Welcome, welcome. I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please see my note at the bottom.
One: The Contestants
Something was happening.
He could feel it.
The dark and deceitful shadow in his mind stirred once more, whispering to him, strangely akin to the mutterings of his brothers and mother during the reign of Time. His hand drifted to the curved blade at his side as hunger slithered into his thoughts.
The blade, stained with blood. The blade, which had given him power – and the blade which had failed to keep him in power. But as to the last, he preferred to think it the fault of his brothers and nephews.
He glanced down at his left forearm, covered in so many little tattoos. They were the marks of his victories and conquests, pleasing reminders of the blood that spilled from their throats and the life that left their eyes as he loomed over them, the triumphant executioner, the last thing they would ever see.
His brothers always said there was something wrong with him. Such was the price to pay for power.
Yet a million small victories could never avenge that massive loss so long ago. He could never be spared of all the humiliation. He had conquered them in the end, but they had found a way out. It was infuriating. It was an incomplete job, and someone was going to pay for it.
He drew his blade and casually beheaded a nearby Harpy, listening to the satisfying thud as her head fell and rolled away, leaving a trail of black blood across his pristine floor. He calmly sheathed his blade again and absentmindedly wondered what was on the menu for lunch.
A Minotaur picked up the head and left to dispose of it. A chimera followed, dragging the body away. It was a regular occurrence. His brothers had even assigned several monsters specifically for the task of cleaning up the perpetual trail of bodies in his wake.
There was a grunt as someone pushed the heavy iron door open. The human underling entered and immediately kowtowed to him, as was required before its betters. "Master?" it asked shakily, face still pressed against the stone floor.
He sighed. "What is it?" Humans never had anything interesting to say.
The underling took a deep, nervous breath before speaking. "We've located them all, master."
"Excellent."
"But, master –" Blinding and burning light flooded the chamber and the underling cowered in terror at its master's wrath.
His eyes blazed with a terrible, all-consuming fire. "WHAT?"
Maybe the chimeras would get human for supper tonight, after all.
"They're together this time!" the underling wailed as the light began to devour his pathetic, mortal soul. "They're allied! And she has found them!"
He froze.
Were they? Had she?
A cruel smile crept onto his face as the light faded away, and the chamber was dead silent but for the underling's fearful sobs.
Perhaps he'd actually have a challenge this time. It was so dreadfully dull to simply shoot them from afar, or to lace their drinks with poison. He missed the days of evisceration and drawing-and-quartering. And the Witch Hunts, those were good times.
His mind immediately began formulating plans. It would be so much… fun, with more of them. His mirthless laughter echoed in the chamber.
Let the games begin.
But it wasn't such a fun game for everyone, even though she had found them at last, and she hadn't been the least bit sorry to leave the smog of New York.
This town was small and quiet. That was good. Different. She preferred the peacefulness of suburbia over the chaos of the city and the desolate loneliness of the countryside.
For the past millennia, she had traveled all over the globe, racing from Moscow to Atlanta to London to Tokyo. Even she couldn't be in two places (fifteen, to be precise) at once. Now she could stay in this one spot and watch over them all.
If she located more than one of them, she had the unenviable task of choosing which to protect, as more often than not they were on opposite sides of the world. Not the case this time.
She usually didn't find her charges until they were adolescent. Before that, it was hard to detect their supernatural power. But as soon as one of them set off even a little spark, she and the Titans would swarm down on them, clawing out each others' throats in their attempt to get there first. She fought to protect them, while the Titans simply had one goal in mind.
Death.
The Titans almost always won. They were more in number and more powerful. She occasionally managed to smuggle her charge away, but they would either refuse her offer or end up dying anyway, and all her efforts would be useless.
This time, one of them had been unpleasantly surprised when he had discovered his powers. The Titans obviously knew about him, but they hadn't bothered to come for him yet and had sent only a few monsters that she'd squashed in an instant. They dismissed this one as minor. There were a few hosts whom the Titans searched for most fervently, and he was not one of them.
But when she had been scouting the area, she had noticed more power than there ought to have been for one person… or two… or three… but the right amount of power for fifteen.
They were all here.
The Fates were probably laughing at her right now.
Hilarious.
Elizabeth didn't know if she wanted to laugh or cry.
Lunch was already halfway over, and not one single student had picked up a campaign flyer. It was very disheartening.
To make things worse, she smelled trouble coming in three… two… one…
"Aw, no one voting for you, sweetheart?"
Elizabeth closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She must not let the overinflated fathead get to her – for the sake of her extremely fragile sanity. "Go away."
He looked at her, amused and clearly not moving.
She plastered a wide smile on her face. "Please?" It was so painful to smile at him.
He flashed a perfect, dazzling smirk back at her. He never smiled, only smirked. "Is that how you get your voters? It's obvious to see you're winning."
