Seventeen-year-old April Parker wakes up in an underground facility, a shock bracelet on her wrist and a five-day countdown on the clock. Dozens of other teens share her inexplicable fate, but their unseen captors never intervene no matter how brutal conditions become. When the ruthless - and unnervingly magnetic - Marcus seizes control, April's trauma-forged instinct is to lay low. But protecting her friends drives her to bargain with the boy she should fear most - a boy whose reality fractures with every tick. Then the countdown ends, and the real terror begins. Powers ignite. Alliances shatter. And predators are born. And with a saboteur among them determined to keep the doors closed forever, escaping what comes next may be the only way to survive it.

"Y-you," she stuttered, staring at the handsome man sitting on the sleek black throne, "you're..." He rolled his eyes, waving his hand impatiently and said, "Hades. Come on, say it with me. Ha-des." "Hades," Ariel breathed out, still not believing the sight before her. Every picture she had seen of the gods had not depicted Hades' beauty. The god sitting before her was not a crusty old man with a white beard; no, he was a Calvin Klein model. "Yes," Hades clasped his hands together and grimaced, "the God of Death and riches; that's me." Ariel nodded, still refusing to believe but knowing she had to and Hades' grimace turned even bitter, "And you, darling, will be staying with me for quite some time." ~*~ Cover: _nymphomaniac Published: 8/6/14