“And that weakness is going to draw him to you like a moth to flame.”
“Yes, it will. Eventually. And, as you said, there is nothing you can do for me when he comes, Drew. You or the others. I will go with him willingly. It will be best for all of us. He will take me home—”
“This is your home now, Khara,” he snapped. “Until we have answers to the mysteries surrounding you and I know it is safe for you to be anywhere else, your home is with us.”
He reached across the car and took my hand in his, a gesture completely foreign to me. He gave it a light squeeze before he retracted his, placing it back on the steering wheel. Drew’s protective nature was so ingrained in him that I knew he would put himself in Deimos’ path in an attempt to save me and would surely die as a result. Son of a god or not, Drew would not be able to survive his wrath. Coming between Deimos and me would be a death sentence for certain. I resolved in that moment not to allow that situation to come to pass.
The silence in the SUV grew heavy and thick while Drew’s concern grew greater and greater. I felt a strange pain in my heart, one I had never experienced before. I felt something for my brother—a sharp pain penetrating my heart. Sorrow, I thought to myself. This must be sorrow. Seeing the trouble on his face at the mere thought of my endangerment pulled that emotion from Kemomussomewhere inside myself that I had not known to exist.
The tightness remained. It was physically uncomfortable, and I clutched at my chest, rubbing it, but the sensation would not abate. I needed to find relief before the unwelcome emotion tore me apart inside.
“He is more beautiful than you would imagine,” I stated abruptly, hoping that distraction might ease both the ache in my chest and the tension surrounding us. “But it is a harsh beauty that belies an evil unimaginable—a ruse for the unsuspecting. This seductive warning makes a woman either want to run from him screaming or fall to her knees before him. In my time, I have done both,” I explained, my words vacant of emotion. Any I felt for Deimos had long been drained from me; my mask of ambivalence now remained firmly in place. I could not afford to show the fear I felt toward him while in his presence, so I had eradicated it. My mind perceived danger when I saw him, but I no longer let it outwardly affect me. I was the portrait of apathy.
When I peered over at Drew, I could see that my outburst perplexed him, but I continued on regardless.
“I have heard of the human ‘fight or flight’ response, but with Deimos neither is effective. You can run from him, but your efforts will be in vain. As I have said, he will find you if he desires to. And fighting him has thus far proved ineffective; I have tried that as well. I did not relish the outcome. But, if I were to play into his desires, no longer resisting him—”
“If you are attempting to assuage my concerns, dear sister, I can assure you that you are failing miserably,” Drew growled from the darkness beside me.
“I am simply offering a viable strategy,” I pointed out. “If we wish to avoid a war with him that we cannot win, then this is our best option.”
“I will never run from battle,” he snapped, pinning sharp eyes on me in the darkness. “And surrendering you is not an option.”
“It is a means to an end, Drew—”
“It could be a means to your end,” he shouted, cutting me short. “Deimos is Ares’ son, too, though he is not PC. He was created long before we were even a thought, an idea. Has it not yet crossed your mind that Deimos may know precisely who and what you are? Who you were born of?”
“That makes no sense. Why would he not have used such information to his advantage by now? If he knew he could manipulate me into succumbing to his desires so easily, he would have.”
“He is insane, Khara. Insane people follow no logic, save their own,” he countered, his voice low and warning. “I’ve heard rumors about him that made my blood run cold. I don’t presume to know the inner workings of his deranged mind, but I believe there is a distinct possibility that he may know far more than you think he does. You cannot go with him—under any circumstance. It is not an option, and I will not allow it.”
“We will see how you feel when the time comes,” I replied, holding his sharpened gaze without faltering. “And it is a when, not an if, Drew. Now, shall we go meet the others? I am far more interested in learning about what you do than discussing a future that is not yet upon us.”
He said nothing in response, only exhaled heavily, staring fixedly through the windshield ahead of him as he did. Then, with the turn of a key, the Suburban’s engine hummed back to life, and he pulled onto the road. Once again, we were on our way to the Tenth Circle where we were to meet the others. I had not put much thought into Deimos’ likely reaction to my abduction until that conversation and didn’t want Kidn and I wto put any more thought into him at all that evening. He was an ambush waiting to happen. An unavoidable fixture in my life.
Drew had vowed that he and the others would keep me safe and hidden from Ares until they knew better how to proceed, but I would not let them die in the process, only to see them again in the Underworld under the most unfortunate of circumstances. Surely they would go there upon their de
aths when so many had fallen because of them. I could prevent that fate.
My eternal torment for theirs seemed a small price to pay.
6
“What took you guys so long?” Kierson shouted over the infernal music that blared around me, shaking my insides.
