Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15)

by Robert J. Crane

  Lethe stirred atop her horse. “You let your feelings color your judgment, Wolfe.” She looked at him, and he felt a sting—she knew. “You may not find death, brought by me to so many others, quite so alluring should it come for you.”

  “And I may just embrace it,” Wolfe said. “You don’t know. Death makes prey of the lessers, and I am no lesser, at least not to any but you and your father. Why deny this truth? Why subsume yourself to Odin, to anyone?”

  “I am hardly invincible, however great my anger may ring,” she said quietly. “And neither are any of my family, not even my father.”

  “But together,” Wolfe said, his heart leaping as he spoke the words he had longed to say all these years, “together we could be—”

  He stopped because he sensed someone ahead, and snapped his head around to see a man standing in the path. He was bronzed, dark-haired, and was calm in manner, plainly unaware of what rode his way at a canter.

  “Lethe, daughter of Hades,” he said pleasantly. “Wolfe of the Cerberi.” Perhaps he did know, then, announcing them by name. “My name is Janus. I believe you met my mother, Artemis, and my sister, Diana, when last you passed through these lands.”

  Lethe drew up short upon her horse. “Why do you block our passage, Janus, son of Apollo?” She knew him then. Wolfe recalled the mother and sister, the huntresses, but this creature standing before them…was a different matter entirely.

  “I come to you now as family,” Janus said. His eyes were brown as wet dirt, deep shadows beneath them. “In your absence, I courted and married your sister, Cocytus.”

  Lethe stared at him, unrelenting. “I congratulate you on a superior match. But I still await your explanation for why you impede my passage. I come to see my father. Speak your words, make them plain, and then remove yourself from my path—or I shall remove you.”

  Janus stared back at her calmly, and then moved himself, without comment, out of the road so that they might pass. Once he had done so, Lethe urged her horse forward, and Janus spoke once more. “You will not find him there. In the underworld with your kin.”

  Lethe took the reins of her horse and jerked them, prompting a great whinnying outrage from the horse, so abused. Wolfe stayed on his steed, unmoving. He was still debating whether to fillet this Janus. “Where might I find him, then?” Lethe asked, eyes narrowed, her patience waning.

  “In the company of death,” Janus said calmly. “There was…an incident…involving one of my children and a local market.” He bowed his head. “There was death. Lord Hades…lost control of himself, regrettably.”

  “Who cares?” Wolfe said, taking a seething breath.

  “Zeus cared,” Janus said. “The others cared. Hades lost his mind with grief, and was inconsolable. In his actions, his mad stride through the nearby towns, he found no relief, even as the deaths added up to far outweigh what was taken. Something needed to be done.”

  “And you did it?” Lethe asked, quietly seething. She dismounted with ease, crossing the distance between them to stand before Janus, hand perched above his head like a sword ready to fall. She had one of those too, but it was at her side.

  “I did not,” Janus said, and Wolfe could almost hear Lethe’s breath hiss out. “Your mother, Persephone, did this thing.”

  “You lie!” Lethe recoiled from him as though struck, putting the tip of her blade at the base of his throat. “I will cut out your lying throat, and then you will spread this filth no more.”

  “You may kill me, if that softens the blow,” Janus said, making no move, a placid look on his face. “But it will not change the truth of what has happened—Lord Hades went mad with grief, and in an effort to save his brood from war and annihilation at the hands of Zeus and the others, your mother struck your father down, settling matters for all involved.”

  “Impossible,” Lethe gasped. “She could no more hurt him against his desire than she could turn a rock against someone as a weapon of war. He could have taken her very soul from her before she reached him.”

  “But do you think he would have?” Janus asked, the voice of reason. It should have infuriated Wolfe, but for some strange reason, he felt utterly calmed at this news, at this chain of events, even though it heralded of destruction in his life that he could scarcely conceive of. “Struck down his wife as she approached him, no obvious ill intent? She took him by surprise, Lethe, the only way that anyone could, save for perhaps one of your own siblings.”

