His face had closed off, and I made an educated guess that meant he was trying to hide what he was feeling. But I could easily imagine what that was: abject fear. For all Cyrus’s blustering and his numerous Olympians, if Anderson decided to hunt them all down and kill them one by one, there would be nothing they could do to stop him. Sure, they might retaliate by killing all of us, but that wouldn’t bring back the dead.
“I honestly don’t think so,” I said. If he were going to kill any of the Olympians, he would go for Cyrus first and foremost, though I figured pointing that out would be counterproductive. “There has to be a good reason he kept his identity such a secret, even from Liberi who’ve been with him for decades. I can’t imagine what it is, but I have to believe wherever he’s gone, it’s to deal with the ramifications of that email.” I vividly remembered Anderson telling me that if his identity got out, it could cost the lives of everyone on the planet, but that was info I couldn’t share with Cyrus.
Cyrus was still trying to keep a neutral expression, but I swore I caught a flash of worry in his eyes. He might be a lying, selfish snake, but he wasn’t stupid. If there was someone out there powerful enough to send a god running for cover—or whatever Anderson was doing—then that someone had to be seriously bad news.
Cyrus leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed. “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better,” he said.
“Me either,” I admitted. “Your dad may have pulled the pin on something he thought was a grenade but is actually a nuke.” Of course, I was being generous in implying Konstantin might have cared what the consequences of his actions would be. He knew he wouldn’t be around to face them, so what did it matter to him?
Cyrus nodded and looked grim. “All of that may be perfectly true, but it doesn’t change anything. I believe that my father is dead and that you’re lying through your pretty teeth in hopes of saving your own ass.”
“Konstantin is not dead,” I insisted. I thought I was being pretty convincing, but I was starting to sweat. It had seemed for a while that Cyrus was considering my story because he hoped it was true. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Prove it!” Cyrus said, pounding the table and making everyone jump. “Give me proof of life, and I won’t wipe you all out no matter how much I want to.”
It was a frighteningly reasonable request, but obviously one we couldn’t grant. There was nothing I could do but stall for time.
“Anderson’s the only one who knows where Konstantin is buried,” I said. “Until he comes back, there’s no way we can give you proof of life.”
“Well, then you’d better hope he comes back soon, or use your powers to track down the burial site yourself. If I don’t have proof within one week that my father’s alive, I’ll start picking your people off one by one until you give me what I want or you’re all dead, whichever comes first.”
“You only have to kill one of us to sign your own death warrant,” I replied. “Anderson’s the son of a Fury. He’s really good at revenge.”
“So am I,” he answered ominously. “You have one week. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind.”
TWO
The meeting with Cyrus had staved off immediate disaster, but we were still in deep trouble. I might be able to stall for time by having Jack, our resident trickster, disguise himself as Konstantin for a proof-of-life photo—his illusion magic was scary good—but I suspected Cyrus would see right through that. We needed Anderson back ASAP. Maybe he could talk (or threaten) Cyrus into leaving us alone.
We tried calling his cell phone, of course. I’m sure all of us left him at least one urgent message, but he didn’t respond. I also tried email, though I doubted he would answer an email when he wouldn’t answer a phone call or text.
“He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Maggie assured me when I expressed my frustration. “He just needs time is all.”
I like to think of myself as a pretty understanding person, but I had my limits, and Anderson had pushed way past them. “Well, we don’t have time to wait till he’s goddamn ready!” I retorted. “And if he doesn’t get his ass back here soon, then I’m going to track him down and haul him in.”
Maggie gave me a shocked look, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. I probably sounded pretty ridiculous claiming I was going to hunt down a god and force him to do anything. Anderson would come back when and if he felt like it, and we all knew it.
That said, I was a descendant of Artemis, and I’d never been good at doing nothing. Maybe there was no way I could persuade Anderson to come back if he didn’t feel like it, but I knew I would feel better if I at least had some clue where he was.
I was still hard at work trying to figure out the ins and outs of my powers as a supernatural huntress, but at least with almost three months’ experience now under my belt, I was no longer entirely clueless about how they worked. Trial and error had taught me they were stronger at night, when the moon was visible. I had also figured out that they were fueled by intuition, the clues registering only on a subconscious level, which made it tough to summon them on demand. I was getting better at telling the difference between a subconscious clue and a random whim, but I was a long way from being truly confident.
I decided to start my search in Anderson’s office, the only room in his wing of the mansion that wasn’t strictly off-limits to the rest of us. I had a feeling some of my fellow Liberi—most notably Maggie—would take issue with me rifling through Anderson’s things in his absence, so I tried to be quiet about it. I wasn’t the only one in the house who wanted him to hurry back, but I was the only one who would risk doing something that might piss him off to make that happen. (Well, except for Jack, who as a descendant of Loki thought infuriating people was a laugh a minute.) Maybe I have a little trouble with authority. Wouldn’t be surprising for someone with my upbringing.
I listened to my subconscious with studied attention as I looked through all of his files and drawers and even his computer. He didn’t bother with password protection, knowing that no one in the house would dare snoop, and no outsider who attempted to break in would survive the experience. I looked for any mention of places he might frequent or that might have some sentimental value, but I tried to keep my mind open to anything.
