by Jenna Black
Phoebe bristled, and it looked for all the world like she was genuinely offended. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you haven’t invited me here to share intel, then this conversation is over.”
“Oh, we’ll share intel. Nikki, will you do the honors?” he asked without taking his eyes off of Phoebe. I hoped Blake was ready to step in at a moment’s notice, because the tension level in the room had risen to dangerous levels in no time flat. Phoebe was steaming, the goon looked ready to leap into action, and Cyrus looked tense and wary. Interestingly, his attention was mostly focused on Blake, and I had a feeling Cyrus knew exactly why Blake was in the room.
I grabbed the photos I’d printed of the three victims who’d been identified, then held them up one at a time so that Phoebe could see them. I could tell she didn’t want to give up her staring match with Anderson, but curiosity got the better of her. She tried to hide her reaction, but the sudden tension in her shoulders told me that she grasped immediately the significance of the photos. And the sudden, sharp look Cyrus gave her suggested that Anderson had been right, and Cyrus didn’t know whatever it was his father was hiding.
“These are three of the four victims of ‘wild dog attacks,’” I said, sure I had their full attention. “You might notice there are certain similarities in their appearance.”
“As in, they all look kind of like Konstantin,” Anderson finished for me with more than a touch of steel in his voice.
Phoebe blinked a couple of times, and I could almost see the thoughts flitting through her head. Should she pretend ignorance? Stonewall? Make up a total fabrication that would throw us off the trail?
Apparently, she liked option D best: retreat.
“We’re done here,” she said, striding toward the door, although Anderson stood in her way.
Anderson didn’t move. Phoebe’s goon smiled, like he was really looking forward to a little action. He reached into his jacket, where, no doubt, he had a shoulder holster.
“Don’t!” Cyrus warned, reaching out to grab the goon’s arm, but he was too late.
Blake did his thing, and suddenly both men froze, their eyes locking on each other as their pupils went dark and unfocused. Phoebe turned to bark an order at them, but then she saw the looks on their faces and quickly whirled on Blake.
“Stop that!” she commanded, but there was a hint of fear in her voice that stole all the power from her command.
Blake grinned like he was having a great time. “Make me.”
“Real mature,” I couldn’t help grumbling under my breath. So far, Blake was being relatively restrained. The lust was plain to see, but it wasn’t so strong that Cyrus and the goon couldn’t resist it. Yet. But resisting it took all of their concentration, making it impossible for them to make any hostile moves.
Phoebe turned back to Anderson, her eyes flashing with fury, which I suspected was a cover for more fear. I had yet to meet anyone who wasn’t freaked out by Blake’s power, and she was obviously no exception.
“Call him off!”
Anderson just laughed at her as he stepped around her and relieved her goon of his gun.
I could tell Phoebe was thinking of making a run for the door while Anderson was busy, so I moved over to block her way. It looked like she was considering going through me, but she thought better of it and settled for growling. “Get out of my way.”
“You came to us for help because you knew Konstantin was in trouble,” Anderson said to Phoebe’s back. “Helping Konstantin isn’t high on my list of priorities, but presumably, it is on yours. I’m willing to do everything in my power to stop this killer, despite the fact that it will help Konstantin. But to do that, I need to know the truth. Even if Konstantin doesn’t want you to tell me, you know it’s in his best interests.”
For a moment, there was a hint of uncertainty on Phoebe’s face, and I thought Anderson might have found the perfect persuasion. Then the steel returned to her eyes.
Phoebe turned back toward Anderson, and there was not a drop of give in her voice. “I’ve told you everything I know, and I don’t appreciate the strong-arm tactics.”
Anderson laughed. “Lady, I haven’t even begun the strong-arm tactics yet.” The look on his face hardened. “I’ve got three questions for you,” he said, counting them off on his fingers. “One: who is the killer? Two: what does he have against Konstantin? And three: why did Konstantin really ask for our help?”
