Sweet Legacy (Sweet Venom)

by Tera Lynn Childs

  Sillus claps.

  “Okay,” Grace says. “Let’s go get him.”

  “You can’t just burst inside,” Grace insists, wrapping a hand around my forearm as I start for the door of the rusty old building that is the source of the boss’s smell. “Trust me.”

  With a determined look, she pulls me around to the side of the warehouse.

  I shake my head and let her. She’s not usually this bossy, so I figure she must have a reason. When she starts up a stack of crates beneath a filthy window, I ask, “Grace, what are you—”

  “Shhh!” She gives me a shut-the-heck-up look—I don’t think Grace is capable of swearing—and then waves me up the crate mountain.

  When I get to the top, she points at the window and whispers, “Look.”

  Why is she being so cryptic? I scowl at her before leaning forward to look inside.

  “Bad,” Sillus says. “Big bad.”

  “What the hell?”

  The inside of the warehouse is wall-to-wall people and monsters and piles of stuff. The crates and boxes are covered with dust, and they look like they’ve been there for a decade or two. They’re probably not stockpiles of weapons, but anything is possible.

  Besides the run-of-the-mill ranks of beasts—butt-ugly giants, dragons, hybrids, and every other creature in the bestiary—there is an absolute army of humans. They stand stock-still, utterly frozen in the middle of the room. There are so many of them that they have only a few inches of personal space in any direction. They are literally packed in like sardines.

  “Greer and I came here when we were trying to capture a monster,” she whispers after scowling at me for my outburst. “We think they’re hypnotizing humans.”

  “Obviously,” I say as I stare at row after row of zombie-like people. “There are so many.”

  She nods. “I know. And there are even more now than before.”

  “There must be hundreds.”

  I knew that monsterkind was hypnotizing people in preparation for overrunning me and my sisters when we finally opened the door. I didn’t imagine they had accumulated quite so many.

  And who knows if this is their entire collection of hypno-drones? They might have more hiding in other warehouses, on other piers. This is bad.

  “We don’t have time for this right now,” I mutter. “We need to get in, get Nick”—if he’s here—“and get gone.”

  Not bothering to scan the crowd below—Nick’s immune to my hypno powers, so I assume he’s immune to monster control, too—I search the perimeter of the space. The damn place is so cluttered, I wouldn’t see a bright orange Hummer if it was parked down there.

  “Look,” Grace gasps, pointing inside at an elevated room at the top of a spiral staircase in the back of the warehouse. It looks like an office.

  I squint to make out what’s inside. Through the open door, I see Nick tied to a chair. His body looks slumped, like he’s unconscious. My muscles tense and I feel the urge for a fight. It was one thing when I tied Nick to a chair and knocked him unconscious. But for anyone else—especially the monster freaks—to do the same? That just pisses me off.

  I quickly evaluate the logistics of the interior. There are no entrances immediately around the office, which means gaining access will take me straight through the middle of the hypno-horde and the monsters guarding them.

  “How am I going to get him?”

  “Huntress no go,” Sillus says. “Too many.”

  “I’ll go,” Grace volunteers.

  Is she crazy? “Um, no.”

  “Not like that,” she says, giving me a stern look. “I can autoport in, grab Nick, and pop back out.”

  “Pop, pop,” Sillus says.

  I study Grace. She looks determined, like she’s excited to be able to do this, to use her powers this way. “You’re sure you can do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine.” I glance inside at the ugly horde. “Get in, get out.”

  Closing her eyes, she scrunches up her face in concentration. I’ve seen her do this before, but it’s still amazing to watch. One instant she’s here, and the next . . . she’s still here.

  “Problem?” I ask.

  Her eyes flash open. “I’m trying,” she says, looking around helplessly. “I’m focusing on the room, but it’s just not working.”

  “Big magic.” Sillus presses his palm to the window, sending a ripple of glowing green waves across the glass. “Keep huntress out.”