“Car problems,” Drew replied, eyeing me tightly. His look was a warning, though one I did not understand. If he perceived Deimos as an imminent threat, I could not fathom why he did not see fit to brief the others on all he had learned during the course of our drive. Before I could add to his explanation, he ushered me to the far corner of the upper deck that my brothers seemed to claim as their own whenever there. “Not now,” he warned. “This is not something to discuss in public. Names like that of the one who will come for you have power around certain beings. We do not need to unleash that so early on.” I nodded in agreement. “You wanted to see what we did tonight, and you will. But you will also see why we do it and who we do it to.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning there is evil crawling all over this city, Khara. It’s overrun with it. I’m amazed the humans can even survive under such a cloak of darkness, but they do. Perhaps they’re more resilient than we give them credit for,” he informed me. “But more specifically, my point is that, because this evil is everywhere, you must use discretion when discussing matters of interest outside of our home or vehicle. Those have been protected . . . by magic. Pierson dabbles in it, though it is not his primary gift. Normally, you may speak freely if he is present. His paranoia, or what he prefers to call diligence, fuels his need to keep prying ears deaf to all conversations he is a party to. But in an effort not to tempt fate, we will not speak about the one who seeks you here, even though Pierson is present, understood?”
“Understood,” I replied, ruminating on what he had told me. “You said that magic is not his primary gift. What would his primary gift be, precisely?”
“It would be a matter to discuss in the aforementioned safe places,” Drew countered, a hint of his more jovial nature breaking through his armor.
Kierson bounded up behind us, throwing his arms around both Drew’s and my shoulders.
“Seriously, Drew. You’ve been hogging Khara all night. When do we get to show her our stuff?”
“Must you constantly be reminded that she’s your sister?” Casey lamented as he approached. “Your ‘stuff’ shouldn’t be making any appearances in her presence.”
“Don’t be such a dick. You know what I meant!”
“See. You can’t even go two seconds without referencing your anatomy—”
“I’m going to fucking whale on you,” Kierson shouted, lunging for Casey, who stood there smiling as though he’d gotten exactly the response he’d wanted.
“Is this what I’ve come to witness, Drew? This is what you do to maintain t
he balance?” I asked, feigning complete confusion.
“No. It isn’t,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “But it seems to be how I spend the majority of my time lately.” He flashed an intimidating gaze at the others. “You two, enough. Go back over to Pierson. Khara and I will be there in a minute.”
Kierson looked like a scolded child while Casey continued to smile, hovering defiantly for a moment before he too made his way over to the couches where Pierson sat, poring over a book of some sort. Oz was nowhere to be seen.
Drew led the way over to them, indicating that I should sit down next to Pierson. As I did, Pierson did nothing to acknowledge me, his eyes never leaving the book in front of him. The writing was in a language unfamiliar to me, which was strange given that I had become versed in so many over the centuries.
“Khara,” Drew called, breaking my focus on the foreign text. “Do you have a preference as to who you would like to accompany on tonight’s patrol?”
I looked at the others as I assessed my options. Casey stared me down, looking every bit as hostile as I thought him to be. Pierson continued to ignore me. Kierson, however, looked at me with pleading eyes, begging for me to choose him. His enthusiasm was unwarranted and tiring, but I could not bring myself to choose anyone else when it was so plain that he actually wanted to be assigned the task of educating me on PC affairs.
“Kierson appears to want the job,” I stated. “I shall go with him.”
“Yes!” he shouted, jumping out of his seat. “Awesome. This is going to be a blast. You won’t be sorry.”
“I think she already is,” a familiar voice purred from behind me.
“On the contrary,” I rebutted, turning to see Oz approaching from the darkness behind me. “I am certain I will find Kierson’s teachings informative.”
“Ah, yes. Nothing describes a night on the town with Kierson better than ‘informative,’” he mocked, coming around the couch to sit next to Casey.
“This is not a social matter. It is one of business, something I assume you know little about.”
“Is that so, new girl?” he questioned, leaning toward me.
“Indeed.” I leaned forward to mimic his aggressive posture, staring him down as I did.
“Why do I feel like I’m refereeing tonight?” Drew pondered aloud with a sigh. He stepped into my line of sight, breaking my eye contact with Oz. “I think you should head out. Remember, you are going out with Kierson so that he can both teach you and keep you safe. You are to do as he tells you. Any sign of trouble and I want you out of there, do you understand? You run until you get back here.” After he was certain I had absorbed the full weight of his instructions, he pulled out a shiny silver device from his pocket and thrust it into my hand. “This phone has all of our numbers programmed into it. If you need us, just hit this button and say the name of the person you want to talk to. It will do the rest.”
I turned the cell phone over in my hand, analyzing it carefully. I had heard talk of these devices before from Father’s soldiers but had never seen or used one. My life had become a crash course in the unknown.
“And where will you be?” I asked, wondering what would happen if I were to need to retreat to the club. If there was enough danger in Detroit to not allow us to speak freely in the club, then there was enough there for me to not be alone there either, per Drew’s own admission. He appeared far more concerned about my well-being than I was.
“Out. But Pierson will remain, should you nee Shoud fad to return.”
“And I will be here as well,” Oz added unhelpfully. “But I will likely be far too occupied to be of any assistance to you. Unless, of course, you felt like joining in . . .” His heavy gaze eventually drifted from me to the dance floor, a clear indication of why he would be too busy to help me, should I have found myself in need. He was proving to be a creature of habit. One that I did not enjoy.
