Lady of the Underworld Read online

  Lady of the Underworld

  Operation Hades Book 1

  Skyler Andra

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Welcome to my “Operation” series, featuring a world of godly avatars. What’s an avatar? They’re a human embodied with the essence and power of a god.

  Previously, I published Operation Cupid, featuring avatars of Eros, Hermes, Ares, and Athena. Hades features in books 2 and 3. You don’t need to read the Operation Cupid series to understand this story, but it will help to familiarize yourself with the characters, especially since Cupid and her men will return in Lord of the Underworld, Operation Hades 2. For your reference, Lady of the Underworld is set prior to the events in Operation Cupid Book 3. Lord of the Underworld and Rulers of the Underworld will be set after it.

  ‘OPERATION’ SERIES UNIVERSE

  Operation Hades

  Lady of the Underworld (coming Oct 2019) set before Awakened Love. Preorder it here https://books2read.com/u/mBOQyA

  Lord of the Underworld (coming early 2020) set after Awakened Love.

  Operation Cupid (completed)

  Battlefield Love

  Quicksilver Love

  Awakened Love

  Stupid Cupid (a short story)

  Operation Osiris - available exclusively in the Prophecy of Magic boxset https://books2read.com/prophecyofmagic-ey

  Chapter 1

  Autumn

  Death. Afterlife. A dreary day for a funeral. Each one a dull prospect I considered as I struggled to carry the giant flower arrangement to the van in the parking lot out back of Pearl’s. Nothing said goodbye like a giant foam baseball stuffed with red, white, and blue roses to match the deceased’s favorite team—something I never thought I’d see in my days as a florist. But grieving people go to all efforts and expenses to bid farewell to their departed loved ones.

  I hoped the client liked it. It had taken me a good three hours to decorate the foam with just the right touch of white roses. Earned me three decent thorn pricks too, which I’d covered with Band-Aids. Pearl, my boss, thought it funny to stock the shop with Sleeping Beauty Band-Aids. Ha ha! Hilarious. Rose thorn pricks. Sleeping curses. True love’s kiss. Get it?

  Another thorn nicked me again as I clutched the display in one arm and opened the van’s side door.

  Junipers!

  A morbid thought entered my mind. Maybe I’d contract some weird-ass fungal disease from the thorns and die a horrible, painful death where my skin turned black. Then poof. It’d be over. An image of myself in an open coffin flashed in my mind. Bright green hair styled with soft curls and a matching floral hippie dress with my hands clutching a blue iris—my favorite flower. And a jacket covering the hideous black mass of fungus that would have eaten my arm away.

  The idea of my unfortunate demise, courtesy of a microscopic fungus, left me wondering what happened once a person left this world. Did an afterlife exist? I’d never subscribed to any religion, so I didn’t exactly have specific beliefs when it came to death. I hadn’t even thought about it in years until this morning.

  Six years ago, when my mom died of breast cancer, I faced death in all its horrible glory. At the time, I contemplated the meaning of life and death, the universe, afterlife, souls, the wheel of reincarnation, and other concepts. None in particular had grabbed me.

  I preferred to look on the bright side, so I don’t know why my thoughts descended into darkness on this overcast and drizzly morning.

  “Stop thinking about it,” I chided myself through exerted pants while fumbling with the oversized arrangement.

  Although potting mix bags were pretty heavy, florists were not gold medal Olympians in weightlifting. We tried to stick to our lane by selling a single rose in wrapping or a bouquet in a vase. Our expertise lay in the delivery of floral arrangements that conveyed apologies, brightened foyers, scented homes, and sending off the dead with beauty rather than competitively creating and displaying awkwardly large arrangements. Classics lines on cards like, I’m sorry for screwing your best friend. Or Honey, you’re always right. I should never argue with you again. But every once in a while we’d get a strange order like this, and well, what could you do when the client had paid five hundred bucks? It paid my wage and kept me in a job.

  I shivered in the fall drizzle as I loaded the display into the back of the waiting van, careful not to squash the flowers on the sides. Hard experience told me the roses would bruise if I did much more than touch them. Sure, the foam wasn’t exactly heavy, but the ten pounds of flowers and sheer size of the display—twice as wide as me—made it tricky to negotiate.

  Gently, I shifted the arrangement, nestling it next to the van’s wall before bracing it with foam rectangles so that it wouldn’t fall and roll all over the back in transit. Not that it would amid the rest of the load consisting of vases with more blue, red, and white flowers to be placed around the coffin and viewing room.

  Yawning, I rolled the side door closed. My morning cup of black tea hadn’t made a difference yet. I was still half-asleep from working late and getting up early. That’d teach me for working two jobs.

  During the day, I enjoyed the delights of being a florist as it meant accepting flower deliveries of every possible kind and storing them in the fridge for preservation, followed by sorting them into different arrangements based on color, flower type, and those that required particular care.

