Deadly Descendant (20 page)

“If Lyssa’s seed showed evidence of being infected, then we needed it neutralized. We were afraid an insane
Liberi
would be an exposure risk. Obviously, we couldn’t destroy the seed. So we figured the only way to neutralize it was to keep it contained.”

“Oh, spit it out, already!” Blake snapped. “You buried him, didn’t you?”

Blake’s moment of impatience was almost enough to get us all in trouble, because Cyrus and the goon blinked and snapped out of the daze he’d had them in. The goon tried reaching behind him, where he probably had another weapon concealed, and Cyrus turned to glare at Blake, but that was all they had time to do before Blake put them under again. Blake gave Cyrus a shrug and a half smile that looked almost apologetic.

Anderson relieved the goon of a second gun, then speared Phoebe with a cold glare. “Is that what you did, Phoebe? You buried the man alive, knowing he’d be trapped in there, unable to die, forever?”

It’s what Konstantin had said he’d done to Emma, although he’d actually chained her in the bottom of a pond instead. I shuddered and tried very, very hard
not to think about what such a fate would be like.

“There was no other way to contain him!” Phoebe snapped.

“How did you manage to bury him without his jackals tearing you to shreds?” I asked.

“He hadn’t figured out how to use his death magic yet. It takes time for a new
Liberi
to learn what he can do. Surely you know that yourself.”

That I did. I suspected it might be years, even decades, before I fully understood my powers and was able to use them to the fullest extent.

“So if you buried him,” Anderson interrupted before I could ask another question, “then how did he get out?”

Phoebe shifted her weight from foot to foot like a guilty child. “He figured out how to create the jackals while he was buried. We never thought he’d be … conscious enough to do anything.”

I shuddered again as I put myself in poor Justin Kerner’s shoes. He must have died of suffocation over and over and over, each time being brought back to life by his seed of immortality, only to die again within minutes. That would be horror enough to drive a sane person over the edge, but for someone who was already crazy …

“The jackals eventually dug him out,” Phoebe continued. “If he’d just run, we might not have known he’d escaped for years, if ever. But he holds Konstantin personally responsible for everything, and he wants revenge more than he wants safety.”

Anderson nodded. “Your vision warned you that
Kerner would get to Konstantin someday and that the jackals’ bites would be fatal even to
Liberi
.”

“Not just Konstantin,” Phoebe said. “When he’s finished taunting us with his mortal kills, he’ll start coming after the rest of us. He’ll come for Konstantin eventually, but not until he’s decimated the Olympians first.” Her brow furrowed suddenly. “How did you know the bites were fatal? Did you lose someone?”

“No,” Anderson said. “We’re all safe and accounted for, no thanks to you and the bounty of information you shared.”

I hoped my poker face was working, because Anderson’s failure to mention just what he’d had to do to cure me bugged the hell out of me. The only reason not to tell Phoebe what had happened to me was that he didn’t want the Olympians to know how to save themselves if they got bitten. I wasn’t a big fan of the Olympians, but I wasn’t exactly into the “kill them all and let God sort them out” philosophy. Still, I managed to bite my tongue. I might argue Anderson’s decision, but not in front of the enemy.

I got the distinct impression Phoebe wasn’t satisfied with his answer, but she wasn’t in any position to press him, and she knew it.

“What it all comes down to,” Anderson continued, “is that you came here spewing lies simply because you wanted me and my people to protect Konstantin.” The curl of his lip said just how appealing he found that prospect. “There is no higher purpose to be served, no risk that Kerner’s actions might expose the
Liberi
to the government.”

Phoebe swallowed hard. “Maybe not. But are you willing to let an untold number of innocent victims die horrible deaths just so you can get back at Konstantin? Because if you are, you’ll have to give up any claim to the moral high ground.”

“Oh, I intend to stop Justin Kerner, mark my words. But I’m
not
doing it for Konstantin’s benefit, and I’m
not
handing Kerner over to you when I’ve got him. Obviously, the Olympians are incapable of keeping him contained.”

Phoebe’s jaw dropped open, like she couldn’t believe anyone would say anything so outrageous about such pinnacles of perfection as herself and her comrades. “We—”

“Will stay out of my way. I will clean up your mess because it’s for the greater good, but you have no say in the how of it. And if I find out you’re withholding any more information, I will hold
you
personally responsible. Understand?”

Mingled fear and anger played across Phoebe’s face. “You don’t dare hurt me,” she said. “The truce …”

Anderson’s smile was fierce and chilling. “Right now, Konstantin needs me. Do you think he’d risk having me withdraw my help for
your
sake? He can always find another pretty trophy to warm his bed. He can’t find another descendant of Artemis to do his hunting for him.”

Phoebe’s gaze flicked to me briefly, and I knew her general dislike of me because of my allegiance to Anderson had now become something much more personal. Konstantin would choose me over her—not
for any sexual reason but for self-preservation—and she would never forgive me for it.

Great. I’d managed to make yet another enemy without even having to say anything.
Thanks a lot, Anderson,
I thought, grinding my teeth to keep from saying it out loud.

“Now that we’ve got that all straightened out,” Anderson said, “is there anything else you’d like to tell us about Justin Kerner and what he can do?”

Phoebe hesitated, but in the end, she knew she was beat. “He draws power from the dead. No doubt, you’ve noticed that his kills take place near cemeteries. If you can get him far enough away from such large concentrations of dead, the jackals might not be so virulent, or he might not be able to create so many. It took him years to dig his way free, and we presume it’s because he didn’t have access to the dead where we were keeping him.”

I could think of another reason that was perfectly plausible: that he needed concentration to control the jackals, and it was hard to concentrate when you were repeatedly suffocating to death.

