Dark Descendant

FOUR

My throat hurt every time I swallowed, but other than that, I didn’t feel as bad as I expected after nearly being choked to death. Especially considering that beforehand I’d been seriously injured in a car accident, then been kicked in the face, then nearly perished from exposure.

Do you still think you need an ambulance? Anderson’s voice echoed in my head.

Rubbing my bruised throat, I sat down on the edge of the cot and tried to absorb everything I’d seen and heard tonight.

Emmitt, appearing in front of my car from out of nowhere.

Logan, lifting Jamaal off his feet and flinging him all the way across the road and into the trees beyond.

My wound sealing itself with invisible stitches.

Anderson’s fire-red handprint on Jamaal’s shoulder.

I’ve never been much into all that woo-woo stuff, but either I was having the longest, weirdest dream in the history of mankind, or something decidedly woowoo was going on.

I hoped for the former, but suspected the latter.

I looked down at the gash in my side and was only dully surprised to see the entire line scabbed over. I imagined the Twilight Zone music playing in the background, then shook off the thought before I made myself hysterical.

I decided to make a cursory examination of my cell. I tried the door, of course, but the sound of those locks clicking shut had been no illusion. I tried the sink and discovered that yes, blessedly, I could get hot water. I picked up my bloody, ruined sweater, rinsed out as much of the blood as possible, then used the sleeve like a washcloth to clean myself up.

I was painfully aware that Anderson was planning to come back and question me later. The kid gloves were going to come off, but I couldn’t figure out what he wanted to hear. If I thought about how our next interview was going to go, all I would do was send myself into a panic. Instead I stripped the sheets off the cot and rinsed them in the sink. Then I flipped the mattress over and was relieved to find I hadn’t soaked it through. With nothing left to do, I reluctantly lay down, terrified of being alone with my thoughts.

I hadn’t been lying down for more than five minutes when I heard footsteps out in the hall again, and I was struck with a far more virulent terror. I shot to my feet, heart pounding and adrenaline flooding my system as I waited in dread for Anderson to finally carry out his threat.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t Anderson after all.

The word that had first come to my mind when Emmitt had shown me a picture of Maggie Burnham was statuesque. I guessed her height at about five-eleven, and she was built like an athlete. She had absolutely gorgeous curly auburn hair, and a pretty, heart-shaped face.

She wasn’t looking her best tonight, though. Not with those red-rimmed eyes and the sorrowful droop of her shoulders. I had no clue what her real relationship with Emmitt had been, but it was clear she was grieving.

“Hi,” she said, smiling weakly. “I’m Maggie.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said automatically, though I mentally grimaced at the empty pleasantry. “I’m Nikki Glass.”

She nodded. “I thought maybe you could use this.” She held out a plush terrycloth robe, and I was so happy I could have hugged her. Considering that she was mourning Emmitt and that I’d been the instrument of his death, I wouldn’t have been surprised if her first move had been to slap me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the robe from her outstretched hand. My voice came out a little scratchy. I told myself that it was an aftereffect of Jamaal’s attempt to choke me to death, not a sign that I was about to burst into tears at the first hint of kindness. Cynically, I couldn’t help wondering if she’d taken up the mantle of “good cop” now that Anderson had dispensed with it.

Maggie considerately turned her back as I removed my undies and slipped into the robe. I wouldn’t have died of embarrassment if she hadn’t, but under the circumstances, I was feeling vulnerable enough to appreciate the gesture. I had to take a deep breath to keep control of my emotions before I told her it was okay to turn around.

She took in the stripped bed and the wet, still-stained sheets that I’d draped over the sink to dry, and frowned.

“I see the boys are in major hard-ass mode,” she commented in obvious disapproval. As far as I’d been able to determine, she was the only woman living here.

I crossed my arms over my chest, pulling the warm, soft robe close around me. “Yeah, well, they seem to think I killed Emmitt on purpose.” The last word came out in something almost like a sob as the full weight of what had happened hit me.

I’d killed someone.

No, of course I hadn’t meant to. And from where I was standing, it sure looked like he’d deliberately put himself in harm’s way. But still … He was dead, and it was my fault.