  “These lies that flow from you,” Lethe said, voice rising, “they pollute my ears and stain them with your—your deceits. He is not dead, for death is undying.”

  “And yet…” Janus said simply. “He is gone. If you do not wish to believe, I cannot blame you. I would not care to lose my father, and would certainly not trust the simple words of a stranger, even though they might be family unknown to me.”

  “Where did this calumny happen?” She put her blade back to his throat, and a tiny dot of red appeared where the tip of the sword poked through his skin.

  “To the north, the market town,” Janus said. “He fell before destroying another village. Persephone…struck true just in time to save the lives of every man, woman and child in—”

  “I care not for the men and women and children of this world,” Lethe said, seething. She yanked the blade from Janus, and left that tiny wound opened upon his neck. If it troubled him, he showed no sign. “I will seek the truth of what you have said. And know this—if you have lied to me—”

  “You will strike my head from my shoulders, I am assured,” Janus said. “But if you choose to do so, it will be out of pique, not because I have lied to you in this. Hades is dead at the hand of Persephone. All in these lands know the truth of this, but if you must see for yourself—feel free to do so.”

  “You do not have the power to give me leave to do anything,” Lethe said, seizing her horse by the reins and mounting it with a leap. “You are not the head of this house.”

  “There is no more house,” Janus said quietly. “With your father gone, Zeus has called for your brood to be…separated. His servant, Alastor, is even now in the caves of Hades, overseeing this task. Your brothers and sisters and all their chattel are being brought to the base of Olympus. There they will dwell near the rest of our kind—”

  “I will be thrice damned before I consign myself to the house of Zeus,” Lethe said, spitting her displeasure upon the ground in a great glob. “My uncle may consider himself the king of us all, but I am a daughter of death and will not be ruled by a cad such as he, a man who can keep no lust under his robe for even a moment.”

  “He is an intemperate man, to be sure,” Janus said, unblinking, “but if you will not submit to his rule—if you will not follow your mother back into the protection of Demeter—then—”

  “You need not say it,” Lethe said, seething, between gritted teeth. “I sense keenly what you mean, and I shall not long linger in these lands once the truth of what you have said has been proven to me beyond any doubt. I will see this place where you claim my father fell, and I will pass onward from these borders, and your accursed thunder-farting-shit-brain will not need trouble himself any longer with a thought of where I go, for I have friends the lands over who would see me live in their domains. Uncle Zeus can direct his cock toward a steady stream of goats in the fields sooner than he would bring me under his dominion, the old—”

  “Yes, I get the gist of your insults,” Janus said. “Forgive me for not conveying them to Zeus in their original form, but I wish to leave you, my unwitting sister by marriage, an out should you ever wish to return.”

  “Do whatever you see fit,” Lethe said, sitting tall on her horse, “but for my part—I shall never return to these lands.” And with that, she turned upon her horse and galloped off, without waiting to see if Wolfe would go with her.

  Wolfe, for his part, stared at Janus. His mind pulled at him, urging him to take the reins of his own steed and follow, toward north, where Hades died and after Lethe. />
  But another part tugged at him, twisting in his gut. She doesn’t want you. Doesn’t want your…worship.

  “And what of you, Wolfe?” Janus asked, staring at him cannily. “Already your brothers have moved their allegiance, swearing to the house of Zeus and taking the lead of Alastor, his wrathful right hand.”

  “I…” Wolfe said, like a force had acted upon him from atop his horse. The desire to tug the reins one way was strong, crying out at him, to be after Lethe before she grew too far from him.

  “You know that following her is a dead end, do you not?” Janus asked. “She rides to a rendezvous with a hard truth—that her father is dead. She may not have seen him in centuries, but it remains that he was a protector, a voice in her head during her formative years, and a presence in her thoughts and life that…she may never replace.”

