Descendant

  “Rivals. You mean Daria Aristarchos.”

  “Yes.” Rory heard the bitterness in his father’s voice. “There are others, of course, but they are weak and scattered. I respect Daria’s strength and her determination. She’s the most dedicated high priestess the Eleusinians have ever had. And she is a worthy adversary. But if she gets in my way, I will crush her.”

  There was a long silence, and Rory wondered why Roth wasn’t cheering on that sentiment. It sounded like a good idea to him. Then again, he knew perfectly well that Cal Aristarchos’s beautiful, bitchy mother was the head of a family dedicated to the Greek pantheon of gods in the same way his family was sworn in service to the gods of the ancient Norse. Kick her ass, Dad, Rory thought.

  “Now . . .” Gunnar’s voice sounded as if he was moving farther away, down the hall.

  That’s okay, Pops . . . don’t mind me. I’ll be fine here all by myself. . . .

  “Find your sister, Rothgar,” Gunnar said. “Use whatever resources of mine you need.”

  As the footsteps drifted away, Rory sank deeper into his pillow with a weak groan. The act of struggling against the medication to overhear that conversation had proved exhausting. But now he could sleep. Now that he knew Gunnar was still moving forward. And as soon as he’d rested up a bit, he’d prove to his father that he was still a vital part of the team. He went to close his eyes, but a surge of pain coursed through him.

  “Holy sh—” He flailed spasmodically in the bed and swore, but a hand came down to cover his mouth, silencing him. Rory’s eyes flew wide. The soporific effect of the drugs had suddenly, shockingly vanished. When he managed to focus his gaze, he saw Roth standing over him, holding an IV tube in his hand—the hand not covering his brother’s mouth. He’d bent the tube in the middle, stopping the flow of a gently glowing, bluish liquid from entering Rory’s arm.

  “That wasn’t anybody’s gun but yours, brother,” Roth said quietly.

  Rory’s protests were muffled squeaks beneath Roth’s palm.

  “Shut up. I’ve known you had a gun stashed in the glove box of your car for months now. I’m assuming it was part of the payment you got from your lunkhead buddies for the magickal performance enhancers you’ve been providing them with. Which, by the way, is right up there on the list of stupidest possible things to do ever.” Roth’s voice grew harsh with barely suppressed rage. “The family doesn’t deal, Rory. That’s a rule.” His gaze bored into his brother like a drill. “But don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell Dad that you fudged that little detail of your story.”

  He glared coldly down at his brother and, after a moment, took away his hand from Rory’s mouth. But Rory knew better than to make any noise. If he cried out and brought Gunnar running—as if that would ever happen—Roth would just renege on his promise and tell their father Rory had lied to him.

  “What do you want, Roth?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Roth looked at him like he was beneath contempt. “What I want . . . is to know what else about your little story is a steaming pile of crap. I want to know what you did to Mason.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “All I did was get her on the train.”

  Rory was sweating now with pain. And fear. Truthfully? Roth had always scared the living daylights out of him. He was always so damned quiet that if he did ever say anything, you knew you were in trouble. But for some stupid reason, Rory decided to try and tough it out.

  “You were the one who screwed up, Roth—you were supposed to bring that Fennrys dude over the bridge. I did my part. I’m the one who—”

  “How?” Roth ignored Rory’s counteraccusations. “How did you get her on the train?”

  Rory swallowed nervously. If his brother found out that he’d essentially tortured Mason—that he’d ruthlessly wielded her claustrophobia against her like a devastating weapon—Roth would probably kill him. Or close enough, which might actually be worse. The pain had begun to flare like wildfire through Rory’s whole body. His face felt like it had met a brick wall up close and personal, and the nerve endings of his right hand and arm felt as though someone had dipped them in a vat of acid. He knew Fennrys had broken his arm—badly—but he couldn’t even lift his head to see the extent of the damage.

  Roth held the crimped plastic IV tube up in front of Rory’s face.

