The humans seemed to sense he was unbalanced and gave them a wide berth, most of them dropping their eyes and stood very still to avoid drawing any kind of attention.
After they passed the checkpoint, Nikos’s brows furrowed. Then he half turned and looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “They knew about the soldiers but did nothing to stop them.”
“They would gain nothing if they engaged in the fight.” Octavia just shook her head at the foolishness. “They went up against daemons a time or two and knew it would just cost them more lives and draw more attention to themselves.”
Nikos remained silent for a second, his expression assessing. His voice was soft when he finally spoke, more talking to himself than her. “They knew you were here to take care of it.”
“We have a truce of sorts. It’s why they allow me to stay without messing with me or mine.” She shrugged. “Any daemon activity is my responsibility. The kids keep an eye out for them, and I’m called when I’m needed.”
He looked appalled, opened his mouth to protest, but shut it when they approached the vehicle.
The truck was where they left it, the guys remaining silent as they piled inside the cab. Octavia hesitated on the sidewalk, debating the wisdom of going with them. Eyes watched her, and she knew they were Rogers and his men looking after her.
They were the deciding factor.
She refused to start a war between the zone and the soldiers when they came to investigate why their team hadn’t returned.
If the people of the zone were questioned, they would pretend ignorance, tell them honestly that she’d left…and Kronos would believe them. They would recognize her description and follow her. But if she stayed, they would hunt her in earnest, and she refused to put any more innocent people in danger.
As she crawled into the vehicle after the guys, her stomach dipped dramatically, like the decision somehow altered the course of the rest of her life.
Atticus moved to sit beside her in the back seat, leaving Keegan to drive. She eyed the big man next to her suspiciously, but he avoided her gaze, seeming content to remain by her side, almost like he was afraid to draw attention to himself and freak her out.
As they pulled back onto the road, Keegan glanced at Warrick. “Where do you want to go? Back to the house is out of the question. Others will be hunting for Eldon, and it won’t take long before Valkyrie’s name is mentioned. Travers will be waiting for us by now, and we can’t risk him making the connection to her until we have a plan in place.”
“There’s only one place they won’t think to search for her.” Warrick sighed, cupping his ribs as he gingerly shifted in his seat, pain and resignation lining his face. “We’ll have to take her to headquarters.”
Chapter Ten
Nikos
Headquarters.
That soooo didn’t sound like a cool, super-secret lair where they could sit back and relax.
Not good.
Octavia has been to enough of them in her life to know she didn’t want to be anywhere near where the demigods ruled. “I can—”
“It’s the one place where you’ll be safe, and we can protect you.” Warrick cut her off, not even bothering to glance over at her as he shot her down.
Protect her…or turn her over and wash his hands of the trouble that always seemed to follow her around wherever she went?
Atticus leaned closer, a scowl on his face as he peered down at her. “What’s wrong?”
Octavia pursed her lips, sensing nothing but genuine concern radiating from him. “I’ve been through the human system, then the government, and now you want me to go to a compound. From my experience, nothing good ever comes out of clandestine organizations.”
None of them denied it.
“Believe it or not, we want to help,” Keegan said as he wove in and out of traffic. “If you give us some idea what kind of trouble is following you, we can be better prepared.”
His argument was logical, and not a personal attack like when Warrick demanded answers.
She hesitated for a moment longer, then finally relented for one reason…Eldon trusted them. It had to be enough. “What do you want to know?”
“Start from the beginning.” Atticus interrupted before anyone else had a chance, curiosity shining in his green eyes. The scent of matches that surrounded him should’ve burned her nose, but she found it warm and comforting instead.
Octavia turned away from the guys, hating the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable under their combined stares. Wanting to get the tale over with as soon as possible, she locked her emotions down tight and gave them the bare facts. “I was raised in an orphanage. The state does frequent testing, and I was lucky to score high enough to make the entrance exams for military school. I won a scholarship.
“It was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Only three dozen kids nationwide were selected. It was a way out of that hellhole, so I took it. A handful of us cadets excelled and were quickly promoted into the accelerated training camp.
“Every few days medical would check us out. It wasn’t until the doctor was called out on an emergency during one of my exams and left my file open on the computer that I even began to suspect anything was wrong.
“Instead of vitamin shots and boosters, we were given different serums. I wasn’t Octavia, I was subject 2-4-3. They kept us isolated from the rest of the cadets, supposedly so we could focus on our training to become the best. Knowing time was limited, I managed to download as many files from the system as I could before the doctor returned.”
Octavia watched as a light mist began to fall, darkness swallowing the outside world as the sun completely vanished from the sky. Tiny droplets of rain landed on the window, streaking down the glass like the sky itself was crying over her tragic tale.
