Deadly Descendant

  Anderson, apparently, didn’t give a damn about any of these concerns, and I felt a shiver of unease when I saw just a momentary hint of white light in the center of his eyes, gone before I could be sure it was there. Jamaal might be able to dismiss that as some kind of optical illusion, but I knew I’d just seen a hint of the being who resided beneath Anderson’s mild-mannered human facade. A being—a god—I wanted to stay as far away from as possible.

  “I want to know what the two of you thought I would do if you’d brought this to me instead of going behind my back,” Anderson said, flexing his right hand.

  Surely he wasn’t going to use his Hand of Doom on us. Not here, at least. Not if he thought Kerner might actually fall for our trick, which he must, or he wouldn’t be keeping our cover.

  “I wasn’t worried about what you would do,” I told him, fighting a cowardly urge to step backward and out of range of his hand. “It was Emma I was worried about.”

  The little growling sound Anderson made in the back of his throat told me just how much that distinction meant to him. He started reaching for me, and I couldn’t fight my instinctive retreat.

  Anderson opened his mouth to say something, but his words were drowned out by a sudden chorus of feral growls.

  Kerner’s jackals appeared out of nowhere, surrounding us. There were eight of them that I could see, although there could have been others that were still invisible or hidden by tombstones or trees. I swiveled my head around but saw no sign of Kerner. I slipped my hand into my coat pocket, grabbing the gun, although I didn’t draw it. As long as Kerner was out of sight, I had to pretend I was here in good faith.

  The jackals circled us, growling and snarling, the circle growing tighter and tighter, but at least they weren’t attacking. Not yet.

  Beside me, Jamaal was standing with his eyes squeezed shut, and there was a thin sheen of sweat on his face. I couldn’t understand why—even if Jamaal was afraid, he was the kind of alpha male who’d never dream of showing it. I reached out to him, but before my hand made contact, I felt the heat that radiated from his body and realized what he was doing.

  “You’re trying to do that now?” I asked incredulously. I was all for using every weapon at our disposal, but unless Jamaal had been practicing when I wasn’t looking, a physical manifestation of his death magic was not on the menu. And if he failed, he’d be so weak and exhausted he’d be useless in a fight, which this was bound to come down to.

  Jamaal, naturally, ignored me.

  Anderson had, at least momentarily, forgotten his anger and was scanning the cemetery past the jackals, no doubt trying, like I was, to spot Kerner. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Kerner’s jackals had pinned us in an area with lots of trees for cover.

  One of the circling jackals broke from the pack and began stiff-leggedly approaching our faux Konstantin. I wasn’t sure Jack’s disguise would hold up to close examination. Did the jackals have a sense of smell? And if so, would they be able to tell the blood wasn’t real?

  I withdrew my gun from my coat pocket and pointed it at the jackal.

  “Tell your dog to keep its distance!” I yelled.

  The jackals growled more loudly, and I took a slow, deep breath to try to calm myself, but it was hard. The jackals weren’t that big, but there were a lot of them, and I already had more than enough firsthand knowledge of their ferocity. Never mind the extremely unpleasant consequences of being bitten.

  “If you’re here to deliver Konstantin into my hands, then why do you want my jackal to stay away?” Kerner’s voice called, and sure enough, it was coming from behind a tree. He might be crazy, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  He had a good point, but right now, he had all of the advantages on his side. I couldn’t see him, we were surrounded by his jackals, and we were on his home turf. I needed to keep him talking until we could somehow tip the scales to our advantage.

  “Because I want some assurances before we hand him over,” I said, improvising. Anderson looked at me with a raised eyebrow, then frowned at Jamaal, who was starting to breathe hard in his efforts to manifest his death magic.

  Kerner laughed, and it sounded like he’d lost a few more inches of his sanity since we’d last spoken. Either that, or he was just embracing his cackling-villain role.

  “You think you have any option other than handing him over?” Kerner asked, then laughed again.

