Deadly Descendant (2 page)

There’s nothing like breaking
things to lift a girl’s spirits when she’s had a lousy day. I’d been having a lot of lousy days lately.

I hefted a fat ballpoint pen, wondering if it was heavy enough to break one of the bottles I’d lined up on the opposite side of the clearing. Only one way to find out.

I sighted at a little eight-ounce Coke bottle, then pulled back my arm and threw the pen at it with all the strength I could muster. Pens aren’t exactly aerodynamic, so my weapon’s flight path was erratic at best. But seeing as I was a descendant of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, I had infallible aim. The pen tinked against the Coke bottle, making it waver on the fallen log I’d dragged into the clearing to hold my targets. Waver but not fall or break. Having infallible aim didn’t mean I had the pitching arm of a Major League Baseball player.

Regular throwing practice was definitely making my arm stronger—when I’d first started, I never would have hit the bottle from this distance—but I was out here to break things, not just prove I could hit them. I bent over and dug into the tote bag I’d stuffed full of small, throwable household items. I pulled out a satisfyingly heavy ceramic coaster. Not exactly something you’d think of as a deadly weapon, but I was betting it would do the trick.

Instead of throwing overhand, this time I threw sidearm, thinking the coaster would fly more like a Frisbee. It wasn’t the prettiest throw in the world, but it was accurate and hard. The bottle shattered into a satisfying spray of glass fragments, the force of the hit strong enough to break the coaster in two. Much more satisfying than the pen toss. If I’d been aiming at a person, I’d have done significant damage.

“I thought a petty thief had robbed the house, but now I see you were just gathering ammunition.”

The voice came from behind me, and I couldn’t help a little squeal of surprise as I whirled around to find Anderson Kane watching me.

Anderson was the leader of a small band of
Liberi
—immortal descendants of the ancient gods—who held to the lofty ideal that the
Liberi
should use their supernatural powers to help make the world a better place. I was the newest and most reluctant member of that band. We all lived together in Anderson’s enormous mansion, although I had yet to acknowledge the place
as home. I wasn’t planning to give up my condo anytime soon, and I tried to spend the night there, in my own bed, at least once a week.

Anderson was also a god—not just the descendant of a god like the rest of his people but a real god, son of Thanatos and Alecto. Death and Vengeance, to their friends. He was also the only being in the universe—that I knew of, at least—who could destroy a
Liberi
’s seed of immortality. Mortal descendants of the gods could
steal
a seed by killing a
Liberi,
but only Anderson could actually
destroy
it, as I’d learned when I’d seen him reduce two
Liberi
to nothing more than a pile of empty clothes. I was one of only two people who knew his secret identity, and I hadn’t been able to look at him the same way since I’d found out.

“Do you know how hard it is for me to find any time to myself in this place?” I grumbled at him, because even though he intimidated the hell out of me, I tried not to show it.

Anderson glanced at his watch. “I saw you storm out here about a half hour ago. I figured I’d given you enough time to do whatever brooding you needed to do.”

I clamped my jaws shut to keep from saying anything I might regret. Anderson looked like such a normal, unprepossessing guy, everything about him “medium.” Medium height, medium build, medium brown hair … You get the picture. But I’d seen him without his human disguise, and I knew beyond a doubt that I didn’t want to piss him off.

“I’m not brooding,” I ground out. “I’m doing target practice.”

“Yes, I can see that. But I’ve noticed a strong correlation between you doing target practice and you being out of sorts about something. So tell me what’s wrong.”

The way he phrased that—like a command, not a question—rubbed me the wrong way, but then, just about everything was rubbing me the wrong way this afternoon.

“Nothing that matters to you,” I said, sounding a little more sullen than I’d have liked. Have I mentioned it had been a really lousy day?

Anderson gave me one of his reproving looks. He was really good at them, and I decided I’d get rid of him sooner if I just told him what was eating me.

“There was a fire at my office building,” I said, kicking at a patch of crabgrass. I was still nominally a private investigator. It said so on the door to my office. I’d had to put my work on hiatus when I’d first become
Liberi,
but now I was trying to resume at least part of my normal life. Which involved making money to live on. I might be getting free room and board at Anderson’s mansion, but I was still paying rent and utilities on my condo, not to mention making car payments. I’d managed to work two whole jobs before today’s setback. No, not setback, disaster.

“Some idiot left his space heater running when he went home for the night. Between the smoke damage
and the dousing from the sprinkler system, my office is pretty much DOA,” I continued. Insurance would reimburse me for the damages but not for the lost business or for the cost of the temporary office space I was going to have to find.

I kicked at the crabgrass again. Not that long ago, I’d been in a horrendous car accident. Well, it was an accident on my part, at least. Emmitt Cartwright, one of Anderson’s
Liberi,
had strolled right into the middle of an ice-slicked road. He knew I was a mortal Descendant and therefore one of the only people in the world who could kill him. He’d used me to commit suicide, and by killing him, I’d inadvertently stolen his seed of immortality and turned life as I knew it on its ear.

The ripple effect of that accident was still causing me unexpected headaches. For example, I’d practically emptied my savings account to make the down payment on my new car, the old one having been totaled. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a hardship, but now that I no longer had any money coming in, it was a different story. It sure looked like I was going to have to do something I’d vowed never to do: dip into my trust fund.

