Awaken

them away.

He destroyed whole armies with a single swipe of that sword, Mr. Smith had said. He killed without a thought to his victims. He was said to be without mercy, without repentance, and without a soul.

So in other words, I’d joked, a typical teen boy.

Just like Seth Rector, whose parents, in the middle of their family mausoleum, had erected a statue of Hades and Persephone.

The goal of the Furies has always been to destroy the Underworld, Mr. Smith had said.

“Are you even listening to me?” Seth hissed. “I don’t think you know who you’re messing with.”

I raised my gaze to lock with his. “Oh,” I said. “I know exactly who I’m messing with. The guy who killed me — not to mention my best friend, my guidance counselor, my cousin, and now my boyfriend. Am I right?”

Something in my tone caused his eyes to widen, not so much with alarm as with incredulity.

“You’re crazy,” he said. “As crazy as everyone says.”

“Oh, I know you didn’t literally kill me,” I said, plucking my necklace from the bodice of my gown, then beginning to twirl the diamond around my finger on the end of its chain. “You just pluck people’s souls from their bodies. You literally killed Alex though. And Jade, too, I think. You know what Jade told me once, before she died? That there’s no such thing as crazy. There’s no such thing as normal, either. Those aren’t therapeutically beneficial words. I don’t know if that’s really true. But I do know one thing: If you don’t let go of my boyfriend’s soul in the next five seconds, you’re going to find out just how crazy I can get.”

“You can’t do anything to me, you crazy bitch,” he said, glancing back towards his friends. “Not in front of all these people.”

“Oh, yeah?” I dropped my diamond and leaned forward, planting one hand on either side of his chest, trapping him inside my arms. He leaned back as far as he could, until his spine was stopped by the raised end of the chaise lounge. “Watch me.”

He could easily have gotten away. He could have knocked me aside and stood up. But he didn’t. He simply lay there, breathing hard, wondering what I was going to do.

What I did was lower myself slowly against him, then reach up to cup his cheeks between my hands. When he still didn’t protest, I pressed my mouth to his, my hair forming a dark, fragrant tent around our faces.

He didn’t knock me aside then, either. It wasn’t because he was too much of a gentleman to hurt a lady. Look what he’d done to Jade. He didn’t knock me aside because he liked it … at least at first. He opened his lips beneath mine, let out a faint moaning sound, and lifted his hands to grip my waist, which just showed that all boys — even ones possessed by Greek personifications of death — could be shockingly stupid sometimes.

Seth closed his eyes, but I didn’t. That’s how I saw the diamond dangling from my pendant fall against the curve of his bicep as he clutched me to him.

It’s also how I saw the diamond begin to burn his flesh.

He evidently didn’t notice the pain or the smoke. But plenty of other people did.

“Woohoo,” I heard Cody hoot. “Rector, you dog. You two are smoking!”

Seth was too busy trying to ram his tongue into my mouth to pay attention … an attempt I thwarted by moving my face away from his and kissing him on the cheek instead.

Unfortunately, he kept moving his head so that my lips met his open mouth. This was very unwelcome, but didn’t last long, since the smell of his charring skin — and the sensation of it — soon caught his attention.

He ripped his mouth from mine, then looked down at his arm. “What the —?”

It was too late. The blue smoke from the wound in his arm was circling in a slow arc towards the ceiling.

“Uh, Seth, Coach said no smoking until end of season, remember?” Bryce did not understand what was happening.

Seth released me, shaking his arm until the diamond rolled harmlessly away, onto his shirtfront. Then, as the stone began to seer through the cotton jersey, he thrust me roughly away from him, towards the far end of the chaise.

“Stop it,” he said in a voice that sounded nothing like Seth’s. It was deep and wild, and as angry as the ocean outside the glass doors. “Stop it now.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said. I glanced towards Seth’s friends, my eyes wide and innocent. “You guys, you saw it. Seth and I were kissing, and now he’s having some kind of fit or something. Maybe you should call his dad.”

“Seth?” Bryce looked down at us, his expression troubled. “Hey, bro, what’s going on?”

Seth gritted his teeth as he clutched at his arm. The wisps of smoke that escaped from between his fingers turned thicker … and blacker. Black as my diamond. Black as his pupils, which seemed to fill the entirety of his eyes.

“I’ll kill you,” he snarled, saliva bubbling out of the sides of his mouth. “I’ll kill you for this.”

“Dude,” Cody said, slapping a hand to Seth’s back. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t touch me.” Seth whipped his head around to rage at him. Cody instantly pulled his hand away.

“Um,” I said. “I don’t think he’s okay.”

Outside, there was a flash of such brilliance, I thought at first it was a nuclear explosion. It lit up the sky, the sea, and the entire room … which was immediately after plunged into total darkness when the generator ground to a halt. Girls screamed — a particularly shrill sound, since the speakers had also failed — and I heard glass breaking. Then thunder crashed with such violence, the entire house shook.

When the lights flickered back on a second later, causing us all to blink, I saw that there was a tall figure standing behind Seth who hadn’t been there before.

“Hey,” Cody said, noticing the figure as well. “Who are —?”

Who are you? That’s what he was probably going to ask. But before Cody could finish his sentence, the figure grabbed a handful of Seth’s shirt, then dragged him from the chaise lounge to his feet.

“It’s one thing to kill me,” John said to him. “But kiss my girlfriend? I don’t think so.”

Then he pulled back one of his powerful fists and planted it squarely into the center of Seth’s face.

18

“That forehead there which has the hair so black … ”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XII

John put a pretty solid end to the coffin party when he broke the host’s nose.

At that exact moment, the sea broke through the glass wall around the spec home’s deck and came gushing through the backyard, around the side of the house, and towards the driveway full of cars.

The party guests who weren’t screaming about all the blood coursing down Seth’s face suddenly began screaming about their vehicles, and they streamed from the house in a futile effort to save them … everyone except those helping Seth, who was cradling his own head and moaning, and Bryce, who immediately came to his QB’s defense.

Dropping his head, Bryce came at John like a bull, his face red with rage. John sidestepped him, then slammed a fist into the younger boy’s stomach. As a ball player, it couldn’t have been the first time Bryce had ever been struck in the gut, but it might have been the first time he’d ever been struck with such force, judging by the look of injured surprise that spread across his face. While Bryce was still doubled over in pain, trying to catch his breath, John plunged another fist into his kidneys. Bryce grunted, then sank to his knees, all the fight clearly knocked out of him.