Phoebe sneered at him. “First: I don’t know. Second: I don’t know. And third: I already told you.”
Anderson clucked his tongue. “Are you sure that’s your best answer? Because things could get ugly here if you don’t start telling the truth.”
“Surely I must be mistaken,” Phoebe said, drawing herself up to her full height. “You couldn’t possibly be threatening me.”
He laughed again. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m doing.” The humor bled from his face, replaced by something cold and implacable. “You lied to me. Gave me incomplete information so that I’d throw my people into danger without knowing the risks. That pisses me off.”
“Konstantin—”
“Can come talk to me in person if my tactics bother him. Now, start talking, whether to save Konstantin’s ass or your own, I don’t care which.”
Phoebe’s face had paled, and though she was trying to put on a brave front, she wasn’t doing a very convincing job of it. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said, but it sounded more like a question than a statement.
Anderson bared his teeth in a savage grin. “Which would be more fun, do you think? Having a three-way with Cyrus and your talking ape?” We all looked at the goon, who was sweating with the effort of resisting Blake’s magic. Cyrus was sweating, too, and he managed to look furious and seriously horny at the same time. On some silent command from Blake, their attention turned from each other to Phoebe. “Or talking to the hand?”
Anderson held his palm up for display, and a strangled gasp of dismay left Phoebe’s throat. I guess she’d seen Anderson’s Hand of Doom in action before. I couldn’t blame her for wanting no part of it.
“Or you could just tell the truth,” Anderson continued with a careless shrug, lowering his hand. “Your choice.”
To say Phoebe didn’t like it was an understatement. Angry color rose to her pale cheeks, and she practically vibrated with fury. But she knew she’d been beat.
“You’ll pay for this someday,” she growled from between clenched teeth.
“Skip the whole saving-face thing, and just answer my questions. Who the hell is this Liberi you’ve set us on?”
Phoebe’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “His name is Justin Kerner. He’s a descendant of Anubis, just like I told you.”
Anderson gave a little snort. “That was the one part of your story I believed. What does this Justin Kerner have against our friend Konstantin?”
Phoebe hesitated, reluctant to part with the truth, but all Anderson had to do was wiggle the fingers of his right hand to get her talking again.
“There’s a … bad seed. We believe it was handed down from the goddess Lyssa to one of her daughters.”
Anderson glanced over his shoulder at me. “The goddess of madness,” he explained, correctly guessing that the name was unfamiliar to me. “She’s often associated with rabies.” He turned back to Phoebe, who’d stalled out again.
“We think Lyssa infected the seed with her madness when she gave it to her daughter. Rumor has it that anyone who’s possessed that seed has eventually gone mad.”
“And what does any of this have to do with Konstantin?”
Phoebe swallowed hard and avoided all of our gazes. “We captured a Liberi who seemed to be insane. We didn’t know if it had something to do with Lyssa’s seed or if he was just a madman in his own right. We wanted to harvest the seed if it was any good, but we didn’t want to risk one of our own people in case it turned out the rumors were true.”
Anderson shook his head in dis
gust. “So you captured a non-Greek Descendant and forced him to kill your madman and take on the seed.”
Phoebe nodded. “We figured we’d see how Kerner reacted to the seed. If he stayed sane, then we’d harvest the seed for one of our own. If he didn’t …”
“Finish the story, Phoebe. What was your plan for if he went crazy, as he obviously did?”
“If Lyssa’s seed showed evidence of being infected, then we needed it neutralized. We were afraid an insane Liberi would be an exposure risk. Obviously, we couldn’t destroy the seed. So we figured the only way to neutralize it was to keep it contained.”
“Oh, spit it out, already!” Blake snapped. “You buried him, didn’t you?”
Blake’s moment of impatience was almost enough to get us all in trouble, because Cyrus and the goon blinked and snapped out of the daze he’d had them in. The goon tried reaching behind him, where he probably had another weapon concealed, and Cyrus turned to glare at Blake, but that was all they had time to do before Blake put them under again. Blake gave Cyrus a shrug and a half smile that looked almost apologetic.
