Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 (2 page)

Agent Li of the FBI, my liaison with the US government, was in the chair next to Ariadne. He was watching me through half-lidded eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether he was skeptical or suspicious. Directly behind him was Scott Byerly—blond-haired, tall, muscular. I may have let my eyes linger on him just a second longer than necessary before moving on.

Finally, on the couch next to my mother sat a couple. One of them looked young, like a little blond cheerleader pulled off the local JV team. She was thin, pretty and perky. Kat Forrest. The guy next to her could have been her grandfather, but he wasn’t. He was likely much older than any grandfather she might have had.

“Janus,” Ariadne said, glancing back at him.

“Ariadne Fraser,” Janus said with a nod to her. “It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance after many years of hearing about your skill and capability.” Janus’s words were characterized by a thick European accent that I’d never been able to place.

“I’m touched - and obviously unsurprised - that Omega was spying on me,” Ariadne said with a low voice, filled with loathing. “Can you tell us if Sienna can use her powers the way Sovereign does?”

“Ah,” Janus said, and his lips pursed in a pained way. “That is an excellent question. I believe she can. Hades was very capable of using the powers of the meta souls he absorbed, though how he did it is a bit of mystery.”

“Why is it so mysterious?” Scott asked. Every eye in the place was on Janus.

Janus looked around, still worn and tired-looking, with dark bags under his eyes. “Because we—the powerful, that is to say—the gods and then, later, Omega—did everything we could to make certain such knowledge was lost. Incubi and succubi were wiped out in large numbers following the death of Hades. They found themselves unwelcome in communities of metas.” He glanced at me. “Perhaps you have felt some of this stigma yourself?”

My mother grunted. “Succubi are outcasts? You don’t say.”

“It was all very deliberate,” Janus said, sparing only a look at her. “The old gods were certain that they never killed all the children of Hades. There were so many, after all. But very few of them ever demonstrated the ability to use the powers of other metas, so it was determined that we would kill when necessary and merely shun the rest. It is a method that has worked for several thousand years with only one unfortunate exception in that time.” He sighed deeply, his shoulders slumping. “It would appear that exception, however, is perhaps the most damning evidence that they should have persisted in wiping out the rest, as he seems hell-bent on repaying the favor on the rest of metakind with an abundance of gusto.”

“I can’t imagine why he’d be upset,” Reed said, arms folded over his leather jacket, ponytail tucked back behind him. “You bastards at Omega and your predecessors were only responsible for the suppression and partial extermination of his people.”

“To be fair, I had nothing to do with it,” Janus said, almost indifferent. “Although I think we can see now that there may have been some merit to the concern that an incubus or succubus who could freely combine the powers of the metas they absorb would be extraordinarily dangerous.”

“Because you made him dangerous,” Reed said with disgust. “You people have always been about protecting your own power. You couldn’t have an army of incubi and succubi out there absorbing other metas because if you did, you might lose control. It might eat into your profit margin, might start breaking that tight leash you had around our kind. This is all about power, about depriving people of it for your own purposes—”

“Reed,” my mother said, more gently than I would have given her credit for. “He’s right. Think of what that power could do in the wrong hands. Imagine Charlie with the power of … I don’t know, that flame-guy Sienna killed. Or the rock-head you used to have around here—”

“Who Sienna also killed,” Li muttered under his breath. Everyone heard him, but no one said anything.

“So,” Ariadne said, and I felt every eye in the place turn to her. It was almost like I could see their thoughts, as one, ratcheting around like gears in a clock, the hands clicking around to point at me. “Can you?”

I stared at her, feeling completely dull of wit. Could I? It was a valid question. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

I watched Reed turn to my mother. “What about you? Can you use another meta’s power?”

My mother took a breath, and her eyes got wide as I saw her think about it. “I can’t recall a time when I’ve even felt a hint of it. Of course, I’ve only absorbed a couple metas, and only in dire straits. I’m honestly not even sure what type one of them is; the other is a Selene-type, which is pretty rare, as I understand it.”

“What does a … Selene-type do?” Ariadne asked with a frown.