My adoptive parents had set up trust funds for me and their daughter, Steph, when we were kids. Steph had no qualms about living on that money, but I had steadfastly refused to touch it. It felt too much like charity, and as much as I loved them, I could never quite get over the feeling that I wasn’t their “real”
daughter. It was all right for their real daughter to use their money but not for me. Neurotic, maybe, but there you have it.

“Do you need some money?” Anderson asked.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, and it was true. I was going to have to swallow my pride, and I was going to feel like a hypocrite for touching that trust fund, but I wasn’t facing financial ruin. All I had to do was get over my stupid hang-up. “I don’t need charity.”

There was a spark of something that might have been anger in Anderson’s eyes, and I reminded myself who I was talking to. This was not someone I wanted to pick a fight with.

“I wasn’t offering you charity,” he said. “I was offering you a job.”

That took me entirely by surprise. “Huh?”

He smiled faintly at the face I must have made. “I was trying to give you more time to acclimate before springing this on you, but it seems Fate had a different idea. One of the things I and my people do is help other
Liberi
and their families who are trying to escape the Olympians.”

The Olympians are a group of
Liberi
descended from Greek gods. They do some truly awful things, slaughtering whole families of Descendants to protect their own immortality. Occasionally, they spare a small child and raise it as one of their own, indoctrinating it to their values of superiority, privilege, and cruelty. They had a whole flock of Descendant toadies, all vying for the privilege of being given a sacrificial
Liberi
from whom to steal the seed of
immortality. Whenever the Olympians stumbled on
Liberi
who weren’t descended from Greek gods or who refused to accept the natural order of things as dictated by the Olympians, they gave those
Liberi
to their pet Descendants to kill, and a new Olympian was born.

“Not everyone we help wants to join us,” Anderson continued, then smiled ruefully. “And sometimes I’m not inclined to issue an invitation.”

I frowned. “Then how is it you help them, exactly? Financially?”

He nodded. “That’s one thing. But most important, we help them go into hiding, make sure the Olympians can never find them.”

“You mean like a
Liberi
witness protection program?”

He grinned. “Exactly.” The grin faded. “We’ve been doing this for years, and we’ve helped a lot of people. I think we do a damn good job, but we’re not pros at this, and we’ve lost a couple of people.”

“So what is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to go over the records for everyone we’ve hidden. See if you find any flaws in their cover, and then help us move them again with better cover if necessary. I’ll pay you a retainer for as long as it takes to get all of the covers examined and patched.”

The clanging sound in my head was the peal of warning bells. I had already been sucked into Anderson’s merry band more deeply than I could ever have imagined. I was living in the freaking mansion, for Pete’s sake! I’d spent too much time in foster care as
a kid to allow myself to depend on anyone too much. The idea of fitting in somewhere, of being part of a family, of
belonging,
was my Holy Grail. But the Holy Grail wasn’t real, and I knew better than to seek it. The last thing I needed was to let Anderson get even more hooks into me than he already had.

“Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but I’d rather go it on my own. I haven’t spent all this time building up my business just to abandon it at the first sign of trouble.”

Anderson probably heard the falseness in my words. It wasn’t commitment to my own business that made me refuse, but that was the most convenient excuse I could come up with off the cuff. Of course, I should have known better than to think Anderson would take no for an answer.

“Perhaps I wasn’t completely clear about what I was asking,” Anderson said. “People have gotten killed because we didn’t do a good enough job of hiding them. I’m asking you to help me protect people who will be murdered—or worse—if their covers are blown. Surely, saving lives is more important than maintaining your independence.”

Ah, the guilt trip. It was a highly effective tactic against me, and yet …

“Wait a minute. You want me to
examine your records
to see if these people are well enough hidden?”

“Yes.”

Anderson was not an idiot, and I was sure he knew exactly what I was getting at. However, he didn’t
budge, giving me a look of polite, bland inquiry. Making me put it into words.

“Why the hell would you keep records on people you’re trying to make disappear? It’s like burying your treasure and then spray-painting a giant X on the spot.”

“Only if the Olympians got hold of those records, and of course, we’re very careful with them.”

“But why?”

“You know why.”

Of course I did. Anderson was capable of being a nice guy, but he was also a ruthless and manipulative son of a bitch when it served his purpose. “You want to make sure you can find them if you ever need them for something.”

Hiding these
Liberi
fugitives gave Anderson a huge amount of power over them. If he needed something, and they refused him, he could hand them over to the Olympians. I didn’t know if even he was ruthless enough to do such a thing, but it would make for a compelling threat.

“Nikki, you might not like how I go about things, but I am trying to keep these people safe, and I could sure use your help.”

And I needed the money, unless I dipped into the trust fund. Which was the lesser of two evils: tapping the trust fund or letting Anderson draw me ever deeper into his world?

I was already being forced to live in the mansion because of the treaty Anderson had crafted with the Olympians. The Olympians had agreed that Anderson’s
Liberi
and their families would be off-limits, and living in the mansion was what made someone “Anderson’s
Liberi
.” If I didn’t live in the mansion, the Olympians would be free to continue their efforts to recruit me—efforts that included tactics like raping my sister. The Olympians had justified the attack by saying that Steph didn’t count as family because we weren’t blood relatives. Anderson had killed the bastard who hurt Steph, and Konstantin—the self-styled “king” of the Olympians—had sent a specious apology along with a promise to leave my adoptive family alone as long as I was one of Anderson’s
Liberi
.

“Did you set the fire at my office to twist my arm into accepting this offer?” I asked, wondering at my ability to see Anderson as one of the good guys and yet still suspect him of something like that.