Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,120

going to be sending up smoke signals like no one’s business when the sun rises. We need to go. The sooner the better.”

For a moment, I thought Anderson’s need for revenge was going to overcome his common sense. He had that angry light in his eyes, and I could feel the malice rolling off of him in waves. Then he shook his head violently and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the white light was gone, and he had a look I could only describe as haunted. “I let my need for revenge control me once before. I swore to myself I would never do it again.”

He didn’t seem to be talking to me so much as to himself. He’d told me before that he’d done “terrible things” in his past, and it seemed like a good guess those “terrible things” had been done in revenge. I was too nosy not to be curious, but now was not the time for questions. And I didn’t think Anderson would answer them anyway.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “at the last moment before I hit him with the rock, Konstantin realized he’d made a mistake and he was going to get killed by a five-foot-two woman with chains on her wrists and ankles. I suspect that knowledge counts as suffering in his book.”

Anderson flashed me a weak smile. Then, his face saying it was killing him to do it, he reached out with a glowing hand to touch Konstantin.

TWENTY-NINE

Not having keys turned out not to be a problem, as Anderson kept a spare set in the glove compartment; however, we had to get underneath and chisel away at the hunk of ice we were hung up on. It didn’t actually take all that long, but if another car had come along while we’d been at it, it would have been . . . awkward. It’s not every day you see a naked man and a woman chained hand and foot having car trouble by the side of the road. Anderson had helped himself to Konstantin’s suit jacket after Konstantin was dead, but it was speckled with blood, which would have been hard to explain if anyone had stopped to try to help us. He’d tried the pants, too, but Konstantin was both taller and broader, and there was no way to keep the pants up.

At least the jacket, bloodstains and all, kept Anderson from looking like he was completely naked when we passed the police cars that blew by us only moments after we’d gotten back onto the road.

As I defrosted in the car on the way back to the mansion, I told Anderson everything he had missed—including that Cyrus had set us up. The fury that darkened his face made me wonder if I should have left that part out. The Olympians had clearly broken the treaty, but even though Konstantin was dead, nothing had really changed from our standpoint. We could not afford a war against the Olympians, no matter what Cyrus had done.

Anderson was quiet for a long time, stewing in his rage. I thought about reminding him of all the reasons why we couldn’t afford a war, but decided my best course of action was to let him figure that out himself.

Of course, the decision of whether or not we were going to war against the Olympians wasn’t entirely up to us. Konstantin had never dared start a war because he knew Anderson could kill him, but Cyrus had no way of knowing our puny little team could actually hurt him and his Olympians, and he was bound to be upset when he found out we’d taken out his dad.

Anderson let out a heavy sigh when we drove through the gates of home sweet home.

“Cyrus is a conniving, selfish, morally bankrupt bastard,” he said. “And he’s a huge improvement over Konstantin.”

“He’s going to assume we buried Konstantin somewhere,” I replied. “He and his daddy might not have had the most loving relationship, but Cyrus is going to want revenge anyway.”

“He might want it, but he won’t dare try to get it.” Anderson smiled, and there was a touch of cruelty in his expression. “If he kills us—or if he just pisses me off enough—he’ll lose all hope that we might someday tell him where Konstantin is buried.”

It was the same tactic Konstantin had used with Emma. Anderson had wanted to kill him for a long time, but he hadn’t dared kill the one man