by Nicole Thorn
“What do we do with her?” Jasper said. “If we call the police, they’ll probably going to wonder why we’ve been involved with two dead parent cases in a matter of days.”
“I can Charm them,” Zander offered. “As long as no one else thinks about the oddity of it, then we’ll be fine. How often do police officers check out another’s case, anyway?”
Jasper shrugged. “I don’t know any cops to pose such a question to.”
They sounded so calm about this, but then again, why shouldn’t they? I had spent the most time with Gwen. They had hardly known her.
“You don’t have to worry about her,” Hades said from behind us. I didn’t even jump; my nerves had been frayed so badly. I turned around to look at the man. He looked as disheveled as I’d ever seen him. Even his Australian accent sounded tired. His shoulders slumped, and bags hung under his eyes. His silver hair looked messy, like he had pulled on it a couple of times.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, shaking my head. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He offered me a small smile that only made me feel worse. “It’s not your fault dear. I’ll take care of Gwen. All you need to do is take care of my son.” He looked up the stairs. When he had mostly turned away, I saw the sadness change to a quiet rage. It filled his eyes to the brim, and sent little shivers down my spine. Hades hadn’t been threatening or scary until that moment. It wanted to wake up my old fear, but too much of me focused on Verin. Too much of me felt wrung out.
And the tough part hadn’t even begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
Vulnerable
Verin
They all talked around me, as if I didn’t sit there. I could hear them. Did they know that? Kizzy and Zander should’ve known better. They’d gotten back about ten minutes and not one person had said anything to me. Juniper threw me a couple of looks, and it felt like she didn’t know if she should touch me or not. I wished she would just stop talking and sit with me.
Sometime later, they informed me that my father had taken Mum’s body somewhere. He must have seen her soul when she arrived in the Underworld. He would have made her feel safe, and comforted her as best he could. I couldn’t make anything better for her. I couldn’t even call upon her with her body gone. I hadn’t learned how to yet. Useless in every way I could be.
Moments. I knew it had been moments. If I’d gotten home sooner, or if I’d been smarter, Mum would still be there. She would be smiling, and dancing, and breathing. I had been careless. I had always been careless. I thought I had been better, and that nothing could touch anyone I loved as long as I stopped them. My thick head told me that I had been unstoppable, and that it would all be fine. Everything I believed in had been wrong, and I found out much too late.
I blinked, and Juniper finally stood in front of me. She made me wait so long that I thought she would just give the job to someone else. I would’ve been too much to handle. Funny, because I thought that prophecy had all been lies. Maybe not, because a mountain crumbled today.
“Can you hear me?” Juniper asked, voice soft as she whispered.
I nodded. “I hear you.” My voice sounded normal, and I disliked that. It should’ve been weak and strained. I just sounded quiet.
She nodded and took my hand. “Do you need anything? Food or water, or whatever?”
“No. I’d just like to sit for a while.”
I left the blanket on the chair, and started heading up the stairs to Juniper’s room. I heard too many voices down here, and I wanted quiet. I wanted to fall into the void.
Juniper followed me into her bedroom, and let me crawl under her covers. She stood by the door, closing it while I laid there like a waste and remembered all the things wrong I’d done that led to my mother’s death.
An hour might have passed where Juniper didn’t move an inch, and didn’t speak a word. I stared at the wall, unseeing and unmoving the entire time. Finally, I said something to her, because I couldn’t take the silence. “Sit with me.”
Juniper’s eyes looked up to meet mine, and she hesitated before speaking to me. “O-okay.” Walking in a hurry, she got herself to the other side of the bed. I turned to her and she settled into a sitting position.
“How are you feeling?” she asked me.
I answered honestly. “Empty.”
I felt nothing inside of me past guilt and failure. Ten minutes might have saved her life, and I hadn’t been there. I had taken my time walking home after saying goodbye to Juniper. If I’d been there, I could have changed everything. Killed Argus, or at least distracted him long enough for Mum to get somewhere safe.
“This was my fault,” I said. “Argus went after her because she was all I had. A punishment.”
They had been careful when they got back in the house, talking about who killed her, and not how. I could have guessed. No blood, and the bruising had been a help. Around her neck, everything looked wrong. It had been quick, and I had nothing else to hold onto.
“This was not your fault,” Juniper said adamantly. “I hate when people say stuff like that, blaming themselves for something like this. The person to blame is the one that—the person who made this choice. Not you. Not for not being there, and not for trying to stop a man who’s trying to do bad things. Nothing you did was wrong, and if your mother were here, I think she would hit you for taking the blame.”
But she wasn’t here anymore. The woman I spent my entire life being taken care of by, and taking care of in return, was just . . . gone. Dead. She had been my whole life, and now I didn’t have her. What would I do without her? I had nothing.
“She would,” I agreed. “But that changes nothing.”
Juniper went quiet.
I literally didn’t know what to do. Around this time, I would normally be making sure Mum had something to eat, and she would be fine for the night. I had nothing at all. No family, and no people I truly felt like I could turn to. The people in this house felt obligated to let me stay. They put up with me because I was another demigod, and we had all been roped into a mission. If I left, I doubted a single one would try and get me to stay.
