by Jenna Black
I squatted behind a bush at the very edge of the tree line, trying to work up the courage to break cover. The cloud cover was growing thicker as the temperature continued to drop. There were moments when the moon disappeared from view, and I worried that soon the patchy clouds would turn into a heavy overcast. If I had any moon-driven powers, and if those powers depended on actually being able to see the moonlight, they’d better hurry up and make themselves known to me.
I was gnawing my lip indecisively when a flicker of movement off to my right made me jump and gasp. I was frantically trying to unzip my backpack before I’d even finished turning toward the sound, cursing myself for not having the gun in my hand already. Then I saw the doe picking her way through the underbrush and almost laughed myself silly.
My heart was racing, my breath coming short and steaming in the frosty air. I sat down on the cold ground, putting a hand to my heart, waiting for the flood of adrenaline to fade.
Braver than I, the doe ventured out of the woods and onto the outskirts of the manicured lawn. She paused briefly to look at the house, as if assuring herself that the coast was clear, then set off toward the man-made pond at a brisk, elegant trot. Still waiting for my heart rate to return to something resembling normal, I watched her progress and felt reassured by the lack of alarms, blaring lights, or barking dogs. My fear of venturing out from the woods was just a side effect of stretched-taut nerves.
The doe reached the shore of the pond, and stood poised there for a long moment. Her head turned in my direction, until I could have sworn she was looking me straight in the eye. The light of the moon limned her with silver, giving her an ethereal look. I shivered as I remembered that Artemis was often depicted with a deer by her side. Was the animal even real?
The doe quit staring at me and bent her head to drink from the pond. And suddenly, for no reason I could point a finger at, I knew. Emma was in the pond. Not buried, as Konstantin had claimed, but drowned. Tossing her into the water, weighted down with chains, required a lot less effort than digging a grave and burying her. I wondered if the magic of the Liberi caused her to revive on a regular basis, and then drown again. I shuddered away from the thought, which was too horrible to contemplate.
All right—I finally had a strong hunch where Emma was. It was based on absolutely zero empirical evidence, and no matter how strong my hunch, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it was wrong. However, the only way to confirm I was right was to take a dip in the pond. The prospect was far from inviting. The water would be freezing, and while the pond was relatively small and probably not very deep, it would take a significant amount of swimming to check the whole thing. All the while out in the open and defenseless against attack.
Slowly, carefully, I edged back into the full cover of the woods. If Emma really was in that pond, I would need help getting her out. I was less certain of her location than I’d have liked to be, but I figured now was a good time to call Anderson and share my theory. Obviously, he knew more about the Liberi and their powers than I did. If my evidence was enough to convince him that Emma was in the pond, then I’d feel a lot more confident that I wasn’t just imagining things. And if I wasn’t just imagining things, then it was time to call in the cavalry and get Emma out of here.
About forty minutes later, I was so numb from cold I felt like I might have frozen in place. That’s when Anderson appeared suddenly and without warning at my side. I about had a heart attack, and a strangled scream escaped my throat as I backed hastily away and tripped over an exposed tree root, landing on my butt.
Like me, he was dressed all in black, with a black knit hat pulled low over his forehead. Hard to spot in the dark, for sure, but I should have seen something.
He grinned down at me, apparently enjoying the spectacle I’d made of myself. “It’s just me.”
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, searching for calm. How had he just appeared out of thin air like that? Emmitt and Jamaal had both pulled similar stunts, and I’d assumed it was an ability unique to Liberi who had death magic. Then again, no one seemed to know who Anderson’s divine ancestor was, so perhaps he was himself a descendant of a death god, though apparently an obscure one if no one recognized his glyph.
I opened my eyes and glared up at him. “You’re lucky I managed to swallow that scream,” I told him. “This expedition could have been over before it started, all because you felt like being a comedian.” Probably no one would have heard me if I’d screamed—I’d told Anderson to meet me in the woods at the property line, right near the realigned camera—but it was the principle of the thing.
Still grinning, he reached out a hand to help me up. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I kind of forgot I was in stealth mode until it was too late.”
I brushed dead leaves and pine needles from the seat of my pants. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I didn’t suppose it much mattered. I glanced into the woods behind him, but saw no other lurking Liberi.
“You didn’t bring any backup?” I asked incredulously. When he’d put enough faith in my hunch to agree to come himself, I’d assumed he’d bring at least a couple of his other people in case this turned into a fight.
“It’s easier to be sneaky with just two of us,” he responded, and I knew at once he was lying, maybe just because it was such a lame explanation.
I gave him a hard look. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The look Anderson gave me in return was just as hard. “Things you don’t need to know,” he said, and took a step forward as if he thought the conversation was over.
I grabbed his arm. “Hey, if I’m putting my butt on the line for you, I deserve full disclosure before I go charging in there.” The sneaking about I’d been doing so far had no doubt been dangerous, but not half so dangerous as an actual attempt to extract Emma from the water. Assuming she was even there.
Anderson twitched his arm out of my grip. “Come help me, or go back to the house. It’s your choice.” He plunged forward again without a backward glance.
