Dark Descendant (5 page)

I shook my head. “Not exactly. He originally hired me to find you, then he asked me to

try to learn more about … um …” I’d kind of glossed over the whole cult thing when I’d

explained to Anderson, and I didn’t want to blurt out anything tactless now, either.

Maggie grinned at me, a surprisingly genuine expression, considering her obvious

sorrow. “I can only guess what he might have told you. He claimed that I’d fallen in with a

bunch of loonies. Is that the gist of it?”

I couldn’t help returning her grin. “Yeah, basically.”

“And then tonight …?”

“Tonight he said you’d called him and were ready to leave. I was supposed to meet him

here as an extra witness.” I frowned as I realized how flimsy Emmitt’s story had been. There was

a reason my gut had been telling me to say no, but my desire to escape from my bad date had

overridden my common sense. It would have been so much better if I’d told Jim I had to meet a

client and then driven straight home. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“Then he surprised you on a dark, icy road when you had no time to stop or swerve.”

I nodded, but couldn’t find the voice to speak.

“The goddamn selfish bastard,” Maggie said thickly, shaking her head as a single tear

snaked down her cheek. She reached up and dashed it away angrily.

“Do you … Do you know why he did it?” I asked softly, wondering if it was any of my

business.

She let out a heavy sigh. “He was getting old. Old and tired. I knew that, but he was too

much of a tough guy to admit how bad it was.”

“Old?” I cried, totally confused. “The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five,

tops.” Truthfully, I thought he was closer to twenty-two.

Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “He was more than twenty-five. Trust me.”

I gaped. “Even if I’m off by a bit, there’s no way in hell he qualified as ‘old.’”

“What if you’re off by an order of magnitude?”

“I don’t believe in woo-woo,” I said, without great conviction.

Another wry smile. “You might want to start. I’m afraid right now you’re neck-deep in

woo-woo and still sinking.”

I grimaced. Yeah, that was kind of what I was afraid of. “Where’s a life vest when you

need it?” I joked feebly.

Maggie reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a slim compact. “There’s

something I think you should see,” she said, thumbing the compact open and then handing it to

me.

Hesitantly, I took the compact from her hand. The makeup inside looked ordinary

enough, so I guessed that the something I needed to see would be in the mirror. Holding my

breath, I opened the compact all the way and looked at my reflection.

I looked awful. There was a big lump on my temple, and my right eye was thoroughly

blackened. The entire left side of my face was one big bruise from where Jamaal had kicked

me—though the bruise looked like it was about three days old. But clearly, that wasn’t what

Maggie had wanted me to see.

No, what Maggie wanted me to see was the iridescent mark on my forehead. It vaguely

resembled a half moon with an arrow through its middle. My mouth dropped open and my eyes

widened as I reached up to touch the mark that quite obviously was not a tattoo.

“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.

“It’s a glyph,” Maggie explained, holding out her hand so I could see the mark on the

back of it. Hers looked like stylized circular lightning bolt. “It represents whose line you’re

descended from.”

“Line?” My voice sounded hollow, and I stared intently at the mirror. The glyph wouldn’t

go away, no matter how many times I blinked or how I rubbed it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie run a finger over the glyph on her hand.

“Mine represents Zeus,” she said. “I’ve never seen one like yours before, but Anderson says it’s

Artemis. I didn’t think she had any descendants—she was supposed to be a virgin goddess—but

I’ll take his word for it.”

“Artemis.” I sounded like a mentally challenged myna bird, but none of this was quite

sinking in. My rational mind threw in the towel, deciding to go hide somewhere safe until the

world returned to order.

“Emmitt was from Hades’ line. Jamaal’s a descendant of Kali, and he and Emmitt bonded

like brothers because both of them possessed death magic. Emmitt was mentoring him, teaching

him control, but Jamaal still had a long way to go. Without Emmitt to balance him, it’s hard to

know if he’ll be able to hold it together.

“You also met Logan, right?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “He’s Tyr.” She cocked her

head at me. “Are you familiar with Tyr?”

Totally numb—and not comprehending a word of what I was hearing—I shook my head.

“He was an old Germanic war god. Descendants of war gods tend to be kind of cranky,

but Logan is one of the most easygoing people I know. Oh, and I almost forgot Blake.” She

made a face, making it clear Blake was not her favorite person. “He’s a descendant of Eros.

Despite that cutesy Cupid tattoo he’s got, there’s nothing even remotely cherubic about him.

He’s easily as deadly as Jamaal. He’s just not as in-your-face about it.”

I remembered the way Blake had looked at me while he was playing bad cop. That was

plenty in-your-face for me.

Maggie gave my shoulder another sympathetic squeeze. “I know this has got to be

overwhelming, and you probably don’t believe half of what I’ve said. I’ll give you the quick

highlights and then give you some time to try to absorb it all.

“Anderson and the rest of us are what is known as
Liberi Deorum
, which means ‘children

of the gods’ in Latin. A long time ago, when the ancient gods were still around, they had children

with mortals. Before the gods left Earth, they gave each of their children a seed from the Tree of

Life. This seed made them immortal, and the
Liberi
thought they were gods themselves as a

result. The only limitation they had—as far as they knew—was that they couldn’t make their

own children immortal, because the gods took the Tree of Life with them when they left. What

the first
Liberi
didn’t know until too late was that anyone with even a drop of divine blood—in

other words, all their children and descendants—could steal their immortality by killing them.”

Wow. That was one hell of a detailed delusion. I had to admit, there was something

decidedly weird going on. But come on, children of the gods? Really?

“The glyph on your hand marks you as a Descendant of Artemis,” Maggie continued.

“When you killed Emmitt, you also stole his immortality. Not on purpose, I know,” she hastened

to add.

