Memory Game: Hound of Hades, #2

By Z.J. Cannon and Zoe Cannon

She used to be a simple assassin. Those were the days...

 

Mal's job used to be straightforward: find the people causing problems for Hades and give them a one-way ticket to his realm. But with Hades's temple a pile of rubble and his other operatives dead, she has a new mission—prevent the entire world from finding out about the temple while single-handedly holding Hades's territory against the rest of the gods. And in less than two days, a documentary crew will get access to the ruins of the temple, and broadcast the truth about the gods' secret wars.

 

Unless...

 

Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, can alter a few memories and make the publicity problem go away. All she wants in return is one human dead—a human who happens to have the power to level entire buildings with a thought.

 

Mal's maybe-ally Bastian offers to provide backup—but nothing is ever free. He needs her help settling an old score against a certain goddess. A goddess named Mnemosyne...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Z.J. Cannon
• Release date: May 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393393337

Book preview

Chapter 1

Holy shit, one of my new coworkers breathed from a few paces away. Take a look at this.

I picked my way across the broken rock to him, trying not to appear too interested. He was squinting at one of the walls, or the remains of it, although I guess you couldn’t really call it a wall anymore when it was lying in pieces on the ground. The piece he had found showed an intricately carved scene of a spirit passing through the gates of the underworld. I only knew because of all the time I had spent looking at it, back when I was stuck in this place for training for an entire year and staring at the walls was what passed for entertainment. The only part left intact was the left side of the gate, with the three-headed dog Cerberus lurking in the background. If I hadn’t known what the full image had been, the fragment might have looked a little like a wolf howling at the moon. Or maybe a sea monster eyeing a tasty ship, if you were looking at it upside down like the man who had spoken.

He knelt to run a finger across the letters engraved at the bottom. What language is this?

It was Greek. I shrugged. You got me. Come on, let’s get all this cleared out so we can get lunch.

The man—I was pretty sure his name was Gordon—looked up at me in disbelief. We’re surrounded by what could be the greatest historical mystery of our time, and you’re thinking about lunch?

I’m thinking about getting paid. And so should you.

One of Gordon’s friends, a man with a perpetually perplexed expression and arms hairy enough that I hadn’t entirely ruled out the possibility that he was part gorilla, shook his head. Don’t you have any romance in your soul, Mal?

I raised an eyebrow. This from the man who challenged me to a farting contest yesterday? Nothing says one of the guys like having someone bet you twenty bucks you couldn’t beat his record for longest single sustained fart. They had been skeptical of me when I had first shown up, but over the past few weeks I had proved myself by showing I could work as hard and as long as the rest of them. That wasn’t entirely accurate, of course. I could have worked twice as hard and twice as long as the rest of them, and that’s if I wasn’t putting all my effort into it. But while nothing I can do physically is outside the normal human range—no leaping tall buildings in a single bound for me—I’m still at the upper end of that range, and that’s not something I like to show off around people who might start asking questions. And these guys were asking too many questions as it was.

I’ve never claimed to be the most poetic guy around, Gorilla Man conceded. But come on. Look at all this. He pointed to the wall fragment, as if I didn’t already know the image by heart. Doesn’t it make you wonder about… life? This stuff is straight out of a history textbook, and it was hidden underneath that graveyard. No one even suspected. Who put it there? Why? And what else do you think is hidden right under our feet while we’re going about our daily lives?

He had just given me a perfect demonstration of the questions I didn’t want anyone asking. But even as strong and as fast as I was, I couldn’t get rid of all this stuff before anyone else got a look at it. The more rubble we cleared away, the more fragments like this one we revealed, and the more questions people asked. And unless I could figure out a solution fast—something more efficient than hauling rocks along with the rest of the crew—it was about to get a whole lot worse.

Someone else slowed down to examine the fragment as he walked by. I think it’s some kind of cult.

