Chapter 27 He Always Finds You #2
I pocketed my phone and closed my eyes, trying to organize everything I needed to tell Kian.
Between my mother, Amy, the mystery nurse, and everything Ekklesia was doing behind the scenes, I couldn’t get my mind to stop spiraling.
Anxiety was an ever-present companion in the back of my head, whispering in my ear every time I was quiet.
I opened my eyes. The scenery had changed. Not the familiar route to Kian’s flat. The storefronts and restaurants had given way to empty lots—industrial buildings with broken windows, and streets I didn’t recognize at all.
My chest tightened. “Um… excuse me? I think you missed the turn back there.”
The driver’s hands stayed steady on the wheel. No reaction or apology. Not even an acknowledgement that I’d even spoken.
“Hello?” I tried again, louder, sitting up straighter. “You’re going the wrong way.”
Still nothing. But in the rearview mirror, I caught the glint in his eyes. Ice slid down my spine. My hands went numb where they gripped my bag.
“Stop the car,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady even as panic spiked through me. “I want to get out. Now.”
“Detour,” he replied smoothly. “Construction ahead. This route is faster.”
But there was no construction. No barriers, orange cones, or warning signs. Just empty streets getting emptier, the buildings more decrepit, taking us further from help with every passing second.
The car made a deliberate turn away from campus—away from Kian’s flat—toward the warehouse district.
Where no one can hear me scream…
“Let me out!” I demanded, yanking at the handle. The child safety locks were engaged.
My chest constricted, lungs beginning to seize from panic. I fumbled for my phone, hands shaking. No signal.
How is there no signal? We are still in the city. That’s impossible!
“I’d sit back if I were you,” the driver said, and all pretense of politeness dropped away. “Screaming will only make this harder on both of us.”
Fight or flight kicked in. The back door wouldn’t open, but the front—
I unbuckled and lunged forward, throwing myself over the center console. The gearshift dug into my ribs as I scrambled toward the passenger door.
“What the hell—” The driver’s hand shot out, fingers closing around my arm like a vise. The car swerved violently.
I twisted, clawing at his grip. His other hand left the wheel, reaching for my hair, my throat; anything to drag me back.
The car lurched again, tires squealing. Pure panic took over.
I drove my elbow back hard and felt it connect with his face.
Cartilage crunched. He howled, blood exploding from his nose.
His grip loosened for just a second.
I threw myself at the passenger door, fingers fumbling for the lock, the handle. It clicked, and the door flew open. Then I was falling, the world spinning as I tumbled out of the moving car.
Pain exploded across my arms and knees as I hit the pavement and rolled. My phone clattered into darkness somewhere I couldn’t see.
“Get back here!” The driver’s voice was pure fury now. Tires screeched as he swerved to the curb. A door slammed, and heavy footsteps thundered after me.
I scrambled upright, half-limping, half-sprinting. My body screamed in protest. My lungs constricted, black spots dancing in my vision as air refused to fill my chest. But fear shoved me forward anyway, adrenaline pushing me past pain into pure survival mode.
I didn’t get far. My foot caught on broken pavement and I went down hard, skidding on my palms. Skin tore, blood welling hot and sticky in my hands.
A shadow fell over me, blocking out the dim streetlight.
I turned, heart rabbiting against my ribs.
The driver loomed above me, his nose was a ruined mess—bent at a sickening angle with blood streaming down his face.
In his hand was a knife. The blade caught the orange streetlight like it was hungry for it.
A bloody, grotesque smile spread across his face. “Get up. Get back in the car. Cyrus only said I needed to bring you back alive. Didn’t say you had to be in one piece.”
Terror spiked through me.
“You think you can run from him?” The man tilted the knife, watching light slide along the blade.
“Everyone thinks they can at first. You disappear from one side of the world, and he finds you on the other. Change your name, your face, your entire life; it doesn’t matter.
Been doing this for three thousand years, little goddess.
Hunting your kind, collecting you one by one like trophies.
You all think you’re so clever, so careful. But he always finds you.”
