Sweet Legacy (Sweet Venom) (17 page)

CHAPTER 19
G
RETCHEN

E
veryone always says that time drops into slow motion in the heat of a crisis. In reality, it all happens in the blink of an eye. One second, Grace is introducing me to our mother. The next, the world erupts in chaos.

Greer gasps, a soft intake of breath.

The knife speeds past my ear—small and shiny and glinting in the sun.

I twist my head to follow its path.

The sound of metal sinking into flesh.

Another gasp from Greer, this one with a harsh gurgle at the end.

Thane shouts something—in
Greek
—and then takes off, lightning fast, chasing down whoever did this, down the alley and out onto the street beyond. I almost go after him, terror and fury urging me to join him in the hunt. But Grace cries out, and I turn back to watch our sister collapse to the ground, a wide-eyed look on her face—wide-eyed, and vacant.

“Greer!” I dive to my knees at her side, feeling my cargoes tear across the pavement.
“Greer!”

The blade sticking out of her chest shines like a gold coin in the sun. I grab her by the shoulders and pull her up, lifting her so I can cradle her in my arms, careful not to touch the knife, not to push it farther into her body.

My arms are shaking, flooded with fear and adrenaline.

Grace drops down next to me, her face eerily pale.

“Is she—?”

“No,” I insist. “No!”

She isn’t. She can’t be. I won’t let her.

My hands are wet and sticky, coated. I don’t look at them because I already know what I’ll see.

“Here,” our mother—Cassandra—says, dropping to my side and wrapping her palm around the hilt of the knife sticking out of my sister’s chest. “Quickly.”

“No!” I shout, grabbing her wrist. “It might be stanching the blood.”

“There is no time,” she replies, placing her other hand over mine. “I’m a trauma nurse and a Sister of the Serpent. I’ve trained for this.”

Sister of the Serpent? What? I can’t make sense of her words.

For a moment, our gray eyes meet. I see confidence and determination in hers, along with the fear. I let her unwrap my hand from her wrist. Turning her attention to Greer, she slowly pulls out the knife. I stare at the flow of blood. It gurgles out of her like a bubbling brook.

I struggle to keep from throwing up.

“Give me your right hand,” our mother says.

I just stare at Greer, shocked and numb. She can’t be gone. She can’t.

“Gretchen!” Cassandra barks.

Jerking up, I look at her.

“Give me your right hand,” she repeats.

With jerky motions, I lift my right hand and hold it out to her. She takes the knife—a small dagger, no more than a four-inch blade, with intricate gold carvings on the hilt—and holds it above my palm.

“This will sting.”

Like I care. All the emotion in my body—all the emotion I ever let myself have—drained away with Greer’s life force. I hear Grace sobbing in the background. I wish I could find release like that, a way to let it out. I wish I didn’t care so much that it feels like the knife landed in
my
chest.

Sillus is wailing. “No, huntress. No.”

Cassandra presses the blade into the flesh of my palm, but I scarcely feel it. I’m numb. I don’t feel anything.

She tosses the dagger aside and yanks my hand forward, over Greer’s chest. Turning my palm over, she presses it to the wound.

The action yanks me out of my disconnect.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

She doesn’t respond, just watches the spot where my blood and my sister’s mingle. Unmoving, she looks like she’s willing something to happen.

“What are you doing!” I shout, practically screaming in her ear.

I’m losing it, I know I am. But I’ve never lost a sister before. I’ve never lost anyone I cared about. I’ve never even cared about anyone before, and now all of a sudden it’s all happening at once—the caring, the losing. My brain—my heart—can’t take it.

Grace’s sobs get louder.

“Shhh,” Milo soothes

I turn and see him kneeling at Grace’s side, his arms wrapped around her in comfort. As much as I don’t allow myself to care about many things, Grace cares easily and deeply for the people in her life. This must be hurting her even more than it hurts me.

And that magnifies my pain.

Sillus huddles against my side, his little body hiccupping with sobs.

The tears come, flooding my eyes and spilling over. Beneath my palm, I feel . . . nothing. No movement, no breath, no heartbeat. She’s just gone.

I don’t know what Cassandra thought she was doing, but clearly it wasn’t enough.

I look up, and my eyes meet Grace’s. Hers are red and puffy, full of tears.

I’m sorry
, I mouth.

Grace shakes her head. She doesn’t blame me—not now, anyway. Maybe she will later, after the raw emotions are gone. But I blame myself. I should have done more. I should have known something like this would happen.

I hang my head. I’ve failed Greer. I’ve failed Grace, too. I was supposed to protect my sisters—I’m stronger than them, and I have more experience with monsters and mythology. I failed, and now Greer is dead.

