by Jenna Black
“We didn’t come here for shits and giggles,” Jamaal said, and though Anderson had just saved our lives, Jamaal looked like he was contemplating murder. “We came here because we thought it would be better if we worked together to solve the problem. Sorry if we’re interrupting your sulking.”
“I’m not sulking!” Anderson snapped. “I’m trying to find Niobe!”
Jamaal was considerably larger and more imposing than Anderson’s human form, and he used that to his advantage as he loomed into Anderson’s personal space. “Oh? And why would you want to go looking for a fertility goddess in the Underworld? Doesn’t seem like a very fertile kind of place. But I suppose you have magical tracking abilities you never told us about and that’s why you think you should go hunting for her all by yourself.” The sarcasm in his voice was thick enough to eat with a spoon. “Hell, you lied about everything else, so why am I surprised?”
It was hard to tell whether the flush that crept into Anderson’s cheeks was from anger or shame. There was a little of both in his body language as he glared at Jamaal and hunched his shoulders.
“Back off, Jamaal,” Anderson said. The centers of his pupils went white. Maybe that was an intentional threat, or maybe it was a sign his defensive anger was getting the best of him. Either way, I thought backing off sounded like a great idea.
I put a hand on Jamaal’s arm. “Let’s—”
Jamaal jerked away from my touch, unwilling to let go of his righteous outrage.
“No, I will not back off!” He took his life in his hands by reaching forward and poking Anderson in the chest. “You were too much of a chickenshit to face us and tell us the truth, so you tucked your tail and ran and left us to try to fix everything ourselves.”
The white in Anderson’s eyes grew, and his right hand started to glow in a way that would make any sensible Liberi backpedal. Even those who didn’t know he could kill with that Hand of Doom, as I affectionately called it, knew you were in for a world of hurt if he put that hand on you. I’d seen him use it on Jamaal once before, and I never wanted to see anything like that again.
“Back. The. Fuck. Off,” Anderson grated with careful enunciation.
If Jamaal were in one of his death-magic-fueled rages, he wouldn’t have even noticed the threat, much less given in to it. But though he was angry enough to spit nails right now, it was a rational anger. I saw his glance drop to Anderson’s glowing hand, saw that he was fully aware of the threat.
He threw a punch anyway.
SIXTEEN
Jamaal’s fist connected with Anderson’s jaw, sending him to the floor.
I covered my mouth with both hands and struggled against the new flood of adrenaline in my blood. Even Cerberus had been cowed by Anderson, and now Jamaal had to go and hit him? And not in a fit of mindless rage, either. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to defuse the tension before Jamaal met with a painful and untimely end, but no bright ideas leapt to mind.
Sprawled inelegantly on the floor, Anderson shook his head as if seeing stars, then put his hand to his jaw and worked it back and forth a couple of times. If he were human, I’d say he was checking to make sure nothing was broken, though I doubt a god had much to worry about on that score.
Jamaal looked down at the man he’d showed such deference to for decades, completely unrepentant. “I, and all the rest of your Liberi, have every right to be pissed at you right now.” Though the words were blatantly aggressive, his voice was mild. “Maybe you should just man up and take it instead of getting your bully on.”
Anderson snorted and sat up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that neither his hand nor his eyes were glowing. “This from the man who just decked me.”
“Oh, like you weren’t threatening to do worse to me.”
Anderson winced and looked sheepish. “I wasn’t threatening you, I was just . . .” His voice trailed off, which was just as well, because we all knew that was exactly what he’d been doing, even if he hadn’t put the threat in words. He looked small and vulnerable, sitting there in the nude while Jamaal towered over him. But I knew it was all an illusion.
Jamaal offered him a hand up, then pulled off his T-shirt, revealing his ubiquitous wifebeater, and held the shirt out to Anderson.
“I don’t like fighting with a dude whose dangly bits are showing,” he said.
