by Jenna Black
“Are you posing for a picture or something?” I jeered, and he finally managed to drag his attention away from the ex-house.
“I was observing a moment of silence for Anderson,” he replied with heavy sarcasm, and though he was looking at me, I could tell his attention was still divided. Which was good, because if he realized I had a weapon within my reach (sort of), he might decide to shoot me before coming any closer.
“But if you’re impatient to find out what I have planned for you, I’ll be happy to hurry things along.”
He was smiling his smug smile, jovial, arrogant, secure in his victory. Just the way I wanted him. He took a whopping two steps in my direction before he noticed the positioning of my feet. His eyes widened, and as he stepped backward, he reached for the gun still sticking out of his pants.
I wanted him closer, but it was now or never.
Putting every bit of strength I could muster into it, I scooped up the piece of brick, using the backs of my feet rather like a lacrosse stick, and kicked my bound legs as hard as I could toward Konstantin’s face.
I had taken Jamaal’s eye out once with a well-aimed toss of a stiletto-heeled shoe, but I wasn’t quite as lucky this time. The brick hit Konstantin’s eye, and he fell to the ground with a gratifying scream of pain, but though he clutched the socket, there was no sign of blood leaking through his fingers.
I hadn’t taken out his eye, but for a few precious moments, he was going to be in too much pain to retaliate. I couldn’t let him have time to recover.
I spotted another piece of brick, even smaller than the first, positioned between me and Konstantin. I wriggled toward it and kicked it at Konstantin’s head. He was protecting his wounded eye with his hand, but his other eye made a good target.
The second piece of brick didn’t hurt him as much. The hand that wasn’t clutching his wounded eye pulled his gun from his belt, and I had to duck as he fired a couple of blind shots in my direction. I suspected he’d get me with a lucky shot before I was able to pitch enough debris at him to incapacitate him, so I needed another plan.
I hunched in on myself, making myself as small a target as possible, then tried to contort myself enough to get my cuffed hands down below my butt. I’d tried this maneuver when I’d been duct taped in the trunk of the car and hadn’t been able to manage it, but I had a lot more freedom of movement out here in the open. I practically tore both arms out of their sockets to do it, but I managed to get first my butt, then my legs, through the circle of my arms so my hands were in front of me. Still cuffed together, but it was an improvement.
Konstantin fired off another shot, and it splashed up muddy snow way too close to my head for comfort. He tried to fire again, but he was out of ammo.
“Probably shouldn’t have wasted so many bullets on Anderson,” I taunted, because I couldn’t resist.
Konstantin dropped his hand from his eye, and though it was closed and swollen and obviously painful, he was going to be back to full capacity way sooner than I would like.
“I have more,” he growled at me, reaching into his pants pocket.
Of course he did.
Bracing myself with my hands, I pushed to my feet. I could move a little by shuffling, but by the time I got anywhere, Konstantin would be reloaded. He might not be able to aim as well as he’d like with one eye swollen shut, but I doubted he’d have any trouble hitting me with a full clip at his disposal. So instead of taking little shuffle-steps, I bunny-hopped.
I probably looked pretty ridiculous, but aesthetics were the last thing on my mind. I hopped toward another piece of debris, then bent to retrieve it and hurl it at Konstantin’s hands. I didn’t even know what I had thrown. It wasn’t big or heavy enough to do damage, but it did cause him to drop his clip in the snow. I thought that was an improvement, until he abandoned the gun and clip and surged to his feet.
Even if I hadn’t been bound hand and foot, Konstantin didn’t need a gun to hurt me. He was a big, strong guy, and I bet he had plenty of experience wrestling women into submission.
I hopped away from him as fast as I could, my eyes frantically scanning the grass and snow for the perfect weapon.
I saw it about six feet away, a big chunk of concrete that might have come from the foundation. I wasn’t going to be able to hop that distance before Konstantin tackled me, so I threw myself forward in a headfirst slide, my hands outstretched.
