by Jenna Black
With a last venomous look at me, she stomped down the stairs and got into the car without a backward glance. The trunk popped open, and Anderson hefted her suitcase inside, then slammed it closed. Cyrus tapped the horn a couple of times in a pseudo-friendly farewell, then worked his way past Anderson’s car and onto the driveway.
Blake and I stood and watched the lights receding while Anderson stalked into the house and slammed the door behind him.
I was so exhausted I had to steady myself on the railing to get up the steps to the porch, and I wanted to follow Anderson into the house and retreat to my bedroom with every fiber of my being. And if Blake weren’t dating my sister, I’d have done just that.
“Does Steph know about you and Cyrus?” I asked him.
It looked for a moment like Blake was going to deny there was anything between the two of them, but he must have seen from the look on my face that it would never work. He reached up and dabbed away the blood on his throat, and I saw that the wound had been so small it had already healed.
“She knows,” Blake said. “Not about Cyrus specifically, but … She knows I’ve been with men, if that’s what you’re really asking. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It’s my business if it’s something that’s going to hurt Steph in the long run. And it’s pretty obvious there’s still something going on between you and Cyrus. I don’t want you breaking Steph’s heart over anyone, much less an Olympian scumbag.”
“He’s not—” Blake started indignantly, then his cheeks reddened as he realized how his instant defense sounded. He sighed. “Cyrus isn’t a bad sort as long as he’s not trying to impress Konstantin, but the only thing left between us is a bunch of regret. When I left the Olympians to join Anderson, I couldn’t get Cyrus to come with me.”
“But if he had, you two would still be together?”
Blake shook his head. “I’m not gay. Being descended from Eros gives me a lot more flexibility than your average straight guy, but I still have a strong preference for women. It’s just …” He rubbed his eyes like this conversation was making him tired. “I can’t sleep with a woman more than once. I can never have a real relationship with anyone, even Steph. I mean, there’s only so long she’s going to put up with me. But I don’t have the same effect on men.”
For the first time ever, I really thought about what it would be like to be in Blake’s shoes. If he slept with a woman more than once, she would never be satisfied by a normal lover again. Which was fine, I suppose, if they were both willing to bet her future happiness that they would be together for the rest of her life, but even a starry-eyed optimist would have trouble gambling on that.
“So you can sleep with a guy multiple times without ruining his sex life forevermore?”
Blake nodded. “If I ever want a sexual relationship that lasts more than one night, it has to be with a guy, even if I’m not naturally wired that way. So even if Cyrus had left the Olympians with me, it wouldn’t have lasted. Friends-with-benefits gets old when one of you wants more and the other can’t give it.”
“And Steph knows all this?”
“Cyrus would have dumped me eventually when he got tired of sex without love, and Steph is going to dump me when she gets tired of love without sex.” He looked me square in the eye for the first time since we’d started talking. “It would be nice if you could cut me some slack every once in a while, let me enjoy what I have with Steph for the short time I have it without constantly having to defend myself to you.”
I felt sorry for him, I really did. Living with his peculiar set of powers couldn’t be easy. But as much compassion as I might have for him, the fact remained that he was not good for Steph. His conscience had so far kept him out of her bed, but I wasn’t sure the loneliness inside him was going to give him the strength to let her go in the long run. Which would be all well and good if he and Steph were ready to commit to each other for the rest of Steph’s life, but building that kind of relationship would take time. Time they might not have if Blake got too lonely to resist temptation.
And so I did the one thing I could to plant a seed of doubt in Blake’s mind, doubt that he really would spend the rest of his life alone if he didn’t forget his conscience and bind a woman to him.
“You’re still in love with Cyrus,” I told him, and I wasn’t sure I was making that up. There had been a definite vibe between them every time I’d seen them together, and I didn’t think it was all on Cyrus’s side, despite what Blake thought.
“I was never in love with him,” Blake countered, perhaps a little too fast. “I like him on the rare occasions when he’s not acting like an Olympian, but it can never be more than that.”
Maybe I was actually doing Blake a favor in my effort to protect Steph. Looking in from the outside, it seemed pretty clear to me that there was something more than friends-with-benefits going on between Blake and Cyrus. And if Blake had hopes that he could build a lasting relationship with someone other than Steph, he’d have a lot easier time letting her go.
“That’s not what it looked like from where I stand,” I said. “If you could have seen—”
Suddenly snarling, Blake gave my shoulder a push, hard enough to make me stagger but not fall down.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” he spat. “Even if I could fall in love with a man, it wouldn’t be Cyrus, not after the things he’s done.”