He lifted the knife, preparing to strike. Not to kill, but to incapacitate—
I kicked at his ankle. He stumbled, cursing. I rolled away, scrambled backward on torn palms until my hands hit the ground.
The man launched forward to grab my leg. I kicked at him again, but he dodged this time. He snarled and brought his knife down, slicing across my calf. Pain flared white-hot, pulling a startled cry from my lips.
My breath came short and painful. My phone was gone. No signal. No one here.
Find solid ground. Both palms flat. Speak his divine name.
The knife came down again. I threw my arm up to block, the blade slicing across my forearm this time—
Then slammed both palms flat against the concrete. The impact jarred through my wrists, sending shock waves up my arms.
“Hades!” I screamed, voice breaking with desperation. “Hades!”
The world split, like reality itself couldn’t hold against the force of that summoning. Vicious shadows poured from the rip. They coiled across the ground with terrible purpose, swallowing streetlights, devouring the orange glow until darkness was absolute.
The temperature plummeted. My breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air. Frost crept across the concrete in crystalline patterns that looked almost beautiful.
Hades materialized from darkness itself. Not the professor in rolled sleeves who bought me coffee. This was the god who ruled the dead, who commanded shadows like living extensions of himself, who made even other Olympians tread carefully.
He stood impossibly tall, wreathed in smoke and shadow that moved like serpents.
His eyes burned molten gold shot through with furious red.
Power radiated from him in waves that made reality warp and bend around his presence.
The shadows surrounding him weren’t just dark—they were hungry.
They writhed in response to his rage, determined to devour anything that had dared threaten me.
When he spoke, his voice was the sound of tombs opening, of earth accepting the dead, of finality itself given a terrible voice.
“You dare touch what is mine?”
The man’s bravado evaporated like water on a hot stone.
He stumbled backward, knife clattering from suddenly nerveless hands, all his practiced confidence dissolving into primal, animal fear.
Desperation made him lunge anyway. He tried to grab me, drag me away before Hades could stop him, probably thinking he could use me as a shield or bargaining chip.
Wrong choice.
Hades moved faster than physics should allow. Shadows lashed forward like whips, wrapping around the man’s throat, his wrists, his ankles. Lifting him off the ground like he was a doll to be discarded. The man choked and clawed at the shadows with useless hands that passed right through them.
Hades stalked forward, and with each step the shadows tightened.
“You came for her,” he growled, his voice like a grinding stone. “You hunted her. You raised a blade against her.” The shadows constricted further. “Fatal. Mistakes.”
“Please—” the man wheezed, face going purple. “Cyrus—Cyrus will—”
“Cyrus,” Hades interrupted, and the name dripped with millennia of hatred compressed into two syllables, “is not here. I am.”
The shadows squeezed one final time with a sickening crunch. His body went limp. Hades released him contemptuously, letting him crumple to the pavement. He waved his hand, and shadows swarmed the man and his car. I blinked, and they were gone.
I sat there, my mind reeling with shock.
It happened so fast. One minute, the man was there, and the next, Hades had ended him.
No hesitation, or mercy. Just the weight of divine wrath.
For a moment, I thought I should fear him too.
But when Hades turned to me, still radiating rage, his eyes found mine and the fire dimmed.
The darkness around him settled, revealing Kian beneath the god.
The only thing I could register was the overwhelming sense of relief that he was there.
“Melanie,” he murmured, voice returning to something almost human.
I tried to stand, to speak, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
Adrenaline was crashing hard, shock setting in.
The asthma attack, mixed with the aftermath of terror, made every inhale feel like trying to breathe through a straw.
Blood soaked through my jacket and jeans from where the knife cut me.
My palms were torn and bleeding. My knees screamed with pain.
I managed a quiet whimper before I fell forward. He caught me before I hit the ground, careful of all the places I was broken and hurting.
“You’re safe,” he said, a promise written in something more permanent than words, carved into the foundation of reality itself. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
I clutched his shirt with shaking hands, my whole body trembling so hard my teeth chattered.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he murmured. “Hold onto me.”
The shadows surged again, folding us into their embrace, shielding us from the world.
And then we were falling.