Page 58 of Painless
This wasn't information I planned to spread to the whole club, but I trusted Shadow. Maybe he didn't have an animal bond, but with his inhuman strength and uncanny ability to see in the dark, I'd place all bets on him being something not-quite human as well.
Just as I thought, he seemed surprised, but not more than that. After a bit more shelf-scanning, he placed an impressive stack of books onto a side table. "These are all the books I have on ancient mythologies. You can look for the names of gods in the index in the back."
I grabbed the first book off the top of the stack, which was on the Aztec religion. One flip through the index told me I wouldn't find anything useful in there. The names of the Aztec gods were no less than twenty letters long and used too many Xs and Zs.
"They're not in this one." I set the book aside and moved onto the next one—Greek mythology.
Something about it rang a bell. Was it Mari that asked me if I took Hades' name from a Greek myth?
My pulse shot up as I scanned down the list of names in the index.
"There it is!" I declared, before running my finger across to find the page number.
"All of them?" Shadow asked me.
"No." My hands were damn near trembling as I flipped to the section in the book. "Just Hades."
And of fucking course. Hades was the god of death and ruler of the underworld.
"The gates of the underworld were guarded by his three-headed dog, Cerberus," I read aloud, before sliding my gaze over tomyHades. The damn mutt was goofing off, rolling around on his back on the floor.
"I found Horus," Shadow announced, showing me another book. "The falcon-headed god of the sky."
"For the Greeks too?"
"No," Shadow shook his head. "The ancient Egyptians." He sucked in a hard breath and nearly dropped the book he was holding.
"What's gotten into you?" I asked.
"There's...a story here." He shoved his hair back, odd-colored eyes moving rapidly over the page. "Horus battled with another god, Set, and lost his eye in the process." A hand floated up to the scarred side of his face. "I didn't lose my eye, but was blinded before being able to see with it again."
I looked back down at my book, reading more thoroughly on Hades rather than skimming like I just did. What I read legitimately made me drop the book. "Fuck me, this shit is freaky."
"What?" Shadow stared at me.
I looked back at my dog, still acting like a fool on the ground, twisting on his back with his tongue lolling out.
"Hades kidnapped his wife, Persephone."
The dog finally rolled over to his belly, barked once, then grinned at us.
"She was his prisoner at first but," I shook my head in utter bewilderment, "they eventually fell in love."
"Like you and Mariposa," Shadow breathed, voicing the connection I didn't dare say myself.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I raked my fingers over my scalp.
“Freyja.” Shadow picked up another book and frantically flipped through it. “What can we find out about her?”
I went over to Hades and kneeled down to his level. “Anything you want to say about this?”
No response, but a big doggy smile, naturally. Still looking through the book, Shadow let out an amused huff.
“What’d you find?” I asked.
“Freyja drove a chariot pulled by two cats,” he reported. “And she slept with four dwarves for some rare necklace.”
My stomach turned in on itself. Clearly, Mari having a cat companion was no coincidence.