  At night, I turned into a propagation technician, cultivating tubestock for nurseries. Every night I got my gloved hands dirty by planting seeds with water crystals, seaweed fertilizer, and mycorrhiza. Junipers! There I went with the fungi again. At least this one played a beneficial role in propagation, colonizing the root system of a host plant, and providing increased water and nutrient absorption capabilities. Basically, it gave the seed a better chance of survival and growth into a seedling.

  Plants were my world, and I spent every living moment with them. It was also probably why I didn’t have a boyfriend or any friends at all outside the industry. They just didn’t understand my passion. Or my jokes. Like what do you call flowers who are bffs? Buds! Classic.

  I got the calling to nature early on when an old, witchy woman at a fair gifted me a necklace—a cross with two back-to-front crescent moons dangling on it attached to a chain.

  “A gift for the Lady of Spring,” she’d said with a smile, her arthritic fingers stiff as she placed the necklace into my palm.

  “What do you say, Autumn?” my mother had prompted me in response.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I replied before dawdling off with the gift in my palms.

  Clutching my necklace at the memory, I admired the brazen Autumn colors of the trees lining the street for a few moments, before slipping into the front seat of the van. With a sigh, I wiped the drizzle from my forehead. A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed frizzy green wisps surrounding my face, thanks to the rain. I smoothed them down in an attempt to look decent for Mr. Cotterly, the client. He was a fussy old fart who demanded his staff and contractors to loo
k respectful for the dead. Not like they knew any different!

  One twist of the key in the ignition got the van started without too much of a problem. Boy, was I glad to score the good truck over the one that needed a pair of pliers to turn the key. Left me in a pretty good mood when I finally hit the road.

  I switched on the radio and lo and behold, a song with the chorus, “Everyone loves a funeral,” jammed through the speakers. Immediately, I turned it off. Talk about creepy. To get my mind off it, I hummed another song, Don’t Stop Be-leafing… because I just loved flower puns.

  When most people think of flowers, they bring up images of wedding bouquets, prom corsages, the just-because bouquets, and the good old sorry-I-messed-up flowers. The last being my favorite. Oh, the joy of listening to the dirt bag boyfriend or husband grovel out their card apologies to me when they ordered. My job provided a fascinating insight into relationships. And I wasn’t just talking about romantic relationships, either. I observed all sorts of connections: friendships, work colleagues, acquaintances, family, and even group associations.

  Besides those sales, our main stock in trade at Pearl’s, as I mentioned, was funerals. Pearl liked to say, not everyone gets married, not everyone goes to prom, and not everyone has to say sorry for sleeping with their significant other’s sibling, but everyone dies. She’s hilarious and has been in flowers longer than I’d been alive.

  When I’d shown up at her shop at seventeen for an after-school job, she said that I would do just fine as long as I was willing to spend the afternoon slightly soggy after unpacking the flowers for the front. In a way, she was like a second mother to me, especially after mine had died. She taught me everything I knew. That had been six years ago.

  Before I left this morning, she examined the baseball display with a critical eye before nodding. “Job well done, Autumn,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “If he still had eyes to see with, the dead man would be weeping with joy at how nice that looks.”

  But I wasn’t thinking about the dearly departed, his funeral, or relatives. Instead, I was thinking about how nice it would be to have the day off after this ‘one quick thing’ I had to do for the boss. Other people might be staring out at the grey drizzle and thinking that their day was ruined, but I saw a fine day for me to plant bulbs and leave them out on my porch for a watering. Then I’d run down to the store to grab some ingredients and set up a big pot of soup to boil while indulging in some serious me-time after working nine days straight.

  By me-time I meant snuggling under a blanket on the couch, binge-watching gardening shows. Probably one of those reality TV ones because I got a kick out of clueless schmucks thrown into designing and creating a garden while tearing their hair out, stressing over materials and expenses. Certainly brought them down to Earth. Pardon the pun… did I mention I liked them? A LOT.

  A twenty-minute drive out into the suburbs took me through the housing estates, then past the mall and a couple of schools, which meant getting stuck in the school traffic. Finally, I arrived at Cotterly’s Funeral Home, a modest cream building with pleasant gardens. If only the owner was as nice.

  Fussy, particular, and sometimes a little mean, Mr. Cotterly looked like he had stepped out of Central Casting for a Victorian undertaker. Apparently, he felt that death was a formal affair. Maybe not black tie, but everyone should darned well be wearing at least business casual and up. Not my favorite client to work with, but as one of Pearl’s best customers we had to give him top-quality service. Unfortunately, my boss always made me go deal with him these days. Said she was too old to deal with schmucks.

  By the time I pulled up at the loading dock, he was already impatiently waiting for me.

  Impeccable in his black suit and twenty-four-carat glare, he said, “It’s about time,” when I hopped down from the van’s raised seat.

  Good morning to you. Dreary day, huh. Let me give you a hand with that. Things he’d never say. Come to think of it, he never engaged in small talk or even smiled at me.

