by Jenna Black
I was about halfway down the stairs, and Anderson was about two thirds of the way down, when suddenly, the pitch-black staircase was flooded with blinding white light, so bright I couldn’t possibly keep my eyes open. I heard Anderson’s cry of dismay, and heard what I presumed was my cell phone thunking to the floor. I tried to force my eyes open in search of something to shoot, but the light was overpowering after the heavy darkness.
A step creaked behind me, and a gunshot nearly shattered my eardrums. Anderson made a strangled sound, which I could barely hear through the sudden ringing in my ears. I felt the vibration under my feet as he fell. The light hurt, stabbing through my head like ice picks, and there was no way I could open my eyes. I turned, meaning to shoot blindly up the staircase behind me. I didn’t know if my supernatural aim could work if I had no idea what my target was, but it was worth a try.
Whoever was behind me moved faster than I did, and something hard and heavy smashed into the side of my face. Pain short-circuited my brain, and I tried to take a step backward to steady myself. Not such a great idea on a staircase. My foot came down on empty air, and I plummeted downward. My reflexes tried to save me, but there was nothing to grab on to, and all I could do was drop the gun. The light dimmed, and I managed to squint my eyes open just a tiny bit.
Enough to see Cyrus, wearing wraparound sunglasses and holding a gun, standing on the stairs and watching me fall.
TWENTY-FIVE
I went down the last of the stairs in a painful and undignified tumble. My ears were still ringing from the gunshot in the enclosed space, and I felt more than I heard the ominous crack a fraction of a second before white-hot pain stabbed through my chest.
There’s nothing that hurts quite so much as a broken rib, and if I’d had any air in my lungs I’d have screamed at the pain. The rib jolted again when I landed in a heap at the base of the stairs, my body piled atop Anderson’s. The light was no longer blindingly bright, but it was as if I’d stared directly at the sun, the afterimage burned into my retinas. Cyrus was nothing more than a shadowy form descending the stairs toward me.
The pain got the better of me and I blacked out.
I don’t think it was for very long. Only enough for Cyrus to reach the bottom of the stairs and crouch over me. He tucked his gun into a holster on his belt, then grabbed mine from where it had landed on the basement floor. He was smart enough to unload it before sticking it in his pocket, though in the state I was in, I wasn’t wrestling it away from him anytime soon. My rib screamed with every breath I took, my exposed skin seemed to have gotten a serious sunburn from the bright light, and my face throbbed where Cyrus had hit me. I probably had a bunch of other injuries, too, but my rib and face hurt the worst. My head was a little woozy, and it took me a heartbeat or two to realize I was no longer lying atop Anderson’s body.
“I’m sorry about this, Nikki,” Cyrus said, flashing me a sad and sympathetic smile. He took off the wraparound glasses and stuck them into his shirt pocket. I guess the light had been so bright that even the descendant of a sun god needed protection from it.
Before I could tell him what to do with his apology—before, in fact, I was conscious and coherent enough to do or say much of anything—he had turned me over onto my stomach. My rib didn’t appreciate the movement, and I couldn’t suppress a scream of pain, even though the scream itself hurt just as much.
“Sorry,” Cyrus said again as he hauled my arms around behind my back and fastened what felt suspiciously like handcuffs around my wrists.
I was in no position to object to his rough treatment, and the breath-stealing pain kept me from retorting. Once my hands were bound, Cyrus sat on my legs, and I felt him pulling up the cuffs of my pants. The clinking sound of metal warned me what he was about to do, but with my hands behind my back and his weight holding me down, there was nothing I could do to stop him from shackling my ankles together.
I blinked away tears of pain and tried to breathe. When Cyrus had turned me over, I’d come to rest with my head facing the base of the stairs, giving me a disturbing view of a large pool of blood. I presumed it was Anderson’s, since as far as I knew, I wasn’t injured enough to leak that much. It was enough blood that I knew Anderson hadn’t moved himself out from under me, and that meant Cyrus wasn’t alone.
