Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) (10 page)

“I never liked Erin,” Emma said to him. “And not just because she was your lover before me. She was so bitter about you dumping her it made her quite unpleasant to be around. I’m sure it was the bitterness that made her choose not to live under your roof, where she would be off-limits to Olympians.”

Anderson stood frozen in shock and horror beside me. Frankly, I wasn’t doing much better myself, and I shared Emma’s opinion about Erin’s likability.

Emma drank in Anderson’s pain, then turned to me with another of her vicious smiles. “I have you to thank for making this so easy for me. I don’t know if I could possibly have hunted her down if she hadn’t come out of hiding to treat you. When she left, I followed her home so I knew where I could get to her if I ever had a need.”

I guess I was supposed to feel guilty about that, but there was no way I was going to accept it as my fault. Although perhaps I should have thought of it when Emma left us to join the Olympians. Maybe I should have anticipated the animosity between Anderson’s ex-girlfriend and his ex-wife and constructed a new cover identity for Erin.

“I told Cyrus where she was hiding,” Emma continued, “and he sent a squad to harvest her seed. Of all the mortal Descendants in our service, Cyrus thought Christina the most deserving of elevation, so he had her do the honors.”

By which Emma meant Christina had killed Erin, thereby stealing Erin’s seed for herself. She was no longer a Descendant, but had joined the ranks of the
Liberi
. With an act of deliberate murder.

I swallowed hard, horrified by what Emma had done—and by the reminder that Cyrus wasn’t really a nice guy, no matter what he liked to pretend. And then I sneaked a peek at Anderson and practically stopped breathing.

He was still firmly in his mortal disguise. There was no white light leaking from his eyes, nor was any glow coming from his hands, and yet he was still incandescent with fury. Enough so that Christina had taken a step backward, and even Emma looked just a touch less sure of herself. She glanced quickly down at his hand, and I knew she was wondering if she’d pushed him too far, if he was actually pissed off enough to use his Hand of Doom against her. Not that she knew what that hand could do if Anderson set his mind to it. Anderson took a step closer to Emma, his hand rising from his side. Her breathing quickened, but she held her ground.

“Do you want to go to war against all of the Olympians?” she asked. “Because if you hurt me, it will break your treaty with Cyrus, and he will destroy you and all of your people. Except for Nikki, of course.” She smiled her malicious smile again. “We’d have other uses for your new girlfriend.”

Even in the midst of the crisis, I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Emma was descended from Nyx, the goddess of night, but if there was a goddess of
jealousy—and I was sure there was, even if I couldn’t name her off the top of my head—I would swear Emma was at least her kissing cousin.

Anderson looked like he was about to choke on his rage. He was a god of vengeance, and it had to be killing him to restrain his need to strike out. I think everyone in the house was damn lucky he was rational enough to care about the consequences of unleashing his inner Fury. “I will not start a war,” he said in a low and dangerous voice. “You and your companion may leave this house unscathed. I was a fool not to see this coming and move Erin to a new location.”

It took everything I had not to burst out with something scathingly unwise. Even after all the crap Emma had pulled, Anderson was still willing to take some of the blame and put it on his own shoulders.

“But I warn you, Emma,” Anderson continued, letting more of his anger creep into his voice, “you had better not try me again. I am better at vengeance than you are, and you would not be the first ex-wife to learn that the hard way.”

Being the son of a Fury, Anderson most definitely was an expert in the vengeance business.
I
sure as hell wouldn’t want to mess with him. Emma was crazy, but only if she was
stupid
and crazy would she take another shot at Anderson after this warning. There was a sense of . . . portentousness in the air, like Anderson’s words might be more than just words. But maybe that was just my imagination running away with me because of what I knew about him.

Emma had lost her gloating smile, and I think that under her calm facade, she was actually afraid of Anderson for the first time. I
know
Christina was afraid, because her face was ghostly pale and her eyes too wide. I bet she’d have run screaming out the door if Anderson had said boo.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Emma said, and I think she actually believed it. “I haven’t broken the treaty, and it was your own fault Erin was vulnerable.”