My mother gave a light shrug. “Named for the Greek goddess of the moon. Near as I could tell, basically … she could glow in the dark.” Scott snickered. “She was still wicked strong, but I’m guessing her power was of a lot more use before the invention of the incandescent bulb. Could have been helpful when an army was marching off to war in the darkness. Now?” Her eyes moved around the room. “Not so much.”

“Assuming you could tap into those powers,” Ariadne said, thin fingers on her chin in contemplation, “you’d be able to fill the air with a faint glow and … possibly do something else.” She sighed. “That’s not exactly going to win the war against the seemingly invulnerable Sovereign.”

“The good news is,” Scott said, and I could feel the room turning back to me again, “we’ve got another succubus, and this one has absorbed a Djinn-type, a Fae-type, a Quetzalcoatl, an Odin-type and … whatever the hell Wolfe was.”

“Cerberus is the technical name, I believe,” my mother said. “I think there were only ever the three of them, though.”

“Their father was one as well, but he is dead,” Janus said with a light nod of acknowledgment toward my mother. “Hades had the three brothers castrated with a sword set aflame by Hephaestus before they entered his service because he did not wish to suffer a scenario in which another of their kind might be born from actions taken in the course of their … activities.”

Reed cleared his throat. “Which is the most polite way I’ve ever heard it put that Wolfe is probably history’s most prolific serial killer and rapist. Though, for my money, if Hades had had the meat cut off with the potatoes it might have spared the world an awful lot of misery.” He glanced at me.

I didn’t meet his gaze. I stared at the blank, white desk calendar that sat in front of me.

“Sienna?” Ariadne spoke. I did not look up. “Are you sure you can’t …?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, and I barely recognized my own voice. “Maybe. I think Wolfe might have used his powers through me, once.” I glanced at Kat, then Scott. “During the fight with Gavrikov and Henderschott on top of the IDS Tower. I think he … took me over and used his power to heal me. But I’ve never …” I looked to Ariadne, “… never been able to do it myself.”

There was another pause. A silence that told me that everyone else was hesitant to push further. I kept my eyes down.

Scott spoke. “Can I just say it?” He hesitated. “That the reason Sovereign was after Sienna—”

“I think we’re all up to speed on that now,” my mother interrupted.

“Maybe,” Scott said, “but—I mean, this is major. We’ve been running around this entire time wondering what motivates this guy, what weakness he might have since he hasn’t shown anything so far—”

“We get it,” my mother said again, her voice getting darker. I could see the clouds moving in across her forehead.

“Do you?” Scott said, turning to face her. “Do you really? Because I think it came as a little bit of a surprise to me, and it occurs to me you probably haven’t had to deal with this particular kind of scrutiny from another meta ever before—”

“You think this is the first time an incubus has come at a succubus for this purpose?” My mother’s voice carried more than just the seeds of umbrage. I recognized her tone as one that meant Scott was heading toward dangerous territory. More than a few times I’d heard her like this just before I had a metal door slammed in my face.

“Can we just say it?” Scott asked. “He—”

“Don’t,” my mother said, and her voice was as cold and unyielding as the door of the box had been in all the days of my youth.

“Someone should,” Reed said, nearly whispering. “Someone should say it out loud, just because … this is … I mean, this is huge. Heinous, but huge. Sovereign has been waiting—”

“Stop,” my mother hissed.

“—searching for centuries, or maybe even millennia—”

“SHUT UP!” My mother’s voice rose to a shout. “STOP—”

“He’s been looking for her,” Reed said, “going through candidates one by one for however long—”

“STOP TALKING! JUST STOP—”

I brought my hand down on my desk and slammed it hard into the wood. I didn’t crack it, but it made a thunderous noise as I slapped my palm against the surface. I looked at the faces around me, my little crew.

Less than an hour earlier, I’d stared into the face of the man who’d been called the most dangerous metahuman in the world.

Had stared into his face and seen…something…I hadn’t seen in a long while.

