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“We started off with a vehicle, but we were carjacked just outside of Littleton. We’ve mostly made our way on foot since then.”
“I saw a lady die,” Tobin said, far too casually.
“Shh!” Leon hissed, elbowing his brother. “Everyone gets sad when you talk about that!”
Both Chance and Creed looked slightly nauseous, and while I was basically one step beyond being a kid myself and knew nothing about parenting,thisI kind of understood.
“You can talk about it, even if it makes you sad, or other people sad,” I told Tobin lightly, giving Leon a small smile so he knew I wasn’t mad at him. “Sometimes we need to talk about the sad things to find our way back to the happy things. Do you want to tell me about what you saw?”
Tobin glanced around the table, as though he was waiting for someone to tell him no before he eventually decided to speak. “Some people were fighting over bread, and a mancuta lady with aknife. And then there was blood everywhere, all over the ground and the people. Why would he cut someone with a knife over bread?”
“We haven’t done the best job at talking about this,” Creed murmured. “I’m an agathos of wisdom, and yet I’m struggling to find any wisdom now, when everything feels so bleak.”
Perhaps that was the case, but I guessed Creed had still bestowed plenty of wisdom to humans on his travels, and Chance would have done the same with his gift of self-restraint. To be an agathos was to feel called to help, no matter the personal risk.
I nodded slowly, still watching Tobin. “Sometimes, people do terrible things when they’re afraid. Terrible things tosurvive.” My throat tightened, and I waited a moment for the feeling to pass before I could carry on. “I did something bad when I was afraid, and I think about it every single day. One day, when the world isn’t so hectic, I’ll find the people I wronged and apologize for what I did, and do whatever I can to make it right again.”
Was that a lie? It used to feel icky and hard to tell them, but it had gotten easier with practice. I liked to think I’d be brave enough to face Dice again someday, but I wasn’t confident.
“Did you cut someone with a knife?” Tobin asked solemnly.
“No! Oh my goodness, no. That is, like,superbad. Don’t ever do that, okay?”
“I won’t,” he agreed, nodding his head.
“The tent is ready,” Harbor announced, his voice carrying from down the hall.
“I’m sorry we don’t have a proper room for you—”
“Please don’t apologize,” Chance cut in. “We’re more than grateful for anything you can provide for us. And once we’ve got the boys settled in, I hope you’ll put us to work. The sanctuary you’ve created here is amazing, and we want to help in any way we can.”
Chapter 6
Ididn’tcarethatThanatos was the God of Death, I was going to find a way to kill that bastard myself.
And then I was going to burn his silver Elvis-style jumpsuit with the jangling bells around the waist and sleeves, that I swore he was wearing just to piss me off.
This living room was particularly grim. I’d traveled all over the globe over the past two days with Thanatos, and it was clear the damage that both Gaia and Nyx’s games had wrought extended over every inch of it. Based on the scorching heat, I guessed that wherever we were now was close to the equator, and the elderly woman here had been dependent on electricity to keep the suffocating temperature down. Gaia’s disintegration of what appeared to be every pipe or wire that had been buried in the earth meant there was no power, no water, no working sewerage.
There was no evidence of anyone else in the house; I doubted it had taken long for the elderly woman who lived here to succumb to these awful conditions. Based on the smell alone…
It had been a while.
“Nearly there,” Thanatos said cheerfully, gently extracting her soul from her body, seemingly out of midair. The soul appeared—a carbon copy of the body it had just been removed from except more lifelike, albeit slightly gray—looking at Thanatos with a mixture of confusion and relief. “I’m running very behind schedule, you know. All these deaths make so much work for me. I bet Nyx and Gaia weren’t thinking about all the additional admin for the underworld when they were whacking off mortals, left and right. No one ever does, you know—been like that all through history. Ares and Athena would have their wars, prance around the battlefield in all their glory, and I’d be stuck on clean-up duty, scraping the souls out of half-decapitated soldiers for weeks.”
If souls could piss themselves, the poor old woman would have made a mess of her hardwood floors.
Thanatos sighed dreamily. “I can’t wait until those days are upon us again. Soon. The prophecy will be fulfilled, the warrior gods will return, and life will be exciting again. Anyway, let’s pop you down to the Styx, hm?” he said, finally turning his attention to the trembling soul. “Unfortunately, you’ll be killing some time with the Restless Dead since you weren’t given a proper burial, but it’s really the place to be right now. Very bustling, since almost no one is given a coin for Charon these days. You’ll probably see a familiar face or two. You know the drill, Keres.”
I rolled my eyes, having given up on my attempts at respectfulness about twenty reaped souls ago. Instead, I wandered out onto the patio for some fresh air while Thanatos blinked out of sight, taking the confused soul with him.
Wherever we were, it was tropical. Or rather, itshouldhave been tropical. Dead tree trunks were the only remnants of what had probably once been lush palms. This house was high on the hill, and I had a good view of sparkling aqua water, bright blue skies, and dead, dry land. Why hadn’t Gaia fixed this yet? Was she choosing not to? Or was this some power play to prove how much mortals needed her?
Or was fixing the damage Nyx had done with her days of darkness more work than Gaia could handle?
I let out a long breath, wondering what sky Grace was looking at right now. Was she missing me, or glad I was gone? Where was she? Was she safe? Was she with Riot, and was Riot okay?
He had to be okay. But I couldn’t think about it, because I had an unknown job from Thanatos to do, and I knew him well enough to understand that I wasn’t getting back to Grace until I’d done it.