  “Hey Mr. Cotterly.” I disarmed him with a grin before throwing in one of my classic flower jokes as I got out of the car. “How do two flowers greet each other?”

  He gabbed his lapels and shook his head.

  I answered him anyway. “Hey bud, how’s it growing?” I laughed, reaching for the sliding side door of the van. Because nothing said F you to a grumpy, old man better than subtly teaching him a lesson on human greetings.

  “We needed the delivery at nine,” he said pointedly.

  “Then I’m just on time.” The key with Mr. Cotterly was to smile and keep moving. He wouldn’t stop you if you were actually doing a decent job, and no one was paying me to fight with a senior citizen funeral director. I mean, they could… I was always pinching pennies while making about a buck better than minimum wage at Pearl’s. For five dollars more an hour, I’d happily stand there and argue with him.

  “Punctuality means being at least fifteen minutes early, or at least it did in my day.” Mr. Cotterly’s jowls tightened. “It was only what was expected from the trades…”

  “Mm-hmm,” I responded, cheerfully collecting the arrangement. I was tempted to take out one of his eyes with a rose thorn, but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of my wrath. That I reserved for my mailman, who delivered me crushed seeds and broken packets of water crystals. “Hey, do you know why flowers are so good at problem solving?”

  Mr. Cotterly checked his wristwatch.

  “They know how to nip things in this bud.” Boom chicka boom! Got him! And with that, I asked, “Viewing Room B, right?”

  Mr. Cotterly blinked as if expecting me to bite back. “Yes. And remember you only have–”

  “I know where I’m going. This isn’t my first–” I realized that rodeo and goat-rope were definitely the wrong comparisons for Mr. Cotterly, though Pearl would have cackled. “Don’t worry about me.”

  To my surprise, he softened just a touch. “I usually don’t. You’ve always done very well by us,” he admitted.

  Wait for it… three, two, one.

  “Now if you could only be a little timelier…” There came the kicker. He couldn’t say something nice without a little insult.

  I’d checked the clock in the van before exiting. 9:02a.m. Two minutes late. With the grey clouds and drizzle there’d been a fair bit of traffic on the roads this morning. Moms were dropping off their children at school earlier to avoid the rain. The man didn’t even allow me to use Mother Nature as an excuse.

  “Of course, Mr. Cotterly.” I feigned a smile and stormed forward, jostling the display as I entered the rear of the funeral parlor.

  According to Pearl, the deceased had once been a big deal—in his wife’s eyes at least—and she wanted to make sure that everyone knew it. Two days ago, she sat in the consultation area at Pearl’s, describing a vision of white, red, and blue flowers and hanging arrangements, as well as flowers scattered everywhere there was free space. Spare no expense, she said. Until I had totaled up the price for her. Then her husband had become a little less deserving, but still achieved an impressive display for what she could afford. Not that I was judging. My mom didn’t have any flowers when she died.

  In the viewing room, a big picture of Alan Parsons rested on the platform next to where they’d raised the coffin. Round-faced with a good smile, balding and wearing glasses, his image screamed ‘middle school principal’ to me. I smiled at the picture as I set up the floral sprays and the baseball display.

  He looks like he was a nice guy, I thought.

  A baseball fan at heart, I bet he would have loved the flowers that I had put together for him to represent his favorite team. Perfect way to send him off, if I said so myself.

  But… I also knew the truth about it, that the flowers and everything that Mr. Cotterly and I did was for the living and not for the dead. The dead were beyond such cares, and anyway, to put it bluntly from the point of view of someone who lived in a studio apartment and ate rice and beans at least
four times a week, they weren’t paying my bills.

  With no further work to go back to for the day and a good thirty minutes before the show got on the road, I took my time setting up the flowers. Large and unwieldy, the baseball display required a bit of effort to stabilize and prevent it from toppling over at an inopportune moment. As a result, I had to fiddle with the base.

  While I crouched, straightening out some stalks that had gotten bent during transport, a chill ran up my spine. It was hard to describe. Not a fear chill. More like a strange déjà vu, a moment of recognition that leaves you feeling just a little spooked.

  It was probably Mr. Cotterly glaring at me or Mrs. Parsons behind me. Maybe even one of the mourners. They weren’t due to get there until 9:30a.m., but that didn’t stop people. Gathering my wits about me, I supposed I should find out.

  Chapter 2

  Hades

  Cold. Empty. Silent. That was how I described my palace after she left. Even after five hundred years I missed the echo of her laughter, her playful tease, the sound of her skin as I smacked it when I had my way with her. Now all that remained was the constant lap of water at the edge of my throne room where the River Styx met my palace—an endless sound that failed to drown out my loneliness.

  My eyes drifted from the ferry bobbing in the water to my golden goblet on my dinner table, half-filled with blueberry and grape wine made and formulated to my exact palate here in the Underworld. But my drink remained untouched. I did not feel like consuming it.