“Hey,” Mollis said.
“Did you know Brennan was shot?” I asked in greeting.
“I know. Asclepius took care of him,” she answered. “Artemis isn’t happy, from what Asclepius told me.”
“So I gather,” I said wryly, and Mollis gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Having the mother-in-law experience already, huh?”
I rolled my eyes, and she let out a low chuckle. Then she sobered. “So, dickhead,” she said to Chen. “Are we going to do this the easy way, or do I get to have some fun?”
He started blubbering, crying, apologizing.
“All it takes is a name. Who helped you?” Mollis asked.
He laughed then, laughed, and lifted his chin in my direction. “She thinks she is helping you. One woman is nothing against us. We are legion,” he said.
“Ugh. Really? We’re at the ‘we are legion’ point in our deluded villain story already?” Mollis asked. She walked closer to Chen, slowly. His expression changed from haughtiness to fear, and I saw him swallow. Mollis took her time, walking around him, letting him lose sight of her as she went behind him. I knew this game, like cat and mouse. She stalked, and he grew more afraid, and every time he lost sight of her, his panic increased, sure that, this time, she would hurt him.
It was only proof that he and his cronies did not know my Queen very well. She always liked those she was punishing to see it coming, to know, without a doubt, that the pain is about to begin.
I stood, and nonchalantly twirled my dagger between my fingers, watching, waiting for any assistance my Queen might want.
“A name,” Mollis said one more time. “Or anything else. This is your chance to lessen the pain you have coming to you.” Of course, he still had plenty coming. But she meant what she said. She could make it hurt much worse, and much longer, if he did not try to be of some use now.
“She was like her,” Chen said quickly, trying to stop Mollis before she started. “Longer hair, though. I haven’t seen her in weeks. She was supposed to bring another one for me, and I was waiting where she told me to. She didn’t come, but she warned me about this one,” he said, nodding toward me again. “So when I saw her, I ran, the way the other one told me to. Though she did warn me that if you found me, I probably would not escape you,” he said to me.
Well. At least my reputation as a zealot was still holding. How comforting.
“What about anyone else? Any others she spoke of, or that you saw?” Mollis asked and he shook his head.
“It was just her. Please,” he begged.
It was quiet for several moments while Mollis studied him, while his sins washed over her. Undoubtedly, she was in his mind, sifting through the things he knew about his helper, sifting through memories, dusting off things he may have forgotten. He whimpered, shook his head.
After a few moments, Mollis seemed satisfied. She gave me a small nod; he had told us all he knew about our adversaries.
“I bet your victims begged while you hurt them, didn’t they?” she asked quietly, still pacing behind him.
He let out a low whimper.
“And you liked it, didn’t you?” Mollis continued.
He shook his head, hard, as if trying to deny it. It was of no use. Mollis had the ability, inherited from her father upon his death, to see everything about anyone who stood before her. There was no hiding your deeds from her, unless you were like her. Unless you were a Fury. The Furies, being those who are tasked with punishing the dead, were, themselves, seemingly above reproach. Which, I imagined, was part of what made Mollis’s father so content around her mother, the Fury Tisiphone; she was the only one whose deeds were not constantly broadcasting, forcing him to see every sin she’d committed. I knew Mollis could see everything about me. Happily, she is the only one I have no urge to hide myself from. Mollis had told me that when she first realized she had her father’s powers, she had been with Tisiphone and Megaera, and all of their past deeds had hit her. It had not happened that way since, and the only theory they had for why she had seen their pasts in that moment was because her new power had just flared to life and the three of them were close, unguarded, raw in their grief over the death of Hades.
I knew she wished, now that we very obviously had a betrayer in our midst, one who could well be her own aunt or mother, that her power still applied to them the way it did to everyone else. It would have provided instant answers to the questions that plagued us.
I turned my thoughts away from problems I, as yet, had no answers to, and back to my Queen and the soul she was judging.
“I won’t take any joy in this,” Mollis said. “Though it is satisfying when evil shits like you beg.” And it began, and I knew it would be a while before I would be able to check in on the shifter. With as many sins as Chen had, Mollis had her work ahead of her.
Chapter Two
A few hours later, Mollis had satisfied herself that she had punished the soul of Chen enough. Most of Mollis’s punishments were of the mental variety. She used their thoughts, their deepest fears, against them. Of course, she punished them physically as well. She hadn’t needed my help at all, though I understood why she liked having me there. Having another being standing ominously off to the side only made him more afraid.
We had been doing this for a few weeks now. I would hunt, now looking for just about any missing soul I could, and I would bring it directly to Mollis, who would learn what she could from it, punish it on the spot, and then release it into the Everafter on her own. For those who had done horrid things, apparently the Everafter was not a nice place. Mollis’s punishments were usually their introduction to what they had ahead of them, their own personal version of the mortal concept of hell. If they were good people, their Everafter was peace and love and being reunited with loved ones.
It was not the easiest way to handle things. It meant that Mollis was pretty much on call, because she did not want me to have to stand around with a soul for hours until she was able to come. She also had to hide the fact that she was seeing me, due to the fact that we supposedly hated one another.
