The Angel of Death

Chapter Two

"Where to start? I guess, it's easier to say where I haven't been." I watched as Will pulled on a pair of gloves and started unwinding the bandage around my ankle. I tipped my head back to look at the ceiling. "I jumped around a lot. I guess it would've been easier to start in one place and work my way on, but whatever." I winced as Will tugged on a part of the bandage that was stuck to my skin with blood.

"Where was your favourite place to go?" He asked, carefully working the cloth free. "Italy," I said without hesitation. "It was really nice to see it again. A lot has changed since I was a kid." Will nodded, smiling a little.

"I bet."

I rolled my eyes, watching as he pulled the last of the bandage away, revealing the raw, split skin that wrapped around the bottom of my ankle and the puffy, bruised state of the ankle itself.

"What the Hades did you do?" He asked, peering closer at the injury, which was slowly oozing blood again. I shrugged.

"It's a long story."

"Well, start talking. I'm gonna have to stitch this." I sighed.

"I was in Mississippi, about three days ago. I was chasing the ghost of a particularly vengeful slave trader. I had tracked him to this old abandoned shack of a house along a river bank. Unfortunately, he had travelled to the Underworld with his whip." I winced as Will began to stitch, tugging the raw edges of my skin closed.

"He still had it, and just as I was catching up to him, he lashed out with it. It wrapped around my ankle, and then I... I fell down the river bank. Which was very steep. And rocky. But I got him in the end." Will laughed, tugging on the thread.

"Only you, Nico. Only you."

"Oh yeah? How many times has Percy gotten injured in stupid ways? How many times has Calypso burnt herself on her boyfriend? How many–"

"Jeez, I get it, alright alright." He laughed.

Will finished with the stitches, carefully re-wrapping the injury in clean bandage. He stood up, peeling his gloves off.

"Alright, it looks like a bad sprain. I have this new walking cast prototype I've been working on, and I have one back in my office. I'm gonna pop out and get it, you can get cleaned up and changed while I'm gone."

After he had left, closing the door behind him, I stood and carefully made my way to the large bathroom. It held a shower stall, a bath sunk into the floor, an ornate sink and another large mirror. The room was white, with onyx and silver accents, as opposed to the main cabin, which was the opposite way around, black with white and silver accents.

The only colour came from the photos hung above my bed, and the clothes I had left in the closet. I kind of wished the place wasn't so dark, whoever had designed cabin 13 obviously had some pretty stereotypical ideas about how children of Hades live.

The shower was refreshing. I changed into a pair of dark grey sweats when I got out, walking out of the bathroom scrubbing a towel through my hair, drying it as much as I could.

Will was sitting on my bed, bent over something made of some kind of light-grey material. He straightened up when I walked in, holding up the contraption, which I could now see was an ankle brace, made of steel-grey fabric and plastic-y looking supports.

"Hey, you were in the shower when I got back so–" he stopped speaking suddenly, noticing I wasn't wearing a shirt. A light pink blush spread over his cheeks, matching mine. He stared for a few seconds, until he jumped up.

"You never said you got tattoos!" He came close, examining the aforementioned ink. I laughed a little.

"Never came up," I said as he walked a full circle around me. My right arm had a full sleeve of ink, from my shoulder down to my wrist. It was entirely made up of purple oleander, the colours so muted it might not have had any colour at all.