  “She is her own person,” Wolfe said, but it was a struggle with his own warring emotions to get even this out. Something had clamped down upon him, twisting his feelings inside. His love, his lust, his craven desire for Lethe was striking hard against an immovable truth—If you touch her, you will die as the rest did—and finding it…immovable.

  “Of course she is,” Janus said. “She could not have survived on her own and made such inroads in the north without being so. But her days at home are waning now. She will go and see the truth of what I have said, and then she will ride beyond the borders of this land, for good. Maybe she will go north, back to the Nords. Perhaps east once more, following the path you set out upon last time. Who can say?”

  Janus took a few steps forward, looking up at Wolfe on his horse. “But what will happen to you, Wolfe? Will you follow at her heels forever, continuing to eat the scraps that she and Odin throw to you? Because your master is dead.”

  “Hades…has not been my master for a long time,” Wolfe said, but it was so difficult, the loyalty breaking like a brittle blade upon an anvil. What had Hades done for him other than present him with strength enough to be feared? Odin had offered him more, and Wolfe still loathed the one-eyed bastard.

  “You have followed a master and then a mistress,” Janus said, brushing the neck of Wolfe’s horse with a stray hand. In normal circumstances, Wolfe would have killed any man who dared do such a thing. Here, he let it pass for…some reason. “Always, things were promised. Ephemeral rewards for tangible loyalty. And how has that worked out for you, Wolfe? How long has it been since the bond between you and your brothers has been renewed?” Janus’s eyes were knowing, and still that did not raise Wolfe’s ire as it should have. “Centuries away from home. Away from kin, from blood. They are different people than when you last knew them.”

  “What…do you want from me?” Wolfe asked, hands shaking as that little part of him screamed, yearned to take the reins and ride after Lethe, to follow her to Hades, to oblivion, to whatever end she commanded—

  But he did not move. All he did was listen.

  “I do not want anything from you,” Janus said softly, still stroking the horse’s mane. The beast was not calm for anyone, yet here he stood, as soothed as Wolfe himself. “But Zeus would have your loyalty as he has that of your brothers. Theirs was willingly, easily given. Yours…I sense…is harder to come by. But we all have our orders, and mine are clear—the children of Hades that will not submit will by no means be allowed to gather loyalty of our other brethren, for that would be…dangerous.”

  Wolfe clenched his teeth, feeling a sudden urge to strike Janus’s head from his shoulders. “If you mean to kill her…”

  Janus made a tsking noise, either at the horse or Wolfe. “Not at all. She will be permitted to pass the borders of these lands one last time, but…she will not be allowed to return. Spies will follow her, from the House of Zeus, of Poseidon, of all of us. For safety’s sake, you understand. Lethe…she carries a seed of danger, one that threatens all of us.” He stared up at Wolfe. “It is fortunate that this…love I feel in your heart for her…that she did not…consummate such a desire with you, bring you into her, for that would make her…a nightmare. Fearsome beyond belief. But your journey with her needs end, for your sake as well as hers, for how long could she be trusted not to sup upon a draught of invincibility that sits right before her?” He laughed, but it was bitter. “No. She must be alone, and definitely kept away from you, to keep the full breadth of her powers well under control, because to do otherwise would be…fatally dangerous. Yes? You know what I mean?”

  “I do,” Wolfe said, that last urge to scream, to slit Janus’s throat, to follow after Lethe with fury to any end…it seemed to die, a thread torn out of the tapestry of his feelings right there.

  “Good,” Janus said, and patted the horse’s neck one last time. “You should come with me. I will introduce you to your new master.”

  “Zeus?” Wolfe sat there atop the horse, the pull gone, now pliant, as ready to be led—for now—as the horse he was upon. Something dark and angry sprang up within him, but faintly, and he marked Janus with it, a fury that he felt buried deep like a mark in his skin.

