Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,103

keep quiet as we knowingly walked into a trap without a plan.

“Konstantin obviously thinks there’s something he can do to you,” I said, panting a bit from the effort of walking through the snow, especially at the brisk pace Anderson had set. “Are you 100 percent sure he’s wrong?”

“Yes,” Anderson snapped.

“What if he’s planning to bury you? Or drown you, like he did Emma?”

“He might find me reluctant to hold still for it. Besides, I’m rather hard to restrain.” To punctuate his point, Anderson walked straight through the trunk of a tree.

I wished his reminder and demonstration made me feel better. The walking-through-walls thing was a common ability for death-god descendants. Konstantin had to know Anderson, as a death god, could do it, and he was waiting in that house for us anyway. To say I had a bad feeling about this was an understatement.

“But you can die, at least temporarily,” I said. “I’ve seen it happen.” He hadn’t stayed dead anywhere near as long as a Liberi with similar injuries would have, but still . . .

“Unless his plan is to stand by my side and kill me every ninety seconds or so, it doesn’t matter.” He came to an abrupt stop and whirled on me. A hint of white glow was leaking out of his eyes, giving me a glimpse of the terrifying, nonhuman creature that lay behind his facade. “Go back to the car. This is my battle, not yours.”

Oh, we were back to that again, were we?

“You’re being a pigheaded, mindless jackass,” I retorted. “Don’t you see that Konstantin has been pulling our strings from the very beginning?” I myself was only now beginning to see how thoroughly Konstantin had manipulated us all. “He didn’t trick you into killing Emma just to hurt you. He did it because he knew it would make you act exactly like you’re acting now.” And his attack on Cyrus was never supposed to succeed, was only meant to prompt Cyrus into giving up his location. “This is exactly the endgame he planned. We’re here because he wants us to be, and we’d be idiots to fall for it.”

Anderson moved so fast that all I saw was a blur. Then there was a hand at my throat and I was being propelled backward until I crashed into a tree trunk. I probably would have lost my footing in the snow and ice, but Anderson kindly held me up. Unfortunately, he was holding me up by the throat, but what’s a little choking between friends?

“I told you I would never hurt you in a fit of temper,” Anderson growled, the white light in his eyes now bright enough to make me squint. “Don’t make a liar out of me.”

I swallowed hard. Anderson can be one hell of a scary guy when he wants to be. But I also noticed that the hand around my throat wasn’t really digging in, and that my impact with the tree had been much more surprising than painful. He was in better control of himself than he wanted me to think, which was sort of scary in itself. If he was in control of himself and still wanted to storm the house, if it wasn’t just some hotheaded momentary madness, then there was no chance in hell I was talking him out of it, no matter how sound my reasoning.

Anderson took my silence for capitulation, and he let go of me. When I started following after him yet again, he gave me an exasperated look over his shoulder.

“I’ll shut up,” I promised him, holding my hands up in surrender. “But I’m coming with you.”

I didn’t know if I could possibly be any help. Konstantin had to be expecting both of us, after all, and that meant he had a plan to deal with both of us. But I wasn’t letting Anderson walk in there alone. I fished my gun out of my coat pocket, rechecking the cylinder to make sure it was loaded and ready to go. Not because I had any doubts, but because I wanted to look tough and ready for action, instead of scared out of my wits.

The show must have been at least marginally convincing. Anderson turned from me once again and started heading toward the house. I followed.

TWENTY-FOUR

We approached the house from the back, staying under the cover of the woods for as long as we could. I tensed as we broke through the trees and onto the back lawn, but no