Deadly Descendant

by Jenna Black

  “She worked for an Olympian,” Kerner argued with no hint of remorse. “She lived in his house. That makes her not a civilian.”

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I didn’t get the feeling our conversation was increasing my chances of survival. The problem was, I didn’t know what would. I could try throwing my keys, using Kerner’s voice to target him, but I didn’t know if that would work, and if it didn’t, I could be sure the jackals would come for me immediately. Anything that bought me just a little more time was worth it.

  I took a couple of cautious steps forward. There was no point in retreating—I couldn’t outrun jackals. Maybe if I could get closer to Kerner, I could figure out a way to stop him.

  “Let’s talk about this,” I said in my best therapist voice. The jackals voiced their displeasure, and I stopped immediately.

  “There’s nothing to talk about!” Kerner snapped. And yet the jackals still hadn’t attacked me. There had to be a reason for that.

  “Maybe we can make another deal.” My mind raced as I tried to think of what Kerner might want from me. And almost immediately, I came up with the answer.

  Kerner wanted from me what everyone wanted from me.

  “I could make it a lot easier for you to find all of the Olympians. And Konstantin, when the time comes.” He didn’t say anything, and I took that as a sign of encouragement. “I’m a descendant of Artemis.” I was pretty sure he already knew that, but it didn’t hurt to make certain. “I’m really good at hunting. It’s why I’ve been able to find you as many times as I have.”

  There was more movement beyond the reach of the light, and I caught a hint of Kerner’s foul reek blending with the sulfur smell of the air. He was moving closer, though he was still careful to stay out of sight.

  “Why should I believe you’d help me?” Kerner asked. “You came with your friends to kill me. Not even kill me—to bury me alive for all eternity.”

  The jackals snarled and snapped, a couple of them stepping to the edge of the light so I could see the long, sharp fangs they bared. I swallowed hard.

  “I’m descended from Artemis, not a death god,” I said, hoping my voice sounded level and reasonable. “I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing when I followed you here, but I’m pretty sure I can’t get out without your help. That’s a pretty powerful incentive for me to help you, if you’ll let me.”

  He thought about that for a long moment. “It’s incentive for you to help me until you get out. Then you’ll just turn on me. Like you did this time.” The edge in his voice grew sharper, and I knew that I had to redirect him before his rage took over.

  “I came after you this time because I considered that you’d already broken our agreement. I understand now that we were working off of different definitions of the word ‘civilian.’ It was a misunderstanding, not a breech of faith.”

  I found my own argument a bit of a stretch, but Kerner’s silence suggested he was thinking about it. I decided my best strategy was to shut up and let him think.

  “Follow me,” he finally said, “but don’t get any closer.”

  The jackals retreated into the darkness, and I heard the echoing sound of Kerner’s footsteps. He hadn’t indicated one way or another what he thought of my proposal, and I was not at all happy with the prospect of following him into more unknown territory. But what choice did I have?

  I followed Kerner through the tunnel for what I’d guess was a couple hundred yards, timing my footsteps to his, getting growled at by jackals if he thought I was getting too close.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked once, but he didn’t answer.

  I kept my eyes peeled the whole way, looking for something, anything, I could use for a weapon. But there was nothing any more lethal that the keys I held clenched in my fist. If I could get Kerner into good enough light, I could try aiming for his eye. The keys weren’t the most efficient throwing weapon in the world, but they could do an impressive amount of damage to something as vulnerable as an eyeball.

  There was light coming from the tunnel up ahead. Dim gray light that wasn’t particularly inviting, but who was I to be picky? As we approached the light, Kerner’s form—and those of his jackals—was silhouetted. I could toss the keys and hit him in the back of the head—except I was too far away to get much oomph on the throw. I needed a more vulnerable target than the back of his head, and I needed to be closer so the keys would hit hard enough to do damage.

  The jackals were quite determined that I wasn’t to get closer.