Really, I hoped her traitor would be discovered soon.
My small group of New Guardians, souls who had started following me when I had begun my hunt for lost souls, were essential in helping me find as many souls as I had. We were in a race against whoever Mollis’s adversary was, it seemed, each side racing to claim a newly-deceased soul before the other side took it. Quinn, who had taken the worst of the injuries when my sisters had attacked, was back on his feet and relentless as ever. He had started to show some interest in learning to rematerialize, despite the fact that it still made him nauseous. Claire seemed to have become my second-in-command, and kept track of the movements of the other three New Guardians, reporting their successes, and, more often than we liked, failures, to me.
I had tried, gently, because I know Mollis would rather not talk about it, to suggest that she look into her mother and aunt’s minds. She could do that. And this whole mess would be at least partially reconciled within minutes. So far, she had demurred, with the excuse that she would have to sift through thousands of years of memories, and there were things in her mother’s mind she did not want to see again. She had torn her way into Hades’ mind once, when she was captive in the Nether, and apparently had learned a hard lesson about the things one sees in the mind of a death god.
I understood that, but in this case, it seemed worth the risk. Why would you not want to just know, for sure, whether someone had betrayed you or not?
As I watched Mollis send the soul of Chen to the Everafter, which only took seconds after she was finished punishing him, I considered broaching the subject again. A look at her eyes, at the razor edge of madness there, made me swallow the advice I was about to give. The souls we were missing still weighed on her. Nether still fought her for control.
Instead, I took her hand, gave it a small squeeze. “Another one down, demon girl.”
She nodded. “Too many still
out there, though.”
“We are working on it,” I said, trying to soothe her.
She gave a small smile. “I know, E. Thank you. It would be pretty handy if you discovered a few more New Guardians out there somewhere, though.”
I gave a short laugh. “That it would. Though Quinn does the work of three Guardians on his own.”
Mollis nodded. “Thanks for this. The only one he ever saw was Delo.”
I nodded. “About her…”
Mollis sighed and shook her head. “I’m still working at her, as well as your other sisters we have in custody.” She paused, looked uncomfortable. “There is still that blank space in their memories, and I know whoever is pulling the strings is there. I just wish I knew how to undo whatever was done to them to make them forget. At the same time, I really don’t want to risk whoever was working with them somehow managing to help them escape.”
I nodded.
“Nain has been watching their cells almost non-stop since you kicked Anthousa and Delo’s asses back in Tokyo.” That fight had been brutal, even beyond the loss of my wings, and I had believed, at the time, that I had killed Anthousa, at least, on the mortal plane. As it was, despite it looking as if her body had turned to dust, Mollis had found her, weakened and unconscious, not far from the building in which we had battled. I did not quite understand it, but I was glad my Queen had been able to take another enemy to interrogate. “We don’t want to risk them getting out again,” she continued. “But he has other work he needs to do too, and it’s coming to the point where having them there and accessible is more of a liability than a help.”
I could see where she was going. “So you want to end them?”
She nodded.
“I think you should do it. If they have nothing of use to offer you, do not risk keeping them around.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind…”
“Mollis! As far as we all knew, you killed them once already. It did not pain me any then, and it certainly will not pain me now. Even less so, this time around.”
She studied me. “Do you want to be there when they end? Do you want to say anything to them?”
“I have nothing to say to them. If you would like me to be there, I have no problem doing that.”
“They’re your sisters, E,” Mollis said softly.
“They are traitors. I have seen the things they have done. I feel no loss or pity for them, only regret that they have failed so completely in what they were created to do.” I paused, changing my mind and deciding to say what I intended to say earlier. “Speaking of familial traitors,” I began, and Mollis shook her head. “Have you made any headway with your mother and aunt?”
She did not want to believe it possible of either of them. Truly, neither did I. But Furies are not above petty backstabbing and other betrayals. It had already happened once, with the third Fury, Alecto, whose name was no longer spoken; everyone, especially the Furies, wished they could make it so that she had never existed at all.
Alecto had betrayed her sisters, Hades, and, most of all, Mollis. She had worked directly with the demon Astaroth, Nain’s oldest enemy, to get to Mollis. It had all ended badly, with Nain dying in the mortal realm. Mollis’s blood in his veins, thanks to the demon marriage bond they’d performed, had been the only reason he had resurrected in the Nether. Like many beings who had been imprisoned in Tartarus, Alecto was now trapped in the Nether, the gateway between the worlds having been destroyed by Mollis and then permanently closed by Mollis’s grandmother, Nyx, who was the Creator of everything known to man and god alike.
“I’m keeping an eye on it.”
I repressed a sigh, but she felt my irritation anyway. “We’re not all as uncomplicated as you are, E. I know. You just want me to break in and be done with this.”
“Obviously,” I answered. “Obviously, I want you to do that so we actually know something instead of guessing. You need to get into their minds, Mollis. Do you really want to keep going on this way?”
“Are we already falling apart here, E?” she asked me quietly.
