I just watched her. She grinned at me, totally relaxed now that she apparently had me subdued. "He was good. I actually meant that. I wouldn't have minded keeping him around a while, but Strife insisted I let him go back to his life. I had no idea how simple it was to ensure I got pregnant," she shook her head, still smiling. "She really is a genius."
I tried getting into her mind. She had a decent shield, actually, but she was so busy taunting me that she wasn't paying attention. She should have been able to feel me in her mind, trying to break in. I rolled my eyes again, and she took it as irritation over Brennan.
Lovely. Keep thinking that, I thought.
I worked at her mind a little more. I didn't give a shit about anything but Strife just then. She had to know something, obviously.
"You know, I really wasn't sure what to believe about how you looked. I mean, you hear things. Some people are all 'oh, she's gorgeous,' and others say you don't look like much of anything at all. Gotta say, Angel," she sneered, "I have to agree with the second group."
I kept working at her, made my way in as she prattled on. She was a prideful idiot. Her mind was filled with thoughts of how powerful she was, how amazing she was, how she was absolutely Strife's favorite. Sweet words whispered straight to her ego by Strife herself, about how glory lay ahead for someone as talented as her.
I searched her thoughts regarding her son. Nothing but pride over the miasma she'd managed to infect him with. He'd been a tool, a means to an end, a way to get more of Strife's approval. Nothing more. She was ambitious. I had to give her that much.
She was still fucking talking, which was actually starting to annoy me a little. "I mean, really. It's not all that surprising he was so easy to seduce, considering what he'd been sleeping with," she said, laughing.
There it was. Her thoughts about Strife herself were actually kind of hazy, confused. The only thing I really got from her head was that she was definitely responsible for working with the demons with all of those murders. Her main task had been to make sure the demons did their job, help them remain undetected, and to carve Strife's symbol (kind of a little weird squiggle; we'd noticed it on several bodies, but didn't know what it was) onto the flesh of each of the bodies. Kind of a prayer of thanks to her favorite goddess.
Yeah. The murders were meant to taunt me. At least I knew I wasn't being paranoid about that now.
"I don't even know what to do with you now," she was saying. "You killed all my demons. And Strife isn't supposed to even call me until Thursday." She stood, watching me, a bit of a pout on her lips. "I guess I can just keep you like that until then. Not like you're going anywhere." And then she laughed again, clearly pleased with herself.
There is only so much self-congratulatory crap I can be expected to stand.
I focused, hard. I could have used mental knives on her. Kind of wanted to, really. Could have set the bitch on fire again. That would have been fun. Unfortunately, I didn't have a whole lot of power left to work with, and I was already in agony from working my way into her mind.
In the end, I used one of the more useless powers I'd stolen back in my earlier days. It made the victim vomit uncontrollably. So I sent that at her, and she bent over, puking loudly.
Her spell broke, and I was free.
I stood, watching her vomit and whimper.
The imps came into the room, and Dahael watched her for a moment, then glanced at me, humor rolling off of her.
"Good one, Mistress," she said.
"It's not all about chopping heads off all the time," I said wisely, echoing Athena's words to me, and Dahael gave a small bark of a laugh. I sent some of the imps out to find my mother.
"Find Strife now?" Dahael asked.
I shook my head. "She didn't know where Strife is. I doubt Strife would have shared that with her; she's not going to advertise her whereabouts. She knows I'm stronger than she is."
"Bleeding, Mistress," Bash said, walking over to us.
"I know." My nose was gushing blood again, punishment for using my powers. I was trying to ignore the pain. I'd just have to toughen up a little until we figured out how to make it all stop. It had taken a lot of power to get into her mind, and I didn't have a hell of a lot left to work with to subdue her. Luckily, I hadn't had to do much; useless powers like making someone puke uncontrollably don't take a whole lot of power to pull off.
"Gonna make her stop now?" Dahael asked, glancing over at the still-puking witch.
"When my mom gets here."
"Not gonna kill her then?" Bash asked, and I shook my head.
"No. She's worthless. And my mom and aunt can spend some time finding out if there's anything else she knows." I felt fear from the witch, in addition to the pain she was in.
I enjoyed that. So I'm a little on the petty side.
A few seconds later, I felt my mother and aunt nearby, and then they walked through the back door and into the living room. My mother glanced at the witch, then raised her eyebrow at me questioningly.
"You didn't kill her?" she asked.
I let out a huffy breath in exasperation. "Why does everyone assume I was going to kill her?"
My aunt grinned. "Can you make her stop vomiting so I may escort her to her punishment, niece?"
I focused for a second, and the retching sounds stopped.
"That is disgusting," Megaera said.
"I know."
My mother shook her head.
"This witch was responsible for working with the demons who cause all of those murders. Twenty-seven deaths in all, and she was an accomplice. It was Strife's idea, but she was responsible for hiding the demons who did it and carving Strife's symbol into the bodies."
My mother nodded. "That's a common tactic Eris uses. Leave the symbol, cause panic because no one understand what it means other than that it keeps appearing."
