Descendant

  “I guess that part of the night’s festivities occurred after you fell.” Douglas’s mouth hardened into a straight line. “Somebody saw fit to blow the hell out of the Hell Gate.”

  Mason . . .

  Fear spread across his chest and punched straight through Cal’s rib cage to encircle his heart. What if something had happened to her? Cal wasn’t sure he could live with himself if Mason had been hurt. He still felt the sharp sting of knowing that a large part of the reason she’d even been on that train, crossing that bridge in the first place, was because of him.

  Because you were such an ass to her.

  “Mase . . .” Cal struggled against the tight-tucked sheets. “I have to get up . . . I have to find her. She has to be okay—”

  Douglas reached up and clamped iron fingers around Cal’s arm, keeping him from pulling out his IV needle. “Calm down. Cal! Calm down. Who are you talking about? What’s this all about?”

  Cal swung his feet to the floor and stood, shakily, steadying himself against the side of the bed. He glared down at his father and after a long moment, when it seemed like he wasn’t going to pitch forward onto his face, Douglas let go of his arm. Cal yanked off the strip of medical tape holding his IV in and pulled the needle from his hand. He felt the cessation of the hydrating drip like a swiftly ebbing tide, but he also felt strong enough to do without it.

  “I was trying to help save a friend. Mason Starling—”

  “Gunnar’s little girl?”

  “Yeah.” Cal nodded. “She was on a train going over the bridge. There’s this guy who was trying to stop it. . . . Look. I really don’t understand everything that was happening. It’s . . .” He lifted his hand in front of his face and spread his fingers wide. His father had said there would be no scars there, and he was right. But Cal could also vividly picture what his hands would’ve looked like with the webbing between his fingers intact. He could almost feel it. He dropped his hand to his side and looked at his father. “It’s just as weird as all of this. Stuff about gods and other realms and the end of the world as we know it . . .”

  “Ragnarok,” his father murmured, his green eyes drifting slowly closed. “Damn you, Gunn.”

  “So it’s true then?”

  “It’s the reason Gosforth exists,” Douglas said. “The reason you go to school there. A long time ago, the founding—or should I say feuding—families, all of them dedicated in service to one ancient pantheon of gods or another, decided that their children would all grow up together. Sort of a joint hostage exchange program. Because, yes. The gods, the Beyond Realms, the monsters and the magick . . . it’s all real, Calum. All of it. And you’re a part of it now.”

  Cal turned and saw that his clothes had been laundered and folded and placed in a pile on a chair in the corner of his room. He walked over to it and started to get dressed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to find Mason,” he said, stuffing one foot into a leg of his jeans. In the very back of his head, beneath the sounds of waves and water that whispered through his mind, Cal suddenly heard a shriek, almost like the discordant cries of a flock of angry seagulls.

  The Nereids.

  Cal’s gaze flew to the window. The curtains billowed and he could see, beyond trees and a rolling lawn, the slender stone finger of the old Blackwell Lighthouse that stood at the very northern tip of Roosevelt Island, its lamp lit like a candle to drive back the dark.

  He heard the shrieking again—louder—and then . . .

  Mason’s faint, startled cry for help.

  XIX

  The bored-looking security guard shook himself out of his lazy slouch and cut across the lobby of the Top of the Rock. It was full of milling, vaguely disgruntled tourists, who were being turned away from the elevators that accessed the observation deck at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

  “Miss Palmerston, isn’t it?” he said. “Welcome back to the Rock. It’s been awhile. We thought you’d abandoned us.”

  He just barely managed to keep his eye line from drifting south of Heather’s face. She’d tugged her shirt as low as it would go and did a quick hair and makeup job in the cab on the way over. Hopefully it would prove to be enough of a distraction.

  “Oh . . . Paulo,” Heather said, shooting him a sly smile, having already scoped out his name badge from behind her oversize mirrored sunglasses—which she then pushed up on her head so she could turn the full wattage of her gaze on him. “Would I do such a thing? I just didn’t want anyone to suspect we were madly in love, that’s all. People get jealous, you know?”

