Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) (33 page)

“Because I would have had to watch you wring
your hands and listen to you whine about it.” Konstantin gave Anderson a nudge with his foot, as if to reassure himself that he was still dead. Then he turned to me. “My dear son has pretensions of moral superiority. He doesn’t mind making an omelet, as long as he doesn’t have to break the eggs himself.”

The anger that flared in Cyrus’s eyes made me hope he and Konstantin were going to get into a fight. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to take advantage of that fight, but I was sure I would find a way to do
something
useful while they weren’t looking.

Unfortunately, they weren’t stupid enough to give me the opportunity.

Cyrus stood up straight, wiping the remainder of my blood off his hand and onto his pants. “I don’t think it’s a character flaw that I don’t enjoy hurting people.”

Cyrus had his back to Konstantin and couldn’t see his father rolling his eyes. For once, Konstantin and I were in agreement about something. It might make Cyrus more comfortable if someone else did the dirty work for him, but the fact that he didn’t enjoy it and would rather not see it didn’t make him a better person. Nor did the fact that he seemed to feel at least a little bad about it.

“You’re worse than
he
is,” I said to Cyrus. “At least he’s not a hypocrite!”

Cyrus hung his head in what looked suspiciously like shame. The look on his face said he actually did feel more than a little bad about what he was doing,
and I suspected he was fully aware of the hypocrisy of his own position. The question was, was there some way I could take advantage of his vulnerabilities and turn him against his father? Because I didn’t care
what
Anderson had told me about how Konstantin couldn’t do anything to him. Konstantin had a plan, and a reason to believe it would work. Anderson might be a god, but that didn’t mean he was never wrong, and this would be the world’s worst time to prove it.

“Don’t do this,” I begged. “Blake still cares about you. I can hear it in his voice when he talks about you. You can work things out with him if you want to. But not if you kill all the other people he cares about. You do that, and he’ll hate you, and you’ll never have what you really want.”

My impassioned plea missed its mark.

“He’ll hate me at first,” Cyrus conceded. “But you know what they say about time healing all wounds. I’m willing to wait.” A tiny smile played along his lips. “And I think I’ll enjoy the challenge of trying to seduce him and win him back.”

Cyrus stepped over my outstretched legs, carefully avoiding the pool of Anderson’s blood as he put his foot on the first step. I realized that meant he wasn’t going to stick around and watch whatever Konstantin was planning to do to Anderson and me. I also realized that meant whatever unpleasantness was in store for us would likely start as soon as he left the basement.

I did
not
want him to leave the basement.

“Cyrus! Wait!”

I had no arguments left to make, no hope that Cyrus was going to change his mind. In fact, I had only two hopes left: that I could keep delaying things until Konstantin got careless and didn’t shoot fast enough to keep Anderson dead; or that Anderson was right and there truly was nothing Konstantin could do to him in the long run. Neither one felt like a spectacularly strong possibility to pin my hopes on, but Cyrus shattered hope number one when he ignored me and started up the stairs.

“I’m sorry, Nikki,” he said again, shaking his head.

I let out an incoherent cry of rage and frustration—and not a little fear—as the stairwell swallowed Cyrus. Moments later, I heard the door at the head of the stairs open and close.

And it was time to find out exactly what Konstantin had planned.

Konstantin stared at the
ceiling. Possibly, he was listening to Cyrus’s retreating footsteps, but all I could hear was the rushing of my blood in my ears. My rib still sent daggers of pain through my body with every breath, but I no longer felt blood trickling down the side of my face. All in all, I was in a lot better shape than Anderson was.

To make sure that remained the case, Konstantin shot Anderson yet again.

Anderson’s head was a bloody mess. He was never going to recover unless I could find a way to stop Konstantin from shooting him every couple of minutes. My stomach lurched unhappily. I told myself I had a concussion, because a tough chick like me had no business vomiting at the sight of blood. Never mind that I’d once tossed my cookies looking at crime-scene photos.

“Did you tell Cyrus Anderson’s big secret?” I
asked. Not that I actually cared. I was just looking for an opening, some way to distract Konstantin long enough to let Anderson heal.