  The tunnel eventually opened out into an enormous cavern. And when I say enormous, I’m talking big enough to hold a small city. Which apparently it did. I came to a stop at the tunnel’s opening and stared at what I saw laid out in front of me.

  For as far as I could see, white marble buildings rose from the gray stone floor of the cavern, some of them so tall they flirted with the blackness of the ceiling—a ceiling that was considerably higher in the cavern than it had been in the tunnels.

  The city was laid out in an orderly grid pattern, with one main road about three times as broad as any other leading up to something that reminded me very much of the Acropolis—only not in ruins. I shivered, even though the air was still uncomfortably warm. Some of the buildings were small and simple, little more than rectangular boxes with windows, but the larger, more elaborate buildings were adorned with columns and carved with bas-relief. In the dimness of the light, the carvings were nothing more than formless collections of shadow.

  Nothing moved in the silent white marble city. Nothing except Kerner and his jackals, that is. The buildings looked like homes and temples and courthouses, but in the silence and stillness, they seemed more like elaborate mausoleums.

  Uncommonly courteous for a crazed serial killer, Kerner gave me a moment to stand there and look around in awe before he started forward again. He didn’t say anything to me, but I knew I was supposed to follow. The city gave me a serious case of the creeps, but I forced myself onward anyway.

  Kerner led the way to the main street, turning down it and continuing on toward the big temple-like structure at its end. He was keeping me about thirty yards behind him, but the oppressive silence made his every footfall sound like a drumbeat in my ears. Or maybe that was just the beating of my heart. Empty windows stared down at me like malevolent eyes, and though the city felt dead, I kept expecting something to jump out at me from the shadows. It didn’t help when I got close enough to one of the more elaborate buildings to make out the details of the bas-relief. It looked like the kind of thing you would see carved into the top of your average Greek or Roman ruin, with rows of figures in action. Except the figures were all skeletons.

  Maybe it was just my imagination, maybe it was the dim gray light that gave everything an ominous look, or maybe it was just because I knew this was the Underworld, but I had a powerful sense that I didn’t belong here, that the city wanted me gone. How an empty city could want anything is anybody’s guess.

  Every step I took involved a battle with my fight-or-flight instinct, which was all in favor of flight. Licking my dry lips with my dry tongue, I took a deep breath of sulfurous air and kept alert for any hint of something that I could use as a weapon. The city looked so ancient that it should be in ruins, but there were no convenient hunks of rock sitting by the side of the road.

  At the base of the temple was a pair of circular stone pits in the floor, looking for all the world like empty swimming pools, though I doubted that’s what they were. They were about eight feet deep, their walls polished so smooth that the stone gleamed. As I neared those pits, Kerner had to go partway up the stairs leading to the temple’s entrance to keep his distance.

  “Stop there!” he commanded when I was a couple of yards from the pits. His jackals stood at the base of the stairs and growled at me in case I didn’t get the hint.

  Kerner turned around, and for the first time, I got a good look at him.
Blood coated the left side of his face and neck and stained his already filthy coat. My gun had hit him right above the left eyebrow, and the damage it had done was more than a bloody scalp wound. I was surprised Kerner wasn’t staggering around with a concussion. Then again, with the insanity he’d inherited from Lyssa’s seed, his brain didn’t exactly function like normal in the first place.

  “I will accept your deal,” Kerner announced from his perch on the stairs.

  “Um, great,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as all that. Kerner had led me here for a reason, and it wasn’t just because he’d look impressive pontificating from the temple stairs.

  “But I need a guarantee,” Kerner continued.

  I already didn’t like it. “What kind of guarantee?”

  Kerner smiled at me, an expression that couldn’t help but look sinister on his bloody face. “I want you to hop into one of those cisterns. Either one, it doesn’t matter. Then I’m going to go fetch a hostage or two. I’ll put the hostages in the other cistern, and then I’ll get you out, and we can go hunting together. Unless you want the hostages to die a slow and miserable death here in the Underworld, you’ll need to keep me alive so I can free them for you.”