  She shot him a wink, and Paulo actually blushed outright. But then, as Heather breezed past the tourists, heading toward the security checkpoint that led to the elevators, with Gwen following in her wake, the guard hurried to get in front of them. “You know the observation deck is closed for the rest of the day, right?”

  Heather tilted her head and gave him a questioning look.

  “It’s the tremors,” he explained. “The earthquakes . . . you know. We’ve been getting a lot of sway up there. I mean—it’s nothing to worry about, the building’s not going to come down or anything—but, it’s a little disconcerting. There was a bit of panic last time. And, uh, motion sickness.”

  “Ooh,” Heather said. “Barfing tourists. How charming.” She reached out and rested her hand lightly on Paulo’s wrist. “So the deck’s closed to ‘gen pop.’ That’s fine. We’re not here for the view, sweetie.”

  She bestowed a knowing glance on him and nodded at Gwen—who was playing the role of bored, sulky hot girl, crossing her arms tightly under her chest to hide the bloodstains on her hands from the cafeteria liver that she hadn’t had time to wash off.

  “Right,” Paulo said with a wink. “Ms. Aristarchos is doing one of her exclusives up in the Weather Room. A cocktail party or something like that, right?”

  “Something like that,” Heather agreed.

  “Anybody else and management would’ve canceled it along with shutting down the decks, but you know, that lady’s got a lotta pull. I’ll just get the guest list so I can check you off.” He started to move back toward the desk. “The others have all been up there for a while. You ladies are fashionably late.” He frowned faintly, glancing back at Heather’s jeans and sneakers. “And just . . . a little casual?”

  “We’re the entertainment, sweetie.” She cocked her head, her smile tight. “They already have our costumes up there.” Heather felt her patience thinning and her nerves dangerously close to showing through. Their names weren’t on any list—guest or otherwise. But then Gwen suddenly stepped forward and pressed a fingernail into Paulo’s chest, keeping him from the desk.

  She smiled a lazy, catlike smile and virtually purred, “And if they don’t, then we’ll just have to come back down and entertain you.” She traced a little heart on his chest above his name tag, and a flush suffused his face.

  Paulo went a little glassy-eyed and murmured, “Yeah, sure. Of course . . .”

  Heather held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t look down and see the stains on Gwen’s hand. But he didn’t. He just turned and escorted them to the elevators, where he activated the call button and, when the doors slid open, stepped aside to let the girls into the elevator cab. Heather blew him a kiss as the doors slid closed, and when the elevator began its ascent, she leaned against the back wall and exhaled the breath she’d been holding.

  “I thought we were busted,” she said, and rolled an eye at Gwen. “Way to be, there, sex kitten. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  Gwen, who’d gone so pale she looked like she was either going to hurl or pass out, grinned wanly. “I didn’t either. Please tell me that was the hardest thing we’ll have to face in all of this.”

  Heather bit her lip and said nothing. She watched the floor numbers climb swiftly upward and felt the palms of her hands grow slick with cold sweat. She suspected that Gwen had tapped into some kind of magick, even if Gwen herself wasn’t actually aware she’d don
e so. Heather began to wonder if this wasn’t all some kind of huge mistake. What were they going to do when the elevator doors opened and they suddenly came face-to-face with Daria and who knew who else?

  “So . . . yeah. About that. It would be really helpful to know what, exactly, we will be facing once these doors open,” Heather prompted.

  “I keep telling you—I don’t know. It’s never that clear.” Gwen frowned in frustration. “There are still things about what’s already happened that I don’t understand, because what I know has happened doesn’t mesh with what I saw happening. But that’s because I never see it all.”

  “I don’t get it,” Heather said, not for the first time. “What don’t you see?”

  “Well, for one thing, I never see what happens to me.”

  Heather snorted. “I think that’s probably for the best. Who wants to know their own future?”

  “I just want to know that I have one,” Gwen said almost in a whisper.