For one unguarded moment, I saw shock on Konstantin’s face. He hadn’t realized I knew that Anderson was a god. He hid his emotions quickly, but I cursed myself for opening my big mouth. Konstantin didn’t want anyone to know Anderson was a god, because he didn’t want anyone getting the idea that he himself wasn’t the most powerful being in the universe. And I might have just signed my own death warrant by admitting what I knew.

The scary thing was, I would probably be way, way better off if Konstantin killed me than if he kept me alive.

“I didn’t see any reason to burden him with that knowledge,” Konstantin said, giving me a once-over that made my skin crawl. I couldn’t have looked that appealing with my face all bloody and my hair scraggling out of its braid. My flannel shirt was blandly shapeless and buttoned to the top for warmth. And yet Konstantin’s leer told me he liked the way I looked just fine.

Maybe he just liked how a woman looked in chains.

It was hard not to squirm when Konstantin looked at me like that. I knew he was a rapist, and I hoped like hell that Anderson was going to come back to life sooner rather than later, before Konstantin decided he was in the mood to play.

“So what’s your big plan, anyway?” I asked as
nonchalantly as I could. “Are you going to stand there and shoot Anderson in the head every couple of minutes for the rest of eternity? Because personally, I think that would get old after a while.”

I was trying to get under Konstantin’s skin, but his smile said he was finding me more entertaining than annoying. On another man, the smile would have looked genuine and disarming. Konstantin wasn’t traditionally handsome, but he knew how to make the most of what he had. His neat black beard disguised what I suspected was a weak chin, and I’d never seen him wearing anything other than designer suits. Today was no exception, though the suit was well on its way toward being ruined. Anderson’s blood spotted his pants legs and the bottom of his jacket.

“Actually, I’ve quite enjoyed it,” Konstantin said, his smile morphing into a phony frown. “Though I’d enjoy it more if he were alive to feel it.”

I shuddered. Cyrus might not enjoy hurting people, but Konstantin sure did. I wished Anderson had listened to me, though truthfully, I’m not sure what kind of plan we could have made to avoid this. We couldn’t have gotten to Konstantin without descending the stairs into the basement, and once we were in the stairway, we were sitting ducks.

Konstantin’s smile returned, and there was now an unpleasant gleam in his eyes to go with it. “But no matter. I’m sure I can find other ways to entertain myself once I’ve removed this thorn from my side.”

He tucked the gun into the waist of his pants. I hoped it would go off and blow his balls to
smithereens. The damage would heal, but I suspected the pain would distract him for a good long while.

Unfortunately, my hopes were in vain. Konstantin bent down and grabbed Anderson’s arm, dragging him closer to the hole in the floor. The man might have looked like a fop in a fancy suit, but he was clearly carrying some muscle underneath, because dragging Anderson’s lifeless body didn’t even make him break a sweat.

My mouth went dry, and my heart rate jumped to red alert. I was aware of Konstantin watching me, savoring my reaction. I tried my best to keep my face neutral, but I don’t think I succeeded. I bit my lip when Anderson’s head slid over the edge of the hole, flopping limply into the darkness.

Konstantin kept dragging on Anderson’s arm, until Anderson’s shoulders crossed the edge and his upper body tilted precariously.

One more tug, and Konstantin let go of Anderson’s arm, tossing it into the mouth of the hole. The weight of his arm was enough to tip the scales, and Anderson started slipping into the hole, headfirst. I wanted to howl in rage, but I somehow managed to stifle the sound. Still, a little whimper worked its way out of my mouth as Anderson fell. When he hit the bottom of the hole, there was a metallic clang. I didn’t know what it meant.

“Anderson can walk through walls,” I said, my voice shaking. “He can get out of there.”

If nothing else, he’d be able to brace himself against the sides of the hole and inch his way up. But
I knew there was more to Konstantin’s plan than just dumping Anderson in a hole.

Konstantin leaned over the hole and fired three quick shots. It would be nice if that were the last of his bullets, but I didn’t think he was careless enough to let that happen.