  I still couldn’t see him, dammit! I wondered if I could make a trick shot and get my bullet to ricochet off one of the tombstones. I’d never tried anything like that before, so I didn’t know just what the limitations of my supernatural aim were. Of course, if I tried that stunt and it didn’t work, the jig was up. Kerner would bolt, and we’d be hard-pressed ever to track him down again. Somehow, I had to get him out from behind that tree.

  I was trying to think of something to say that might tempt him to be incautious, but before I came up with anything, Kerner’s jackal took a flying leap at Jack. My finger squeezed reflexively on the trigger, and the jackal went down with a very realistic yelp. I reminded myself that it was a phantom, not a real animal.

  Kerner roared in rage but stayed behind the tree.

  “I warned you not to do that!” he yelled, and then all of the jackals charged us at once.

  Jack jumped to his feet, his form changing in midair until he was himself again, only this time clad in chain mail. In his hands, he held a baseball bat, which he swung at one of the oncoming jackals, making solid contact.

  Hoping the sound of gunfire wouldn’t bring any civilians running, I started shooting jackals right and left. Anderson disappeared from sight, but I knew he was still there because one of the jackals suddenly went flying backward with a yelp for no apparent reason.

  Realizing I had a bit of an opening, I tried to scramble sideways so that I’d have a clear shot at Kerner—or at least at the spot where I thought Kerner was standing. It was only when I’d moved away a bit that I noticed Jamaal had fallen to his knees, his eyes still closed despite the chaos around him.

  “Jamaal!” I screamed as I saw two jackals leaping at him. Jamaal didn’t react.

  I shot one of the jackals, but I wasn’t fast enough to get both of them, at least not before one of them latched on.

  I winced in anticipation even as I moved my hand to try to belatedly target the second jackal, but before I could steady my aim, Jack slammed into Jamaal from the side, knocking the bigger man to the ground. And leaving himself completely vulnerable.

  The leaping jackal landed on Jack’s back, its jaws snapping at the hand that held the baseball bat. Jack screamed and dropped the bat. I pulled the trigger and hit the jackal square in the head, but the damage had already been done. Jack was bitten, and that meant he had some serious hell to go through. Assuming he survived this, that is.

  It was damned hard to turn away when my friends were in danger, but I knew my best chance of defending them lay in finding a clear shot at Kerner. Gun held out in front of me in hands that shook despite my best efforts, I continued moving away from the battle so I could get a look at the shadowed area behind the tree.

  I got to where I had an angle, but there was no sign of Kerner. Either he had moved, or he was invisible. I suspected the former, because if he was invisible, he wouldn’t have needed to hide in the first place. I shot at the empty space behind the tree, just in case, but there was no telltale cry of pain.

  As soon as I fired off that shot, I cursed myself for stupidity. I’d been shooting at the jackals as if I had unlimited ammo, but my gun only held six bullets at a time. My shot into empty air was number six.

  With my supernatural aim, six shots would usually be more than enough, but with Kerner’s ability to re-create the jackals after I “killed” them, ammo was definitely an issue. I should have ignored the jackals from the beginning, just as Jamaal and I had planned, and gone straight for Kerner.

  I had stuffed a handful of extra cartridges into my pocket, but it’s kind of hard to reload a re
volver during a fight, especially when ninety-nine percent of your experience with guns came from the firing range. My hands shook with adrenaline, and the various growls, snarls, and screams from the battle kept ratcheting the sense of urgency up and up and up. I was so rattled that I dropped the first cartridge when I fumbled it from my pocket.

  With a curse, I bent to grab the cartridge, trying to move as fast as possible without rushing. Rushing was what made me drop the cartridge in the first place.

  A deep-throated roar split the night, and I was so startled I almost dropped the cartridge again. Unable to resist the temptation, I spared a glance for the battle between my friends and the jackals.

  Anderson was still nowhere to be seen, but that was only because he was using his death-god stealth. Jack was on his knees, cradling his bloody right hand to his body while he swung out seemingly at random with his baseball bat. And Jamaal sat on the ground with his eyes closed, not moving despite numerous bleeding wounds. But none of that was what stunned me into near immobility.

