Another quick inhale. "Your apartment is still standing. Just the complex. But the wards."
It's as if she's falling through the mesh of the swivel chair, her limbs not wanting to move, her legs lead. "How?" She asks, her heart strangely not pounding. "Was anyone hurt?"
"I don't know."
"My cats --"
"I don't know."
Aimes blinks, unable to process anything but the fluorescent lights and the brief movements of air.
Tentative, as if not wanting to upset her further, the phone briefly crackles. "Are you okay?"
And that seems like too much of a question to answer, but her heart isn't pounding and her hands aren't shaking. "I'll call you back." And she abruptly clicks off the phone, staring at it, breathing hard.
They tried to smoke her out.
AIMES (2:02 PM): They tried to burn out my apartment.
The dots appear three times on her screen, but no reply comes for a while, and she stares at the screen and just. Breathes.
TALL GUY (2:11 PM): It's still standing, the pets are scared but okay, just some smoke.
Her brows furrow.
AIMES (2:12 PM): Can you come get me?
She attempts to stare at the screen for a while, but the code now makes a mockery of her, and it's too much to even contemplate trying to fix anything else.
It's not like her heart is pounding, but something isn't right. Her landlord should've called, not the nebulous government official. Well, they most definitely have everything of hers tracked, but.
Still.
TALL GUY (2:20 PM): No.
She flips up the phone, dialing Katya.
"He says my cats are safe," she says, quick.
There's a moment of heavy breathing from Katya. "Good." But it’s...strange. Like a voice box, someone imitating her voice but not actually speaking like her.
"Can you come pick me up?" She asks, tentative, the skin on the back of her arms prickling. "Jake can't, and I want to check..."
There's a choked off sound, like Katya's crying a bit, but her voice is just as professional as before. "I'm sending Miri." There's something, a crackle off the phone, something in the background.
The hair on her arms rise up. "Thanks."
And Aimes spends the next forty-five minutes staring at the computer screen, something off.
Katya shouldn't sound like that, even in crisis. It's as if she was spoken to by two different people, both with Katya's voice.
Iakov should be able to get her, even if she's in danger. Even if he's in danger. He got her out of Vegas, and can get her out of this.
Breathing hard, she grips the handle of the bronze knife in her purse, waiting.
Miri doesn't have a hair out of place, but her eyes are wide as she regards Aimes's grim face as Aimes climbs into her car. "I want you to know that I do not want to do this," she says, her honeyed voice grim. "I don't want any part of this."
Aimes nods as she buckles herself up. "Sorry."
The car, one of those rickety old Corolla's that's still stick shift, jerks into motion, and Miri drives it way more white knuckled than is normal. "You shouldn't...go into the apartment." Miri says, her voice reluctant. "It'll probably be not safe."
"If your apartment burned down, would you want to go see what's left?" Aimes snaps, leaning her head against the cool glass of the window, watching as the 210 becomes the 134.
Miri grips the wheel tighter. "Not if demigods were the one that burned them down." She spits out. "I'd run. I'd run away and never come back."
Aimes glances at her. "Is Katya okay?"
Miri's lips thin. "Haven't seen her today, just got an email to pick you up with the deets." Her profile darkens, her brow drawing down. "I can't believe she'd send you there," she says, soft, almost contemplative. "She should've.."
There's a long silence, with just the bumps in the road for music. "She should've what?"
Miri shakes her head and purses her lips even further. "Not my place to question the boss."
Aimes turns in her seat and faces her. "What."
With a yank, Miri pulls them over to the shoulder of the freeway and jerks the car to a stop, and the seat belts pull Aimes back with a shock. "Are you sure you spoke with Katya?" She asks, earnest. Horns blare at them streaming down the side of the freeway, but she pays them no attention.
Aimes blinks at her, and Miri is wide-eyed and innocent looking as possible. "It was her voice."
"It was her voice, but was it her?" She asks, slowly.
Taking a deep breath and ignoring the many honks, Aimes stares her in the eyes. "I don't know."