To my surprise, Maggie stepped forward and gave my shoulder a warm squeeze. “It’s all right,” she said, though her own eyes shone with unshed tears. “Anderson told us your story. The boys are all huffing and puffing with conspiracy theories, but I believe you.”

I had to swallow hard a couple of times before I found my voice. “You do? Why?”

She smiled sadly and gestured at the cot. “Why don’t we sit down? This might take a few minutes.”

We both sat, backs to the wall. I gathered the robe around my legs and wrapped my arms around my knees.

“You told Anderson that Emmitt hired you to investigate me,” Maggie said.

I shook my head. “Not exactly. He originally hired me to find you, then he asked me to try to learn more about … um …” I’d kind of glossed over the whole cult thing when I’d explained to Anderson, and I didn’t want to blurt out anything tactless now, either.

Maggie grinned at me, a surprisingly genuine expression, considering her obvious sorrow. “I can only guess what he might have told you. He claimed that I’d fallen in with a bunch of loonies. Is that the gist of it?”

I couldn’t help returning her grin. “Yeah, basically.”

“And then tonight …?”

“Tonight he said you’d called him and were ready to leave. I was supposed to meet him here as an extra witness.” I frowned as I realized how flimsy Emmitt’s story had been. There was a reason my gut had been telling me to say no, but my desire to escape from my bad date had overridden my common sense. It would have been so much better if I’d told Jim I had to meet a client and then driven straight home. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“Then he surprised you on a dark, icy road when you had no time to stop or swerve.”

I nodded, but couldn’t find the voice to speak.

“The goddamn selfish bastard,” Maggie said thickly, shaking her head as a single tear snaked down her cheek. She reached up and dashed it away angrily.

“Do you … Do you know why he did it?” I asked softly, wondering if it was any of my business.

She let out a heavy sigh. “He was getting old. Old and tired. I knew that, but he was too much of a tough guy to admit how bad it was.”

“Old?” I cried, totally confused. “The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, tops.” Truthfully, I thought he was closer to twenty-two.

Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “He was more than twenty-five. Trust me.”

I gaped. “Even if I’m off by a bit, there’s no way in hell he qualified as ‘old.’”

“What if you’re off by an order of magnitude?”

“I don’t believe in woo-woo,” I said, without great conviction.

Another wry smile. “You might want to start. I’m afraid right now you’re neck-deep in woo-woo and still sinking.”

I grimaced. Yeah, that was kind of what I was afraid of. “Where’s a life vest when you need it?” I joked feebly.

Maggie reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a slim compact. “There’s something I think you should see,” she said, thumbing the compact open and then handing it to me.

Hesitantly, I took the compact from her hand. The makeup inside looked ordinary enough, so I guessed that the something I needed to see would be in the mirror. Holding my breath, I opened the compact all the way and looked at my reflection.

I looked awful. There was a big lump on my temple, and my right eye was thoroughly blackened. The entire left side of my face was one big bruise from where Jamaal had kicked me—though the bruise looked like it was about three days old. But clearly, that wasn’t what Maggie had wanted me to see.

No, what Maggie wanted me to see was the iridescent mark on my forehead. It vaguely resembled a half moon with an arrow through its middle. My mouth dropped open and my eyes widened as I reached up to touch the mark that quite obviously was not a tattoo.

“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.

“It’s a glyph,” Maggie explained, holding out her hand so I could see the mark on the back of it. Hers looked like stylized circular lightning bolt. “It represents whose line you’re descended from.”

“Line?” My voice sounded hollow, and I stared intently at the mirror. The glyph wouldn’t go away, no matter how many times I blinked or how I rubbed it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie run a finger over the glyph on her hand. “Mine represents Zeus,” she said. “I’ve never seen one like yours before, but Anderson says it’s Artemis. I didn’t think she had any descendants—she was supposed to be a virgin goddess—but I’ll take his word for it.”

“Artemis.” I sounded like a mentally challenged myna bird, but none of this was quite sinking in. My rational mind threw in the towel, deciding to go hide somewhere safe until the world returned to order.

“Emmitt was from Hades’ line. Jamaal’s a descendant of Kali, and he and Emmitt bonded like brothers because both of them possessed death magic. Emmitt was mentoring him, teaching him control, but Jamaal still had a long way to go. Without Emmitt to balance him, it’s hard to know if he’ll be able to hold it together.