I think it’s from some ancient expedition no one ever knew about. Gorilla Man scratched his head. Anyone else watch that documentary about how there’s all this evidence that the Celts came over here in the sixth century? Like that, except with the Greeks. That’s Greek, isn’t it?

Gordon leaned in even closer to the fragment until I thought he might lick the thing. No. You guys have it all wrong. Look closer. That creature there—he’s not human. And if you turn it this way— He rotated the fragment sideways. This is the spaceship, see? What we’ve found here is a sign of alien activity on Earth, from so long ago that this place was buried by thousands of years of… of… whatever it’s called when the land moves around and forms mountains and stuff.

If these guys and their theories were all I had to worry about, I would be able to sleep well at night. But remember when I said things were about to get a lot worse?

Lew Cifnek, my new boss as of two weeks ago, strode over to us with a scowl on his face. Quit chatting. And be careful with that. The film crew is going to want all of this intact.

Yeah. A team of archaeologists had flown in from LA last month to study this place, but when one of them broke his leg on a bit of unstable rock, the city closed down the site. But they hadn’t turned around and gone home; that would have made things too easy. They were just waiting for us to finish clearing the place out and declare it safe before they swarmed over it like maggots on meat.

That would have been bad enough. But then the makers of the Buried Treasures documentary series had seen dollar signs flashing in front of their eyes and decided to get in on the action. They had made a deal with the archaeology team, where they would come in and film the entire process, and the archaeologists would, I assumed, get paid handsomely for allowing them access. Everything in here was about to make its way onto TV sets across the world—accompanied by the archaeology team’s best theories about this place. And if they were half as good as their jobs as I was at mine, they would be able to figure out enough to get the world asking the questions that everyone in both the mortal and divine realms wanted to avoid.

Of course, I wasn’t feeling very good at my job right about now. Covering all this up had been my responsibility. You can see how well I was doing at that.

Cifnek was still shooting us all his patented get-back-to-work glare. I made sure to get out of his line of sight before searching for other wall fragments. I spotted one showing the same three-headed dog gnawing on a bone—adorable, even if that bone probably belonged to one of the citizens of Hades’s realm—and accidentally-on-purpose dropped it hard enough to shatter it. Which took some doing. This place was built to last. Unfortunately, it wasn’t built to withstand explosives.

Behind me, I could still hear Gordon chattering on about aliens. I rolled my eyes. Although I supposed it wasn’t really fair of me to make fun of him for not having all the information. I was the only one here who knew what this place really was—or rather, what it had been. And as for the alien thing, I had firsthand experience with creatures a lot stranger than little green men.

This was the former temple of Hades, the god of the underworld—one of the underworlds, at least. The new temple was in my apartment. Long story. I wasn’t the person responsible for what had happened to the old one, but if I had moved a little faster, or been a little smarter, I might have been able to stop it in time. I thought about that a lot these days, usually when I was supposed to be sleeping. Not that I’d had any time for sleep in the past month.

We had lost a lot when the temple was destroyed. Hades lost a big chunk of his influence over the city, enough that it was a minor miracle that none of his enemies had swooped in to try and take over yet. And that wasn’t even getting into the deaths. Two of us had survived. The rest? Gone. People Hades had needed to help him hold on to his territory. People I cared about.

I tried not to think about any of that too hard—it was too late to do anything about it. But if the truth about the temple got out, we were going to lose a whole lot more. And by we, I meant all of us—not just Hades and those of us who served him, but every god, every Guardian, and every one of the Marked throughout the world.

Once upon a time, all the gods stuck to their own territory, and aside from a bit of infighting now and again, things were pretty peaceful. The gods never squabbled about which areas of the globe, and which tribes of humans, belonged to which pantheon. But the old rules no longer made sense in an era when conquests and migrations and colonizations have turned both those questions into puzzles that require a whiteboard with lots of squiggly arrows to answer. It took the gods a while to realize that the rules had changed, but once they did, they made up for lost time. Hera was the first one to break ranks, making a secret plan with the Norse gods to gain them territory that should have belonged to Zeus. The others quickly followed suit, and these days it’s every god for himself. The alliances they form are temporary at best, and deceitful at worst, as they vie for territory.