Nothing raised a blip on my subconscious radar.
I could have searched the rest of the Forbidden Zone—which is what I called Anderson’s private wing of the mansion—but if I didn’t find anything in his office, I doubted I’d have much luck elsewhere.
My next ploy was to wait until the sun set and the moon rose and then drive around at random, hoping my subconscious would lead me in the right direction. This method usually worked better when someone else was driving, allowing me to space out completely, at which point my elusive power would be triggered and I’d start giving directions without even knowing I was doing it. But for the time being, I wanted to try it solo. Although no one had come right out and challenged me about it, I got a sense they suspected that I’d discovered Anderson’s secret before they did. After all, they knew I’d been there the night we “buried” Konstantin. I’d told them the same lie I’d told Cyrus, but they had even less reason to believe me. I didn’t want to be trapped in a car for several hours with someone who might start pressing for the truth.
I drove around for a couple of hours, but I didn’t stray into any unexpected neighborhoods or feel any compulsion to go one way or another. It was highly possible that my meager powers weren’t up to the challenge of tracking a god. It was also possible that Anderson had disappeared to somewhere I couldn’t follow. As a death god, he had easy access to the Underworld, which mere mortals like me were unable to enter unless escorted.
Frustrated by my total lack of progress, but glad I had actually made an effort, I returned to the mansion.
Anderson was very fond of his privacy, so you couldn’t just drive up to the house without going through a gate first. When I neared the gate, I was surprised to see an unfamiliar car sto
pped in front of it. It was pretty dark, but I could see the driver’s hand reaching out to press the intercom button just in front of the gates. The hand was delicate and feminine, and from the way she punched the button about ten times, I had a feeling this wasn’t her first try.
I saw no reason to open the gates for a stranger, so I pulled up behind her instead. From what I could see in the shadows, the car had only one occupant, but looks can be deceiving, especially in the world of Liberi.
I was on high alert as I put my car in park. A lone woman might not look all that threatening to most, but I would consider her dangerous until I saw evidence to the contrary. I wished I’d brought my gun for tonight’s drive, but I hadn’t been sure if I’d end up within the D.C. city limits, where I couldn’t legally carry it. There’d been an awful lot of times when I’d ignored that law, but only when I felt I might be in immediate danger, which I hadn’t tonight.
I stepped out of my car, leaving it running in case I needed a speedy getaway. The brake lights on the car in front of me dimmed, and I realized the driver had put it in park as well.
The door opened, and the woman climbed gracefully out of the driver’s seat. She was tall and curvy, with thick black hair held back in a ponytail. She wore faded jeans and an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, and yet she somehow managed to convey an aura of class and sophistication. I searched her face and the skin exposed by her sweatshirt, but saw no glyph that would mark her as a Liberi or a Descendant.
The stranger was regarding me with equal curiosity, and there was nothing about her facial expression or body language that looked even vaguely threatening. However, I wasn’t about to relax.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said with a half smile. “Depends who you are.”
I raised an eyebrow. She might not be overtly hostile, but apparently she had the privileged attitude I was beginning to think of as the hallmark of all the Olympians.
“I live here,” I told her curtly. “You’re the one who needs to identify herself.”
The woman looked pointedly down at my left hand. I didn’t get why until she asked me, “Are you the current Mrs. Kane?”
Oh. She’d been looking for a wedding ring. That seemed to suggest she wasn’t an Olympian, because they all knew perfectly well who I was.
“Who’s asking?” Maybe I was being stubborn, but I wasn’t willing to answer even an innocuous question without knowing who this stranger was.
I saw a flash of annoyance in her eyes, but she quickly quelled it. “I suppose one of us has to concede first, and it might as well be me. My name is Rose, and a long time ago, I was the sister-in-law of the man you know as Anderson Kane.”
I had no idea how old Anderson was, except that it was old, and I knew he’d had at least one other ex-wife besides the two I’d met, Emma and Erin. But I couldn’t help wondering just how many ex-wives and in-laws were still wandering around in the world. I assumed most if not all of them were Liberi, because marrying a mortal would kind of suck when you knew they were going to die and you weren’t. I looked at Rose more carefully and still saw no sign of a glyph.
“How long ago are we talking?” I asked.
“Very long ago,” she said, then seemed to be thinking something over. I kept my mouth shut, and eventually she sighed.
“I presume you are aware of the email about Kane that circulated not long ago,” she said. I nodded and gestured for her to continue. “Well, the author of that email was correct when he suggested that Kane was hiding from someone. You see, he was supposed to have died a very, very long time ago, and there is someone who’s very disappointed to learn that he didn’t.”
I didn’t need any supernatural powers to hear the warning bells clanging away. Hard not to be alarmed when Anderson’s words about “every man, woman, and child” kept echoing in my head. No Liberi could possibly cause that kind of damage, which meant whoever Anderson was hiding from had to be a god. And having his ex-sister-in-law from “very long ago” parked here in front of the gates gave me a definite sinking feeling.
