A Beautiful Evil

Page 22

“What do I do? Tell me what to do.” I stumbled over my words as Athena sauntered over to Henri, closed his mouth for him with a finger under his chin, grabbed the barrel of his shotgun, flipped it in her hand, and fired it into his stomach.
“Henri!” Oh God. Henri. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
He grabbed his gut, his expression one of astonished horror, before he crumpled to the ground. Athena motioned for her guards. “Dump him over the cliff.”
“NO!”
She spun, holding out a hand to stop me. I was unable to move forward. “You’re full of surprises, Aristanae. You must tell me how you made it into my realm. Once you’ve had some time in my prison.”
Nineteen
“I’LL HEAL, ARI,” SEBASTIAN MUTTERED AS I HELPED HIM TO his feet. “Warlock vampire, remember? Christ, Henri . . .”
The guards lifted Henri’s body, carried him to the wall, and dumped him over. Just like that. As though he was nothing.
I gritted my teeth until tiny bursts of pain shot through my jaw, and I made a promise to Henri—one more person who deserved justice.
My grief became detachment. My shock became determination.
Come hell or high water, Athena was going to pay.
Menai shoved us up the steps to the temple as Athena disappeared inside. I held on to Sebastian’s arm tightly, too shocked and sickened to cry. My limbs were trembling so badly, and another push from behind made me trip up the steps. I recovered in time to avoid a face plant on the landing.
At the top of the steps I craned my neck, my gaze going up and up and up. . . . The bases of the columns alone were taller than me. The gods weren’t giants as far as I could tell, but their egos—well, one in particular—were definitely in line with the massive structure.
We passed through the main hall, the same room that had held the banquet with my father as the night’s entertainment. Fires burned in the stone bowls around the room. But it was empty now and quiet.
After walking the length of a long corridor, we were directed down curved, torch-lit stairs made of stone and into a chamber where several of Athena’s were gathered. At the far end of the chamber we passed through a heavy door and down into the mountain itself, on steps carved into the rock.
A cavernous space opened up two flights down. The steps ended, replaced by a sloping spiral path that ringed a vast chasm. Fall off the ledge and you’d be history. Around the spiral I could make out rooms and prison cells, levels upon levels of them.
Humidity dampened my skin, and the air was thick and difficult to breathe. We proceeded around the chasm, eventually stopping at a row of empty cells. Sebastian and I were put into adjacent cells. The doors slammed shut behind us, the metal clang and lock shuddering through me. The floor was rock and dirt. No bedding, no toilet. The back wall was solid rock and thick bars made up the sides and front.
After Menai and the guards left, I started pacing. “Can you do your disappearing thing?”
“Not right now,” he said through a grunt of pain, sitting back against the bars that separated our cells.
I sat down, angled so I could see his face. “I’m sorry.” He turned his head toward me. He’d gone even paler than before, a sickly color, and was damp with sweat. “As soon as you’re better,” I said, “I want you to leave this place, Sebastian. Okay?”
“Leave,” he repeated through pants, turning his head away from me and letting it fall back against the bars. His Adam’s apple slid up and down as he tried to swallow. “You’re crazy. How ’bout when the time comes you leave.”
I gave a small snort and resisted the urge to tell him that this was my fight. He’d made it clear before that he didn’t agree with me, and deep down I knew he was right; Sebastian had a legitimate reason to be here too. Yet look where we were. In less than twenty-four hours one of my greatest fears had come true. Athena had struck again, hurting someone I cared about. Two someones. Sebastian was hurt and Henri was . . . gone.
“Ari, it’s not working.” I saw that his arm was lifted, palm open and trembling. “I can’t draw energy here.”
He’d expected light to form over his hand and there was nothing. “Can you heal?” I asked.
“Healing is part of my physical makeup, not magic, so yeah. But I can’t . . . there must be some kind of spell or block here.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Your father said the same about the prison Athena kept him in. Maybe it will come back once we get out of here.”
“Or she might have her entire temple blocked.” He frowned and blinked at me. “She doesn’t have you blocked, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you did to the archer, the last time we were here. You were able to use your power, Ari. Which means”—he stopped to take a few breaths—“she hasn’t blocked you in her hall. Maybe here in the prison, but not the hall. She wants to see you use your power. Otherwise she would’ve killed you already.”