“Get out. Now.”

I think Emma would have liked to have hung around and looked for more chances to gloat. This was probably the end of her revenge—Cyrus was right, and I couldn’t see her settling for burning down empty houses when she had this rabbit already in her hat—and she wanted to savor it. But she also knew when Anderson had been pushed as far as it was safe to push him, and that was the case now.

“Well, it was lovely seeing you both again,” Emma said, then turned her back on Anderson and walked with affected nonchalance toward the door. Christina, who truly had been there as nothing but a prop for Emma’s revenge, was in such a hurry to get out she practically bowled Emma over on the way.

The door closed behind them, and seconds later the car revved its engine and pulled away. Leaving me alone in the foyer with an enraged god of death and vengeance who might be on the verge of exploding.

I was afraid to
move. Afraid to even breathe. I felt like I was standing on a land mine, and one false step would blow me to smithereens. Should I try to say something sympathetic and comforting to Anderson? Should I apologize for my role in Emma’s revenge, even while refusing to accept any blame? Or should I try to slink away without bothering him?

Sometimes it really sucked knowing the truth about him. Even having witnessed his Hand of Doom in action, I doubt I’d have felt this level of dread if I thought he were merely another
Liberi
. But I
did
know the truth, and I wasn’t sure what would happen if Anderson reached his breaking point.

“Don’t stop breathing on my account,” he said. His voice sounded almost normal, but there was still something about him that
felt
dangerous.

“I’ve seen you lose it before,” I replied quietly, thinking about what had happened when we’d
trespassed on Alexis’s property to rescue Emma from the depths of his pond. Alexis had taunted Anderson with what he and Konstantin had done to Emma while she was in their custody, and Anderson had dispensed with his mortal disguise and turned into a humanoid pillar of fire. “I don’t want to see it again.”

“I didn’t ‘lose it,’ ” he said, sounding affronted.

“I saw you turn into—”

“I know what you saw.” He turned and looked me squarely in the face. “I was entirely in control of myself, Nikki. I had always planned to . . .” He looked around, as if just noticing we were standing in the foyer, where anyone could overhear. “What I did then was calculated. Trust me: you don’t want to be near me if I ever really do ‘lose it.’ ”

Oh, I trusted him about that all right. I might not know the details of what would happen, but it would be ugly, and there was likely to be collateral damage.

“I’m . . . sorry about Erin,” I said, because I couldn’t walk away without saying it.

“Me, too.” He was almost eerily calm now, his face showing no emotion, his voice flat. “I need to be alone right now.”

He turned from me without another word, climbing the stairs, no doubt heading for the east wing, which was his private domain within the mansion. My throat was tight, and my heart hurt for him. I’d had very little contact with Erin, and my memories of the time were a little hazy, but I remembered how she and Anderson had sniped at each other as
ex-lovers often do. Yet Anderson had loved her once, and to have Emma bring about her death was a devastating blow. I wished he had someone to turn to, someone to give him support and companionship to help him through.

But Anderson was a god in hiding, and that meant he had to be used to dealing with the hardships of life alone. My heart might ache for him, but there was nothing I could do.

After Emma left, I tried to forget all about her nasty
visit. I had enough crap on my plate that it wasn’t too hard.

Despite Cyrus’s unequivocal warning that I was to back off Konstantin, I had no intention of doing so, especially now that I’d crossed Emma off my suspects list. It was still possible Anderson was behind it, that he’d done it to light a fire under my ass, so to speak, but Konstantin was the more likely suspect. It might have been smarter for him to leave me alone, but being deposed from his position as “king” of the Olympians, he might be angry enough to act on emotion rather than logic.

I wasn’t breaking the treaty by merely driving around the city looking for Konstantin, but just in case Cyrus didn’t see it that way, I rented a sedan that would blend in with the city’s traffic. Last night had revealed the pitfalls of cruising around by myself and trying to follow my instincts. I needed to be able to let my conscious mind drift, which was hard to do—and potentially dangerous—while driving. I’d be much
better off if I could get someone else to do the driving for me.

