Darker Than Night

by Amelia Wilde

  Her eyes clear, and she shakes her head, curls rustling over her shoulders. “I won't go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to kill you.”

  “You've killed enough people, don’t you think? One of my girls, even.” I furrow my brow. “Where is her body?”

  “Downstairs in the walk-in refrigerator.” She frowns, blinking hard, and another piece of clarity slots into place. She’s been experimenting, and whatever she took last is wearing off. “You came here for her, but not me.”

  “Of course I came here for you,” I lie, scanning her for her next move. “You’ll always be my best girl.”

  The last word out of my mouth snaps in the center and breaks off. I’ve found it, next to her foot.

  A silver switch for a bomb.

  Her hand shoots down, lightning quick, and she snatches it up.

  Not a switch—this is a bomb. It’s compact, lightweight, and easy to hide. I recognize it because Xavier Morris has been bragging about getting them for his SWAT teams.

  They’re all still too close.

  If she sets it off in here, Brigit could die.

  There’s no time to look around, no time to think. I put my arms around Demeter and lift her out of the chair, pinning the bomb between us. What the fuck. It digs into my chest, against hers, and I have no plan. I should have had a plan for this. I always have a plan.

  In the absence of a plan I reach between us and pinch it between my fingers. “Tick tock,” Demeter says. Her hands are pinned down by mine, but not for long. She’s small. Slippery.

  I throw it.

  Demeter twists her body and drops out of my arms. I rush her, trying to corral her away from that fucking thing, but she runs, light on her feet. Brigit and Savannah are at the door. There’s nowhere to go but out, so when Demeter stops and wheels I block her path and herd her out, too. I can’t pin her to the bomb without going with her. And I’m not going with her.

  I find Brigit's eyes. “Run,” I say, or shout, and she bends down and puts her arms under Savannah’s.

  Demeter’s between me and the door now and I move toward her. She startles and jumps to the side, laughing, and I see what she’s planning to do—lock me in here and waste me with a fucking bomb. A graceful twirl, and she dances across the threshold, reaches for the door—

  And screams.

  She tears back across the floor, toward me, and I get her around the waist.

  Poseidon streaks in the door and jumps like he’s going to catch the rigging of a ship. “Window, window, window,” he bellows, and I drop Demeter in a heap on the floor and run. The windows along the side of the room have latches. There’s no time for latches. I grab the top of the frame and kick one out with both feet, then fall, onto my back, onto the floor.

  The bomb sails over my head and through the window. It has three red lights. All of them are blinking. From the way it’s spinning, he skipped it like a rock through the broken glass.

  The impact comes a moment later, rattling the walls of the building. It’s not so much a sound as pressure, intense, unflagging pressure, and I turn over onto my hands and try to get up. Except there’s been a short-circuit. An overload. The room flickers and goes dark and in that space I’m trapped in a film reel of memories that feel like broken glass.

  A small, waiflike Demeter standing in a slice of moonlight in my attic bedroom, tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t want to get burned.” She’s still so young that her R sound is muddled. “I can’t reach—”

  Her tongue between her teeth in concentration, a chubby grip on the pencil. She swipes her hair out of her eyes. “D,” she says, face lighting with pride. “What’s next?”

  “E,” I tell her. “M. E...”

  “Don’t look!” she squeals. I’m not fucking around—my eyes are covered by my own hands. But she puts hers over mine. “Count to twenty. Count to a hundred!”

  “Ninety-one,” I say, and she laughs, her footsteps receding while her giggle hangs in the air. “Ninety-two.”

  “One loop,” she repeats after me. “Two loops. Cross—it’s not working.”

  “Try again. One loop—”

  A whisper in the night. He’s coming. I’m out of the bed before I know what I’m doing, shushing her, taking her to the piece of shit closet in my room. It’s only large enough because she’s thin, small. I’m sorry, she mouths, and I close the door on her white face while heavy footfalls shake the attic stairs. I have the words ready. It was me.

  Demeter, knees to her chest on the lakeshore. “Do you think he’ll ever like me?”

  “I like you,” I tell her.

  The room blinks back into existence, a frustrated scream pulling me back and up to my feet.

  Poseidon has her. Her feet don’t reach the ground and her white dress looks ridiculous, incongruous. She’s already scratched deep lines into the flesh exposed by his rolled-up sleeves. With one big hand he turns her head to the side.

  “Say the word.” Hate burns in his eyes. The bomb didn’t take out the building but Poseidon might. His mouth is a twist of disgust.

  He’s going to snap her neck.

  I hold out a hand. Wait—wait. It would be simple. It would be clean. She’s killed so many people, she’s maimed so many people, she’s destroyed my heart. She looks at me from the corner of her eyes and there’s real fear there. No hiding it from me. I’ve seen it too many times.

  How can she ask me to save her now?

  After everything?

  “If you kill me,” she rasps, her voice raw. “You’ll never find it.”

  At first I think she’s talking to me, but it’s Poseidon’s face that heats, rage stoking higher in his eyes. “I don’t care,” he says.