“I am not the one falling apart,” I said, looking her squarely in the eye. “You know there is nothing I would not do to help you. You know this. So take what I am about to say in the light it is meant: you need to stop being so soft about this. You need to get into their minds and have this question answered.”
She sighed. “I know.” Her shoulders slumped, and she looked up at the night sky. We’d walked out of the church, and were standing on the front steps. “I don’t want to just force my way in, E. I do that when I have to, and if we can’t figure this out, then I’ll do it. But this is my family.”
“It is tearing you up inside, wondering which one, or if both, betrayed you,” I reminded her, and she nodded.
“It is. You haven’t had that done to you, though, have you? Had someone break into your mind?”
I shook my head.
“It’s an assault. An invasive, violent, terrifying assault. The only way I can explain it that truly expresses how wrong it is is that it’s like mental rape. I have done that. I have broken my way into people’s minds, back before I inherited my father’s powers. Now, there’s no need, except for these cases in which I’m trying to uncover what has been hidden from us,” she said with a grimace. “This is my family, E,” she stressed again. “My mother. My aunt. I don’t want to do that to them. Not unless I have strong evidence to suggest that it needs to be done. Because if I’m wrong, and I do that to them… there’s no way to come back from that.”
We stood in silence for several long moments. “And I know that our theories point to it being at least one of them, because of the missing memories in the lost souls and your sisters. I am being careful. But you also recommended that I look at every possibility before leaping to the conclusion that it had to be one of them, remember?”
“Yes,” I said. “You know, you could ask them to let you into their minds,” I said.
“If it comes to that,” Mollis said. “I will.”
She had closed up on me, which I knew meant that our conversation was over. She would not budge on this, and I did not know how to make her see that she was only making it more difficult on herself. The illogical nature of the way she was about her family truly baffled me.
“Well. As I said before. If you desire to end my sisters, please feel free to do so. I have no remorse for traitors,” I said.
“Touché, E,” Mollis said wryly. “You think I’m weak.”
I shook my head. “Not that. Never that. I just hope you do not end up regretting the loyalty and respect you are giving them. They may not both deserve it.”
“That makes two of us, E,” Mollis said softly. Then she disappeared, most likely returning to her palace in the Netherwoods to be with her mate and children.
I stood there alone for a few moments longer, and looked up at the night sky, at the puffy clouds passing over the tiny sliver of a moon. For just a moment, I felt my wings flex under my leather coat.
But of course, they hadn’t. It was the memory of wing movement, the phantom reminders of what it had been like to be able to soar.
These were the times I needed it most. These were the times I needed to feel free and weightless, just for a few moments.
My mind flashed back to that day in Tokyo. My New Guardians and I had believed ourselves to be tracking prey, tracking a soul that had eluded us. We had made our way into one of the love hotels in Tokyo, and found ourselves beset by too many enemies, including two of my sisters.
Memories passed through my mind, images I would not likely forget.
My New Guardians, lying weak and injured.
The bodies of the goddesses of autumn and winter, chests ripped open, their hearts taken from them.
My wing, falling, torn and bloody, to the filthy floor.
I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to will the images away.
It was not just the fact that I missed flying. It was the knowledge that I wa
s now less than I should be. That I was not fully able to do the things I knew I should be able to. I had always considered myself to be a fairly even-keeled being, especially for an immortal. But the emotions that had stormed through me since waking a few weeks ago and realizing my wings were gone, for good… those were things I had not expected. I was, at turns, depressed, angry, mournful.
Frankly, it was irritating.
I forced my gaze down, away from where I longed most to be, reminding myself that I had a ridiculous shifter to reprimand. And Artemis’s cooking to suffer through.
Chapter Three
I rematerialized in the backyard of the cozy bungalow where Brennan had moved his small family after Mollis had “exiled” us from her inner circle. I had lived there with Brennan, his son, and Artemis for only two days before deciding it was more than I could take. I still visited most days, but it was a relief to know I did not have to live in Brennan’s home.
It was not that I did not enjoy my time with the shifter. I did. Likely, I enjoyed it too much. It was very easy to forget myself when his eyes met mine, or when we sat, side by side, his strong thigh pressed to mine. The kisses we had shared in Japan, that beautiful flight we’d taken together still haunted my dreams and memories. Both of us, likely for our own reasons, had drawn back from what had started between us. There had been no more kisses once I had fully recovered, and though he still often watched me in a way that made my heart race, he had made no further advances.
I did not know whether I was grateful or irritated with him for that.
The back yard of Brennan’s home, the place he had lived as a child before his parents had died, before he had gone to the loft to be raised by Nain, was the perfect place to raise his son, Sean. It was an ideal place for a little boy to be able to call his own. A large expanse of lawn, surrounded by a chain link fence and gate (absolutely necessary for a shifter child) and it was littered by all manner of climbing, swinging, and sports equipment. There was a large apple tree, which Sean had already taken to climbing. Near the house was a brick patio with a small wooden table and two chairs.
Betrayer (Hidden Book 7) Page 2