“Fair enough,” he said.
We both stayed silent for a moment. I didn’t know if he was trying to think up what to say, or waiting for me to say something myself. But I didn’t know what to say either. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
A rustling sound had me turning my head, almost raising the gun up against a potential threat—before I recognized Alcides, stumbling upon the scene. He must have heard the gunshot. The gunshot that killed his father.
A chill spread over me. It was already much too late to avoid this.
Wide-eyed, his gaze laden with disbelief, Alcides stared at the body of his father. “Dad?” he said, a hollowness to his voice.
His scrutiny turned to Luca, who’d frozen in place, still kneeling by the corpse. Still holding a knife covered in the sentry’s blood. Then his eyes fell on me, a half-raised gun in my hand.
The moment stretched to infinity, hitting me with the full impact of what had just happened. I’d killed someone to protect myself, but in the end, his son stood over his body. And I felt like a murderer. I was a murderer. There hadn’t been a good option, but that didn’t save me from the guilt of choosing one of the bad ones.
Alcides suddenly turned around and ran, fleeing the scene with a speed that almost took my breath away. A speed that only a legend could manage, a scion of the House of Hercules. For one shameful second, I wondered what he’d tell the rest of his House. What the consequences of letting him go would be.
I concentrated on keeping my gun pointed firmly down at the ground, afraid that if I focused on anything else, the fear—the survival instinct—would kick in, and I might do something horrible. Something I would never be able to take back. Then Alcides was gone, and the moment was over. I’d successfully let him go.
And so did Luca. Turning my attention back to him, I realized he hadn’t even moved, except to drop the knife. “Poor kid,” he muttered. He looked over at me. “Jordan, I—”
“Wait,” I cut him off. “If you’re going to say anything, you should say it to all of us.”
He paused. “Does all of you include Simonetta Berti?” Right, if he was a legend, I doubted he wanted to talk to her.
“All of us includes everyone who risked their lives coming here.” I reconsidered. “Well, maybe not Jessie.”
I was grateful to her for coming and all, and I did like her. But I barely knew her, and Carter was right when he’d called her flaky. Who knew who she’d babble all our secrets to? She’d survive not knowing. She wasn’t on the team. And with her power, she wasn’t taking as much of a risk, anyway.
Luca relaxed. “I can do that. I was hoping to leave them out of it, but you’re right. I shouldn’t.”
Okay. Great. Now what? Would we just walk over to where everyone else was, side by side? Was I comfortable enough for that? I was still holding the gun, after all.
That gun was my only advantage. He probably regretted giving it to me. I didn’t know what kind of magic he had, or what he could do. But there weren’t a lot of things out there that could guarantee protection against a well-placed bullet, not even magic.
What was I supposed to do? How could Luca, the guy who’d spent those last days on the Aventine with me, be anyone else? It was so intellectually obvious that he was a legend, and yet it still barely made sense to me. It was completely different from the reality I’d accepted, and I didn’t know how to handle it.
My dad would have said to hope for the best, but not to take unnecessary risks. My mom would have said to expect the worst, to survive and learn to live with it later. She would have shot him, if she were here.
I didn’t want to shoot him. I was already trying to fight off the dawning realization that I’d killed one person. That way lay a dark pit for me to fall into, and I didn’t know who I would be when I found my way out. I hadn’t even known him, and I still felt terrible.
My head realized that I didn’t really know Luca either, but I still felt like I did. When I thought about taking him out of this world, my mind drew a blank, like I couldn’t imagine doing it. Could I really be responsible for killing someone I knew and liked? I couldn’t even deal with killing a stranger who’d wanted me dead.
If I put down the gun, I’d know whether or not he was lying about wanting to talk. If I didn’t put down the gun, I’d still have to walk with him to the others, or shoot him. But if I let my attention waver for a moment, he could take advantage of that.