“You also met Logan, right?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “He’s Tyr.” She cocked her head at me. “Are you familiar with Tyr?”

Totally numb—and not comprehending a word of what I was hearing—I shook my head.

“He was an old Germanic war god. Descendants of war gods tend to be kind of cranky, but Logan is one of the most easygoing people I know. Oh, and I almost forgot Blake.” She made a face, making it clear Blake was not her favorite person. “He’s a descendant of Eros. Despite that cutesy Cupid tattoo he’s got, there’s nothing even remotely cherubic about him. He’s easily as deadly as Jamaal. He’s just not as in-your-face about it.”

I remembered the way Blake had looked at me while he was playing bad cop. That was plenty in-your-face for me.

Maggie gave my shoulder another sympathetic squeeze. “I know this has got to be overwhelming, and you probably don’t believe half of what I’ve said. I’ll give you the quick highlights and then give you some time to try to absorb it all.

“Anderson and the rest of us are what is known as Liberi Deorum, which means ‘children of the gods’ in Latin. A long time ago, when the ancient gods were still around, they had children with mortals. Before the gods left Earth, they gave each of their children a seed from the Tree of Life. This seed made them immortal, and the Liberi thought they were gods themselves as a result. The only limitation they had—as far as they knew—was that they couldn’t make their own children immortal, because the gods took the Tree of Life with them when they left. What the first Liberi didn’t know until too late was that anyone with even a drop of divine blood—in other words, all their children and descendants—could steal their immortality by killing them.”

Wow. That was one hell of a detailed delusion. I had to admit, there was something decidedly weird going on. But come on, children of the gods? Really?

“The glyph on your hand marks you as a Descendant of Artemis,” Maggie continued. “When you killed Emmitt, you also stole his immortality. Not on purpose, I know,” she hastened to add.

“So I’m immortal now?” I asked, trying to hide my skepticism the best I could—which wasn’t well at all.

“I know it sounds crazy. But yes, you are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The guys—especially Jamaal—think you already knew all this and staged the accident to steal Emmitt’s immortality deliberately.”

Perfectly logical—if you bought into the craziness in the first place, which I wasn’t about to do. “But you think Emmitt committed suicide, because he knew I was a Descendant of Artemis and was actually capable of killing him?” I was well aware of my tone of voice, that I was talking to her like I was humoring a dangerous psycho, but I couldn’t help it.

Maggie nodded. “I don’t know how he found you, but he must have seen the glyph on your face and decided to use you.”

“But the glyph only showed up a little while ago!” Had I caught an inconsistency in her story?

“It’s been there all along. It’s just that only Liberi can see it.”

Some of this was beginning to make a weird kind of sense, and I began to worry about my own sanity. Maybe the blows to my head had rattled my brain around more than I knew. But Maggie was the closest thing I had to an ally in this loony bin, and I needed to take advantage of that while I could.

“It’s all a little much to take in,” I said, because I didn’t have it in me to actually say I believed her.

“I know,” she said with a gentle smile. “And it’s all right. You don’t have to pretend to believe me. I’m not offended.”

Maggie was definitely the nicest of the cultists. It was time to test just how nice.

“Thanks for being so understanding,” I said.

“Hey, we girls have to stick together here in Testosteroneville.”

“Yeah, about that …”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you out,” Maggie said.

“Please, Maggie. I think Anderson’s going to … interrogate me. And I don’t think that’s going to go so well for me.” I didn’t have to force the shudder.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be all right. I’d let you out if I could, but Anderson gave me an order, and disobeying his orders isn’t such a great idea.”

I remembered Jamaal’s scream, and felt just a little guilty for asking Maggie to defy Anderson. Not enough to stop asking, though.

“Maggie, I—”

But she’d had enough, rising to her feet and cutting me off. “I can’t, Nikki. I just can’t. I’ll get you some clean bedding, some towels, and some toiletries, but that’s the best I can do.”

She started toward the door, and I slid off the bed, wondering if I could barrel past her and escape. I didn’t like my odds, but I might have tried it anyway if my wounded side hadn’t screamed in pain. Apparently, I’d stood too fast. By the time I was able to breathe through the pain, Maggie was gone and the door was closed.