“Shall we?” Kierson prompted, extending a bent arm in my direction. I knew not what to do with it so I came up beside him, only to have him intertwine our arms before turning us toward the staircase that would take us down to the main area and the exit. I was growing more anxious to leave by the minute. “This is going to be so awesome, Khara. Hunting is such a rush . . . well, it is when you actually find someone up to no good, but that happens readily enough to keep my spirits up.”
His mischievous grin exposed nearly every tooth his mouth contained. It was clear that he loved his calling, though I still did not fully understand what that entailed. Finding evil and eliminating it did not excite me as it did him. Surely I was missing something.
Once we stepped out onto the sidewalk, he looked around until he located the colossal black vehicle I had just ridden into town in and made his way over to it.
“Can we not walk?” I asked, not wanting to admit that being inside that oversized contraption made me uneasy. There was something unnatural about it that did not sit well with me.
He shrugged ambivalently and conceded, redirecting us down a narrow passage between the towering buildings to a less traveled road. He explained along the way that bad things rarely happened in crowded areas. That concept made little sense to me—they happened everywhere in the densely populated Underworld.
“So what do you use to find scenarios that require the attention of the PC?” I asked while we made our way down the dark and rather malodorous street. Refuse was strewn about without concern, and people lay sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk. I stepped carefully over one that appeared to be lying in a puddle of his own bodily fluids. “Certainly you don’t just wander aimlessly all night long in hopes of finding some nefarious creatures engaged in unsavory acts. This city is too large for that plan to be statistically advantageous, if one could call such a course of action a plan at all.”
“Drew specifically told me not to go into too much detail about things, if you chose to go with me—at least not for now. He knows I can get a little carried away when I’m excited, and he doesn’t want to overwhelm you. You’ve had quite a shock to your system as it is. We don’t wanna blow a circuit, you know?” I thought I understood what he was saying and nodded. “But,” he said with a shrug, “what Drew doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?” Again, I nodded. “The truth is that, for the most part, each member of the PC can sense all types of supernatural, with very few exceptions. Unfortunately for us, most of those exceptions reside in Detroit. That’s forced us to adapt over time,” he explained, taking my arm as we crossed the street.
“Have you adapted as a whole or individually?”
“Both. We were each chosen to police this city and what roams its streets for a reason,” he continued, his expression darkening momentarily. “Those of us still left were best suited for the task, I guess.”
“Still left? There were more . . . are more? I have other brothers?” I prodded as we continued down the increasingly desolate street. Even those who had apparently taken to in Sy ter habiting them disappeared as I looked off into the distance.
“You have many brothers, Khara—hundreds, though those numbers dwindle over time as they fall. Our job is not without danger, nor are we immune to its consequences.”
The immensity of his statement weighed heavily on me, forcing me to stop in my tracks and fully acknowledge it. I had more family than I could comprehend, and likely had lost even more than that which still existed. I wondered if I had passed them in the Underworld, not knowing who and what they were. They would not have known me either. The dead do not feel as the living do. They are consumed only by terror and pain—that was my experience with them.
That unwanted feeling in my chest was returning at the thought of my brothers facing an eternity of torment for their actions above. I needed to quash this feeling immediately.
“Are you okay?” Kierson asked, assessing me curiously.
“I am fine,” I replied dismissively, continuing in the direction we had been headed. “So you have survived unscathed. What is your adaptation that serves you so
well, since you implied that you were not one who could sense these few supernatural beings originally?”
“The answer to that lies with my mother—well, Pierson’s mother too, obviously. Do you know of the Banshees?” He took my lack of response to mean I did not. “That’s what she was. I don’t know what Ares was hoping to accomplish through that bizarre pairing, but he seemed moderately pleased by what it produced.”
“Which was?”
“A strange bastardization of what our mother could do,” he said, leading me down yet another dark and narrow way. “A Banshee’s wail signaled an impending death, most often the death of someone in a prominent family. That’s what our mother did, but our powers don’t work quite like that. Alone, Pierson sees things, precognition, if you will, but his premonitions won’t necessarily come to pass on their own. They are not always certain.”
“So he can see where danger lurks and stop it?”
“Sort of.” He looked befuddled, trying to explain whatever gifts he had received from his mother. “But not without my help. Have you ever heard about twins having strange connections . . . knowing what the other is thinking without saying anything? Feeling what the other is feeling, stuff like that?”
“No, I have not.”
“Okay, well, this might sound weird to you then, but Pierson and I have that kind of connection. Like a strong one. When he sees something, I can sense it. I can’t see it, but it’s like he can direct me to it.”
“This is why he is not out with us?”
“Pretty much.”
“Does he not fight at all then? He has the same fierce look as Casey at times, the same that Drew wore before he nearly ended me. Is he not a warrior as the rest of you are?”
“He is, and don’t ever let him hear you say that,” Kierson warned, his playful demeanor quickly overtaken by one of caution as he caught my arm, demanding my attention. I stopped walking immediately. “He’s a bit sensitive about that particular issue. He tries to make up for that with knowledge, hoping that if he appears superior to everyone else intellectually, he will not be questioned.”
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