  Grace deflates. “Shoot.”

  “Looks like we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

  If only I knew how. I can book it with the best of them, but here I need to make it through the crowd of creatures and back again—with a Nick-sized dead weight over my shoulder. Maybe there’s another way in.

  Dipping down, I look up at the ceiling: nope, no skylights. I won’t be rappelling down into the warehouse. There goes that possibility.

  “If I can distract them,” Grace muses, her voice distant, “how fast can you get to him and get out?”

  I don’t question how she intends to distract them. After a quick mental calculation—seven seconds to run across the floor and three up the stairs, five to cut Nick loose, and twenty-five to carry his limp body down the stairs and back across the floor—I say, “Forty seconds, give or take.”

  Grace nods. “If we can find the electrical panel, I can give them something else to think about for a minute or two.”

  “Good,” I reply. “Let’s find it, then.”

  Sillus climbs back to ground level ahead of us.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Grace says as she follows me down the stack of crates. “You might have to do it in the dark.”

  No problem. If Nick’s life depends on it, I could do it blindfolded, with both hands tied behind my back and an Indos Worm wrapped around my ankles. I guess that sums up how I feel about him.

  Now I just have to rescue him so I can tell him—in slightly more straightforward terms.

  “Now, there might be a few sparks,” Grace says as she pulls open the electrical panel near a side door to the warehouse. She smiles at me. “That’ll be your cue to go.”

  I nod and, just because I feel the urge, give her a quick hug.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She squeezes me back. “You’d do the same for me.”

  She’s right; I would. In a heartbeat.

  “Go,” she says. “Get ready.”

  I move into position next to the door. A twist of the handle confirms my suspicion that it would be locked. I give Grace the agreed-upon hand signal, and she nods, waiting for me to deal with the lock before proceeding with her distraction.

  There might be more elegant ways to defeat a locked door, but I only know one.

  Once this war is over, I definitely need to acquire some lock-picking skills.

  Pulling a dagger out of my boot, I slide it between the door and the jamb, moving it down the crack until it connects with the shaft of the bolt. I hold the blade steady with one hand, angling down into the door, and then slam my palm into the end of the hilt.

  The dagger jolts down halfway. One more palm to the hilt and the blade swings free, the deadbolt shaft severed in half. There are some definite advantages to super strength.

  I smirk at the thought that this door will never lock again. The monsters will have to either repair or relocate.

  Turning to Grace, I give her the thumbs-up.

  She turns her attention to the electrical panel. I resheathe my dagger and then wait, hand on the doorknob, for her next signal. Seconds later, she squeals as the panel erupts in a spray of sparks.

  Inside, the fire alarm roars to life, pounding out an ear-splitting siren.

  “Okay, go!” she shouts.

  But I’m already gone.

  Inside, the main lights are out, but the faint glow of emergency backups is more than enough to illuminate my path. Enough to see the hypnotized human army staying utterly—and creepily—still while the monsters around them
erupt in chaos.

  No one notices me as I sprint from the broken door, through the field of human statues, to the spiral staircase. I climb three steps at a time, making it to the top winded, but in three seconds—right on my estimate.

  Pulse pounding, I scan the office as I run through the door, finding it empty except for Nick.

  “Nick,” I bark as I spin his chair around and lift a dagger to the rope. “Wake up!”

  He doesn’t even groan.

  Sawing through the ropes takes several seconds more than I guessed. My heart races faster the longer I take. I’ve just cut through the last rope when the alarm stops.

  I curse. “Nick, Nick, come on.”

  I shove my dagger back into my boot as I haul him up out of the chair, ducking down so I can heft him onto my shoulder. Fine. I can do this.

  I turn to leave.

  “Going somewhere, huntress?” the boss asks, an ugly smirk on his ugly dog face.

  The weapon in his flipper—what looks like a pistol that’s been modified so he can fire it without fingers—stops me more than the two Cacus bodyguards at his back.

