Face of Death

Chapter 10

My hands shook as I willed my blood to mix in my veins. This was going to be painful. Maybe so painful I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. No, I wouldn’t think like that. I’d find the strength to do this. No matter what.

Arianna touched my arm. “You must raise Matt’s soul first, Jodi. Once you raise your human soul, you won’t have the power to raise Matt.”

She was right. How stupid of me. My fear was taking over and clouding my judgment.

“And another thing.” Arianna looked around, making sure there was no sign of Hades. He could show up at any moment, and that would be the end of our plan. We’d be right back in Tartarus. No more time off for good behavior. We’d be done.

“Hurry, Arianna. We don’t have much time.”

“I know, but you have to locate the bodies of the souls you are reaching out to first. Find them with your blood.”

“That’s, like, the opposite of what I’m used to doing.”

“I know. It won’t be easy, but you need to figure it out fast.”

Alex took my hands in his. “You can do this. Take some of my power if you need to.”

I’d never taken power from anyone but Chase. “It’s too risky. I may hurt you or leave you completely defenseless. I have to do this on my own.”

“Too bad Chase isn’t around. You could drain his power.” Alex’s face hardened. Chase had that effect on him.

“I don’t need Chase for anything. Trust me.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I willed my blood to mix again, and I searched for Liz and Brian’s bodies. Knowing their names and how they’d died helped. My blood had a purpose, targets to seek out. Images flashed through my mind so fast I couldn’t make out a single one. But then I saw the hospital morgue. The bodies.

“I got it.” I opened my eyes. I didn’t need to see the bodies anymore. My blood knew where they were. That was enough. “Where’s Matt?”

Alex reached for the gate, but Arianna stopped him. “If Matt steps across that gateway, Hades will be alerted. He’ll think Matt is trying to break out of the Fields. Jodi has to raise him from where he is.”

That was too close. We’d almost ruined everything. I walked to the gate and stared at Matt. He was looking at me with a vague sense of recognition. “I’ll see you soon,” I said, and I willed my blood to raise Matt’s soul. To put him inside Brian’s body. I had to work quickly and hope Hades was too busy to notice a soul leaving. With any luck, Matt’s soul would blend in with the ones the Ophi still left on Earth were raising. It should’ve been more difficult, but some part of Matt must have understood I was helping him, because his soul didn’t fight me. He floated away, and as soon as he was in Brian’s body, I turned to Alex and Arianna. “My turn.”

Alex pulled me to him and pressed his lips against mine. Before he let go, he whispered, “Don’t forget about me when you’re human. Please.”

My body shook with a combination of my blood wanting to finish what it had started and with the heartache of leaving Alex. “Never. I love you.” I was already pushing my Gorgon blood and soul away to free my human soul.

The last thing I saw was Alex mouthing the words “I love you” in return. His actual words were drowned out by the screaming in my head. My blood was raising my human soul. I felt like I was being ripped in half—because I was. My former strength and power were replaced with pain and weakness. My human soul floated from the underworld and through the ground. I smelled the dirt and worms as I searched for my new body. It felt like someone was pulling me through concrete. The pain was worse than what I’d gone through in Tartarus. When Hades made us relive the raisings of our victims, it wasn’t as torturous as the real thing. Not by a long shot.

Even the air felt like it was crushing me from every angle. My soul twisted and writhed in torment. Just when I thought I couldn’t handle it anymore, my soul found Liz’s body. I was slammed into it with such force I felt like I’d shatter. Only I wasn’t whole. Not yet. I bounced around inside Liz’s body, instinctively looking for a way out. This wasn’t home. This wasn’t me.

I felt her skull sealing back up and her skin pulling itself together where she’d been cut in the car accident. The body burned and itched; it wasn’t as painful as hellfire, but a close second. Finally, the body sealed around me, locking me inside. I was a prisoner in someone else’s corpse. To say it was disorienting was an understatement. I couldn’t see a thing. I thought I was blind for a second before I realized I was under a sheet. No, not a sheet. I was in a body bag. I had to get out. Matt was trapped on the gurney next to me, and he had no idea what was happening to him. He must have been terrified.

