by Jenna Black
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Jack muttered. I wondered if he thought anyone here had a good feeling about it, because I sure didn’t.
If I were an ordinary human—you know, like I was just a few months ago when I was so blissfully ignorant about the existence of the Liberi and all things magical—I would never in a million years have thought to try to shoot guys dressed in dark clothing, lying flat against a roof in the dark of night. I probably would have looked a lot more badass if I’d had some macho military rifle, but when your aim is literally flawless, you can be deadly with a peashooter. Not that the Glock Logan had bullied me into using was a peashooter.
I found the best available vantage point, then took aim through a thick veil of leaves at the gunman who was the most exposed. A human sharpshooter would have had trouble making that shot with a handgun, but I was confident I could do it. If I could get myself to pull the trigger, that is. I am not a big fan of shooting people. Even when I know they’re bad people who probably deserve it.
Everyone else hunkered down in the darkness behind me. Logan insisted we not stand too close together and make ourselves into easy group targets, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who didn’t like the way the others seemed to melt away into the darkness as soon as they moved a few feet away. There was the disquieting feeling that they were all abandoning me. Except for Violet, who refused to budge from my side.
“They’re going to be panicked for a few seconds,” I warned her, “but after that, they’re going to start firing back, and it won’t just be with guns.”
Thanks to the flash suppressor Logan had installed on my gun, they wouldn’t be able to target me that way, but someone throwing lightning bolts didn’t have to make a direct hit to put me—and anyone around me—in a world of hurt.
“You should go with Logan.” As a war-god descendant, he was better able to protect Violet than anyone else. And unlike me, he wouldn’t immediately be drawing fire.
Violet shook her head. “You’re the only one who actually cares if I live or die. I’m sticking with you.”
I winced internally, because that was pretty much true. I still thought she’d be safer with Logan, but there wasn’t time to argue.
Sita shimmered into existence on the lawn a couple of feet away from the thicket of vegetation that kept us all hidden. One of the rooftop gunmen saw her and let out a cry of mingled alarm and warning. I should have started firing right then and there, but I was still fighting to overcome my resistance to shooting a fellow human being.
Everyone on the roof started scrambling in search of the source of the alarm, and the guy who’d spotted Sita fired on her. No bullet could hurt Sita, and she and I were hardly what I’d call friends, but maybe just because I saw her as part of Jamaal, I felt a surge of protective rage that suddenly made pulling the trigger not so hard.
The guy I’d taken aim at had risen to his knees, the better to swivel around and face the threat. He also gave me a target I could have hit even without my supernatural abilities. My bullet went through his head, and he went instantly limp, his body sliding off the roof and landing on the grass below with a thump.
Everyone else who’d been scrambling suddenly remembered why they’d been keeping such a low profile in the first place and dropped back down. I didn’t have a good shot at anyone, the angles of the roof keeping the most vulnerable body parts protected, but then Sita did one of those impossible leaps of hers and vaulted all the way from the ground to the middle of the roof, inches from one of the gunmen. He let out a scream of abject terror and tried to bring his gun around to bear on her—not that it would have done him any good—but Sita let out an earthshaking roar and lunged for his throat.
I was glad it was dark so I couldn’t see the fountain of blood that must have erupted as his cry was abruptly cut off.
The rest of the guys on the roof started firing those automatic weapons of theirs, but they were panicked, unaimed bursts. They must have had some idea where my shot had come from, but either Sita was too distracting for them to bother with trivial things like aim, or they were imagining phantom movements in the dark, because despite the spray of bullets, nothing even came close to my position.
I took out a gunman as Sita chased another right off the edge of the roof. The enemy wasn’t exactly showing grace under fire, and I was reminded again that as frightening as the Olympians and their followers could be, they weren’t as a general rule combat trained. They were used to living the good life, not fighting for their lives.
I suppose I was getting a little complacent already, watching our enemies fall so easily, but of course those guys had been exposed on the roof because they were considered expendable.
The next burst of automatic-weapons fire came from the windows, from people who didn’t have to worry—yet—about having Sita rip their throats out. And though it was clear they still couldn’t pinpoint where my shots were coming from, they had a general idea. Bullets ripped through the foliage around me, and I lowered myself to a crouch, making as small a target as possible.
Sita continued to wreak havoc on the roof, and no one there was even trying to shoot at me, too busy trying to stay alive. I took a moment to look around, hoping to spot Jamaal even though I knew better. I could barely see Violet, who was right there with me. How I hoped to see Jamaal, who had presumably moved to a safe distance, I don’t know.
Gunfire from the open windows continued to strafe my approximate position. Broken branches and torn leaves rained down on me, and I wondered if the tree I was using for cover could survive the repeated assaults. My fellow Liberi were now shooting back from their scattered positions, making it harder for the gunmen to concentrate on a single target. I hoped everyone was keeping safe and covered—especially Jamaal, who would start to weaken over time from the effort of controlling Sita.
