Authors: Jenna Black
memory that I’d actually pointed a gun at another human being and pulled the trigger. Good
thing Anderson couldn’t see my face, or he’d have known how much I was bluffing with my
tough girl act. Hell, maybe he knew anyway.
He was silent for a long moment, and I wondered if he was more surprised or angry at my
bravado.
“He’ll recover,” Anderson finally said, his voice perfectly neutral. “I suppose sending
him after you was a miscalculation on my part. He has a unique ability to get under people’s
skin, and he still believes you killed Emmitt on purpose.”
I raised an eyebrow, though of course he couldn’t see. “You say that as if you
don’t
believe it anymore.”
He sighed, and it may have been my imagination, but I heard a world of sorrow in that
sigh. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maggie is convinced Emmitt had grown weary and set you
up, and I was beginning to agree with her. Then you up and shot Blake. I have to say that seems
more like the act of a cold-blooded schemer than an innocent victim.”
Internally, I cringed at the accusation in his voice. I didn’t want to feel guilty about
shooting Blake, but I couldn’t help it. I’d already killed a man last night, and the fact that it had
been an accident on my part didn’t do much to ease my conscience. I couldn’t help wondering…
If I hadn’t sped up when the driveway had straightened out, would I have been able to swerve in
time to avoid hitting him? I hadn’t thought I’d been going that fast, but the airbag
did
deploy,
which suggested I’d been going faster than I’d realized.
I tried to summon a surge of anger to counter the guilt. “What was I supposed to do? Let
him use that creepy power of his to violate me and then drag me to you so you could torture me?
Are you suggesting only a cold-blooded schemer would do everything in her power to avoid
that?”
There was such a long silence on the other end of the line I thought I might have lost the
signal on my phone.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. Whether he
did
or
not was anyone’s guess. “I don’t suppose any of us are thinking as clearly as we should at the
moment, especially me. Emmitt was my friend for a long, long time. I should have—” His voice
cracked, and he cleared his throat.
My own eyes stung at the pain in Anderson’s voice. I’m such a bleeding heart. But I
couldn’t help mentally putting myself in his shoes. I’d stolen his friend’s life and immortality.
Worse, I claimed that friend had used me to commit suicide. If I were in Anderson’s shoes, I’d
probably lash out at me, too.
“If he was really weary enough to end his life,” Anderson continued, his voice steadier, “I
should have seen it. I should have been able to help him. I’d much rather you were lying about it
than to accept that I was so blind.”
I took a deep, quiet breath, trying to distance myself from Anderson’s pain. Yes, I could
understand he was grieving for his friend, and I could even understand why he didn’t want
Emmitt’s death to have been suicide. But none of that could forgive the threats and the
strong-arm tactics.
“But the reasons for my behavior don’t matter much to you, do they?” Anderson asked as
if he’d read my mind. “I treated you like your guilt was a foregone conclusion last night, and for
that I’m sorry. From now on, how about I presume you’re innocent until proven guilty. And if
you really are innocent, then we need to talk. There’s a lot you don’t know.”
I resisted the urge to snort at the understatement. “I’m happy to talk on the phone for as
long as my battery holds out.”
“In person would be better.”
I laughed. “Maybe for you.”
“For you, too. Nikki, you have no idea the kind of danger you’re in. I know I haven’t
exactly come off to you as one of the good guys, but I am. At least in comparison to Konstantin
and the rest of the Olympians. They will stop at nothing to get their hands on you. You can’t go
up against them alone; and I promise you, you wouldn’t like what would happen if they captured
you.”
“Why would they want to capture me?”
“Because Descendants of Artemis are exceedingly rare. Contrary to popular belief, she
wasn’t literally a virgin goddess, but she bore only one child, and her line has nearly died out.
She was a goddess of the hunt, and a lot of the skills her descendants possess would be of great
use to the Olympians.”
“Go on,” I prompted. “Prove to me that you’re a good source of information.”
“I believe in the proverb that with great power comes great responsibility. The Olympians
believe that with great power comes great privilege and no responsibility whatsoever. From their
perspective, they are better than everyone else, and that’s the natural order of the universe. They
are selfishness incarnate, but as reprehensible as I find that, it’s not why I oppose them as I do.
“I understand that Maggie explained the origins of the
Liberi Deorum
last night.”
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. Even after all I’d seen, there was a part of me that
desperately wanted to deny I believed what Maggie had told me.
“So she explained that anyone descended from the ancient gods can steal the immortality
of a
Liberi
?”
“Yes.”
“Because Descendants can potentially steal their immortality, the Olympians see them as
a threat that needs to be eliminated. For centuries, they have hunted Descendants. Generally,
when they find a family of Descendants, they kill all the adults and all the children over the age
of five. They then raise those youngest children themselves, indoctrinating them into their
beliefs. If the children show any signs that they question the ‘natural order,’ they are disposed
of.”
I sank down onto the edge of my bed, knees suddenly weak at the images Anderson’s
words brought to mind. “By disposed of, you mean killed.”
“Yes. Remember, as far as the Olympians are concerned, they are the pinnacle of
perfection, and everyone else is expendable. Even children they have raised themselves.”
“Why do they raise the children at all? Why not…” I let the question trail off because I
couldn’t put the horror into words.
“Because only a mortal Descendant can kill a
Liberi
. The Olympians can’t kill rival
Liberi
themselves, so they need pet Descendants to do the dirty work for them. That’s how they
raise these children—with the philosophy that if they are good enough, the Olympians will one
day give them a sacrificial
Liberi
so they can become immortal themselves.
