Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  “You had a chance,” I said under my breath. He could hear me, of course. “You chose not to.”

  “Not exactly,” he said. “The same goes for you. The first we knew of you were rumors, really. From Omega expatriates seeking sanctuary in Revelen during the war. The rest—”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t know about me at all?” I asked, staring him down. “About my fight?”

  He shook his head. “No. Only whispers, until just before your battle with Sovereign. Imagine our surprise to find out one of ours was leading the charge.”

  “I tried to help,” Lethe said. She was fixed on me, looking me dead in the eye. “I was on my way up to Minneapolis when you fought him, after you killed Century. I was hours away when I got the news he was dead. That you won.”

  “Did I make you proud?” I asked, as snarkily as I could manage.

  “Yes,” she said and … shit. I think she meant it.

  “It was indeed a proud day,” Hades said. “But also a sad one; Sovereign, for all his faults, was one of my brood as well. A shrinking number, to be sure. I found no joy in his death, but I did find pride that you proved yourself strong enough to handle the threat he posed. Sovereign had a world-killing, world-ending organization, and you …” Hades smiled. “You countered it. Eighteen years old, and you defeated a man who had walked the world for over a thousand, defeating all comers in that time. It was an impressive accomplishment, and the first of many, if I do say so. So, yes, we are … proud of you and all you have done. I only wish we could have met sooner, but … this is the time we have.”

  “Why couldn’t we have met sooner?” I asked. “You’ve been here all this time. I’ve been on the run from the law for two years. Hell, I was a few hundred miles away last year, up to my eyeballs in trouble with another of your ‘brood’ in Scotland—”

  “Yes,” Hades said, nodding, “it was unfortunate that your greatest battle came at the hands of another of our own. Tragic that we have seen so much internal strife when the world largely hated us all along.” He shook his head. “This is why I have brought you here now, in fact.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So it’s not just because I’m super special and needed a way out of prison?”

  He shook his head. “There are so few of us left now from the family. And so many of us have fallen in the last years. Sovereign. Charlie. Rose. Your mother.”

  “Your boy Raymond,” I said.

  Hades blinked. “Who?”

  Lethe thought about it for a second. She muttered something in Greek. “He had started going by Raymond.”

  “Ahhhhh,” Hades said. “He was still alive? How unfortunate, I did not know, but this merely illustrates my point. Our family has long been under attack, especially those of you with the power of incubi and succubi. We have long seen you hunted by a jealous and fearful world. Here, we will watch each others’ backs. Put aside pointless dominance games and live in peace. Together, we will forge a new society, and a new future for our kind.” A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Here … we will be family again. Just as it was in the days of old. And you, Sienna … to you, I say …” He extended his arms wide. “Coming here … this was always to be your fate. Welcome home, Sienna Nealon.” He smiled, and it was … less terrible. “You need never fear again.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Great-Grandpa is a little grandiose, isn’t he?” I asked Lethe. We were walking down the hall of the castle a few minutes after Hades had made his pronouncement of how I was home at last, and was oh-so-welcome. We’d exchanged a few conversational pleasantries after that, nothing major (because I’d been a little stunned by everything), and he’d asked Lethe to show me to my room so I could rest after my long journey.

  So now she was showing me to my room, and I was looking to get the straight dope from my grams.

  Lethe just smiled at my observation. “He was the God of Death for an entire civilization. Even in exile in the caves—the underworld—yes, I suppose being who he was lent a certain grandiosity to everything he did.”

  “Hm,” I said. “What about—”

  “Here,” Lethe said, and we stopped outside a wooden door. She opened it, and it gave way to a nicely appointed room. The stone walls were hung with some paintings and such to make it look less medieval, and there were blankets and pillows on the bed to give it a homey touch. All in pink. Like they’d just found out I was a girl and tried to decorate appropriately.

