Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

“Yeah, I don’t think he and I will ever be on each other’s Christmas lists,” I said.

Alexis said nothing, merely stood to the side and glared at me, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Then perhaps it would be best if you and I spoke alone,” Konstantin said. Without waiting for my response, he headed toward the sofa in the corner of the seating area. I guessed I was supposed to follow.

I felt Alexis’s glare on the back of my head the moment I turned away from him. He hadn’t uttered a sound of protest, but I knew he was majorly pissed off that he was being left out of the conversation. And he hadn’t appreciated Konstantin’s public rebukes, either, no matter how insincere they might have been. Like he needed another reason to hate me.

I sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa, feeling anything but relaxed around this self-proclaimed king of the Liberi Deorum , but he sprawled in the seat at the other end as if he owned the place. For all I knew, he did. I knew nothing about this man, not even his last name. Not that I wanted to know anything about him.

“So what was it you were so desperate to talk to me about?” I asked, trying to release some of the tension in my spine. We were in a very public place. I could hardly expect Konstantin to try to attack me here. Still, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility out of hand, which was why I’d done my surveillance before the meeting. There was just too damn much I didn’t know, and the only people who could give me information were people I didn’t want to talk to. “Alexis suggested you wanted to hire me for something?”

Konstantin nodded. “Yes. As a Descendant of Artemis, your skills would be a great asset to us.”

I wondered if his “us” was a royal “we,” or if he actually meant the Olympians as a whole. “Go on,” I said. I already knew there was no way in hell I was working for him, but I figured it behooved me to hear him out for diplomacy’s sake.

“We Olympians function as something of a police force for the Liberi Deorum . As such, we often find ourselves needing to track down people who do not wish to be found. Ordinarily, we use private investigators to help us locate these fugitives, but even a skilled private investigator has limitations, especially considering the level of secrecy we require. You, however, would be perfect for the position. Not only a descendant of Artemis, but already an experienced private investigator. You would make it infinitely easier for us to track down our fugitives.”

He made it all sound terribly … benign. Of course, even if everything Anderson had told me about the Olympians was true, they were no doubt the heroes of their own stories. What I might see as a ruthless slaughter of innocents, they might consider a necessary purge to protect their own people. Even so, I didn’t think that was what Konstantin believed. He might have started his crusade against Descendants under the pretext of protecting the Liberi , but these days it was all about enjoying the power. Maybe I was reading things into his tone and body language, but his words carried no sense of self-righteousness or conviction like they should if he really believed them.

“What would happen to these ‘fugitives’ once I found them for you?” I asked.

“They would be dealt with in an appropriate manner.”

“Would dealing with them in the ‘appropriate manner’ involve killing them, by any chance?”

“It would depend on the circumstances. However, it would be your job to find them, not to carry out their sentences, whatever those sentences might be.”

Maybe that was supposed to allow me to soothe my conscience if I accepted the job. As if the fact that I wasn’t personally killing anyone would make me feel better about tracking people down so the Olympians could kill them.

“The rewards you would reap if you chose to work with us are considerable,” Konstantin said. “We are richer than many countries, and we are generous with those riches. Your pay would be in seven figures, with bonuses for success. You could live like a queen.” He sounded much more passionate about this argument than he had about the “it’s for a good cause” thing.

I shrugged. “Money doesn’t tempt me.”

He laughed, like I’d just made the funniest joke in the world. “Oh, Nikki, money tempts everyone.”

And just like that, I’d heard enough. I’d listened to what he had to say, and there was no hint of doubt in my mind that I wanted nothing to do with Konstantin or his Olympians. The time for diplomacy was over. “Let me rephrase that: I don’t want your money.”

Konstantin’s urbane veneer thinned a little more, until it was practically nonexistent. “Perhaps you don’t understand. I am the king of the Liberi Deorum . I realize you have only been recently introduced to the Liberi , but that doesn’t exempt you from our laws. You are Liberi , and therefore you answer to me.”

I snorted softly. “Most of the Liberi I’ve met don’t answer to you.”

He went completely still, shedding the last vestiges of his pseudo-friendly persona. The darkness in his eyes spoke of power and of deadly danger. “I have a treaty with Anderson and his people. That treaty does not extend to you .”

He leaned toward me on the sofa, and it was all I could do not to recoil. His anger wasn’t as ostentatious as Alexis’s, but it was all the more chilling for its calculated control.

“Make no mistake, Nikki,” he said, his calm, unruffled voice at odds with the fury that radiated from his every pore. “I have presented you with a choice, but the consequences of making the wrong one are beyond the limits of your imagination.”

I swallowed hard, hating that I couldn’t hide my fear. “I thought you weren’t into making threats.”

He shrugged and sat back, banishing all signs of anger in a fraction of a second. The veneer was back, but I’d already gotten a clear view of what lay beneath it. “I prefer to catch my flies with honey, when possible.” He gave me a charming smile that scared me almost as much as his glare. “But a good king must sometimes make compromises to ensure the well-being of his people. It is important to our people that we find these fugitives, and therefore I’m not in the position to take no for an answer.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “On this paper are three names, those of our most wanted.” He tried to hand me the paper, but I refused to take it from him. Then he grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip and forced the paper into my fingers, smiling pleasantly all the while.

“I know they will be difficult to locate,” he continued, still holding my wrist so hard I felt like my bones were scraping together. “I’ll be generous and give you one week to find your first fugitive. It can be any of the ones on that list, although eventually you must find all three. When you have the location of the first fugitive, you will call Alexis with your information, and he will send a squad to confirm you’re telling the truth. When you find that first fugitive, I will pay you one million dollars.” He smiled again and let go of my wrist. “In case that isn’t incentive enough, I’ll have you know that Alexis has taken quite a liking to your sister.

“If you refuse, or if you fail, I will give Alexis permission to do whatever he wants with her. Let your imagination run wild. He won’t kill her, though. He’ll let her live so that you can see the wretched ruin he has made of her. If that doesn’t motivate you … then we will have to get more creative. I have walked this earth for many centuries, my dear. Let me assure you, when it comes to cruelty, I’ve seen every form imaginable in my day, and there is nothing I would not scruple to do.”