Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

He leaned over and kissed her forehead, like a father comforting a little girl, before he left the room, but I didn’t think his affection for her was exactly paternal. Was it just his guilt over having failed her last night that made him act so devoted, or had he really formed such a quick, strong attachment?

“Come and sit down, Nikki,” Steph beckoned.

I hadn’t realized until that moment that I was hovering near the door as if ready to make a quick escape. It was almost impossibly hard to face my sister and be forced to see what had been done to her because of me. But she needed every ounce of support she could get, so I manned up and took Blake’s place at the side of the bed. She reached out and took my hand, giving it a firm, comforting squeeze.

“I’ll survive,” she told me softly even as she squeezed my hand harder. “You know that, right?”

My throat ached so much I couldn’t answer, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to start bawling. Steph shouldn’t need to comfort me after what she’d been through. I should be strong enough to hide my own pain and guilt, deal with it on my own rather than burdening her with it.

“I’m not as fragile as you think I am, Nikki,” she said when I still couldn’t force myself to speak. “It’s going to be rough for a while, but I swear to you, I’m going to get over it.”

I sucked in a breath, and it loosened my throat enough to let me speak. “I’m so sorry …”

Steph shook her head. “There was nothing you could have done. This Alexis creep was never going to just let me go. You know that, don’t you?”

Actually, I hadn’t thought about it, about what he would have done if I’d gotten there on time. I had a suspicion Steph was right. Alexis wasn’t what you’d call the honorable type, so expecting him to keep his word was wishful thinking. But having not made the rendezvous, I couldn’t be sure. I guess I didn’t look convinced, because Steph continued.

“Blake says Alexis wants you to track down a bunch of innocent people so he can slaughter them. Do you think for a moment that’s what I’d have wanted you to do?”

I scrubbed at my eyes, wiping away the hint of tears that had gathered in them, wishing I could wipe away the aching exhaustion as easily. Obviously, Blake had done a lot of talking. And been very convincing. “No, of course not.”

“I’d like to take you and Blake and knock both your heads together. The self-flagellation the two of you are doing is getting on my last nerve. Bad things happen to people, and unless you’ve got an infallible crystal ball, you aren’t always going to be able to stop them. Just deal with it and move on, because let me tell you, knowing you’re miserable about it doesn’t help me one iota.”

I flinched from the anger in her voice. The numbness appeared to be gone for now. “What do you want me to do? Smile and act like nothing’s wrong? I’m not a good enough actress to pull that off.”

“No,” she replied with exaggerated patience, “I want you to stop wasting your time and energy feeling guilty about it and start figuring out how you’re going to get the son of a bitch who did this to me! ”

There was nothing I wanted to do more. The problem was, how do you “get” someone who’s immortal? Unlike the Olympians, Anderson didn’t have a bunch of indoctrinated Descendants sitting around waiting for the opportunity to kill a Liberi .

An idea struck me before I even managed to finish the thought. “The list,” I murmured, not meaning to say it aloud.

“Huh?”

“Konstantin gave me a list of Descendants he wanted me to find. Maybe if I could find one of them, we can use him to kill Alexis.” What a sweet irony it would be if the very list the Olympians gave me turned out to be the key to destroying Alexis! I’d enjoy rubbing his smug face in it, right before—

“Wait a minute,” Steph interrupted before my thoughts could gallop too far ahead. “Your plan is to hunt down some random civilian who probably has no idea that the Liberi even exist, then … what, exactly? Hope he’s a homicidal maniac who’ll be happy to kill Alexis at your command? Or were you thinking of kidnapping him and forcing him to kill Alexis? Or maybe doing to him what this Emmitt character did to you, somehow tricking him into killing Alexis?”

Damn. Steph had a few too many good questions for my taste. I frowned. “I only came up with this idea like five seconds ago. Give me some time to work out the kinks. Besides, how else are we supposed to make Alexis pay for what he did? There’s no other way to kill him.”

“Who says you have to kill him? Blake told me you’ve been searching for a woman the Olympians have had interred for ten years. Why not give them a taste of their own medicine?”

There was a sense of poetic justice to the idea, except—

“If we bury him, somebody could dig him up someday just like we plan to dig up Emma.” Assuming I could ever find her, which wasn’t looking too likely. “I never thought of myself as bloodthirsty before, but I want that man dead.”

“And the world would probably be a better place without him.” Her voice softened. “But Nikki, you aren’t a killer. I want Alexis to pay for what he did, but not at the price of putting a black mark on your soul.”

I’d always suspected Steph was so damn nice because she’d had such an easy life. It’s easy to be magnanimous toward others when everything is going your way, or at least that’s what I’d thought. But here she was, being nice, worrying about the state of my soul after having been through a trauma worse than any I’d experienced. Maybe her niceness had nothing to do with her charmed life after all. Maybe it was just her.

“You can’t possibly believe you’re the only woman he’s hurt,” I said instead of voicing any of my true thoughts. “There’s not a question in my mind that he deserves to die.” And killing him would make me feel so much better. Thought the woman who felt guilty about taking Jamaal’s eye out. Maybe Steph had a point, but damned if I was going to admit it.

“So you’re going to turn vigilante? Use your superpowers to hunt down the baddies one by one?”

She meant for me to respond to the vigilante comment—I guess it was supposed to shame me into seeing things her way—but I didn’t want to argue with her, not now of all times. So I deflected the question.

“You’re presuming I even have superpowers. I do seem to have acquired really good aim, but the hunting/tracking thing has been a total bust.” Unless I counted finding the ring as part of my ”superpowers,” but that hadn’t exactly turned out so well.

Despite her misery, there was a spark of interest in Steph’s eyes. I suppose learning about the secret world that existed just beneath the surface of the ordinary one was a good way to distract herself from her present situation.

“How is the power supposed to work?” she asked.

“Beats me,” I answered with a shrug. “I didn’t get an instruction manual.”

She gave me an exasperated look. “No kidding? What have you tried?”

I resisted the urge to give her another flippant answer. I couldn’t do near as much as I wanted to help her, but I could at least talk to her and keep her mind occupied. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure what to try,” I admitted. “I’ve approached the search just like I would if I were using my ordinary everyday skills and hoped I’d figure something out. So far, it hasn’t worked. It’s not like I’ve suddenly developed a hound’s sense of smell or can tell which way someone went by a blade of broken grass.”

Her brow furrowed in thought. “But you’ve always been good at finding things, even when you weren’t Liberi . How did you do it?”