And Athena was going to use whatever means possible to see what I was made of. Violet. My father. Sebastian.
“Well, we know magic isn’t blocked outside. She won’t leave us in here forever. That’s not her style.” Athena was a showman; she’d make sure all her followers saw exactly what she could do to me and mine. It was obvious that my power was still chaotic and uncontrollable. She knew I was an amateur, and she knew she had the upper hand. My only hope was that she’d let it go to her head, get too comfortable, and make a mistake.
Sebastian’s head slumped to the side. “Sebastian?”
He didn’t respond. He was out cold.
I grabbed hold of a rusty metal bar and drew my knees to my chest. If I could just think of a plan. . . .
Ideas came and went and nothing seemed viable. Worries and images of what happened in the courtyard kept invading my mind and breaking my concentration. Finally I gave up and closed my eyes. Henri might’ve made it; he was a shifter and had abilities beyond that of a human. But how could anyone have survived that blast? How could anyone survive being dumped over a cliff?
I rubbed my wet eyes. The hot, tight pain in my chest grew until I could hardly breathe.
Oh God. Henri was dead.
I woke to find myself curled against the wall, my hand through the space in the bars, my fingers entwined with Sebastian’s. I didn’t know if it was the next day or night. There was no sense of time in the darkness below Athena’s temple.
I released Sebastian’s hand and sat up, rubbing my face to stir the blood and wake myself up.
Sebastian yawned and straightened, the movement making him wince.
“How’s your shoulder?”
He rolled it. “Fine. Just stiff.”
I stood and stretched, my stomach growling loudly. My internal clock said it was morning, but there was no way to be sure. No way to eat since our backpacks with our food and water had been confiscated.
On the other side of the wide chasm the cells continued their spiral down into the blackness. One after another, so small from where I stood, so dark and so many. A few sporadic torches burned, but they were too dim and too far away to allow me to see what else occupied the cells.
It wouldn’t be long now. Anxiety flooded my system, and I rubbed my arms and paced the cell. Athena would wake and eventually send for us. Which meant I needed to be prepared for anything.
“Ari. Stop.”
“I can’t help it.” I gestured toward the cell door, the sense of helplessness suffocating. “They’re going to come, and the next time we go up there, it won’t be my father in that pool. . . .”
“Yeah. So stop it.”
“If you don’t like what I’m feeling, then just block me.”
A frown pulled his eyebrows together. “Or just stop projecting. You think I want to feel what you’re feeling right now? You think I liked feeling what you felt when you saw your father? I don’t. I don’t. . . .” He dropped his head in his hands, rubbed his face, and then plowed his fingers through his hair.
I knelt down in front of him, grabbed the bars, and shook my head. “I don’t know what to do.”
He reached through and lifted a strand of my hair, twisting it around his hand. “You’re not responsible for all this, you know. And it won’t be your fault if we fail. It’s not your fault that Henri is gone. . . .”
I stared down at the floor, suddenly finding it very interesting. That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? If we did fail, if Sebastian or Violet got hurt or worse during all this, I’d blame myself. I’d see it as my fault, that I should’ve saved them, done something differently. . . .
My nose grew stuffy. I lost myself for a minute in the storm clouds in Sebastian’s eyes. He tugged on my hair. “You’re doing it right now, aren’t you? That calming thing.”
“No.” He shrugged. I laughed sadly, then sniffed again.
Keys jingled in the lock. The guards had returned. Desperation blew cold and bitter through me. I wasn’t ready for this. I shook my head, looking at Sebastian. His fingers wrapped around mine on the bars. We didn’t move until they came inside each of our cells and pulled us apart.
We were taken to the main hall in the temple. Music played, but this time it was David Bowie’s “China Girl,” which at first surprised me, but then I remembered what I’d learned about Athena involving herself in every era of civilization. Guess she liked Bowie.
I spotted Menai sitting on a bench, sharpening the tips of her arrows. Groups of Athena’s minions gambled and drank and messed with the female servants.
The tables were being set for another feast.
Menai saw us, got up, and approached. She grabbed Sebastian and snapped a gold cuff around his wrist. “The only way you can get this off is if you remove your hand, so don’t waste your time.”
The cuff was three inches wide and ringed with symbols.
“What’s it for?” I noticed she didn’t have one for me.