Dark Descendant

SEVEN

To say I was shocked by what I’d done was an understatement. For a long, breathless moment, I just stood there and stared, hardly believing I’d actually shot someone. Blake’s face was squinched in pain, and his hands were stained crimson as he tried to stanch the flow of blood.

My hands were shaking as I lowered the gun, and I blinked furiously to hold back tears. I couldn’t afford to wallow. A .38 Special isn’t exactly a quiet gun, and people on the lower levels of the garage had to have heard the shot. Maybe they’d assume it was just a car backfiring, but I couldn’t count on it.

I grabbed my backpack and shoved the gun back inside. There was a tracker in my pack somewhere, but I didn’t have time to look for it now, and all the reasons I’d had previously for not dropping the backpack still applied.

Heart in my throat, I stepped around the protection of the car, keeping a wary eye on Blake. His face was still tight with pain, and his skin was a bloodless shade of white, but he was conscious. I hoped that meant he wasn’t going to die.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely, then rolled my eyes. What kind of action movie heroine apologized to the enemy for hurting him? If I was going to play the part of a badass, I was going to need some serious practice.

I slung the backpack over my shoulder and opened the door to the stairwell. Blake’s eyes glittered as he glared at me, but when he tried to stand up, his face went even whiter and I thought he might pass out. I bit my tongue to stave off another apology, then slipped into the stairwell and let the door slam behind me. The echoing sound made me jump, and it took a healthy dose of self-control to keep myself from running down the stairs, which would only draw attention. I had enough people chasing me without adding the police to the list.

I hurried to the nearest Metro station, and got on the first train that arrived, not caring where it was going as long as it was away from the scene of the crime. Once the train was moving, I sat down and started examining the contents of my backpack—making sure the gun stayed safely concealed, naturally.

Eventually I found the tracker. Jack had done an impressive job of hiding it. I’d gone through everything twice and was beginning to think I’d have to dump the whole backpack after all, when I finally noticed that my purse-sized package of tissues weighed more than it should. I pulled out the first few tissues, then found a white, rectangular device, about two inches long, tucked into the center of the pack.

I left the tracker on the train—that ought to keep Anderson and crew occupied for a while—then got off at the next stop and took a cab back to my hotel.

Just in case the tracker had allowed Blake to figure out which hotel I was staying in, I decided to get out of there. My cell phone rang while I was packing. I checked caller ID: Steph. I groaned. There was no way I could talk to her now without her figuring out something was wrong, and I couldn’t explain my situation without sounding like a lunatic.

I was going to have to talk to her eventually, but I couldn’t handle Steph now.

Deciding I’d call her in a couple of hours, I checked out of the Holiday Inn and found myself a new hotel halfway across town. I took a hot bath, hoping that would calm my nerves, but nothing short of a horse tranquilizer could have done the trick.

I had no idea what my next step should be. Apparently, I had two factions of Liberi after me, and they had the financial and magical resources to make my life really difficult. I couldn’t evade them forever, not unless I decided to run away and make myself disappear.

I’d had enough experience tracking people who didn’t want to be found to cover my own tracks if I needed to. I could disappear from D.C. and create a new identity for myself somewhere else. But I’d spent most of my childhood being shuffled from foster home to foster home, and here in the D.C. area with the Glasses, I’d experienced the only true stability I’d ever known. I couldn’t face the prospect of digging up my roots and leaving everything and everyone I’d come to love behind. Not unless it was absolutely the last resort.

Which meant that somehow, I was going to have to find a way to convince both factions of Liberi to leave me alone.

To be perfectly honest, I already had a sinking feeling that life as I had known it was over. I didn’t have a clue how to get the Liberi to back off, and even if I did … Let’s face it, I wasn’t the same person I’d been just twenty-four hours ago. I believed in the supernatural. I’d become immortal with supernatural powers myself. And I’d shot a man. In cold blood.

I have to admit, I was wallowing. But then, who could possibly argue that I didn’t have the right?

My phone rang again, and I snapped out of my funk enough to check caller ID. A nervous shiver ran through me when I saw the name Anderson Kane.

Naturally, my first instinct was to ignore the call, just as I’d ignored Steph’s. I had, after all, gone to rather extreme lengths to avoid being forced to talk to him. But I was desperately in need of more information, and my available sources were pretty limited. Anderson couldn’t hurt me over the phone—at least I hoped not—so I answered.

I’m not much of a badass. Hard to be, when you’re only five-two. In spite of that, I’ve never been one to let people push me around and I’d had enough pushing already from the various Liberi I’d met, so instead of answering with a pleasant or neutral greeting, I said, “How’s Blake?”

My stomach flip-flopped at the memory of Blake clutching his bleeding chest, at the memory that I’d actually pointed a gun at another human being and pulled the trigger. Good thing Anderson couldn’t see my face, or he’d have known how much I was bluffing with my tough girl act. Hell, maybe he knew anyway.