  “I hear this stuff’s pretty sweet. I have no problem whatsoever denying you access to it if you don’t tell me what I need to know,” he said, smiling dangerously. “You know . . . the Wolf busted you up pretty bad. The regular docs didn’t think there was much they could do for your arm besides putting half a dozen pins and a couple of plates in. The rehab alone would have taken months. So Dad called in favors to get you taken care of, Ror, if only so you wouldn’t end up as a totally useless waste. Even still . . . there’s only so much the witchmechs can do, y’know?”

  Witchmechs? Rory thought, his brain screaming with pain. And then he remembered. “Witchmechs” was a kind of derogatory term Gunnar had used in his diary in a couple of entries to describe the dwarves of Norse myth. They were repugnant things—evil little creatures that lived belowground and created wonders out of precious metals in return for dark bargains—but sometimes useful. Half witch doctors, half sorcerer-mechanics. Still, Rory wasn’t at all sure what they had to do with him. . . .

  “Maybe you were just too hurt,” Roth was saying. “Maybe you never even regained consciousness. . . .”

  “Jeezus, Roth,” Rory gasped. “We’re brothers!”

  “And Mason is our sister.” Roth shrugged. “Honestly? I’ve always liked her better than you. Now. What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing! I swear!” Rory’s brain went into spin mode. “She was with that Palmerston chick. And—uh—me and Overlea . . . we—we just told them we were going to a party. We told them to come along. That’s all.”

  “And Mason just went with you. Just like that. Even after losing the competition?”

  “Yeah. Yeah . . . I guess she was pretty upset. Maybe she just wanted to forget. I think that’s what Heather said to her . . . I mean . . . I’m sure she did. Y’know. That a party would help take her mind off it.” A flare of pain sizzled up from his arm to explode in fireworks behind his eyes. “C’mon, man! Let go of the tube—”

  “Why the hell did Mason wind up on top of the train car?”

  “’Cause she’s so damn stupid!” Rory gasped. “You know she does crazy shit, Roth! I was—y’know—partying with Heather in the front of the salon car, and I guess things got out of hand between Overlea and Mason.”

  “You left that overgrown ape alone with her?”

  “I didn’t know. I guess . . . I mean, yeah. That was totally my fault. I should have been looking out for her, I know. I guess he got a little too aggressive. Dumb jock probably thinks he’s a real Romeo. . . .”

  What the hell, Rory thought. Dead men tell no tales, and if he was lucky—and Mason really was out of the picture for good—then he could pin his whole sorry screwup on a football player who his dad had just offed probably less than a couple of hours earlier. At least he could buy himself some time.

  “I think maybe Mason told him off and went into the other train car to be alone,” he continued, spinning a pretty plausible tale as he went. “I think Tag followed her. He’s used to college girls. He probably cornered her and Mason . . . y’know. She probably got all phobic. You know how she gets. I think the most likely scenario is that she just freaked.”

  And, in fact, that was a pretty likely scenario. Even Roth, knowing Mason’s history with claustrophobia, couldn’t deny that. Roth’s eyes narrowed, and he stared down into Rory’s face for what seemed like half an hour. Rory held his gaze and silently willed his brother to believe him. The strange, restless, meaty-metallic noises he’d heard earlier had paused, and the clock ticking on the bookshelf across the room was now the loudest sound in the quietest room Rory had ever
heard. He felt his heartbeat slowing to match it, each beat thrumming against the insides of his ears.

  Roth let go of the IV tube.

  “I have to go see what I can do about cleaning up this mess you’ve made,” he said, and shook his head in disgust. “Maybe I can stop things from spiraling too far out of control . . . but I doubt it.”

  Rory almost wept with relief as the glowing blue magick flowed once more into his veins and wrapped him in a cloud of euphoria. He was going to be fine. He was going to be better than fine. He didn’t realize just how much improved, though, until Roth turned to go. Before he did, he glanced back at his brother, and his gaze drifted to Rory’s right arm—the one opposite to where the IV needle pumped such sweet elixir. The one that Fennrys had shattered, trying to wrest the gun from Rory’s grasp.

  “I told Gunnar he was making a mistake, having them fix you up like that. I’m still not sure you deserve it,” Roth said. “All I can say is . . . don’t waste it.”