Some of the gods have humanity’s best interests at heart. Some don’t. Hades is one of the good guys. Unfortunately, he’s never been one of the popular kids, either with humans or with his fellow divinities. He and Persephone share New York City, along with a constantly-shifting array of minor gods they’ve brought into their alliance, but the surrounding area all belongs to Zeus and his crew—Ra, Ganesh, Freya, maybe a couple of others. And they… well, let’s just say they aren’t the good guys.

But even though the gods have different opinions on things like whether to protect humans or punish them for their disloyalty, there’s one thing they’ve all agreed on from the beginning: secrecy is paramount. Everyone knows how dangerous we humans can get when we’re scared, and what’s scarier than a bunch of gods fighting their wars all around you? Plus, every worshipper makes a god that much stronger—and no one wants to worship a god who can be defeated. And even the strongest god can be defeated if the tide turns against them.

A select few humans know about all this. The gods can’t act directly in the mortal world—or rather, they can, but it wouldn’t end well for anyone involved. Sure, they help us humans out—or the opposite, depending on how bitter they are about their original followers abandoning them—in various ways, depending on their sphere of influence. Hades, for example, was able to create an afterlife for anyone who dies within city limits. But for anything less subtle than a good harvest or a place to go when we die… well, they pretty much only have one setting, and that’s big and apocalyptic. For more precise work, they need precise tools—and that’s us. The Guardians are priests and priestesses by another name; they spend their days praying and chanting and walking in circles and a whole bunch of boring stuff I don’t completely understand. They have the ability to channel their god’s power into the mortal world—in other words, to do what most people call magic. Then there are the Marked, who are the hands of the gods in the mortal world, fighting their wars on the physical plane. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since Hades raised me from the dead five years ago and made me an offer.

And that was why I was standing in the ruins of the temple wearing a hard hat, with visions of film crews and angry gods dancing in my head.

Usually the way I solve Hades’s problems is much simpler. But usually I’m working against other Marked. Under most circumstances, the gods tend to frown on shooting the civilians in their territory—and even when they don’t, I do. So there I was, lifting rocks.

Plus, I needed the paycheck.

I hauled a few big pieces of rock to the debris removal crew. Nothing incriminating, nothing I needed to destroy. I had to do what I could to make sure next week’s team didn’t find anything useful down here, but I also needed Cifnek to see me doing actual work. Once he passed by again with an approving nod, I went back to where I had found that other fragment. It didn’t take me long to spot another carved bit. I tried not to look at this one too closely—it depicted Hades himself, and I’d had a couple too many close encounters with him to feel comfortable looking even a carved version of him in the eye. Divine power isn’t all pretty paintings and fuzzy feelings. Trust me, you don’t want to talk to a god in person if you can help it. Not unless you’re a Guardian, anyway. I turned the carved side away from me as I lifted it and—

Stopped where I was, because Gordon was walking up to me, eyes wide as he pointed to what I was holding.

You found another one! He poked the image of Hades directly in the gut. Who’s this freaky-looking guy? You think he’s one of the aliens?

Now, I’m hardly the most reverent person out there. My involvement with the gods begins and ends with my missions. But I believe in what Hades stands for—the cycle of life and death, endings and new beginnings, peace at the end of a life well-lived. And not being a dick to humanity just because you’ve got divine power—that part is kind of important too.

And like I said, I’ve talked to Hades a couple of times. They weren’t exactly high points in my life, but he did something good for me, that last time. Something he didn’t have to do.

As much as I liked to roll my eyes at people who talked about their god of choice in hushed tones and thanked them for everything from getting a good parking space to teaching them a life lesson by not getting them a good parking space, something about Gordon’s gesture just… wasn’t right.