  “Zeus is a busy man, with much to do,” Janus said, turning his back. “No, you will answer to Alastor, as I do. He is a faithful friend to those who serve, you will see. And a powerful enemy to those who cross him.” Janus looked back, a glint of triumph in his eyes. “Something I think you will respect.”

  Wolfe found himself nodding, though he did not know why, and taking the reins of the horse and jarring it forward. It moved, following Janus as the man slowly walked him down the path toward the caves below, where the house of Hades had finally, after all these centuries, reached its end.

  41.

  Well, this was a shit sandwich of a tactical situation, I reflected as the entire Edinburgh police department came charging in at me. Rose had a gun to her head, and the implication was pretty clear—move and she was going to be learning to think again without a hell of a lot of her brain tissue. If she survived.

  The place, which had seemed so open and inviting before now, seemed claustrophobic as fifty cops fell upon me with batons and nightsticks and fists and feet and everything else they had at their disposal. I swear to God one of them hit me with a red Swingline stapler, like a feral version of Milton from Office Space.

  “Geez, guys,” I said, kicking a female detective so hard she sailed into a partition between desks, “was it something I said or something I did?”

  There wasn’t a lot of conversation here; they just charged and grunted and generally made themselves a vicious pain in my ass by raining down all sorts of physical abuse upon my person. I’d seen something similar once before, the night I lit a commerce park in Eden Prairie, Minnesota on fire because a bunch of metas I’d stuck in jail, quite deservedly, teamed up for revenge on yours truly. This was a little different, though. It was still Horde Mode, as Reed would have called it, but this mob was coming after me of their own free will, or so it seemed.

  I was pulling my punches big time, too. One guy came at me and I backhanded him such that his head snapped back and he lost his footing. He was promptly trampled by three other cops trying to club me senseless, the milk of human kindness for their fellow lost in the mad rush to tear me limb from limb at Frankie’s order.

  Frankie was still at the other end of the room, and I caught glimpses of him now and again as he stood up on a desk, watching the fun. He was grinning, and wouldn’t have looked at all out of place if he’d had a popcorn bucket and was stuffing his face while watching. Somehow he’d turned the entirety of this station against me and my red-wigged self at the drop of a hat, and if it had happened a little more organically and a little less frothing-at-the-mouth-ingly I would have easily believed that they were just aiming to kick my ass because I was Interpol’s Most Wanted right now.

  But they’d gone nuts in a way that sane people seldom did, and the fact that it happened the way it had suspended my ability to believe these were law enforcement officers doing their duty. They may not have been as rabid as those reporters in Eden
Prairie, but there was an element of human response missing from the way they bum-rushed me, that dash of uncertainty that any human would feel when charging at a superhuman weapon who’d killed literally hundreds of people, and you’re armed with nothing but batons and staplers and—shit, was that a monogrammed paperweight that clipped my ear? I think it was.

  Of course, that moment, when I was being overrun by a room full of angry cops, wasn’t the moment to draw a lot of conclusions, which is why most of my brainpower was dedicated to kicking and punching and occasionally biting, maybe with a dash of clawing thrown in, given my somewhat limited fingernails; anything to get these people to not whack me with batons in an effort to club me to death. The fact that there wasn’t a lot of strategizing going on—not one call of, “Hey, you go left, I’ll go right, and we’ll pincer the hell out of her by beating her skull in from all sides!” was another strong indicator that things had seriously jumped the track here.

  “Okay, well,” I said, whacking a lady cop and knocking her clean out, “this is about enough of this.” I leapt up and over one of the cubicles, kicking someone as I went past. I landed in another cube and then jumped again, coming down two rows over, using my levitational abilities to extend my jump.

  A couple gunshots rang out behind me, and I froze. Rose had a gun to her head when last I saw her—did that mean…?

  Someone grunted and took a punch to the face a row back, a sound as familiar to my ears as a toaster dinging was to most. There was a thud and then another, and someone landed on the desk above me and then skidded down, a big red mark on her cheek and a pistol in her hand.