“And if you don’t find all of this distasteful enough, know also that only those descended
from the
Greek
gods are considered worthy to become
Liberi
. If the Olympians find a family descended from one of the other pantheons, they leave no survivors.
“They want you to join them because they believe they can use your skills to help them
hunt down and slaughter more Descendants. Without a Descendant of Artemis in their employ,
the Olympians have to hunt Descendants using only conventional methods. They’re always on
the lookout for unfamiliar people with visible glyphs. If they find a Descendant, they’ll extract a
family history and go looking for all the relatives. If you join them, they’ll use your powers to
track down the ones they can’t find.”
“That’s never going to happen,” I said immediately. “I wouldn’t help them kill
anyone
,
much less helpless children!”
“That’s what you think now,” Anderson countered, “but the Olympians are very good
at… persuasion. Come back to the house. You’ll be much safer with us than you would be out on
your own.”
I laughed briefly, then swallowed it before it could turn into hysteria. “You’ve got to be
kidding me! You let Jamaal practically choke me to death last night, you yourself threatened to
torture me, and then you sent Blake with his slimy lust power after me, and you expect me to just
hand myself over because you claim the other guys are worse?”
“I realize that—”
“You don’t realize a goddamn thing!” I squeezed the phone so hard I accidentally hung
up on Anderson. Then I decided my subconscious had the right idea, and I turned the phone off.
Maybe he was telling me the truth. But I had no way of knowing. And even if he
was
, I
saw no reason why I would be better off hanging out at Psycho Central. Jamaal had made it
crystal clear that he wanted to make me suffer, and Blake no doubt hated my guts after what I’d
done to him this morning.
Geez, I was just making friends all over the place.
I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose where an
exhaustion headache was starting up. I might not be willing to hand myself over to Anderson, but
I was no closer to figuring out what I
should
do.
As a child, I’d been a real pro at getting into trouble. There was a good reason I’d been
bounced from foster home to foster home so often before I’d landed with the Glasses. I couldn’t
blame the other foster families for getting rid of me. I’d been well on my way to becoming a
juvenile delinquent, getting angrier and angrier each time a family gave up on me, my behavior
worsening each time. But as much trouble as I’d gotten into, as close as I’d come to spending
some quality time in juvie, none of it came close to preparing me for the trouble I was in now.
Between the physical exhaustion and the sense of hopelessness that enveloped me, I
couldn’t help curling up on my side, clutching a pillow to my chest. In no time, I was fast asleep.
The dream was familiar, one that I’d had countless times
over the years. More a
memory than a dream, really, though I wasn’t sure how much of the memory was real, and how
much was pieced together by my subconscious. I’d been awfully young at the time, but in my
dreams, at least, the memory was crystal clear.
It was a nasty, rainy day, the air so thick with moisture you could drown in it. The rain
should have made it cooler, but instead it merely made it feel like we were walking through a
steam room.
I don’t know where we were, exactly, except that it was in the South somewhere and that
it was a long way from home. My mom was carrying my baby brother, Billy, his chubby little
arms lost under her thick hair as he wailed and tried to hide from the rain. Momma murmured
assurances, shielding his face with her other hand. Until Billy had started to cry, she’d been
holding my hand. I kept plucking at her sleeve, wanting her to take my hand again, but she was
too busy with Billy.
We’d been walking for what felt like miles, after having spent a day and a night riding on
a stinky, crowded bus. I was hungry. I was soaked through. My feet hurt. And I wanted to curl up
to sleep in my cozy, comfortable bed at home.
“Momma! Pick me up!” I whined, at the end of what little patience I had at the age of
four. “My feet hurt.”
“Hush, sweetheart,” she said, absently reaching down to brush a dripping lock of hair out
of my eyes. The stupid baby cried even louder once Momma wasn’t holding him with both
hands. I hated him for it even though I knew I was supposed to love him. “We’re almost there.”
I didn’t know where “there” was, but I didn’t see anything familiar on this run-down city
street, so I knew “there” wasn’t home, and home was the only “there” I wanted.
“Wanna go home!” I yelled, stamping my foot. Then I decided to see if I could out-wail
my brother. If I was loud enough, maybe Momma would give me what I wanted. It always
seemed to work for stupid Billy.
Momma closed her eyes in pain and weariness when I started to cry, but she didn’t take
me home. Instead, we continued to trudge through the rain. I tried going on a sit-down strike, but
Momma grabbed my hand and dragged me along. I was too old to be carried, she informed me,
so I was just going to have to walk.
Finally, when I was sure I couldn’t walk another step even with Momma pulling on me,
we climbed a set of weathered stone steps. Momma pushed open a door, and I followed her into
a cool, dark entryway. It seemed we were finally “there.”
I wiped my dripping hair away from my face as my eyes adjusted to the low light, which
seemed to come almost entirely from candles. Ahead of us, a pair of doors were propped open to reveal a long aisle with rows of pews on either side. The rain had darkened the afternoon skies so
that only the faintest glow of light shone through the stained glass windows, but a discreet
spotlight illuminated a gruesome statue of Christ on the cross.
I shivered in the air-conditioned breeze. Seconds ago, I’d have done anything to get
inside out of the rain, and to sit down, but I didn’t like this church. Maybe it was a premonition.
Or maybe it was just that I was reliving the memory/dream from my adult perspective, knowing
what was going to happen.
Momma led me down the aisle, to a pew in the middle of the church. There were a couple
of old ladies sitting at the very front, but other than them we were the only people in the place.
Our footsteps echoed, despite the strip of carpet down the center of the aisle. It was then that I
realized the baby had finally stopped crying.
Momma nudged me into the pew, and I sat down gratefully, no matter how uneasy the