I noticed Seth making his way toward us with Adonis not far behind, and I wanted to tell them to back off. I could take care of this witch on my own.
“Empusa, is it?” I gave her a glare.
With a giggle, she plopped onto one of the seats, pushing the old grandma out of it. Her long black nails scratched her head of black hair.
She looked like a Goth movie gone horribly wrong.
Seth finally made it to the party and cursed. Hmm… my exact same reaction. Though I guessed his curse had more to do with the fact Empusa was basically a female version of him. A fallen creature that had resorted to seducing men to feed on, and wonder of all wonders, she also guards the road to Denali with a vengeance. Meaning, in this case, she ate innocent passengers. Not that old ladies were a threat to any sort of Titan. We, however…
How had I missed that the blood had been drained from all the old ladies? I guess it didn’t help that they were already pale and smelled funny.
“So, what now?” Seth sat dramatically across the seat. “You wanna kill her, Thena, or should I do the honor?”
“Decisions, decisions,” I muttered, fingering the dagger with excitement. It’d been too long since I’d killed, and my body was itching to do physical harm to the witch in front of me.
Empusa giggled again. “Kill the messenger? Now that isn’t exactly playing fair, is it?”
“Messenger my—“
“Enough, Seth,” I interrupted what would have probably been a string of unholy curses from his otherwise dirty mouth and smiled at the girl in question. Her blue eyes shone back at me. Tilting her head in a predatory stance, she licked her lips, as if in anticipation of a snack.
“I’ll do the honors.” I made a lunge toward her. Everything always happened in slow motion for me. I heard the blood-curdling screech come from her lips. My eyes focused on the blood as it pounded through her black veins. It was like her body came alive, until as she drew a final breath I ran my dagger along her throat fully ending her existence.
Her body was motionless and defenseless, but her eyes continued to scour our faces, waiting for one of us to finish her off. The only way to kill a being like her was to dismember her sad excuse for a body.
I’d always let Headquarters do the dirty work before, but lucky for me, Seth was more than willing this time. I think he actually enjoyed it more than what was considered normal. As he smiled and ripped her body to shreds, I dusted off my hands and waited for Adonis to say something. He’d been watching the whole exchange with a peculiar look on his face.
“What?” I said, wiping my knife on my pants.
“Nothing, it’s just…” He raised his fingers to his head, pushing back beautiful locks of hair. “I don’t see why Empusa would be sent on the plane with us. It’s not as if we’re an easy target. I mean, we do have Atlas with us.”
The plane started to plunge. My heart nearly stopped.
“Well, crap.” I gave Adonis a panicked look as we ran to the front of the plane.
The pilot’s seat was empty. Atlas had disappeared on us, what was he thinking? Let us crash into…
“Wait…” I ran back and grabbed the map to look at the coordinates. “He overshot the plane. We’re not landing in Fairbanks.”
“So where we landing?” Seth walked up and stretched as if it had been an afternoon stroll. How was he acting so calm after the old lady killing spree and plummeting plane?
I gulped. “We’re, uh, heading straight for the mountain.”
Seth grinned. “Awesome.”
I wanted to punch him. “Please tell me how this is awesome?”
“The way I see it, Atlas got us as close as he could without actually having to betray the rest of his brothers. Look.”
We all looked out the window. Noting again how high we were made me hesitate a bit. A few clouds parted and Mt. McKinley in all its glory appeared. To my utter horror, I realized our only escape was to jump.
“Well…” Great. It seemed the only intelligent thing I could say was well before our jump into the highest mountain range in the United States. Fantastic.
I pulled at the duffel bag, frantically trying to jerk out my parachute and was mentally doing all the calculations of death versus survival at this type of jump.
“So, I just pull this cord, right?” I asked for the millionth time. I’m sure Seth was ready to jump out of pure annoyance.
Adonis was busy making sure there wasn’t any evidence left behind from our battle with Empusa. Naturally it won’t look too bad, considering the crash should disintegrate any sort of evidence. Still. To us the loss of innocent human lives was sad. Good guy that he was, Adonis did a final walk of the plane, praying blessing over the remaining bodies.
I know I was being selfish, but I couldn’t help but think about what we were about to do, not what we’d already done.
Seth pulled at my parachute and tightened the pack. “Okay, Thena, look at me.”
I obliged him.