They stared at each other, neither willing to give in first. The tension between them was almost tangible. After all, their enmity had begun in kindergarten.
He started it.
People were starting to loiter, watching in anticipation. Their infamous arguments were like fireworks – brilliant explosions that were very entertaining to observe.
Elizabeth avoided him whenever possible, but he always started a fight when he caught sight of her. He didn't care if other people were watching. They wouldn't say anything about him. He was so popular, if he shunned someone, then everyone shunned them. Monkey see, monkey do.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
She promptly turned her back on him and started to put the flyers in her backpack. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pile nearest him falling onto the ground. She closed her eyes and sighed. "What did you do that for?"
"Do what?" he asked, confused.
"You just knocked over those flyers!"
"I did not!"
Elizabeth scowled. Her temper was running thin. "You immature, conceited pig – grow up!" She began collecting the fallen papers. Murderous thoughts ran through her mind as she envisioned shipping him in a wooden box off to Madagascar to live there as a hermit.
Ha. He and his pretty blue-gray eyes wouldn't last a week.
Unexpectedly, he also crouched and began picking up flyers.
The shock lasted only a second before Elizabeth remembered she was supposed to hate him. "Stop that."
"I'm helping you!"
"Yeah, that'll happen when pigs fly." She paused and tossed a smug smile in his direction. "Then again, I have heard that you have a pilot's license."
He thrust a stack of the papers at her. "Uh-huh," he said wryly. "Who's the immature one now?"
They both reached for the last flyer. His hand brushed hers, and there was an audible zap.
"Ow!" Elizabeth immediately retracted her hand and nursed it. The patch of skin was throbbing and red. She shuddered as what felt like an electric current rippled across her arm.
"My God, that hurts so much," he drawled sarcastically. "It was only static electricity. No need to be such a drama queen about it." Then he noticed the color of the skin and frowned. "Let me see that." He took her hand.
She wrenched it back out of his grasp. "I don't need your help," she snapped, standing up. She picked up her backpack and turned to go. "You'd do more harm than good."
"Ouch. You've broken my heart, darling."
The endearment grated on her nerves. She stopped, hands on her hips, and looked back at him with narrowed green eyes. "You have no heart."
"You have no heart," Mitchell King mimicked as he headed to the parking lot.
Why the hell was it so sunny today? It didn't match his mood. It shouldn't be sunny.
His brother, Reed, who was one year older than him, was sitting in his Jeep with tuna sandwich in hand as he flipped through a magazine. It was Sports Illustrated, some car magazine, or a more adult brand. Probably the third.
Dante, his eldest brother, was… somewhere. Whatever. They'd see him later.
"Break up with Bess already?" Reed asked without looking up. Yup, number three.
Mitchell grimaced at the mention of his current girlfriend. That needed to change. "No." He flopped down on the grass, dropping his backpack beside him. "Harper said it."
Elizabeth Harper, SGA Presidential Hopeful. Elizabeth Harper, only girl in the universe who didn't like him. Elizabeth Harper, naturally blond unlike most of the girls he dated, and he was only certain of that because he'd known her since kindergarten when –
Reed looked up in amazement. "Connie said that?"
Mitchell rolled his eyes. "No, you moron, her sister!"
Connie Harper was Elizabeth's much kinder, sweeter, willowy older sister and the current love of Reed's life. But even though Reed had the naturally perfect black hair, legendary blue eyes, and dashing good looks that ran in the family, he wasn't very lucky with girls. That probably explained why he hadn't even begun wooing Connie yet.
Mitchell had gotten all the charm, so it seemed, though to be fair Reed had the charismatic personality that easily won over new friends, and the mysteriously absent Dante could talk his way out of anything.
Reed shrugged and continued flipping through his magazine. "At least Connie doesn't look like she wants to kill me every time I talk to her."
Mitchell scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous, I don't like Elizabeth." What was Reed talking about? He hated her. Loathed, detested, despised, abhorred, resented –
"I never said you did," Reed said in a sing-song voice. "But there's enough sexual tension between you two to suggest otherwise." He cracked up and ducked as an apple hurtled through the air. It missed his head and landed harmlessly on the parking lot, rolling away bruised – like Mitchell's ego.
Mitchell lay down and glared up at the sky. Still clear and blue. Clouds still fluffy and white. Birds still singing like it was some freaking Disney movie. If deer and rabbits started dancing out of the woods, he was going to kill something. Preferably Reed.
He lifted and examined his right hand, which had touched Elizabeth Harper's several minutes ago. Nothing looked wrong with it.
But static electricity didn't normally turn someone's skin painfully red.
"Hmm," Mitchell muttered. It was strange. Lately, when he got static electricity, he didn't feel the shock as much. But he could hear those little zaps growing louder and louder, like the one earlier. He could sometimes even see sparks, though that might've been his imagination.
