Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

The smile flickered for a moment, then came back at full force as he took a step toward me. “My name is Alexis Colonomos,” he said, holding out his hand for me to shake.

Instead of shaking his hand, I stepped backward, trying to keep a safe distance between us. I had no idea what a safe distance might be, however. Despite my recent skepticism, I had no doubt Alexis Colonomos would turn out to have supernatural powers of some sort.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, making no attempt to sound like I meant it. “Now what do you want?”

The smile flickered again, and his eyes narrowed in what might have been anger as he let his hand fall back to his side. When he put the smiley face back on, it had lost some of its wattage, and there was a hard glint in his eye that suggested he was a man used to getting what he wanted.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” he said, and there was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “And have a little talk.” He gestured toward the open door of the Mercedes.

“If you think I’m going to get into a car with a total stranger, you’re nuts.” I took another step back, prepared to turn and bolt if he made a hostile move.

He didn’t, but his smile lost even more wattage, until it started to look more like a snarl. “You’re Liberi ,” he said from between gritted teeth. What were the chances he and Maggie would use the same unusual term to describe what I apparently was if it were all some freaky cult delusion? Yet another nail in the coffin of denial. “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to.” And everything about his body language said he wanted to very much.

Personally, I didn’t think I’d been rude enough to warrant the level of hostility that radiated from this guy, but based on the behavior I’d witnessed last night, either it didn’t take much to set a Liberi off, or I just had a natural knack for it.

“You can’t kill me,” I clarified, though I felt ridiculous making the claim. It was one thing to almost kind of believe it, and quite another to truly accept it. “That doesn’t mean you can’t hurt me.” I’d seen evidence enough of that last night.

The smile turned into a sneer. “Cowardice isn’t becoming to a Descendant of Artemis.”

I guess I was supposed to be so insulted by the suggestion I was a coward that I would meekly climb into the car. “There’s a difference between cowardice and caution,” I told him. “If you want to talk to me, then do it. If you don’t want to do it standing here in the street, then offer to buy me a cup of coffee. I might take you up on it.”

Maybe the smartest thing for me to have done was to turn around and run away. The vibe I was getting off this guy was anything but friendly. But I didn’t know what he wanted from me, and I wasn’t sure that ignorance was bliss. Plus, I had no idea how he’d found me. Even if he was some friend of Anderson’s—a friend I’d never seen hanging around the mansion—he shouldn’t have been able to locate me when I was nowhere near any of my usual stomping grounds.

Obviously, he could find me, and if I ran off now, he’d probably be even less friendly the next time he did. Which was why I was prepared to at least listen to what he had to say.

“Then may I buy you a cup of coffee?” he asked, and it looked like it physically hurt him to concede.

“I’d love one. How ’bout we head over to that diner?” I pointed at a greasy spoon on the opposite side of the street. It was doing a brisk business, so I figured it had good bad food and served bottomless cups of coffee.

Alexis looked at the place and curled his lip in disdain. I pegged him for the kind of guy who thought he was slumming it if he ate in a restaurant that charged less than five bucks for a cup of coffee. “Fine,” he said, then slammed the door of the Mercedes with more force than necessary.

I hate sore losers.

I kept just enough space between us to be out of arm’s reach as we crossed the street and headed to the diner. He probably wasn’t going to try anything in broad daylight, in front of tons of witnesses, but you can never be too careful.

When he reached the diner, he pushed the door open and held it for me. It meant I had to brush by him to get inside, and I didn’t like it. I reminded myself once again that he wouldn’t dare try anything on a crowded street. His expression darkened as he noticed my hesitation, but I went inside before he could make an issue of it.

A waitress was clearing a table for two just as we walked in the door. The hostess directed us to that table with a wave of her hand, and we slid into the booth in silence while the waitress gathered up the remains of the previous patrons’ meal.

“Be right back,” she said with a distracted smile, then carried her loaded tray to the kitchen. As far as I could see, there was only one other waitress in the whole place, which explained why they were both moving so fast and looked so wild-eyed.

There were crumbs all over the place, and a smear of ketchup looking rather like a bloodstain threatened to drip over the edge and onto my lap. I grabbed a napkin from the dispenser to wipe it away, watching Alexis surreptitiously as I did. His lip remained curled in that singularly disdainful sneer, and his arms were crossed over his chest as if he were trying to minimize contact between himself and the diner. To say he looked out of place was an understatement. No one else was even wearing a dress shirt, much less a suit and tie.

The waitress came back and wiped off our table with a damp rag, but she had a harried look and wasn’t very careful about it. A couple of crumbs tumbled off the table and onto Alexis’s lap. His face reddened and his eyes sparked and I thought sure he was about to make a big scene. He restrained himself, however, and settled for staring daggers at her. It was all I could do not to smile.

Have I mentioned that this guy rubbed me the wrong way?

“What can I get you?” the waitress asked, pulling out her pen and order pad without making eye contact.

“Two cups of coffee, please,” I said, because I was afraid that if Alexis opened his mouth he was going to be a total asshole.

“Anything else?”

“That’ll do it,” I said, and Alexis didn’t contradict me. I suspected he’d rather starve to death than eat anything served at this place.

She was walking away before the last word left my mouth. If I couldn’t see with my own two eyes how overworked she was, I’d have thought she was being rude.

I leaned back in my seat and eyed the dangerous-looking Liberi who sat across from me. I got the distinct impression that he’d been planning to charm me when he’d stepped out of that car, but I figured my attitude had killed that plan by now. Maybe I shouldn’t have come on so strong right from the start, but I had a right to be grumpy after everything that had happened.

“So, what was it you wanted to talk about?” I asked as the waitress put two ceramic cups on the table and filled them with dark-as-pitch coffee. She reached into her apron and pulled out a handful of creamers, leaving them in a pile in the center of the table. She opened her mouth—I think she was going to ask if we needed anything else—but shut it again when she saw the forbidding expression on Alexis’s face. He waited until she’d walked away to answer me.

“You’re new in town,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

I raised my eyebrows as I took a sip of coffee. “I am?”

He frowned at me, dark eyebrows forming a severe V. “You have to be. You’re not one of ours, and you’re not one of Anderson’s.” He said Anderson’s name with another one of those little sneers of his.

I sipped my coffee, wishing I’d been able to believe Maggie last night so I could have asked her a lot more questions. There was a hell of a lot I didn’t know about being a Liberi . For instance, I had no idea what Alexis was talking about when he referred to “one of ours.” Nor did I have any idea what—if anything—I should tell him about myself.