For all the fighting I’d done for Juniper, I didn’t know if it meant anything to her. She had sunken too deep in denial to see the truth. Right now, I couldn’t think about fighting for much of anything. I could’ve laid there for years, unmoving.
Though, I should’ve been doing something else.
I dragged myself into a sitting position, throwing the blankets off of me. “Argus is going to die today,” I decided. “I don’t know what this was to him. A warning, a punishment, or a declaration of war. It doesn’t matter, because it’s over now.”
I got out of bed, ignoring Juniper’s questions as I walked out of the room and headed down the stairs. I needed answers if I would make this as right as I could.
Everyone still sat sullenly in the living room. The black aura in the room felt just like my insides, but I couldn’t let myself shut down. Not until this ended. I had too much work to do.
“I want to know where he is,” I said, making four heads snap up as I got to the bottom of the stairs. “I want to know where he’s hiding out, and what army he’s amassed.”
Zander stood, keeping his expression blank. “Wait.” He raised his hands. “We can’t just go out guns a blazin’ and start a fight we might not win.”
“Fine,” I lied. “We need to know where he is, no matter what. If he’s planning on doing something else to one of us, I want to know right now.” I would not let what happened to my mother happen to anyone else. No more death that I didn’t have a say in.
“That would be up to me,” Juniper said, walking up to my side. “I can see where he is and what he’s doing.”
Good.
Juniper sat on the couch, her siblings at her side. They took her hands, and this all felt familiar. The three of them would always have each other, and I knew that. Same with Zander and Kizzy. Until the end, it would be the seers and the demigods. I didn’t f
it into either little group. My family had gone to the Underworld, and I felt stuck topside, by myself.
Juniper talked through her vision, and I listened to every detail of the surroundings she described. The forest and people fighting—no, training. She said it looked like they trained, being overseen by Argus. Bastard had started building up his army. He killed my mother like she had been nothing, and then went back to business as usual. The rage in me billowed, and I wanted to act.
I had to stay. Stay long enough that this little family wouldn’t be able to stop me. They would try, and I didn’t trust their reasoning. It would be too much, and we would be defeated. I didn’t buy that. Honestly, I didn’t care. I didn’t care if it would be my death march. I wanted this to end.
Night came fast, and they decided that we would talk about it after some sleep. I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to try.
“You’re staying here tonight,” Juniper decided for me. “I don’t want you alone in your house.”
And I didn’t want to be alone in that house. I didn’t want to be in the house where my mother had been killed, and where I failed. I would feel it when I walked into that house. I would feel death and decay and blackness.
I nodded, and went to make up a bed on the couch. I wouldn’t sleep on it of course, but I needed to keep up appearances.
Before I could move the pillow, Juniper took my hand. “Stay with me tonight,” she said. “You don’t have to be alone.”
Even Jasper didn’t comment on that, probably too smart to think anything sordid would happen. And I had felt too out of my mind to think about the subject. It took everything just to put one foot in front of the other.
Juniper got ready for bed, and I removed my boots before I got in. She wouldn’t think anything of it. I had gotten in bed when she came back into the room. She joined me in the silence.
***
I thought a couple of hours passed before Juniper fell asleep. She hadn’t tried talking to me about what happened, and I felt quite grateful for that. Talking it out would do nothing to solve this, or to make me feel better. I didn’t want to heal from this. I wanted to feel it forever, because my mistake ended it all. I deserved to hurt.
I snuck out of the bed, and turned back to Juniper as she slept. She didn’t have any pace on her face, even under. Nightmares no doubt caused by me. I couldn’t protect her from her own head, but I could protect her from this world. One life lost felt like far too many, and I intended on that number never rising again.
I quietly wrote out a note, telling her something that I hoped would be a comfort. I didn’t know if I would come back from this, and I didn’t have anything but her that I’d miss. The only thing I would care about leaving behind if I died tonight. And she didn’t know it, or she didn’t believe it, but one day, she would. She would know what she meant to me. I hoped when that day came, the note would mean something to her. I hoped I would be back in time that she wouldn’t need to read it, and I could tell her in person.
I left the house, intent on finishing what Argus started.
I took my car, because walking would take far too long. My calm left me as soon as I left the house holding Juniper, and it took most of my concentration to not crash into something. The streets looked empty of cars, and that helped. I could speed without worry, rushing past red lights and stop signs as I went.
The blackness in me could feel the marks of hundreds of others that I headed for. Killers, every one of them, and I would be just one more. Days ago, I’d never taken a life. Not ever. And now, I had one death under my belt, and another I had a hand in. I planned on that number increasing when I got to the camp. I didn’t care how black that made my soul. I didn’t care who it made me.
Argus picked her because he knew. He knew that all I really had in this world had been my mother. From the beginning to the end. It had been a coward’s move, hurting a woman who couldn’t defend herself. I knew that had been one of the reasons he picked her instead of Juniper. She had back up, and Mum didn’t. Just me, and I had been busy.