  “Thought I’d take this off your hands,” I say, nodding at Nick. “You have so much on your plate already, what with the plans for monster world takeover and everything. You should be thanking me.”

  His face contorts with what I think is rage.

  Odds are not in my favor. With Nick over my shoulder, I’m not agile or nimble. I can’t reach my daggers. I can’t get the smoke bombs from my left pocket or the flash bombs from the right. All I have is my wit, and that only seems to make him angry.

  “Oh, I do thank you, huntress,” the dog boss says, “for walking right into my trap.”

  I shrug one shoulder. “I do what I can.”

  “Boys,” the boss says, nodding at his bodyguards.

  They step around him, reaching for—

  An explosion rocks the entire building. The boss stumbles back, and his bodyguards, caught off-balance, tumble to the ground.

  I can only hope this is the second wave of Grace’s distraction plan.

  I don’t hesitate.

  Securing my arm around Nick’s waist, I leap over the guards and knock into the boss on my way to the staircase. I’m a third of the way down when I see the boss fall past me, landing on the concrete floor below with a sickening crunch.

  Then I’m sprinting across the floor, toward the door that Grace is holding open. Sillus is sitting on her shoulders, waving at me to run faster.

  “What was that?” I ask as I blow through.

  “You were behind schedule,” she says, panting but keeping pace next to me as we sprint down the pier. “Figured you could use some help, so I blew the transformer.”

  There’s no time to maneuver Nick into a car seat.

  As I pop Moira’s trunk, I give Grace a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

  Before she can answer, Sillus is in the back, Nick is secured, and Grace and I are speeding away from the warehouse. I watch in the rearview mirror as the boss’s bodyguards come chasing after us. I floor the gas and leave them breathing my exhaust.

  With adrenaline filling my bloodstream, it’s no wonder I’m driving a bit wild. Grace is gripping her seat belt with both hands, knuckles white, with a frightened look on her face. I take a quick survey of our surroundings and realize that we’re on a direct path to the most tourist-dense part of town.

  It’s as good a place as any to get lost for a minute.

  I cut left on Market and then merge right onto Geary. Barely stopping to snatch a parking ticket from the gate, I speed into the garage beneath Union Square Park.

  When I cut the engine, I release a breath I think I’ve been holding since we squealed away from the pier. Grace releases the death grip on her seat belt.

  Without waiting for her to make some comment about my driving, I jump out of the car and run around to the trunk, popping the release as I go. Nick is already waking when I pull the trunk lid up and out of the way.

  “I thought we were past the locking-me-in-the-trunk phase,” he grumbles as he pushes himself into a sitting position.

  “We are.” I grab him by the forearms and pull him out of the trunk—again I find it’s really useful to have super strength. “We are not, apparently, past the saving-your-butt-from-the-monster-horde phase.”

  “Oh yeah.” He gives me a sheepish grin. “That.”

  “Yeah, that,” I repeat.

  He straightens to his full height—a few inches taller than me—and I have to resist the urge to wrap my arms around his waist and rest my cheek against his chest. I don’t think my pulse has slowed to anything near normal since Grace first told me he’d been taken.

  Now, finally, I can relax.

  “Hey, Nick,” Grace says as she finally forces herself out of the car. She walks up and punches him. Hard.

  “Ow.” He rubs the spot on his arm. “What was that for?”

  “For throwing me in that elevator and getting yourself taken prisoner,” she says without any venom. “Next time ask first if you’re planning on sacrificing yourself. I would have said no.”

  His mouth curves up into an amused grin. “Note taken.”

  “Good.” She flashes him a cheery smile. “Now, I’ll be in the car with the monkey so you two can make out.”

  I pretend to kick her as she dances out of range.

  When she closes the car door behind her, I give in to my urge. Wrapping both arms around Nick’s waist, I lean into him and hug him tight.

