her jeans, for that matter, but paper towels were just a pain in the ass at the end of the day.
“Did I tell you?” As she gathered their paperwork, he slid her a sly grin. “Last week, Chuck told that new kid never to drink water in the exclusion zone. Because it’s bad practice, and goes against health and safety guidelines.”
Together, they turned to stare at their red cooler filled with water bottles, which she’d placed on the tailgate of their field truck that morning.
“Chuck’s a self-congratulatory twenty-two-year-old prick who’s spent almost no time on actual job sites.” At her flat statement, Bashir’s eyes widened. “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but is happy to tell everyone how to do their jobs anyway.”
At that, Bashir snorted. “Not just our jobs.”
