Hades (The God Chronicles #3) (5 page)

“You had an altercation with the man a little
while before,” he explained. “It resulted in you breaking his nose
and Barry throwing him out.”

“Katrina,” Daddy chastised me.

“Yes, I know what you’re talking about,” I
said, brushing off his angry look. “That was all that happened,
though.”

“Barry says you took the trash out soon after
and then came in asking to go home?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding quickly. “I felt
somewhat sick after what had happened.”

“And what happened exactly to cause such a
reaction in you?”

“You mean to tell me you came here to question
my daughter and didn’t think you needed to run it by me first?”
Daddy said angrily, looking between us with a near growl coming out
of his mouth.

“It’s fine, Daddy,” I said, grabbing his
hand.

“Katrina is an adult,” the sheriff said
defensively. “And I thought you would appreciate a questioning here
rather than taking her down to the station to do it.”

“You can’t take her down to the station,” Daddy
said. “There’s no proof she did anything other than get in a fight
at work.”

“Katrina is our only suspect so
far.”

The words hung in the air, revitalizing the
shock in the atmosphere I’d been feeling as soon as I’d come
downstairs.

“Suspect?” My voice squeaked through my lips,
the first sign of my terror to escape.

“I’m sorry, Hurricane,” the sheriff said sadly.
“I don’t think you did it, but I have to follow the
leads.”

“He grabbed me,” I said, clearing my throat to
try and get a hold on the shakiness that was invading every sound
coming from me. “Inappropriately. So I head butted him. That’s
all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Katrina,” Daddy interrupted. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

“You already don’t like me working there,” I
said, smiling at him weakly. “I figured this would just add fuel to
your fire.”

“I know we had to come check on something
before, when you punched a customer?” The sheriff leafed through
the little book he’d been holding in his hands, checking off things
and then looking at me for an answer.

“Another drunk doing something he shouldn’t
have,” I said grimly, knowing my helpful acts in the bar were now
going to be held against me.

“Katrina,” Daddy said again, his voice angry.
“Do you mean to tell me that you go to work and get in fights all
night? I raised you better than that.”

“It’s not that,” I sighed in frustration,
pushing myself up from the couch and walking over to the window.
“Sometimes we get people who’ve had too much to drink. I don’t use
force unless it’s necessary.”

“Katrina,” Daddy said again, a warning in his
voice.

“I think that’s all the questions I have for
now,” the sheriff said, interrupting us. “I’ll check back if I need
anything else.”

He got up from his seat as well and headed
toward the door on his own.

“Oh, and Katrina?” he said, stopping with his
hand on the knob, using my given name once more. “You shouldn’t
leave town for a while. Got it?”

I stared at him for a moment, chewing on the
inside of my cheek before nodding curtly.

“All right then,” he said, letting himself
out.

To his credit, Daddy stayed silent as I watched
the officer get into his patrol car and drive away. A few of the
hands watched him as well, looking over to the house curiously as
the dust from the road followed him off the ranch.

“I didn’t do it,” I finally said quietly,
needing him to know for some reason.

“I know,” he said, staying in his
seat.

After a few more minutes of silence I left the
window and headed to the front door.

“Where are you going?” he asked, watching
me.

“You asked me to help muck out the stable this
morning. Remember?”

I pulled on my boots and went outside, not
waiting on his answer. It would be nice to get my mind off of what
just happened with some good, hard work.

“Hey, Hurricane,” one of the hands, Rick,
called out to me as I came down the front steps. “What did Sheriff
Stevens want?”

“Nothing really,” I said, shrugging him off as
he came over and threw an arm around my shoulder.

“Aw, come on,” he chuckled. “Don’t be like
that. You know you’re like my sister.”

“Your sister has work to do,” I said with a
smile, his usual charm pulling me out of my mood
somewhat.

“Really though, Katrina,” he said, turning
serious. “Was it about that body they found at Barry’s?”

“How do you know about that?” I asked
suspiciously.

“The whole town is talking about it,
Hurricane,” he said, worry etched into his features. “There hasn’t
been anything like this happen around here in . . . Well, ever, I
think.”

By then, we’d arrived at the doors of the barn
and I went inside, grabbing a shovel off the wall as I headed
towards the side where the horses were stalled.

“He had some questions about work last night,
that’s all,” I said, laying the shovel down as I reached the first
stall.

“What did you tell him?”

“What is this, the Inquisition?” I laughed,
opening the gate and slipping a rope around the horse’s neck before
leading him out.

“I just want to make sure everything is okay,”
Rick laughed, helping me do the same to the other three
horses.

“Everything is fine,” I said, trying more to
convince myself.

We led the horses out to the field and set them
lose, letting them mingle together and graze.

“Well, you let me know if I can help with
anything,” he said, handing the ropes he’d handled back to
me.

“You wanna muck out some stalls with me?” I
teased.

“I got my own work to do,” he
laughed.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, aiming a good
natured and purposefully missed kick at him. “Get to
it!”

Thankfully, I was able to spend the majority of
my day doing work on the ranch. There was always something that
needed to be done and I was more than happy to have my mind taken
off the events of the previous night.

After everything was finished and I was once
again freshly showered and dressed, I decided it was time to take
care of the box under my bed. Daddy was smoking on the front porch,
a weekly ritual he’d had for years, so I quietly slipped through
the back door and out into the woods that lined that side of our
property.