“It’s very hard to keep death-god descendants contained,” Konstantin agreed. “I found that out the hard way, as you know. I imagine it’s even harder with an actual god.” He grabbed one of the sections of girder stacked beside the hole, dropping it down. “I don’t know if he has some kind of animal he can conjure to dig him out if I bury him.” This time, he used both hands and threw two sections down at once. “But I’m not about to take chances.”

“What are you going to do?” I didn’t know how tossing pieces of steel down into the hole was going to help keep Anderson trapped, but I had a sick feeling I would soon find out.

“After my mistake with Justin, I’ve decided a little overkill is in order.” He got impatient with throwing the steel down one piece at a time, positioning himself behind a stack of pieces and giving them a mighty shove.

I winced, even knowing that Anderson was currently dead down there and couldn’t feel all those heavy pieces of metal raining down upon his vulnerable flesh.

Konstantin looked over the edge of the hole and nodded in satisfaction. “That ought to be enough,” he said, more to himself than to me.

He held out both his hands toward the hole. “I reinforced the hole with steel pipe, and put a good size layer of girders on the bottom.”

A blast of heat sucked all the moisture from my eyes and mouth. I couldn’t see very well from where I was sitting, but my skin felt seared and raw from the heat, and the edges of the hole began to glow, first red, then white.

The steel was melting.

I screamed out a protest as the sides of the hole began to melt and run, flowing downward into the hole. I thought of all those pieces of metal Konstantin had tossed down there, melting around Anderson’s body, burning the flesh from his bones.

Konstantin smiled and made a big show of dusting off his hands. “Even a god will take some time to recover from the damage all that molten metal will do. And when he does, the steel will have cooled around him. He’ll be trapped like a bug in amber.”

I was crying again, dammit. I tried to hold on to the hope that Anderson was as indestructible as he’d thought he was. “B-but, he can walk through walls. He can get out of the metal.”

Konstantin took one last, satisfied glance at the hole, then sauntered toward me. I wanted to scoot away from him, but there was nowhere I could go. The best I could do was draw my bound legs up toward my chest as he squatted beside me with that smug, sadistic smile.

“Let me explain some basic rules of physics to you,” he said. “A human body cannot pass through
a solid object. Death-god descendants pass through walls by making themselves incorporeal, but they can’t actually move themselves when they’re incorporeal. Imagine them like astronauts, floating through the vacuum of space. If you give them a push, then the momentum will keep them going indefinitely. But if you could drop them into the vacuum in complete stillness, then they’d have no momentum to move them, and nothing to push against to give them momentum. A death-god descendant takes a step toward whatever barrier is in his way, giving himself momentum. Only then can he go incorporeal and keep moving.

“Anderson will awaken completely immobilized by his metal casing. He can go incorporeal all he wants, but with no momentum, all he can do is flail around.” Konstantin frowned dramatically. “It might have been enough just to immobilize him by burial. After all, Kerner could go incorporeal, but he couldn’t get out of his grave until his jackals dug him out. But, as I said, overkill seems like a good idea.”

Konstantin sat back on his heels with a happy sigh as I tried to absorb the horror of what he’d just told me. I really wanted to find a flaw in his theory, or at least to believe he was lying. But no, he was way too happy and self-satisfied. He was sure Anderson wasn’t getting out of that hole. Ever. And I was beginning to fear he might be right.

I was deathly afraid
of whatever Konstantin was going to do next. Even if there was some miraculous way Anderson could escape when encased in solid metal, I was sure it would take a while. Hell, it would probably take a while before he could possibly come back to life. I had no idea how long it would take that molten metal to cool, but I was sure its temperature would be lethal for quite some time.

Meanwhile, I was chained hand and foot and trapped with a man who thought rape and torture were fun. The only other living person who knew where I was was Cyrus, and he’d made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of saving me.

In short, it was looking spectacularly bad for the home team, and I was fighting the very reasonable urge to panic. I tried to wriggle my hands out of the cuffs, willing to take off as many layers of skin as necessary to escape them, but I didn’t think I was
getting out of them without removing a few pesky bones from my hand.

Konstantin licked his lips, and I couldn’t tell if it was an unconscious gesture, or if he was trying to feed my panic. He smiled over his shoulder at the hole in the floor, the contents of which were still emitting a faint red glow.