I groped for the zipper on the body bag, but muffled voices sounded in my head, making me raise my hands to cover my ears. It was like a buzzing that wouldn’t stop. I kicked at the body bag and screamed to block out the noise in my mind. I was losing it. Raising my human soul had driven me mad.

No. Tony had said I’d have to tune out one of my bodies—or one half of my soul. Was I hearing what was happening in the underworld? I settled down, being absolutely still, and listened.

“She really did it.” Alex’s voice was a faint echo.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on her. She’s moving on autopilot now. I’m not sure anything is really registering.” Arianna’s words made me panic. If I was acting weird in the underworld, Hades would notice.

“She reminds me of the souls in the Fields of Asphodel, dazed.”

“She’ll learn to tune out one soul for a while to give herself some peace. It will make her body robotic, just going through the motions rather than thinking, but we’ll get her through it.”

Alex closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “How will she get back if she doesn’t have any powers in human form?”

“She can still summon her human soul from down here. Her Gorgon soul is strong enough.”

“Does she know that? Does she know she’ll have to keep checking in with us?” Alex was panicking. He had no idea I was listening in and seeing everything they were saying.

“She’ll be okay. Let’s give her time to get settled in her new body, and then we’ll try calling her here.”

“If Hades suspects what Jodi’s done, he’ll bring her back himself.”

I was sure he’d find the most painful way possible, too. My head pounded as Alex and Arianna’s faces invaded my vision. I was seeing double—the body bag and the underworld at the same time.

“She’s opening her eyes,” Alex said.

Arianna grabbed Alex’s hand as he reached for me. “Don’t touch her. Just let her be for now. She must be going through a lot.”

Arianna was right. I had to focus on my human soul and getting out of this bag. I tried to block out the underworld completely by throwing myself into finding a way to bust out of this bag. Where was that zipper? I reached up by my head, but the bag was fully zipped—of course. Damn it! I jabbed my pointer finger at the end of the zipper, hoping to make it poke through. Trying to undo a zipper from the inside wasn’t going to be easy by any means. It took a few tries, but I finally forced my finger through, making a small opening at the top of the bag. Now I had to work the zipper down the rest of my body. I hooked my finger over the zipper and tugged. It was awkward, and the zipper snagged on my hair, so I had to tug at Liz’s blonde strands to get free. Little by little, I pried more of my body through.

When I got the bag open to just below my knees, I bent my leg and used my foot to unzip the bag the rest of the way. Using my elbows, I propped myself up and looked around to make sure no one was in the morgue. I felt like I was in a horror movie, because, just like those dead guys that rose from the slabs and walked out of the hospital, I was a zombie. We had to be inside one of those walk-in refrigerators because the room was freezing cold and the walls were silver, like they were made of steel or some other metal to keep the room cold enough to preserve the dead bodies.

I sat up and stretched my limbs, trying to get used to Liz’s body. It was completely foreign to me. Luckily, since I’d raised myself, I didn’t need to wait for anyone’s permission to speak or do anything else. My blood was controlling me, allowing me to be more than just a normal zombie. Matt would be a different story, though.

There was no sign of movement in the body bag next to me. Where was Matt? I slid off the metal table and unzipped Matt’s bag. “Come on, Matt. Open your eyes.” I couldn’t risk someone walking in here and finding us. It was bad enough we were going to leave the hospital with two missing corpses on their hands. Thankfully, we’d be going far away from here so the police wouldn’t be able to track us down.

Why wasn’t Matt moving? I looked down at Liz’s body. That was it! My human half was useless in this situation. I needed my Ophi powers to command him. I closed my eyes and tuned in to my body in the underworld. I was in the palace again. Chase was going on and on about another soul he’d taken to Tartarus. I ignored him and focused on sending a message to Matt’s soul. “Be free. Live out your life in Brian’s body.” As soon as the message was sent, I shifted my focus again.

I heard him stir and opened my eyes. “Matt.” I reached for him, but he pulled away. “It’s okay. You’re all right. Talk to me, Matt. Say something.”

