by Jenna Black
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To all the readers and fans who make this wild and wonderful career as an author so rewarding.
I couldn’t do it without you.
ONE
I stepped up to the door and knocked loudly. “You can’t shut us out like this, Anderson,” I said. I was standing outside Anderson’s study, surrounded by my bewildered, angry, and hurt housemates. I had knocked once politely. When he didn’t answer, I decided politeness was overrated. “Let us in, or we’re letting ourselves in.”
My friends recoiled, and there was a chorus of shushing, accompanied by urgent hand gestures. No one spoke to Anderson like that. You didn’t have to know the whole truth about who and what he was to tread cautiously around him and what I’d dubbed his Hand of Doom.
“Nikki, what are you doing?”
“Do you have a death wish?”
“Speak for yourself, not for the rest of us!”
Everyone took a step away from me, as if fearing they’d get caught in the explosion if they stood too close. I understood where they were coming from. Anderson could be damn scary even if you didn’t know he was a god. Before the posthumous email that Konstantin, the late and unlamented leader of the Olympians, had sent out into the world, I’d been the only one who knew exactly how dangerous Anderson truly was. Now that we all knew, the rest of the Liberi probably expected me to bow and scrape accordingly. I’m not the bowing and scraping type.
I ignored the protests and warnings, and when Anderson still didn’t answer me, I turned the knob and pushed his study door open. I’d expected it to be locked.
Of course, I’d also expected Anderson to be inside, and he wasn’t.
In fact, he was nowhere to be found. I tried calling his cell phone, but my call went straight to voice mail. I tried again, listening for the telltale sound of his phone ringing from somewhere in the house, but I couldn’t hear anything.
I’d expected Anderson to be seriously upset about his secret getting out, and I certainly expected him to not want to talk to us about it. But it had never occurred to me that he might be too chicken to face us at all.
My housemates and I searched the whole house, just in case he’d turned off his phone and was holed up somewhere unexpected, but he was gone.
With Anderson now AWOL, the most immediate threat my housemates and I faced was Cyrus Galanos, the new leader of the Olympians. He was under the impression that Anderson and I had buried his father, Konstantin, in a secret location he hoped to prize out of us someday. Being buried alive was a hellacious torment for a Liberi, who would die, then revive, only to die all over again, but it wasn’t irreversible. Cyrus’s hope that he might someday rescue Konstantin from that secret grave gave him an incentive not to attack us. However, now that Cyrus knew the truth about Anderson, knew that he was capable of killing Liberi, who were for the most part immortal, it was only natural he’d suspect his father might have met with a more permanent fate. I didn’t think it would be good for our collective health if Cyrus found out Anderson killed his dad.
Cyrus was not an easy man to put off. He called the house multiple times, and since he had both my cell phone number and Blake’s, he called us, too. No one felt inclined to pick up. It wasn’t really any of us he wanted to speak to, and since we couldn’t produce Anderson for a conversation, silence seemed our wisest option. You see, we all thought the situation was temporary, that Anderson would soon come back from wherever he’d disappeared to and pick up the reins once more. Then it would be up to him to figure out what to do about Cyrus and the Olympians.
When Anderson didn’t come back the next day, I began to get nervous, and Cyrus got impatient. His phone messages took on a more threatening tone, and I worried he and some of his goons might show up at the front gate. He probably wouldn’t break it down as long as he thought Anderson was around, but the longer we refused to answer, the more likely he’d get over his fear of getting on the bad side of a death god.
By the third day, I wasn’t the only one who was beginning to wonder if Anderson planned to come back at all. And even if he did, I wasn’t sure we could afford to wait for him. Cyrus and his Olympians outnumbered us by a huge margin, and if they stormed the house, they and their pet Descendants could slaughter us all and there would be nothing we could do to defend ourselves. Not when they had mortal Descendants—the only people other than Anderson who can kill Liberi—on their side and we didn’t.
I could happily have gone the rest of my immortal life without seeing Cyrus’s face or even hearing his voice again, but it seemed that was not among my options.
“Have you decided what you’re going to tell him?” Maggie asked as I pulled into a parking space across the street from the coffee bar where we were to meet Cyrus.
“Hell no,” I answered honestly—and perhaps unwisely.
“You’re kidding, right?” Logan asked from the backseat. “I thought you said you had a plan.”
I shrugged, wondering how exactly I’d come to be our spokesperson in Anderson’s absence. “My plan is to find a way not to get us all killed.”
“You’re not filling me with confidence,” he replied, and Maggie snorted in some combination of agreement and amusement.
I wasn’t exactly filling myself with confidence, either. When I’d spoken to Cyrus on the phone to arrange the meeting, he’d been tense and tightly controlled. I might have felt better about things if he’d shouted and threatened me with death and dismemberment. Once upon a time, I’d allowed myself to forget that Cyrus was one of the bad guys, and the consequences of that oversight continued to ring in my memory. I was through trying to predict what Cyrus would say or do, and that made advance planning challenging, to say the least.