  An enormous tiger ripped a jackal open from shoulder to hip with a casual-looking swat of its skillet-sized paw. The tiger roared again, and if the jackals had been real animals, they would have fled the scene with their tails tucked between their legs. But these were a crazy man’s phantom constructions, and they didn’t have the good sense to flee.

  I forced my eyes away from the battle as I finally got a firm grip on the cartridge, and that was when I caught sight of Kerner, slipping through the trees away from the battle at a pace just short of a full-out run. I didn’t dare lose sight of him, so I leapt to my feet in pursuit, even though it would be even harder to get the gun reloaded in the dark while running. A semiautomatic with an easy-to-change clip would have come in real handy.

  Kerner glanced over his shoulder and saw me, and I thought for sure he was going to manifest another jackal just for me. Instead, he picked up speed, running toward a deeper patch of darkness amid another small stand of trees.

  Just looking at that deeper darkness made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was too dark. I remembered Anderson telling us that some death god descendants could open up entrances to the Underworld in cemeteries and that Kerner was one of them. If he made it into that darkness, he could reemerge anywhere, at any cemetery he wished, and who knew how many people he would kill in retaliation for my attempted trickery?

  I wasn’t skillful enough to reload while running, and if I stopped running, Kerner would make it through that portal before I could finish and shoot. So I forgot about trying to reload and instead pumped my arms to give myself more speed, putting everything I had into an all-out sprint.

  I was closing the distance between us at a good pace, but even so, I knew I wouldn’t make it. He had too much of a head start. If only I hadn’t fired that last bullet!

  Hopeless though it was, I kept running. Kerner glanced over his shoulder in the moment before he hit the patch of blackness, and even in the dark, I saw his snarling smile of victory. As a last resort, I tried heaving my gun at him. I’d crushed a Liberi’s skull with a thrown rock once, but the gun wasn’t as heavy as the rock, and though my aim was perfect, I’d waited too long. The gun struck Kerner in the temple, knocking him back—right into the portal.

  My rational mind insisted it was time to wave the white flag. I was running headlong, and Kerner was even now disappearing into the darkness. If I didn’t stop, either I’d find myself following him into the damned Underworld—assuming that was possible—or, more likely, I’d end up crashing headlong into a tree or a monument or something that was hidden behind the portal.

  But this whole thing had been my idea, and even though I had accomplices, I held myself fully responsible for the result. If the result ended up being both Jack and Jamaal getting the super-rabies and having to go through the terrifying cure while Kerner escaped and killed a bunch of innocent people to punish me, I would never, ever forgive myself.

  So I didn’t listen to my rational mind. I kept sprinting even as Kerner disappeared into the blackness and the portal started shrinking in on itself. And when it became clear the portal would be gone in a fraction of a second, I threw myself forward, diving for the darkness like it was home plate.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My stomach crawled up into my chest as my arms and legs flailed through empty, black air.

  I let out a breathless scream as I fell into what could very well turn out to be a bottomless pit. There was not a hint of light anywhere, nothing but complete blackness. I would have been completely disoriented if it weren’t for the sickening falling sensation that let me know in no uncertain terms which way was down.

  I couldn’t help flashing back to the empty darkness of death, momentarily terrified that I had just plunged headlong into it, but there had been no falling sensation in death. And I hadn’t been able to breathe or move my limbs, both of which I was doing just fine.

  I wasn’t dead. Not yet, at least. But assuming I wasn’t going to fall forever, I might well be when I hit the ground, especially if I hit headfirst.

  I’m not an acrobat, and the only time I ever went skydiving, I did it in tandem, where I didn’t have to try to control anything. Still, I tried my best to orient myself and twist in the air until my feet were pointing vaguely downward, just in time to burst through the blackness into a lighter darkness. One that allowed me to see the rock floor rushing up to meet me.

