Deadly Descendant (34 page)

I’m not an acrobat, and the only time I ever went skydiving, I did it in tandem, where I didn’t have to try to control anything. Still, I tried my best to orient myself and twist in the air until my feet were pointing vaguely downward, just in time to burst through the blackness into a lighter darkness. One that allowed me to see the rock floor rushing up to meet me.

My feet hit the floor with teeth-rattling force, and I rolled with the impact. My ankle twisted painfully, and I banged my hip so hard I was surprised I didn’t break it. When I came to a breathless stop, I was pleasantly surprised to find I
still
wasn’t dead. In fact, although I ached from head to toe and no doubt had a host of bruises to go with my twisted ankle, I was pretty sure I hadn’t even broken any bones.

For a moment, I could do nothing but lie there on my back where I’d come to rest, staring at the black nothingness from which I’d emerged. Then I reminded myself that Kerner had come through before me, and I groaningly forced myself into a sitting position.

I was in what looked like a tunnel of some sort, although the walls disappeared within about seven feet into the blackness above. If I hadn’t just fallen through that blackness, I would have said the tunnel was dark, but there was just enough ambient light for me to see the roughly hewn walls and the uneven floor. Don’t ask me where that ambient light was coming from, though, because though I looked in all directions, I could see no source.

I’d obviously clocked Kerner pretty good with my gun, because even in the dark, I could see the smear of blood on the floor where he’d landed. There was another, hand-shaped smear on one wall, and a few drops on the floor marked which way he had gone.

I didn’t have time to explore or absorb my surroundings. I had to catch up to Kerner before he disappeared back into the mortal world at some unknown location.

What I was going to do with him when I caught up to him was anyone’s guess, as I was now officially unarmed. I glanced around on the off chance the gun had come through the portal with Kerner, but I didn’t see it.

I started following the trail of blood, moving cautiously despite the sense of urgency that hammered at me. It was dark enough that I could only see a few yards ahead of me, and I had no idea what might be lurking in these tunnels.

The air was uncomfortably warm and smelled stale. I hoped there was enough oxygen. Then I wondered how the hell I was going to get out of here, but I shoved the thought aside. I would worry about that after I’d taken care of Kerner. And no, I still didn’t have a plan for how I was going to do that.

I patted down my pockets in search of a weapon, anything heavy enough to take Kerner down with a really good throw, but the best I could come up with was my keys. Even throwing them as hard as I could and with perfect aim, I doubted I could kill Kerner
with them or even knock him out. But it was all I had, and I wasn’t going to accomplish anything by sitting around in the dark twiddling my thumbs.

The tunnel broadened as I followed it, but there were no branches. I could have stayed on Kerner’s tail even without the helpful blood trail. But with every step I took, I became more and more convinced I’d done something unutterably stupid by diving into that portal.

I was unarmed and in unfamiliar territory. If Kerner caught sight of me, all he had to do was conjure a single jackal, and I had no way to defend myself. Who did I think I was to pit myself single-handedly against a supernatural serial killer? In the Underworld, no less, a place I wasn’t sure I could escape from if I didn’t have Kerner around to create one of his portals.

My mouth was dry, my skin clammy despite the heat, which seemed to be growing more oppressive by the second. Was I imagining things, or was there a hint of sulfur in the stale air? What
was
the Underworld, anyway? Was it Hell?

I blew out a steadying breath and continued forward until a soft growl emanated from the darkness in front of me. I came to an abrupt stop, hardly daring to breathe, as I strained my eyes, trying to see farther down the tunnel. Was there a patch of deeper darkness up ahead, darkness that might be the shadowed form of a jackal?

The beat of my heart seemed unnaturally loud
in the echoing silence of the tunnel. A bead of sweat rolled down the center of my back.

There was a scraping sound from up ahead, like claws scratching across stone, and the deeper pool of shadow moved. Enough that I could tell it was approximately jackal-shaped.

“You tried to trick me,” Kerner’s voice rasped from far enough down the tunnel that I couldn’t even see him as a shadow. “I thought we had an agreement.”

There was another growl, and I realized there was more than one jackal hiding just beyond the edge of the weak light. I was going to be torn apart, just like Phoebe had been. Unless I could find some way to talk Kerner out of it. But how do you reason with a madman?

“I thought so, too,” I said, and I was proud of myself for not letting my voice quaver. “Then you killed that poor maid just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“She worked for an Olympian,” Kerner argued with no hint of remorse. “She lived in his house. That makes her not a civilian.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“That’s too bad.”

I didn’t get the feeling our conversation was increasing my chances of survival. The problem was, I didn’t know what would. I could try throwing my keys, using Kerner’s voice to target him, but I didn’t know if that would work, and if it didn’t, I could be sure the jackals would come for me immediately.
Anything that bought me just a little more time was worth it.

I took a couple of cautious steps forward. There was no point in retreating—I couldn’t outrun jackals. Maybe if I could get closer to Kerner, I could figure out a way to stop him.

“Let’s talk about this,” I said in my best therapist voice. The jackals voiced their displeasure, and I stopped immediately.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Kerner snapped. And yet the jackals still hadn’t attacked me. There had to be a reason for that.

“Maybe we can make another deal.” My mind raced as I tried to think of what Kerner might want from me. And almost immediately, I came up with the answer.

Kerner wanted from me what
everyone
wanted from me.

“I could make it a lot easier for you to find all of the Olympians. And Konstantin, when the time comes.” He didn’t say anything, and I took that as a sign of encouragement. “I’m a descendant of Artemis.” I was pretty sure he already knew that, but it didn’t hurt to make certain. “I’m really good at hunting. It’s why I’ve been able to find you as many times as I have.”