“That someone wouldn’t happen to be an ex-wife, would it?” I asked.
“Yes, it would. And before you ask, yes, that would be my sister, Niobe.”
Oh, shit.
I hadn’t exactly been an expert in Greek mythology when I’d become a Liberi, but just for the sake of self-preservation, I’d done a lot of reading since. Enough that the name Niobe was frighteningly familiar.
“You don’t mean the Niobe, do you?” I asked hopefully.
“Perhaps we should go inside,” Rose suggested. “I have a feeling we have a lot to talk about.”
Natural caution aside, I had a feeling she was right. And that I might prefer to be sitting down for this conversation.
When Rose and I entered the house, I went into hostess mode and put on a pot of coffee.
Much of what is recorded in mythology flat-out isn’t true. For example, my divine ancestor, Artemis, is known as a virgin goddess, but obviously since she had descendants, that wasn’t strictly true. But there’s usually at least a kernel of truth buried within the myth, and considering what I knew of Niobe’s story, that kernel of truth couldn’t be good.
According to mythology, Niobe was guilty of the heinous crime of hubris, overly proud of herself, her status, and her children. She thought herself better than the gods, and they didn’t like that. They sent Apollo and Artemis to teach Niobe a lesson—by killing every one of her seven sons and seven daughters before her eyes. The idea that the gods—including my ancestor—thought murdering fourteen innocent people was a fitting punishment for someone they thought was conceited shows just how not-human the gods really were.
When the coffee was ready and Rose and I were sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, I cupped my hands around my mug and looked her straight in the eye.
“So your sister is the Niobe that the Greek myths talk about.”
Rose nodded. “Of course the myths have just about everything wrong about her.”
“I figured as much.” But I also figured the kernel of truth was going to revolve around the ugliest part of the story, that it was probably Anderson who’d killed Niobe’s children rather than Apollo and Artemis. That would certainly give her reason to want him dead and be pretty pissed off to find out he was alive.
I didn’t want to consider the possibility that Anderson had done something so terrible. However, he’d hinted more than once about his dark past, and I didn’t think refusing to hear about it was the mature and responsible choice.
“Niobe is not a mortal woman,” Rose said. “She’s a goddess, and long, long ago she and Kane . . . I mean Anderson, were married. Together, they had seven sons and seven daughters. But Niobe fell in love with a mortal man, and Anderson caught the two of them together. Niobe begged for her lover’s life, and Anderson spared him. Then he went home and killed all of their children, claiming he couldn’t be sure they were his.”
I’m sure my face went white as a sheet, and my stomach plummeted to my toes. For a moment, I seriously feared I was about to be sick and had to swallow hard to keep everything down. I thought I’d been braced for the worst, but the idea that it was his own children that Anderson had killed never entered my mind. And to have done it out of pure spite to punish his wife . . .
I knew that when gods did terrible things, they were terrible beyond the imaginings of regular people, but nothing could have prepared me for this. Nothing.
Tears burned my eyes, and I found I had trouble breathing. There was no way Rose didn’t notice my distress, but she kept talking anyway.
“As you can imagine, Niobe was heartbroken when she found out what Kane had done, and she was determined to get her revenge. She wanted Kane dead. Gods and goddesses have been killing each other since the beginning of time, but death gods are exceedingly hard to kill. Niobe couldn’t just run him through with a sword, so she got together with me and the rest of our sisters, and together we came
up with a plan to cause his death.”
The floor felt strangely wobbly beneath my chair as it finally dawned on me that Rose was a goddess. My shock and distress were clearly messing with my mental faculties, because if her sister was a goddess, then of course Rose was one, too.
“Kane’s powers and his very life are all sustained by human death. If we could eliminate death among humans, then he would no longer be able to exist.”
Rose was looking at me expectantly, but there was no way I was up to drawing logical conclusions about anything. All I could think about was my friend, a man I looked up to and respected, cold-bloodedly murdering his own children just because his wife cheated on him. I had always been convinced he was one of the good guys, but I knew I could never, ever look at him the same way again. Suddenly his disappearance and his radio silence made a whole lot more sense.
Rose chewed her lip, suddenly looking anxious and uneasy. Her gaze dropped down to her mug of coffee, which had stopped steaming. She hadn’t exactly been relaxed before, but she was clearly a lot more tense now, her eyes glazed and a little haunted.
I forced myself to focus, to think about what she had just said. She and her sisters had been determined to kill Anderson—for which I could hardly blame them—but he couldn’t be killed as long as human beings kept dying.
“How do you eliminate mortal death?” Rose asked softly, still not looking at me.
My heart gave a hard, almost painful thud as I realized what Rose was implying. “You eliminate mortals,” I answered. For the millionth time, I remembered Anderson’s claim that every man, woman, and child would die if word of his existence reached the wrong ears. And now I knew why.
Which meant I was sitting across the table from a goddess who’d thought it was a good idea to kill everyone on the planet in an act of revenge.
“We figured once there weren’t any people around to die anymore, Kane would wither away and die himself, and then we’d repopulate the planet and start all over.”