  “Yes you do.” It’s almost a melody. “You do, you do—”

  “You’re such a bitch,” Poseidon growls. “A hellion. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  “Then let me go.” She’s not scratching him anymore, just hanging there in his hands, her face pale.

  “Pick one of them.” His hand tightens on her face and she stiffens. “One of your little police buddies. They can trade you for a place on the force. Can’t they, Zeus?”

  Demeter blanches. “No. No—don’t.”

  It’s in this moment that the full depth of her brokenness is finally clear. She was having women raped in front of her, but now, the suggestion of a prison sentence has turned her into a trembling rabbit. God knows what she did to Savannah. What she would have done to Brigit.

  “Put her down.”

  Poseidon has never hated me more than he does in this moment, but he does it—probably because he hates touching her the most. Demeter trips on the hem of her dress and recovers. And for the second time today she hurries toward me.

  For a single instant I can see her outside, in the woods, running toward me just like this with a smile on her face instead of a complicated, terrified relief.

  That girl in the woods is gone. She’s dead. This one—I don’t know who she is.

  With one step to go she throws herself into my arms. “I knew you’d come,” she says, and it is so fucked up.

  Belt, I mouth to Poseidon over her head. He takes it out from the loop of his pants in a fluid movement and tosses it to me without breaking his glare.

  Demeter blinks. “What—no.”

  But it’s too late. I have her arms pinned, I have the belt around her wrists, and I pull it tight. Then I kick her feet out from under her. It’s gentler than she deserves.

  “James,” I call, and he rushes in with two of our people and two of Poseidon’s. He surveys the situation, checks me for blood, and finds nothing. “Take her to the train station.”

  18

  Brigit

  Someone—one of Zeus’s people—has us in the hallway before the bomb goes off and then there is a general chaos. Emergency vehicles arrive to do what they do when there’s a sudden explosion on a city street. Savannah can’t get out by herself so we sit in the h
all until one of Zeus’s teams comes to take her to the paramedics. James kisses his husband in a far corner of the hall, whispering to him at every possible moment and directing people the rest of the time.

  I want to go back to Zeus—need to go back to him—but Savannah won’t let go of my hand. “Don’t leave me with these people,” she says through gritted teeth.

  “They’re just taking you outside. It’ll be okay.”

  She doesn’t believe me and she has a death grip on my fingers so I’m the one who goes with her to the sidewalk.

  “Why are you like this?” Savannah asks me from the stretcher. “I tried to poison you.”

  “Yeah.” I can’t help but laugh. “You did.”

  “You’re so weird.” Then she’s gone, loaded into the back of an ambulance. Its red lights turn the shadowy street into a blinking funhouse.

  I turn around to run back into the building, but I’m blocked by four men who are carrying a kicking, screeching Demeter out the front doors. James jogs ahead and waves down one of the thousand black SUVs Zeus must own, and it pulls up to the curb.

  Zeus follows them out, his hands in his pockets, his golden eyes distant and dark. I don’t know if I should be relieved for him or give in to my lingering fear that something could still go wrong.

  As soon as I’m at his side he puts an arm around me and pulls me in close. It’s only once he touches me that I feel it.

  His hands are shaking.

  I lean into him, watching the scuffle at the back of the SUV. She doesn’t want to go. “Zeus!” Demeter screams, the sound mostly contained by the car. “Don’t let them do this.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Where are they taking her?”

  The sigh he lets out is laced in suffering and old pain. “Home.”

  I blink up at him. “You’re letting her go home?”

  “I’m putting her under house arrest.”

  “Zeus.” An even louder voice barrels into us from behind. “You’ve been fooling us all these years, pretending to be competent. What a show.” Poseidon strides up next us, dragging my father along with him in a headlock. He doesn’t seem to register the man fighting weakly at his side. “I just gave you the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “You could have let the bomb go off.” Zeus strokes a hand down my side, brushing my ribs. “It would have accomplished the same goal. She’d be dead.”

  “But so would you, and I’m not about to give the bitch that pleasure.”

  “You are—” Zeus shakes his head. “You are infuriatingly inconsistent.”

  Poseidon frowns. “Your words wound. I’m not inconsistent.”

  “Do you not remember working with Hades, then?”

  “Of course I remember.” Poseidon refastens a button on his shirt. “He called me first.”

  Zeus’s mouth falls open. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him look genuinely surprised. “Oh my god,” he says. “That’s why you think you’re an honorable pirate? Because you side with whoever calls first? What if it had been Demeter?”

  Poseidon laughs, a deep, rolling belly laugh. “I hate her. I’d sooner have dropped her in the sea.”

  “But she has something you want,” Zeus points out. What is it?

  His brother’s face darkens, and he pushes two fingers into Zeus’s chest. “I hate you. Don’t forget it.” Then he pauses. “Any preference?” This, to me.

  “Preference?”

  He jerks my father’s head back and forth. “This is the one who sold you off to the uncle, isn’t it? I can leave him in the open ocean. Deserted island. Your choice.”

  My father tried to force me into an arranged marriage. He was working with Demeter. I feel no pity. “I’d rather not know,” I tell Poseidon. “As far away as you can get.”

