The Gatekeeper's Sons (The Gatekeeper's Trilogy) (18 page)

“
Ah! Ah! What’s happening? What the hell is happening?”

“Think carefully,”
Alecto said again. “Are you sure you do not know of this man?”

“Help!” the man screamed, but Than knew his cries were futile, for
Alecto had already immobilized the two others in the store with her acrid steam from the Lethe, putting them in a funk they would not recall.

The steam enveloped the man.

“I swear I don’t know him!”

Alecto
stood up and turned to Than. “He’s not the one.”

Immediately the snakes rushed back down from the man back into the holes in the floor from whence they came. The man fell in a stupor on his desk covered with the foul steam. The jets stopped and the steam began to dissipate.
Than and Alecto left the man, but not through the door.

Chapter Nineteen: Questions and Answers

After a warm shower, Therese lay in her nightshirt in bed with Clifford curled up beside her near her waist. Than said to give herself time to process what he had told her outside the Wildhorse Saloon, but how does one process such information? He’s the god of death? His sisters are the Furies? They’ve come to Earth to avenge her parents’ murder?

She couldn’t sleep, so she took the remote from her nightstand and turned on the television tucked in a small armoire beside her desk. Puffy stopped in his wheel to see what the bright lights were all about. “Sorry,” she said to him. “I know it’s late.” Puffy liked to work in silence and darkness.

Puffy continued on his wheel as she flipped through the channels and finally settled on an old
George Lopez
episode she had already seen. She tried to distract herself with the humor before her, but her eyes left the television to stare at the light reflecting on the ceiling. This whole business with Than as the god of death couldn’t be real, could it? Had she lost her mind? The death of her parents had taken a toll on her sanity, right? She’d become a deranged lunatic.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Clifford’s ears pricked up. Therese was vaguely aware that Puffy had frozen, like a chipmunk in the middle of the road. She and Clifford jumped to their feet at the same instant. Standing across the room in the same pale blue polo and jeans he had worn earlier was
Than, the supposed god of death.

Clifford sat back down on his haunches and wagged his stub of a tail.

She didn’t move. “How did you get in?”

Than
gave her a wry smile. “I’m a god.”

“Why are you here? Did you decide to take me after all?” She was suddenly not so certain she was ready to go.

“I came to check on you. I was worried.” He moved toward the bed. The smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol lingered in his clothes from the dance hall. “Mind if I sit down for a while?”

Laughter roared on the television, but Therese wasn’t laughing. “I guess not. Go ahead.”

He sat at the foot of her bed, and she returned to the headboard against her pillows by Clifford. She tucked her feet closer to her body to avoid touching him.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep and that yo
u’d have questions, so I decided to come to see if I could help put your mind at ease. I know this is hard for you.”

“You have no idea. How could you?”

His mouth tightened into a frown. “I suppose you’re right. I can’t know how you feel.”

“How can you be here, anyway? Don’t you have a job to do? Is nobody dying while you’re here handlin
g horses?” Her voice had a touch of hostility in it. Then she remembered Dumbo. “Why couldn’t you do anything to save Dumbo?”

He gave her a weak smile. “So I was right. You do have questions.”

“And you haven’t answered any of them,” she said sharply.

“There was nothing I could do about the horse. I’m sorry. I don’t kill living things; I merely guide their souls after they die. I have nothing to do with the timing.”

“Couldn’t you pull some strings?”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “As to your other question, I made a deal with my dad. I told him if he’d make my brother, Hip, take my place as the guide for the dead, I would come to Earth and help my sisters find your parents’ murderer and avenge their
deaths. He gave me a time limit because while Hip is doing my job, humans have restless nights without dreams, and Zeus won’t tolerate that for long.”

That explained why she hadn’t been able to reenter the dream lately. “But why would your father care about avenging my parents’ death?”

Than shifted by lifting one bent leg partly on the bed and turning to face her, his back to the television. “My father is a just god and his priority is justice for the souls in his care. When humans fail to find justice for the dead, he and my sisters step in. The lieutenant needs help finding the person who orchestrated your parents’ death. My sisters, Tizzie and Meg, are working on the case. I plan to help as well, but first I wanted to get to know you.”

“Why?”

He moved closer to her on the bed, sending her heart into arrhythmia. “Don’t laugh, okay?”

Laugh at a god? she thought. Yeah, right. “I won’t.”

“My mother may have given me some affection when I was young, but I don’t remember it. The other gods on Mount Olympus rarely visit the Underworld. They only come if they want a favor. They know my job is necessary, and I suppose they’re glad it’s me doing it and not them, especially Hermes who did it before me, but that doesn’t stop them from looking down at me with contempt. And the humans I encounter have already died. They have no love for me.

“But that night I took your parents and you came close to dying yourself, that night you swept down from the sky from out of nowhere and took me into your arms,
that night you kissed me, well, that night changed me.”

Therese pulled her knees into her chest with her covers around her.
Than moved closer, his face inches from hers. She couldn’t tell if she was frightened or aroused. Maybe she was both.

His mouth seemed to twitch with anxiety. “Before that night, I didn’t know what I was missing, but once you showed me what affection was like, I needed more. So, to be honest, my true motive in coming to Earth was to seek you out.”

Therese couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say. She sat there, stunned.

“I knew I wouldn’t kill you—at least, I didn’t think I would. As I’ve said before, you wouldn’t be the same. I don’t think I’d like having a wife with little personality and no freedom.”

“Wife?” Therese whispered.

