Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven (7 page)

I narrowed my gaze and looked at him. “I doubt you’ve ever had the people you trust most force you to kill the person you love.”

He stopped dead on the sidewalk. “I watched my parents killed before my very eyes by Zeus himself, in a fit of pique. I was ten. You see, Artemis, my mother, dared to resist his charms, his advances,” he took a step closer to me, “and when my father, Apollo, intervened to save her, he too was killed by Zeus’s rage. I watched him, powerless to do anything to stop it, until there was nothing left but ashes when the fire from the electricity subsided. I have lived in the presence of monsters my entire life and tried to never become one myself. Years later, I got to see a human mob kill a god. Of course, they did not know she was a god. She was only six, after all.” His expression grew darker. “Still, they killed her—witchcraft, devilry, something of that sort—before I could intervene. This was after I left Zeus’s court and tried to live among the humans to avoid the games of power and politics. The girl was my daughter, and to see them kill her with a sword before I could cross the hundred feet between us …” The air went out of him. “Well. It was the last regret they ever had, their hasty action, because I was not hasty in my revenge at all. Thorough, but not hasty.

“There are monsters everywhere, and that was my lesson that day. Human, meta-human, it matters little. The entire race is compromised, shot through with weakness of emotion, of the heart. To glorify people in spite of their flaws is the trick I had to learn.” He looked jaded. “Most of the time it works. So, yes, I have seen people I trust, admire and respect butcher those whom I loved, and I have also seen it done by total strangers. Neither one feels much worse than the other.” He turned back down the street, looking, as though he could see a destination in the far distance. “But I suspect you know that. All the rest is merely something that you are clinging to in time of great sorrow.”

I followed his gaze but didn’t see anything in particular he could be looking at. “Some days … lately … I don’t feel like I know anything at all.”

A wan smile spread across Janus’s face as he looked back at me. “I think that also is a uniquely human—both meta and standard—feeling.”

“So Hades is dead?” I asked, staring at Janus.

“He is,” came the reply. “He died before the Roman Empire even fell from the height of its glory. And he was no incubus, as I said.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story than you’re telling me?”

“Because,” he said, and he sounded weary, “there always is.” He gave me a look. “Do you know why we want you—you, specifically? Why we’ve been after you since day one?”

“Not really,” I said, quiet. “Are you going to tell me?”

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said, and his words were shot through with a deep-seated tiredness that I felt in my bones as well. He gave a smile that reflected it. “So much of what you are as a succubus—and one of only three whom we know of that currently live—is … clouded.” He seemed to give a moment of consideration. “Succubi and incubi have lived on the margins of the meta-human world for ages. As a type of meta, yours is the most feared, most hated. Cloisters do not accept incubi and succubi among their number, fearing—perhaps rightly—that your powers lend themselves toward a casual application. If you’ve ever met one of your own kind who has embraced their power fully, you know why.”

“Fries,” I said with a whisper. “Charlie.”

“Yes,” Janus said with a solemn nod. “To fully use all the ability at your fingertips—literally—in many cases results in a sort of addiction to using said powers. Much like your aunt, the incubus or succubus becomes obsessed with drawing souls, feeding this ever-increasing emptiness within. It is very much like drug addiction, save that people become a disposable commodity, something to be drunk like wine.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And much like wine, it can become required rather than occasional, a constant need, a desperate desire to be fueled in every possible instance.” He cast a look across the street, where a tour group of students lingered next to a bus stop, backpacks on their backs. They didn’t look much younger than I was. “A succubus on the prowl looks at a city street and sees nothing but targets, souls to be absorbed, a rush to be felt.”

I looked at them, so young, and I didn’t feel that—maybe a hint of it, a desire to walk through the middle of them and brush against them with ungloved hands. But not the desire to wade in, to drag the screams from them as I had with Wolfe or Kappler. “My mother wasn’t like that.”