Anderson laughed and put the T-shirt on. Thanks to their size difference, it was long enough to just barely hide the “dangly bits,” as Jamaal called them. He looked sort of ridiculous swimming in that too-large tee, but I agreed with Jamaal that it was better than nudity.
“So we’re planning to fight some more?” Anderson asked with an inquiring raise of his eyebrows.
To my surprise, Jamaal looked at me. I figured that meant he was done expressing his personal outrage and it was time to move on. I had plenty of personal outrage of my own, but I put that aside and kept the acid out of my voice. Mostly.
“I guess it kinda depends what you’re going to do next,” I said. “If you’re planning to run off again and leave us to try to clean up the mess without you, then I suspect we’re going to have a problem.”
Anderson’s eyes flashed, and he opened his mouth as if about to issue a heated reply. Then he thought better of it and tried again. “I was never leaving you to clean up the mess without me,” he said evenly. “This is beyond your ability to handle, and I’m doing everything I can to take care of it.”
“No, you’re not,” I countered. “If you’re looking for Niobe and you haven’t asked for my help, then you’re definitely not doing everything you can. Unless you really do have some secret hunting talent I don’t know about.”
“I don’t,” Anderson said with exaggerated patience. “But your power isn’t mature enough to handle this kind of global search yet. Traveling through the Underworld lets me get from place to place quickly and efficiently, and you would not be able to withstand spending the kind of time here that I have. This is no place for the living.”
I couldn’t help my curiosity, despite being annoyed at his lame excuse. “But you’re living.”
“True, but I’m not human and I’m the son of Death. The rules are different for me. So you see, this really is a hunt I have to do on my own.”
Jamaal spoke before I had a chance to calmly point out that Anderson’s explanation was total bullshit.
“What are you planning to do with her if you do find her?”
Anderson thought a moment before answering. “I’ll try reasoning with her, of course, but I have no reason to think that’s going to work. If she’s still willing to destroy the human race—along with her own and her sisters’ chances of ever rejoining the rest of the gods—to get her revenge, then I don’t see her being talked down from that particular ledge.”
“So you plan to kill her,” Jamaal said, more stating a fact than asking a question.
“I doubt she’ll leave me any alternative.”
“And killing her would help the situation how?” I asked. “It would make for one more abandoned altar and possibly some very pissed off sister goddesses. Killing Niobe doesn’t help get those altars taken care of.”
Anderson shrugged. “If push comes to shove, the altars can all be maintained by one goddess. They may hate me even more than they do now—if that’s possible—but once they see that I am both willing and able to kill them, they’ll have no choice but to take care of both their own altars and the abandoned ones.”
I wasn’t convinced by Anderson’s logic. Violet had come right out and said she and her sisters would refuse to renew their altars if Niobe was killed. Taking out more of them to try to bully the rest into doing their duty seemed like it could backfire on an epic scale. The sisters might not be willing to risk their lives for the greater good, but they just might do it for the sake of revenge.
“No matter what you plan to do with her, you have to find Niobe first,” I said.
“Exactly,” Anderson replied. “And the time we’re spendi
ng on our nice little chat now is—”
“Not a waste, so don’t even go there,” I finished for him. “You don’t have to search for Niobe. All you have to do is get one of her sisters to an abandoned altar, and you can be sure she’ll show up to stop it from being renewed.”
Anderson opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out.
He’s not an idiot, I swear. He’s just single-minded—and apparently very good at lying to himself. Chasing Niobe pointlessly through the Underworld gave him the excuse he needed to avoid having to face the people he’d disappointed. Gave him a way to hide from us while still convincing himself he was putting up a fight, trying to solve the crisis his past actions had triggered.
“The problem isn’t finding Niobe,” I said. “The problem is getting to her.” Anderson’s power was awesome and frightening, but it wouldn’t be very useful in a battle. It took too much time, and he could only use it on one person at a time. I was certain Niobe was continuing to recruit additional support and that the next time we faced her, our odds would be even worse.
