Jared got to his feet. “Me too. I’ve only been here a few days, and I’ve died twice.”
“What’s his deal?” Lexi pointed at Chase, who was breathing heavily and unable to move.
“He’ll be fine. I had to borrow some power to bring you all back.”
“What exactly happened to us?” Carol asked. “I thought you were raising souls.”
“I was. Chase wasn’t.” I walked over to him and kicked his shoe. “He lied to me. Tricked me into thinking we were taking back the souls Hades stole, but really he had a different plan all along.” I moved to Ethan. “A plan I thought you were in on with him, but he wanted you dead, too.”
“I should’ve known.” Ethan practically spat in frustration. “Ever since his mother was taken by Hades, he’s been different. He was supposed to follow the plan. But instead, he took me down like I was one of you.”
“Wait, what?” He was speaking as if I knew the whole plan. As if I knew Hades had taken Chase’s mother. “Back up. What happened to Chase’s mom? I knew something happened to her and that it changed him, but Hades took her? Alive?”
“No, he killed her. Rather brutally.”
When Hades took an Ophi, the Ophi relived the deaths of every person they’d killed or brought back from the dead. If Chase’s mom had died brutally, she must have raised some pretty awful souls in her life.
“Why did he take her? What did she do to anger him?”
Ethan scoffed. “She was Ophi. That’s enough for Hades.”
“Why did you two,” I motioned to Chase, “team up with Hades?”
“What?” Leticia shrieked. “They’re working for Hades?”
“More like doing his dirty work, I think.” I got in Ethan’s face. “Am I right?”
The ground shook, and we all scrambled to avoid the enormous crack that was creeping up the cemetery, splitting it in two. Alex and I were on separate sides, getting farther apart by the second. I fell backward to avoid being pulled into the abyss. I’d seen this trick before. It was Hades’ grand entrance.
I wanted to tell everyone to run. I couldn’t protect them from Hades. He was too powerful, and I couldn’t even reach everyone right now thanks to the crack in the ground. Not that it would help. This was it. Everything I’d tried to do over the past two and a half months was worthless. I was going to die, and so was everyone else.
A swirl of black smoke rose from the darkness in the chasm. I braced myself to see Hades. Would he come out swinging or would he make me suffer? My money was on making me suffer. I willed my blood to mix. I didn’t think it would really help, but it was the only weapon I had.
The smoke stilled and disappeared, leaving me face to face with Hades. He was still majorly hot. He made Chase look like the dweeby guy who sat right in front of the teacher’s desk and took enough notes to fill a textbook. My blood rippled through me at the sight of him. If he wasn’t completely terrifying and didn’t want me dead, I probably would’ve been kissing his feet.
“Well, this isn’t exactly what I expected to see.” He looked at the others. “So many Ophi still alive, or should I say alive again?” He whipped his head around at me. “We had a deal that you would return every soul you took from me.”
“You never had their souls. I brought them back before they lost their souls to you. I didn’t break our deal.” My voice shook, but I stood my ground.
“Hmm.” He tapped his finger on his chin, mocking me with his questioning look. “I think you may have forgotten someone.” He walked over to the mausoleum, where my dad was still facing away from the group like I’d asked him to.
“Dad,” I mumbled. “No, Hades, wait!”
He turned to me. “Are you ordering me around, Jodi Marshall?”
“No.” I frantically shook my head. “It’s just that—”
“What, you were hoping that, since he’s your father, I’d let this one slide?” He reached a hand out to the corpse my dad was borrowing. “Turn around and face your daughter,” he commanded.
My dad turned, and the terror in his eyes was intense. He couldn’t talk without being invited to. It was one of the drawbacks of being a zombie. One of the many drawbacks.
“I’m sorry.” I locked eyes with my dad, but Hades thought I was talking to him.
“Sorry? What an interesting thing to say. Do you really think an apology is enough to make me forget you broke our agreement?”
What could I say? I wasn’t planning on returning my father’s soul. I’d been planning to take a whole bunch more.
“Funny thing.” Hades walked around my dad so he was directly behind him. “I was in Tartarus today, checking up on a few things, when some of my souls started disappearing. One minute they were there taking their punishments and the next…” He touched my dad’s shoulder with one finger, and the corpse collapsed on the ground. I saw my dad’s soul release. “They were gone. Just like that.”
“No!” My blood boiled. Hades was toying with me. It reminded me of Chase and the way he’d controlled me. I’d had enough of guys pushing me around. I stepped toward Hades.
“Uh-uh, Jodi Marshall.” His voice was laced with mockery. “You wouldn’t want to make me any angrier with you right now.”
“You’re angry?” I threw my arms out. “What about me? You sent Chase here, didn’t you? You struck some kind of sick deal with him. It had to do with his mom, right?”
Hades raised his eyebrows. “When did you figure that out? Before or after you fulfilled the prophecy and killed your friends?” He laughed, a real belly laugh to show how much he was enjoying my misery.
“Why do you hate us so much?”
“Do you know what my role is in the underworld?” He stepped over my father’s body and walked toward me. I resisted the urge to back away. “I see that the afterlife suits the life the soul lived.”
“Then why are you torturing all those souls you took from this cemetery? I raised one of them. I know you’ve been shoving them into the wrong bodies, making them endure the pain of that experience over and over again. What did they do to deserve that?” I was yelling now, and I didn’t care. Hades was going to kill me. He’d taken my dad away again, and I was going to be next. I might as well get out what I had to say.
“Did you think this cemetery was a peaceful resting place? Somewhere family buried their loved ones?” He circled around me like he’d done with my dad. “Think about it. Have you ever seen anyone come put flowers on one of these graves? Anyone crying over a lost loved one?”
I shook my head. “This place is hidden. Humans don’t know we’re here.”
“Exactly. Why would humans bury their loved ones where no one could find them?” He stopped right behind me and leaned forward, his mouth inches from my right ear. “Because they weren’t anyone’s loved ones.”
My eyes widened. Why had I never questioned who the bodies were in the cemetery? I’d raised enough of them to know they were vicious as zombies. I’d come to the conclusion that I’d been raising them from Hell because they were awful. The way that corpse had attacked Randy. The way the souls always lashed out at us. I thought back to Matt. When I raised him, there was no screaming. No anger towards me for raising him. Because he hadn’t been in Hell. Matt was the nicest, sweetest guy ever. If his soul had moved on, it had gone to Heaven. That was where I’d pulled him from. None of the others had been like him.
“Who were they?” I asked Hades. “These people—how did they get here, isolated from the rest of the world?”
Hades smiled. “It’s making sense now, isn’t it?”
Yes, it was.
“This building you call a school was once an experimental prison. The people who stayed here were either criminally insane or downright murderers. Instead of living in cells, they were heavily sedated to keep them under control, and they were buried here, where the rest of humanity would never have to think about them again.”