The only alternative was to have him walk in front of me while I followed with the weapon. I thought about the circumstances, trying to decide if that was too extreme. Considering everything, probably not. He’d know it was what I was doing, but why should I care about that now? Erring on the side of caution tempted me with its illusion of safety.
Except for one huge problem. If I took him to the others without knowing what his intentions were, they’d be in danger too. This way, the risk was just mine. Neither of my parents would have liked that, but as soon as I made the decision, I knew intuitively that it was the right thing to do. I could live with this—or not live with it, which wasn’t ideal, but a risk I had to take. I knelt down, put the gun on the ground, then stood back up. Luca blinked at me, a frown forming on his face, but didn’t move.
Okay, that was encouraging. I stepped away from the gun and spread out my hands. “Your move.”
He stood slowly, stretching out every movement. Then one step in my direction followed another, until he was standing over the gun I’d abandoned. Kneeling, he took hold of the weapon, raising himself back up with it in hand—and offered it to me. “You’d better keep that. Especially now that I know you aren’t going to shoot me and you know I’m not going to attack you.” He smiled weakly.
I nodded. Everything was still a total fucking mess. But this wasn’t nothing.
Chapter Sixteen
CARTER SPOTTED US FIRST. He tapped Hayley on the shoulder, jolting her out of what she was doing—which was filing her nails. If she’d been hoping to keep up her nonchalant façade to the rest of the team, she’d gone massively overboard. Hopping out of the pick-up, she hurried over to us and gave me a quick hug.
Tony’s head popped up over the driver’s side. Which, considering he’d had to take his foot off the pedal to do that, was actually a big deal. Another look confirmed that it was just the three of them here, waiting for us. “Wasn’t Jessie supposed to be here?” I asked.
“She was,” Carter replied. “She said something about making sure no one found out we were here, and told us to go ahead without her.”
I was taken aback. “Leave her here?”
Carter shrugged. “That’s what she said.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Hayley. “She drove her own car. Having an extra getaway vehicle is always a good plan, you know.”
Carter grinned at her. “You’re just repeating what she told us and acting like you came up with it yourself.”
“Hush up, you.”
Well, I wasn’t about to question Jessie. And it made things easier. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about letting my team get into a car with a legend unknowingly. Now was as good a time as any. Moving to stand beside Hayley and Carter, facing Luca, I shot our spy a pointed look.
He nodded. “I need to tell you guys something.”
“Can it wait until we’re out of here?” Tony holed back up in the driver’s seat, ready to go like always.
But of course it couldn’t wait. Alcides needed time to get to Tivoli, where he could mobilize his House. Pegasi were fast, but cars were faster, and they wouldn’t even be chasing us, because they didn’t know we had a getaway vehicle. They’d be searching for us throughout the expanse of Hadrian’s Villa, never imagining we were gone.
And we’d never get a better opportunity, away from Dr. Berti and everyone else. An hour’s drive away, which would give everyone time to think over what we wanted to do. “Tony, you want to get out of the car for this.”
Tony turned an incredulous expression on me. But a
mazingly, he did what I told him to, without even a token argument about it.
Luca’s eyes met mine for a few seconds, and it was almost like he was the guy I knew. The one whose attention could make my skin tingle with the intensity of it. Then he turned to face the rest of us, and the moment was gone.
“I have a confession to make,” he said. “My name is Lucius. I came to Rome a few years ago, because my House—the House of Aeneas—wanted to know what Simonetta Berti was up to. We had nothing to do with any of this, though, I promise.”
A stunned silence followed, as each of my teammates processed this. As they studied Luca, trying to come to terms with who he was.
“So that explains why you’re so weird,” Hayley said.
Tony looked at her with disbelief. “You think he’s weird?”
Carter didn’t say anything at all.
“Okay, look,” Tony began. “I think he’s a reckless twit, but he saved my life once, and he came here for me and Jordan. That means I am completely okay dealing with the ‘legend spymaster’ issue later.” He got in the car and revved the engine. “Are you people done wasting time, or should we get a fire going? Maybe take out a bag of marshmallows? I’m sure the House of Hercules will appreciate the smores when they capture us.”
