Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

Wow. That was one hell of a detailed delusion. I had to admit, there was something decidedly weird going on. But come on, children of the gods? Really?

“The glyph on your hand marks you as a Descendant of Artemis,” Maggie continued. “When you killed Emmitt, you also stole his immortality. Not on purpose, I know,” she hastened to add.

“So I’m immortal now?” I asked, trying to hide my skepticism the best I could—which wasn’t well at all.

“I know it sounds crazy. But yes, you are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The guys—especially Jamaal—think you already knew all this and staged the accident to steal Emmitt’s immortality deliberately.”

Perfectly logical—if you bought into the craziness in the first place, which I wasn’t about to do. “But you think Emmitt committed suicide, because he knew I was a Descendant of Artemis and was actually capable of killing him?” I was well aware of my tone of voice, that I was talking to her like I was humoring a dangerous psycho, but I couldn’t help it.

Maggie nodded. “I don’t know how he found you, but he must have seen the glyph on your face and decided to use you.”

“But the glyph only showed up a little while ago!” Had I caught an inconsistency in her story?

“It’s been there all along. It’s just that only Liberi can see it.”

Some of this was beginning to make a weird kind of sense, and I began to worry about my own sanity. Maybe the blows to my head had rattled my brain around more than I knew. But Maggie was the closest thing I had to an ally in this loony bin, and I needed to take advantage of that while I could.

“It’s all a little much to take in,” I said, because I didn’t have it in me to actually say I believed her.

“I know,” she said with a gentle smile. “And it’s all right. You don’t have to pretend to believe me. I’m not offended.”

Maggie was definitely the nicest of the cultists. It was time to test just how nice.

“Thanks for being so understanding,” I said.

“Hey, we girls have to stick together here in Testosteroneville.”

“Yeah, about that …”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you out,” Maggie said.

“Please, Maggie. I think Anderson’s going to … interrogate me. And I don’t think that’s going to go so well for me.” I didn’t have to force the shudder.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It’ll be all right. I’d let you out if I could, but Anderson gave me an order, and disobeying his orders isn’t such a great idea.”

I remembered Jamaal’s scream, and felt just a little guilty for asking Maggie to defy Anderson. Not enough to stop asking, though.

“Maggie, I—”

But she’d had enough, rising to her feet and cutting me off. “I can’t, Nikki. I just can’t. I’ll get you some clean bedding, some towels, and some toiletries, but that’s the best I can do.”

She started toward the door, and I slid off the bed, wondering if I could barrel past her and escape. I didn’t like my odds, but I might have tried it anyway if my wounded side hadn’t screamed in pain. Apparently, I’d stood too fast. By the time I was able to breathe through the pain, Maggie was gone and the door was closed.

Maggie brought the suppliesshe had promised. If I had been inclined to stick my head in the sand and pretend nothing out of the ordinary was happening, I might have been able to curl up on the cot in something resembling comfort and gotten some sleep. Of course, sleeping was the last thing on my mind; I kept thinking Anderson was going to come back to “question” me.

He never showed. Maybe Maggie convinced him that I was telling the truth. Or maybe he just thought the anticipation of pain would crack me faster than the pain itself.

Whatever the reason, no one came for me through the long hours of the night. For a while, I was treated to the comforting sound of Jamaal pounding on a door and yelling at the top of his lungs. Apparently, Anderson had locked him in one of these basement rooms, too, and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know he was unhappy about it.

Every time I heard his voice, I found myself selfconsciously rubbing my throat, where I should have had bruises galore from his attempt to strangle me to death. I didn’t have a mirror, but as far as I could tell by touch, there wasn’t any bruising at all.

Of course, everything Maggie had told me had to be bullshit. Right? There was a perfectly rational explanation for everything that had happened tonight. Damned if I could figure out what it was, though.

Locked as I was in a room without windows, and wearing a broken watch, my internal clock was my only way to keep track of time. No matter how scared and freaked out I was, as the hours crept by, exhaustion sat more and more heavily on my shoulders. When the pillow started to look inviting, I forced myself to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face. It helped me feel more alert for all of about five seconds.

I never consciously made the decision to lie down and sleep, but when the door to my cell next cracked open, the sound of squealing hinges woke me up with a start. My heart instantly went on red alert, pounding adrenaline through my system. I leapt to my feet, wide awake. My side didn’t scream at me for the sudden movement, but I was too alarmed to be relieved.

Standing in the doorway, grinning as if my terror was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, was yet another one of Emmitt’s “cult members.” This one was Jack Gillespie, and he looked a bit like a transplanted surfer-dude. His curly, dark blond hair was streaked with lighter blond—an effect that was probably supposed to look like sun-bleaching, but was a little too even to be anything but man-made. His skin was a deep, skin-cancer tan, and in the handful of times I’d seen him, he’d always been wearing torn jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt, despite the cold.

I shook off my fear and narrowed my eyes at him. “Has Anderson ordered you guys to take turns coming to see me, or what?” I asked. Unless there was another cultist I wasn’t aware of, I had now met all but one of the men Emmitt had had me “investigating.”

Jack’s grin didn’t falter. “If Anderson had ordered me to come down here and talk to you, I probably wouldn’t be here. I’m not too good with orders.”

I rubbed my eyes. Now that the first surge of adrenaline had faded, I remembered how utterly exhausted I was. I had no idea what time it was, or how long I’d been asleep, but I felt like I could sleep another six or eight hours, easy. I wasn’t in the mood for witty banter.

“Are you just here to stare at me like I’m an animal in a zoo, or is there something you want?”

He leaned casually against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over what his tight T-shirt advertised was a very nice chest. “I’ll go away if I’m interrupting your beauty sleep. But I thought you might sleep better in your own bed.”

My heart leapt at the thought, though my rational mind immediately proclaimed the suggestion too good to be true.

“So you’re letting me go?” I asked, making no attempt to mask my skepticism.

“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to drive you home, seeing as what’s left of your car has been towed. And there’s not much in the way of public transportation out here even in the daytime.”

I examined his words for hidden nuances, but couldn’t find any. Still, there was something decidedly fishy going on. If Anderson had decided to release me, I was pretty sure I’d have been gone hours ago. Jack showing up here in what my body clock told me was the middle of the night or very early morning screamed of ulterior motives. Unfortunately, I had no idea what those motives could be.