Miri's throat works, her porcelain skin pale, with two patches of pink high on her cheeks. "I don't think you should go there."
"Yeah, I gathered that."
They stare at each other, for a few moments, before Miri sighs, explosive. "Are you at least armed?"
Aimes pats her bag. "Bronze knife."
"I'm not going to go close. I'll...drop you off a block away." Miri starts the car, and the engine sputters to life, before she jerks the car back onto the freeway. "And if Katya's in there, get her out?"
She nods, heart pounding from the horns and the jerking of the car. "Yeah."
True to her word, Miri pulls over in front of the Tiki Bar, and refuses to budge forward. "If it was seriously on fire, we'd see the smoke by now." She points out, her face white.
Indeed, the air is as clean as you could get in Burbank. "Yeah."
Miri's eyes flicker to her, then down to her phone, flickering open the Find Friends app, and Katya's name is directly in her apartment. "Do you...do you want a gun?" Her voice is small. "Mine is at the office, we could get it."
Aimes shakes her head, opening up the rickety door and taking a big gulp of decidedly not-smoky air. "Something tells me I shouldn't delay this sort of thing."
"You could always run." Her voice is gentle, soothing. "No one would think ill of you."
She stands. "Thanks for the ride." And shuts the door behind her, catching only a glimpse of Miri's concerned face in the window, before she strides away.
Running's more of Iakov's thing, anyways.
So she walks, feeling strangely okay with pretty much everything, but her hand gripping tight at the knife in her bag.
Worst case scenario, she goes in and they try to kill her. Which, okay, is pretty bad, but considering she wanted to catch one of them anyways it can't be that off base.
Best case scenario is everything's okay. Katya's in the apartment looking for evidence, and Iakov is fuck off who knows where, just busy.
As she walks down the familiar cracked sidewalk, she keeps on expecting some sort of panic to hit her, some sort of shortness of breath, but nothing comes. It's surreal, cause the sun is shining and the cars are speeding and the air smells faintly of concrete and smog and it would be the same as any other day; if not to what she might be walking to.
Her phone dings, and she almost jumps a foot off the ground.
TRIXIE (2:45 PM): Can we do Tiki room tonight?
She stares at her phone, cause seriously how do you respond to a text when you're about to walk into a potential hostage situation? She's loathe to set plans for a bar when she might not, you know, still be alive in a few hours.
So instead of answering she shoves her phone back into her purse, resuming her grip on the knife.
Miri had spoken true, and there’s no smoke or fire trucks in front of her little complex.
The door creaks open at her touch, not even properly latched, and the first thing she sees is both her cats nestled on the couch, blinking sleepily at her. There's a rush in her chest as she dashes forward, throwing her arms around them on the couch and burying her head in their fur.
The smart one meows, soft and confused, before squirming to be not crushed, staring as if she is absolutely insane.
"Yeah, yeah," she whispers, petting their heads. "Okay, you guys are fine."
She reshoulders her purse, for the ai
r is too still and too quiet, and steels herself to go into the bedroom and...
...It's empty. Fully empty, the bedsheets still rumpled from this morning, and the air still smelling faintly of Iakov's cologne.
"Fuck." Aimes whispers into the dead air. "Fuck."
She scrambles for her phone, before hesitating. Who the hell would she call? If Katya and Iakov are somehow compromised, and Miri wouldn't come back to her if you paid her millions...
She dials Trixie, and she picks up before the first ring even finishes.
"I meant tonight, Aimes, not right now," Trixie says.
"I think something's' happened with Katya and Iakov, and I don't know where they are," Aimes blurts out. "I got a call that they tried to burn down my apartment but it's fine, and I don't --"
"One sec," Trixie interrupts, then says something in a flurry of French to someone off phone, then, "So you're at your place."
Aimes smoothes a hand on her bedsheets, not wanting to sit down. "Yeah."
There's a pause. "You don't know where they are?"
"They suggested they were here."