Maybe he was becoming some kind of superhero that controlled electricity. That'd be cool.
He started on his sandwich and noticed the sky darkening.
Finally. The atmosphere was getting too happy for his taste.
Stupid Mitchell, Elizabeth silently cursed as she ran her injured hand under the bathroom sink faucet. He always ruined everything. Was it his mission to ruin her life? She wouldn't be surprised if it was. She could just imagine his schedule:
Make out with Girlfriend Number One. Play soccer. Make out with Girlfriend Number Two. Drive Elizabeth insane. Make out with Girlfriend Number Three. Plot how to make Elizabeth go insane.
"You should stop getting so wound up about Mitchell all the time," the ever-wise Connie suggested. "He's not that bad. Maybe it's just you."
"Connie, you know why I hate him so much," Elizabeth said impatiently. "You even told me that he was in the wrong and I had every reason to be upset."
"But that was eleven years ago," her friend Sage interjected, absentmindedly braiding her wild brown hair. "We thought boys still had cooties back then." She narrowed her eyes as she tried to untangle a knot. "So how's your presidential campaign going, Lizard?"
Elizabeth grimaced. "Not as well as I'd hoped. Everyone knows that Bessie Jones is Mitchell King's current paramour, so they're going to vote for her just because of that." See? He was even ruining this for her. He just had to be dating the girl who was her opponent for SGA president.
Sage looked up and frowned, though her eyes were teasing. "What do you have against girls who go out with Mitchell?" she said snippily. Her wide brown eyes and tall, curvy figure attracted many of the male population, including Mitchell last year.
Sage hadn't taken him seriously, considering he was a year younger, but had agreed to go out with him as a favor to Reed because, apparently, Mitchell had been making his entire family go crazy with his infatuation for her. But Mitchell quickly realized that they weren't romantically compatible and the two had parted on amiable terms.
"I'll never forgive you for that." Elizabeth sniffed haughtily. They caught each other's eye and burst out in giggles.
Sage patted Elizabeth's shoulder. "Don't worry about the campaign, Lizzie. I'll stuff the ballot boxes with your name."
Connie laughed. "What century are you living in? No one uses ballot boxes anymore. They use computers for votes now."
"Then I'll find a hacker," Sage said stubbornly.
Elizabeth shook her head, smiling. "Sage, it's okay. I'd rather win on my own terms."
Sage was silent for a moment as she considered this. Finally, she said, "Can I at least make the environmental club spell your name in petunias?"
Elizabeth rolled her eyes, still grinning, and started walking out of the bathroom.
"Or I can get Keene to sneak into Bessie Jones' house and sabotage her campaign. How's that?"
Keene Price was a scrawny brunet freshman in dire need of a growth spurt. His best friend was Leo Archer, a sophomore, and they only knew each other because when Leo had moved here, he'd accidentally been placed in kindergarten instead of first grade, and the teacher made him and Keene share a desk. Leo had accidentally broken Keene's blue crayon so Keene had drawn a mustache on his face when Leo had fallen asleep during story time. By the time Leo was moved up to the proper grade level, the two were the best of friends.
In sixth grade, Leo had developed a huge, still ongoing crush on Connie Harper, a then-eighth grader, and he made Keene stalk her. Connie and her friends eventually noticed the munchkin-sized fifth grade following them, but of course Keene was so adorable that they let him into their circle of friends without hesitation.
Keene was now a master at worming onto people's good sides and talking his way out of sticky situations. His gift of gab had also been responsible for getting him "hired" as Mitchell King's personal private investigator, though he was assigned such a wide variety of tasks that "private investigator" no longer did his job justice.
One thing for sure, he'd never expected to be the one stalked.
Keene couldn't shake off the feeling that he was being watched. All the time. When he waited for the bus in the morning, when he was in class, when he chilled outside during lunch, when he walked home from the bus stop.
On very rare occasions, he could feel the staring at night. He would run to the window and look outside, only to find nothing but darkness. But the last time this had happened, he had seen something – a pair of red, inhuman eyes, for a fraction of a second, and then it was gone.
He was also seeing snakes. When he walked to Leo's house, he would just catch its tail disappearing into the forest behind the Archer residence. Not to mention the large, deformed birds that took off when he turned around – birds that cawed something in between a screech and a cackle.
Keene had asked Phoebe, Leo's twin and the local animal expert, about the snakes and birds.
She'd made a face at the mention of the reptile, the only animal she didn't like. "I don't know anything about snakes. None of our dogs have been bringing back their carcasses and burying them in the yard." But she promised, "I'll keep an eye out for those birds, but it's probably nothing. Maybe it's only a funny shadow."
Then Keene casually mentioned to Leo that he felt like something was watching him, ready to shrug it off if Leo laughed and called him paranoid. But Leo had turned serious.
