Sorry for the late update! Thanks to all of you who commented :D I hope you like this chapter, ima introduce someone new ;)
As much as Nico didn't want to admit it, he was glad to have Will come along. They had left the camp behind and shadow-traveled to the town where the hellhound had been spotted. As soon as they had gotten there their ride had abandoned them. When the landed in a clearing near the main entrance Mrs O'Leary had frozen up, her eyes darting around, and her ears perked. She sniffed the air and was gone in a second.
Will looked at Nico a confused look crossing his face "What was that?" he asked, turning back to the shadows where the large hellhound had disappeared.
"I don't know…" Nico muttered, shrugging it off he started to walk towards the main entrance "I bet she doesn't like the scent of the other hound, lets head to the village." He walked through the thick undergrowth before Will could say anything.
As soon as they entered the small town everything went quiet. A group of children that had been playing was ushered into the housed by worried looking adults, others watched from windows and whispered. Nico continued along the main street, his eyes wandering from house to house, he was about to go knock on a door when he heard his voice being called "Nico!" looking over he saw Lucy, a girl about his age, running towards him. She smiled brightly and jumped at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Will grunted in surprise automatically glaring at the girl.
"You came back!" she chirped, hugging the breath out of him "I knew you'd help us!"
She let go of him and yelled "Father! He came back! I told you he would!" as her words echoed around the silent village a tired looking man came from one of the large houses, he closed the door behind him and walked up to the small group.
"I'm glad to see that." He said, his voice raspy "I was hoping that you would be able to help us with our wolf problem." He turned and waved at them to enter the house "Come. We will talk inside." He quickly entered, followed soon by Lucy.
"What's going on?" Will asked, still scowling at the girls disappearing back "Why do these people know you?"
Nico laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head "Well… when I first came here the townspeople were worried about the 'wolf' so they didn't allow any visitors." He paused looking around, then lowering his voice "I kinda told them that I was studying wolves and could help them."
Will rolled his eyes "So you lied to get info."
"Technically it's not lying." Nico snapped, slapping Wills' shoulder "If you think about it I am studying what's causing their problem." Before Will could reply he followed the two others into the house.
They were led into a small family room "Sit." Lucy offered waving them to the couch. When Nico sat down she was quick to claim the spot beside him, causing Will to huff irritably and sit on one of the chairs across from the couch.
"Has anything else happened?" Nico asked, looking at Lucy's' father.
The older man rubbed his hands together nervously, his eyes flittering across the room landing on anything but Nico "The wolf has taken three more sheep, and one of our dogs." He stopped and gathered himself "And one of our children."
Nico just stared at him, thinking of a way to react "Oh… well did you figure out where it lives?"
"We know that it lives in the southern part of the forest." Lucy said, pulling a map out and laying it against the table in the middle of the room. She pointed to a spot on the map "This is the village," she made a line across the map to a grove of dark green trees "We darkened the map where the wolf lives, it's in the thickest part of the forest."
Nico nodded leaning forward to study the map. Lucy leaned against him, pointing out another spot on the map. Will glared at the movement and stood, forcing himself between them "Let me see." He said, pushing Lucy away a little too hard. Lucy glared back at him.
"Careful!" Nico snapped as he moved to make room "We don't want to damage the map." Why Will had sat there was a complete mystery but Nico didn't have time to think about his actions. Shaking the thoughts away he went back to studying the map "Would it be alright if we took this with us?" he asked, looking to Lucy's father.
Nodding he took the map from Nico and carefully rolled it up.
"You should wait until nightfall." Lucy said, shoving aside Will and walking up to Nico "It's most active then." She smiled sweetly at Nico and wrapped her arm around his "I'll show you around, last time you didn't get to see the whole village." Without waiting for his reply she drug him towards the door, pausing only to look back and smirk at Will.
Nico honestly didn't know what was going on. As soon as he had left the house Will had come up and snatched Lucy's hand, saying something about wanting to see the sheep. Nico had ended up walking behind them as they continually bickered about the most useless things.
"This sheep is an ash black, not grey!" Lucy argued, waving to one of the nearby sheep.
"No, ash black is more like that one." Will shot back, pointing to a sheep further out.
"Does this really matter?" Nico asked after his patience finally ran out "Does the color of the nearest sheep really help the case?" he expected them both to shrug and start helping but they both looked back at him and snapped "YES!" and just like that they were back to the argument.
Nico stared at them, dumbfounded. How could two people have a debate on the color of a sheep? Sighing he shook his head and continued along the path, they probably wouldn't notice his absence in time to catch up with him. He walked along the path that would lead him to the southern exit, it didn't take long to reach it "This really is a small village." Nico sighed to himself "What do they have against eachother?"
As soon as he entered the forest a dark feeling came over him. It wasn't like a gut-feeling it literally felt like a weight had been added to his shoulders. The air had turned dry and the shadows danced around him like ghosts. Shadows shouldn't have scared him, he was the son of Hades after-all, but these shadows seemed… alive.
The sound of a scream turned his attention away from the shadows. He sprinted along the faint path, the over grown branches whipping his face and arms. The scream sounded again, this time from his left. Turning sharply he broke through the bushed and into a small clearing, he automatically wished he hadn't. It was a mess. Blood splattered the clearing and a vaguely human shape writhed in a pool of the scarlet liquid.
It was a woman. Her legs were bend at unnatural angles and her arm was nowhere in sight. He neck had a nasty gash along the side, blood poured from the multiple wounds. The scent of metal was heavy as blood continued to soak into the ground around the body. Running up to her Nico swallowed his nausea, kneeling down beside her he studied the wounds. He was surprised the pain hadn't been enough to kill her but she was definitely dead now. Her eyes… or eye, was dull and widened with fear. The socket where her left eye should have been was bleeding, slick with blood.
Nico had seen much worse, but for some reason, looking down at the corpse made him want to throw up. The smell of blood was all he could smell and the still running wounds continued to make the puddle grow around him. The blood had soaked into his jeans, turning them a red color. His hands were sticky with it.
"What happened?" Nico turned and saw Will running towards him.
Standing he turned to face them "I found her like this…" he said "I think the hound must have gotten her."
"Are you okay?" Will asked, running up to him and gently placing his hand on Nico's shoulder "You have some blood on you." He said, panic flickering across his face.
"I'm fine." He looked back down at the corpse "Let's go get someone to get the body." His stomach twisted and he had to look away. Will looked at him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder "Yeah." Let's go."
How was it? I'm still struggling to write in Nico's point of view so please tell me if I should do something different. Thanks for reading! Please review! Oh, and if you don't like graphic scenes you might want to be careful with later chapters, it's going to get worse.