33. Charon

33

CHARON

“You should’ve waited back at the house.” It’s the same thing I’ve said several dozen times in the last fifteen minutes. And just like every other time, Hades ignores me. He taps the screen of the tablet in his hand, his expression intense. Thanks to Orpheus’s quick thinking in calling me, we were able to catch the van on cameras and use that network to track them to where they’re headed.

To a boat waiting for them in the warehouse district.

We’d suspected they might have come from the upper city. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Our network of cameras and intelligence on this side of the river is hardly exhaustive, but it’s thorough enough that they shouldn’t have been able to evade us for this long.

Unless they weren’t staying here at all. It takes a particular ruthlessness for Circe to require her people to cross the river—and the boundary—every time they want to attack us, but it’s the only way they had a chance of escaping cleanly each time.

Until now.

“Hades.”

“I heard you.” He sits back with a sigh. “I am the fucking lord of the lower city, and they came into my territory and fucked with my people, destroyed my property, and shot at my wife and unborn children. They wanted my attention. They have it.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Hades hasn’t lost his shit like this since he discovered my uncle kept the truth about his family—or, more accurately, his father—from him. I thought he’d kill the old man, but in some ways his punishment was even worse. Exile without actually being exiled. He sent Andreas to a retirement home in the country. Every need is catered to, the best care money can buy, but Andreas is miserable.

I don’t blame Hades for making that call, just like I don’t blame him for making this call today, but when his family is involved, sometimes he behaves irrationally. It makes it hard to protect him.

He won’t agree to stay in the car, just like he didn’t agree to stay back at the house. I’m sticking to his side like glue. I readjust my grip on my own tablet and lean over. “In that case, let’s go over this again. Our people in the area were able to take care of the boat before they could cross back to the upper city. They retreated to this warehouse here, and they know we’re coming. Here’s how I would like to proceed.”

By the time we park one block over from our target, we have a solid plan in place. We have eyes on the streets around the building, but not inside. Since we don’t know what we’re walking into, we can’t just blow the place up. Civilian casualties are not acceptable. Beyond that, explosions mean fire, and the last thing we need to do is set fire to our own damn warehouse district.

No, we go in quiet. We know there’s at least five of them, but it’s entirely possible there are more. We take out all but two. The survivors, we’ll transfer back to the house and lock up for questioning. Minos keeps acting like he doesn’t know anything, but these soldiers definitely do. I don’t look forward to the possibility of torture, but I’ve done worse in the name of protecting the lower city.

I check my vest as I come out of the car. Next to me, Hades does the same. We exchange a look, and it’s clear he’s not going to let me take the lead. This is the same man plagued with guilt from when he shot Eurydice’s attacker…except he’s not the same at all.

That Hades was sure that his actions, his so-called monstrousness would lose him the one person he cared about more than any other.

But this Hades? This Hades has taken full ownership of the lower city in the last year, guarding it possessively and making the hard calls to ensure his people stay safe. This Hades has a pregnant wife who he will commit untold acts to protect. He’s not going to balk at pulling the trigger this time.

There’s a part of me that mourns the man he used to be, but I can’t deny that he’s a much more effective ruler this way. He’s become the boogeyman that they always accused him of being. Ironically, it’s not hate that made him this way. It’s love.

That, I understand intimately.

I check my gun, ensuring there’s a bullet in the chamber. “Let’s go.”

There are ten on our team, including me and Hades. We split and wait for several precarious minutes while the other team reaches the second exit. I motion at Arai. “Take care of the doors.”

They nod and scurry off. They’re a lean white person, with close-cropped red hair and a penchant for getting into places they shouldn’t. I’m nearly one hundred percent sure they’re a cat burglar in their time off, but they are loyal to a fault, so I don’t question how they spend their evenings as long as it doesn’t bring any heat from the upper city. They’re also a genius when it comes to explosives.

The next few minutes are tense and seem to last forever. Arai works best alone, and when they don’t want to be seen, they’re practically invisible. That doesn’t stop the worry worming its way through my stomach until I hear the faint, “Got it. Doors out of commission in three…two…one.” Faint pops sound in the afternoon air, almost like fireworks going off.

“Move.” Hades doesn’t raise his voice, but he doesn’t have to. No one would dare disobey him when he speaks in that tone.

We move.

We hurry down this side of the warehouse in single file. Hades pauses so that I can move ahead of him and kick down the door. It’s reinforced, but I have a lot of strength behind that kick. I duck out of the way immediately, just as gunfire erupts.

Hades takes a slow breath that I can barely hear, and leans around the edge of the door and jerks back before a hail of gunfire erupts. “Just the one.”

“Let me.” He looks at me. Just looks, not saying a single word. It’s enough for me to lift my hands in surrender. “Fine. Be careful.”

He shifts into a crouch and angles his hand around the doorframe. He pulls the trigger once. There’s a pained cry and the gunfire stops. Hades peers around the corner again. “There. Let’s go.”

We rush inside.

Most of our time is spent on security and ensuring the people of the lower city are protected. But Hades is a paranoid motherfucker, so we’ve practiced drills like this ever since Persephone came to the lower city. First, it was because he worried Zeus might come for her. Then, it was because he had something particularly special to protect.

We move like clockwork. We have already pulled the blueprints, so we know the floor plan. It’s a large open space with a rickety-looking staircase leading up to offices. In the warehouse proper, there are half a dozen vehicles and several large pallets of boxes. Those weren’t in the blueprints.

I catch Hades’s gaze and motion at the pallets. We don’t know what’s inside them, so we can’t risk them catching a stray bullet and blowing us the fuck up. He nods and relays the information through my comm. “Don’t shoot unless you know you’ll hit your target.”