  No, I definitely didn’t like this plan. I jumped when a jackal growled from behind me.

  “Choose a cistern,” Kerner commanded as I backed away from the jackal that menaced me.

  The good news was that the cisterns would make the perfect place for me to contain Kerner once I’d subdued him—assuming he couldn’t just create a portal back to the world above anywhere he pleased, but if he could do that, I was screwed no matter what I did. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get him into one of them. Maybe if I did as he asked, he would come closer to gloat at me.

  I kept backing away from the jackal, looking back and forth between the two cisterns while keeping an eye on Kerner out of my peripheral vision. He was still too far away for me to hurt him with my keys, but he wasn’t trying to maintain his distance anymore, and every step I took closer to the cisterns was a step closer to Kerner.

  No matter what, I couldn’t follow his instructions and jump into the cistern. If I did that, even if he came close enough for me to hit him afterward, he would just heal, and I wouldn’t be able to get him into the cistern because I’d be stuck in it myself.

  “I’m losing patience,” Kerner said, and I realized what I had to do.

  I was too far away to get a good shot at Kerner’s head, and the jackals would attack me the moment I made a hostile move. They could run a hell of a lot faster than I could, but if I caught Kerner by surprise …

  I took a deep breath, my hand spasming on the keys I still held, hard enough that I was sure I’d have key-shaped marks on my palms. This might be the craziest, most suicidal plan in the history of the universe. Even in the best-case scenario, I would be stuck in the Underworld forever. A frightened little corner of my mind suggested I go along with Kerner’s plan and figure out how to rescue the hostages after I’d gotten out of there and taken care of Kerner.

  But I couldn’t do that. If I let Kerner get away, a lot of people would die for my cowardice. Maybe I’d find a way to rescue whatever hostages he brought, but I couldn’t forget that in Kerner’s mind, I’d violated our first agreement. When we’d made the agreement, he’d warned me he would kill innocents if I broke it, and I had no doubt he was still planning to do so. If I let him go now, he would return to the Underworld later with his hostages and with proof of how many innocents he’d killed to punish me.

  It was now or never.

  I hung my head as if in defeat, but I was really just trying to hide my face, making sure Kerner could read nothing in my expression that might give me away. I took a couple of hesitant steps forward, turning my body like I was going to head for one of the cisterns.

  Then I charged Kerner.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Kerner and his jackals were so taken aback that for a moment, they didn’t react. I let out a battle cry as I picked up as much speed as I could within a few steps.

  Kerner recovered from his moment of shock, and suddenly, his jackals all leapt into action at once.

  Hard though it was, I ignored the jackals, pulling back my right arm for a throw. I was still a bit farther away than I’d have liked, but at least I had the momentum of my brief sprint behind me as I hurled my keys at Kerner with every drop of strength I could muster, aiming not at his eye but at his wounded temple.

  I put so much into the throw that I lost my balance, landing on the stone floor on my hands and knees. It turned out to be a lucky break, as a jackal sailed right through where I would have been if I’d kept my feet. I lashed out at one of the onrushing jackals with one foot, knowing it was a lost cause. A single bite was all they would need to kill me—assuming I never found my way out of the Underworld, which was a frighteningly good assumption.

  A choked scream from above told me my keys had hit their mark, and the jackal I’d been trying to kick suddenly disappeared, my foot going through empty air. I looked up in time to see Kerner put both hands to his wounded head as fresh blood welled between his fingers. He staggered woozily and lost his footing on the stairs, tumbling down them and hitting his head numerous times on the way. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he lay still.

  I stayed on my hands and knees for a moment, hardly daring to believe I wasn’t buried under a blanket of jackals. A vicious, fang-filled blanket. But I saw no sign of them, and Kerner wasn’t moving.