  My feet hit the floor with teeth-rattling force, and I rolled with the impact. My ankle twisted painfully, and I banged my hip so hard I was surprised I didn’t break it. When I came to a breathless stop, I was pleasantly surprised to find I still wasn’t dead. In fact, although I ached from head to toe and no doubt had a host of bruises to go with my twisted ankle, I was pretty sure I hadn’t even broken any bones.

  For a moment, I could do nothing but lie there on my back where I’d come to rest, staring at the black nothingness from which I’d emerged. Then I reminded myself that Kerner had come through before me, and I groaningly forced myself into a sitting position.

  I was in what looked like a tunnel of some sort, although the walls disappeared within about seven feet into the blackness above. If I hadn’t just fallen through that blackness, I would have said the tunnel was dark, but there was just enough ambient light for me to see the roughly hewn walls and the uneven floor. Don’t ask me where that ambient light was coming from, though, because though I looked in all directions, I could see no source.

  I’d obviously clocked Kerner pretty good with my gun, because even in the dark, I could see the smear of blood on the floor where he’d landed. There was another, hand-shaped smear on one wall, and a few drops on the floor marked which way he had gone.

  I didn’t have time to explore or absorb my surroundings. I had to catch up to Kerner before he disappeared back into the mortal world at some unknown location.

  What I was going to do with him when I caught up to him was anyone’s guess, as I was now officially unarmed. I glanced around on the off chance the gun had come through the portal with Kerner, but I didn’t see it.

  I started following the trail of blood, moving cautiously despite the sense of urgency that hammered at me. It was dark enough that I could only see a few yards ahead of me, and I had no idea what might be lurking in these tunnels.

  The air was uncomfortably warm and smelled stale. I hoped there was enough oxygen. Then I wondered how the hell I was going to get out of here, but I shoved the thought aside. I would worry about that after I’d taken care of Kerner. And no, I still didn’t have a plan for how I was going to do that.

  I patted down my pockets in search of a weapon, anything heavy enough to take Kerner down with a really good throw, but the best I could come up with was my keys. Even throwing them as hard as I could and with perfect aim, I doubted I could kill Kerner with them or even knock him out. But it was all I had, and I wasn’t going to accomplish anything by sitting around in the dark twiddling my thumbs.

  The
tunnel broadened as I followed it, but there were no branches. I could have stayed on Kerner’s tail even without the helpful blood trail. But with every step I took, I became more and more convinced I’d done something unutterably stupid by diving into that portal.

  I was unarmed and in unfamiliar territory. If Kerner caught sight of me, all he had to do was conjure a single jackal, and I had no way to defend myself. Who did I think I was to pit myself single-handedly against a supernatural serial killer? In the Underworld, no less, a place I wasn’t sure I could escape from if I didn’t have Kerner around to create one of his portals.

  My mouth was dry, my skin clammy despite the heat, which seemed to be growing more oppressive by the second. Was I imagining things, or was there a hint of sulfur in the stale air? What was the Underworld, anyway? Was it Hell?

  I blew out a steadying breath and continued forward until a soft growl emanated from the darkness in front of me. I came to an abrupt stop, hardly daring to breathe, as I strained my eyes, trying to see farther down the tunnel. Was there a patch of deeper darkness up ahead, darkness that might be the shadowed form of a jackal?

  The beat of my heart seemed unnaturally loud in the echoing silence of the tunnel. A bead of sweat rolled down the center of my back.

  There was a scraping sound from up ahead, like claws scratching across stone, and the deeper pool of shadow moved. Enough that I could tell it was approximately jackal-shaped.

  “You tried to trick me,” Kerner’s voice rasped from far enough down the tunnel that I couldn’t even see him as a shadow. “I thought we had an agreement.”

  There was another growl, and I realized there was more than one jackal hiding just beyond the edge of the weak light. I was going to be torn apart, just like Phoebe had been. Unless I could find some way to talk Kerner out of it. But how do you reason with a madman?

  “I thought so, too,” I said, and I was proud of myself for not letting my voice quaver. “Then you killed that poor maid just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”