  “Wow, I’m so excited to get my own room again.” I said it deadpan, but honestly … I was kinda glad. I’d shared with June Randall for the days before this, Harry before that, and getting one without a lock on the outside? Even better.

  “We can personalize it some if you’d like,” Lethe said, giving it the once over with me. “Lots of tradesmen and merchants in Bredoccia have some nice touches that could spruce things up. Interior décor was never my strong suit, but … there are options available. And a nearly unlimited budget.”

  “Cool, I’d like a nuclear silo over in the corner, and a vault to store my Fabergé egg collection over here—”

  She evinced a little surprise at the words “nuclear silo,” just a flash of the eyes.

  “I was totally kidding about the Fabergé eggs. Unless you’re cool with me buying some.”

  “Well, we’re not exactly an Emirate here,” she said. “Our budget isn’t entirely unlimited, I suppose I should have said. As to the other thing … were you kidding?”

  “No, I want some nukes to wipe out all my enemies in a scourge of fire—of course I was kidding,” I said. “I was listing expensive things. But you have nukes here?” I asked, and she grimaced, confirming it. “Wow. When did that happen?”

  “We have an entire country of metahumans,” she said, looking around the room as though there were an escape hatch available. “There are powers at our disposal that have allowed us to—”

  “Go nuclear?”

  “To take over Russia,” she said, apparently deciding somewhere in the middle that honesty was the best policy. “Dammit. We were going to tell you all this a little later. Hades had a whole briefing planned.”

  “I’ll try and act surprised when it comes up.” I deepened my voice to imitate my great-grandfather’s timber and accent, crossing it with the traditional Dracula. “‘Ve have taken Moscow. Ze Russians are now our bitches.’” Back to mine. “‘Yay! That’s so amazing! Can I be Czaress’?”

  Lethe arched an eyebrow at me. “Well, you wouldn’t do any worse than Stalin.”

  “Let’s not be so sure of that,” I said. “I have a firm hand. An iron one, one might say. I bet I’d be a bloodthirsty dictator.” I let my amusement dissolve. It was mostly forced. “You know invading other countries isn’t cool, right?”

  “We didn’t invade them,” she said. “We put a skinchanger in charge. He looks like the old—”

  “Douchebag.”

  She stared at me in question. “You mean us or—”

  “The other guy,” I said. “He was a douchebag. Dmitry Fedorov was a tyrant. Though, based on your reputations …”

  She looked away. “I know.” Then her gaze fell back on me, like she found her courage with a new line of attack. “One could say the same of you.”

  “You’re kinda hurting my feelings here, Grandma,” I said.

  Lethe didn’t quite blanch, but her eye twitched some. “It might take me some time to get used to you calling me that, at least in such a cavalier manner.”

  “Well, I’m always cavalier. Flippant, even.”

  “No doubt,” she said, and walked over to a high dresser, messing with the doily atop it, cringing a little at it as she picked it up between her fingers. “There’s no one innocent in this room, Sienna. The standards of the world were different in our day. It was not the civilized place it is now. It was tribal warfare; no one trusted anyone, at least not without good cause. That led to conflict. Neither I nor Hades much cared to lose.”

  “I, too, do not care
for losing,” I said, pursing my lips. “Fine, I won’t judge you based on your reputation from thousands of years ago. But we’re still going to have a talk about all the crap that’s flown my way the last few years out of Revelen. It’s a long list.”

  “Agreed,” she said, wadding the doily up and tossing it in a nearby trash bin. “I assume you didn’t want that?”

  “But it was so pretty,” I said. “Kidding. So … how many souls do you have under your command?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. None, really, at least none active. They’ve all been dissolved away given how long it’s been since I’ve taken one in. The power …” She shook her head. “It’s a burden. I’m not Charlie. I’m more like your mother. I only use it when I absolutely have to, and I haven’t found cause for quite some time.”

  “But when you were younger …” I watched her carefully.