I might have put a little more oomph into that slide than was strictly necessary. I jammed my fingers against the concrete, breaking a few nails and possibly dislocating my middle finger. I swallowed the pain and wrapped my hands around the concrete, rolling into a sitting position so I could get some momentum on the throw.
At the last moment, Konstantin, who was almost on top of me, seemed to realize he had made a mistake. He tried to skid to a stop, holding his hands out in front of him. I think he was trying to summon another blast of heat, but it was too late.
I put my whole body into the awkward, two-handed, side-arm throw, and the chunk of concrete hit Konstantin right between the eyes.
He staggered and went down to his knees, blood streaming from his nose and from a large cut on his forehead. My throw had been too awkward, and he’d been too close for me to get enough momentum to knock him out. However, it had obviously made him woozy.
He flailed at me as I hopped over toward the chunk of concrete, but I think he was seeing double or triple, because he didn’t come close to hitting me. I raised the concrete over my head, and this time I had a nice downward angle for my throw.
The concrete caved in the back of Konstantin’s head, and he went down for the count.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I gave myself all of about three minutes to bask in my victory and enjoy the relief that flooded my system. Konstantin wasn’t going to get his chance to rape and torture me, and though I was hurting in any number of places, the damage I’d sustained was all superficial enough that it would heal completely within an hour or two. Considering how grim my situation had been when Konstantin had carried me out here, it was quite a gratifying turnaround.
It didn’t take long, however, for the logistics of my current situation to sink in.
Konstantin was dead, sure. But I was neither a mortal Descendant nor a death god, so he wasn’t going to stay that way. I was still bound hand and foot. My phone was somewhere in the rubble beneath the house. We’d driven here in Anderson’s car, and the keys were probably somewhere down there with my phone. Not that I liked my chances of making it to the car before Konstantin came back to life and tracked me down. Hopping wasn’t the most efficient means of travel, and my legs were already feeling the burn. It didn’t help that my supernatural healing ability sapped so much of my energy. It would probably take me hours, and plenty of rest stops, to get to the damn car, even if I had the keys. And let’s not even talk about how I would be able to drive!
I was squeamish enough that I’d have preferred not to look at Konstantin’s body. There was a lot of blood, and an obvious concave spot on his skull. However, unless I planned to stand here indefinitely in the freezing cold and conk him on the head every time he started to come back to life, I was going to have to get out of the handcuffs and shackles.
Praying under my breath that he would have the keys on him, I dropped to my knees beside him and started gingerly exploring his pockets. I kept my eyes narrowly focused on his body, not letting them stray to his ruined head, but my stomach was queasy anyway.
The good news was I didn’t hurl. The bad news was, there were no handcuff keys on him. In another case of good news/bad news, he had a cell phone, but either he’d broken it during our struggle or its charge was dead. I had no way to get out of the handcuffs and shackles, and no way to call for help. It was possible one of the neighbors had heard the blast and called the cops, but I didn’t think that would be a good thing. I did not want to try to explain the current situation to cops, and if Konstantin came back to life while there were witnesses . . .
>
I scanned the sky, trying to judge how likely it was that I had to start figuring out a cover story. The blast had been incredibly loud from close range, but in this neighborhood, there were acres of land between houses. I could imagine someone nearby being roused from their bed by the blast. They might even go look out their window in case they could see what had caused it. However, you couldn’t see Alexis’s ex-house without actually trespassing on the grounds. The fire had burned so fast and fierce that it had burned itself out already, but there was still plenty of smoke rising from the smoldering wreckage. The darkness wouldn’t hide the smoke for long, which meant I had until dawn to get myself and Konstantin’s body out of here.
I was frankly at a loss for what to do. With a lot of work, I might be able to drag Konstantin’s body past the tree line, where he was less likely to be found right away. What I really needed was a Liberi extraction team to come get me. We would then have to find someplace secure where we could bury Konstantin’s body. I still didn’t like the idea, no matter how evil Konstantin was, but until we could get Anderson out from under all the rubble and saw through his metal casing, we didn’t have anyone who was capable of making Konstantin’s death permanent.
