Blackhearted Betrayal (5 page)

Nearly an hour after we left the subway behind, Durra approached a building deep in the Belly that seemed a likely spot for a meet-and-greet with her superior, a pantheon, or temple dedicated to all the gods and goddesses. Fitting, considering that’s who Furies were officially sworn to serve. Some of us had our personal favorites, of course, but we owed allegiance to no one god in particular.

It wasn’t a big shocker to discover that the pantheon crawled with Megaeras. Hell, with an undeclared civil war brewing, their Prime would be an idiot to venture away from the Palladium without a substantial guard force to watch her back—and front—and both sides. So far, no matter how much she’d pissed me off, the Prime Megaera hadn’t struck me as the slightest bit stupid. Bitchy and treacherous, yes; stupid, not so much.

Durra exchanged inaudible murmurs with one of her sisters before turning back to Mom and me. “The Megaera awaits us just beyond this antechamber. I assume neither of you carries spell-worked silver?”

Even though that was a big no-no on sacred ground unless one was a temple guardian, I couldn’t blame her for checking. Her ass would be in just as much trouble as ours should she bring us before her Prime carrying the metal lethal to our kind. She didn’t take us at our word, of course—the slight tingle of a magical scan washed over us before she was satisfied we spoke truly. Durra nodded to the sister closest to the door, who then swung it open. Mom and I followed the assassin-turned-kidnapper-turned-escort without a word.

Modern-day pantheons were more like Christian churches than their predecessors. We passed from the cold marble antechamber into a warmly decorated chapel
consisting of a dozen rows of pews leading to a carpeted dais—the chancel—on the far side of the room. Gorgeous tapestries lined the chapel walls in between elegant stained-glass windows throughout the room. Several tense-looking Megaeras sat in the front pew, staring up at the chancel’s sole occupant: a tall, dark-skinned woman in full Fury form who bore a vague resemblance to the olive branch-bearer-turned-hostage.
The
Megaera.

As if she could hear my mental identification, she turned emerald eyes toward Mom and me. My steps faltered slightly as I followed in Durra’s wake, but I tightened my lips and turned the stumble into an outright strut. I was a
Tisiphone
, dammit, and no way would I let another Fury intimidate me as if I’d just Fledged yesterday. Not even
the
Prime Megaera.

I forced my gaze back to her Furied-out eyes and finished looking her over. Her dark brown skin set off the red leather uniform way better than my pasty white skin did. Her hair, while the typical Fury’s charcoal in color, had been plaited into several dozen braids wound into tight buns jutting out from her scalp, no doubt in homage to her homeland. Based upon her great-aunt’s slight accent and Durra’s fanatic devotion, I was willing to bet her birthplace was somewhere in central Africa.

Durra reached the foot of the dais and distracted me from my unabashed appraisal. She went down on one knee, placed a hand upon her heart, and muttered something in an unfamiliar language too rapidly for me to channel magic to comprehend. Definitely sounded like Swahili or something similar. I tried to remember exactly where Durra was from, but we hadn’t been close even
before
she tried to kill me.

The Megaera’s sudden sharp voice belied the pleased nod she gave her sister. It also matched her great-aunt’s in accent. “Keep to English, Durra, so that all present may understand.” And to lower the chance we might pick up enough clues to figure out who she was in case we needed to track her down again later.

Durra nodded. “Of course, Prime. I bring with me Allegra and Marissa Holloway of the Tisiphone to answer your summons, as requested.”

Ten to one that hadn’t been the phrase originally spoken.

The Megaera accepted Durra’s announcement with a graceful flick of her wrist. Durra rose smoothly, bowed first to her Prime, then—to my surprise—Mom and me, before joining her sisters on the front pew, leaving mother and daughter Tisiphone to face the imposing Megaera alone.

Fortunately for my still-developing diplomatic skills, tradition dictated that the seniormost sister—in this case, Mom—spoke first. “As your sister Megaera indicated, we two of the Tisiphone stand before you in answer to your summons. By what right do you summon sisters not of your own class?”

