My own knees gave out then, and I collapsed onto the grass. As I lay there panting, I dug through my pack for another rock, pushing myself up into a sitting position. Even with the power of Artemis, I wasn’t sure I could hit Alexis again from this distance, especially not while sitting down, but I was willing to give it a try.
It turned out I didn’t have to. A glowing white pillar of fire—Anderson—ran by me at an easy lope that seemed to cover about ten yards per stride. Alexis screamed in terror when he saw what was coming for him. He lurched to his feet, still visibly unsteady, and stumbled through the doorway. He tried to slam the door behind him, but Anderson had already closed the distance.
I turned my head and covered my ears when Alexis began to scream.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Covering my ears didn’t help, at least not enough. I didn’t care what Alexis had done—I couldn’t bear to hear a human being suffer like that.
Sobbing with the effort, I got to my feet once more and, still covering my ears, ran back toward the pond, putting more distance between myself and the house in hopes the sound would be muffled. I made it all the way back to the edge of the water before my legs refused to carry me anymore and I had to sit down. The screams were fainter now, but I could still hear them, and I knew the sound would haunt my sleep for years to come.
Peter lay where we had left him, his head still caved in from the impact of my rock. There was no evidence of any healing whatsoever, so he’d clearly failed in his quest to become Liberi. I didn’t see how, though. He’d shot Anderson in the freaking head. I’d seen the bullet come out the other side, seen the life drain from Anderson’s eyes. Anderson had died, I was sure of it.
Maybe Peter hadn’t really been a Descendant after all, though I wasn’t sure how one could make a mistake about that. The glyphs were pretty clear indicators.
And then there was Dean.
Actually, there wasn’t Dean. Where Dean had lain, there was a shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of sneakers, all empty. The air smelled of sulfur and ash, although as far as I could tell there wasn’t even a speck of ash or dust to mark where the Liberi had once been.
He was dead. And not the kind of dead a Liberi could get up and walk away from. He was an immortal being who could only be killed by a mortal Descendant. And yet Anderson—clearly not a mortal—had killed him.
Footsteps approached me from behind, but I didn’t turn to look. Alexis’s screams had finally stopped a couple of minutes ago, so I guessed Anderson was through with him. There was no eerie white glow lighting the night now, but that didn’t stop the chill of fear that traveled up and down my spine. I’d been coming to think of Anderson as a friend, but after the savagery I’d witnessed tonight, I couldn’t force myself to look at him.
In my peripheral vision, I saw him come up beside me and then sit on the grass, just out of arm’s reach. Even just seeing him out of the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help noticing he’d lost the handcuffs and the underwear somewhere along the line. Likely when he’d morphed into that humanoid pillar of fire.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” I asked in a choked whisper when the silence became too heavy.
“Yes.”
“Permanently.”
“Yes.”
I shook my head, trying not to remember the sounds of their screams. I couldn’t be sorry they were dead—especially Alexis, though for all I knew Dean was just as bad—but their suffering sickened me. Worse, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wasn’t about to face the same fate. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize I’d witnessed something I shouldn’t have. Anderson seemed to be a nice guy most of the time, but even before tonight, I’d seen ample evidence of the ruthlessness his genial manner hid.
Trembling, I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Are you going to kill me, too?”
He turned his head to face me, and I reluctantly met his eyes. “Are you going to tell anyone what you saw tonight?” he countered.
I shook my head, unable to trust my voice. How could he possibly believe my denial, though? What kind of idiot would admit they were planning to run around blabbing in this situation?
His expression was grave, though not especially menacing. “You know what fate awaits you if you talk. And the same fate awaits anyone you talk to. I trust that will motivate you to keep quiet.”
There was another long stretch of silence, but silence gave me too much room to think, and that was the last thing I wanted to do right now, so I hurried to fill it.
“You aren’t Liberi, are you?” I asked.