Common sense told me to get the heck out of there. I couldn’t begin to guess what Anderson was hiding, but chances were it was going to come back and bite me in the butt. That’s just the way my life works.
But common sense and I haven’t been on speaking terms for a while now, so instead of trekking back to the car and heading for safety, I followed Anderson deeper into the woods. When I caught up to him, I adjusted our course so we’d come out as close to the pond as possible.
We paused for a while when we came to the edge of the woods, both peering into the heavy darkness left by the moon’s disappearance. Still no lights on in the house. It would be pretty funny, in a sick sort of way, if after all this fearful skulking around, it turned out that Alexis wasn’t even home.
“Any idea where to start looking?” Anderson asked me as he sat on the ground and started unlacing his boots.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t plan to swim in my hiking boots.” He pulled off one boot, along with the sock, then started working on the other one.
“That water has got to be freezing!” I protested, and I meant it literally. Even in the darkness, I could see the thin crust of ice that was forming along the shore.
“You think I can get her out of the water without getting wet?” Off came the second boot, followed by his utilitarian black jacket. “The clothes won’t keep me warm if they’re wet, and I’d rather have something dry to put on when I get out.”
The thought of setting even a toe in that water made my teeth chatter, but of course he was right. And unlike a normal human being, he wouldn’t die of hypothermia.
“Of course, I’m not exactly looking forward to it,” he continued, pulling his sweatshirt off over his head, “so if you can give me a general idea where to look, I’d appreciate it.”
I know I’ve said before that Anderson is rather unprepossessing, but seeing his nicely muscled chest and sculpted shoulders made me rethink the assessment. Then he sl
ipped out of his jeans, leaving himself naked except for a pair of black briefs that clung very attractively in all the right places. I decided I hadn’t just been wrong, I’d been dead wrong. Without the camouflage of his scruffy, unflattering wardrobe, he was very nice to look at indeed.
Which was so not what I needed to be noticing right now.
The surprising view had momentarily distracted me, and I all but smacked myself in the head to get my brain working again and remember what he’d asked me. I glanced at the pond, trying to listen to my gut in case it had a message for me, but there was nothing. The clouds had thickened enough to hide the moon, and even the certainty that Emma was in there had faded with its light. I was going to be completely mortified if I made Anderson swim around in that frigid water for nothing.
“Maybe if you go in where I saw the deer?” I suggested doubtfully. The second thoughts were pounding at me now, telling me this was the stupidest idea I’d ever had. I only came looking for Emma on Alexis’s property because I wanted him to be the one who had her, and I was making an awful lot out of the fact that I saw a deer take a drink from the pond. It was probably a popular watering hole for the local herds, and what I’d seen had been nothing remotely supernatural.
“As good a guess as any,” Anderson said, already beginning to shiver in the cold. “Show me where.”
What confidence I’d had was now completely shot, and I wanted to tell Anderson to forget it, that I’d been wrong and we should just get out of here and go somewhere warm and safe. But I knew he wouldn’t listen to me even if I said it. If there was a chance he would find his Emma in that pond, then he’d take it, no matter how slim the chance might be, or how unreliable the source.
I visualized watching the deer cross the lawn to the pond, homing in on the spot she’d paused to take her drink, then hesitantly stepped out from the cover of the woods. My entire body was tense, expecting against all reason that Alexis was going to jump out from behind a bush somewhere and attack. I did my best to fight the feeling off as I led Anderson to the spot where I’d seen the deer.
I’d have felt a lot surer of myself if there were some nice, clear hoofprints in the mud, but of course there were none to be seen. Had I imagined the deer? Or had it been a supernatural creature, one that didn’t leave prints?
I gestured at the general area, giving Anderson a helpless shrug, feeling like a fool.
“All right,” he said, stepping to the edge of the pond. I felt a little better about the possibly imaginary deer when I saw that Anderson wasn’t leaving footprints in the mud, either. As he eased his way into the water, wincing at the cold, I reached out and touched the ground, finding it frozen solid. I should have guessed as much. The film of ice around the water’s edge had visibly spread since we’d first peeked out of the woods.
Anderson took a series of quick, deep breaths, preparing himself for the shock of cold. Then he dove forward into the icy water and disappeared beneath its surface.
TWENTY-FIVE
I stood on the shore of the pond, chilled down to my bones in sympathy for Anderson as I watched the ripples from his dive glide over the glassy-smooth surface. With the full moon hidden, the only light came from the ambient glow of the nearby city. It was enough that I didn’t feel completely blind, but I was uncomfortably aware of the blackness of the shadows—shadows that could hide anything.
Figuring a little paranoia might be healthy under the circumstances, I put my backpack down and rooted through it until I found my gun. I pointed the gun at the ground and kept my finger off the trigger, remembering how badly I’d been startled earlier by the deer. It wouldn’t do for me to fire blindly out of startled reflex if another deer made an appearance.
Anderson’s head broke the water at the center of the pond. Immediately, steam rose from his skin. The shadows hid his expression, and I didn’t dare call out to him. He dove again after a few quick breaths, his feet flashing up into the air as he went straight down.