I turned away, almost knocking him over with the chunk of wall. I don’t have time for this.

"What’s biting your balls?" Gordon muttered from behind me.

I looked over my shoulder as I walked away. He was still watching me. And as long as he was watching me, I couldn’t destroy this fragment, and if I couldn’t destroy it, I couldn’t do what I had come here to—

Who was I kidding? It didn’t matter how much of this stuff I managed to sabotage. There would still be enough left for the team to get a clear idea of the basics—a temple of an ancient Greek god, built only twenty years ago, hidden under a Manhattan cemetery. I had been kidding myself when I had thought getting this job might let me change that.

And it wasn’t as if anyone else was going to step in and fix this problem. It was up to me. Persephone’s people were on it too—and Ahti and Tridamos, two of the newer and more eager deities in Hades’s alliance, although they didn’t have the power to do much. But it was Hades’s temple, and Hades’s responsibility.

And I was the only Marked of Hades left.

Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Supposedly there were two more out there, but they were both on the other side of the world and I had no idea how to contact either of them. So for all intents and purposes, it was just me. And I had nothing.

I hurled the piece of stone in my hands at a nearby rubble pile, this time out of frustration rather than any deliberate attempt at destruction. It didn’t shatter like the last one did—like I said, that takes effort. But it did split down the middle, leaving the image of Hades broken and ruined.

Garwood! What do you think you’re doing?

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that he was talking to me. I hadn’t been able to get my old identity back—as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Mallory Keyne had been dead and buried for ten years—but I had recently gotten my hands on a new name, and a new life story to go with it. Cifnek knew me as Mallory Garwood, and that was who he was yelling for as he marched toward me with murder in his eyes. Or at least severance without pay.

I see you doing something like that again, and you’re out. That piece of rock that you let slip out of your hands while you were daydreaming about your lunch break is worth more than ten of you.

At least he hadn’t suspected that I had thrown it. Probably because it would have been impossible for a normal human.

You can’t afford to get sloppy with this stuff. If the archaeologists aren’t happy, the film crew won’t be happy, and if the film crew isn’t happy the city won’t be happy, and if the city isn’t happy then we don’t get paid. Not that you’ll be getting paid at all if I catch you being that careless again.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but before I could get that far, my phone started ringing, a cheap tinny sound that said this phone is so old it shouldn’t even be working anymore.

He scowled in the direction of my pocket. Do you have a phone in there?

I couldn’t exactly say no. Unfortunately, I also couldn’t claim I hadn’t known about the no phones in the pit rule, after the ten-minute lecture he had given about it on my first day. I must have forgotten to take it out.

He huffed. If that thing gets broken, or you break your foot because your phone buzzes and distracts you at the wrong moment, it’s your own damn fault. He stomped away, pausing briefly to look over his shoulder. And don’t even think about taking that call.

The phone kept ringing. There were only a couple of people who had this number, and none of them would be calling me just to chat. I don’t have much in the way of a social life. If someone calls me, nine times out of ten it means something is wrong.

I slid a hand toward my pocket. Cifnek cast another glance in my direction, saw where my hand was headed, and shot me a warning scowl. I let my hand drop to my side.

The ringing stopped. I told myself it was probably nothing. It could wait until I got home.

I couldn’t make myself believe it.

The ringing started again. Cifnek was lecturing Gorilla Man—something about not moving fast enough, judging by the running-legs gesture he made with his fingers. I turned away, angling myself behind the remnants of a column, and flipped the phone open. Ciara?

No. It’s me. Lissa, Guardian of Hades and my newest roommate. She had been my second guess.