“Indeed not,” Janus said. “Your mother is probably the most disciplined of all of your kind. She can take a single memory from a person’s mind with the skill of someone opening a filing cabinet, sliding out a single piece of paper and leaving the rest untouched. That takes a great deal of practice and considerably more than just raw ability, I assure you. She is the most powerful of your kind presently walking the planet.” He held up a hand to forestall my response. “Not in terms of raw power. I understand that you have her outmatched in that way, but she has decades of practice that have refined her abilities into something unmatched in the world.”

“She is strong,” I conceded. “I’ve seen her take a person’s memories. I think I leave a little more of a mess when I do it, though I have done it.”

“Ah, yes, I read about that last night,” he said with a subtle nod. “Ariadne, was it?”

I gave him a wary look. “I let her live.”

“I heard,” Janus said. “Turned her loose in the parking lot of a mall with no shoes.”

“I gave her a coat.”

He let out a small sound of amusement. “Well, then, that must absolve you of any responsibility for her well-being. I’m certain it was of great consolation to her when she lost those toes to frostbite.”

My jaw fell open. “She lost toes?”

Janus let out a small laugh. “I kid. But it is nice to know that you still care, at least a little.”

My face straightened. “Your group employed Wolfe. I doubt that it matters to you how much I care.”

Janus gave a slight shrug. “To them, perhaps not. To me, it is all the difference in the world. This is why you are here now, and were not on any of the occasions they previously tried to capture you. I told them, when I took over, that they were going about it all wrong. They are used to dealing with monsters like Wolfe, like … others,” he said carefully. “I told them you are dealing with a girl—woman—who has a heart, who has a soul, but you try to entrap her as if she were an animal or perhaps a beast that needs to be caged.” He made a tsking sound. “They would use you to help save the world of metas from destruction and the world of humans from slavery. A noble cause, I think, which is why I have remained with Omega through … some ups and downs, let us say. As a decent person, I think this would be an aim that you would agree with. Yet they went about it by trying to capture you by force, to make you come with them.” He shook his head. “Foolish, I said. Directed at the wrong audience.” He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. “I think after dealing with monsters for so long—including some who are very much within our own organization,” his face tightened, “you become accustomed to approaching all situations by immediately leaping to the same conclusions, and theirs usually involve applying force.”

“You make them seem innocuous,” I said, “as though they had no culpability in sending all the fiends that they did after me. Wolfe was just the start, remember? Henderschott was no peach, either. And trying to get Fries in bed with me—”

“I don’t think that having Fries sleep with you was part of any plan,” Janus said stiffly, “I believe that was a concession made to get him to try and recruit you.”

“Nice,” I said. “It’s good to know that your organization would have no problem with a man using me for sexual gratification without thought or regard for what were to happen afterward. That certainly strengthens my opinion of you.”

Janus let out a sigh. “I am not condoning the actions they’ve taken.”

“I don’t hear you condemning them, either.”

“I have a hard time mustering much anger for condemnation given what’s presently on its way toward us,” Janus said. “Yes, I would not have done it that way myself, but I understand the fear—the raw fear—that Century breeds. Look at her,” he waved back toward the Greek restaurant a hundred yards behind us. “She’s convinced that we’re returning to the darkest age of our history, a time when Hades was annihilating entire populations—”

“You don’t think that sounds like what’s happening now?” I looked him over.

“Oh, I’m very certain that Century is taking some pages out of Hades’s book,” Janus said calmly. “But Hades is dead. Very dead. Very certainly dead. I watched him die, and it was in a manner that left no ambiguity as to whether he might rise up again or not.”

“You’re being vague.”

Janus gave a slight nod, made a sound of acknowledgment. “Some ground is best left untrod. There are things I cannot tell you, things about why we need you, specific things about yourself that I am simply not allowed to get into.”

“Sounds like we’re back to the same issue as with Fries—you people don’t care how you use me so long as you get to use me, huh?”

“It is neither as simple nor as vulgar as you put it,” he said, sounding a little exasperated. “What would you be willing to do to save the world? To save your people?”

“Very little at present,” I lied. “Remember, I’m here for revenge, not because of the gallantry of your quest.”

