Chapter Eight

The bitter taste of the drink went down my throat. I gagged and grabbed the pillow and screamed inside it.

I went from being held hostage at a strip club, dancing my ass off, to awakening in a dark Victorian room hoarding with antiques, books, and strange objects, with people claiming to be the old Greek Gods I learned about in middle school.

I truly am dead or I’m in a coma at the hospital.

“You are not dead,” Athena droned and sat on the bed. “Nor are you in a hospital. No surgeon could perform the impeccable stitching on your organs like I did.”

I groaned again and gripped the pillow tightly. Athena pulled on it, but her grip was too strong, and she pulled it away.

“Come now, you mustn’t wallow in self-pity, you need to hit the ground running as they say. You have such an opportunity here.”

An opportunity? Is she serious?

I was sitting on a bed that could very well be hundreds of years old. The room smelled of old worn books, paper, and cloth. On top of it all, I have Death in the other room who had an anger problem, and if I say something wrong, he just might off me.

Then again, he saved me, which makes little sense. Death shouldn’t save a person. It”s much easier to just take their soul, right?

Athena’s lip slightly curled, and she patted my hand. “Much better. I knew you could see reason. Your ability to accept the reality that gods exist is just fascinating, but of course, it is because–” she leaned forward, nose to nose with me. My eyes go cross-eyed staring back at her.

“Because what?”

She backed away and shook her head. “Never mind. It isn’t important now, but what is important,” she pointed at me, “is that you be patient with Thanatos. He is not around mortals very much. Alive ones anyway. He needs company, he needs to learn more about emotions, joy, peace, happiness. He has anger, frustration, sadness, and depression down to a science. We need the better part of him to come out.”

I opened and closed my mouth several times.

Since when is it my responsibility?

Athena hummed, standing up and pacing the room. “Fate!” she said, making me jump. “Do you know what fate is, dear child?”

She called me a child.

“When something is meant to be?” I grabbed the pillow she took away from me and held it close.

“Yes, partially. Fate led you here. Thanatos was supposed to find you.”

“Because I was dying?” I stated.

Athena narrowed her eyes at me.

“I was supposed to die, right? Then he brought me here, and you fixed me up with your rad sewing skills.”

Her eyes lit up. “They were impeccable, weren’t they? You know it was because I shrunk my fingers to the size of my owl’s claws,” she explained.

Meanwhile, I looked around the room for an exit, but there was none. Just the curtain where Thanatos left. This room was dark, besides the candles and all the different relics inside. Busts of heads, tiny stone statues on shelves, stones of beautiful gems. No pictures of people or gods, but there were pictures of various places, of hell.

One included a large lake of fire.

Cheesus.

Definitely didn’t want to go there.

While she talking, I quietly got out of bed and took one of the books from the shelf. It wasn’t in English, it was written in maybe Greek or Latin? I flipped through the pages and saw other pictures not of hell but of naked bodies, glowing. They were doing the nasty with one another, gold threads twisting, weaving fabric around them.

Athena slammed her hand down on the book, which landed on the table. Dust went flying around me and I waved my hand, pushing the cloud of dirt away.

“And then I tied it up into a neat little bow.” Athena pretended to tie an invisible knot. “I should write it down. That way, the physicians on earth can find it and use it with their fancy machines. They have a laser called the Da Vinci up there, you know?”

No, I don’t know.

Athena led me back to bed and sat me down.

”Now we also know fate as The Fates. There are three, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, and they are the ones that take care of a mortal’s string. Their life. It starts with a mortal”s birth. They follow the string of their life and see how they live and what trials they face until finally what decisions lead to their death. The fate of a mortal’s life is in their hands.”

I don’t like where this was going.

“Atropos decides when a human is supposed to die for their soul to come to the Underworld for judgment.”

My stomach churned. I had such a bad feeling about this.

“Thanatos saved you,” Athena whispered and held both of my hands.

My heart raced. Does this mean I’m not supposed to be alive? That I should be dead? Will this Fate try to end me now?

“So now, you must pray, and thank the Fates.” She patted my hands.