He was silent for a long moment, and I wondered if he was more surprised or angry at my bravado.

“He’ll recover,” Anderson finally said, his voice perfectly neutral. “I suppose sending him after you was a miscalculation on my part. He has a unique ability to get under people’s skin, and he still believes you killed Emmitt on purpose.”

I raised an eyebrow, though of course he couldn’t see. “You say that as if you don’t believe it anymore.”

He sighed, and it may have been my imagination, but I heard a world of sorrow in that sigh. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maggie is convinced Emmitt had grown weary and set you up, and I was beginning to agree with her. Then you up and shot Blake. I have to say that seems more like the act of a cold-blooded schemer than an innocent victim.”

Internally, I cringed at the accusation in his voice. I didn’t want to feel guilty about shooting Blake, but I couldn’t help it. I’d already killed a man last night, and the fact that it had been an accident on my part didn’t do much to ease my conscience. I couldn’t help wondering… If I hadn’t sped up when the driveway had straightened out, would I have been able to swerve in time to avoid hitting him? I hadn’t thought I’d been going that fast, but the airbag did deploy, which suggested I’d been going faster than I’d realized.

I tried to summon a surge of anger to counter the guilt. “What was I supposed to do? Let him use that creepy power of his to violate me and then drag me to you so you could torture me? Are you suggesting only a cold-blooded schemer would do everything in her power to avoid that?”

There was such a long silence on the other end of the line I thought I might have lost the signal on my phone.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. Whether he did or not was anyone’s guess. “I don’t suppose any of us are thinking as clearly as we should at the moment, especially me. Emmitt was my friend for a long, long time. I should have—” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.

My own eyes stung at the pain in Anderson’s voice. I’m such a bleeding heart. But I couldn’t help mentally putting myself in his shoes. I’d stolen his friend’s life and immortality. Worse, I claimed that friend had used me to commit suicide. If I were in Anderson’s shoes, I’d probably lash out at me, too.

“If he was really weary enough to end his life,” Anderson continued, his voice steadier, “I should have seen it. I should have been able to help him. I’d much rather you were lying about it than to accept that I was so blind.”

I took a deep, quiet breath, trying to distance myself from Anderson’s pain. Yes, I could understand he was grieving for his friend, and I could even understand why he didn’t want Emmitt’s death to have been suicide. But none of that could forgive the threats and the strong-arm tactics.

“But the reasons for my behavior don’t matter much to you, do they?” Anderson asked as if he’d read my mind. “I treated you like your guilt was a foregone conclusion last night, and for that I’m sorry. From now on, how about I presume you’re innocent until proven guilty. And if you really are innocent, then we need to talk. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

I resisted the urge to snort at the understatement. “I’m happy to talk on the phone for as long as my battery holds out.”

“In person would be better.”

I laughed. “Maybe for you.”

“For you, too. Nikki, you have no idea the kind of danger you’re in. I know I haven’t exactly come off to you as one of the good guys, but I am. At least in comparison to Konstantin and the rest of the Olympians. They will stop at nothing to get their hands on you. You can’t go up against them alone; and I promise you, you wouldn’t like what would happen if they captured you.”

“Why would they want to capture me?”

“Because Descendants of Artemis are exceedingly rare. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t literally a virgin goddess, but she bore only one child, and her line has nearly died out. She was a goddess of the hunt, and a lot of the skills her descendants possess would be of great use to the Olympians.”

“Go on,” I prompted. “Prove to me that you’re a good source of information.”

“I believe in the proverb that with great power comes great responsibility. The Olympians believe that with great power comes great privilege and no responsibility whatsoever. From their perspective, they are better than everyone else, and that’s the natural order of the universe. They are selfishness incarnate, but as reprehensible as I find that, it’s not why I oppose them as I do.

“I understand that Maggie explained the origins of the Liberi Deorum last night.”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. Even after all I’d seen, there was a part of me that desperately wanted to deny I believed what Maggie had told me.

“So she explained that anyone descended from the ancient gods can steal the immortality of a Liberi?”

“Yes.”

“Because Descendants can potentially steal their immortality, the Olympians see them as a threat that needs to be eliminated. For centuries, they have hunted Descendants. Generally, when they find a family of Descendants, they kill all the adults and all the children over the age of five. They then raise those youngest children themselves, indoctrinating them into their beliefs. If the children show any signs that they question the ‘natural order,’ they are disposed of.”

I sank down onto the edge of my bed, knees suddenly weak at the images Anderson’s words brought to mind. “By disposed of, you mean killed.”

“Yes. Remember, as far as the Olympians are concerned, they are the pinnacle of perfection, and everyone else is expendable. Even children they have raised themselves.”