The Prime touched her palms together and inclined her head respectfully. “By my right to serve as Voice of the Triad.”

Shocked whispers behind us demonstrated that the other Megaeras felt as much surprise as Mom and me. She and I shared a look before focusing on the Megaera again.

Mom’s voice sounded much less accusatory and more awed this time. “The Triad has spoken to you directly?”

The Prime nodded, expression more serene than I
could have managed under the same set of circumstances. Serving as leader of the individual classes was only one function performed by the Prime Furies. Their more sacred duty was to act as messengers for the gods and goddesses on those rare occasions they chose to communicate with the Sisterhood directly. The last time I personally knew of its happening came only from secondhand stories told to me: Upon the night of Hazuki’s assassination, the Moerae who finally succeeded in brokering that blood-soaked Peace Accord ending the Great War only to be murdered by a splinter faction of arcanes who did
not
want peace on any terms. After her assassination, the Sisterhood’s first instinct had been to hunt down and slaughter her assassins, something that would have plunged us straight from one war into another. The Deities had forbidden that act by speaking through all three Prime Furies, leaving the Sisterhood no choice but to obey. Of course, the Deities might speak with the Primes more often than word got out, but still. That was a pretty startling statement.

The Megaera’s abrupt reversal from trying to kill us to suing for peace made all-too-much sense. The Deities themselves had intervened. Rather than be merely grateful, however, I was a whole lot of scared shitless. For them to exercise a rite so rarely used, things had to be even worse than any of us expected, like the difference between the
Titanic
heading toward an iceberg and a moon-sized meteor hurtling toward earth. Mom’s fingers clutching at my hand showed that she, too, was terrified.

The Prime turned her attention from Mom and me to the sisters behind. “Leave us,” she commanded.

Several of the Megaeras shot us uneasy glances but
scurried to do her bidding. Durra, not surprisingly, protested. “But that would leave you defenseless, Pri—” The Prime’s eyes flashed a brighter shade of green that had Durra scrambling toward the door.
Nobody
—however well-intentioned—accused a Prime of being defenseless and got away with it, not to mention gainsaid a direct order. “As you wish,” Durra choked out before vanishing after her sisters.

The Prime gave a deep sigh when the chapel door thudded shut. “If only children would
think
before they speak.”

Mom gave me a sardonic glance before smiling slightly. “If
only
.”

An answering smile flashed across the Megaera’s face before she became businesslike once more. “Now that we are alone, I can prepare you.”

That
didn’t sound particularly good.

“The Triad desires to speak with you both.”

My knees buckled but not due to the injury I’d suffered when saving Scott from insurmountable odds. Drumbeats sounded inside my ears in sharp staccato for several seconds before I realized it was my pulse pounding in fear. Funny, in a not-ha sort of way, since a minute earlier I thought myself incapable of being any more scared.

Just as the Sisterhood had its hierarchies—apprentices like Cori, sisters like me, and Elder Furies like Mom, so, too, did the Immortals. Demigoddesses such as Furies who
barely
counted and were usually classified with the other arcanes, lesser gods and goddesses who were
truly
immortal (meaning they could not be killed in any way, shape, or form) but had either little magical or political
power, and the greater gods and goddesses who were referred to as Deities-with-a-capital-
D
. The divine beings falling into this category were those who possessed a shitload of power both magically
and
politically (as reckoned by fellow immortals). The Triad referred to whichever three Deities currently had enough magical and political power among Their fellows to be elected as nominal leaders. While They didn’t rule over their peers in the strictest sense of the term, They
were
responsible for serving as Tribunals against any immortal thought to have committed crimes against other immortals.

Mom’s hands squeezed my fingers tightly, and her ragged breathing indicated she was no less fearful than I. Nan hadn’t raised a fool any more than my mother had.

This time, I was the first to find my voice. “But that—that’s—
impossible
. The Triad doesn’t speak to—we’re not
Primes
!”

