Chapter Fifty-Eight

Betty Quentin hoped her old heart would survive the supreme thrill of tonight. At last, she watched as a bullet shot through Adrian Watts’ skull and dropped him to the ground in a spray of blood. The fire awaited, leaping high in the fire pit. At last this fiend would be removed from the world, like that Rhea woman before him.

Krystal holstered her gun and grabbed Adrian by the legs. She grunted as she began to drag him the fifty feet or so to the fire pit. “Little help here?” she called.

“Here, Grandma,” Landon said. “You cover Sophie. I’ll help carry him.”

Betty limped to where Landon sat. He put the unconscious Sophie on the ground, handed his gun to Betty, and jogged over to Krystal. Betty glanced down at Sophie, and nudged the girl’s leg with one foot, but she stayed out cold. Oh, well. Betty did feel it was kinder not to make Sophie watch as Adrian’s body was burned, whatever harsher ideas Krystal might have. Sophie would have a rough enough life after this already. Even when they let her go, they’d keep watching and warning her. She had her parents’ loss to contend with now, and her friend Tabitha was likely to be removed next. Sophie was a smart girl; she would learn to turn against the immortals. What would teach her if these tragedies didn’t?

After checking that the gun was ready to fire, Betty held it pointed downward at Sophie, just in case. But she gazed primarily upon the pivotal moment unfolding in front of her: Landon picked up Adrian by the arms, and Krystal by the legs, and they carried him toward the fire. Landon’s face was pale and gleamed with sweat. The poor boy had a sensitive nature. He didn’t love the task the way Krystal did. It spoke well for him, Betty felt. A nuanced mind was best for directing Thanatos. Brute force was handy for these jobs, but it couldn’t run the whole operation.

Sudden movement writhed below her. She looked down, and in that second, Sophie grabbed the gun and ripped it away from her. Betty gaped. Anger blazed in Sophie’s wide-awake eyes, and the girl was already climbing to her feet, pointing the gun at Betty.

“What—” Betty said.

Krystal dropped Adrian’s body, leaving Landon to fall to his knees, struggling with his half of the burden. Krystal pointed her gun at Sophie. “Drop it!”

Sophie looked at them, and her fury only intensified. Sophie’s arm whipped around Betty and yanked her up close, unbelievably tight. The gun’s cold barrel dug into Betty’s temple. How could anyone be so strong after being repeatedly electrocuted? Was Sophie one of the immortals after all?

“I’ll shoot you from here,” Krystal shouted. “I am an excellent shot.”

“No!” Landon begged, as his panicked gaze took in the hostage situation. “Wait.”

“For what?” Krystal kept her aim upon Sophie. “Throw him in the fire! Now!”

Sophie flung Betty away from her, sending her ten or twenty feet through the air before she crashed in the grass. The ground was squishy, thankfully, but the landing still bruised her bones and knocked the wind out of her.

Sophie paced forward toward Adrian.

A bang assaulted Betty’s ears: Krystal had fired. But either Sophie somehow dodged, or Krystal missed, for Sophie kept stalking straight at them. Then she raised the gun she’d stolen from Betty and fired at Krystal.

Krystal went down with an enraged scream. Betty struggled up to her elbow to look, and saw Krystal clutching at her hip, pain contorting her face.

Krystal aimed at Sophie again, though her arm shook. But before she could fire, someone dived in from the darkness and knocked Krystal back to the ground. Soon something went flying—probably Krystal’s gun. With a strangled grunt, Krystal curled up on the ground, gasping and still.

The stranger rose: a tall, slender young man with a merry smile. “Hello, dear,” he said to Sophie. “You take Adrian while I chat with our friends?” He glanced at Adrian’s body. “Don’t worry, he’s still in there.”

Sophie nodded, strangely straight and poised. She swung to point the gun at Landon, who, unarmed himself, immediately let go of Adrian and scrambled backward on his knees with his hands raised.

“Hmm,” the stranger said. He gazed at Krystal and then at Landon. “Now that’s interesting.”

“Please,” Landon begged. It seemed to be all he could say.

Betty, struggling to regain her breath, hauled herself painfully upright in the grass.

“Know what?” the stranger told Landon. “You can go. For now. I think it’ll be fun to leave you wondering when we’ll find you again. Which we will, I assure you.”

Landon got to his feet, hands still in the air. He glanced at Betty.

“No, you can’t take her,” the stranger said. “I’ve got business with her. But the redhead, fine. Shoo now.” He fluttered his fingers at Landon.

Landon hurried to Krystal’s side and picked her up while she gasped in pain. He rushed to the van with her. “Grandma!” he called desperately across the field.

“Go, Landon,” Betty called back. “Drive fast. Don’t wait for me.”

Sophie had sunk to her knees beside Adrian, and laid her hand upon his chest. Betty couldn’t observe more, because now the smiling stranger strolled to her, grabbed her by both arms, and picked her up like she was a rag doll.

Goodbye, Landon, she thought with tenderness. No one but he had loved her in such a long time. He would likely grieve.

The world darkened as the fire disappeared. Across the meadow stood a glowing horse. The stranger threw her over his shoulder and walked toward it. “Know where we are?” he asked.

“The dead world,” she said. “Where you’ll leave me for the animals.”