“I know why he’s after me,” I said, looking from Li, who was focused on his shoes, to Ariadne, who stared at me with dull eyes. “I know how he’s treated me compared to others he’s clashed with.” I glanced at Kat, holding tight to Janus on the couch. They were both watching, listening. “I saw in his eyes what he wanted from me.” I let my gaze drift to Reed, who wore something approaching a look of pity, then to my mother across the door frame. “I felt his intentions in the way he talked, the way he deferred to me.”

Finally my eyes came around to Scott, who had one hand in his tousled, sandy-blond hair. He looked back at me with pity, too, but something else. Something that had been purer in its expression only a few hours earlier, when he kissed me. Something that had been missing from my life for … months. I licked my lips, and it felt like I could taste his kiss still lingering there, as though he had just done it a moment earlier.

And I thought of Sovereign, of how I’d touched him, stood only inches away while trying to drain the life from him. Foolishly, it turned out.

“I know you didn’t intend for that to be meaningful,”
he’d said to me,
“but for me it kind of was.”

“I know what he wants from me,” I said, and I looked at Scott. He looked back, and I could see the dread forming in his eyes. I tried to decide whether it came from what I was saying, or whether it was a reflection of what he saw from me. Either way, it didn’t matter. Not really. “He wants me … to be his. His consort.” I said it clinically. Emotionless.

“His … companion.” I felt the bile in the back of my throat as the words rolled out of my mouth. “His … wife.” The acrid taste in my mouth grew stronger at this thought, and one final pronouncement came ringing out, making me positively nauseous from top to bottom. “His lover.”

The night air was quiet and fresh. I took a deep breath and exhaled, taking it into my lungs. My knees rested on the ground, my jeans pushing against the hard dirt floor of the woods.

I was in the forest that ringed the campus, my eyes closed as I knelt on the ground. The taste of that last cup of coffee was still with me. I hated the stuff, but I’d needed it in order to avoid sleep. My body had threatened to crash after the meeting had broken up in the wake of my grim pronouncement, and I wasn’t ready to sleep. Not yet.

I had things to do.

I took another breath and squinted my eyes closed. Crickets chirped around me in the warm summer air, and I let one of my hands touch the dirt, running my fingers over the forest floor. A dew-soaked blade of grass brushed my palm, and I felt the water run down to the tip of my index finger.

I looked deep inside, into a swirling darkness that was blacker than the night around me. I could withdraw into myself when necessary, into a little space that I’d set aside, and it was almost like retreating from the world. There was no smell, no taste but what I brought with me.

All that surrounded me was a circle of six metal monuments, each taller than me.

Faint howls echoed, voices raised in a cacophony that was muted by the walls of the metal boxes that imprisoned the souls I carried with me. I took a breath as I sat in the center of the circle and rose from the kneeling position I was in.

I turned and looked at each of the steel sarcophagi in turn. They were perfect recreations. Massive, dark-blue plates welded together at the corners, six feet tall, with a little window on the front of each. I gestured to the one behind me and it opened with a click, the lock sliding free. Hinges squealed as the door opened.

“I’m not sorry to get out of there,” Zack said, stepping free of his prison. His blond hair was neat, and he was wearing a suit. Just like I remembered him.

“You saw everything?” I asked. I thought I could feel shame burning my cheeks.

“Yeah,” he said, and his teeth gritted together in a grimace. “He’s been after you this whole time so you’d be his child bride, huh?”

“So it would seem.”

“Hmm.” Zack took another step toward me, scratching his nose. Why did he do that? I wondered. It wasn’t like he had an actual, physical nose that itched anymore. “You’re gonna need help from the inmates.”

I looked in a slow circle around the metal prisons I’d built to house my mental squatters. “You think they’ll jump at the chance to give me a hand?”

“Not likely,” Zack said with a shake of his head. “Not after you figured out how to toss us all in stir.”

I stared at him. He really was just as handsome as he’d ever been outside of my head. “
You
don’t seem that bitter about it.”

“I … was in love with you,” Zack said with a faint smile. “And I betrayed you when we first got started, if you recall, so my guilt might be weighing in your favor. It’s not like I enjoy being in there.” He gestured to the open cell behind him. “But I know how important it is for you to be able to think clearly, so I accept my punishment like … well, like the guilty party I am, I guess.”