  She nodded. “Yes. I killed … countless. Absorbed so many. Took my enjoyment wherever I could. Felt the rush … used it.” She bowed her head. “Sienna … you have to understand … the things you can do … with your boyfriends … I couldn’t.”

  I frowned. “Hey, wait. I don’t need to hear—”

  “There was no easy way for me to touch another human being without taking their soul,” she said, looking right at me, “until the invention of—”

  “I don’t need to hear this.”

  “—latex—”

  “Really, really don’t need to—”

  “Imagine going through your whole life not being able to—”

  “I—please—stop—”

  “I mean, you think you have it bad—”

  “No. No. Noooooo.”

  “—the things you can do with your boyfriend now? Younger me would be jealous. And probably try to kill you, because … that’s just how I did things.”

  I realized one of my eyes was tightly shut. “Oookay. Are we done with this now? Confession may be good for the soul, but even the tangential details of my grandmother’s tragic sex life, even with lots of blanks not filled in? Terrible for my brain.”

  “What’s that clichéd phrase? ‘Just sayin’?” Here I caught a glint of amusement in her eye, a slight twitch to the corner of her mouth. “In that one small area … you don’t have it so bad living in the modern world.” She looked away, toward the small window out of the castle wall. “Actually … there are a lot of wonderful things about the modern world.”

  “Indoor plumbing, right?” I asked. “Gotta be high on the list, given the state of latrine technology when you were a kid.”

  “We lived in a cave for most of my childhood,” she said, making her way to the window. “We can get this torn out and replaced with a bigger window if you prefer. One like Hades’s.”

  “Yeah, I’m not a vampire, so, that’d be great.”

  “I’m a soul vampire,” she said, lifting a bare hand. “Technically, so are you.”

  “Well, like you said … I don’t enjoy sucking. At least not souls.” I said. “Maybe a lollipop.”

  “I like those, too,” she said. “Another boon of modernity.” She lowered her gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry that you had such a rough upbringing. And … young adulthood. And life, in general.”

  “Well, that’s the way things roll,” I said. “My childhood, all that, it wouldn’t have been my choice—”

  “Yes, it would,” she whispered.

  “Um, no,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “If you say so.”

  I frowned. “It was what it was. What about you? What’s your path these last … however many years? You’re still working the family business, still dealing with … I’m having a hard time not calling him ‘Vlad’—”

  “He won’t care if you call him that. I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s annoyingly self-aware and very into trends. The whole Dracula thing? It amuses him, though he’s … well, he’s not what you’d expect of Dracula.”

  “Not as bloodthirsty as I would have expected from Dracula, true,” I said. “Didn’t really anticipate being offered cotton candy by Vlad the Impaler.”

  “He’s still not someone you would want to cross,” she said, “but he’s different now, for this different age. Bloodthirsty played well in the old world. If you were facing a legend like that? Who wants to storm that castle?”

  “Elizabeth of Bathory, maybe?”

  “She was an actual vampire,” Lethe said, “and not a nice one. The day I helped kill her—”

  “My family was involved in making history by killing people, so interesting,” I muttered.

  “It’s a family trade,” she said with dry humor. “You seem proficient in it yourself.”

  “I have done things I am not necessarily proud of,” I said, looking around, catching a flash on the flatscreen TV mounted above the fireplace. For a second, I thought maybe it turned on and off. “But I’m a little low on regrets, to be honest. Going to Scotland without a portable howitzer might be one of a very, very few.”

  “I have … so many,” she said, staring off into the distance.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Name one.”

  “Not killing your bastard Uncle Friday is right up there, some days,” she said, eyes flashing.

  “So you did order that,” I said, staring her down. “I hope you don’t plan to try it again, because—”

  She shook her head. “I’m over it. Mostly.” She looked away. “Your grandfather, Simon … we weren’t good for each other. His behavior reflected the gaping flaws in our relationship.” She looked me right in the eye, and … yeah, there were hints of pain. “It wasn’t like it is now. I thought we could have a solid relationship without … those certain things you probably wish I wouldn’t talk about—”

  “Yeah, let’s steer clear of your sex life, please, thanks, bye.”

