Resurrected - Chapter 2

While a good chunk of this novel wraps up Sam and Tiffany's story arcs, there's some other character threads that need to be finished. And then there's some returns as well...

===========================================

Ptolemy

The moaning of the damned never stopped on the shores of the Styx. If Ptolemy Antonius had one regret about the afterlife, it was the lack of his digital music player. That and a pair of earbuds could do so much to bring joy back to his life.

Or actually his death.

But then, the lack of comfort was the entire point of damnation, wasn’t it?

He perched on a boulder and watched the shades drift back and forth along the gravel-strewn banks. Some had been there so long they were nothing more than amorphous gray blobs. Most had gone insane millennia ago. Only a handful of souls had come to the dock since Hermes had deposited him here…

It could have been hours. Years. Centuries ago.

There wasn’t any way to know in the unrelenting grayness. No sun. No moon. No sleep. No waking. No eating. Nothing to mark the time.

And no way out. Not without a coin for Charon.

At first, he had been thankful it had been Hermes who collected his soul. If it had been Anubis, he would have been brought before Osiris and the forty judges, instead of being stranded on the shores of the Styx.

He would have been condemned for betraying his brother. His soul consumed by Ammut. His existence erased from reality for his sins. Even Hermes had stated he wasn’t sure which underworld was the worse punishment when he left Ptolemy here.

“Ptolemy, darling, why aren’t you hunting with Jubba, Alexander and the others?” Selene drifted closer. This time, his sister wore an ephemeral version of a Roman matron’s stolla and spoke Latin, which explained her question. Selene was reliving the past again.

“Too busy debating the merits of the Ars Amoratia.” He smiled.

She settled next to him on the boulder and clucked her tongue. “Which girl is it this time?”

“A Ptolemy doesn’t kiss and tell.” They’d have the very same conversation over two thousand years ago, and twice since Hermes brought her to the edge of the realm of Hades.

She’d been insane with fury when she arrived. What little he’d been able to glean from her was that her spawn, Duncan St. James, had tried to kill her lover before killing Selene herself and that two years had passed between Ptolemy’s death and his sister’s. He was a little surprised Caesar managed to hold St. James back for those two years. Or maybe he should be more surprised she evaded the Briton’s vengeance for that long. He’d told her more than once when they were both still alive that killing St. James’s Normal kin was unwise, but she took any rejection so personally.

Over time, Selene’s initial outrage sank into ancient memories as the mind-numbing drift along the Styx ate what little was left of her sanity.

“Come on. You can tell me.” Selene nudged his shoulder with hers. Or tried to. She didn’t seem to notice what passed for their bodies merged and parted, wisps of mist in the constant chill of the Underworld.

Grief as cold and gray as their surroundings filled him. Maybe her madness was a blessing. But how long would it be before he followed her? Before they both became as incoherent as the older shades drifting along the shore.

“Phillippa,” he lied.

Selene leaned back to examine him. “You can’t—”

He held up his hand to stop her usual lecture regarding the Amazon. “Like I could touch her even if I wanted her. She wields thunderbolts with the precision of Lord Zeus himself. The discussion was purely intellectual.” No one outside him and his siblings had known the truth about Phillippa at the time.

His sister’s ectoplasm morphed into something more recent. The suit she wore was from the middle of the twentieth century, her hair matching the style. “We need to kill her,” she whispered in English.

“How do you propose we do that?”

“We drink her blood while she sleeps.” Somehow, Selene’s dull ectoplasm managed to convey a maniacal gleam in her eyes. “If we don’t, she’ll burn us all.”

He would have sighed if he still could. This was a new take on Selene’s paranoia.

Before he think of an answer that wouldn’t set off her temper, her ectoplasm shifted again. This time, she wore jeans and a turtleneck sweater. “You’re in love with St. James’s brat!”

“What?” If he still had blood, it would have chilled in his veins. Had she guessed the truth, or was this part of her paranoid ramblings?

“You’re as bad as Alexander! Both of you let your dicks do all your thinking!”

“Selene—”

“I’ll kill you for betraying me!” The edges of her ectoplasm blurred as her rage escalated. Her mouth opened, far wider and with far more teeth than her physical form had. She lunged for his throat only to pass through him. The rough gray blob, all that was left of sister in her mad fit, charged along the shore, shrieking incoherently.

“Well, that was an interesting performance.”

Ptolemy turned to find Lord Hermes floating a sword-length above the gravel. The wings of his sandals lowered him gently to the ground. He took the seat Selene had vacated.