We circle the perimeter, and I’m doing my damnedest to see everything all at once. It’s too quiet. They left one person at each door, apparently to guard their retreat, but there’s nowhere to retreat to. They’re trapped in the warehouse itself. There are at least three enemies left. Why hide when they must know we’ll find them?

Hades must be thinking the same thing. He straightens slowly and looks around. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“They should be here, fighting for their lives.” My attention shifts up to the door at the top of the stairs. “Do you think they’re holed up in there?” That doesn’t make sense either. In fact, it’s sloppy as fuck that they let us track them back here…

Oh, fuck.

“It’s a trap,” says Hades, echoing my train of thought. “They drew us here on purpose.” He speaks so calmly, almost resigned. “And fools that we are, we blocked off the most readily available exit.”

I grab his arm and start dragging him toward the door, barking orders. “Everybody out. It’s a trap.”

We’re the first ones to reach the door we entered through…only to find it barricaded. “Fuck!” I kick it and kick it again, but it’s no fucking use. “We’re trapped.” I thought not promising to come home to Eurydice and Orpheus tonight would make the possibility of failing easier. It isn’t. I want that future more than I want anything. And I made a vow to keep Hades safe. My carelessness is making a godsdamned mess of this. I made a vow that I’d keep Hades safe. Two promises I’m going to break with my carelessness. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Hades seems to snap out of the strange mood that took him when he realized that we misjudged the situation so thoroughly. He shakes his head sharply. “The hinges. Now.”

My frustration boils over, but it’s a relief to have something to do. We have to get out of here. I have to get him out of here. I pull a knife from each of my boots and hand one over. Then we get to work hammering the hinges with the hilts. Too long. It’s taking too fucking long. “No guarantee this will work.” I move faster, putting more strength behind each strike.

“Probably won’t.” One last slam and the top hinges pop off.

I finish on the lower hinges just as two of our people rush up. And that’s when I hear it. It’s almost like a sharp inhale that pulls every bit of oxygen out of the room. I have the space of two seconds to throw my body over Hades, pinning him to the door, before the explosion roars through the warehouse, and heat sears my back.

It blows the door right through whatever barricade had been set up on the outside. We’re airborne for one breathless moment, and then hit the ground with bone-crushing force. My whole world is pain and fire and heat. I command my limbs to move, and for a moment I think I’m okay, but I’m not the one moving my body. It’s Hades beneath me, rolling me carefully onto my side. He’s bleeding from a cut along his hairline but seems otherwise okay. “Charon! Charon, talk to me.”

I tried to speak up. Really, I do. But all that emerges is a pained sound.

Hades looks up and tenses. “Stay down,” he says softly. Then he’s moving. Gunshots sound, too close. I have to fucking move. If something happens to him because I was too fucked up to protect him… No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

I flop back onto my stomach and force myself onto my hands and knees through sheer determination. There’s something seriously wrong with my back. It’s one long line of agony, and all I really want to do is lie down and close my eyes. Spend a little time in blissed out unconsciousness.

That’s not a fucking option.

Miraculously, my gun is still in my holster. I pull it out and thumb the safety off. More gunshots sound as I fight to my feet. I catch sight of Hades hunkered down against the side of a car and stagger over to lean against the cool metal next to him.

He glares at me. “I told you to stay down.”

“Need someone…to watch…your back.” Even my voice sounds fucked up, too raspy. I don’t ask about our people. There are two bodies on the pavement near where we landed. They’re not moving, and I hope like fuck that it’s because they’re unconscious. Not dead.

I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and twist in a move that makes my head spin. But my body knows the motions, even if it hurts. I manage to squeeze off two shots, sending the masked person to the street in a puddle of their own blood. Everything is spinning even though my feet are planted… At least I think they’re planted. “We’re in trouble.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Hades surges up and squeezes off another two shots. “There’s more of them than we thought.”

“They’ve been ahead of us since the beginning.”

In the distance, an engine roars to life. Hades and I exchange a look of dawning horror. I know that engine. Arai had me working on it for the majority of the summer a few years back. It’s attached to a monster of a beast, a giant truck that might’ve started out as something familiar but now has so many things attached to it that it looks more like a tank. “They wouldn’t.”

My comm crackles in my ear, and then Arai’s voice is there. “I assure you, they would. I’m coming for you and anyone left alive. I already picked up the team on the other side of the warehouse. They fared better than you. Let’s run these fuckers over.”

They barely finish speaking when the tank—because really, what else am I supposed to call the damn thing?—hurtles around the corner and skids to a stop between our two fallen team members and the gunmen. Bullets bang into its side as our enemies try to shoot it, but nothing’s getting through those reinforced doors.

I take one step toward the tank, and the world tilts sideways. Shit, this is bad. It’s going to hurt when I make contact with the ground. Except I don’t. Hades is there, sliding under my arm and hauling me up. It hurts like a motherfucker, possibly more than if he just let me drop. He practically drags me to the tank and shoves me up in the back seat, following quickly behind. It takes mere seconds for the other team to get the two of us off the ground and into the back.

“Finish them, Arai.” There’s no forgiveness in Hades’s voice. Just judgment.

They grin, but it’s a shadow of their normal joyful expression. “Sure thing, boss.” They gun the engine and the tank shoots forward far faster than it has any right to. Obviously they’ve made some upgrades since I helped them get this thing running. There’s a faint scream, and the vehicle jostles if we’ve hit some particularly nasty speed bumps.

“Stop.” Hades has his hands on either side of the seat. “We collect them and take them back to the house. If any of them are still alive, I want them to stay that way.”

This isn’t over yet.