Everything is over: the Key Generation, the door, the prophecy, the war and the restoration of balance and the lives of every creature within the abyss. One less heartbeat in the world, and everything changes.

Something pulses beneath my palm.

I jerk back. I must have imagined it. There is nothing there. Greer is gone. She—

It pulses again.

“She moved,” I gasp.

“What?” Grace asks, her voice barely a whisper.

I look at Cassandra, who is smiling through her tears.

“She moved,” I repeat. “There! She did it again.”

“See it, see it!” Sillus cries.

Cassandra sighs with overwhelming relief. “She did.”

“Impossible,” Milo gasps.

I ask, “How?”

Grace scrambles to my side and presses her palms to Greer’s face.

“Your blood,” Cassandra explains. “From the left vein it has the power to kill, and from the right it has the power to heal.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“The healing blood,” she continues, “can—in very rare instances—also return life to the dead.”

My mind reels. “What?”

Cassandra smiles. “When administered within moments of death, your blood has the power to save a life.”

Grace sobs. “Oh my god, she’s breathing.”

“How do you know that?” I ask our mother.

As far as I’m aware, Cassandra hasn’t been a part of our lives or the mythological destiny we carry since she handed us over for adoption. She shouldn’t know about the blood.

“There is another legacy,” she answers. “The Sisterhood of the Serpent. From the moment of the prophecy, the women in our line have known this time would come. While we do not have your powers, we pass on the knowledge from generation to generation so the truth is not lost.”

“That’s amazing,” I reply, trying to imagine how hard it was to carry that information forward through the centuries.

“When you were born,” she continues, “I knew the time would come when my daughters would need even more from me. In addition to the knowledge of the Sisterhood, I’ve studied every piece of Medusa lore I could get my hands on. I went to nursing school, volunteered for the emergency room and the trauma ward. I’ve had sixteen years to get ready.”

I shake my head, stunned. I thought she had abandoned us. All this time, she’s been preparing for this moment.

And it paid off by saving Greer’s life.

I feel frozen, like I can’t draw breath into my lungs.

But beneath my palm, my sister is not having that problem. Her chest rises and falls with the steady rhythm of resting breath.

If I were the kind of girl to cry at happy news, I’d be sobbing right along with Grace. Even so, I find it almost impossible to keep my act together. I wrap an arm around Sillus’s shaking body and hug him tight. It’s only the knowledge that my other palm needs to stay steady on the wound and my mind needs to stay focused on revenge that keeps me from collapsing onto Greer’s life-filled body.

CHAPTER 20
G
RACE

G
reer is alive. I can’t stop staring at her, can’t stop watching the rise and fall of her chest, can’t stop my heart from pounding in my chest with unparalleled joy.

A minute ago, she was dead. I didn’t have to feel her pulse fade away to know. The look on Gretchen’s face was enough to tell me everything. She was gone.

And now she’s back.

My brain can’t quite accept the reality of it. In the space of a couple of minutes, I’ve experienced just about the biggest possible roller coaster of emotions. My sister—my triplet—came back from the dead. And my other sister brought her back.

Greer is still unconscious—maybe in another astral lock—but she’s breathing easily, and the wound has stopped gushing blood. There is so much blood. Her clothes are covered with dark red—she’s going to be upset when she wakes up. The ground, too, is soaked in blood, as is Gretchen’s hand—the hand that saved Greer’s life.

Gretchen looks stunned, and I suppose I do, too. The idea that my sister is back from the dead—however briefly she was gone—is beyond comprehension.

“You saved her,” I whisper.

Gretchen glances at our mother. “Cassandra did,” she says. “I mean, our mother.”

Cassandra shakes her head with a weary smile. “I only knew the lore, and hoped it was true.”

“It’s still amazing,” I say.

“It’s impossible,” Milo says, reminding me that he’s still here—that he witnessed all of this.

If he wasn’t freaked out before, he is now.

“We need to get her back to the safe house,” Gretchen insists.

“Yes,” Sillus says. “Go.”

Rough footsteps echo down the alley an instant before Thane comes running around the corner, covered in sweat and with a bleak look in his stormy gray eyes. “Bastard got away.”

He took off after the murderer—well, attempted murderer—almost the instant the knife hit Greer’s chest, and it had looked like he and Greer had run all the way here from the safe house in the first place.

He should be exhausted, but he doesn’t show it.

Ignoring everyone else, he crosses to Greer’s side and drops to the ground. He reaches out, reverently tracing his fingertips over her brow.