“It all depends on how badly Cyrus wants to believe his daddy’s still alive,” I said. I didn’t wait around for any more questions, darting across the street as soon as there was a break in traffic. I wished Maggie and Logan had allowed me to come alone, as I’d originally planned, but they seemed to think I might need backup. Unfortunately, they were probably right.
Cyrus was expecting to see only me and Anderson come through the door. Somehow, I didn’t think he was going to be happy to see me showing up with Maggie and Logan instead. I hadn’t specifically lied to him and told him Anderson was coming, but I’d certainly encouraged him to draw that conclusion.
Cyrus had made it to the coffee bar before we did. When I opened the door and looked inside, I realized that he had brought a veritable army with him. There wasn’t a single person in the entire place who didn’t sport an iridescent—and invisible to non-Liberi—glyph on some stretch of exposed skin. Even the lone barista had a glyph in the center of her forehead. The coffee bar was supposed to be a neutral site, but right now it looked the exact opposite of neutral. Not a good start to our meeting.
“Shit,” I heard Logan mutter under his breath behind me, and Maggie let out a soft gasp of surprise. We were badly outnumbered, and I had no doubt that at least a few of the people in the room were Descendants, and therefore capable of killing us and claiming our immortality for their own. Maybe meeting Cyrus in person had been a bad idea, but it was too late to back out now.
Cyrus was sitting at a table at the rear of the room, facing the door. His legs were stretched out in front of him in a posture that was supposed
to look casual and relaxed, but even at a distance I could see the tightness in the muscles of his crossed arms. He sat up straight and looked surprised when he saw me. I half expected him to order his people to attack, but he didn’t, instead waving and beckoning us in.
I shared a quick glance with Logan and Maggie. If things went sour in here, the two of them would almost certainly be killed. Cyrus would probably prefer to keep me alive, just as his father had wanted to, because descendants of Artemis are rare and useful. But the life the Olympians envisioned for me made death seem far preferable.
Maybe I should have tried harder to convince Maggie and Logan to stay home. It was one thing to risk myself, quite another to risk my friends. My nerves buzzed with anxiety as I stepped into the lion’s den with Logan and Maggie right behind me.
The room was eerily silent as the three of us made our way back toward Cyrus’s table. The Olympians watched us with predatory intensity, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. The espresso machine let out a screech, and I couldn’t contain a little start of surprise. The barista laughed out loud at my reaction, and several of the others had a nice chuckle. So much for my plan to pretend I was filled with confidence and not a bit intimidated by the enemy.
Cyrus stood up as I approached the table. There was no sign of his usual deceptively friendly smile, which was just as well. The last time I’d seen him, he’d conked me on the head and trussed me up to hand over to his father. He’d known perfectly well that Konstantin planned to rape and otherwise brutalize me, but he’d delivered me in a neat little package anyway. If he’d tried a friendly smile, I might not have been able to resist putting my fist through his teeth.
“Anderson running late?” he asked with a cock of his head.
“Nope. He’s not coming.” I met his challenging stare head-on, doing my best to ignore the angry muttering of the Olympians who now had us completely surrounded.
I thought my answer might irritate Cyrus, but he just shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”
I figured that was a rhetorical question and kept my mouth shut.
“Please, have a seat, Nikki,” Cyrus said, resuming his own seat with his back to the wall.
I sat across from him with Logan standing at my right shoulder and Maggie at my left. They weren’t much use as bodyguards under these circumstances, but they were doing their best.
Cyrus and I indulged in a brief, silent staring contest. Looking at him, remembering his “advice” that things would go easier for me if I didn’t fight Konstantin, I couldn’t help feeling sick to my stomach. Turning green around the gills wouldn’t do much for my credibility, so I decided to derail the staring contest.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a coffee?” I asked him. In the past, he’d ordered espressos for me even though I didn’t want them. I glanced over my shoulder at the barista, with her iridescent glyph and her ugly glower. I doubted drinking anything she served me would be a smart move.
The expression on Cyrus’s face hardened. “Pardon me if I don’t feel particularly gracious today. Right now, you’re just lucky to be alive.”
“I seem to recall you saying that your daddy wanted me alive and that I would be much luckier if I did die.”
He gaped at me. “You’re going to try to guilt-trip me? Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Oh, right. I almost forgot I was talking to a man who only has a conscience when it’s convenient.” I believed he honestly regretted leaving me to his father’s tender mercies—but only to a point. After all, that regret wasn’t enough to stop him from doing it in the first place, so it meant nothing. Anger pounded through my veins, some of it directed at myself. I had almost liked Cyrus, despite knowing he was the bad guy. I felt hurt and betrayed by what he’d done, then felt pissed off at myself for feeling that way.
He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table so he could glare at me from closer range. “If you’re here to talk about my shortcomings, then you are possibly the biggest fool I’ve ever met.”
I tried to be subtle about taking a deep breath, doing my best to stuff all that anger, hurt, and self-loathing into a mental box where it would be out of the way. I had somehow ended up as the spokesperson for all of Anderson’s Liberi, and that meant I had to keep a level head.