Good enough for me. With a shrug, I hopped into the back of the pick-up. Carter was right behind me, insistently settling in with his back towards Luca. Hayley followed at a more leisurely pace. But Luca stayed put, hesitating.
Tony had a point. Luca hadn’t done anything to hurt us. If anything, he’d helped us. I didn’t like being lied to, and I wasn’t letting him off the hook for that so easily. But I got why he didn’t say anything. And now that I’d figured out he wasn’t going to hurt me, it was hard to work up too many hard feelings over this.
That didn’t solve the problem of how we’d move forward from here. My team needed to decide whether or not to tell Berti and send Luca off to his House, never to see him again. Our decision depended largely on what he wanted. And on what every single one of us was or wasn’t willing to do.
But for now...
“Luca,” I said, putting some exasperation into my voice. “Get in already, or Tony will get tired of waiting and leave without you.”
It wasn’t until then that I realized the position I’d put him in, if the team had reacted badly. Alone in hostile territory, while we had the only escape vehicle. He’d have to either find Jessie or find a way out himself.
I wouldn’t have let that happen, of course. I’d have insisted we bring him back to the Aventine before sending him back to his House, cover blown. And I knew these people well enough to know that they’d have agreed, no matter how angry they were. But looking at Luca now, I realized that he hadn’t known that.
His tense form remained in place, eyes shifting between all of us like he was waiting for someone to take back my invitation. Only when none of us bothered to respond did he actually get into the pick-up, an air of disbelief still about him.
A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY from our destination, I asked Tony to stop the car. It was relatively safe here, far from Tivoli, close to Rome. And once we actually arrived at the Aventine, we’d lose the luxury of privacy.
Tony complied, no arguments about being outside of the safety zone and needing to get back. He even got out of the car, and joined us in the back. Maybe we’d earned a measure of trust from him after all.
“Okay people,” I said. “Time to decide where we stand and where we’re going to go from here.” Serious expressions all around. “Luca, you knew when you revealed yourself that there was the possibility you’d be done in Rome, and wouldn’t be able to go back to what you were doing.”
He nodded, grim.
“I guess here is where we decide if that’s what’s going to happen.”
“This comes down to Simonetta’s hopes for the country, yeah?” Hayley asked. Then she turned to Luca. “And your hopes, whatever those might be.”
“I like legends,” Tony threw in before Luca could do much more than open his mouth. “Though maybe not so much the House of Hercules, anymore. But the culture of legend communities is kind of my thing. Everyone here knows that. I really don’t want any kind of conflict. And if what we’ve heard is true, it’s possible—I don’t know how likely, mind you, but it’s possible—that Simonetta Berti might start one.”
“As for me, I like Simonetta,” Hayley said. “But sometimes she can’t see the forest for the trees. And hey, I like Luca, too—he’s dependable, a little absurd, and kinda hot, though I get that my best friend has dibs.”
“Hell,” I said, embarrassed—even knowing that she was just doing what she did, digging at people. “Really, Hayley?”
Luca looked like someone had punched him. And I absolutely did not glance at him to see his reaction, so I didn’t know that.
Hayley flashed me a wicked grin, before returning to the matter at hand. “I have a huge amount of respect for Simonetta, but I think she’s juggling too many things. If our neighbors are literally sending spies and assassins, then maybe we need to rethink our approach.”
“Or,” Carter inserted, with a touch of ruefulness. “Maybe our neighbors should have opened up a dialogue with us before sending the spies and assassins? Just a thought.”
“Point,” Hayley conceded.
“So then,” I said. “Luca. Your turn.”