There is such sadness in his eyes—Thane has always had a bit of sorrow in him, just beneath the surface—but this is so much worse. He looks . . . bleak. As I open my mouth to tell him the good news, Greer coughs. He lurches back.

“She’s—” He swivels to stare at me. “She’s not dead?”

I shake my head. “Gretchen saved her.”

Thane looks at Gretchen, uncharacteristic emotion on his face. He doesn’t usually let this kind of feeling show, but the gratitude is unmistakable. He looks like his soul aches with relief.

“How?” he asks.

“Our blood,” Gretchen says, holding up her right hand. “It . . . has that power.”

He nods, as if that’s all the explanation he needs. I shouldn’t be surprised that he just accepts it. If his blood had been able to save Greer, to bring her back from the dead, I think he would have drained every last ounce to try.

“Cassandra showed her how,” I tell him.

As he turns back to face me, he sees Milo standing off to the side. He scowls and then turns to me. “Grace?”

“Um, yeah, I . . .” I flick a desperate glance at Milo, but he gives me a helpless look. That’s okay; now isn’t the time anyway. “Can we talk about this later?”

Thane considers it for a second and then nods. “Get Greer back to the safe house.”

“We were just about to do that.” Gretchen looks at Cassandra. “Can we move her?”

Our mother’s brow furrows. “Let me examine her.”

While Gretchen, Thane, and Cassandra figure out how to get Greer off the ground, I walk over to Milo.

“So . . . ,” he says.

As much as I don’t want to do this—I want to talk to him about this and find out if he’s really freaking out—things are far too serious. I won’t put him at risk.

“Milo, I—” I lower my gaze, because I don’t want my hypno powers involved. “I think you should go home now.”

After a hesitation, he says, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

He doesn’t sound freaked out.

“I don’t,” I say, “but things are very dangerous right now.”

“I can help.”

I look up, giving him a grateful smile. “I know. But for now, my sisters and I have to handle it.”

He nods. “Okay. For now.”

He casts a quick glance at Thane and then presses a quick kiss to my lips. “Just don’t forget you promised me answers.”

“I won’t,” I say, smiling as he waves good-bye to my brother and heads out of the alley.

Maybe things will work out between us despite all the crazy in my life. Maybe.

As I’m walking back to my sisters, the glint of gold and steel catches my eye. I walk over to the dagger that our mother discarded after slicing open Gretchen’s palm and pick it up. Such a small, pretty thing to cause so much pain.

It might have caused even more, if Cassandra and Gretchen hadn’t acted so quickly.

“Shiny,” Sillus says.

“Can I see that?” Gretchen asks.

I hand her the blade.

“Can you tell who it belongs to?” I ask. “Or maybe who sent him?”

She turns the dagger over in her hand. The blade is short, double-edged—like the black ones Gretchen carries in her boots—and pretty unremarkable. The handle, though, is quite unusual. There are intricate carvings, swirling patterns of what look like antlers in gleaming gold, now covered in bright red blood.

Gretchen wipes the handle off on her pants.

Woven into the golden antlers are gems and mother-of-pearl inlays in the shapes of crescent moons. There must be two dozen in total.

“No,” Gretchen says, staring at the dagger as if it might have an invisible “property of” label hiding somewhere. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It looks like it comes from Hephaestus’s forge,” our mother says, stepping closer to examine the blade. “But as to the owner’s identity, I cannot hazard a guess.” When Gretchen and I stare at her, wide-eyed, she shrugs. “I have studied a lot of books on Greek mythology.”

“I know whose it is.” Thane’s voice is low and hard.

“You do?” I ask.

He doesn’t look at me, keeps his eyes steady on Greer. “It belongs to an assassin sent by Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.”

“Artemis?” I echo.

Thane nods. “Apollo’s twin. She’s on Zeus’s side in this war. She’s been working actively against you for years.”

“How do you know that?” I ask.

Gretchen demands, her voice low and full of warning, “How do you know the dagger is hers?”

“Because—” He swallows hard, his jaw muscles clenching like he has to force himself to speak the words. He reaches down and pulls up the leg of his jeans, revealing an ankle holster. Glinting in the sun is a dagger just like the one Cassandra pulled out of Greer’s chest. “It is standard issue.”

Cassandra pronounces Greer stable enough to be moved, and Gretchen carries our sister back to the safe house, back to a magically protected, comfortable place to recover without worrying that monsters are going to break down the door at any moment. There was no way she was letting Thane touch her.

Then, once Greer is settled into the unexpectedly soft bed, we gather around Thane in the living room—me, Gretchen, Cassandra, and little Sillus. I listen intently as he tells his story. We all do.