Did that mean he’d found her? If he was still looking, he should be swimming forward, not straight down. Right? I held my breath in anticipation. It was all I could do not to cross my fingers like a superstitious child.
He stayed down a long time, long enough for me to worry that something had gone wrong. For all I knew, the Olympians had pet monsters that lived in the bottoms of ponds. I had yet to fully embrace the magic I’d already witnessed, and I’d been slow to ponder what my newfound knowledge of the supernatural meant to the rest of my narrow view of the world. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, hoping like hell he would hurry up and surface before I felt obligated to go in after him.
Moments later, he bobbed to the surface once more, sucking in a great gasp of air. I opened my mouth to call out to him, too curious now to worry about who else might hear me, but before a sound left my throat, I was blinded by a bolt of lightning, traveling horizontally across the lawn.
The lightning hit the surface of the pond, and I heard Anderson’s strangled cry of pain. The residual energy of the bolt lifted me off my feet and tossed me onto my back. The gun fell from my fingers as I hit the ground, and a clap of thunder resonated so loud it sent a spike of pain through my head.
Woozy, blind, and deaf, I retained just enough brain cells to know holding still was a bad idea. I rolled over until I got my feet under me, then broke into a stumbling run, having no idea where I was going. I could have run straight into the icy water, but, for once, luck was on my side, and I managed to stay on the smooth, grassy lawn.
My hair rose on end, and I instinctively dove forward just in time. The next lightning bolt struck the ground just a few yards away. I clapped my hands over my ears to dull the roar of the thunder as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I was close enough to the point of impact that the electricity in the air made my heart beat erratically, but at least it was beating.
Once again, I forced myself to my feet. Even through my closed lids, the flash had been hell on my night vision. However, I could see just well enough to point myself toward the trees before I started running again.
A third bolt incinerated a tree seconds after I made it into the cover of the woods. The concussion knocked me down to my hands and knees, but I was up and running again in a fraction of a second. There were no further bolts as I zigzagged through the trees, slowing my pace just enough to keep from tripping over roots and sprawling on my face.
My ears popped and my vision started to clear—not that I could see much in the darkness. But the return of my physical senses signaled the return of my higher reasoning as well. If I couldn’t see in this darkness, then probably my enemies couldn’t, either. However, they could hear me crashing headlong through the underbrush. My flight was making me more conspicuous rather than less so.
I forced myself to slow down, sucking in one calming breath after another. I hadn’t caught even a glimpse of our attacker, but since Alexis was a descendant of Zeus, it seemed a logical conclusion that he was the one who’d thrown the lightning bolts. And, while the bolt in the water wouldn’t have killed Anderson—at least, not permanently—it would certainly have disabled him for a while.
Anderson’s “treaty” with the Olympians obviously wasn’t anything close to bulletproof. Perhaps Alexis had only been taking advantage of a perceived loophole when he attacked Steph, and the treaty itself was still nominally in place. Maybe that treaty meant Alexis would fish Anderson out of the water, then let him go. But though I’d been forced to retreat, there was no way I was going to abandon Anderson and hope for the best.
Of course, I wasn’t sure what use I was to Anderson in the current situation. My gun lay abandoned on the lawn somewhere, and though I’d have loved to call for help—for the backup Anderson had failed to bring with him, the idiot!—my cell phone was in the backpack at the edge of the pond.
I stopped for a moment to think, listening intently for any sounds of pursuit. The only sound I heard was the wind whistling through the branches above. No doubt Alexis thought I’d do
ne the sensible thing and run for my life.
It was hard to get my bearings in the depths of the darkened woods, but I’d always had a pretty good sense of direction. I relied on that sense of direction now as I attempted to steer myself back toward the security camera I’d knocked out of position earlier. I managed to find it, then groped around on the ground until I found the rock I’d thrown at it. As weapons went, it wasn’t much, but it was heavy enough to do some damage if I threw it just right.
Heading back through the trees toward the pond, I hoped I wasn’t making the world’s biggest mistake.
The situation was pretty damn grim. Alexis, looking smug and superior, stood by the side of the pond. Beside him stood another man—unfamiliar to me, but with a haughty bearing that immediately pegged him as another Olympian. They watched the water as a third man towed an unconscious—or maybe temporarily dead—Anderson toward the shore.
Three men, one rock. I didn’t like the odds. I tried to spot my gun in the grass, but either the shadows hid it, or one of the bad guys had picked it up.
The third man labored out of the water, visibly shivering as he dragged Anderson’s limp body through the shallows and then up onto dry land. Neither of the Liberi looked inclined to help, and I guessed that the third man was a mortal Descendant—a lesser being from the Olympians’ point of view.
“Bind him,” Alexis commanded.
Panting with exertion, Alexis’s flunky turned Anderson over onto his stomach, then dragged his hands behind his back and secured them with a pair of handcuffs he drew from his sopping pants. Unlike Anderson, he’d gone into the water fully clothed. I suspected he was regretting it now as the wind gusted over his wet skin.
“M-may I t-take him now, my lord?” the Descendant stammered, hunching his shoulders and crossing his arms over his chest as if that would keep him warm.