Huh?

“Come now, say it,” Athena urged me. “Thank you, Fates, for letting me live another day,” she chastised.

Now I really wished the tea was poisoned.

“I heard that. Do you have an underlying problem you need resolved? Do you not know you sometimes speak out loud when you believe you are just thinking? I am also a therapist, you know?”

“Oh my god!” I screamed. “Thank you, Fates for letting me live another day!” I raised my hands in praise.

“And its gods, thank the gods. There are more than one.” She raised a finger.

I took the pillow again and screamed into it.

“There, there,” she patted my back. “It is a lot, but you will get used to it. Most mortals do. You and Thanatos will learn from each other as well. You both have plenty of time. And Atropos will be very grateful for your thankfulness and leave you alone.”

I raised my head and sniffed. “What do you mean, I have plenty of time? He saved me. I’m getting better. Doesn’t that mean I can leave, I can go back home?

Or what”s left of my home. I had an apartment; it”s been almost four years. I”m not even sure if my apartment or my things are still there. Am I even still a missing person, or have they called off the search and pronounced me dead?

With little to no family, I’m sure they wrote me off as a lost cause.

Not that they cared anyway.

Athena frowned, her hand coming away from my shoulder. “You won’t be able to go home yet. You are still healing. Help Thanatos with his emotions while you are at it.” She chuckled nervously. “Thanatos will finish up your treatment as well.”

“Why him? Aren’t you the doctor?” I put my hands on my hips.

She rubbed the back of her neck. “Yes, well, there are rules and regulations in the Underworld. This is not my domain. Besides, don’t you want to explore? A human rarely gets to come to one of the realms. Think of all the things you can see.”

“After seeing a lake of fire on the wall, I think I might want to pass on that,” I mumbled.

Athena chuckled. “Oh no, this is just the dark corner of the Underworld. Other places are quite beautiful. Hades’ Palace, for example. He has a fire garden, not to mention a garden for his queen. Ember is lovely.”

Who the heck is Ember?

“I thought it was Persephone?”

Athena shook her head. “No, no. That is all lore. You will find out a lot of things about the gods that are not actually true, such as we are not just ‘Greek,’ we are from many nationalities. It”s just that the Greeks adopted us more quickly than others. There are also more gods than just the typical ‘Greek Gods,’ many more legends and such.”

My ears perked up at that. It was interesting. I guess humans weren’t alone out there in the universe.

“Thanatos can explain much more of it.” Athena walked to the curtain and cracked it with her finger.

“Or you could tell me?” I slid off the enormous bed and closer to her.

Thanatos, as awkward as he was, made me feel things I shouldn’t. But he did save me. I owed him my life, but he was—different.

I didn”t feel scared of him, although I should have. And part of me wanted to know more, be in his presence, and I found it unsettling. Who wants to hang out with death?

But he saved me.

I owed him something.

Be a friend, a companion, just for a little?

I guess I could give him that.

I turned to Athena and said, “You said Thanatos needs to learn emotions? The good kind?”

She nodded. “Yes, he would never hurt you. Know that. He saved you, the first mortal in his entire existence. Do not take that lightly, Juniper. Death never saves a soul, but he saved yours.”

My stomach fluttered.

Death saved me.

But why? Why me?

Confusion must have flashed across my face because Athena stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “You must be someone worth saving.”

I scoffed. “Maybe it was because he thought I was easy. I was wearing a stripper outfit.”

She frowned. “One thing you should know about Thanatos. He can see inside someone’s soul. He judges not what is on the outside.”

Oh. That made me feel terrible for calling him a twat then. He’s probably a sensitive thing. That’s a lot to take if you can see someone’s soul, their insides like that.

I rubbed my lips together, and I heard a growling noise, books slamming to the floor. My heart jumped in my chest, and the worst feeling overcame me. Maybe I had hurt his feelings.

A god hurt? I hurt the God of Death’s feelings?

I pushed through the thick curtain and called out to him. But when I blinked, I found Thanatos’ hand gripped tightly around another man’s neck.