"I know. I have this feeling that something's going to happen."
But Leo hadn't mentioned it again, so Keene kept mum about it.
As it were, Keene had other, more important things on his mind, such as the best way to dump Mitchell's girlfriend for him.
As Keene searched out Mitchell's now ex-girlfriend, Leo sauntered up and propped his elbow on Keene's shoulder. Sometimes, Keene really hated tall people.
He frowned and pushed off Leo's arm. "I'm working!"
"Right." Leo rested his arm on Keene's head. "What is it this time? Finding out what one of the midfielders on his team did on Saturday night?"
Keene scowled as Leo began tapping a beat on his skull. "Mitchell is breaking up with his girlfriend."
The tapping paused. "And he gets you to do it?"
"Part of the job," Keene said in a long-suffering voice.
"Wow. What's your pay?" The tapping resumed.
Ah, pay day. Best day ever. "It's worth it." Keene continued scanning the hallways for Bessie.
Leo's next words piqued Keene's interest. "I heard something following Phoebe and me this morning when we were walking to the bus stop," Leo said quietly. His elbow slid off Keene's head.
Keene quickly stepped an arm's length away before Leo tried to reclaim his armrest. "Did you see it?"
"For a few seconds." Leo smiled humorlessly. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you what it was."
"Just tell me."
Leo hesitated. "It looked like Bigfoot."
Keene bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing, until he realized Leo wasn't joking. Then, before he could respond, something stopped him.
He had found Mitchell's ex.
Bessie had dyed blond hair and an admittedly nice tan, was pretty and somewhat popular, and was one of those girls who didn't eat lunch.
Really, how could anyone get through the day without lunch?
"Watch the fireworks," Keene muttered to Leo. He walked over, putting on his politest, most innocent expression and voice. "Bessie Jones?"
She looked at him, eyebrows raised. Freshmen didn't usually suddenly approach upperclassmen. "Yes? What do you want?"
Keene tried to keep a solemn, apologetic face. It didn't help that he could see Leo doubling over, trying to stifle his laughter. "Mitchell doesn't think your relationship can work anymore."
He could see it clicking in her mind. Now she recognized him as Mitchell's lackey, as he was sometimes condescendingly called. To his alarm, her hands latched onto his shoulders, her fingers digging into his skin. "But why?" she demanded. "We've been dating only for a week!"
Keene's brain worked quickly. "He doesn't want to influence your chances in the upcoming election. Rule of law and everything, you know."
At first, she looked stunned. Her grip loosened enough for Keene to slip out. Then when her eyes grew watery, Keene began backing away, groaning internally.
Why were girls so emotional?
But finally, she settled – on anger. "So that jerk has you do his dirty work for him?" Her rising voice caught the attention of the hallways' other occupants.
"We tried to tell you, Bess," one of her friends said. "We said that he'd only play you."
"But what I would give for a day with him," another said dreamily. She wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box.
Bessie turned on them. "Why didn't you stop me? You knew I thought I could change him! You should've tried to convince me more!"
Now that her attention was safely turned away from him, Keene raced away as if a banshee were at his heels, followed by a highly-amused Leo.
"You should've seen your face!"
"Shut up!"
There was probably only one student in the entire school whom Keene didn't know. No one knew him, actually. But Braden was fine with that. He did kind of have a problem.
Or two.
Or three.
Or… well, he had a lot of problems.
He heard voices. Big problem there. He could usually ignore them and go about acting like a normal person (well, as normal as he could be), but not this time, and these voices were the reason why he was having a mental breakdown behind the school.
Something had happened to him, and he wasn't sure how to describe it. Magic? If it was magic, then it wasn't the happy abracadabra stuff they showed on TV. This magic was dark. It hurt. It was bad. It was driving him insane.
If a team of psychologists could've seen him at that moment, they would have diagnosed him with several dozen mental disorders. That would be science's perspective.
The truth, however, was much bleaker. Because those voices weren't a part of his imagination.
Because one of those voices had been heard by countless people for ages, one desolate human at a time.
Because that voice belonged to one of the Olympian gods, whose soul currently resided in Braden.
And that Olympian wanted out.
Thank you for reading, and many thanks to The Sky's Bouquet for their invaluable advice!
I go into slightly more detail in my profile, but here it is - I've been querying literary agents about this story (which is complete). Some of them request the first chapter or first few pages in addition to the cover letter, so quite a few of the agents I've queried have seen this chapter. I would greatly appreciate any critique, because the first page - the first sentence - could be what makes or breaks it with an agent, if the story can capture their attention long enough.
Alas, I cannot offer any tangible rewards, but you will have my eternal gratitude if you can tell me how to improve (but please, no flames). If you have written your own stories, I'll gladly review/critique them if you ask me to (provided that they are in fandoms I'm familiar with). Thanks again!