One corner of Anderson’s mouth tipped up, though I wasn’t sure what he found funny. “No, I’m not Liberi.”
“Then what are you? If you don’t mind my asking …”
I thought at first he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged, perhaps deciding it wasn’t necessary to be coy when I knew too much already.
“I am the bastard child of Thanatos and Alecto.” I gave him what I was sure was a blank look. “The Greek god of death and one of the Erinyes, or Furies,” he explained. “I am Death and Vengeance, rolled into one.”
I swallowed hard. “So what you’re saying is …” My throat tightened, and I considered the possibility of panicking. “What you’re saying is you’re not Liberi, you’re an actual … god?”
He gave me a small smile. “Is that really so hard to believe after all that you’ve seen?”
I stammered like an idiot, making his smile broaden and bringing a mischievous twinkle to his eye. The expression further widened the chasm between the Anderson I knew and the terrifying creature I’d seen him turn into.
“There are a few of us left on this earth,” Anderson said. “We were abandoned here by those who thought themselves our betters. We keep our existence a closely guarded secret.”
“But Konstantin knows who you really are, right? That’s why he made a deal with you?”
Anderson nodded. “Yes. He saw me kill one of his people, back when we were at war. He escaped, but immediately abducted Emma so that if I killed him, I’d never be able to find her and I’d doom her to an eternity of suffering. That was when we made our deal. He’s made sure to abide by it, knowing that as long as he didn’t provoke me unbearably, I would let him live in hopes that he would one day lead me to Emma.”
“And no one else knows who you are. Konstantin has kept your secret.”
“To tell anyone who and what I am would be to acknowledge that he isn’t the most powerful being to walk the Earth, something his ego will never allow.”
A number of facts lined up in my mind, and something clicked. “That’s why Konstantin was so desperate to recruit me, right? Not because he wanted me to hunt Descendants—or not just because of that, anyway—but because he didn’t want me to help you find Emma.”
Anderson nodded.
“And you didn’t bring any of the others tonight because you knew you were going to end up killing Liberi, and you didn’t want any witnesses.”
Another nod. “I am as anxious to keep my identity a secret as Konstantin, only for different reasons. I had no choice but to risk letting you find out, but I did have a choice with the others.” He shrugged.
There was more to it than that, I knew. I didn’t really matter to him, so if I saw something I shouldn’t and he had to kill me to silence me, it wouldn’t break his heart, not like it would have if he’d had to make the same decision with one of his own people. I was still an outsider, an interloper, and I probably always would be. I told myself I was used to it and that it didn’t hurt a bit.
I turned to stare at the pond. “Is she in there?”
Something sparked in his eye, an expression that held no hint of mischief and screamed of fury. “She’s there. If you’ve settled down enough that I can trust you not to bolt, I’ll go get her out and we can all go home. And then Konstantin and I are going to have a long talk.”
I suppressed a shudder. Right now, I was really, really glad I wasn’t Konstantin.
> “Then go and get her,” I said. “I want to get out of here.”
Without another word, Anderson rose gracefully to his feet. And wouldn’t you know it, despite everything I’d learned about him that night, despite all the fear and awe and horror, I couldn’t help taking a moment to admire his naked backside as he walked to the water and once more plunged in.
It took the better part of forever to get Emma out of the water. She was chained and weighted down, and god or not, Anderson didn’t have the strength to break the chains that bound her. It occurred to me that Alexis might have been planning to haul her out and maul her in front of Anderson as part of the slow, torturous death he’d had in mind, so I reluctantly went back to the house. Shuddering the whole time and trying desperately not to think, I searched through Alexis’s empty clothes until I found a ring of keys. I brought these to Anderson, and sure enough, one of them was the key to the shackles. Anderson brought Emma’s body to shore and laid her on the grass.
She was naked, naturally. Her skin was ivory pale (or corpse white). Her hip-length black hair and her rosy lips gave her the look of a sickly Snow White, and I knew that alive and healthy she would be a stunning beauty. Which I supposed was only appropriate for the wife of a god.