I walked in the twilight, night air for a good
while before I finally felt that I was far enough out to not be
noticed. Before I left the house, I’d added a tiny hand shovel, a
lighter, and some lighter fluid to the box that held my
indiscretions. Pulling it all out now, I set to digging a hole just
big enough for the container to set in.

Once the hole was dug, I laid the box inside,
spraying it and its contents down with the lighter fluid. With
another flick of my hand, I set it all ablaze and sat down to watch
it burn into nothing.

The flames licked at their prey hungrily,
devouring it at a steady pace. Heat from the display kept me warm
as the sun finished setting and night overtook the area. I wasn’t
bothered by it, though—I’d played in these woods many times before
as a child and easily knew my way home.

As I stared down at the smoldering ashes left
in the hole, the only sign anything other than a bar fight had
happened last night, I felt a shiver of disgust wash over me.
Images of what had almost happened to me filled my mind, as well as
the memory of what the blood spurting all over my skin had felt
like.

After I’d escaped to my truck, I’d laid in the
front seat and waited. I didn’t want to be seen fleeing the scene.
About an hour had passed before I’d finally sat up and driven home,
still covered in the bloody mess. Thankfully, I’d been able to get
inside the house and clean myself up without anyone seeing me. Most
of the hands had already left for the evening and Daddy was in the
den watching his program. If the visit from the sheriff was any
sign, though, I was far from being in the clear.

Slowly, I began to shovel the dirt back into
the hole, burying the remains of my terrified feelings with the
ashes.

“Did you do as I asked?”

I stiffened at the voice, recognizing the
darkness from before.

Chapter Five

“It’s only been a day, I said, turning around
to look at the man who should have been myth. “I didn’t expect to
see you around very soon.”

“Things progressed much quicker than I
anticipated,” he said, leaning his back against a tree. “As it
happens, I need your services now instead of when I’d originally
planned. Don’t make me ask again—did you do as I asked?”

“I did,” I said, crossing my arms over my
torso, feeling the familiar searching of his eyes tugging at me.
“There wasn’t a whole lot to learn, to be honest.”

“It was enough,” he said, his voice clipping in
an impatient manner. “I only wanted you to have a basic
understanding before I sent you in.”

“Sent me in?”

He left the question unanswered, hanging in the
air with the smoke from my fire and his misty presence.

“Persephone, Hades’s wife, is due back to the
Underworld within week’s end. It appears that we are to have an
early, long winter this year. She was quite put out about
it.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, not sure where he was
going with the conversation.

“When I stopped by to have a little
conversation with her about it,” he continued, starting to swirl
some of the smoke between his fingers as if it were a toy. “She was
put off by my offer to help her to escape her prison for good. I
wasn’t so surprised actually. She may be bitter about having to
stay there, but the queen of the Underworld loves the power she has
there. What woman doesn’t love power, really?”

I wrinkled my nose at the insult, staying
silent. He would say what he had to say eventually, if our last
encounter had been any indication.

“Anyway, when she wouldn’t cooperate, I took
care of it. We have big plans, plans that she would have hindered
more than helped.”

“Wait,” I said, catching on to what he’d been
saying in a roundabout way. “Did you kill Persephone?”

“I did,” he said with a wicked grin. “With all
the darkness she had inside her, it was more than easy to strangle
her from the inside out. Of course, gods can only be killed by a
blade that’s been dipped in the water of the River Styx, so there
was that little extra, fun part as well.”

He fingered the curved blade at his side, the
sick smile on his face making my stomach turn.

“Here’s the part where you come in,” he spoke
again, pushing away from the tree and walking towards me at a slow,
over exaggerated pace.

My skin started to prickle as I realized I’d
agreed to do something that was going to end very badly for
me.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You,” he said with a chuckle, pointing a
finger at me. “You are going to take her place.”

Suddenly, he clapped his hands together and all
of the smog around us sucked together, forming another one of the
copies I’d encountered the night before. It wasn’t me this time,
though.

She was beautiful; I didn’t know how else to
think of her. Tall and fit, her light brown hair was long and
curled, framing the soft, flawless skin of her face perfectly.
Striking green eyes shone out from under full lashes, almost taking
away any notice of her perfectly shaped, cherry red lips. A
flowing, black dress hugged her form, giving her the air of someone
regal.

At the same time, she appeared menacing and
dark, much like the version of myself I’d see before. It made me
afraid of her, almost as if she would destroy me if I so much as
continued to look at her.

Erebos pulled a box from the pocket of his dark
coat and opened it, revealing a sparkling diamond ring. At his
motion, the form began to disappear, breaking apart into smoky
wisps that spun around in the air and then dived into the ring,
turning the rock blacker with each strand that was
added.

“I can’t impersonate a goddess,” I said, half
laughing in disbelief. “I don’t even know how I wou—are you nuts?!
Everything I read said it was impossible to trick Hades. I’d rather
not be the next person forced to push a giant rock up a mountain
every day for the rest of eternity.”

“For a human,” Erebos said, pulling the ring
from the box and examining it once all the smoke had been locked
inside. “It is impossible to trick Hades. For me, it is
easy.”

“I’m a human,” I said in a panic.

“But you have my help,” he said
smoothly.

I could see the darkness sifting around in the
diamond, slowly becoming more solid as it took on its new
form.

“I can’t leave town,” I said suddenly, another
bad situation rising in my mind. “I’m a suspect in the murder that
you
committed. Thanks for that, by the way.”