Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,104

gunshots shattered the darkness, and there was no one lurking nearby to jump us.

My twisted ankle had healed already, but Anderson was still walking fast enough that it was hard to keep up. I wished I had longer legs, and bit my tongue on a request that he slow down. He’d made it clear he was through waiting for me.

To get to the back door of the house, we had to walk by the pond that had been Emma’s personal torture chamber for the better part of a decade. It was completely frozen over, its surface hidden under a layer of snow. Someone not familiar with the house might not even have realized it was there, though if you looked carefully you could see the outline of its banks under the snow.

I’m sure it cost him something, but Anderson resisted looking at the pond as we made our way past it. There was no way he wasn’t aware of its presence, wasn’t thinking about what Emma had gone through, wasn’t thinking about what Konstantin had manipulated him into doing, but he was in a painfully single-minded state, so focused on his revenge his footsteps didn’t falter.

There were no lights on in any of the windows that looked out over the back of the house, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone on the lookout for intruders. I wanted to maybe do the kind of crouching run you often see people doing in action movies, but that only worked if there was cover to hide behind. Anderson and I were two moving dark blotches in a sea of pristine white snow, and if anyone was watching for us, there was no way in hell they could miss us.

The thought made me utter a few more curses under my breath. Anderson could make himself invisible. If he’d been willing to take the time to formulate a plan, perhaps we’d have been able to figure out a way to take advantage of his ability. But no, he’d rather charge in immediately, too impatient for his revenge to waste time on such trivialities as trying to figure out how to get at Konstantin as safely and easily as possible.

We reached the back door without any alarms sounding or traps springing, but that didn’t make me feel any better. If Konstantin had set a trap of some sort, it made sense that it would be inside the house.

Anderson tried the door. Surprise, surprise, it was locked, but there was no way that was going to slow down a death god, much less actually stop him.

Anderson walked right through the door, and I had a momentary fear that he was going to leave me outside to find my own way in while he continued on without me. Before the worry took on a life of its own, I heard the locks turning, and Anderson considerately opened the door for me. I had the guilty thought that I’d probably have been better off if he’d stranded me outside, but that didn’t stop me from stepping through the doorway.

“What now?” I asked in a bare whisper.

“Take me to him,” Anderson responded. The edge of impatience in his voice made me bristle.

“I’m not a bloodhound!” I held up my wrist and pointed to my watch. “The moon set three minutes ago. I have no idea where he is.” There was a flash of white light in Anderson’s eyes again. “And getting angry at me isn’t going to make my powers suddenly come back.”

He blinked a couple of times, and the light went away. “The moon may help you, but you aren’t powerless without it. You should be able to track Konstantin when he’s so close.”

He was right, and I knew it. But my pulse was tripping, and my chest was tight with anxiety, and I wasn’t in any state to pick up the subtle nuances of my subconscious. My conscious mind was fully in control—telling me I should get the hell out of the house while there was still time—and any subconscious cues I might be getting were drowned out by the yammering.

I made a helpless gesture and shook my head. At this point, I almost hoped Konstantin changed his mind about whatever he was planning and decided to run instead. I was too frazzled to follow him, and it meant I would probably never be able to find him again, but I suspected that might be the lesser of two evils.

Anderson grunted. “Guess we’ll just have to search