Chapter 1 The Survivor #2
Location: Siberia.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
Two men looked particularly murderous. Their gazes scoured the side of my face with knifelike sharpness.
Three months ago, they’d placed me on an altar. They’d kneeled before me, worshipping my flesh with soft lips and reverent touches.
Now vitriol wafted off them in punishing waves, its intensity more biting than the icy wind. They were wrathful gods pretending to be men.
Run for your life, my inner voice screamed.
But I was done fleeing.
Straightening my spine, I matched their unnaturally stiff postures and pretended I wasn’t intimidated by the Chthonics.
Loaded armpit and thigh holsters stretched across their black T-shirts and cargo pants.
Spartan helmets sat atop their heads.
Ancient warriors dressed as modern killers, ready to induct a new cultist.
I was ready.
No, you’re not.
I ignored the voice of reason; there was no place for it here.
Rural Montana had prepared me for two things: selling my organs on the black market, and cult life. For some reason, dark times were a breeding ground for uncomfortable group participation in dangerous activities.
Nyx slithered under my toga. “It’s so cold, I want to die,” she hissed in an inspirational display of mental toughness.
Hades shifted beside me. Cerberus, stoic and calm, stood at his feet.
In contrast, Fluffy Jr. dug in the snow. Ears perking up, he bit the end of a stick, then gulped it down his throat.
Not now.
Everyone watched as my protector hacked.
Finally, just when I was about to intervene, he regurgitated the half-eaten piece of bark, and looked back at me with his tail wagging.
God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.
I prayed for death.
A familiar scoff echoed.
I looked over, before I could remember why I shouldn’t.
Dear God.
The Devil had answered my prayer.
Ice-blue eyes met mine, and the temperature in the forest plummeted. Frostbite dug its frozen claws into my sternum.
Kharon’s lips curved up with a predatory promise.
“Furia” flashed, the tattoo stark across the front of his pale throat.
Dried blood was also smeared across his mouth; his nails were painted black; holsters stretched obscenely across powerful thighs and the chiseled lines of a cut torso; ink covered his right arm, shading his skin in an illusion of skeletal bones that mirrored what lay beneath the skin.
Time slowed.
“Honey,” he mouthed slowly, not a sound falling from his crimson stained lips. “I’m home.”
My heart stopped beating.
Complete cardiovascular meltdown.
I’d forgotten what it felt like to meet his gaze; I’d forgotten how my cells froze with abject terror as a deep animalistic instinct screamed at me to get away from him; I’d forgotten how he’d mockingly called out the greeting each time he’d leapt to Corfu.
Now I remembered.
“Hello, carissima,” Kharon mouthed silently. His posture was hostile, his expression downright disrespectful.
Carnivores like to play with their prey.
The Hunter stood before me, a creature capable of unholy depravity, and he wanted one thing.
Me.
I looked down, turning slightly so he was in my blind spot, faint with panic.
He was searching for a weakness, desperate to exploit me. This was nothing but a power trip for him.
He can never know about my eye and ear.
Two hellhounds crouched at Kharon’s feet, their bones flickering in and out of existence as if they were glitching. Blue flames danced in their eye sockets.
They shouldn’t have been visible.
“Alexis,” a baritone voice said, smooth as silk. “Look at me.”
I obeyed.
Augustus’s black eyes trailed down my body from head to toe, caressing, checking for injuries.
My name lingered between us in the icy air—three short syllables—yet he’d managed to make it sound like the most depraved of curses. He always did.
Midnight eyes locked on mine—I gasped.
Augustus’s expression was ravenous.
Black and white hair hung loose down his back, the strands blowing around his wide shoulders. The scarlet edge of his scar peeked out beneath his helmet.
Tendons strained in his neck.
Danger, a subconscious voice screamed as my pulse pounded in my ears.
Crimson pooled in the whites of Augustus’s eyes as he activated his Chthonic powers.
He looked enraptured.
Beside him, Kharon slowly licked his lips.
The world faded and there was just the three of us meeting in the snowy woods, the dangerous villains and their reluctant wife. A trifecta of lethal abilities.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even Lord Acton couldn’t have imagined the depraved power of Chthonics.
A droplet of blood spilled from Augustus’s lashes, streaking down his cheek like a tear and disappearing beneath his Spartan helmet. I’ve never seen a Chthonic do that before.
He’s going to invade my mind and smash it to pieces.
Terror crawled down my spine. He’d torn into my head during the crucible and forced his will upon me. He could do it again.
RUN.
Augustus was a monster.
So are you.
Poco screeched, black hands wrapping around Augustus’s neck as he climbed up onto his shoulder. Raccoon whiskers quivered, black eyes flashing.
