Prologue, part II
AIDEN
It’s probably not the most sensible decision I’ve ever made, but sensible decisions haven’t done much for me lately.
The sensible thing would’ve been staying in Brooklyn and getting word to Teddy after Johnny disappeared.
The sensible thing would’ve been leaving the office with my soul intact the first time he asked me to kill a man, whether they deserved it or not.
But men like me don’t get very far by doing what’s sensible.
We do what’s necessary, and I agreed to this.
So I step around the dead creature and start walking.
It’s only fair. I killed the enemy before they killed me, and with Johnny Wallace somewhere in these woods with me, I have to go and finish my job before I begin to think about how I’m getting back to Brooklyn.
Because, one thing for sure, this ain’t Brooklyn.
We don’t have some weird horse-crab monster attacking citizens in good ol’ New York, I tell you that much. Magic mirror, huh? Maybe, but Johnny’s here, and that’s all that matters right now.
And I believe that the entire time I attempt to track him down.
The farther I walk, the stranger the forest gets.
Some of the trees have faces in the bark.
Not carved faces, either. Real ones. Eyes closed.
Mouths twisted as if they’re dreaming about something unpleasant.
Vines crawl across the ground when I get too close, pulling themselves out of my path like they know better than to tangle around my boots.
I decide not to look too closely at anything, acting as though I’m used to this unusual place.
On the plus side, I’m not attacked again, by anything from Brooklyn or this weirdo place.
I just keep walking, and when I hear water somewhere up ahead, a little voice inside my head tells me to go that way.
I still keep my gun up and out, though.
Once I reach a break in the trees, I step through it and curse under my breath.
I’ve stumbled upon a lake. It stretches farther than I can see, smooth and black beneath the enormous moon. There isn’t so much as a ripple across the surface. The stars overhead are reflected perfectly, making it hard to tell where the world ends and the water begins.
There’s a body crumpled at the side, fingers outstretched toward the dark water lapping at the shore.
I march over there, overcoat flaring as I look down at Johnny Wallace, his eyes wide and staring, his face twisted in a look of shock, delight, and despair all at the same time.
He’s dead. Dead as a fucking doornail.
And I didn’t do it.
I don’t understand. He’s not wet. He didn’t drown. I don’t think he even went inside of the lake. It’s like he reached the edge of the shore, peered down and saw his reflection and—
—died, supplies a deep, somber voice inside of my head.
It’s like a funeral dirge echoing against my skull, and my free hand flies up, knocking my hat back as I clutch the side of my head.
The hunter was trapped by his reflection, but because it’s been so long since he’s seen his true soul, it was too much for him.
Rather than waste away, he was dead the moment he saw his own eyes.
Poor soul just doesn’t know he’s mine yet.
“Get out of my head,” I snap, tugging on the slicked-back strands of my black hair. After three years at war, there are too many memories I wish I could forgot, and too many screams that I hear in my nightmares.
But this? This is something different.
This is something new.
I shake my head, rapping my temple with the butt of my Colt.
Thankfully, it quiets that deep, ominous voice, but it doesn’t erase what it said.
The voice is right. Johnny Wallace is dead, even if I don’t understand how ‘cause I didn’t do it.
Because, one thing for sure, no way did he look at his reflection and croak. That just… that doesn’t happen.
Just like being pulled through a mirror and landing in a world with hungry monsters and a killer lake doesn’t happen…
I look down at Johnny Wallace’s corpse. “Jesus Christ. What the hell did you see?”
“The end of his story.”
I turn so fast I nearly lose my balance.
A good-looking beast of a man stands several yards away.
He’s at least twice my width. He’s got a head on me, and without a hat, I can see that his thick hair is a gleaming silver color.
His eyes are pale, his clothes a suit similar to mine, though the way his bronzed skin glows like the light of the moon up above tells me that this fella… he ain’t no man, is he?
I don’t know how he got there, or how he snuck up on me without me noticing. One second, the lakeshore was empty. The next, he’s not that far, watching Johnny Wallace and me with an expression I know all too well.
Grief.
It’s the quiet grief of someone who already knows he’s too late.
He’s older than me, though I can’t guess by how much.
He’s forty. Maybe fifty. As I look closer, I notice that his strikingly handsome face has a few of the hard lines men earn from carrying too much for too long.
Nothing about him should seem that unusual after all of the things I’ve seen tonight, but that glow… that does.
He walks toward us, paying no attention to the Colt in my hand.
Knowing I only have one bullet left, I aim at his chest. “Okay, pal. That’s close enough.”
He ignores me. He keeps coming, and maybe it’s because I know this is the last bullet I’ve got for now—and no desire to shoot it all of a sudden—I stay my hand even as he passes me, heading for Johnny.
He kneels beside the body, touching two fingers to Johnny’s brow. As I watch, the stranger closes Johnny’s eyes, then sighs.
“Narcissus made it through the portal,” he says quietly. “I hoped that might be enough to save him from his own fate. I thought he might’ve been saved before Death came for him.” His pale eyes flicker my way, and I jolt like I’ve been zapped. Was that… was that lightning flashing in their depths?
What the hell is going on here?
