Hades's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Melissa held the journal against her chest. She did not run yet. She watched Hades the way she always watched him before a fight, reading his hands, his breath, the tilt of his shoulders. "How many?" she asked. The red lights bobbed closer along the rail. Hades squinted into the dusk. Three points. Then a fourth flickered behind a leaning car. Then maybe a fifth. He could not tell. The rails bent the light. The ash in the air smeared it. Guessing wrong meant dying here, and Melissa dying with him. "I don't know," he said. That was the truth, and he hated it. Lil Ray crouched at his knee, her backpack half-open, wires spilling. "I can find out," she whispered. She pulled a cracked bicycle mirror from her pack and a coil of copper. Ollie was already unspooling something from the recording device at his hip, thumb on a switch. "Echo trick," his son said. "I bounce a sound off the far tank. Count what answers." Hades wanted to say no. He said, "Do it fast." Lil Ray sprinted low along the rail bed and wedged the mirror against a signal post. She angled it back toward him. In the glass he saw the track behind the leaning car, stretched and small, but clear. Ollie pressed the switch. A short, sharp tone rolled down the yard. Boots stopped. Boots started again. Hades counted the lanterns reflected in the mirror. Not three. Not five. Seven. Seven pursuers, spread in a loose net, two circling wide to cut off the south rail. He turned to Melissa. "Go north. Now. Not the south path." She nodded once and kissed his forehead. Then she ran, the lantern hooded under her coat, the journal wrapped tight. The husky went with her without being asked. Hades stood up into open ground and let the spike blade catch the last light. Seven was too many for one man. He knew it. He also knew the shape of the trap now, and a known trap could be broken. He whistled low, three notes, the old scout call from the raid two years back. For a long breath, nothing. Then a shape rose from behind a rusted freight car he had already checked twice. A short, broad man with a black beard and a scar splitting one eyebrow. Varek Thornclaw. Behind him, low and silent, the yellow eyes of a beast the size of a small truck opened in the dark. Its armored jaw clicked once. "Nyx sent word," Varek said. He spat into the ash. "Seven, you said?" "Seven," Hades answered. "Then we make it four." Varek walked past him toward the south rail, the metal-plated beast pacing at his shoulder. Hades followed. Melissa was gone into the north dark with every name they had. The line would hold. It just would not hold quietly.