  “You weren’t worried about me, were you, Sharpe?” he teases.

  I can’t answer. If I tell him the truth, he’ll know how I feel about him. If I lie, he’ll know I’m lying, which will tell him how I feel about him. Either way, I’m revealing more of those feelings that I try to keep locked up tight.

  “You don’t have to say it,” he says, his voice soft and serious for once. “I was worried about you.”

  “Me?” I ask, pulling back to look at him. “I wasn’t taken prisoner.”

  “But I was.” His mouth quirks up to one side. “Who would protect you if I was dead?”

  I narrow a scowl at him. “Who usually protects who in this relationship?”

  “It’s a relationship, then?” he counters.

  Darn it. He is too good at these verbal games. I’m better at the physical. So rather than try to beat him with words, I use my mouth another way.

  Our lips are just about to touch when the horn on my car blares. The sound echoes off the concrete of the parking structure, amplifying it to eardrum-damaging levels.

  “Sorry,” Grace shouts out her open window. “Sillus got a little handsy with the steering wheel.”

  I laugh and relax into Nick’s chest.

  “Can’t we just stay here?” I ask.

  “Forever?”

  “Maybe,” I reply. “Or even for a little while.”

  He rests his chin on my head. “Maybe a little while.”

  For a second, I close my eyes and pretend the rest of my life doesn’t exist. I don’t resent my legacy. I love my sisters, and I take pride in our destiny. But sometimes, in moments like this, with my arms around Nick and his heart beating against my ear, I want to be a normal girl with normal girl problems.

  I know these moments never last long, but I’m going to hold on to it for as long as I can, because after this one is over, I have a feeling that “normal” won’t even be in my vocabulary anymore.

  I sigh and listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Normal. Just . . . normal.

  CHAPTER 27

  GREER

  For the longest time, I just watch him.

  He’s sitting on a wrought iron bench in front of a small pond. There are ducks in the pond and blossoms on the tulip trees. Just like my vision. The setting is so peaceful, and so at odds with the emotions battling in him.

  I almost don’t want to add myself into the equation. I might tip the balance either way. But, in the end, I have to. We need him
.

  I move silently, my footsteps light on the path as I walk down to his bench. I half expect him to sense my presence, so I’m surprised when I make it all the way into his peripheral vision before he notices me.

  “You lost the connection with Apollo.”

  It’s a statement, not a question.

  “I wouldn’t call it a loss,” I reply, moving around the bench to look down at him. “But, yes, I’m a beacon no more. How did you know?”

  He glances up, his eyes dark with pain. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” I ask. “That you’re secretly an assassin sent to kill Grace and the rest of us so we can’t open the door?”

  His brow scrunches up in confusion. Clearly, he thought I would be a little more upset about his confession. He doesn’t know me very well yet.

  “What does that have to do with you reading my mind?”

  He rests his elbows on his knees, clenching his hands together. “Artemis and Apollo are twins.”

  “I know that.” I am well versed in classical mythology. “They are the children of Zeus and Leto, the goddess of motherhood.”

  “As twins,” he explains, “they have a supernatural connection that links their thoughts. As a soldier of Artemis, I was branded with her mark.”

  He releases his hands and pulls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. There, inked into the flesh where his arm meets his shoulder, is a dark green tattoo in the shape of a bow and arrow—the symbol of the goddess of the hunt.

  “This connects me to her in the same way the pendant connected you to Apollo.” He tugs his sleeve back down. “It connected me to you, until your death severed the bond.”

  “So you really could read my mind?”

  He shifts uncomfortably. “Not exactly. It was more like some of your thoughts—mostly your visions—ended up in my mind too. I didn’t go looking for them.”

  Well, that is a lot to process. Not only did I form a magical connection to a god, but that connection also tied me to his twin sister and those who bear her mark.

  The world of Greek mythology is exceptionally complicated.

  Maybe things will begin to make more sense the longer I’m involved.