“Later, after I had time to go through some of the files, I learned that my friends weren’t on assignments like they’d told us. They weren’t out saving the world. They were all dead. I saw videos of their bodies being dissected and studied…some of them were even still alive while it happened…if you can call what they turned them into as human anymore.
“It had to be a mistake. I was so sure of it that I snuck down to the medical facility late at night.” She gave a bitter laugh, tracing the path of the rain against the window. “I was a naive fool. What I found was a nightmare. People were locked in cages with barely enough room for them to sit hunched over or curled up.
“Soldiers were tied down, being studied as they slowly unraveled from whatever the fuck they were given. Apparently each of us got a different serum. Some of them worked…for a time. Unfortunately, the side effects were terrible. If they didn’t die outright, they wished for it in the end.”
The streetlights strobed by her window, but she no longer saw the outside world. “I went to another door and discovered how they created the serums—they were extracting it from daemons.”
Nikos swore viciously. “That’s why they were in the zone—they were hunting down more donors.”
“Yes and no.” Octavia shrugged. “They took the adults to make more serum, but their main goal was the kids who have yet to come into power. They’re young. With the proper conditioning, they can be turned into the perfect soldier. If they resist, they will eventually be harvested. And before you say they will resist, Kronos is ruthless. They demand obedience. If you continue to defy them, they’ll find your greatest weaknesses and take their rage out on the ones you care about the most as punishment. Believe me, after enduring weeks of torture, the daemons will fold when the first few begin to die.”
She turned away from the darkness outside, a frigid chill invading her soul as she stared at Nikos. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t left, they would’ve left the kids alone. You see, subject 2-4-3 was their only success. The other soldiers suffered unfortunate side-effects like dying. And now they believe my age and ancestry hold the key to creating more monsters. They gave me injections well before puberty, doing genetic alterati
ons, and fiddled with my DNA to ensure success. They’re now trying to duplicate that success. The kids are the backup plan.”
She unconsciously pressed her hand to her stomach, still remembering the injections that left her riddled with pain.
“You did what you had to do to survive.” Atticus spoke softly, but his words offered little comfort.
“Maybe.” A heavy weight pressed down on her because of the mess she made of things. If she’d stayed, she could’ve found a way to destroy Kronos from within. Instead, she reacted with outrage and horror. “Kronos was biding their time until they had enough test subjects with the right criteria so they could crack me open and harvest what they needed to duplicate their success. I found the notes in my file.
“So I did what I had to do to get free.” She rubbed her mouth, unable to get rid of the vile taste at the thought of how many she left behind to rot in that hellhole. “I freed the injured first, and gave them the codes to get them out of the compound. Then I let the able-bodied ones go next. I warned them not to run, not to draw attention to themselves.”
She ducked away from the men’s piercing stares, twisting her fingers in her lap. “I used them for a distraction. I released the kids last, the ones they had in cages, and took them out the back. We only had minutes before they found us gone and the sirens blared. Gunshots soon followed when they began their hunt. I grabbed the kids and left the others to die.
“We managed to escape, but it wouldn’t be long before they discovered it was my code that released the prisoners, and that I was missing. Thanks to my blood, I knew they’d hunt me to the ends of the earth, so I dropped the kids off at different bus stops and train stations throughout the city, gave them what little money I could grab, and left them.”
Guilt threatened to crush her for leaving them to fend for themselves, and she couldn’t find the words to continue.
“You disappeared into the abandoned city,” Keegan guessed.
When they didn’t curse her for her cowardice, some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. She blamed herself enough for all of them. “I left dozens of false trails to give the others time to escape. Every time they sent a soldier after me, I made sure they never left. I gave weapons and supplies to those who lived in the city and helped out where I could. We were the ghosts who started the rumors—those who enter the city never leave.”
“Why stay?” Nikos’s voice was quiet. “You had a chance to escape, a chance for a new life.”
When she would’ve answered, Warrick glanced back at her, his pale blue eyes blazing. “She couldn’t. Someone had to stop them. That was the night the Valkyrie was born.”
Octavia couldn’t do anything but stare at his complete conviction. She didn’t understand him at all. One second he was trying to throw her out, the next he refused to release her. He acted disgusted by her very presence, but she caught him staring at her as if baffled.
Not willing to be trapped in his eyes, she leaned forward. “I just gave you the information you wanted. Now tell me what the hell’s happening to me.”
Nikos was the one who broke the stalemate. “Headquarters is where daemons go to train when their abilities emerge. The stronger their abilities, the more dangerous they are to themselves and those around them—until they gain control.”
“Beneath the headquarters is a compound where young daemons learn to master their abilities.” Warrick cut in, ruthlessly getting to the point of the matter. “If they fail, they never leave.”
Octavia heard the threat in his reply, knocking him back down to asshole status once again, and she couldn’t help but snark back at him. “And if you survive, you’re forced into a lifetime of servitude. Yeah, sounds like a great place.”