“As a little boy, I was given into the service of Artemis,” he begins. “My parents were poor, and the goddess gave them great wealth in return for me.”

I can’t remember him ever stringing this many words together at once, especially about his past. He
never
talks about his past. Mom and Dad would be in shock.

“As part of my service to the goddess of the hunt,” he continues, “I trained as a warrior. As an assassin.”

“Assassin?” I echo, my voice barely a whisper.

He gives me a curt nod. “Even as a child. I was her star soldier. Could handle any blade with deadly precision.”

He casually flips the dagger he pulled from his ankle holster into the air, letting the golden hilt spin several times in the gleaming sun before landing squarely back in his palm. He turns and, faster than my eye can follow, sends the blade speeding through the air. It is quivering, blade-first, in the narrow strip of wood between the window panes. A fraction of an inch to either side and it would have shattered the glass.

“Could best anyone in her army,” he says, not sounding proud of his achievement, “even the teenagers.”

“But you were only eight when we found you,” I say.

An eight-year-old being trained as an assassin? Fighting other soldiers, even the ones way older than him? I can’t imagine what it must have been like, little boy Thane being taught to fight and kill. He’d seemed like such a fragile thing when he came into our family, small and hungry after living on the street. Had that been a sham? Was it all a setup?

“One day, the goddess came to me with a mission.” His eyes cloud over. “It was a very special mission, one that would bring me glory and my parents even more wealth. If I failed, it would bring us death.”

I gasp.

Gretchen just glares at him.

“For three weeks prior, she starved me. I was given two slices of bread and a glass of water each day.” The haunted look in his eyes says he remembers that time as if it were yesterday. “When I was ready, she sent me to the city. She arranged events so that I was found, so that our parents”—he looks at me—“would be the ones who adopted me.”

“What was your mission?” Gretchen demands.

Thane turns to her. “My mission was, and remains,” he says, his voice chilled, “to kill the sister of the Key Generation who possesses the far-roaming power of the gorgon Euryale.” He doesn’t look at me as he says, “To kill Grace.”

Sillus gasps.

I can only stare and blink.

Gretchen launches herself at him before anyone can react. She has him on the floor, her palms tightening around his throat. His arms spread out, palm up. He’s not resisting her. If what he says about his training is true, he could probably pin Gretchen in a flash. He’s letting her choke him.

“Do it,” he whispers. “I deserve it.”

That stuns her. She doesn’t release his neck entirely, but she sits back on his chest.

“Why didn’t you?” she asks. “Why did you abort your mission?”

He shakes his head from side to side. “I—” He glances at me, and in that look I see everything I need to know. He loves me, unconditionally. He’s my brother, however that came to be, and he loves me. “I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” Gretchen echoes.

He returns his attention to her. “I wouldn’t.”

She releases his neck.

“They know?” she asks. “Your keepers know you’re not their boy anymore?”

Thane nods. “I told them.” He looks away. “Stupid. That’s why they sent another.”

“Is that where you went?” I ask. “When you disappeared, you went to tell them you wouldn’t kill me?”

He doesn’t nod. He doesn’t have to.

“That’s who beat you up,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have gone,” he says. “I thought if I told them about you, about how you are a good person and you only want the best for everyone, maybe they would change their minds about the whole operation. Instead, they planted a bomb.”

“Bomb?” Gretchen growls. “The one that destroyed my loft?”

The pieces fall into place.

“
You
made the call,” I blurt. He doesn’t answer, but I know it’s what happened. “You saved our lives.”

“Too bad you’re the one who put us in danger in the first place,” Gretchen says. “You should have told us sooner.”

He winces in pain. “I know.”

She climbs to her feet, knocking him in the ribs with her boot as she steps over him. Sillus runs over and kicks him in the thigh.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know what to feel. The big brother I have looked up to for most of my life, who taught me how to knee a guy who got too handsy and who always made sure I got the biggest brownie on the plate, is suddenly a stranger. One of the people I trust the most, and he was the one I should have been afraid of.

He’s still my brother, but he has also been my enemy. I feel like I don’t know him at all.

Thane lies there for a moment before finally getting up. He looks defeated. I don’t know what to say. I want to tell him everything is okay, but is it? How can I tell?

Greer coughs, sputtering breath into the air.

I rush into the bedroom and sit at her side.

“Hush, Greer,” I soothe. “We’re here. You’re okay.”

Our mother sits at her other side, checking Greer’s pulse and smoothing fingertips over her forehead. She’s been watching over her ever since we got back to the safe house.