The Megaera inclined her head in agreement. “You are not.” She tilted her head, then murmured with a thoughtful tone, “Not yet.”

My poor, skittering mind could take no more, and my body shifted from partial to full Fury form out of pure instinct: glowing green eyes, huge feathered wings, hissing Amphisbaena writhing along my arms, and razor-sharp talons bursting from my fingernail beds.

Amused emerald eyes met my own, and the Megaera let out a soft laugh. “You’ve half prepared yourself already.”

Her matter-of-fact response to my uncontrolled shift lessened the embarrassment—a little. Only Furies in full-on demigoddess form could withstand a meeting with
true
Immortal beings. We would be unable to see them at all in mortal form, and in partial Fury form, we
would see them but be unable to withstand their sheer magical glory. Mom shifted to help lessen my faux pas even further, something that made me love her all the more. She also expanded on the Megaera’s response to my incoherent babbling. “It’s not impossible for them to speak with non-Primes, Marissa, they just rarely choose to do so, especially outside of a wartime Conclave.” The Conclave consisted of all Elder Furies, who were eligible to vote in the Greater Consensus, and the fifteen Furies—five from each class—elected to serve on the Lesser Consensus.

I blinked at Mom’s revelation. Apparently Elders kept all kinds of secrets from junior Furies. Although, really, considering how much more we worked in the outside world, that only made sense. Just like the mortal PD I worked with, the Sisterhood kept its secrets from outsiders as much as possible. Mom was only ’fessing up now because she
had
to. My mind finally finished its panic attack and logical thought kicked back in. If the Deities rarely chose to speak with non-Primes outside a wartime Conclave and were about to break that usual pattern, that could mean only one thing. The Sisterhood’s brewing internal war had the potential to spill out across the arcane world as a whole. And the Triad thought
we
could do something to stop that.

I licked my lips and stared at the Megaera intently. “Why?” Meaning:
Why us?

She didn’t dissemble, but neither did she answer my question. “Let us finish preparing for their arrival, and I will let the Triad explain.”

Goose bumps broke out all over my body, and I couldn’t help the shudders that followed. True, I had confronted lesser gods before—case in point, my lover
Scott’s patron deity, Anubis—but they were just a step above Furies on the magical food chain. A big step, to be sure, but the step dividing
them
from the Deities-with-a-capital-D was ten times greater than that between Furies and the lesser gods, maybe even a hundred. The thought of facing not just one Deity but
three
was almost too much for me to handle.

Still, I guess I should have been grateful they were giving our puny little brains time to prepare for their arrival and limiting their number to three. A magical number; a sacred number—and the reason Furies had been divided into
three
classes—and even more interesting when I really thought about it. The Triad would carry the authority of the immortals as a whole, which meant that somebody had been a
very
bad boy or girl since the only reason the Triad could have to confer with the Sisterhood directly was to serve as Tribunal against someone of true immortal blood.

Mom broke into my reverie by shaking me slightly and nodding toward the Megaera, who had opened a concealed door behind the chancel. She held her arms out in a formal gesture, sweeping them from us to the doorway. “Come, sisters, let us prepare to receive the counsel of the Deities who would aid us.”

And who would have
us
aid
them, the cynical side of me couldn’t help but add silently. I shoved that irreverent piece of my personality way, way down inside. If ever there was an absolutely worst time to give in to one’s Inner Snark, meeting with the Triad would be it. Only once I was sure I had ironclad control of my emotions did I follow in my mother’s footsteps through that doorway, feeling very much like Alice stepping through the looking glass.

THAT FEELING ONLY INTENSIFIED OVER THE
next hour as the Megaera—at some point I
really
needed to find out her actual name—helped us fumble through rituals we’d never heard of, much less needed to learn. We also had to bathe in magically cleansed water that seemed to sear away all signs of inner exhaustion along with outer grime. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so refreshed, especially considering I’d been pulling bone-draining shifts for a month on that serial-killer case. My skin continued tingling even after I stepped out of the water and slipped into the snow-white toga the Megaera handed me.