“You’re doing no one any good in the Underworld,” Jamaal said. “It’s time you come back to the mansion and face the music. And then we can all work together and see if we can come up with a way to get to her.”
Anderson eventually agreed that it made sense to stop pointlessly chasing after Niobe through the Underworld. When he finally conceded that, he no longer had any excuse not to come back with us. I honestly didn’t know how that would go, whether the rest of his Liberi would be able to accept him. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I could, and he hadn’t been lying to me anywhere near as long as he’d been lying to them.
Anderson was ready to open a portal right then and there, and I wanted out of the Underworld so bad I was sorely tempted to let him.
“We have to go back to the city and get Oscar,” I said, not at all looking forward to the prospect. I was sure we’d be safe with Anderson by our side, but I doubted his presence would make the city feel any better to my already hyperactive nervous system.
“Oscar?” Anderson said. “That would be the Olympian guide you were telling me about?”
“Yeah. He tried to ditch us, and Sita didn’t like it.” I chose not to mention that she’d been out of control and killed Oscar intentionally and against Jamaal’s will. “We had to leave him behind when Cerberus showed up.”
“Then I’d say he got what he deserved for trying to leave you here with no way out,” Anderson said. “He can find his own way home when he recovers.”
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you,” I lied. We both knew I was too much of a bleeding heart to leave a member of our party behind, even when the guy was a son of a bitch. It didn’t escape my notice that Anderson had said “when he recovers,” to make it sound like a certainty that he would. But Anderson had chased Cerberus away, not killed it, and I didn’t like Oscar’s chances of getting out while it was on duty.
I told Anderson about the deal I’d made with Cyrus, and I thought we were in for another godly temper tantrum based on the look on Anderson’s face. Jamaal leapt to my defense before Anderson could let me know what he thought about my decision making.
“Before you start throwing stones, remember that the only reason we even had to consider making a deal with Cyrus was because you chose not to stick around.”
Anderson cocked his head and regarded Jamaal with obvious curiosity. “When Nikki first found out what I was, she tiptoed around me like I was some unstable explosive that might go off if she looked at me funny. Why don’t you try the same thing?”
“I used to let you boss me around because I respected you. That changed the moment you disappeared on us. Now let’s go get Oscar and get out of here.”
I knew Jamaal’s words had to hurt, and maybe in the past Anderson would have lashed out to reassert his authority. But he no longer had solid ground to stand on, and he knew it. He kept his mouth shut and started down the tunnel toward the city.
Jamaal and I looked at each other, and I saw my own reluctance to go back to the city mirrored in his eyes. However, after all the trouble we’d taken to find him, there was no way we were letting Anderson out of our sight. Jamaal took my hand, and we gave each other squeezes of encouragement before falling into step behind Anderson.
Our hands stayed locked together when the City of the Dead opened up in front of us, and I couldn’t help looking around in search of Cerberus. There was no sign of it, which didn’t do much to calm my unease. The city really, really wanted us gone, and every step was an effort.
When we reached the temple, there was no sign of Oscar. His blood had been completely absorbed by the building, and his body was gone.
“Could he have woken up already and gotten out?” I mused out loud. I didn’t think he’d had enough time to manage that.
Anderson shook his head. He looked at me, and I saw him notice for the first time that Jamaal and I were holding hands. Maggie was convinced Anderson was secretly in love with me, though he’d never made any overtures. I imagined if she was right, seeing me and Jamaal openly acting like a couple must have been another blow. If it was, he hid it well.
“He’s still here,” Anderson said. “You just can’t see him.”
“Huh?” Jamaal and I said in unison. It might have been funny if we’d been anywhere but where we were.
“It’s the City of the Dead because it’s full of dead people,” Anderson explained. “Their spirits, anyway. The living can’t see them, but that uneasy feeling you get when you enter the city is them trying to push you out.”
“But you can see them,” I said.