  “Sir,” James calls from the SUV. “We’re ready.” Another one is pulling up behind him. The street is beginning to clear. No one seems to notice that a group of men have essentially kidnapped a woman and put her in the trunk.

  “Are the police coming?”

  Zeus looks down at me, amusement lighting his eyes. “For what?”

  “I don’t know—to help?”

  “No.” He laughs. “No, they’ll be busy at headquarters.”

  “Busy with what?”

  “Reorganizing,” he says. “They know I’ll be in soon to clean house, so they’ll try their best to do it for me.” I feel it then, for a minute—the balance of power shifting all over the city. He caught them here, with Demeter, and I don’t doubt that Zeus has collected evidence. It’s not just money that gives him power. It’s all the combined knowledge of everyone who comes through the doors of his businesses. He gives my hip a final squeeze. “Let’s go.”

  “Home?” I’d give anything to be in his bed.

  “There’s something I have to supervise first.”

  We follow the SUV in a separate vehicle all the way to a train station. It’s a secondary one, close to the city limits, and a dark figure waits there for us.

  Zeus climbs out of the SUV and calls to him. “Did you miss me this much? I’m only a phone call away, Hades.”

  Hades rolls his eyes. “I’m not letting someone else put her on the train.” It’s stopped by the station, idling there. “I’ll take her the rest of the way.”

  “You wouldn’t.” Zeus widens his eyes. “For me?”

  “Not for you, you self-absorbed prick. For Persephone.”

  We ascend to the top of the platform. “She sent you here?”

  “For some reason, she didn’t think you were capable of following through. I’m inclined to trust her judgment.”

  A muffled raging from inside the first SUV breaks into the open air. It takes three men to drag Demeter out of the trunk, even with her ankles tied, and when she sees Hades her face goes red. She thrashes so much they drop her and she hits her head on the sidewalk.

  No one seems very concerned about it.

  When they lift her again she’s slightly more subdued. They carry her past us and she spits at Hades, who takes this in with an unflinching gaze.

  “A gag was out of your budget?” he says to Zeus.

  “I didn’t want to waste the fabric.” But I see the way Zeus looks away when he says it. Away, and down.

  Hades has a special train car for when he wants to transport a difficult passenger. A quick glance through the only visible window shows reinforced walls. I’m sure it has other features, too. Hades steps forward at the last moment and presses a hand to a panel by the door, which slides open in response. The three men put her inside and back away, their faces slack with relief. He puts his hand on the panel again and the door closes with a definitive thud. The train hisses, the wheels making a slick protest as it reverses.

  “Are you staying in the city?” Hades asks.

  “Obviously.” Zeus brushes his hands together as if he’s completed another task in the office. “I have a business to run.” Hades takes this in with a dip of his chin, and then Zeus is leading me down the stairs, back to the SUV. “Home,” he says. “There’s something we need to discuss.”

  19

  Zeus

  I mean to tell Brigit when we arrive at the house, but in a patently unsurprising twist of fate she falls asleep on the way there and bats my hands away when I try to get her to resurface.

  It’s just as well. Because the clarity that arrived after that bomb exploded—so many bombs, these days—included a realization about the future that I’ll have no choice but to share with her. I bundle her up into my arms, conscious that this could be the last time I carry her up the stairs. James steps out of the first SUV in our little procession and pushes his hands through his hair.

  “I need you in the office,” I tell him. “Bring Cal inside.”

  As if the man would leave him behind.

  When I’m finished tucking Brigit into bed I find a blanket and toss it over Cal’s prone form, stretched out on my sofa and dead to the world. James waits for me in my
office, his hands covering his face. When I come into the room he sits up and clears his throat. “We’re finding placements for all the women tonight,” I tell him.

  “Placements?”

  “You saw Olympus burn, did you not?”

  James huffs. “I saw.”

  “Match each of the women with a temporary residence. Homes where they can recuperate. Families that will take care of them. They’ll need at least three months, maybe six.” I take a seat at my desk, leaving him at the round table. James takes out his phone and starts tapping at the screen. “Nice places. Shelters are an option, but if they even hint at being underfunded, I want donations in bank accounts by the end of the week.”

  “Until you’ve rebuilt?”

  “Until they're ready.” A mild sidestep never actually murdered anyone.

  The process of vetting available families and shelters in the city takes the better part of two hours. James drops sheet after sheet crowded with information onto my desk. I have one stack of women’s names, another stack of places for them to live, and matches to make.

  “Go home.” James is standing—swaying, really—in front of my desk. “Tell Cal he can keep the blanket. Update me tomorrow evening on the insurance paperwork.”

  They will need my signature to begin demolition and the process of rebuilding. They’ll need several of my signatures, in fact.

  But it’s not fear of paperwork that keeps me at the desk, sorting and matching and making agonizing phone calls, until the sun comes up.

  It’s been up for nearly two hours when Brigit appears at the threshold, looking pink and flushed and fresh. She wears soft leggings and a top that looks like it would tear easily in my hands. “Have you been here all night?”

  “I had business.” At some point during our working hours, James pulled a chair up on the other side of my desk. I wave Brigit into it now. It doesn’t escape me that we’ve been on opposite sides of a desk like this in far more delicious situations.