  Rory blinked at his brother in confusion, his brain already cottony again with the painkiller. But as Roth left the room, Rory forced his head up off the pillow to see, finally, what had become of his wounded limb. He was just in time to see a strange, stunted creature tearing away the last, fibrous bits of flesh that held his forearm attached to the rest of him. There were two more misshapen, dwarfish things who carried Rory’s arm away as he tried to scream, but the glowing blue narcotic that fogged his mind had also stolen his voice. He could only watch in silent horror as another witchmech crawled up through a strange, shimmering hole in the penthouse floor, carrying a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. As he was unwrapping it, Rory caught sight of the ragged stump where his forearm used to be . . . and passed out cold.

  When he awoke some time later, Rory flailed around in terrified remembrance, struggling frantically to prop himself up. In the dim light filtering through the curtains, he saw his right arm, where it lay on top of the covers.

  It was only a dream, he thought. A nightmare.

  He still had his hand.

  Whole and sound, his fingers and wrist moved with supple strength as he bent and flexed the joints. But something was strange. Different. As he contracted his fingers into a fist, they felt cool and too smooth against one another. He reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. In the glow from the single bulb, Rory saw that the skin of his arm gleamed with a watery, metallic sheen. Rory lifted his hand up in front of his face and gasped. His arm—his real, flesh-and-blood arm from the elbow down—was gone.

  In its place was one made—impossibly—out of living silver.

  Rory watched, mesmerized, as with a thought his shining fingers slowly clenched again into a fist. It felt like a sledgehammer. He smiled to himself at the thought of bringing that hammer down on the head of the Fennrys Wolf the next time they met. Because there would be a next time. And that, Rory vowed silently, was exactly what he was going to do.

  XIV

  For the life of him, Fennrys couldn’t figure out how Rafe knew which way was which in the Between. Everything was a sameness of bleak, oppressive, darkly luminous fog. Yet somehow, the ancient god seemed to unerringly negotiate the murk and the press of wraiths, the shades of the unquiet dead.

  Fenn was really only worried about what would happen once they actually reached their destination: North Brother Island—the anchor point of the rift where it manifested in the mortal realm.

  “Once we get to where we’re going,” Rafe said, as if in answer to Fennrys’s thought, “we’ll need to leave. Quickly. I have a boat standing by.”

  “A boat?” Mason asked, ducking to avoid something smoky and toothy that drifted past her head.

  “The rift opens up on an island,” Fennrys explained, and then turned to Rafe. “This wouldn’t happen to be the same boat that took so long to get to us last time that I almost got eaten by a sea monster, would it?”

  Rafe grinned sourly. “I told Aken that if he’s not waiting when we get there this time, I’m actually gonna make him pay his bar bill. All of it.”

  “Sea monster?” Mason raised an eyebrow.

  “Dead sea monster,” Fennrys reassured her.

  “Right. Okay. So . . . an island.” Mason waved off another wraith that was doing its best to tangle itself in her hair. “Sounds . . . nice?”

  Fennrys snorted.

  “Oh, come on,” Mason said. “How bad can this place be? I mean, I like islands. Y’know: Coney . . . Hawaii . . .”

  “Rikers . . . Devil’s . . .” Fennrys rolled an eye at her.

  “Here we are!” Rafe sang out. “Last stop, all exits, no waiting, people!”

  The god surged forward, and the swirling dimness that pressed in upon the trio suddenly split, spilling brilliant crimson light into the Between. Rafe hauled Mason and Fennrys in his wake through a kinetic surge of storm-cloud energy that wrapped around them and snapped at their limbs and hair and hands. Together, they tumbled through from the Between, to land sprawling in a place that resembled a moss-thick, leaf-strewn clearing on the edge of a forest in a fairy tale. The kind of forest that small children and comely maidens of virtue true were always being told to avoid entering at all costs.

  Fennrys shrugged out of Rafe’s grip and pushed himself to his knees, gazing all around. Opposite the trees, a ragged little cove and a refuse-strewn, rocky beach gave way to a view of the East River. The sun was close to setting, and streamers of bloody-red clouds unfurled against the burnished gold backdrop of the sky. Behind them, beneath the trees, the shadows were deep purple, and the twilight contrast clarified every little detail of leaf and twig, picking them out in sharp, stark focus.