Warrick grunted, and Keegan took over the conversation before they could devolve into another argument. “They’re called benefactors. One cannot survive without the other. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement between daemons and demigods. They allow us to maintain control by feeding off the excess energy we emit until we’re strong enough to control the fluctuations ourselves.”
“Leaving you as their slaves for the rest of your life.” She just couldn’t get over how they so meekly accepted their fate.
“It’s more than that,” Keegan disagreed. “They’re demigods. They give us a piece of their essence so we can survive. In turn, we have to work off our payment. It’s not impossible to regain our freedom, it’s just hard. Most are loyal to their benefactor by choice and remain so until death. They wouldn’t know how to live any other way.”
“That makes a weird sort of sense,” Octavia muttered. “Maybe that’s why the soldiers keep dying. They’re missing the binding component, so their abilities overwhelm them before their bodies have time to stabilize from the sudden influx of energy. That’s why Eldon’s spirit looked so alive when he died while the soldier’s looked tainted.”
The guys gaped at her in stunned silence, and she frowned at them in confusion. “What?”
Nikos gawked stupidly at the girl. She was like nothing he’d ever encountered, neither demigod nor daemon, but something more. There was a hidden well of power inside her that burned brighter than he’d ever seen, and it drew him to her like a flower seeking out the sun.
But what she described terrified him.
It was a sacred ritual known by few, a skill only the demigods had conquered…the ability to consume the pure energy of the gods and survive.
If the dead didn’t return to the aether right away, they could turn vengeful and consume the souls of the living.
Any confrontation with them was fatal, which was why the demigods were the only ones who could unlock the souls of the dead who lingered and set them free.
But instead of being destroyed, Octavia survived without a fucking scratch.
Damned if the power didn’t seek her out…as if coming home.
She didn’t get a boost of energy that triggered her transformation like they expected—it was much worse. She absorbed it like a full-fucking-fledged god. Even from a distance, he could feel the thrum of power resting just under her skin.
Instead of being drained, she was charged like a fucking battery.
While the demigods could manipulate the energy they took, boosting their own abilities for a short time, they couldn’t produce more.
Only the old gods could build something out of nothing.
And that was the problem.
Most daemons believed that when they died, their spirit would return to the aether, and they would be reincarnated. It took the power of the gods to create a daemon, a process that had worked since the dawn of time.
Until the gods disappeared.
Without the influx of new energy, few demigods honored the old ways. For a while anyway. Now, more often than not, when a daemon died, the demigods claimed the energy for their own, which meant fewer and fewer daemons were born as anything more than a gifted human with extra strength, speed, or intuition.
With fewer daemons each year, the demigods’ hold over their territory weakened.
The demigods feared that fate—the loss of their powers—so much that the vicious cycle continued.
Without the gods to keep them in line, it was getting worse.
The only reason Nikos even knew the truth was his Maenad and Atlantean heritage allowed him to see into a person’s soul. He saw the demigod consume a daemon’s magic like he was slurping down some damn oyster.
Nikos kept the truth of it to himself out of self-preservation. Confronting a demigod was a fight he had no hope of winning, one that would send him to an early grave. He did research. He was a gifted healer, which granted him access to books and scrolls that others weren’t even aware existed.
Not that the demigods necessarily knew he had access.
He basically helped himself rather than ask for permission.
It was one of the many reasons why Warrick and the others fought so hard for their independence.
More and more daemons were
demanding their freedom, almost as if they sensed the danger.
If the truth ever got out, the resulting war would tear the world apart. Since neither daemons nor demigods could survive without the other, it would be mutually assured destruction, likely resulting in the death of every human in the process—unless the fools figured out a way to survive together before it was too late.
Nikos leaned forward, looking past Atticus so he could see Octavia, trying to remember the thread of conversation, and shared a worried glance with the others. “Demigods carry their power in their blood. It’s called ichor, and they share it with the daemons they claim as their own as part of the binding process. When a daemon dies, the sliver of their essence they borrowed is returned.”
“A sliver?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Somehow I seriously doubt that.”
“You’re seeing and judging things through the eyes of a human.” Nikos held up his hand when she opened her mouth to protest, knowing he had to keep her from discovering the truth.
The information would be the powder keg that started the war.
So he fibbed.
He told her the way it was supposed to work before the demigods perverted the ancient custom. “Daemons don’t have that luxury. Without the demigods to help balance us, we perish. When we die, they release us from duty, and leave us free to seek our final resting place in the aether…until we’re called again.”
Her nose crunched up adorably, suspicion darkening her eyes as she harrumphed, and his fingers itched to touch her again.
Once hadn’t been enough.
He shook off the stray thought, his brain scrambling to think coherently, and he struggled to pull away from the allure that tried to ensnare him. He studied her more closely, needing to convince her of the lie, because if she knew the truth, her life would be in even more danger.
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