  Heather winced at the pain in Gwen’s voice. She had an incredible ability. A gift. But more than that, it was a burden. “Have you ever been able to stop something that you saw?” Heather asked gently.

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “Does that mean that I should stop trying?” she asked fiercely, and Heather could see tears glimmering on her lashes.

  Heather shook her head and looked up through the glass roof of the elevator as they climbed upward toward the sixty-seventh floor. They were almost there—at the Weather Room, an indoor observation gallery with soaring windows and its own separate terraces where New York’s elite held super-swank private events, high above the city. Like the party Daria Aristarchos had thrown there just last year for Calum’s eighteenth birthday.

  Gwen was staring at her, waiting for an answer. Instead, Heather asked her a question of her own. “Is that why you didn’t tell me about Cal?” she said quietly. “So that I’d try and help Mason and not him? Because she’s Roth’s sister?”

  “No,” Gwen said, reaching out to grip Heather’s hand hard in hers. “I swear. I didn’t tell you about Cal because I didn’t see him die, Heather. I’ve never seen him die—”

  “Stop!” Heather pulled her fingers from the other girl’s grasp. “Just . . . don’t do that. Don’t give me false hope.” She switched to a slightly less painful subject. “Can you see Starling?” she asked. “Mason, I mean? Do you know what’s happened to her?”

  Gwen shook her head, a frown creasing her brow under the fringe of purple hair. “She’s gone. Not . . . dead. Just gone.”

  Heather thought about the blinding flash of light that had swallowed the train as it had thundered across the bridge. Gone where?

  “I don’t know where,” Gwen said, as if answering her silent question.

  The elevator made a soft ping sound and the doors slid open, admitting a rush of incense-sweet air. Gwen and Heather exchanged glances and stepped hesitantly out into the dim elevator lobby. There was nobody there, and the place was as silent as the grave. Through twenty-five-foot-tall windows, they could see the sweeping vistas of the city lights spilling out into the distance, but all the lights in the Weather Room were turned down low. Most of the illumination came from colored spotlights, artfully hidden behind panels of fabric that hung from the high ceiling. White couches were scattered everywhere, draped with crimson throws, grouped around low tables holding large, shallow silver bowls filled with rotted fruit. The sickly stench of decaying pomegranates and moldy, fermenting bunches of grapes was overwhelming, and Heather wanted to gag. There were razor-sharp silver sickle-shaped blades hanging suspended from the black branches of leafless olive trees scattered around the room in white marble planters. Bunches of barley stalks hung upside down, tied to marble pillars with wide white ribbons like festive garlands. Heather reached out to touch one of the feathery stalks, but Gwen grabbed her hand, pointing to a grayish, sickly-looking growth on the barley that Heather hadn’t noticed.

  “Ergot,” Gwen said. “It’s a fungus. And it’s super toxic. In ancient Europe they called it Tooth of the Wolf.”

  “What’s it doing here?” Heather asked, drawing back in revulsion.

  “It’s also a powerful hallucinogenic. Sometimes the priests or priestesses would give it to sacrificial victims before ritually killing them—to put them into some kind of mystic trance or something, I think.”

  “That’s delightful.”

  Maybe Gwen wasn’t overestimating the amount of danger Roth was really in, Heather thought. If he was even there. The hall felt deserted. . . .

  “It’s also widely thought to have been a key ingredient in kykeon, a concoction specially prepared for rites performed by participants in the Eleusinian mysteries.”

  Daria’s little cult, Heather thought, her blood running cold.

  “I guess we’re in the right place, then.”

  “Sure. We are. But where’s everybody else?” Gwen said, looking around. “The guard downstairs said that a bunch of other guests were already here.”

  Heather shrugged and walked cautiously out into the main room. The small hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she felt as though someone was watching them, even though the place was empty and echoing. The only movement came from the billowing of more white draperies at the far end of the room, where a door leading out onto the north-facing private terrace stood wide open. Heather nodded at the door, and the girls moved silently over to the exit and out onto the terrace.