There was more movement beyond the reach of the light, and I caught a hint of Kerner’s foul reek blending with the sulfur smell of the air. He was moving closer, though he was still careful to stay out of sight.

“Why should I believe you’d help me?” Kerner asked. “You came with your friends to kill me. Not even kill me—to bury me alive for all eternity.”

The jackals snarled and snapped, a couple of them stepping to the edge of the light so I could see the long, sharp fangs they bared. I swallowed hard.

“I’m descended from Artemis, not a death god,” I said, hoping my voice sounded level and reasonable. “I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing when I followed you here, but I’m pretty sure I can’t get out without your help. That’s a pretty powerful incentive for me to help you, if you’ll let me.”

He thought about that for a long moment. “It’s incentive for you to help me until you get out. Then you’ll just turn on me. Like you did this time.” The edge in his voice grew sharper, and I knew that I had to redirect him before his rage took over.

“I came after you this time because I considered that you’d already broken our agreement. I understand now that we were working off of different definitions of the word ‘civilian.’ It was a misunderstanding, not a breech of faith.”

I found my own argument a bit of a stretch, but Kerner’s silence suggested he was thinking about it. I decided my best strategy was to shut up and let him think.

“Follow me,” he finally said, “but don’t get any closer.”

The jackals retreated into the darkness, and I heard the echoing sound of Kerner’s footsteps. He hadn’t indicated one way or another what he thought
of my proposal, and I was not at all happy with the prospect of following him into more unknown territory. But what choice did I have?

I followed Kerner through the tunnel for what I’d guess was a couple hundred yards, timing my footsteps to his, getting growled at by jackals if he thought I was getting too close.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked once, but he didn’t answer.

I kept my eyes peeled the whole way, looking for something,
anything,
I could use for a weapon. But there was nothing any more lethal that the keys I held clenched in my fist. If I could get Kerner into good enough light, I could try aiming for his eye. The keys weren’t the most efficient throwing weapon in the world, but they could do an impressive amount of damage to something as vulnerable as an eyeball.

There was light coming from the tunnel up ahead. Dim gray light that wasn’t particularly inviting, but who was I to be picky? As we approached the light, Kerner’s form—and those of his jackals—was silhouetted. I could toss the keys and hit him in the back of the head—except I was too far away to get much oomph on the throw. I needed a more vulnerable target than the back of his head, and I needed to be closer so the keys would hit hard enough to do damage.

The jackals were quite determined that I wasn’t to get closer.

The tunnel eventually opened out into an enormous
cavern. And when I say enormous, I’m talking big enough to hold a small city. Which apparently it did. I came to a stop at the tunnel’s opening and stared at what I saw laid out in front of me.

For as far as I could see, white marble buildings rose from the gray stone floor of the cavern, some of them so tall they flirted with the blackness of the ceiling—a ceiling that was considerably higher in the cavern than it had been in the tunnels.

The city was laid out in an orderly grid pattern, with one main road about three times as broad as any other leading up to something that reminded me very much of the Acropolis—only not in ruins. I shivered, even though the air was still uncomfortably warm. Some of the buildings were small and simple, little more than rectangular boxes with windows, but the larger, more elaborate buildings were adorned with columns and carved with bas-relief. In the dimness of the light, the carvings were nothing more than formless collections of shadow.

Nothing moved in the silent white marble city. Nothing except Kerner and his jackals, that is. The buildings looked like homes and temples and courthouses, but in the silence and stillness, they seemed more like elaborate mausoleums.

Uncommonly courteous for a crazed serial killer, Kerner gave me a moment to stand there and look around in awe before he started forward again. He didn’t say anything to me, but I knew I was supposed to follow. The city gave me a serious case of the creeps, but I forced myself onward anyway.

Kerner led the way to the main street, turning down it and continuing on toward the big temple-like structure at its end. He was keeping me about thirty yards behind him, but the oppressive silence made his every footfall sound like a drumbeat in my ears. Or maybe that was just the beating of my heart. Empty windows stared down at me like malevolent eyes, and though the city felt dead, I kept expecting something to jump out at me from the shadows. It didn’t help when I got close enough to one of the more elaborate buildings to make out the details of the bas-relief. It looked like the kind of thing you would see carved into the top of your average Greek or Roman ruin, with rows of figures in action. Except the figures were all skeletons.

Maybe it was just my imagination, maybe it was the dim gray light that gave everything an ominous look, or maybe it was just because I knew this was the Underworld, but I had a powerful sense that I didn’t belong here, that the city wanted me gone. How an empty city could
want
anything is anybody’s guess.

Every step I took involved a battle with my fight-or-flight instinct, which was all in favor of flight. Licking my dry lips with my dry tongue, I took a deep breath of sulfurous air and kept alert for any hint of something that I could use as a weapon. The city looked so ancient that it should be in ruins, but there were no convenient hunks of rock sitting by the side of the road.

At the base of the temple was a pair of circular
stone pits in the floor, looking for all the world like empty swimming pools, though I doubted that’s what they were. They were about eight feet deep, their walls polished so smooth that the stone gleamed. As I neared those pits, Kerner had to go partway up the stairs leading to the temple’s entrance to keep his distance.

“Stop there!” he commanded when I was a couple of yards from the pits. His jackals stood at the base of the stairs and growled at me in case I didn’t get the hint.

Kerner turned around, and for the first time, I got a good look at him. Blood coated the left side of his face and neck and stained his already filthy coat. My gun had hit him right above the left eyebrow, and the damage it had done was more than a bloody scalp wound. I was surprised Kerner wasn’t staggering around with a concussion. Then again, with the insanity he’d inherited from Lyssa’s seed, his brain didn’t exactly function like normal in the first place.