I’m working. What do you need? Before the temple had been destroyed, Lissa had spent the last five years of her life down here. And I mean every minute of those last five years. She hadn’t so much as come up for a taco or a cup of coffee or a chancer to feel the sun on her face. And no, that’s not a requirement for Guardians. That’s just Lissa. The point is, sometimes she forgets how the aboveground world works. It can be hard to remember that things like paid employment exist when you’re spending all your time having two-way conversations with an actual god.

I need you to come home. Lissa’s voice trembled.

What’s wrong? Is Kimmy giving you a hard time again? Before the temple had changed locations, the apartment had belonged to Kimmy; I had just lived in what used to be her pantry, paying half the rent and trying to stay out of sight of the landlord. We still shared the place, but now we were also rooming with a god and his last surviving Guardian. Kimmy had done a pretty good job of adapting, but sometimes it got to her. I couldn’t blame her. Living in a temple wasn’t my idea of a good time either.

No. I… I need you to come home. Her voice didn’t sound right. And this time it wasn’t the usual exhaustion that came with trying to do the work of an entire temple full of Guardians all by herself. This was something different.

Get to the point, Guardian, snapped a voice from the background.

The hairs on my arms rose.

I didn’t know that voice. There was a stranger in our apartment. And if she knew what a Guardian was, she wasn’t a member of Kimmy’s study group.

Then I realized what I had heard in Lissa’s voice. Fear. Lissa was terrified.

Who’s in there with you? I asked, already hurrying toward the safe path out. Someone stepped in front of me; I barely registered his presence as I shoved him aside.

She’s Marked. She won’t talk to me. She says it’s Marked business. Now the tremor in her voice was unmistakable.

What god does she serve?

She won’t tell me.

Across the pit. Cifnek caught sight of the phone in my hand. He marched toward me, already opening his mouth to yell.

Sorry, I said. I have to go.

Then I ran.

Chapter 2

I burst through the door, leading with my gun. I wasn’t in the mood for subtlety. Someone had barged into Hades’s temple and my home. She had scared Lissa to death. And she had made me leave work early, making it even less likely that I would catch up on my rent anytime soon.

There’s no need for theatrics. I’m just here to talk. The stranger was leaning against the fridge, arms crossed in front of her chest. Her hair was cut in a jagged punk style, and she wore a well-used motorcycle jacket that I actually envied for a minute. But the effect was spoiled by the shirt that read, It’s not my fault I’m better than you. She gave me a lazy smirk.

I didn’t lower my weapon. Who do you serve, and what the hell are you doing in my apartment? I glanced over at the living-room half of the main room to make sure Lissa was okay. She didn’t look injured—I didn’t see any blood or signs of broken bones. She sat in the middle of the floor, hugging her legs. She looked several years older than she had when I had met her, but that was nothing new. This past month hadn’t been kind to her. She had gone from being a low-ranking Guardian, with no ambition for anything greater, to being the sole person responsible for keeping the temple running and channeling Hades’s power into the city. Most nights she wouldn’t even take a break to sleep unless I lectured her.

She shot me a look of naked gratitude. She’s never liked talking to the Marked, even when they’re on her side. It took me saving her life for her to start to get comfortable with me. And I was guessing this particular Marked wasn’t one of the gods’ friendlier representatives.

Across the room, Kimmy was sitting on the couch, stiff and white-faced. I had thought she had class this morning; clearly I had been wrong. When she saw me, she recovered enough to give me an outraged—if slightly trembly—frown. This person barged in here like she owns the place. She says she won’t talk to anybody but you. Does she realize this is a private residence?

The unfamiliar Marked raised an eyebrow. So this is Hades’s new temple, she said, with a deliberate look at the dirty dishes in the sink and Kimmy’s grad school textbooks piled next to the altar. I knew he had fallen far, but not this far. And who is she? She flicked a finger in Kimmy’s direction. She claims not to be Marked, but she’s clearly no Guardian.

I took a slow, deliberate step toward the stranger. I still hadn’t lowered the gun. I asked you two questions. You haven’t answered either one.