“Does she know?” I asked Anderson as he knelt beside the body, brushing his wife’s hair from her face as we waited for her to revive.
He spared me only a brief glance. “No. And it’s going to stay that way.”
I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. No way in hell I was going to mess with him, not with everything I knew, although I kind of thought his wife had a right to know exactly who and what she was married to. Still, that was their problem, not mine.
Naked and wet in the frigid air, his teeth chattering, Anderson was almost blue with cold. I fetched his clothes from where he’d discarded them in the woods, but for the time being, at least, he ignored them, all his attention focused on Emma. She wouldn’t be in much better shape when she came to, and I figured we were past the time for stealth by now. Even so, I stayed near Anderson, giving him ample chance to veto my decision as I called the mansion. I got Logan, and asked him and Maggie to come help us. I provided zero details beyond the address and the need to bring something warm to wrap Emma up in.
It was at least twenty minutes before Emma suddenly sucked in a breath, then started coughing. Anderson turned her onto her side and supported her head as she expelled the pond water from her lungs.
Embarrassed by their mutual nudity and wanting to give them time to get reacquainted without an audience, I wandered off into the woods before Emma finished retching. I sat heavily on the ground as soon as I was out of sight, drawing my knees up and resting my forehead on my folded arms.
I’d seen too much pain and misery in the past few days, endured too much fear. I couldn’t contain it anymore, and I finally let it all go at once. Muffling the sounds with my arms, I cried for everything Steph had suffered at Alexis’s hands; for the multiple deaths Jamaal was suffering in punishment for his disobedience; for all the abuse Emma must have suffered over the years she’d been Konstantin and Alexis’s prisoner; for the normal life I’d once taken for granted; and for the uncertain future, which I had no doubt would expose me to even more life-altering traumas.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I let Anderson do all the explaining when the cavalry arrived. I tried to make myself concentrate on the answers, thinking it was a good idea if I actually paid attention to the “official” story, but I was a little too shocky to manage it. Certainly I knew Anderson made no mention of Alexis’s demise, or that of his crony, Dean. We’d weighted Peter’s body down in the chains that had once held Emma, then dumped him in the pond, where hopefully he would never be found, at least not by any human authorities. We’d disposed of the empty clothes, as well. No one except Konstantin could possibly guess what had actually happened here tonight.
Emma was alive and conscious, but that’s about the best you could say for her. Her eyes had a glazed, shell-shocked expression, and she didn’t react to anything anyone said to her. Anderson cradled her in his arms, and while she didn’t resist, she didn’t cuddle up to him, either. For now, at least, there seemed to be no one home. My heart broke for both of them, and if I hadn’t already cried my eyes dry in the woods, I probably would have done it again on the ride home.
As far as I could tell, Emma was no better the next day, although she would move around and eat and drink if prompted. She wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone, and forget about talking or changing her facial expression. Still, Anderson seemed confident she would recover, if perhaps not all the way. I didn’t know if that was the wisdom of the ages speaking, or just wishful thinking, but I certainly wasn’t going to argue with him or try to take away his sense of hope.
I’d really hoped that Emma’s presence would inspire Anderson to commute Jamaal’s sentence, but when I tentatively made the suggestion, he silenced me with one cold look. Before I’d seen his true form out at Alexis’s mansion, I might have tried to argue or cajole him out of it, but there was no pretending he didn’t scare the crap out of me now.
“What really happened last night?” Maggie asked me when we were alone. “It’s obvious Anderson didn’t give us the whole story.”
I would have loved to have told her, to unburden myself and talk the situation through with another human being. But of course, I couldn’t, not without risking my own life and hers.
“Don’t ask,” was all I said, though I could see that the way I’d shut her out hurt her.