Anderson relieved the goon of a second gun, then speared Phoebe with a cold glare. “Is that what you did, Phoebe? You buried the man alive, knowing he’d be trapped in there, unable to die, forever?”
It’s what Konstantin had said he’d done to Emma, although he’d actually chained her in the bottom of a pond instead. I shuddered and tried very, very hard not to think about what such a fate would be like.
“There was no other way to contain him!” Phoebe snapped.
“How did you manage to bury him without his jackals tearing you to shreds?” I asked.
“He hadn’t figured out how to use his death magic yet. It takes time for a new Liberi to learn what he can do. Surely you know that yourself.”
That I did. I suspected it might be years, even decades, before I fully understood my powers and was able to use them to the fullest extent.
“So if you buried him,” Anderson interrupted before I could ask another question, “then how did he get out?”
Phoebe shifted her weight from foot to foot like a guilty child. “He figured out how to create the jackals while he was buried. We never thought he’d be … conscious enough to do anything.”
I shuddered again as I put myself in poor Justin Kerner’s shoes. He must have died of suffocation over and over and over, each time being brought back to life by his seed of immortality, only to die again within minutes. That would be horror enough to drive a sane person over the edge, but for someone who was already crazy …
“The jackals eventually dug him out,” Phoebe continued. “If he’d just run, we might not have known he’d escaped for years, if ever. But he holds Konstantin personally responsible for everything, and he wants revenge more than he wants safety.”
Anderson nodded. “Your vision warned you that Kerner would get to Konstantin someday and that the jackals’ bites would be fatal even to Liberi.”
“Not just Konstantin,” Phoebe said. “When he’s finished taunting us with his mortal kills, he’ll start coming after the rest of us. He’ll come for Konstantin eventually, but not until he’s decimated the Olympians first.” Her brow furrowed suddenly. “How did you know the bites were fatal? Did you lose someone?”
“No,” Anderson said. “We’re all safe and accounted for, no thanks to you and the bounty of information you shared.”
I hoped my poker face was working, because Anderson’s failure to mention just what he’d had to do to cure me bugged the hell out of me. The only reason not to tell Phoebe what had happened to me was that he didn’t want the Olympians to know how to save themselves if they got bitten. I wasn’t a big fan of the Olympians, but I wasn’t exactly into the “kill them all and let God sort them out” philosophy. Still, I managed to bite my tongue. I might argue Anderson’s decision, but not in front of the enemy.
I got the distinct impression Phoebe wasn’t satisfied with his answer, but she wasn’t in any position to press him, and she knew it.
“What it all comes down to,” Anderson continued, “is that you came here spewing lies simply because you wanted me and my people to protect Konstantin.” The curl of his lip said just how appealing he found that prospect. “There is no higher purpose to be served, no risk that Kerner’s actions might expose the Liberi to the government.”
Phoebe swallowed hard. “Maybe not. But are you willing to let an untold number of innocent victims die horrible deaths just so you can get back at Konstantin? Because if you are, you’ll have to give up any claim to the moral high ground.”
“Oh, I intend to stop Justin Kerner, mark my words. But I’m not doing it for Konstantin’s benefit, and I’m not handing Kerner over to you when I’ve got him. Obviously, the Olympians are incapable of keeping him contained.”
Phoebe’s jaw dropped open, like she couldn’t believe anyone would say anything so outrageous about such pinnacles of perfection as herself and her comrades. “We—”
“Will stay out of my way. I will clean up your mess because it’s for the greater good, but you have no say in the how of it. And if I find out you’re withholding any more information, I will hold you personally responsible. Understand?”
Mingled fear and anger played across Phoebe’s face. “You don’t dare hurt me,” she said. “The truce …”
Anderson’s smile was fierce and chilling. “Right now, Konstantin needs me. Do you think he’d risk having me withdraw my help for your sake? He can always find another pretty trophy to warm his bed. He can’t find another descendant of Artemis to do his hunting for him.”