Steeling myself against yet another blast of pain, I turned my head so that I was facing the main part of the room.
Actually, calling it a “room” was a bit of an exaggeration. It was really just an unfinished, unadorned basement. The floor was ugly gray concrete, and the walls were cheap Peg-Board, like you might see in some handyman’s garage, only there were no tools on any of the pegs.
In the center of the floor was an ominous black hole, about the size of a manhole, though I didn’t think there were too many people who had manholes in their basements, and I saw no sign of a cover anywhere. Beside the hole, there was a large collection of what looked like steel girders, only they’d been cut up into little sections, maybe six or eight inches long and piled about three feet high. And beside those girders, looming over Anderson’s limp body, was Konstantin.
Having finished securing my legs, Cyrus grabbed me under my arms and pulled me into a seated position, dragging me a couple feet so my back could rest against the wall. I could tell he wasn’t actively trying to hurt me, but when you’ve got a broken rib, everything hurts. He winced in what looked like sympathy. Some of my hair was sticking to the tears on my cheeks, and Cyrus reached out to brush it away and tuck it behind my ear. I jerked away from his touch, practically knocking myself out as my head reminded me I’d been pistol-whipped about two minutes ago.
Cyrus pulled his hand away, and I saw that his fingers were wet with blood, rather than tears. “I didn’t want the wound to heal around your hair,” he said.
How considerate of him.
“Guess everything you told me on the phone this morning was a lie, huh?” I asked. I’d thought after seeing him kill Emma with such cool dispassion that I’d allowed myself to see Cyrus as he truly was, that I’d gotten over thinking he wasn’t really such a bad guy. But the stab of betrayal as my head cleared enough for me to figure out what was happening said I hadn’t quite gotten there yet.
“ ’Fraid so,” he said, sitting back on his haunches.
“Why?” I shook my head, hardly able to believe how wrong we’d all been about him, thinking him a lesser evil than Konstantin.
Cyrus glanced over his shoulder briefly, taking in the sight of his father looming over Anderson. When he turned back to me, there was an expression of grim determination in his eyes.
“Because when Anderson’s gone, Blake will have no choice but to rejoin the Olympians.”
My jaw dropped open. I hadn’t even come close to seeing that one coming.
“How I managed to raise a son with a sentimental streak, I’ll never know,” Konstantin said, and there was no missing the disdain in his voice.
“You don’t have to understand,” Cyrus said tightly without looking at his father. “You just have to stick to the deal.”
My stomach felt like it was doing the cancan, and I wasn’t sure whether it was because I was sickened by what Cyrus was doing, or if he’d actually given me a concussion when he’d hit me. Maybe both.
My head wasn’t as clear as I would have liked, and my sense of time was definitely out of whack, but I was pretty sure it had been at least a couple of minutes since Anderson had been shot. If I could keep father and son talking long enough for him to come back to life . . .
“I thought you were enjoying your Blake substitute,” I said, trying to sneer. I think it came out more like a grimace of pain, but Cyrus was appropriately needled anyway.
“Why settle for a substitute when I can have the real thing? Blake never belonged with you people anyway. He really wants to be one of the good guys, but it just doesn’t suit him.”
“And you think taking out Anderson and letting your daddy kill the rest of us is going to sen
d Blake running into your arms?” It was a little easier to muster a real sneer this time. I hadn’t thought much of Blake when I’d first met him, and I still didn’t think a whole lot of him dating my sister. But I did think he was basically a good guy, with a good heart. It was hard to imagine what he’d ever seen in Cyrus—at least, it was hard for me to imagine it now, when Cyrus was flaunting his true nature—but I didn’t for a moment believe Blake would forgive and forget.
Cyrus shrugged. “If his choices are run into my arms or die, he’ll run into my arms.” One corner of his mouth tipped up in a fond smile. “He’s a survivor.” The smile faded quickly, and Cyrus’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll save as many of your people as I can, Nikki. I’m not doing this because I want anyone to get hurt.”