“Why do they raise the children at all? Why not…” I let the question trail off because I couldn’t put the horror into words.

“Because only a mortal Descendant can kill a Liberi. The Olympians can’t kill rival Liberi themselves, so they need pet Descendants to do the dirty work for them. That’s how they raise these children—with the philosophy that if they are good enough, the Olympians will one day give them a sacrificial Liberi so they can become immortal themselves.

“And if you don’t find all of this distasteful enough, know also that only those descended from the Greek gods are considered worthy to become Liberi. If the Olympians find a family descended from one of the other pantheons, they leave no survivors.

“They want you to join them because they believe they can use your skills to help them hunt down and slaughter more Descendants. Without a Descendant of Artemis in their employ, the Olympians have to hunt Descendants using only conventional methods. They’re always on the lookout for unfamiliar people with visible glyphs. If they find a Descendant, they’ll extract a family history and go looking for all the relatives. If you join them, they’ll use your powers to track down the ones they can’t find.”

“That’s never going to happen,” I said immediately. “I wouldn’t help them kill anyone, much less helpless children!”

“That’s what you think now,” Anderson countered, “but the Olympians are very good at… persuasion. Come back to the house. You’ll be much safer with us than you would be out on your own.”

I laughed briefly, then swallowed it before it could turn into hysteria. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You let Jamaal practically choke me to death last night, you yourself threatened to torture me, and then you sent Blake with his slimy lust power after me, and you expect me to just hand myself over because you claim the other guys are worse?”

“I realize that—”

“You don’t realize a goddamn thing!” I squeezed the phone so hard I accidentally hung up on Anderson. Then I decided my subconscious had the right idea, and I turned the phone off.

Maybe he was telling me the truth. But I had no way of knowing. And even if he was, I saw no reason why I would be better off hanging out at Psycho Central. Jamaal had made it crystal clear that he wanted to make me suffer, and Blake no doubt hated my guts after what I’d done to him this morning.

Geez, I was just making friends all over the place.

I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose where an exhaustion headache was starting up. I might not be willing to hand myself over to Anderson, but I was no closer to figuring out what I should do.

As a child, I’d been a real pro at getting into trouble. There was a good reason I’d been bounced from foster home to foster home so often before I’d landed with the Glasses. I couldn’t blame the other foster families for getting rid of me. I’d been well on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent, getting angrier and angrier each time a family gave up on me, my behavior worsening each time. But as much trouble as I’d gotten into, as close as I’d come to spending some quality time in juvie, none of it came close to preparing me for the trouble I was in now.

Between the physical exhaustion and the sense of hopelessness that enveloped me, I couldn’t help curling up on my side, clutching a pillow to my chest. In no time, I was fast asleep.

The dream was familiar, one that I’d had countless times over the years. More a memory than a dream, really, though I wasn’t sure how much of the memory was real, and how much was pieced together by my subconscious. I’d been awfully young at the time, but in my dreams, at least, the memory was crystal clear.

It was a nasty, rainy day, the air so thick with moisture you could drown in it. The rain should have made it cooler, but instead it merely made it feel like we were walking through a steam room.

I don’t know where we were, exactly, except that it was in the South somewhere and that it was a long way from home. My mom was carrying my baby brother, Billy, his chubby little arms lost under her thick hair as he wailed and tried to hide from the rain. Momma murmured assurances, shielding his face with her other hand. Until Billy had started to cry, she’d been holding my hand. I kept plucking at her sleeve, wanting her to take my hand again, but she was too busy with Billy.

We’d been walking for what felt like miles, after having spent a day and a night riding on a stinky, crowded bus. I was hungry. I was soaked through. My feet hurt. And I wanted to curl up to sleep in my cozy, comfortable bed at home.

“Momma! Pick me up!” I whined, at the end of what little patience I had at the age of four. “My feet hurt.”

“Hush, sweetheart,” she said, absently reaching down to brush a dripping lock of hair out of my eyes. The stupid baby cried even louder once Momma wasn’t holding him with both hands. I hated him for it even though I knew I was supposed to love him. “We’re almost there.”

I didn’t know where “there” was, but I didn’t see anything familiar on this run-down city street, so I knew “there” wasn’t home, and home was the only “there” I wanted.

“Wanna go home!” I yelled, stamping my foot. Then I decided to see if I could out-wail my brother. If I was loud enough, maybe Momma would give me what I wanted. It always seemed to work for stupid Billy.

Momma closed her eyes in pain and weariness when I started to cry, but she didn’t take me home. Instead, we continued to trudge through the rain. I tried going on a sit-down strike, but Momma grabbed my hand and dragged me along. I was too old to be carried, she informed me, so I was just going to have to walk.