  Slowly, I rose to my feet and approached his body. A pool of blood was forming on the stone beneath his head. I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead, but even if he was dead, it would only be temporary.

  I didn’t understand how Kerner’s power worked. Could he create a portal anywhere in the Underworld he wanted to? Or were there certain places—like the tunnel we’d fallen into from the cemetery—that led back to the world above? I had to hope for the latter, or even trapping Kerner in one of the cisterns wouldn’t keep him from escaping once he came back to life. Unless I were willing to stay by his side and pound his head into hamburger every time it came close to healing. I had the disturbing thought that if I really was trapped down here till the end of time, I wouldn’t have anything better to do. Though I supposed I would starve to death or die of dehydration periodically, which might give Kerner the time he needed to heal and escape.

  Kerner reeked, and I didn’t want to touch him, but I did it anyway, bending down and feeling for a pulse. There was none. Even if the blow from my keys hadn’t been enough to kill him, the fall down the marble stairs had done the trick. Now all I had to do was drag him to the cistern and hope he couldn’t just form a portal and escape.

  Along with being disgustingly filthy, Kerner was also malnourished and as thin as a rail, but he still weighed more than I did. Dragging his dead weight—pardon the pun—toward the cistern was harder than I thought it would be, and I had to stop every couple of feet to suck air into my lungs. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, and fear hovered around the edges of my mind as I tried not to contemplate my bleak future. I wanted to sit down, hug my knees to my chest, and let loose with a fit of hysteria. Then maybe fall asleep and wake up later to find this was all a bad dream.

  All of which I promised myself I’d do once I’d gotten Kerner into the blasted cistern. Gritting my teeth in determination, I bent down and grabbed Kerner’s ankles to pull him another few feet closer to the cistern, which I could have sworn was moving farther away every time I turned my back.

  “Need some help with that?”

  The unexpected voice made me screech with alarm, and my clumsy attempt to whirl around was made even clumsier by my unfortunate mistake of putting my foot down on the edge of Kerner’s leg. I fell awkwardly, getting blood and filth on me as I landed partway on Kerner’s body.

  I scrambled away, adrenaline still whipping me into a frenzy even as my rational mind realized it recognized that
voice.

  When I stopped my panicky retreat, I looked up to find Anderson standing a few yards away, his arms crossed over his chest as he regarded me with amusement. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my racing heart.

  I’d allowed myself to forget that Anderson was a death god. I’d wondered once before whether he had the ability to travel into the Underworld. Now I had my answer.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When I opened my eyes, Anderson was bending over me, offering me a hand up. I accepted his help, but he didn’t let go once I was on my feet. He’d been smiling at me when I first caught sight of him, but he wasn’t smiling now. I guess he was still mad that I’d gone behind his back.

  “You could have gotten yourself, Jamaal, and Jack all killed tonight,” he said, his hand tightening on mine enough to make my bones ache.

  I swallowed hard, hoping he wasn’t going to do the Hand of Doom thing. I’d have tried to pull away, but I knew it was pointless.

  “I couldn’t just let him keep killing people,” I said. “And I couldn’t let Emma know what I was doing. I couldn’t risk Steph.”

  Anderson closed his eyes, but not before I saw the flash of pain in them. He let go of my hand, and I rubbed at my sore knuckles.

  “She wouldn’t have hurt Steph,” Anderson said, but his voice held a trace of doubt. “Emma’s not like that.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t like that before the Olympians got to her. But she is now.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “Is that a trick question?” Anderson scowled at me, and I held up my hands in surrender. “Because I didn’t think you’d believe me. You want the old Emma back so much you refuse to see what she’s become.”

  Anderson shook his head, either in denial or in disgust, I wasn’t sure which. My heart ached way more than any of my physical injuries.

  “I have a bag packed in my car,” I said, forcing words through my tight throat. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as you get me out of here. Maybe if I’m not around, Emma will start to stabilize.”