To my shock, there was a sheen of tears in Blake’s eyes as he turned away from me and stormed through the front door, leaving me standing on the porch in a state of exhausted confusion. And curiosity.
Deciding it was past time for my brain to shut down for the night, I followed Blake’s example and entered the house. Blake was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well. I was so tired I didn’t want to tackle the stairs and instead spent the remainder of the night—actually, early morning—on the sofa in the den.
EPILOGUE
It’s going to take quite a while to sort through all of the fallout from my hunt for Justin Kerner, and I know I’m going to be spending a lot of time second-guessing my decisions.
Jack was infected with the super-rabies and had to go through the same draconian cure that I had. When he revived afterward, there was a shadow in his eyes that didn’t belong there, not in eyes that usually sparkled with mischief. As mercurial and capricious as he seemed, he’d been the true hero of that night, making the decision to call Anderson and tell all while we were en route and then jumping to Jamaal’s defense when Jamaal zoned out. If it hadn’t been for his actions and decisions, we might very well not have lived through that night.
Although Jamaal had been bitten more times than Jack, the bites healed normally, and he showed no signs that he’d been infected. He suspected that this had something to do with his death magic. He can create the tiger now at will, although he has difficulty controlling it—as Logan discovered one time when he interrupted one of Jamaal’s self-training sessions. Jamaal reeled the tiger in before it tore Logan’s throat out, but just barely. On the plus side, Jamaal’s moods are evening out, and he no longer smokes like a chimney in a vain attempt to keep calm.
Leaving town is no longer an option, not with Emma’s threat hanging over my head. I can’t leave the Glasses and Steph vulnerable to her malice, especially not when she’s got the Olympians backing her. Sometimes I feel a kind of guilty gratitude that Fate provided me with a reason to stay.
Konstantin and his cronies are still out there, in hiding somewhere. Right now, Anderson is too devastated about losing Emma to think about what that means, but I know that one day soon, he’ll realize that he’s now free to attack Konstantin without having to start a war with the Olympians and risk losing his people. How long will it be before he asks me to go on a new manhunt? Hunting Kerner to stop his killing spree was one thing, but hunting a man down for personal vengeance is another. I’m not sure how my conscience will swallow that when the time comes.
And then there are the
Olympians themselves. To all appearances, Cyrus is by far a lesser evil than Konstantin. According to Blake, he will put a stop to the most egregious of the Olympians’ actions—like killing Descendant children—but that doesn’t make him one of the good guys. He still believes in the basic Olympian philosophy, which is that they are the pinnacle of creation and can do whatever they please, unfettered by the morality of mere humans. Blake has warned me to be very careful with Cyrus, who he’s sure will want to recruit me as an Olympian just as his father had—but who will do so in a more subtle and insidious manner.
Personally, I’m not worried that Cyrus is going to sweet-talk me into joining him. I don’t care how subtle or charming he can be; he’s the enemy, and my mind is very clear about that. I just hope that once he realizes I can’t be persuaded, he doesn’t decide he needs to employ tactics like his father’s to change my mind.
My heart—or maybe just my innate pessimism—tells me that eventually, I’m going to be forced to make myself disappear. Even if I somehow manage to make peace with Emma so I don’t have to worry about her hurting my family, my power is unique and useful enough that I can’t see the Olympians ever giving up hope of getting their claws into me. Hell, even a revenge-crazed madman like Kerner had wanted to bend me to his will. If I stayed out in the open long enough, someone would eventually find a way to crack me, and that was something I could never allow to happen.
But for now, for however long as I can, I will stay here with my fellow Liberi and bask in the feeling that I almost kind of belong.
For me, that’s a big step in the right direction.
JENNA BLACK is the author of Dark Descendant and Deadly Descendant, the first two novels in her Nikki Glass, Immortal Huntress series. She is also the creator of the popular Morgan Kingsley urban fantasy series, the Guardians of the Night paranormal romance series, and the Faeriewalker young adult fantasy series. A typical writer, she thinks of herself as an “experience junkie.” She received B.A. degrees in physical anthropology and French from Duke University. She dreamed of being the next Jane Goodall, until she realized that primates spend eighty percent of their time not really doing anything. She moved on to such pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation before becoming a full-time writer of fiction. She lives in North Carolina. Visit her website at www.jennablack.com.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Epilogue
About the Author