  “Anyway, even with that, I wasn’t able to …” She shook her head, looked away. “I guess I had other problems by that point. I always thought if I could just touch I would be able to … be …”

  “Normal,” I whispered.

  She looked up, sharply, surprised. “Yes. Normal. Have a normal relationship. After … thousands of years of … not.”

  Lethe shuffled to the window. The sun was starting to fade toward sunset. “But it turns out that thousands of years of pushing people away or draining their souls? It leaves a mark on your personality. I think you might know something of that.”

  “What? Nooooo,” I said, joining her by the window. Her eyes were fixed in the distance, past the Dauntless Tower, and there was a longing there. “All my relationships have turned out wonderfully, thanks. I’ve definitely never driven away men by dint of my personality, which is all sweetness and light … and woe betide any son of a bitch who says differently.”

  Lethe cracked a smile. “You sound like …”

  “You?” I asked.

  “And your mother,” she said, looking away again. “She and I … we butted heads. Big surprise, right?”

  “She and I did the same,” I said. “Constantly. She kinda tried to … break my will. It didn’t take.”

  “I don’t think she tried to break your will, Sienna,” Lethe said, putting a hand on the window, palm on the glass. “I think she did what she had to in order to keep you safe. No more, no less.”

  “She might have done a little more than was strictly necessary,” I said. “But … it’s hard to quibble with the ‘keep me safe’ part, given what I’ve gone through since I got out.”

  Lethe nodded. “You miss her.”

  “It was the question, wasn’t it?” I asked. “About whether she or not she was dead? That was the giveaway? Because most people assume I hate her.”

  She didn’t answer, just waited.

  “Yeah, I miss her.” I nodded. “Weird, isn’t it? She imprisoned me for a decade. Hammered me. Locked me in a metal coffin when I pissed her off—”

  “When you pushed at the boundaries she’d set for your safety,” Lethe said.


  “Way to justify child imprisonment, Grandma,” I said. “Lemme guess, in your day, they boxed you up every hour on the hour, whether you needed it or not?”

  A faint smile appeared on her lips. “I was raised in a cave, guarded by Wolfe and his brothers, so … my upbringing is not one you want to look to for a favorable comparison. I didn’t see the light of day until I was a woman grown.”

  “You and Bane both,” I said. “Bet you have dynamite night vision, though.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We all do. But the point stands. We were both prisoners growing up—you because of Omega and the others who would have wanted you. Me because of my father’s enemies, who were legion. An entire pantheon, actually.”

  “That does suck,” I said. “I can sympathize with the ‘no light’ thing. I mean, I had electricity, and Mom let me get away with looking out the back windows, but other than that …” I shook my head. “I didn’t see the sun, really, until … the day I was standing on the roof of the IDS tower having just drained Aleksandr Gavrikov.”

  She nodded. “I know these feels, as you kids say.”

  “It kinda creeps me out that you and Vlad use these extremely modern terms,” I said. “I’m all set to take you seriously as these epic, legendary murderous badasses, and then you bust out the tweener-speak. I figure you’re about two sentences away from saying, ‘We’re literally gods over here, you guys.’”

  “We try to keep up,” she said, smiling. “With the changing times. It’s easier now, with the internet.”

  “Well, congrats on being the ‘cool’ grandparent,” I said. “And also the only living one.”

  “Lucky me,” she said softly, “I’ve got you all to myself—for now.” That could have sounded really threatening in someone else’s words, especially given Lethe’s track record of murder and mayhem, but it was so laced with regret that it sounded almost … sweet.

  Like she was actually grateful to be standing here with me.

  My throat got a little thick just then, and I coughed a few times. Not out of emotion, you know, just … “The air’s dry here,” I said.