She barely glanced at the weapon I was holding. Call me Jade. I’m here on behalf of Mnemosyne. My goddess wants to make your temple— She didn’t actually make air-quotes when she said the word temple, but I could still hear them. —an offer.

Mnemosyne. Now that was a name you didn’t hear every day. From what I gathered, she wasn’t exactly a major player even in the good old days. These days, her territory consisted of a cluster of small towns in Minnesota, or Montana, or one of those other M states with more cows than people.

I lowered the gun, but didn’t relax my grip. I met her raised eyebrow with one of my own. And what does Mnemosyne have to offer Hades?

She curled her lip. I wouldn’t act so superior if I were you. Last I heard, my goddess still had a real temple.

Do you have a point, or did you come here for some kind of divine dick-measuring contest?

As you might have noticed, Jade said, we don’t have much time before the civilians get a giant clue about what’s been going on all around them. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like spending the next few years cleaning up the messes a planetful of panicked civilians can make. More to the point, neither does Mnemosyne.

I was still trying to figure out what Mnemosyne’s area of influence was. I’ve always been more the shoot at who they tell me to shoot at type of Marked than the geek out about the gods type. And in my five years working for Hades, Mnemosyne had never done anything worthy of conversation, let alone concern. I had looked up a family tree of the Greek gods once, though, in my early days out of the temple, and she had been on there. She was the goddess of… of…

Memory.

Oh.

Jade gave me a patronizing smile. So you’re starting to understand. Good.

So she can… what, make everyone forget the temple ever existed?

Not quite. Erasing memories wouldn’t make the ruins themselves disappear, and you can’t just make someone forget something they see every day. But she can alter their memories. Make them believe it’s something insignificant—a sinkhole, or an old subway tunnel. The city will fill in the hole, and no one will feel the need to think about it anymore. She shrugged. Or at least that’s the impression I got. My eyes tend to glaze over at all that Guardian stuff.

As much as it pained me to find myself on her side, I was with her on that one. I dealt with the Guardians as little as possible—which had been a lot easier before one of them had moved in. So what is she waiting for?

Jade smirked again. Did you expect her to do Hades a favor for free? Are you new at this or something?

I gritted my teeth. It will be bad for all of us if the civilians figure out something they shouldn’t. Mnemosyne included. I gave myself points for not losing my temper. Ciara would be proud. Although Jade was obnoxious enough that even Ciara might want to punch her at this point.

But for Hades most of all, said Jade. A modern temple of Hades in the middle of New York doesn’t give away the whole game, especially since I’m sure you’ve had people in there to get rid of any files that survived. The rest of us can find ways to stay hidden, if we’re smart about it. But Hades doesn’t have that option. And while he’s dealing with the fallout in the mortal world, the rest of the gods won’t take this lightly. They’ll put their differences aside long enough to take his territory from him as the price of his incompetence. Maybe even imprison him in the divine realm like they used to do in the old days. And you two— She looked from me to the still-quivering Lissa, and back again. —will be out of a job.

Lissa didn’t look so good. If anything, she was shaking more than she had when I had first walked in the door, and her face had turned the color of day-old sushi. Probably just fatigue, plus the considerable stress of listening to Jade speak. But I made a mental note to check in with her later. She was the only surviving Guardian of Hades; we couldn’t afford for her to get so much as a head cold.

Kimmy, of all people, was the first to speak. You’re wrong. I’ve felt the power in this place. I’ve seen what Hades can do.

I turned my head sharply toward Kimmy, surprised. Since when was Kimmy a big defender of Hades? Yesterday she had tried to haul the altar stone out to the curb because she needed that space for her Pilates routine. The day before, she had thrown the most prim and self-righteous tantrum I’d ever seen because Lissa had woken her up at five in the morning with her chanting. Of course, I had almost wanted to back her up on that one. I wasn’t a fan of waking up before the sun either, especially not to my roommate doing something with divine power that made my teeth