Not being able to tell Steph the truth was even worse. According to Anderson’s version of events, we had run Alexis off, but there was no mention of his slow and painful death. Blake was still sticking to Steph like glue, and I didn’t dare even hint at what had happened to Alexis when Blake might hear me. I trusted Steph to keep a secret, but not Blake.
Eventually, I managed to get her alone for all of about five minutes. I was worried enough about Anderson’s threat that I dropped my voice to a bare whisper even though we were alone.
“Alexis is dead,” I told her. “I can’t share details, and if anyone gets a hint that I told you, we’ll both join him in the grave. But I thought you should know.”
Steph’s eyes misted with tears. Of the two of us, I’d been by far the most bloodthirsty, so I was a little surprised when she whispered back, “I hope it hurt.”
I shuddered, remembering Alexis’s screams. “It did,” I assured her, then hugged her tightly as she burst into tears.
When sunset rolled around, I seriously considered finding somewhere in the house to hide so I could avoid having to witness Jamaal’s third and final execution. I was scared to death of defying Anderson, but I honestly wasn’t sure my psyche could survive one more horror.
In the end, though, I pulled on my big girl panties and headed out to the clearing with the rest of Anderson’s Liberi—minus Emma, thank God, because even hard-assed Anderson had some compassion, at least for his own wife. I figured Jamaal was being punished in part because of me, and therefore it was my moral duty to stand witness. In hindsight, I think I was still fighting a boatload of guilt over having killed Emmitt and started Jamaal down the self-destructive path he’d chosen.
What courage I’d managed to muster completely failed me when I stepped out from between the trees and into the clearing, however. Jamaal had warned me that Logan would choose something “heinous” for the grand finale, as he termed it, and he hadn’t been kidding.
In the center of the clearing, illuminated by the light of many torches, was a wooden stake, driven into the ground and surrounded by firewood and kindling.
“No fucking way,” I said, coming to such an abrupt halt that Maggie bumped into me from behind and almost knocked me over.
There were winces and gasps of sympathy from the other assembled Liberi, but no one else reacted as violently as I did. I whirled on them, my outrage reaching epic proportions.
“We
are not going to just stand here and watch while …” I couldn’t even say the words, but Maggie was frantically shushing me anyway.
“You’re going to do exactly that,” Anderson told me coldly as he stepped into the clearing, followed by Logan and Jamaal. Jamaal staggered when he saw what was awaiting him, but he regained his composure and his courage in a heartbeat, visibly steeling himself for the ordeal.
Earlier in the day, I’d been unable to shake the vision of Anderson in his true form, an avenging god of death with pitiless eyes. Memories of Alexis’s and Dean’s screams had silenced me better than any gag ever could. But this was too much. Jamaal’s actions had been misguided, but not truly evil. He hadn’t meant to harm anyone but me, and he’d thought he had good cause. He didn’t deserve this torment—and I didn’t deserve to have to watch it.
I took a belligerent step in Anderson’s direction and opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought of him, ignoring the steely threat in his eyes.
“Shut up, Nikki!” Jamaal snapped at me, surprising me into silence. “It’s my choice whether to submit to this or not, and I choose to submit.”
I wanted to argue, but he had a point. He could walk away if he wanted to, high though the cost might be. But he wasn’t going to walk away. “Fine. Be a martyr if you want to. But I am not watching this.”
I didn’t wait for Anderson’s reply, instead turning and plunging into the woods, running full speed toward the house, hoping I could get inside and as far away from the clearing as possible before the screaming started. If Anderson insisted on punishing me for my act of defiance, I’d deal with it when the time came. I just couldn’t bear to see or hear any more suffering.
I wasn’t thinking when I ran, but once I entered the house, I found myself pounding down the stairs toward the basement instead of heading up to my room. I didn’t analyze my instincts, just went with them, and soon found myself in the cell I’d been locked in the very first night I’d set foot in the mansion. Slamming the door behind me, I threw myself onto the narrow cot and pulled the pillow over my head.