"That sounds...suspicious." Trixie's voice echoes that tingling feeling in the back of her neck.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, but --" A breath of wind, just the movement of air, and she twists, hand gripping the knife in her purse and --
Harsh fingers dig into her shoulder, and she's not in her apartment anymore, her phone crunching to the ground.
She staggers back, and one of the twins - Vanya or Pieter - just grips her arm tighter. His lip is split, and he looks as if he had been drug through a dirt road, his hair peppered with grime. He bleeds, sluggish, from what looks to be a bullet graze on his arm.
The other twin, looking put together and polished smooth, paces behind a chair, where Iakov slumps, his eyes bleary.
It's like time froze. His arms twisted behind him in some parody of restraints, Iakov meets her eyes, his shoulder cranked back, suggesting a dislocated socket. He's tied to a chair, lashed with something resembling computer cords.
Behind him, on the floor, almost beyond view, lies Katya's crumpled body. The quick moment she gets to look doesn't tell her if her chest is rising or falling.
Her gun is next to her.
There's a lot of blood on the carpet.
The room they're in is so nondescript that she feels like she's in some sort of parallel universe. Something almost a hotel room or almost a basement, and the frozen moment ends.
The polished twin, pacing behind the chair, smiles at her, and it's too close to Iakov's smile for comfort. "So you did come." He grins outright, as if it’s a clever joke.
Her purse slides down her shoulder, and she struggles to hike it up. "I don't --"
The other twin's hand tightens further, almost to the point of pain, deep into her shoulder...but he doesn't remove her purse.
They don't know.
The polished twin, whichever one he is, strides in front of Iakov, his attention from Aimes evaporating like a ghost. "We have her, now," he says, voice smooth, and the pit of Aimes stomach drops. "We have her, and there's nothing stopping us."
Aimes shrugs her purse back on, and dives her hand into it, closing once more on the knife. Now her heart's pounding, of course, and her palms slick with sweat, but she has it.
And they're not even looking at her. None of them are, Iakov's eyes half lidded shut narrow at the twins.
The one gripping her gives her a little shake, and it's as if he honestly thinks that the one hand on her upper arm is enough to restrain her properly. "We can kill her now, and kill you," he says, slow, his voice rattling around in his chest. "Or..."
He trails off, and Iakov jerks his eyes over to the other twin, as if years of experience shows him who will speak next.
"Or you can join with us," the polished twin's voice is smooth, gentle, more akin to telling someone something soothing than anything world changing. More like a waiter telling of a food option than something that could, if she understands it well enough, kill millions of people.
Iakov glances at her, a quick, beseeching glance, one that speaks too much. He flicks his eyes to the side, where Katya is, but she still can't tell if her chest is rising or not.
Some of the blood on the floor is coming from Iakov's side, she realizes, belated. "Are you hurt?" She blurts out.
The attention of all three Demigods turns to her, as if they forgot she could speak.
Iakov nods, slow, his lips tightening and his face paling, as if indescribable horror crossed his mind. "Aimes," he whispers, his voice broken, "Aimes, I'm okay." His breath hitches, and she feels a bubble in the back of her throat, like his distress reaches across the room to her and takes hold around her neck. His eyes flicker to Katya.
The fingers close tighter around her arm, and she flinches. Cold radiates down her elbow, as if he is attempting to freeze her blood and stop her veins. "Iakov," the twin spits out, then launches into a barrage of Russian that leaves her blinking.
She has to stab him.
The other twin is too far away for her to reach, not by surprise and not in any reality. After she takes out one...
For an odd, disassociated moment, while they spit at each other in furious Russian, she wonders if the twins can feel each other's pain. If they are somehow like her and Iakov, if it will hurt like that.
A stuttering breath from Iakov cuts through her thoughts. He's staring at her, wild eyed, still forcing out Russian.
The twin holding her shakes her, as if punctuation in a sentence she can't understand, but, she thinks she sees Katya's foot move.
Relief flooding her, she meets Iakov's eyes again.
