TWENTY
“Can we talk about this a bit?” I asked. I hated how tentative I sounded, but Anderson was really freaking me out. I almost liked the emotionless machine he’d been last night better, though I supposed it was a good thing he’d let some of that out considering the destruction in the clearing.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Anderson said, fixing me with his laserlike stare. “She broke the treaty. And she’s proven she can’t be trusted.”
“Anderson, please,” she begged, sobbing. “Please believe me! I didn’t do it!”
Anderson might as well have been struck deaf for all the attention he paid her.
“But I’m the injured party here,” I argued. “And I don’t think she needs to die.”
“Your opinion is duly noted.”
And ignored, obviously. I tried to think up some argument that Anderson might listen to, but Cyrus spoke up before I could.
“Actually, Nikki, you’re not the injured party here. I am. I gave her a direct order to leave you alone, and she disobeyed me. I can’t allow that.”
For the first time since I’d met him, there was cold steel in Cyrus’s voice. He’d dropped the friendly smile, and there was a predatory sharpness in his eyes. Usually, the only resemblance I saw between him and his father was in their coloring, but the look on his face now suggested they might be more alike than I’d guessed.
Emma seemed to realize there was no reaching Anderson, so she switched her focus to Cyrus.
“I didn’t disobey you! I swear to you, I’m being framed. That bitch probably set the whole thing up to try to get me out of the way.”
My jaw dropped open. Even now, when I was the only one in the room trying to save her life, Emma was trying to stick it to me. If I’d had any sense, I would have washed my hands of her right there and then. Surely there was a straw that broke the camel’s back somewhere in her ravings.
And yet they really were ravings. I’d always thought of her irrational behavior like it was some kind of character flaw, but maybe instead of hating her and being angry with her for her behavior, I should have been trying to get her to seek professional help. Maybe if she’d been put on meds shortly after she’d emerged from the pond, she wouldn’t be what she was today.
“It’s not fair to blame her for being crazy when it was your own father’s decade of torture that made her that way,” I told Cyrus, deciding it was best to ignore Emma’s wild accusation. “You always said you were sorry for what he did to her. Prove it!”
“What caused her to do it is irrelevant. I told her what would happen if she disobeyed me, and she did it anyway. I might have spared her if Anderson were willing to claim her as his own again, but that seems not to be the case.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow at Anderson, who shook his head.
I was still scrambling for an argument that might work. I supposed I could try throwing something at Mark and giving Emma another chance to run for it, but I couldn’t risk breaking the treaty. If my choices were to let Emma die or to trigger a war we couldn’t win between us and the Olympians, I had to let Emma die.
I practically jumped out of my shoes when Blake put his arm around my shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze while whispering in my ear. “There’s nothing you can do, Nikki.”
“Proceed,” Cyrus said to Mark.
Emma started making gasping, gurgling sounds, and I saw that Mark’s forearm was across her throat, muscles bulging as he choked her. Emma kicked and flailed, but she was no match against Mark’s brute strength.
“You could stop it,” I hissed at Blake. He could use his power to distract both Cyrus and Mark with uncontrollable lust. That might interfere with their plans, but it wasn’t technically breaking the treaty.
“I suspect it would annoy Anderson almost as much as it annoyed me if you tried it,” Cyrus said to Blake. I guess my whisper hadn’t been as quiet as I’d thought.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anderson said. He was looking at Emma now, and his face wasn’t quite so impassive anymore. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times in quick succession. Emma’s lips were turning blue, and her struggles became even more frantic.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said lamely, my eyes blurring with tears. Yes, I was crying over the impending death of a woman who’d tried to have me buried alive.
“Yes, I do,” Cyrus answered, showing no signs that he felt any regret over ordering Emma’s death. “You’d better grow a thicker skin if you’re going to hang around with Liberi for the rest of your life.”
If Blake hadn’t clamped his arm around my shoulders harder, I might not have been able to resist the temptation to go slug Cyrus. I’d reminded myself time and again that he was one of the bad guys.
After today, I knew I would never forget it again.
Cyrus didn’t chortle or rub his hands together with glee as someone like Konstantin might have done, enjoying the suffering of others. But his callous indifference was almost worse. At least if he’d reveled in it, it would have told me the death of a fellow human being actually meant something to him.
Emma went limp in Mark’s arms. Unlike Cyrus, he looked like he was having a great time, but then he was in the process of becoming Liberi, stealing Emma’s immortality so that he could live forever himself. I guess that could be quite a rush for someone who was raised believing in the Olympian ideal.
Mark didn’t let Emma’s body fall to the floor until long after she stopped moving.
Before that awful day when my car crashed into Emmitt and changed my life forever, I’d never once seen anyone die. On the way back to our car, I tried to figure out how many people had died in front of me since I’d become Liberi. The fact that I had to think about it before I could be sure freaked me out.
There was Emmitt, of course. Then there was Alexis and his two cronies, who had died when Anderson and I rescued Emma from the pond. There was Justin Kerner, and one of his victims, whom I’d tried unsuccessfully to save. And now there was Emma. That brought the death toll up to seven, if you didn’t count the two times I’d seen Jamaal executed. Seven permanent deaths witnessed over the course of two months.
But today’s was the worst of all. I’d seen Anderson be ruthless before. I knew he had it in him. He was the son of a Fury, for God’s sake. But Emma was his wife. Okay, ex-wife, though they hadn’t exactly filed for divorce in a court of law. The principle was the same. He had stood there and watched her die when he could have saved her.
I kept having to dab at my eyes as we made the silent walk from Cyrus’s house to the garage where we had parked. Anderson was stone-faced, staring straight ahead as he walked. When we reached the car, Anderson pulled the keys out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Blake.
“I’m not fit to drive,” he said. His voice was gravelly, and for the first time I noticed the rim of red around his eyes.
It made me feel a little better to know that Anderson was hurting after what he’d done. I don’t know if I could have borne it if he’d been as indifferent as he’d pretended to be while we were at Cyrus’s. Maybe he’d just been trying to hide his true emotions in front of the enemy.
“It had to be done, boss,” Blake said as he took the keys.
A glint of anger flashed in Anderson’s eyes. He’d called for Emma’s death himself, had stood idly by while Mark killed her, but apparently he didn’t like the implication that she’d needed to die. “You never did like her, did you?”
“There are a lot of people I don’t like, and only a couple of them I’d like to see die. Emma wasn’t one of them. But she wasn’t right in the head, and she was getting worse over time instead of better. I just wanted you to know I thought you did the right thing.”
Blake gave me a look that held both warning and reproach, probably worried I was going to argue, but what would be the point? I’d made my position clear already. Anderson was obviously suffering—as he had been almost from the moment we’d pulled Emma from the pond and he’d seen what she’d become. I wasn’t going to give him an “atta boy” like Blake had, but I wasn’t going to kick him while he was down, either.
Anderson nodded a thank-you at Blake, then climbed into the back of the car. The ride home was even longer and more miserable than the ride out had been.