“Narcissus?” I echo though I know better. I can’t help it, though. The name… why does it seem like I should know it? “That ain’t Narcissus. That’s Johnny Wallace.”
“That was his mirrorside name. Here, in this realm, he was born to be Narcissus. And, as such, he died as Narcissus died. No thanks to you, brother.”
I scowl. “I have no brother.”
I have nothing.
He looks at me for a moment, and that same voice from before utters one name: Zeus.
I ignore him. “Who the fuck are you?”
“The better question is: who are you?” He pauses. “Death,” he says again, and his slight accent becomes all the more noticeable as he rises up and offers me a name I know all too well: “Mickey Soter.”
I keep my face closed-off. “What about him?”
“He was found floating in the East River. Two shots to the chest.” He pauses again. “You killed Poseidon.”
Posiedon? I… I know that name. I did my schooling. Poseidon… he was a Greek god. Of the seas, I think.
“Soter was rigging races over in Queens. Killed four horses and two jockeys before my boss figured it was him. He had to go.”
“Poseidon was the lord of horses,” the man retorts. “In this realm or another, he never would’ve, but false words had you turning your gun on your brother.”
A chill skitters up my spine. “I told you, buddy, I don’t have—”
“Paul and Harold Brighton. Father and son. They died in a fire, and with them, the souls of Daedalus and Icarus.”
It was only fair. Teddy said they were responsible for a boarding house blaze that killed sixteen people.
“What about Sally Franklin?”
I know her, too. An innocent face with a penchant for poison. She was one I struggled with, but when I thought of her victims, I knew I had to do it. “What about her? And how do you know her?”
“Because she was Circe, and I was hoping that the powerful sorceress would help balance the scales if I could convince her to join us… but she was skittish—”
“Skittish?” I spit out. “She was a murderess!”
He arches his eyebrows, and I nearly recoil when I see the look on his face. Before, it was grief. Now? It’s pity.
“She was a librarian, Hades.”
This time I do recoil. “First Death, now Hades? If you don’t know who I am, good, but don’t give me names I haven’t earned. Librarians can be murderesses, too. Anyone can be a killer.”
Ask me how I know.
He nods. “Yes, but not that one. And your other victims… someone has been playing with your head, brother. Playing with your soul. I only wished I’d found you in time to stop you before you took so many of us.”
Many of us?
Many of who?
I open my mouth to argue, but he cuts me off with a tone as firm as one as Teddy. No way I can argue back now.
“You don’t know. I figured as much. The god I know… he wouldn’t turn on his kind like that.”
God?
What does this whack job mean, god?
Again, he continues, and I just stare blankly at him.
“One day, you might understand, and you might even be willing to listen to me, but now that you’ve returned to the Other at last… I’ll assure you of one thing, Aodhán Murphy. You are Hades. And you have a duty to do.”
God.
Hades.
No.
My temper snaps. I lift the gun as high as I can, aiming right between his strange eyes. I don’t know what did it: the casual way he used my name as though he has any idea who I am—who I used to be—or how he insists I’m… I’m…
Hades, rumbles the voice in my head… in my chest… in my soul. I am Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and the shade is waiting for me to guide him below to be judged. He’s waiting for us.
What?
I can’t stop myself from looking, almost as though, for a moment, I no longer have control of my body. I turn toward Johnny Wallace, and while his body is still crumpled along the shore, there’s another man standing there.
No. What did that voice say? It’s a shade, and considering the man is hovering inches over the ground, somewhat there, yet somewhat not… he’s a spirit. A soul.
He’s also one hell of a looker. With skin as deep a shade of bronze as the man with the silver hair, the shade has dark brown eyes and long, golden locks that reach his shoulders.
He’s wearing something that would be more fitting on a dame, only there’s no doubt he’s a man.
None I’ve ever seen before, but, even so, something about him makes it clear that he is Johnny Wallace.
Narcissus, supplies the voice. He’s done what he was meant to do, and eventually, he’ll be reborn mirrorside again to do this all over again. Just like we do this again and again.
Again and again.
Again…
Narcissus turns to me. Because part of me wants to take hold of him and lead him into the dark, I jerk my head, searching for the silver-haired man. He already knows so damn much. He has to be able to explain—
—only he can’t because he’s gone.
And someone has to lead Narcissus to the Underworld to be judged by Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus… and how the holy hell do I know that?
Because, Hades tells me, I do. And, as Zeus told you, you are now Hades, and you will spend all eternity on my throne until, once more, the throne beside you is no longer as empty as it’s been for far too long.
I have no idea what that means, only that—somehow—I’ve trapped myself in this weird place with no way back to Brooklyn at all. Oh, I could use the last bullet on myself, but just as I’m sure that there’s no going back, there’s no easy escape for me, either.
Lowering the Colt, I think of what that man… what Zeus said… about how I thought I was so righteous in killing the targets that Teddy Thanos gave me. There were so many. At least twenty folders over the last ten months, and if even a one was as innocent as Zeus claimed…
Maybe I do deserve to spend the rest of my life in the dark of the Pit.
And, whether I do or not, that’s precisely where I lead Narcissus’s shade—and, with Hades my constant and only companion, that’s where Aiden Murphy stays.