“So I’m immortal now?” I asked, trying to hide my skepticism the best I could—which

wasn’t well at all.

“I know it sounds crazy. But yes, you are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The guys—especially Jamaal—think you already knew all this and staged the accident

to steal Emmitt’s immortality deliberately.”

Perfectly logical—if you bought into the craziness in the first place, which I wasn’t about

to do. “But
you
think Emmitt committed suicide, because he knew I was a Descendant of

Artemis and was actually capable of killing him?” I was well aware of my tone of voice, that I

was talking to her like I was humoring a dangerous psycho, but I couldn’t help it.

Maggie nodded. “I don’t know how he found you, but he must have seen the glyph on

your face and decided to use you.”

“But the glyph only showed up a little while ago!” Had I caught an inconsistency in her

story?

“It’s been there all along. It’s just that only
Liberi
can see it.”

Some of this was beginning to make a weird kind of sense, and I began to worry about

my own sanity. Maybe the blows to my head had rattled my brain around more than I knew. But

Maggie was the closest thing I had to an ally in this loony bin, and I needed to take advantage of

that while I could.

“It’s all a little much to take in,” I said, because I didn’t have it in me to actually say I

believed her.

“I know,” she said with a gentle smile. “And it’s all right. You don’t have to pretend to

believe me. I’m not offended.”

Maggie was definitely the nicest of the cultists. It was time to test just
how
nice.

“Thanks for being so understanding,” I said.

“Hey, we girls have to stick together here in Testosteroneville.”

“Yeah, about that …”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you out,” Maggie said.

“Please, Maggie. I think Anderson’s going to … interrogate me. And I don’t think that’s

going to go so well for me.” I didn’t have to force the shudder.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be all right. I’d let you out if I could, but

Anderson gave me an order, and disobeying his orders isn’t such a great idea.”

I remembered Jamaal’s scream, and felt just a little guilty for asking Maggie to defy

Anderson. Not enough to stop asking, though.

“Maggie, I—”

But she’d had enough, rising to her feet and cutting me off. “I can’t, Nikki. I just can’t.

I’ll get you some clean bedding, some towels, and some toiletries, but that’s the best I can do.”

She started toward the door, and I slid off the bed, wondering if I could barrel past her

and escape. I didn’t like my odds, but I might have tried it anyway if my wounded side hadn’t

screamed in pain. Apparently, I’d stood too fast. By the time I was able to breathe through the

pain, Maggie was gone and the door was closed.

FIVE

Maggie brought the supplies
she had promised. If I had been inclined to stick my head

in the sand and pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I might have been able to curl

up on the cot in something resembling comfort and gotten some sleep. Of course, sleeping was

the last thing on my mind; I kept thinking Anderson was going to come back to “question” me.

He never showed. Maybe Maggie convinced him that I was telling the truth. Or maybe he

just thought the anticipation of pain would crack me faster than the pain itself.

Whatever the reason, no one came for me through the long hours of the night. For a

while, I was treated to the comforting sound of Jamaal pounding on a door and yelling at the top

of his lungs. Apparently, Anderson had locked
him
in one of these basement rooms, too, and he

wasn’t shy about letting everyone know he was unhappy about it.

Every time I heard his voice, I found myself selfconsciously rubbing my throat, where I

should have had bruises galore from his attempt to strangle me to death. I didn’t have a mirror,

but as far as I could tell by touch, there wasn’t any bruising at all.

Of course, everything Maggie had told me had to be bullshit. Right? There was a

perfectly rational explanation for everything that had happened tonight. Damned if I could figure

out what it was, though.

Locked as I was in a room without windows, and wearing a broken watch, my internal

clock was my only way to keep track of time. No matter how scared and freaked out I was, as the

hours crept by, exhaustion sat more and more heavily on my shoulders. When the pillow started

to look inviting, I forced myself to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. It helped

me feel more alert for all of about five seconds.

I never consciously made the decision to lie down and sleep, but when the door to my cell

next cracked open, the sound of squealing hinges woke me up with a start. My heart instantly

went on red alert, pounding adrenaline through my system. I leapt to my feet, wide awake. My

side didn’t scream at me for the sudden movement, but I was too alarmed to be relieved.

Standing in the doorway, grinning as if my terror was the funniest thing he’d ever seen,

was yet another one of Emmitt’s “cult members.” This one was Jack Gillespie, and he looked a

bit like a transplanted surfer-dude. His curly, dark blond hair was streaked with lighter

blond—an effect that was probably supposed to look like sun-bleaching, but was a little too even

to be anything but man-made. His skin was a deep, skin-cancer tan, and in the handful of times

I’d seen him, he’d always been wearing torn jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt, despite the cold.

I shook off my fear and narrowed my eyes at him. “Has Anderson ordered you guys to

take turns coming to see me, or what?” I asked. Unless there was another cultist I wasn’t aware

of, I had now met all but one of the men Emmitt had had me “investigating.”

Jack’s grin didn’t falter. “If Anderson had ordered me to come down here and talk to you,

I probably wouldn’t be here. I’m not too good with orders.”

I rubbed my eyes. Now that the first surge of adrenaline had faded, I remembered how

utterly exhausted I was. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been asleep, but I felt

like I could sleep another six or eight hours, easy. I wasn’t in the mood for witty banter.

“Are you just here to stare at me like I’m an animal in a zoo, or is there something you

want?”

He leaned casually against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over what his tight T-shirt

advertised was a very nice chest. “I’ll go away if I’m interrupting your beauty sleep. But I

thought you might sleep better in your own bed.”

My heart leapt at the thought, though my rational mind immediately proclaimed the

suggestion too good to be true.

“So you’re letting me go?” I asked, making no attempt to mask my skepticism.