There were only three people in the house I was willing to spend that many hours shut up in a car with. My first choice, naturally, was Jamaal, but he turned me down with some lame excuse about being too tired after having worked so much with Sita during the day. He didn’t
look
tired when I cornered him. More like sullen and . . . distant. He was drifting further away, and I might be the only one in the house who saw it happening.

My second choice was Maggie, but I couldn’t find her, and she didn’t answer her cell. My third and last choice was Logan, but he informed me he already had plans for the evening. I was tempted to ask him what he was up to—for the most part, Anderson’s
Liberi
didn’t seem to have much of a social life—but it was none of my business, and he hadn’t seemed like he wanted to share.

I tried Maggie one more time, but no dice. She was off the grid, and I was on my own.

That is, I was on my own if I insisted my driver be one of the
Liberi
. I hesitated to ask Steph to do anything that might be even remotely dangerous, but I couldn’t see any problem with her driving me around. We’d be in a rented vehicle no one recognized, and I would not make the mistake of loitering around if the moon hid behind the clouds at inconvenient times. No one was going to notice a nondescript car that drove by without stopping or slowing.

My decision to ask Steph was reaffirmed when I
got a call from the Glasses. They had decided to come home early after all, although they hadn’t been able to get a flight until Wednesday. That meant I could no longer put off trying to come up with a plausible explanation for why I was living in the mansion, and I’d need Steph’s help to corroborate it. Driving around with her tonight would give me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

It was getting uncomfortably late by the time I reached the decision to ask Steph to drive me, the sun already starting to set. Moonset wasn’t until almost eleven, but a quick check on the weather had shown me rain was heading our way. The skies were still clear, but who knew how long it would last? I stood by my window and watched the sky anxiously as I called Steph. There was no urgent reason why I should have to go out hunting tonight, specifically, except for my fear that Konstantin wasn’t going to wait very long before he struck again.

The phone call started off poorly, because Steph was planning to meet Blake for dinner. If the rain weren’t moving in, I’d have said we could go on our hunting expedition afterward, but it didn’t look like we were going to have a whole lot of time tonight. Steph reluctantly agreed she could reschedule her date for the next day.

The good news was that since she’d been planning to meet Blake, Steph was already on her way to the mansion when I called, and she arrived about fifteen minutes later. I waited for her on the front porch, my rental car parked along the mansion’s
circular drive. Steph pulled up behind the rental, and I took a deep breath before starting down the stairs toward her. Silly of me to feel nervous about seeing my own sister, but I was still swimming in guilt about the hell I’d brought on our family, and I knew she wasn’t happy with me for interrupting her planned evening with Blake.

Our eyes met over the hood of her car as Steph got out, and maybe I was reading things into her expression that weren’t there, but I thought I detected a hint of coolness. I wondered if asking her to do the driving tonight was a bad idea, but it was too late to change my mind now. I dug the keys to the rental out of my coat pocket and took a quick glance at the darkening sky. So far, there were only wispy clouds, and the moon was easily visible. It was a good night for a hunt.

“Thanks for helping me out,” I said to Steph as I handed her the keys.

She certainly didn’t need to dress up for a date with Blake, who would find her beautiful and alluring even in ratty sweats, but either they’d been planning to go somewhere fancy, or she’d dressed up because she felt like it. Her red wool swing coat covered most of the outfit, but her black pencil skirt and stiletto-heeled pumps gave her away. Not the kind of outfit she’d have worn if she’d known how she’d be spending the next few hours.

I guess my visual assessment of her outfit wasn’t terribly subtle, because Steph looked down at herself and chuckled. “I’ll be the best-dressed assistant private eye out there.”

“I’m sorry—” I started, but Steph cut me off.

“I have even more reason than you to want Konstantin caught,” Steph said, all hints of humor banished. “I’m not doing this as some kind of favor.”

I knew that was the truth, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to apologize. I refrained, because I knew Steph wouldn’t appreciate it. “Am I allowed to thank you at least?”