“Stay back.” His voice was strained, and he swallowed hard. “Who are you? How do you know me?”

Of course he didn’t recognize me. I was in Liz’s body. How could I be so stupid? “Matt, it’s me, Jodi.”

He shook his head. “No. You don’t look anything like Jodi.”

“Please, just let me help you out of there. I promise I’ll explain everything.” I reached for him again, but he sat up on his own and looked around.

“Did you put me here? Is this a—”

“Morgue, yes. And I did put you here, but it’s not what you think.” He’d never guess this on his own, and unfortunately the truth was probably much worse than whatever he was thinking.

“Is this some sort of prank? Did you knock me out and…” His eyes widened as he ran his hands along the bag. “You put me in a body bag?”

“No. Not really. I mean, yes, technically I put you in here, but—” This was coming out all wrong. How the hell did I tell my ex-boyfriend—no wait, we’d never officially broken up—that I had brought him back to life?

He used the sides of the metal slab to stand up, and he stared at me, looking like he was seeing a ghost, or worse, a monster. “Where’s Jodi? What did you do to her? We were together in her backyard, and then I don’t remember anything. You knocked me out, didn’t you?”

“No.” What I’d done to him that day in my backyard was much worse. I’d stopped his heart forever. I shivered, partly at the memory and partly at how cold it was in the morgue. I guess I should at least be thankful that he didn’t remember Hades raising him in the graveyard at the school. “Please, Matt. I am Jodi. I know I look different, but it’s me. It’s really me.”

He turned and headed for the door, his movements jerky in the unfamiliar body. “Jodi!” he yelled.

“Matt!” I grabbed his arm and raised a finger to my lips to quiet him before someone came to see what was going on in the morgue. “It’s me. I’m in someone else’s body, but it’s me.”

“Are you crazy? Did someone do something to you, too? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? It wasn’t you who hurt me and Jodi? Someone else did it, and they hurt you, too?”

I shook my head, not knowing how to make him believe me. I should’ve known this would happen. But he was Matt. He knew me that night in the cemetery at school when Hades brought him back. He’d even recognized me in the Fields of Asphodel when every other part of his memory had faded away. He didn’t know himself, but he still knew me. I’d just assumed he’d know me now.

“Ask me anything. I’ll do anything to prove to you that I’m Jodi.”

“Listen, I’m sorry if you’re hurt, but you have to understand you’re not Jodi. Jodi is my girlfriend. She has brown, wavy hair and the most amazing green eyes. She looks nothing like you.” His voice was soft and sympathetic.

This wasn’t working. He thought I was some poor girl who’d wound up at the end of a prank gone wrong.

“Matt, my name is Jodi Marshall. My birthday is December eighth. My best friend is Melodie. She’s your best friend, too. She introduced us. You and I have been dating—or at least we were until—”

“Until that guy came along. Alec or something.” His face looked strained as he struggled with the memory.

“Alex. His name is Alex.”

“I hate that guy. He tried to hurt Jodi.”

Damn it. He still didn’t believe I was me. Not even after I’d spouted all that off. “How would I know all this if I wasn’t Jodi?”

“Are you friends with Alex? Did he put you up to this?” Matt’s head turned from side to side as he scanned the morgue. “Where is he? Does he have Jodi?”

“No!” I was more frustrated with myself than Matt. None of this was his fault. I looked around helplessly for an answer. My eyes fell on the steel walls. Matt would be able to see his reflection in them if I could just get him to focus on that instead of trying to find me—or what I usually looked like at least. “Come look at this.”

He put his hands up in defense. “Listen, I get that you’re upset, but—”

“Look at your reflection.” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but he wasn’t listening to me.

“My reflection?” He stared down at his hospital gown. “Where are my clothes?”

“Look at your hand, Matt. You have a birthmark on the side of your left palm, right? Or you did, but it’s not there now.”

Matt stared in horror at his hand. “What’s going on?”

“Look.” I pulled him closer to the steel wall and under the lights. He held his eyes on me for a moment before looking into it. The second he saw his reflection, he gasped. “That’s not me.”