He let out a mild exhalation of annoyance then shook his head. I was sure it was feigned, though, that he could see through my lie. “Very well. We’ll have to work on rekindling your concern for others as we go on. We have things to do now, anyway.”

“Oh?” I asked. “We’ve just swayed some girl into coming into your fold, so what else is on the agenda? More recruitment?”

“Heavens,” Janus said, “if only. If only there were more to recruit, more to protect. Unfortunately, there are few, which is part of the problem with our little subspecies. Too few and far too dispersed to be of great use. This is why Century is such a threat. They have banded more of the powerful metas of the world together than Omega has ever been able to.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I want Winter, and I still don’t care about all this other stuff, these hoops I have to jump through to get him. What’s next?”

“Yet still I notice you continue to absorb the background and the history I give you on all these events,” Janus said. “It is almost as though you are learning, saving them up for a time when you will need them.”

“Look at it however you want,” I said. “But don’t forget the agreement under which I came here. You can try and recruit me for the next three months, but if you don’t deliver on the promise of getting me to Erich Winter and allowing me to kill him, all your recruitment efforts will be for naught.”

Janus gave me a slow nod. “Very well, then. Let us move on.” He turned and started to walk back down the street as the wind came howling through again.

“Wait,” I said, and he paused to look back at me. “Where are we going?”

A small smile lit his aged features. “Why, to Omega headquarters of course.” The light faded from his eyes. “I believe it is time that you came into the den of those you have so long despised so that you can see for yourself exactly what you are up against.”

Janus’s car was a black Mercedes that slid through the light morning traffic as I stared out the window at the bright, sunlit London day. The blocks passed one by one, though it was disconcerting to find myself sitting in the place where the driver would be were I in America and that we were driving on the opposite side of the road from what I was used to. Janus had the window slightly down, and a soft breeze ruffled my hair as we waited at a traffic light.

There was a stir in my mind, a chorus of voices in the back, having a conversation that I was trying my best to ignore. It was a mild squall, though it didn’t feel like it. A vein throbbed in the space behind my eyes, a solid twitch that pulsed with every beat of my heart, a little shooting pain that made me wonder what sort of discussion was going on in my brain. I listened for a moment, caught a heated dustup between Bjorn and Wolfe about Hades, and then got distracted.

“You can hear them in your head, yes?” Janus looked sideways at me from the driver’s seat, an almost-touching look of concern etched on his features. I say “almost” because I wasn’t inclined to believe it was real. He did have a specific purpose, after all, and it wasn’t to make sure that I felt loved and cared for. Or if he did have that purpose, it was a means to the end of getting what he wanted.

“Yes.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my fingers, hoping that massaging the tension would relieve the pain. It didn’t.

“What are they speaking about?” The car accelerated away from the light when it turned green, down the street ahead of us.

“Bjorn and Wolfe are arguing about Hades,” I said. “I’m not paying much attention right now.” There was a moment of quiet in my mind. “Wolfe worked for Hades, along with his brothers, right?” I heard Bjorn howl something at Wolfe about murdering children, which got a swift and visual reply that almost made me retch, something on the order of not bothering to deny but instead glorying in that fact.

“It takes a toll on you, yes?” I saw him start with the concern again, and I remembered the last time someone had come at me with that sort of fatherly interest; it had come to a rather abrupt end when he orchestrated the murder of my boyfriend.

“That obvious, huh?” I let my fingertips lightly dance over my forehead, soothing the skin there with just the barest touch, light over the top of it, the sensation distracting me from the throbbing pain.

Janus let out a low chuckle. “Perhaps not to all, but I am an empath, and your emotional states are as obvious to me as a physiological defect would be to a physician.”

“I’m deformed,” I said, “I’ve got seven souls in one body. It’s like I’m Siamese twins but only in my brain.” I blanched as Bjorn shot a withering reply at Wolfe, something about working for a pure evil—which I thought was ironic, coming from the source. “Or like having an internal hydra in my mind. I’d gladly cut off some of their heads,” I growled, causing them to quiet for a moment, “but I expect the only thing that would get the job done would be doing it to mine.”