Sita dispatched the last of the rooftop gunmen and began looking around for her next target. We had certainly achieved our goal of getting the party started, but we hadn’t drawn out their big guns yet. Being shot at with machine guns wasn’t what you’d call a pleasant experience, but the guns weren’t our biggest concern, and what we were really trying to do was draw out and engage the Liberi defectors, who were the true threat. As long as they settled for using guns, we knew they were keeping their most powerful people in reserve. It was Logan’s job to signal Anderson via text to head into the Underworld. I wondered if Logan had sent the signal yet. It would take a few minutes for Anderson and the rest to make it here, and those were going to be a long few minutes.
I dared to peek out around the cover of my spindly tree and scrutinized the windows, trying to see who was inside, but all I saw were muzzle flashes that left spots in my vision when I looked away. We had to eliminate the gunmen before things started to get real, and even with my aim, that was going to be tough to do when they had such good cover.
Sita jumped down from the roof, drawing a hail of fire that passed right through her. The windows weren’t open wide enough to let a tiger through, but Sita never let such trivial things as closed doors or windows stop her. She made another impressive leap, this time aiming for one of the second-story windows. The gunfire intensified, which seemed kind of pointless to me considering how many rounds they’d already wasted on her with no effect, but I suppose they didn’t have anything useful to do.
Sita sailed through the window as if it didn’t exist, and I heard the screams from inside even over the continued gunfire. Apparently, having Sita actually inside the house convinced the bad guys that they needed a more potent weapon.
The darkness came out of nowhere, so dense I might as well have been suddenly struck blind. The gunfire sputtered out, since no one could see anything. Through the ringing of my ears, I could still hear screams coming from the house. I didn’t know if it was as dark inside as it was outside, but Sita didn’t need to see to be deadly.
The only person who could see in this total dark was the Nyx descendant himself, and he was probably ta
king advantage of it somehow. Niobe would want Violet dead for her betrayal, and I had visions of the Nyx descendant walking right up to her and shooting her in the head without me ever knowing he was there. I reached out to put a hand on Violet to make sure I didn’t lose her in the dark, then closed my eyes so they would stop straining to see.
Without speaking, I backed up and tugged on Violet’s arm. She got the hint, and I heard the plants around us rustling as they made room for us to retreat farther into the cover of the jungle. When we were about ten feet back from the edge, I urged Violet into a crouch once more and made sure to position myself between her and the house.
Even with supernatural night vision, the Nyx descendant would have to be almost on top of us to see Violet now. He would also have to venture into the jungle, which he couldn’t do without making a fair bit of noise, as we had learned earlier during our short trek. I hunkered down next to Violet and, with my eyes still closed, strained to hear the sound of leaves rustling in something other than the breeze.
Although the gunfire had stopped, the night was still far from silent. There wasn’t as much insect noise as there had been before the shooting began, but there was some, and I heard the distant crash of the waves from below. And of course, the screaming and the occasional roar from inside the house. But those sounds were all distant, and I was listening for something much closer, for the sound of a man forcing his way through the trees and bushes, confident he was safe in the darkness he had created. When I’d had to play cat and mouse with Emma and her manufactured darkness once, I’d learned that I could do a pretty good job of finding a target by sound alone.
I’m convinced my plan would have worked out nicely and I’d have been able to take the Nyx descendant out of the picture at least for the space of time it would take him to heal a severe gunshot wound. But even in the sweaty heat produced by too much adrenaline and heavy body armor, I went completely cold when I heard a single gunshot and a distant roar from Sita, one that sounded pained instead of furious.
I’d been assuming the Nyx descendant was coming after Violet, but though killing Violet would have foiled our presumed attempt to get the altar taken care of, it would not have eliminated the biggest threat that was facing Niobe’s impromptu army right now: Sita. As far as we knew, she was completely invulnerable. Which meant the only way to stop her was . . .
“Jamaal!” I croaked, not meaning to say it out loud.
I wanted to run to him, to protect him, but I had no idea where he was. If I could have calmed the panic that throbbed in my veins, I might have been able to use my power to find him even in this dark, but I was in no state to be still and focus on vague subconscious clues.
Another gunshot rang out. Sita let out an unearthly scream and fell suddenly silent.
I lost all semblance of logic and reason, my brain completely short-circuiting.
“Jamaal!” I screamed, leaping to my feet regardless of my blindness.
I would have taken off into the darkness at a dead run, frantic to get to Jamaal even if there was nothing I could do for him, only Violet anticipated me and grabbed my arm, yanking me back down onto my ass. I hit with a teeth-clacking thump just as a concentrated burst of gunfire cut through the space I’d been occupying. I’m not the only one who can target based on sound.
Violet’s quick action probably saved my life, but I wasn’t in a grateful state of mind. Hell, I don’t know if my mind was even present, much less functioning. Despite my close call with death, I struggled against her grip, desperate to get to my feet once more.
Violet might not be the most powerful goddess ever to walk the Earth, but she had more than enough strength to restrain a puny human like me, and my struggles were to no avail. She wrestled me to the ground and clapped a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t shout again. Then she put her mouth right up against my ear.