I now had something new to add to my list of things I didn’t want to think about: how to get Anderson out. We would need a freaking excavation to get down to where he was, and somehow I didn’t think it would be so easy to arrange an excavation on land that didn’t belong to us.
I’d spent about fifteen minutes dithering, trying to come up with a plan that didn’t suck, to no avail. Maybe it was my imagination, but when I forced myself to look, I thought the depression in Konstantin’s skull was shallower than it had been.
Hitting a dead man in the head with a hunk of concrete shouldn’t bother me so much. It wasn’t like he could feel it. But it was still remarkably hard to get myself to do it. I’m just not the violent type. However, I couldn’t risk him coming back to life.
Closing my eyes and turning my face away, I brought the concrete down on Konstantin’s head. The nasty crunching sound it made when it hit his skull made my stomach turn over, and it took everything I had not to throw up. I was just not cut out for this sort of thing.
I put down the hunk of concrete, then lowered my face into my hands, momentarily overwhelmed. It didn’t help that the heat from the fire had dissipated. I was shivering, and I couldn’t feel my feet. It was bitterly cold out, and ice was forming on the surface of the puddles the melting snow had formed. Frostbite couldn’t kill me, but it could make getting myself out of this mess even harder.
I was still hanging my head, my mind cycling through each of the possible things I could do next and hitting the same brick walls, when the sound of a throat clearing behind me made me scream and jump to my feet. The screaming part of that equation worked just fine. Jumping to my feet, not so much. It’s amazingly hard to stand up when you can’t feel your feet, especially when your ankles are shackled together.
I landed in a heap in the snow.
“I’m sorry,” Anderson said. “I didn’t think there was any way I could make my presence known without scaring you.”
My jaw gaped open, and I turned to look at the smoldering ruins of the house. Then I turned to look at Anderson. My gaze dropped to his feet when I realized he was stark naked. He was standing in a pristine patch of snow about ten feet away from me, past the debris field and past where the heat from the fire had melted the snow. Which made the lack of footprints anywhere around him noticeable even while my mind was trying to encompass the idea that he was alive and free.
“H-how . . .” I gestured at the ruins and shook my head, unable to form a coherent question.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened,” he said. He had to be freezing standing there in the snow in the nude, but there was no hint of shivering in his voice. “I take it I was inside when the house came down?”
Of course he wouldn’t know what had happened. He’d been dead for most of it. I could have given him a blow-by-blow recap of what he’d missed. But only if my brain had actually been working.
“M-molten metal,” I stammered incoherently. “You were encased in molten metal and h-he brought the house down on t-top of you.” The fact that I was well on my way to turning into a human Popsicle wasn’t making my dialog any wittier or easier to understand.
I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. He was completely unself-conscious about his nudity, but I couldn’t say the same of myself.
“I can see why he’d have thought that might work.”
I sucked in a deep breath, hoping it would help steady me. Instead, I merely froze my lungs a little more. “H-he said you wouldn’t be able to move.”
“He was right about that, at least.” There was a hint of smugness in his voice, and I couldn’t resist looking at him despite his nudity.
“Then how—?”
“I’m the son of Death, Nikki. There is one way to kill me, and it was not in Konstantin’s power to do. But there is no power on earth that can contain me.” He walked through the snow toward me—leaving footprints this time—and crouched so he was about at eye level. “You remember the Underworld, don’t you?”
I shuddered and nodded. When I’d been hunting Justin Kerner, I’d discovered that some death-god descendants are able to use cemeteries as gateways to the Underworld. I couldn’t tell you exactly what the Underworld is, even though I’ve been there, but it’s not a place we mere humans can get to without aid. I knew that Anderson was able to use cemeteries that way—after all, he’d come into the Underworld to rescue me—but we weren’t in a cemetery right now.