  “Did it work?” Mason asked, rolling over and pushing the hair from her face. “Are we there?”

  “Yeah. It did. We are.” Fennrys hauled himself to his feet and held out a hand to help Mason to hers. “Welcome to North Brother Island, Mase. The place I died.”

  Mason’s eyes went wide, and her mouth drifted open. Her hand tightened convulsively on his, and he could see her gaze fill with concern for him. Fennrys wasn’t quite sure how he felt in that moment, revisiting the place where he’d sacrificed himself and gone to Valhalla so that another man could live. He’d thought it might have been hard to take—that it might’ve hurt coming back. But in fact, all he felt was a kind of hollowness. Echoes. It felt like that life had belonged to someone else. The only thing that mattered to him was who he was now. And who he was with.

  He reached out a hand and smoothed Mason’s hair, the strands slipping through his fingers like spun silk, midnight-hued and shining. Her eyes never left his face as he did so, and the warmth and compassion in that sapphire gaze made everything Fennrys had gone through to be there, in that moment, completely, totally worth it.

  He felt himself smiling as he reluctantly turned his gaze from her face to their surroundings. In the distance, he could make out the contours of several buildings, their outlines softened by the massive overgrowth of vegetation that had taken over the island since it had been abandoned. The island had once been home to a quarantine hospital and had seen more than its fair share of tragedies, but now the whole place looked as though it was being consumed by nature. It was eerie. As were the strange, will-o’-the-wisp-ish lights that sparkled and danced in the deep shadows under the trees.

  “As islands go,” Mason murmured, “this place is less resort-y than I generally prefer.” She shivered and hugged her elbows. “It feels kind of . . . haunted.”

  “It is haunted,” Fennrys said.

  In the west, the glass-and-stone towers of Manhattan lay glittering far beyond the restless gray stretch of the Hell Gate strait like some fairy-tale kingdom. The sun was sinking swiftly behind the artificial horizon of the city line, and a deep indigo blue tinted the vault of the sky in its wake.

  “I wonder what time it is,” Mason said.

  “Yeah? I wonder what day it is,” Rafe muttered, then shrugged when Mason glanced questioningly at him. “Time passes a little d
ifferently in the Beyond Realms. Until I see a calendar, even I can’t be sure how much of it passed here, while we were there.” He turned to the water and scanned up and down the shore, a frown creasing his forehead.

  Mason sighed. “This isn’t going to be one of those ‘hapless mortal returns home after a night of revels to discover a hundred years have passed and everyone she knows is long dead’ folktale things, is it?” she asked drily. “Because that would suck more than all the other weird things that have gone on in the last few hours of my life.”

  “Hey, there are worse fates,” Fennrys said, striving for lightness.

  But Mason had obviously heard the edge in his voice, and he mentally kicked himself. It wasn’t her fault that what she’d just described was, fundamentally, almost exactly what had happened to him.

  “Oh god.” She winced. “I’m so sorry, Fenn . . . I didn’t mean—I wasn’t thinking—”

  “Forget it, Mase.” He shook his head and forced the smile back onto his face. “It’s okay. Really. I’m okay. Hell . . . if I’d lived and died when I was supposed to, I never would have met you, right?”

  “I’m starting to think that’s maybe not such a bad thing.”

  “Stop.” He gripped her by the shoulders—hard enough to make her blink up at him. “Don’t ever say that. Nothing about this is your fault, and you are not the guilty party here. We will figure out how to make all of this right and then, when all this is done, we will go back to the Boat Basin Café and we will sit at that pain-in-the-ass waiter’s table again and we will finish those beers and order those burgers like we were supposed to. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Damned ferryman,” Rafe muttered, still scanning the boatless river. “I’m going to go see if I can spot our transport farther down. You two find somewhere safe to hunker down and wait until I get back. With darkness falling, I don’t want Mason wandering around out in the open in this place.”