“He’s Liberi, Nikki. He’ll recover.”
The words didn’t get through to me at first, so she repeated them, and finally my brain came back online.
As long as it wasn’t a mortal Descendant who pulled the trigger, Jamaal would recover from even the worst gunshot wound. I was almost certain it was the Nyx descendant—a Liberi—who’d done the deed, unless he’d been dragging a mortal Descendant around with him, which seemed unlikely. So Jamaal might be dead at the moment, but it wasn’t a permanent thing. At least it wouldn’t be as long as we didn’t lose this battle.
With Sita no longer wreaking havoc inside the house, Niobe’s crew finally went on the offensive. The darkness was so complete I couldn’t see the barrage of lightning bolts thrown in our general direction, but I could feel the electric charge in the air, and I could sure as hell hear them as they crashed into the trees and bushes and shook the ground. I smelled a combination of smoke and ozone in the air, and after what Cyrus had told us about the former Olympian who could control fire, I was not a bit happy about the smoke part of that equation.
If the dark was so total it could make lightning bolts invisible, then we wouldn’t even be able to see any fires that might pop up. I hoped that Logan had given Anderson the signal, and that our reinforcements were even now pouring into the house.
A wall of light, blinding after the total dark, appeared out of nowhere, pushing the dark away before it. The dark pushed back, the line separating the two shimmering back and forth as each fought for supremacy, night against day. That could only mean that Cyrus was here, and for the first time, I felt almost hopeful. We had lost Jamaal and Sita—temporarily, I reminded myself—but Niobe’s losses had been greater, and her people were now outnumbered.
Either Cyrus won the battle against the Nyx descendant, or Niobe’s people decided the dark was no longer to their advantage, because the heavy black darkness disappeared all at once, leaving me squinting and covering my eyes against the sun brightness Cyrus had created. I wondered briefly what the hell the neighbors were making of all this.
I forced my eyes open and tried to find something to shoot at, but because we’d moved back so far into the trees earlier, I couldn’t see anything but leaves and vines in the artificial daylight.
Cyrus’s light abruptly winked out, moments before a very visible bolt of lightning streaked through the air. I guess bringing the sunlight was very much like bringing a flashlight, giving the enemy a clear and easy target in the night. I hoped the fact that Cyrus’s light had gone out before the lightning hit meant he’d gotten out of the way in time.
Violet and I crept forward through the trees once again, taking up a position right at the edge where we could see the house but still have cover. On the far left edge of the jungle, right next to the cliff, a dead tree was on fire, filling the air with smoke. Ordinarily, I didn’t think this lush jungle landscape was in much danger of catching fire, but the situation was far from ordinary. If that fire started to spread, it would flush us all out of the cover of the trees.
From my position, there wasn’t a whole lot to see except for the dead bodies Sita had left in her wake. I fought off an almost dizzying sense of dread, wishing I could find Jamaal and stay by his side for the duration. I didn’t know how many mortal Descendants were left alive in that house, but all it would take was one to steal Jamaal’s immortal life.
Focus, Nikki, I commanded myself. The stakes in this battle were too crushingly high for me to allow myself to be distracted by my own fears or even by the fate of a single man. No matter how much he mattered to me.
Lightning streaked from two of the open windows into the jungle. Zeus, having been a horny bastard, seemed to have more descendants than any three other gods put together. I noticed for the first time that the house’s front door was swinging in the breeze. Left open by Cyrus, no doubt, when he left the house to push back the darkness. But if our reinforcements were in the house, then why were there still people throwing lightning bolts at us from inside?
I noted with alarm that the fire was spreading and a couple of living trees were now engulfed in flames. I silently pointe
d it out to Violet, who chewed her lip in worry. If we wanted to stay within sight of the house, we had about fifty yards’ worth of cover before we’d reach the driveway and be forced out into the open.
The idea had been for us to drive Niobe out from cover, not the other way around, but so far she obviously felt safe enough in her fortress—and confident enough in her allies—that she felt no need to come out and confront her sister personally. We were going to have to turn up the heat, so to speak.
In a night that had been dead calm, there was suddenly a gust of wind so strong it almost knocked me over. The trees all creaked and groaned with it, and vines whipped through the air. I glanced at the sky and still saw the clear, bright moon hanging above, with only wispy, slow-moving clouds obscuring it. And yet the wind brought an unmistakable hint of moisture, mistlike drops of water that blended with my sweat.
I licked my lips and tasted salt. At first, I assumed it was the sweat, but then as the water in the air grew thicker, carried by the swirling wind, I realized that the water itself was salty.
Seawater.
I remembered that Niobe had a couple of Poseidon’s descendants in her court, and I didn’t much like the implications.
While the salt water continued to swirl in the wind, it didn’t seem to be bothering the fire one bit. When the wind gusted the right way, I could feel the first edges of heat and knew we had to start moving. Thanks to the light from the fire, we weren’t as invisible as we’d once been. The bad guys would have a harder time picking us out of the foliage if we just held still, but the fire was quickly taking that option away.