Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

But common sense and I haven’t been on speaking terms for a while now, so instead of trekking back to the car and heading for safety, I followed Anderson deeper into the woods. When I caught up to him, I adjusted our course so we’d come out as close to the pond as possible.

We paused for a while when we came to the edge of the woods, both peering into the heavy darkness left by the moon’s disappearance. Still no lights on in the house. It would be pretty funny, in a sick sort of way, if after all this fearful skulking around, it turned out that Alexis wasn’t even home.

“Any idea where to start looking?” Anderson asked me as he sat on the ground and started unlacing his boots.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t plan to swim in my hiking boots.” He pulled off one boot, along with the sock, then started working on the other one.

“That water has got to be freezing!” I protested, and I meant it literally. Even in the darkness, I could see the thin crust of ice that was forming along the shore.

“You think I can get her out of the water without getting wet?” Off came the second boot, followed by his utilitarian black jacket. “The clothes won’t keep me warm if they’re wet, and I’d rather have something dry to put on when I get out.”

The thought of setting even a toe in that water made my teeth chatter, but of course he was right. And unlike a normal human being, he wouldn’t die of hypothermia.

“Of course, I’m not exactly looking forward to it,” he continued, pulling his sweatshirt off over his head, “so if you can give me a general idea where to look, I’d appreciate it.”

I know I’ve said before that Anderson is rather unprepossessing, but seeing his nicely muscled chest and sculpted shoulders made me rethink the assessment. Then he slipped out of his jeans, leaving himself naked except for a pair of black briefs that clung very attractively in all the right places. I decided I hadn’t just been wrong, I’d been dead wrong. Without the camouflage of his scruffy, unflattering wardrobe, he was very nice to look at indeed.

Which was so not what I needed to be noticing right now.

The surprising view had momentarily distracted me, and I all but smacked myself in the head to get my brain working again and remember what he’d asked me. I glanced at the pond, trying to listen to my gut in case it had a message for me, but there was nothing. The clouds had thickened enough to hide the moon, and even the certainty that Emma was in there had faded with its light. I was going to be completely mortified if I made Anderson swim around in that frigid water for nothing.

“Maybe if you go in where I saw the deer?” I suggested doubtfully. The second thoughts were pounding at me now, telling me this was the stupidest idea I’d ever had. I only came looking for Emma on Alexis’s property because I wanted him to be the one who had her, and I was making an awful lot out of the fact that I saw a deer take a drink from the pond. It was probably a popular watering hole for the local herds, and what I’d seen had been nothing remotely supernatural.

“As good a guess as any,” Anderson said, already beginning to shiver in the cold. “Show me where.”

What confidence I’d had was now completely shot, and I wanted to tell Anderson to forget it, that I’d been wrong and we should just get out of here and go somewhere warm and safe. But I knew he wouldn’t listen to me even if I said it. If there was a chance he would find his Emma in that pond, then he’d take it, no matter how slim the chance might be, or how unreliable the source.

I visualized watching the deer cross the lawn to the pond, homing in on the spot she’d paused to take her drink, then hesitantly stepped out from the cover of the woods. My entire body was tense, expecting against all reason that Alexis was going to jump out from behind a bush somewhere and attack. I did my best to fight the feeling off as I led Anderson to the spot where I’d seen the deer.

I’d have felt a lot surer of myself if there were some nice, clear hoofprints in the mud, but of course there were none to be seen. Had I imagined the deer? Or had it been a supernatural creature, one that didn’t leave prints?

I gestured at the general area, giving Anderson a helpless shrug, feeling like a fool.

“All right,” he said, stepping to the edge of the pond. I felt a little better about the possibly imaginary deer when I saw that Anderson wasn’t leaving footprints in the mud, either. As he eased his way into the water, wincing at the cold, I reached out and touched the ground, finding it frozen solid. I should have guessed as much. The film of ice around the water’s edge had visibly spread since we’d first peeked out of the woods.

Anderson took a series of quick, deep breaths, preparing himself for the shock of cold. Then he dove forward into the icy water and disappeared beneath its surface.

I stood on theshore of the pond, chilled down to my bones in sympathy for Anderson as I watched the ripples from his dive glide over the glassy-smooth surface. With the full moon hidden, the only light came from the ambient glow of the nearby city. It was enough that I didn’t feel completely blind, but I was uncomfortably aware of the blackness of the shadows—shadows that could hide anything.

Figuring a little paranoia might be healthy under the circumstances, I put my backpack down and rooted through it until I found my gun. I pointed the gun at the ground and kept my finger off the trigger, remembering how badly I’d been startled earlier by the deer. It wouldn’t do for me to fire blindly out of startled reflex if another deer made an appearance.

Anderson’s head broke the water at the center of the pond. Immediately, steam rose from his skin. The shadows hid his expression, and I didn’t dare call out to him. He dove again after a few quick breaths, his feet flashing up into the air as he went straight down.

Did that mean he’d found her? If he was still looking, he should be swimming forward, not straight down. Right? I held my breath in anticipation. It was all I could do not to cross my fingers like a superstitious child.

He stayed down a long time, long enough for me to worry that something had gone wrong. For all I knew, the Olympians had pet monsters that lived in the bottoms of ponds. I had yet to fully embrace the magic I’d already witnessed, and I’d been slow to ponder what my newfound knowledge of the supernatural meant to the rest of my narrow view of the world. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot, hoping like hell he would hurry up and surface before I felt obligated to go in after him.

Moments later, he bobbed to the surface once more, sucking in a great gasp of air. I opened my mouth to call out to him, too curious now to worry about who else might hear me, but before a sound left my throat, I was blinded by a bolt of lightning, traveling horizontally across the lawn.

The lightning hit the surface of the pond, and I heard Anderson’s strangled cry of pain. The residual energy of the bolt lifted me off my feet and tossed me onto my back. The gun fell from my fingers as I hit the ground, and a clap of thunder resonated so loud it sent a spike of pain through my head.

Woozy, blind, and deaf, I retained just enough brain cells to know holding still was a bad idea. I rolled over until I got my feet under me, then broke into a stumbling run, having no idea where I was going. I could have run straight into the icy water, but, for once, luck was on my side, and I managed to stay on the smooth, grassy lawn.

My hair rose on end, and I instinctively dove forward just in time. The next lightning bolt struck the ground just a few yards away. I clapped my hands over my ears to dull the roar of the thunder as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I was close enough to the point of impact that the electricity in the air made my heart beat erratically, but at least it was beating.