Finally, when I was sure I couldn’t walk another step even with Momma pulling on me, we climbed a set of weathered stone steps. Momma pushed open a door, and I followed her into a cool, dark entryway. It seemed we were finally “there.”

I wiped my dripping hair away from my face as my eyes adjusted to the low light, which seemed to come almost entirely from candles. Ahead of us, a pair of doors were propped open to reveal a long aisle with rows of pews on either side. The rain had darkened the afternoon skies so that only the faintest glow of light shone through the stained glass windows, but a discreet spotlight illuminated a gruesome statue of Christ on the cross.

I shivered in the air-conditioned breeze. Seconds ago, I’d have done anything to get inside out of the rain, and to sit down, but I didn’t like this church. Maybe it was a premonition. Or maybe it was just that I was reliving the memory/dream from my adult perspective, knowing what was going to happen.

Momma led me down the aisle, to a pew in the middle of the church. There were a couple of old ladies sitting at the very front, but other than them we were the only people in the place. Our footsteps echoed, despite the strip of carpet down the center of the aisle. It was then that I realized the baby had finally stopped crying.

Momma nudged me into the pew, and I sat down gratefully, no matter how uneasy the church made me. I thought she’d sit next to me, but she didn’t. She knelt in the aisle, still cradling Billy in her arms. He made a little sound of protest, like he was about to start screaming again, but then stuck his thumb firmly in his mouth instead. The quiet made the patter of the rain on the windows seem loud.

Momma let go of Billy with one hand, and he was too busy sucking his thumb to complain. She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand, and the light glinted off the moisture in her eyes.

“I want you to sit here and be a good girl, Nikki,” she said in a low whisper, the sound barely loud enough to hear over the patter of the rain. “I have to go change Billy’s diaper,” she continued, and her eyes shone even brighter. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

A tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek. I didn’t know why she was crying now that both Billy and I had stopped. I knew it was a bad sign, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Momma was supposed to comfort me when I cried, not the other way around. The confusion was more than I could deal with, so I just nodded and didn’t ask why she was so sad.

“I love you so much, baby,” she said, leaning forward so she could plant a soft kiss on my forehead. “Never doubt that. Never.”

When she pulled away from me, tears were streaming down her cheeks. And there was an iridescent glyph on her forehead.

She stroked my wet, tangled hair one last time and stood up. Then she wrapped both arms around Billy, and hurried down the aisle.

I never saw her again.

I awoke with a start and a gasp. I’d dreamed of my abandonment about a zillion times. The details varied here and there, which was what made me wonder how much was really memory, but never before had the dream included a glyph on my mother’s forehead.

I sat up slowly, my head foggy and confused. The bright sunlight of the afternoon had faded to blue twilight while I’d slept, leaving the room in shadows. Still groggy, I reached over and switched on the bedside lamp, squinting in the sudden brightness.

Of course, it made sense for me to dream about my mom having a glyph on her forehead after all I’d gone through in the last twenty-four hours or so. Surely it was nothing more than the power of suggestion.

But what if it wasn’t? Anderson said the Olympians hunted down Descendant families and killed them. What if I’d gotten my divine heritage through my mother’s side of the family? And what if she’d found out the Olympians were after her? Could that explain why she’d abandoned me?

We’d been on that bus a day and a night—if my memory was accurate—which meant she’d traveled hundreds of miles away from our home, before she left me sitting on that church pew. When I’d finally realized she wasn’t coming back and the old ladies at the front of the church had called the police, I was so hysterical I couldn’t even tell them my own name, much less my mother’s. Nor could I tell them where I lived. My mom had made me memorize our address and phone number once, but I didn’t remember it.

Eventually, I calmed down enough to remember the address, but it was just the street address—no city or state. The street name was common enough—Main, or Broad, or something like that—that the police were able to take me to the address, but since it was the wrong city, it didn’t help.

My mother had not only abandoned me, she’d severed all ties to me. I was found so far from where I’d grown up that no one could possibly recognize me, and I was young enough to think my mother’s name was “Momma.” There was no way anyone could identify me, or associate me with my mother in any way. And if anyone was hunting her, if anyone found her, they’d still never have found me.

Most likely, it was just wishful thinking that built this scenario in my mind. After all, my mother hadn’t left Billy at the church. Maybe she didn’t think the old women at the front would have let her leave a crying baby and a four-year-old alone in the pews. Or maybe she’d left Billy somewhere else, hiding her tracks even more.

“Or maybe she just abandoned you because you were too much damn trouble,” I muttered, disgusted with myself for the stupid fantasy. Odds were, my mom had known nothing whatsoever about the Olympians. I couldn’t fathom why she was so desperate to get rid of me—I didn’t become a hellion until I started living in foster care—but there is, sadly, no shortage of women who abandon their children, one way or another. There was no reason to believe my own mother wasn’t just one more.