“That’s all I can tell you,” Phoebe finished. “When he took on Lyssa’s seed, he fell to the madness within weeks, so we didn’t exactly have time to test him out and see what he could do before we had to subdue him.”

Anderson stared at her intently for a few seconds, trying to intimidate her into talking more. When she didn’t, he shrugged. He emptied out the guns he’d taken from the goon, then put them back into their concealed holsters.

“You promise your ape will be on his best behavior when Blake releases him?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, though it looked like the promise physically hurt her.

“And I’m sure Cyrus won’t do anything rash,” Anderson added, but he looked to
Blake
for confirmation, not to Phoebe. Blake nodded, and his sexual magic evaporated. Phoebe’s goon gasped in a deep breath and took several panicked steps backward, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to get away from Cyrus. He regained some of his composure almost immediately, stopping his retreat, but his face was pale and sweaty, and he couldn’t seem to look anyone in the eye.

Cyrus’s reaction was less dramatic. He blinked a couple of times, then fixed Blake with a heated look. “I’ll pay you back for that someday,” he said. His facial expression screamed of anger, but there was a completely different undercurrent in his voice. Unless I completely missed my guess, that threat had been as erotic as it had been angry, and I was almost certain that Blake and Cyrus had some kind of history with each other.

“I’m sure you will,” was Blake’s understated reply.

Phoebe gave Anderson one last withering look before turning on her heel and striding for the door. This time, I got out of her way.

“I’ll show you out,” Blake said. His offer had nothing to do with courtesy—he was just making sure the Olympians actually left. And didn’t do any mischief on their way out.

I should have followed them, should have given
myself time to ponder and digest everything I’d learned from this conversation before saying word one to Anderson.

Even as I told myself that, I found myself closing the door and turning to face him. When I met his eyes, I found not Anderson the laid-back man who was friendly and easy to talk to but Anderson the god in disguise. He was still in his human form, showing no overt hint of the dangerous and powerful being within, but there was a weightiness to his gaze that told me he had no interest in hearing my opinion.

Getting the hell out of the room was probably a good idea when he had that look on his face. But I’ve never been all that good with authority—as most of my foster parents would be happy to tell you—and I refused to be intimidated.

All right, that’s a lie. I
was
intimidated. But if Anderson wanted a good little toady who never argued his decisions, then he might as well kick me out, because that wasn’t me.

“Tell me you’re not seriously considering burying Kerner alive for all of eternity,” I said.

I hadn’t thought his expression could get any more forbidding, but I’d been wrong. “Burying him would be pointless,” he said in a monotone that still managed to convey plenty of authority. “The jackals would just dig him out again.” He frowned, the expression making him look almost human again for a moment. “Perhaps we’ll need to encase him in concrete. Or steel. Then we can bury him somewhere far away from the dead so he’ll have as little power as possible.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re missing the point on purpose.”

“He has to be contained.” The humanity was gone again. I wondered if he was doing that to make himself more forbidding, or if he just had to cut himself off from his humanity in order to be such an ass.

“No, he has to be killed,” I said. “And you can do it.” As painful as death at Anderson’s hands would be, it had to be the lesser evil compared with being buried alive for eternity.

“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. My ability and my origins are top secret. A secret that only you and Konstantin have survived learning. When I find a way to get to Konstantin without witnesses, I will kill him. If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I will have to kill you, too.”

I was shocked by how much his words hurt. It wasn’t anything I didn’t know, wasn’t anything he hadn’t told me before. But in the past, it hadn’t been so … blunt. Or so cold. Anderson was my friend, at least sort of, and though I’d been under no illusions that I was as dear to him as the rest of his people, who’d been with him for decades, I’d thought he would be at least a little reluctant to kill me.

Apparently, I’d been wrong, and to my shame, my eyes prickled with tears, and my chest felt heavy with loss. Loss I had no right to feel, because I was still an outsider, would
always
be an outsider, and I knew it. You can’t lose something you don’t have in the first place.

The ice in Anderson’s expression thawed, and he
reached out to put his hands on my shoulders. I took an instinctive step back, but he followed and trapped me against the door. His hands squeezed the tight muscles in my shoulders, and I knew the gesture was meant to be comforting. But his last words were still echoing through my head, and it was an effort for me to hold still and not try to jerk out of his grasp.

“It’s nothing personal, Nikki,” he said gently. “I have good reasons for keeping this secret so … aggressively. I’m sorry to have to resort to threats, but I don’t know how else to be sure you’ll keep quiet.”

My throat was tight, but I managed to get words out anyway. “You could try telling me the good reasons. Because from where I’m sitting, it all looks very selfish.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to trust me.” His eyes met mine, and I found myself trapped by his gaze. Usually, those eyes were a perfectly ordinary shade of brown, but right now, there was a hint of white light coming from the centers of his pupils. “I’ve taken a huge risk in letting you live. Konstantin I know well and understand. I know he will not reveal my secret because he fears that if others know, it will diminish his power. You I can’t predict as comfortably. I can’t know that you won’t someday get angry and blurt something out.” He raised his hand to my cheek, stroking the backs of his fingers over my skin as he continued to meet my gaze with those unsettling, inhuman eyes.

“You’re alive because I care about you,” he continued. “I’m taking this massive risk because I like you
too much to hurt you.” The light in his eyes grew a little brighter. “But I need you highly motivated to keep my secret, and so my threat will always be there, and I may at times feel it necessary to remind you. It doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“Right,” I responded in a hoarse whisper.

I knew he was telling the truth as he saw it. It even made a sort of sense, in a coldly logical way. Anderson was, after all, a god. He’d never been human, and to expect him to have human values might not be very fair of me. That didn’t stop me from expecting it, however.