“Neither Alexis nor Konstantin was stupid enough to bury bodies on their own land, so unless we’re sitting on top of some ancient burial ground, this isn’t any form of cemetery,” I said.
“Death-god descendants get to the Underworld by creating a gateway. I, on the other hand, am a gateway. I can create an entrance to the Underworld wherever I am. I told you Konstantin couldn’t trap me by burial or drowning.”
“You didn’t mention being encased in molten metal.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor.”
I didn’t actually find it all that funny. If Anderson had just come right out and told me this in the first place, instead of being so cryptic in his impatience . . .
I sighed. It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. He hadn’t been able to come back from the dead until after I’d already finished off Konstantin. He wouldn’t have been able to help me, and no matter what he’d told me, I wouldn’t have believed he could really escape until I actually saw it.
“We have to get out of here,” I said, glancing up at the sky. It was still dark, but I thought I was beginning to see the first hints of predawn light.
Anderson stared at Konstantin’s inert form. I guess I was getting to know him pretty well, because I knew what he was thinking.
“Unless you can get these shackles off of me,” I said, “you’re going to have to carry me to the car if we want to get there before next Wednesday. I know you’re strong, but can you carry me and Konstantin at the same time?”
Anderson was the son of Death, but he was also the son of a Fury. I’d certainly hurt Konstantin when I’d pelted him with bricks and dropped a hunk of concrete on his head, but when Anderson killed someone, they suffered. Unless their human shell was already dead, that is.
“A quick death is too good for him,” Anderson said through gritted teeth.
“Maybe. But how about you worry about what’s good for us instead? We really don’t want to be here when the police come knocking, and the house is going to be sending up smoke signals like no one’s business when the sun rises. We need to go. The sooner the better.”
For a moment, I thought Anderson’s need for revenge was going to overcome his common sense. He had that angry light in his eyes, and I could feel the malice rolling off of him in waves. Then he shook his head violently and close
d his eyes.
When he opened them again, the white light was gone, and he had a look I could only describe as haunted. “I let my need for revenge control me once before. I swore to myself I would never do it again.”
He didn’t seem to be talking to me so much as to himself. He’d told me before that he’d done “terrible things” in his past, and it seemed like a good guess those “terrible things” had been done in revenge. I was too nosy not to be curious, but now was not the time for questions. And I didn’t think Anderson would answer them anyway.
“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “at the last moment before I hit him with the rock, Konstantin realized he’d made a mistake and he was going to get killed by a five-foot-two woman with chains on her wrists and ankles. I suspect that knowledge counts as suffering in his book.”
Anderson flashed me a weak smile. Then, his face saying it was killing him to do it, he reached out with a glowing hand to touch Konstantin.
TWENTY-NINE
Not having keys turned out not to be a problem, as Anderson kept a spare set in the glove compartment; however, we had to get underneath and chisel away at the hunk of ice we were hung up on. It didn’t actually take all that long, but if another car had come along while we’d been at it, it would have been . . . awkward. It’s not every day you see a naked man and a woman chained hand and foot having car trouble by the side of the road. Anderson had helped himself to Konstantin’s suit jacket after Konstantin was dead, but it was speckled with blood, which would have been hard to explain if anyone had stopped to try to help us. He’d tried the pants, too, but Konstantin was both taller and broader, and there was no way to keep the pants up.
At least the jacket, bloodstains and all, kept Anderson from looking like he was completely naked when we passed the police cars that blew by us only moments after we’d gotten back onto the road.
As I defrosted in the car on the way back to the mansion, I told Anderson everything he had missed—including that Cyrus had set us up. The fury that darkened his face made me wonder if I should have left that part out. The Olympians had clearly broken the treaty, but even though Konstantin was dead, nothing had really changed from our standpoint. We could not afford a war against the Olympians, no matter what Cyrus had done.