Phoebe’s gaze flicked to me briefly, and I knew her general dislike of me because of my allegiance to Anderson had now become something much more personal. Konstantin would choose me over her—not for any sexual reason but for self-preservation—and she would never forgive me for it.
Great. I’d managed to make yet another enemy without even having to say anything. Thanks a lot, Anderson, I thought, grinding my teeth to keep from saying it out loud.
“Now that we’ve got that all straightened out,” Anderson said, “is there anything else you’d like to tell us about Justin Kerner and what he can do?”
Phoebe hesitated, but in the end, she knew she was beat. “He draws power from the dead. No doubt, you’ve noticed that his kills take place near cemeteries. If you can get him far enough away from such large concentrations of dead, the jackals might not be so virulent, or he might not be able to create so many. It took him years to dig his way free, and we presume it’s because he didn’t have access to the dead where we were keeping him.”
I could think of another reason that was perfectly plausible: that he needed concentration to control the jackals, and it was hard to concentrate when you were repeatedly suffocating to death.
“That’s all I can tell you,” Phoebe finished. “When he took on Lyssa’s seed, he fell to the madness within weeks, so we didn’t exactly have time to test him out and see what he could do before we had to subdue him.”
Anderson stared at her intently for a few seconds, trying to intimidate her into talking more. When she didn’t, he shrugged. He emptied out the guns he’d taken from the goon, then put them back into their concealed holsters.
“You promise your ape will be on his best behavior when Blake releases him?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, though it looked like the promise physically hurt her.
“And I’m sure Cyrus won’t do anything rash,” Anderson added, but he looked to Blake for confirmation, not to Phoebe. Blake nodded, and his sexual magic evaporated. Phoebe’s goon gasped in a deep breath and took several panicked steps backward, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to get away from Cyrus. He regained some of his composure almost immediately, stopping his retreat, but his face was pale and sweaty, and he couldn’t seem to look anyone in the eye.
Cyrus’s reaction was less dramatic. He blinked a couple of times, then fixed Blake with a heated l
ook. “I’ll pay you back for that someday,” he said. His facial expression screamed of anger, but there was a completely different undercurrent in his voice. Unless I completely missed my guess, that threat had been as erotic as it had been angry, and I was almost certain that Blake and Cyrus had some kind of history with each other.
“I’m sure you will,” was Blake’s understated reply.
Phoebe gave Anderson one last withering look before turning on her heel and striding for the door. This time, I got out of her way.
“I’ll show you out,” Blake said. His offer had nothing to do with courtesy—he was just making sure the Olympians actually left. And didn’t do any mischief on their way out.
I should have followed them, should have given myself time to ponder and digest everything I’d learned from this conversation before saying word one to Anderson.
Even as I told myself that, I found myself closing the door and turning to face him. When I met his eyes, I found not Anderson the laid-back man who was friendly and easy to talk to but Anderson the god in disguise. He was still in his human form, showing no overt hint of the dangerous and powerful being within, but there was a weightiness to his gaze that told me he had no interest in hearing my opinion.
Getting the hell out of the room was probably a good idea when he had that look on his face. But I’ve never been all that good with authority—as most of my foster parents would be happy to tell you—and I refused to be intimidated.
All right, that’s a lie. I was intimidated. But if Anderson wanted a good little toady who never argued his decisions, then he might as well kick me out, because that wasn’t me.
“Tell me you’re not seriously considering burying Kerner alive for all of eternity,” I said.
I hadn’t thought his expression could get any more forbidding, but I’d been wrong. “Burying him would be pointless,” he said in a monotone that still managed to convey plenty of authority. “The jackals would just dig him out again.” He frowned, the expression making him look almost human again for a moment. “Perhaps we’ll need to encase him in concrete. Or steel. Then we can bury him somewhere far away from the dead so he’ll have as little power as possible.”