I could do the same to him.
I parked far from where I knew they would be camping out, because I wanted them to have no warning. The screaming of their falling allies would alert them. Then let the rest of them come.
Through the trees, I moved quietly. I had no weapon at my side, because I didn’t want to bring one. I wanted my hands to be what ended these people. I wanted to feel it.
The walk through the woods got me nothing but too much time. I thought about how scared Mum would have been when Argus got in the house. Did she try and run? Or call out to me for help? Did she scream for me? No one would tell me, even if I asked and they knew. Jasper would know, because he saw it all in his head. I prayed that it had all been quick, and the thought of that made me sick. The thought that a fast death for Mum would’ve somehow been a thing to hope for.
This all felt wrong. She should’ve died an old woman. Wrinkled, and wanting to meet up with old friends and family again. She had too much to do. She wanted to see me marry Juniper, and make children for her to fawn over. She should’ve knitted them sweaters, and bought them little toys, and spoiled them rotten. Juniper should’ve finally known what it felt like to have a mother that loved her and treated her the way she deserved. They all should’ve gotten that. The seers, and Kizzy and Zander. They could have had so much more in their lives. And Mum would have treated their children like her grandchildren as well. Bitter pictures appeared up in my head, showing me a bunch of little kids running around with her, all that life in her eyes. That wouldn’t happen. None of us would ever see her again, and she would never meet my children. I had so much to mourn
But that would need to wait.
Revenge first.
I approached the camp, and it sounded silent as they slept. A few torches had been lit, two to a cabin as far as I could see. The cabins looked shoddily put together and small. Probably with two or three people crammed into each, and only used for sleeping. Why would you need more if you spent your days training?
Yes, these people would be well trained and not all human. A challenge, but one that I didn’t care about facing. I would take down as many of them as I could before I fell. I smiled at the thought of blood on my hands.
I found myself at the first cabin, and the door hadn’t been locked. Why would they lock it if they believed they could fight off whatever came? That wouldn’t be a problem after tonight.
Four people slept in their makeshift beds, safe and sound. If I wanted to get as many of them taken care of as possible, I would need to start out slowly. Thankfully, I had many weapons tossed about on the floor. I picked up a dagger and got started.
I hovered above one of them, a boy by the look of him. Maybe Zander’s age, and a human. Unfortunate for him.
I ran him through the eye, and he died before he could have felt a thing. Just like my mother, and just like the rest of the fighters in this small cabin. I walked through, taking them out one by one without making enough noise to wake anyone up. That silence let me hear what went on outside. Through the crackling of the fires, I heard blades clink together and people speaking. Ah, so some of them trained at night. Judging by the size of the camp, I wouldn’t be all that shocked if they had to take training shifts to ensure the better taught ones could get more time with those newbies.
There would be no sneaking up on them, so I came up with a better plan. I popped outside for a spell, just to grab a torch. With it in my hands, I sighed at the bodies before me. All alive one moment, and gone the next, like their time meant nothing. I would have cared more if they had been on the right side of this fight. They chose to fight for the bad guys, and I chose to end their lives. I couldn’t do anything else to keep Juniper safe. If I died in the process . . . so be it.
I dropped the torch onto the floor, and it caught fire instantly. I need a few minutes before anyone else could smell or see it, and that would give me the time to take out at least one more cabin. Then ev
eryone would rush to the cabin on fire, and buy me even more time.
I entered another cabin, and found four people in this one as well. Really stuffing them in, huh? Oh well. I took out two of them, and walked up to the third. A woman, and a demigod at that. Betraying her parent and her people by joining Argus, and I bet it had been some stupid and bitter act on her part. They always took it personally when a god didn’t care about their children. Demigods could be too blind to see that we meant nothing to most gods. And in all honesty, sometimes they just liked some of us better. The demigods just didn’t know how to play the game.
“Hey!” the fourth fighter shouted at me. Ah, damn. That would complicate things.
The woman who I’d been getting ready to kill woke up, and she reached out for me. I still had a dagger, so I stuck it in the middle of her chest, aiming for her heart. No need to try and be quiet now. I could smell the fire, and this man behind me decided to be rude and yell.
I turned to him as he swung his arm out at me. He had to have been new to this, because that seemed like the wrong move to make. I grabbed his fist with my free hand, and bent his arm backward. Of course, he screamed in agony at the way the bone popped right out of his skin.
“Ah, it’s all right,” I laughed. “No need to cry.”
I pulled his body to mine, and held him by the hair while I dug the dagger into his throat, so deep that I wondered if he would get to keep his head. He died while I held him upright. I dropped him when I heard the other fighters coming.
I slipped out the door, seeing them running to the cabin engulfed in flames. Well, that worked out pretty nicely. I decided to take another torch and go around, spreading the fun to as many cabins as I could get to. It surprised me to find out people still in some of them.
It didn’t take long for me to be spotted, and with the fun just about to begin. They didn’t ask for my name, or what I wanted. Either they knew, or it didn’t matter.