“The spirit realm,” he corrected, “and that’s what Adrian said he’d do. But I’m not as patient.” He vaulted onto the horse with Betty, jostling her further, and commanded, “Up!”

The ground dropped dizzyingly away. A weightlessness both terrifying and delightful swooped through Betty’s stomach. From her awkward position upside-down against his back, she watched the dark ground spread wider. The mountains dwindled, changing from peaks towering over them to an undulation of land below them. Looking sideways, she found a few stars floating between the clouds.

“It’s an even nicer view in daylight,” the man remarked. “No moon tonight. Bad luck. Oh well, you’ll see more of the realm when you fly.”

“Fly?”

He hauled her forward so she slid back down his shoulder in front of him.

Instinctively she clutched at him, not wanting to fall—though she began to understand that was exactly her fate.

“It’s rare a person can say this literally,” he said, still sounding pleasant and conversational. “But in your case I can.” He tore her away from him, holding her at arm’s length out in the air. Her kicking legs swept through the glowing horse without making contact. “See you in hell,” the stranger said, and flung her out into space.

Betty fixed her terrified eyes on the stars as she fell and fell. Then there was a lightning-fast pummeling—branches, rocks, ground—then total blackness.

She rose, pain-free, and beheld her own body in the spirit realm. Her soul illuminated it. But she couldn’t stand long in contemplation, for invisible forces were pulling her away, fast and inexorable like rapids going over a waterfall. She succumbed, and flew.

The burning, numbing, glorious power in Sophie’s body began to ebb. She remained immobile on her knees, her hand on Adrian’s chest. He had begun to breathe again, faintly, and twitched once in a while as the gunshot wounds in his head, front and back, started to heal. Niko had vanished with Quentin, probably to abandon her in the other realm. The two younger Thanatos killers had driven away a few minutes ago in a rapid crunch of gravel. It was just Sophie and Adrian, the silent and wounded, in the field. She dropped Quentin’s gun beside her with a shudder, hating the slick metal feel of it.

She hardly knew what had happened during the last several minutes. She’d been taken over by what she could only describe, in this dizzy aftermath, as the righteous fury of angels—or, likelier, gods.

When she had opened her eyes in an unclouded moment of strength to see the stooped Betty Quentin standing over her, not even watching her, not even properly keeping hold of the gun she held, Sophie had let all her howling grief and rage surge forth. It had even felt a bit like someone else’s grief and rage. Perhaps Zoe had thrown magic her way.

And immortal strength too. No way could Sophie have flung Quentin across the field like that otherwise. And fear ordinarily would have made her shake as she faced down a Thanatos assassin with a gun. Instead she had walked straight at the redheaded woman, didn’t even flinch when the bullet grazed her shoulder, and fired back. She had shot someone.

Now she did more than flinch. The tendon curving from her right shoulder into her neck stung and throbbed. She touched it and winced, finding blood soaking her T-shirt and sweater. The gouge hadn’t hurt much before, as if her temporary strength had shielded her from pain too, but now the pain increased with each breath. She’d need medical help. But she had to see Liam first.

And with the thought of Liam, the rest of the evening crashed down upon her mind. She wilted until her forehead almost touched her knees, and let the tears drip down her nose and into her filthy jeans.

Footsteps whispered through the grass. She looked up. It was Nikolaos, his face paler and less merry than when he had arrived. He knelt and hugged her, saying nothing.

She stayed in his arms a long spell, letting her silent tears soak his clothes instead of hers.

Then he sucked in a breath and murmured, “Gods, girl, you’re wounded. Why didn’t you say?”

“I’ll live.” It came out sounding mournful. She sniffled and asked, “What’d you do with Quentin?”

He cleared his throat. When he answered, his voice retained its usual flippant quality, but with a strained undertone. “Took her high up on my horse to give her a nice view in the starlight. Very high indeed. Not a height a person would want to fall from.” The flippancy dropped away, and he added softly, “At least it was fast.”

Sophie closed her eyes and shuddered again. But she stayed huddled against Niko, and whispered, “Good.”

“Is it?” He still spoke softly. “Won’t the Fates chain me up even longer now, Persephone?”

Wincing at the pain in her shoulder, she glanced up at his anxious eyes. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “But if it were up to me, I’d pin a freaking medal on you.”

He smirked and glanced away.

“Did I kill the girl?” Sophie asked.

“Doubt it. Only hit her in the hip. Should give her a good world of hurt, though. Maybe a limp forever, if we’re lucky.” His gaze slid to Adrian. “Well, come on. Let’s get the pair of you back.”

Niko transferred them to the spirit realm, carried Adrian to the bus, and attached his own horse to the team before driving them back to Carnation. On the quick ride, Sophie held Adrian across her lap. But he felt and smelled alien, with all the blood, and the pain in her shoulder in combination with the horror at losing her parents had flared into a nauseating headache that marred any possibility of love or comfort.

She did love Adrian. She didn’t want him to die. And she refused to let Thanatos win. But she couldn’t stand the pain anymore, the fighting. She wasn’t strong enough. Life had become a nightmare.

What if she could turn the clock back to the night three months ago when Adrian had texted, Are you interested in being kidnapped again, then? What would she answer, knowing what she knew now?

No, she thought, closing her eyes in nausea and agony. No, please, leave me in peace.