Augustus didn’t move. He just stared at me with leaking, bloody eyes.
With tingling fingers, I rubbed at my chest where the new marriage bond strummed, the one that was supposed to make our powers stronger. The same bond that forged Persephone’s terrifying powers.
Augustus and Kharon were two indominable forces. There was nowhere to run from them, nowhere I could hide where they wouldn’t eventually find me, and even Crete wasn’t safe. I knew it in my bones.
Looking around, I focused on anything but the two dark gods bonded to my soul.
Branches clattered in the wind.
My neck prickled because my husbands weren’t the only ones staring.
Achilles and Patro stood beside them, watching me with an intensity that bordered on deranged.
My mentors.
Achilles glared, a cigarette hanging between the grates of his muzzle. Smoke rose around his face, red eyes bright through the hazy tendrils. Hair pulled back tightly with DEATH tattooed across his knuckles, he was a blazing presence in the frigid forest.
Nero, his mammoth shaggy black wolf, sat obediently next to him with a matching scarlet gaze.
Patro smirked haughtily, leaning casually against his lover. Poppae, his sleek jaguar, flicked her tail back and forth, emerald eyes bright.
A strangling pressure squeezed my neck. I touched my throat protectively.
Predators everywhere.
I looked away.
Hermos and Agatha were at the end of the line—two dark creatures with Chthonic blood somewhere in their lineage.
Hermos was an infamous Gorgon. Agatha was an Empusa, a rare type of shape-shifting creature that ate men.
She inspired me.
Crack.
I screamed as something huge leapt into the clearing.
A woman astride a monstrous black horse scoffed at me, crimson droplets sparkling in the air around her.
Artemis.
Ice-blue eyes peered down an aristocratic nose, the air around her full of fear, literally. Her power surrounded her in a mist of glittering red—it was terror incarnate.
The immense horse pranced in place.
A familiar stocky figure in a black exercise toga stood between the trees.
No.
This can’t be.
Drex shrugged sheepishly as his golden toucan flapped its wings with agitation.
“But y-you’re an Olympian,” I sputtered.
The entire point of the Assembly of Death was to oppress and punish Chthonics after they lost the Great War.
Drex stepped closer. “The Olympians exiled me because Theros was my mentor.” His voice cracked. “I had no choice—at least here I can fight Titans … with you.”
Sparta was still reeling over Theros’s betrayal and subsequent disappearance. The Falcon Chronicles reported that Ceres, a muse from the crucible’s library, had helped Theros kidnap me and other House of Zeus heirs. She’d planted the warning notes in my textbooks.
After the article dropped, Ceres had also disappeared without a trace.
“I’ll be fine,” Drex whispered. “Maybe.” He narrowed his eyes. “Hopefully?”
We’re both dead.
“We’re here,” Artemis announced, “because we have two new recruits to welcome—a fellow Chthonic daughter, and the first … idiot … to ever volunteer for induction.”
She bared her teeth, eyes manic, as she cocked a bloodstained bow and raised it to the full moon.
Yep, that’s definitely Kharon’s (Karen’s) mother.
“At the Spartan Gladiator Competition this August, we will showcase our powers and strike fear into the hearts of the Olympians.”
She shot an arrow into the sky.
Please let it hit me.
A squirrel fell from the top branch with a loud thud.
Okay, Arthritis (Artemis) needs to be stopped.
Artemis turned her horse to face us. “Per tradition, in honor of Pheidippides of the House of Ares—you will be hunted by our youngest members, twenty-five miles through the woods.”
Was that blood on her teeth?
“They will give you an entire hour’s head start before they come after you.” Artemis scoffed, like she thought that was too much time. “While you’re in the forest, leaping and fighting back is forbidden. It doesn’t matter how many bullets you take.”
She smiled.
“If you fail to make it out of the woods and are captured, you will be killed.”
Drex whimpered.
Oh nice, Arthritis looks genuinely excited.
Hades shot me a reassuring smile.
He’d explained all this before and said everyone always survived, but Artemis made it sound like our demise was a very real possibility, and she was personally going to make it happen.
“After the woods, you can leap,” Artemis said flippantly, like she didn’t need to explain it because we’d already be dead by then.
“If you’re uncaptured by the first morning light, you’ll be in the Assembly of Death, and can choose who you want to partner with for your first mission. If you’re caught, the two Spartans who capture you will fill that role.”
Kharon bared his teeth and Augustus smirked, his eyes still dripping crimson.
Achilles cracked his neck back and forth, muzzle concealing his expression. Patro winked, looking smug.
Artemis raised her bloody bow.
“RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Drex and I didn’t need to be told twice. We turned and sprinted into the icy woods.