Words couldn’t describe how much he disgusted me in that moment. I felt a chill of fear as I thought about what would happen to the rest of Anderson’s Liberi if Anderson were no longer around to protect them. Leo, Maggie, and Blake might be able to become Olympians, if they could stomach it. They were all descended from Greek gods, which was the primary membership requirement for the Olympians. But Jack, and Logan, and Jamaal . . .
And let’s not even talk about what would happen to me. I might not be Olympian material despite my ancestry, but I was a rare and useful tool, and I held no illusions that there would be a quick and easy death in my future.
But of course, nothing was going to happen to Anderson. He was a freaking god, and he was going to come back to life any second now. Once he did—
Another gunshot rang out. Cyrus flinched and ducked, his hands going up to his ears. He quickly lowered them again and glared over his shoulder at Konstantin.
“Some warning would be nice next time,” he shouted. At least, I was pretty sure he was shouting, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the renewed ringing in my ears. If I were an ordinary mortal, I’d be seriously worried about permanent hearing damage.
Of course, the ringing ears weren’t the worst of my problems. Konstantin had just shot Anderson a second time, which meant any healing progress was back to square one. Killing Anderson every few minutes was a surefire way to keep him out of the picture, though obviously Konstantin had something else in mind. The yawning hole in the floor suggested that some kind of burial was forthcoming. Anderson had dismissed potential burial as a threat—maybe he could move through the earth as easily as he could move through walls—but I wasn’t exactly eager to put it to the test.
“If you don’t like it, hurry up and finish your touching good-bye before I have to do it again,” Konstantin replied.
“It’s not really a good-bye,” Cyrus hastened to reassure me. “You don’t have to take my word for it, even. You know you’re too valuable to kill.”
“Actually, that doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said between clenched teeth.
“If you can find it in yourself to cooperate, things will go much easier for you.”
My rib was still hurting like hell, but I managed to suck in a deep breath of indignation anyway. “You advising me to lie back and think of England?” I growled at him.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s the best advice I can give under the circumstances.”
“As if I would ever take advice from you,” I replied in disgust, hating myself for letting his charming smile lull me for even a moment. “You’re nothing but a liar and a fraud. I should never have believed a single word that came out of your mouth.”
“I can’t argue that I’m not a liar,” Cyrus admitted. “But for what it’s worth, I was telling you the truth most of the time. I didn’t know my father was behind any of this until last night.”
Konstantin interrupted with an exaggerated snort. “Now tell her if it would have made a difference if you had.”
“It might!” Cyrus snapped over his shoulder, and his father laughed at him.
“As long as I promised to give you Blake, you’d have done whatever I told you to do.”
Cyrus’s face flushed with anger. I didn’t know why he was getting so pissed off. Did he really think it made a difference whether he’d been lying from the beginning or just since his phone call this morning? “Then why didn’t you tell me?” Cyrus countered.
“Because I would have had to watch you wring your hands and listen to you whine about it.” Konstantin gave Anderson a nudge with his foot, as if to reassure himself that he was still dead. Then he turned to me. “My dear son has pretensions of moral superiority. He doesn’t mind making an omelet, as long as he doesn’t have to break the eggs himself.”
The anger that flared in Cyrus’s eyes made me hope he and Konstantin were going to get into a fight. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to take advantage of that fight, but I was sure I would find a way to do something useful while they weren’t looking.
Unfortunately, they weren’t stupid enough to give me the opportunity.
Cyrus stood up straight, wiping the remainder of my blood off his hand and onto his pants. “I don’t think it’s a character flaw that I don’t enjoy hurting people.”
Cyrus had his back to Konstantin and couldn’t see his father rolling his eyes. For once, Konstantin and I were in agreement about something. It might make Cyrus more comfortable if someone else did the dirty work for him, but the fact that he didn’t enjoy it and would rather not see it didn’t make him a better person. Nor did the fact that he seemed to feel at least a little bad about it.