Wetness rims his eyes, like he's about to cry. As if they can communicate telepathically, Aimes nods at him, hoping it to be something resembling comforting.
He sucks in a deep breath, as if steeling himself, tearing his eyes away from Aimes, and she gets the horrid, sinking sensation that he's about to do something very, very stupid.
So she shifts her grip on the knife. Pivots around the arm held tight by the twin, pulling up her other arm and stabbing down.
The knife slides into his chest, as easy as if she is slipping it into a knife block, and doesn't stop until her fist around the handle thumps against his chest.
There's either no sound, or her ears are roaring too loud, but the twin stares down at her, his eyebrows coming together, and his confused expression is just too close to Iakov's that she closes her eyes.
The chest against her fist jerks, then slumps forward, and she struggles to keep herself upright.
And in an instant, the intense quiet breaks. The other twin, the one across the room, lets out a coarse yell, dashing forward.
Aimes jerks out the knife, and it catches on his sternum bone, scratching like nails on a chalkboard. As she stumbles away, that twin falls, slumping over. His brother catches him before he hits the carpet.
Her entire arm is coated in vivid red blood, sticking to her arm hairs and dripping on her fingers, and she brandishes at the remaining twin.
"Get out," she says, and her voice trembles along with her hand, but he looks at her, his eyes wide, stricken.
The twin on the floor, with the gaping bloody hole in his chest, stares unseeing up at the wall of the room. Or, at least, his eyes are open, unblinking, and his chest doesn't rise and his blood doesn't stop leaking onto the carpet.
With a lump rising in her throat, she knows he's dead. He's dead, one of the twins is dead, and she's the one that did it.
The remaining twin stares at her, as if he's unable to do anything else.
"Get out. Leave," she says again, gesturing with the knife. "Leave us alone."
His eyes flickering between her and Iakov, his face grey, he crawls to his feet, leaving his dead twin on the floor. His polished suit is slicked with blood, and he backs away from her, holding his hands up.
His fingertips shake, and his eyes unfocus as she watches, as if something inside him b
reaks down. His face goes slack, and he twitches.
She gestures with the knife, more of a wild stab at the air than anything coordinated, and he disappears with a flash, leaving the body of his brother behind.
And then, only then, in the sudden quiet of the room left behind, does she look over at Iakov.
Their eyes meet for a second, then she drops the knife with a clatter and rushes over to him. "Oh my god," she blurts out, and for once she's covered in way more blood than he is. "Oh my god, are you at all okay?"
For a brief moment he recoils away from her, and she freezes. Then he takes a deep breath, nods, his face wet. "What," he rasps, then shakes his head as if to dislodge what just happened.
She jerks around him, to where Katya is stirring. There's blood under her hair, but she's breathing.
With shaking hands, Aimes unties the copper cord holding Iakov to the chair, and he groans when the pressure is off his shoulder. "We should get out...leave," she says, and her voice sounds strange even to her own ears. "Katya needs help."
Faster than he should be able to, he whips around, pulling her to him and clutching her against his chest, smearing blood between them. His arms shaking, he holds her there, as if doing anything else is too hard. "Aimes," he starts, but he's trembling too hard to do anything else. "Aimes, how..."
"I don't know," and for a split second she lets herself close her eyes and lean against him. "I don't know, but now they can't...they can't. Right?"
He takes a shuddering breath. "I don't think so."
She leans against him for one pounding heartbeat, then pushes away, her hand sticky. "We need to --"
"Katya, yes." He mutters, a hand twisting in her shirt, as if unwilling to let her go. "Hospital?"
"Yes." She agrees, her words hollow in her ears. "Where even are we?"
He shifts away from her and grunts with the pain. "Romania?"
He takes them to a glistening beautiful hospital somewhere clearly in the U.S, stays only long enough to call Miri to let her know which hospital and text Trixie that she's safe, then, as he starts slumping over in the waiting room, she prods him and he whirls away to her apartment.
Marked by the Demigod Page 21