  The space was empty and unadorned except for a massive slab of what looked like carved black granite, table-high, supported by two stone plinths and flanked by a pair of freestanding fountains that burbled away in the corners of the terrace, the water falling musically, hypnotically, from the eyes of weeping stone maidens into marble pools.

  “Oh no . . .” Gwen went pale. Paler. If that was even possible. “Look at the altar.”

  “What about it?” Heather walked forward and peered at the top of the granite slab. It was decorated with a carving of a horse’s head—only with snakes in place of a mane—and it was surrounded by a circle of wheat sheaves and poppies.

  “This isn’t just a standard meeting of Daria’s Eleusinians.” Gwen pointed at the stone. “It’s a dedication to Demeter Aganippe. Also called the Night-Mare. Also known as She Who Destroys Mercifully.”

  “Destruction and mercy?”

  Gwen grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back inside, her voice cracking with panic as she said, “We have to get out of here! Now!”

  “But what about Roth?” Heather asked, running to keep up with the other girl as she headed back toward the elevators.

  Gwen didn’t answer her, and Heather almost knocked her over when Gwen screeched to an abrupt halt in the elevator lobby and stood, staring up at the glass observation window of a room two floors up that overlooked the Weather Room. It was called the Breezeway, and under normal circumstances, it housed a cool interactive-display art installation—a computerized lightshow—one of the tourist attractions at the Top of the Rock. But in that moment, it looked more like a nightmarish crystal prison. All the lights in the room cycled to red, silhouetting the figure of Roth Starling—who was pressed up against the window glass above them, his limbs spread-eagled and his eyes wide . . . vacant.

  His mouth was open in a silent scream.

  “Roth . . . ,” Gwen whispered, frozen where she stood. “What have they done to you?”

  Heather grabbed Gwen by the arm and yanked her away, dragging her toward the nearest elevator. She stabbed wildly at the call button, but it didn’t light up. She couldn’t hear any indication of the elevator motor working to lift the cabs. The only sound was that of Roth’s hands clawing at the glass wall above them. . . .

  Heather spun around in panic, just as fifteen or twenty figures—men and women dressed in long, white, hooded robes—came gliding around a marble corner on silent feet to surround Heather and Gwen in a circle. The women each held a silver sickle blade in one hand,
and they looked like they would use them without hesitation, if the girls decided to make a run for it. Heather made a grab for her purse, where she’d concealed the little crossbow, but one of the women snatched the bag from her shoulder and threw it the length of the elevator corridor, out of reach. Not that Heather even knew what she would have done with it. Two bolts against a room full of crazies . . .

  Daria Aristarchos’s dark eyes flashed coldly at Heather as she stepped forward and pushed her hood back from her face.

  “This is unexpected,” she said. “I didn’t think Gwendolyn would bring along a guest, but I suppose it’s only fitting. Since you loved him, you can stand witness to the consequences of my son’s death.” She turned back to Gwen. “While you . . . will help me protect this city from that madman, Gunnar Starling, whose son is proving himself to be so very useful to me. And such a perfect, tempting lure to draw you here.”

  “I won’t do it!” Gwen struggled against the hands of the devotees who held her. “If you hurt Roth or Heather, I won’t read the future for you anymore—I swear!”

  She winced as Daria grabbed her by the face and forced Gwen to look her in the eyes. “I don’t want you to just see the future anymore, Gwendolyn,” she snapped. “I want you to create it. Together we will call the Miasma down upon Manhattan.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Gwen said through clenched teeth.

  Daria smiled coldly. “You are so much more than a haruspex, I’ve always known that. You are a conduit. A sorceress, more powerful than even ancient Circe or Medea. Use your gifts to call down the Miasma—the kin-killer curse—and ring this island with a Sleeper’s Fog. Then I will sow the dragon’s teeth and keep our people safe.”

  Heather cried out a warning, but there was nothing she could do as one of the robed women stepped up beside Gwen and put a hypodermic needle to the side of her neck. Gwen shrieked in terror as the woman jabbed the thing into her flesh, pushing the plunger on a syringe filled with a faintly gleaming, silver-gray liquid.