“You’re worse than he is,” I said to Cyrus. “At least he’s not a hypocrite!”
Cyrus hung his head in what looked suspiciously like shame. The look on his face said he actually did feel more than a little bad about what he was doing, and I suspected he was fully aware of the hypocrisy of his own position. The question was, was there some way I could take advantage of his vulnerabilities and turn him against his father? Because I didn’t care what Anderson had told me about how Konstantin couldn’t do anything to him. Konstantin had a plan, and a reason to believe it would work. Anderson might be a god, but that didn’t mean he was never wrong, and this would be the world’s worst time to prove it.
“Don’t do this,” I begged. “Blake still cares about you. I can hear it in his voice when he talks about you. You can work things out with him if you want to. But not if you kill all the other people he cares about. You do that, and he’ll hate you, and you’ll never have what you really want.”
My impassioned plea missed its mark.
“He’ll hate me at first,” Cyrus conceded. “But you know what they say about time healing all wounds. I’m willing to wait.” A tiny smile played along his lips. “And I think I’ll enjoy the challenge of trying to seduce him and win him back.”
Cyrus stepped over my outstretched legs, carefully avoiding the pool of Anderson’s blood as he put his foot on the first step. I realized that meant he wasn’t going to stick around and watch whatever Konstantin was planning to do to Anderson and me. I also realized that meant whatever unpleasantness was in store for us would likely start as soon as he left the basement.
I did not want him to leave the basement.
“Cyrus! Wait!”
I had no arguments left to make, no hope that Cyrus was going to change his mind. In fact, I had only two hopes left: that I could keep delaying things until Konstantin got careless and didn’t shoot fast enough to keep Anderson dead; or that Anderson was right and there truly was nothing Konstantin could do to him in the long run. Neither one felt like a spectacularly strong possibility to pin my hopes on, but Cyrus shattered hope number one when he ignored me and started up the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Nikki,” he said again, shaking his head.
I let out an incoherent cry of rage and frustration—and not a little fear—as the stairwell swallowed Cyrus. Moments later, I heard the door at the head of the stairs open and close.
And it was time to find out exactly what Konstantin had planned.
TWENTY-SIX
Konst
antin stared at the ceiling. Possibly, he was listening to Cyrus’s retreating footsteps, but all I could hear was the rushing of my blood in my ears. My rib still sent daggers of pain through my body with every breath, but I no longer felt blood trickling down the side of my face. All in all, I was in a lot better shape than Anderson was.
To make sure that remained the case, Konstantin shot Anderson yet again.
Anderson’s head was a bloody mess. He was never going to recover unless I could find a way to stop Konstantin from shooting him every couple of minutes. My stomach lurched unhappily. I told myself I had a concussion, because a tough chick like me had no business vomiting at the sight of blood. Never mind that I’d once tossed my cookies looking at crime-scene photos.
“Did you tell Cyrus Anderson’s big secret?” I asked. Not that I actually cared. I was just looking for an opening, some way to distract Konstantin long enough to let Anderson heal.
For one unguarded moment, I saw shock on Konstantin’s face. He hadn’t realized I knew that Anderson was a god. He hid his emotions quickly, but I cursed myself for opening my big mouth. Konstantin didn’t want anyone to know Anderson was a god, because he didn’t want anyone getting the idea that he himself wasn’t the most powerful being in the universe. And I might have just signed my own death warrant by admitting what I knew.
The scary thing was, I would probably be way, way better off if Konstantin killed me than if he kept me alive.
“I didn’t see any reason to burden him with that knowledge,” Konstantin said, giving me a once-over that made my skin crawl. I couldn’t have looked that appealing with my face all bloody and my hair scraggling out of its braid. My flannel shirt was blandly shapeless and buttoned to the top for warmth. And yet Konstantin’s leer told me he liked the way I looked just fine.