“Just listen,” he said. “After that day your parents died, I went to my father to see what it would take to make you a god. As a god, you would retain your personality and free will and could live with me in the
Underworld unchanged. I reminded my father how he got my mother, Persephone. Are you familiar with that story?”

Therese shook her head. “Vaguely. I don’t recall.” She still hadn’t gotten past the word “wife.”

Than pulled off one of his boots. “Do you mind?”

Like she would deny a god. “Make yourself comfortable,” she murmured.

He pulled off his other boot and then brought both legs straight in front of him on the bed, crossed, stretched over the tan and white comforter nearly to her headboard. Therese shifted over to give him more room, still unable to believe. He didn’t sound like a god. Shouldn’t a god speak differently? In her mind she said, “You sound so human.”

“We’ve been around humans for centuries. Why wouldn’t gods sound like humans?”

Her eyes shot up to his. He could hear her?

He crossed his arms at his chest. “My mom, Persephone, is the daughter of the goddess of the harvest known as Demeter. Technically,
she’s Zeus’s sister. The genealogy of the gods is…complicated. Anyway, one day Persephone was walking along with some friends when she was drawn by a cluster of white daffodils. Persephone was picking the daffodils near a cliff edge separated from her friends when my father came riding by in his chariot and swept her up without stopping. He plunged the chariot over the cliff edge into this giant chasm in the earth and took her down with him to the Underworld where he made her marry him and become his wife.”

“That’s so cruel.” She pulled her legs closer to her chest, hugging them with her arms. “Your dad sounds like a jerk.” Did she just say that out loud? To a god? She sucked on her lips. Keep your mouth shut, she said to herself.

“Hades thought if she could just get to know him, she would fall in love with him. See, like me, he had little contact with the other gods, and all the humans he knew were already dead. He was lonely.”

“I don’t think that justifies…”

“I know,” he snapped.

Therese’s eyes widened. Shut up, she said to herself again.

“My grandmother, Demeter, looked all over for Persephone, but no one would tell her the truth because they feared my father. She even disguised herself and came to Earth and lived for a while with a human family, but her misery made the Earth barren, and people and animals were beginning to die along with the vegetation. So my father’s brother, Zeus, decided to take the matter into his own hands and force my father to let Persephone go. By that time, Persephone had grown fond of Hades, but she missed her mother and was anxious to see her. Before Persephone left, my father offered her a pomegranate seed, which is one of the most powerful foods you can eat, as a farewell blessing. She graciously took his offering without knowing it was another trap. By taking his food, Persephone was obligated to return.”

Therese shuddered, still convinced Hades was a jerk.

“Zeus, trying to please everyone, commanded Persephone to live with Hades in the Underworld as his queen for six months out of every year, and the rest of time she could spend on Mount Olympus with her mother, Demeter. That’s why humans have to deal with fall and winter every year: For six months, Demeter sinks into depression and mourns the loss of her daughter. Most of the vegetation dies. Demeter never gets over losing my mom.”

Therese thought of her own parents down in the
Underworld, permanently. At least Demeter had the six months each year. Therese would take that deal. She had nothing. She released her knees and sat up crisscrossing her legs. Clifford crawled over into her lap. “What does your mother’s story have to do with me? My parents are already down there. My aunt wasn’t expecting to have to finish raising me. It would be better for everyone if I died, too.”

Than
moved along the foot of the bed so that he was lying on his side propped on an elbow, his head resting in his hand. “You know that’s not true.” He gave her a gentle smile. “Your aunt, your friends, and your pets would all miss you.”

“They’d get over it.” She pet Clifford as tears came into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Than reached across the bed and wiped the tears from her face and then lay back on his side. “My brother told me I should come to Earth and have my way with as many girls as I wanted, to sow my wild oats, he said; but that’s not my style. There’s only one girl I’m interested in.”

Therese’s heart sped up. “You can’t really mean me?”

He smiled, apparently amused. “Why not?”

“I’m the first girl you’ve met. How can you be so sure there isn’t someone better? And you hardly know me. And I’m, I’m nothing
compared to many girls I know.” She couldn’t believe she had blurted all that out. She felt her face flush red.

“Earlier I said the humans I come into contact with are dead, but I have still seen the living from afar. I have travelled all over the earth and have seen all kinds of people. You are the sweetest, most natural, mos
t vibrant person I have ever observed.” He reached across the bed and touched her hand.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

He laughed out loud. “Jen’s right. You’re way too hard on yourself.”

Her eyebrows flew up. Had he listened in on their conversations?

“And you seem to have no clue about your natural abilities.”

“Abilities?”

He laughed again. “The way you communicate with animals, the way you read people’s thoughts, the way you naturally know what to say to make others at ease. You are so full of life and aware of the nature around you. Ironically, you are the exact opposite of the dead I ferry. And that makes you utterly attractive to me in every way.” He leaned in and touched his lips to her cheek. She felt her heart beat erratically and her lungs fill with air which she couldn’t release.

He sat back and smiled shyly at her, and then he frowned with doubt, but she didn’t know what to say. “So, anyway, I reminded my father of his own loneliness before finding my mother and asked him to consider making you a god. He said there is a way.”

“What is it?” Therese asked with enthusiasm. “Please tell me. I want to know.”

His face turned bitter. “It’s not worth doing just to see your parents. I’m telling you, they aren’t the same. They probably won’t remember you.”

She slid on her knees and then lay down on the bed across from him, mimicking his position propped on her elbow. Clifford moved between them. Therese and Than both pet Clifford as she struggled to put into words what she was feeling. “That’s not my only reason,” she finally said in a soft voice. “I want to be with you, too.”