"Right. So, she has a lot of punishment coming her way. If it had been left up to me, I would have killed her painfully, and then we would have learned nothing." I can't poke at her mind too much more. Her shield is strong and my powers are still not working right, I thought at my mother. Please do that for me.
Tisiphone met my eyes, nodded. You wanted to kill her.
Badly. She feels no remorse for the things she's done. This was all I could do just now, and it satisfied my own juvenile need to see her brought low.
My mother smiled a little. We will handle it. We will strip her of her powers, her memories, when we are finished with her.
I nodded. Tell me what you learn.
She hugged me, and she and my aunt dragged the witch from the room.
Well. One witch down, anyway. Hopefully she knew more about Strife than I'd been able to get from her. The imps filed out of the room, and I was left, trying to get my aching, bleeding body to stop.
Eventually, the pain receded enough that I could fly the rest of the way home. It still felt like my insides were being shredded as I walked into the duplex's back yard and rose into the air again. All I wanted to do was fall into bed. Instead I headed in the opposite direction, toward the bright lights downtown. I circled around, then flew to the top of one of the buildings on Wayne State's campus. I could see the loft from there, city shimmering beyond. The windows at the loft glowed, lit from the inside. Every once in a while, a shadow would cross one of the windows. I stood on the roof, my city below me, the home of the only people I'd ever loved nearby. And I wasn't part of it anymore, any of it, but it was mine. I'd protect it. I'd give them something to believe in, the reassurance that someone was watching over them.
I stood there a long time, the cool night breeze drying the blood on my clothing. The lights of the city, the freeways beyond lit the night sky. I felt my body healing itself from the damage caused by using my powers. My heart was still shredded. It would stay that way, probably. I couldn't deal with that anymore. I had enemies to find, people to save. I was here, for better or worse. I'd do what I do best: fight.
Even if it meant fighting the da
rkness within myself.
Epilogue
I landed in my front yard. It would be morning soon. Time to stop flying around where everyone could see me. I needed a shower and a warm bed.
Granted, it would be an empty bed, but whatever.
Instead of an empty yard, though, I was greeted with four beings standing on my front porch.
Eunomia, Levitt, Shanti, and Hephaestus stood there, and, once they saw me, they all put a fist to their chest.
"What the hell are you guys doing here?" I asked as I walked toward the porch.
"We go where you go," Shanti said.
I shook my head. "They need you."
"So do you," Eunomia said. "You have too many enemies, devil girl. We're not going to stand aside while you have all the fun."
"Agreed. We want in on the fight," Levitt said.
"You have a team, queenie," Hephaestus said. "Put us to work, already."
I stared at them, turned to Shanti. "What about your other duties?"
"I'll still be working for queen Rayna. But when she doesn't need me, I'm here."
"Uh. So, where do you plan to live?" I asked them. Eunomia grinned and picked up a large duffel bag, and Levitt followed suit.
"You have a few extra rooms," Eunomia said. "Any chance you're up for house guests?"
The imps had gathered around now, and they watched me and the group on the porch.
"You all are freaking suicidal. This is the dumbest place you could possibly want to be," I told them.
"I'll take my chances here, just the same," Eunomia said. I hesitated, stood staring at them, trying to find a way to talk them out of this stupidity.
"Look at us, Molly," Shanti said, desperation in her voice. "We were all lost in our own ways. And then you came along and showed us what we could be. You gave us a place when there was nowhere else to go. I'd rather die fighting by your side than live, leaving you to face this shit alone. You made me the kind of person who doesn't give up. I'm not freaking giving up now."
I felt it from all of them: certainty. Stubbornness. Devotion, to me. Warmth.
I could run from Brennan. I could run from Nain and his team. There was no way I could run from the people who'd had ended up living this crazy life because of me. I owed them more than that.
I shook my head and walked up the porch steps, and they parted, giving me a path to the front door. I unlocked it and pushed it open.
"Fine," I said, and my friends, my team (insane as they were), filed into the house.
"Tomorrow's another day, Scarlett," Shanti said as she walked past me. "That's from another crappy book you made me read, by the way." I rolled my eyes and closed the door behind us.
"Welcome home, team."
END OF BOOK THREE
* * *
Keep reading for a sneak peek at
Know Your Enemy: Hidden Book Four
Know Your Enemy: Chapter One
My name is Molly Brooks.
Vigilante.
Godslayer.
Oathbreaker.
Daughter of the Lord of the Dead.
The Angel.
What a joke.
I now lead a team of supernaturals who chose me when I'd split from my old team. The people of my city consider me a legend, a god. A hero.
You want to know what I am?
I'm someone who's afraid to go to sleep at night. I'm someone who scrubs my hands so often I make them bleed. I'm someone who re-lives every single one of my deaths, over and over and over again.
I'm a powerful being who can't use my powers without ending up in agony.
I'm afraid of myself. The darkness inside me grows, and I am losing hope that I'm strong enough to contain it. If I lose control, if I unleash whatever this is that is inside me, everyone I've ever loved will suffer for it.
One, in particular, more than others.
And the easy solution would be to get rid of the problem: me. Except that, unfortunately, I can't die.
As in, plenty have tried to make that happen. But I just keep fucking coming back.
Lucky me.