He kept tossing intermittent glances at each of us, his brows furrowed, his eyes still betraying a hint of confusion. “Okay. You guys were honest, and I owe you the same courtesy. My people aren’t interested in conflict, either. Though we definitely won’t like this new thing I’m hearing about, Simonetta closing us out of her plans to change the world. But even before all that came up, we didn’t like her surface goal, either. All of the human communities around us uniting into a larger whole...it makes us feel like we’re losing control. Like you’re becoming more powerful and it puts us at risk. Even if it is just to keep people safer from the legimals, we don’t like it.”
“Then what do we do?” Hayley asked. “Neither side initiated conversation on this issue before acting. Do we try to get them talking? Do we want to put the brakes on Simonetta’s plans until they at least try to work things out peacefully?”
A light of hope sparked behind Luca’s eyes. I hated to have to crush that.
“It’s getting worse,” I said, and everyone’s attention moved to me. “The Boom caused a massacre, and our population declined dramatically, concentrating in the cities. But legimals are still encroaching onto human territory now. Not just in Italy. Most places don’t have the resources to figure out the statistics, but this could be a worldwide thing.”
I took a breath before continuing. “I don’t know if they’re ranging out or if there are more of them. But it’s getting worse. The agricultural output is suffering. Most of the sightings reported this year? By farmers, whose crops had been destroyed. Why do you think Berti has so much support from everyone in food production? Urban farming is taking the edge off, but it can’t meet our needs. Conventional farming needs land, and that land has to be safe to work.”
“So things can’t stay exactly the same,” Hayley said.
I sighed. “I don’t even like Berti. But this won’t last. Delaying any efforts to make that land safer puts people’s lives at risk, and threatens our food security. It’s just not workable.”
And I had my own needs. Things were getting worse on the frontier, too. It couldn’t support the number of people it currently had. And no one had the space or resources to take the excess population in. If we started reclaiming territory, making it safe to move onto more land, then they would have somewhere to go. My family would have somewhere to go, and they would get priority to move here because of my work.
Everyone stayed quiet for a while, thinking. Until finally, Tony broke the silence. “Okay, so we don’t have any good solutions yet. We need time to think it over.”
Hayley nodded. “We can always dec
ide that we aren’t all going to be able to work together later. But we won’t be able to take back any rash decisions now. We can discuss it again after we deal with the current crisis, alright?”
I didn’t have a problem with that. I wasn’t ready to deal with the thing with Luca, and we still had the House of Hercules to worry about. We still had a potential conflict with the Hercules brewing. And we still had to—
Wait. I’d almost forgotten. “I’m okay with shelving the topic for now,” I said. “But we have another problem that you guys need to be aware of.”
“Yeah,” Carter said in a tone of voice that could only be described as ‘duh.’ “The House of Hercules.”
I shook my head. “Not just them. It didn’t even occur to them to confiscate our cell phones. But back with the chimera, we couldn’t contact anyone for help.”
“Oh.” Hayley said, coming to attention. “Someone else had to be involved.”
Tony groaned. “Are you serious? Having a whole House of legends try to kill us isn’t enough?”
“We need to get back, maybe consult with Dr. Berti,” I said. “But keep it in mind that there’s still an unknown player.” I had no idea who else could’ve been involved. But even as my mind struggled to come up with possibilities, I felt myself tiring.
The team stumbled back to the vehicle, all slightly overwhelmed. It was a quiet drive. Some of my tension drained out of me when we sighted the houses of the Aventine, places where people actually lived under the Remus’ protection. But not all. Too much had happened now, too much had destabilized my view of the world, for me to feel safe.
A few people staggered out of those houses. In one of the most ridiculous displays I’d seen in my life, they started up a small cheer as we passed. Why, I couldn’t fathom—because, well, what were we to these people? But they cheered anyway, and as we neared the center of the Remus’ abode, there were more and more of them on the streets, celebrating our safe return.
It didn’t make sense. A part of me was wary, knowing that this reception probably wasn’t about me at all. And yet, another part of me was strangely comforted. If I could be shaken by the callousness of the House of Hercules, knowing that it hadn’t been about me either, why couldn’t I be bolstered by this?
Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1) Page 21