He nodded. “And although I don’t know your Olympian friend, I’m pretty sure that must be him, because he seems to hate your guts in a very personal way.”
“Okay, so his spirit is here, but where’s his body?”
“It’s gone and it’s not coming back,” Anderson answered. “His spirit wouldn’t be here otherwise. Cerberus must have gotten to him, and that’s a death from which he cannot recover. The Underworld isn’t safe for the living, even Liberi.”
Unlike Jamaal, I kept my string of curses contained, but inside I was screaming my lungs out. What had I done? And how the hell was I going to tell Steph that I’d basically gambled with Blake and lost?
SEVENTEEN
As a god of death, Anderson has a control over the Underworld unlike even the most skilled Liberi, and the portal he created as soon as we stepped out of the city opened onto the mansion’s front lawn.
It had been just after sundown when Jamaal and Oscar and I entered the Underworld, and I expected to emerge from the portal into the dark of night, knowing despite my confused sense of time that many hours must have passed. Instead, we stepped out of the portal in a gray light not much brighter than that within the Underworld. Being an early riser, I knew that it had to be the first light of dawn. I’d been dead tired to start with, but realizing we’d spent what was effectively the entire night in the Underworld without a wink of sleep ratcheted my exhaustion level up to max.
I yearned for a hot shower, a hot cup of coffee, and a long nap, not necessarily in that order. I expected I’d be lucky if I could get one of the three, and I wasn’t wrong.
A subtle change overtook Anderson the moment we stepped through the front door, and he immediately started to take charge.
“Why don’t you make some coffee, Nikki?” he suggested in a tone that made it more of an order than a suggestion. “I’m going to go put some clothes on and wake the others. I don’t want Blake in Cyrus’s hands a minute longer than necessary, so we might as well get any other drama out of the way as soon as possible.”
Maybe he was hoping everyone would be too bleary eyed to tell him what they thought of him if he rousted them out of bed. But I doubted it was anything his people would say that Anderson would have trouble dealing with. Most of them were too used to deferring to him to be as openly angry as Jamaal had been. Their anger and their sense of betr
ayal would come through in the way they looked at him—or maybe even in the way they wouldn’t look at him.
I wished I could just take time for some well-earned rest. However, the altar in Bermuda had been dead for five days now, and catching up on my sleep was not a high priority.
I did as I was asked and brewed a pot of coffee, extra strong. Jamaal wasn’t much of a coffee drinker—caffeine was a really, really bad idea for him—but he stayed with me anyway, and having him there was a balm even though he didn’t speak. I was still struggling with my guilt over having let Cyrus take Blake. Anderson seemed to be taking it for granted that we were going to get Blake back despite Oscar’s unfortunate demise, but I wasn’t so sanguine. Maybe it was just as well that I not have any time alone with my thoughts. They might well have eaten me alive if I gave them a chance.
One by one, the rest of Anderson’s Liberi trickled into the kitchen. The expressions on their faces ranged from anger, to sadness, to calculated blankness. I really hoped Anderson was groveling and apologizing as he explained himself, though that wasn’t exactly his style. Even if he was doing it, it didn’t look like it was helping much.
Maggie, her eyes rimmed with red like she’d been crying, was the last of the Liberi to arrive. She went straight for the coffee without speaking or making eye contact with anyone. She probably could have used a hug, but that didn’t come that naturally to me, so I settled for passing her the sugar and giving her an encouraging smile.
Anderson made his appearance about ten minutes later. No one was talking, and I had my back turned while pouring myself another cup of coffee, and yet I knew the moment he appeared in the kitchen entryway. It was like something changed in the air itself, and I felt almost like I could reach out and touch the tension in the room. Slowly, I turned around.
Anderson looked much like he always had, dressed in a wrinkled shirt and nondescript khakis. And yet he was somehow different. Maybe it was the almost tentative expression on his face, or maybe it was just the way everyone was looking at him. He just seemed lesser somehow, and I found myself missing his aura of quiet authority.