“So how’s it going?” The Olympian looked distinctly uncomfortable.

A ripple of unease fluttered through Ptolemy. The gods were never uncomfortable around mortals, regardless of whether the mortal in question was Normal or supernatural. The dead were even less of a threat to them.

“May I help you, my Lord?” Hermes’s nearness made him acutely aware of his sister’s furious screeching along the banks of the Styx. Maybe there were worse things than going mad.

“I’m here to ask a favor.” The god twirled his caduceus in his hands. His two snakes hung onto the wooden staff literally for their dear lives. One glared at Hermes through slitted eyes, but she didn’t dare utter a word.

“While I am pleased and honored to assist you, my Lord, my skills are quite limited at the moment.” Ptolemy held up his gray misty hands.

The god stopped playing with his staff. His snakes looked relived, or at least Ptolemy thought they did. Hermes stared at him with an intense expression. “How would you like a second chance at life?”

The unease turned to full-blown panic. There was a reason the Mafia dons were referred to as “godfathers.” Like the Olympians, one simply didn’t say no. Not without severe repercussions. And saying yes often meant an even worse fate.

“What service must I perform in return for this…favor?”

Hermes’s face split into a wide grin. “I love a clever man.”

Ptolemy waited. Patience had been something he sorely lacked when he’d been alive.

And a hard-earned lesson on the shores of the Styx.

“You will need to acquire an object.”

Ptolemy waited and let idle thoughts drift through his mind. Was it summer or winter? On this side of the river, one never knew if the Queen of Hades was in residence.

“It’s a magickal object.”

Ptolemy waited. Another year could be passing on Earth. Had Tiffany gone to college and met a boy there? Maybe it was a good thing he had died. She was safe from his attraction to her. She had been coming into her own womanhood, oh, so beautiful, when Selene had shot him in the heart.

Finally, Hermes said, “You will deliver it to you by someone you know. Alexander Stanton.”

“Stanton?” He hated the enforcer with a passion. Stanton was blond, blue-eyed, and handsome with charm oozing from his every pore. He could attract any woman with a smile and a wink.

And worst of all, Tiffany adored him. They shared a passion for the idiotic sport of surfing. If one could call balancing on a wooden board among the ocean waves a sport.

“And how am I supposed to acquire this object of yours?” Ptolemy punched the boulder on which he perched. His fist passed into the rock. He yanked and gray ectoplasm rushed from the stone and reformed into his hand.

Hermes’s nostrils flared before he said, “You’ll have a body to use. The catch you’re looking for in our offer is that you’ll be living another man’s life.”

“Normal or supernatural?”

“Does it matter?”

Ptolemy waited some more.

Hermes sighed. “Normal, but he’s a part-time day enforcer with your old coven if that helps.”

The god’s lack of specificity worried Ptolemy even more. “Augustine Coven?”

“Um, it’s, um, no longer Augustine’s.” Hermes kicked at the gravel beneath his sandals.

“My brother’s dead?”

Hermes started twirling his staff again. “No. He’s very much alive.”

Ptolemy narrowed his eyes. “Then why isn’t he the coven master?”

The god finally met his gaze. “Because his wife found the cure to the V-virus.”

“Bebe found the cure?” If he had still been alive and actually had a body, he was sure it would have gone into shock. “How many years has it been since—”

“You died?” Hermes stopped spinning his staff. The snake that had been giving the god dirty looks stretch out and bit his thumb. “Ow! Stop that!”

“Then quit spinning us,” the snake hissed. Her partner nodded.

Hermes ignored the irritated reptiles, but he laid his staff aside. “It’s been almost nine years since your sister shot you.”

“But I’ll be living another man’s life?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Hermes exhaled heavily. “Because the only way to return you to the land of the living is to put you in a vacated body.”

“A ghost can’t possess a body for long.”

“We would give you help to last long enough to accomplish your task.”

Ptolemy had to admit the idea was tempting. A short time to breathe again. Walk. Feel the sun on his face. Ghosts couldn’t last a week in a body. The gods wouldn’t break the rules of life and death. They may bend them, which meant he might have a few extra days before he died again.

Would it truly be worth it? Oh, Hades, he already knew his decision, but he needed more information.

Ptolemy snorted. “What’s the other catch?” He held up his left hand when Hermes opened his mouth. “Let me guess. I can’t tell my brother I’m back.”

Hermes waved his right hand nonchalantly. “Go right ahead. You may need his help.”

“With acquiring this object of yours?”

The smile Hermes gave Ptolemy renewed the chill of his ectoplasm. “No. With capturing a goddess.”