“I apologize for drifting off topic,” I said, my voice too tight to make the apology sincere.
“Frankly, I’m not sure what the topic is,” he countered. “Your boss killed my father and lied about it. If ever there was a cause for war, that would be it. And, Nikki, I do hold grudges. It may have been your boss who did the killing, but you were there. I don’t care how rare and useful descendants of Artemis are. I will kill you.”
The threat was even more disturbing coming from someone who’d always been so friendly to me before than it would have been from an unrepentant psycho like Konstantin. I won’t pretend I didn’t feel a chill of apprehension, but I hoped I kept it from showing on my face. When dealing with Olympians, revealing weakness is never a good idea.
“If you weren’t worried about what Anderson would do, you’d have killed me already,” I pointed out. “He’s not a man whose bad side you want to get on. Just ask your dad. Or Emma.”
Anderson had made no secret about how much he’d loved Emma, but Cyrus was there when Anderson thought she’d betrayed him and condemned her to die.
Cyrus’s eyes filled with anger and his jaw clenched. Instinct told me he was about three seconds from telling his people to kill us all right here. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one the thought occurred to, because one of his goons started closing the blinds on the front windows.
“If any of us get hurt, Anderson will hold you personally responsible,” I warned him. “I don’t know how many Olympians he’d kill in retaliation, but I do know you’d be first in line. And you know that, too.”
The rest of the Olympians in the room started murmuring among themselves, and it occurred to me that maybe coming into what had obviously become enemy territory and issuing threats hadn’t been my wisest decision. Then again, coming in with my tail tucked between my legs and begging for forgiveness would have gotten us all killed for sure.
Either way, it was time to change the tone to something marginally more positive.
“Konstantin isn’t dead,” I said, and my words instantly silenced the buzz in the room.
Cyrus sneered at me. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I was there, remember? Anderson didn’t want anyone to know what he really was.” Which was true, to an extent. Anderson had threatened to kill me—and anyone I told—if I didn’t keep his secret, and I’d never doubted that he meant it. I suspect I was very lucky he hadn’t killed me on the spot when I’d learned his identity. “Do you honestly think he would kill Konstantin with me there to witness it? We buried him, just like we told you before.”
Cyrus dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “That’s meaningless. Even if it’s the truth, it doesn’t mean Anderson didn’t go back later and do the deed.”
“All right, then. Let me put it to you this way: Which is the better revenge? A quick death, or an eternity of dying then coming back to life and then immediately dying again?”
For the first time, Cyrus looked like he might be considering my words. But then he shook them off, saying, “If my father is alive, then prove it. Take me to him.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, right.”
“You think I can’t make you?”
I rolled my eyes, though it was hard to maintain my aura of confidence when I was spouting so much bullshit. “I think Anderson is really, really good at keeping secrets. I helped bury your father, but I have no idea where we were. Anderson blindfolded me. For my own good,” I finished, with air quotes.
“Funny how everything worked out so conveniently for you.”
I don’t have to make him believe me, I reminded myself. I’ve just got to plant enough reasonable doubt to make him hesitate. “Conveni
ent or not, it’s the truth. You’re never going to find Konstantin without Anderson’s cooperation, and you’re never going to get his cooperation if you kill any of his people.”
“It’s not like I’m going to get his cooperation anyway.”
I shrugged. “Where there’s life, there’s hope, right?”
The muscles of Cyrus’s jaw worked as he ground his teeth, and I knew I had him. He and his father had obviously had their differences, but he still harbored love and loyalty that Konstantin neither deserved nor returned. He wanted me to be telling the truth, and that wishful thinking was going to keep his thirst for vengeance in check. For now.
In my peripheral vision, I could see a wide variety of scowls and glares on the Olympians who surrounded us. I doubted any of them felt the faint hope of rescuing Konstantin was worth giving up on their vengeance. Konstantin was respected as a leader, but I sincerely doubt he was ever loved by his people. Cyrus would probably be buffeted repeatedly with that message, and eventually either he would cave to the pressure, or they would stop listening to him. I just hoped I was buying us enough time to find Anderson and come up with a better plan for defense.
“Why did Anderson send the three of you here instead of coming himself?” Cyrus asked. “Maybe you were the ones he thought were expendable?”
I decided to intersperse a little truth with all the lies I’d been telling. “Anderson’s been off on a little walkabout ever since that email came in. I figured this meeting of ours couldn’t wait until he got back.”
I sensed both Maggie and Logan tensing. Letting Cyrus know Anderson wasn’t around was a calculated risk. On the one hand, it left us looking exposed and vulnerable. On the other hand, I couldn’t think of a plausible explanation for Anderson sending us in his place. He was a freaking god. If he didn’t want to talk to Cyrus, he’d tell Cyrus to shove it, not avoid him.
“A walkabout, eh?” Cyrus asked, his eyes narrowing. “Coincidentally, I seem to have lost track of two of my Olympians in the last couple of days. Two who were close friends of my father’s. You don’t suppose Anderson had anything to do with that, do you?”