♦ ♦ ♦
I drove the route I'd driven dozens of times, from my house to the loft where Nain and his team lived. Every block that closed the distance between me and the people who lived there made my stomach clench more.
My hands gripped the steering wheel, hard enough to snap it if I'd unleash my powers just a little. As it was, the stress was stirring my powers, heightening them, and it was starting to hurt. Eunomia reached over and put her cool hand over mine on the steering wheel.
"Relax, my friend," she said softly.
"Better to be on edge than relaxed, considering. Don't you think?" I asked her. I glanced over at her, then into the rear-view mirror. The rest of my friends, my team, sat in the back seat. Levitt, Hephaestus, and Shanti. The imps had gone ahead; they'd meet us there. My team knew about the problems I was having. They knew that the moment I relaxed, the darkness inside me threatened to take over. They knew how close I was to giving in to it, to becoming the thing I feared most. They fought beside me. They watched out for me. And, maybe most importantly, they watched me, always prepared for that moment when whatever was inside me took over for good. And they knew that, when that moment came, their job was to put me down.
Yes. I trust my best friends to try to destroy me. Doesn't everyone?
We'd gotten to know each other better than I could have imagined over the past few weeks. We lived together, worked together, fought together. My house, which had seemed so big during all the years I'd lived there alone, felt cozy now. Granted, it was a crazy combination of gods, demons, vampires, and imps, but it was mine.
They knew my weaknesses. My problems. The promises I made to myself. We were more than a team. We were a family, and I trusted them with my life, as they trusted me with theirs. Considering how many powerful beings I had gunning for me, I thought their trust was misplaced. They ignored me when I said stuff like that.
They knew, better than anyone, that I was not as tough as most of the world believed. They knew I still tried to scrub unseen blood and gore off of my body. They knew I had nightmares, when I managed to let myself sleep. They knew that, in my weakest moments, I cursed my life for the things I couldn't have.
"This is exactly why ya should have talked to the fuckin' shifter on the phone all those times he called. Now yer goin' in with all this pent-up shit. Not healthy, queenie," Hephaestus said from the back seat.
"Well, that's why you guys are here, right?" I said, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror. "Keep an eye on me. Make an excuse to leave if it seems like I'm going to lose it. But I can't keep putting Nain off about this meeting, considering we're all trying to hunt Strife down and she's here because of me."
Strife.
I'd trapped her here in my realm back when I'd initially destroyed the gateway between here and the Nether, cutting off this world from the world of the immortals. She was not my biggest fan. I'd killed one of her closest friends, Enyo, the Goddess of War. And I'd trapped her other pal, Ares, the God of War, in a talisman that added to my power. She'd been doing her best to cause chaos, even going as far as using Brennan's infant son (another thing I tried not to think about too often) to harm those I cared about.
And we'd all been hunting her, but she was wily. We hadn't even gotten close.
So I'd finally given in, and agreed to meet with Nain and his team.
I hadn't seen Brennan since the night we'd decided to stop seeing each other. So I'm a coward. But it hurt too much, and I had enough on my mind. I knew it was for the best. It didn't make it any easier. Not when I loved him more than anything in this world or any other, and I knew he felt the same way about me.
Sometimes, love doesn't conquer all. That's a bunch of bullshit.
I pulled into the parking garage, and we all got out of the car. My team, for better or worse, had adopted my uniform as their own: black cargo pants, black shirts. The imps were there already, waiting for
me as they'd said they would. And it wasn't just them. My parents, Hades and Tisiphone, stood by the elevator. Hades leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest. My father never looked worried about anything. Though, I guess if you were the Lord of the Dead and ruler of the afterlife, you wouldn't be worried about much, either. Tisiphone, as always, looked like she was on guard, ready to kick ass.
"What are you two doing here?" I asked them as my team and I walked toward the elevator. "Not that I'm not happy to see you," I added. My mother gave me a small hug, murmuring a hello, and my father studied me.
"There's a reason you've been avoiding this. We're here in case we're needed." I hadn't been thrilled about telling my parents about the issues I was having, but E had insisted, and I had to admit it was smart. If I lost my mind, they were two of the few beings who had any decent chance of getting me under control.
I nodded. My parents, as always, were also dressed in black. "Go team death," I muttered under my breath as I pulled the gate up and we all got onto the elevator.
"We need a secret handshake," Shanti said. Then she hit the button to take us up to the loft. I took a deep breath. My stomach was turning. It wasn't seeing Nain and the team. I was fine with that. I'd had lunch with Ada and Stone the previous week, seen Nain around town. It was Brennan. I loved him. I missed him. And when I had my blackouts, I had visions of murdering him, brutally, in ways that made me sick. And even though I'm hurt, I know I'd never do any of those things to him. It was this… thing, whatever it was that was inside me. It was even more bloodthirsty than I was, and it wanted to hurt everyone I cared about. Especially him, because that would break me. It hated him. I knew that without knowing how, and that alone scared the shit out of me.
I'd tried to talk Nain out of this dozens of times. But my ex-husband was not the most accommodating man. And he'd finally just growled that I needed to get over it, that I was being weak.
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