Clash-clash-bang!
Clash-clash-bang!
Swords crashed together in a loud, violent chorus, but I couldn’t pinpoint which direction the noises were coming from. After a few seconds, the sounds vanished. In the distance, I thought I heard a car engine rumble to life, along with the squeal of tires. If Lance and Drake had gotten into a vehicle, they were gone. But I didn’t know for sure, so I held my position in case the sound was some kind of trick and the Reapers decided to double back this way.
Footsteps scuffed through the fallen leaves, heading in my direction, and I raised my sword into an attack position. A few seconds later, Takeda appeared, with Mateo following him.
I let out a tense breath and lowered my weapon. “What happened?”
Takeda shook his head. “They had a car waiting at the edge of the woods. We lost them. I’m sorry, Rory.”
“It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “We need to get back to the mansion. Ian and Zoe are hurt.”
Takeda nodded and headed in that direction. Mateo stopped and squeezed my shoulder, letting me know that he was glad I was okay, then followed the older man. I sighed, slid Babs back into her scabbard, and headed after them.
* * *
By the time we made it back to the mansion, the kids around the pool had finally realized that something was wrong. So had everyone in the house. Someone had cut off the insanely loud music, and the students huddled in groups, being questioned by the Protectorate members.
The party was definitely over.
I pointed out the steps I’d raced down earlier, and Takeda, Mateo, and I climbed up to the third-floor office where Ian and Zoe were.
Zoe was awake and sitting up against the wall, although her hazel eyes were distant and unfocused, as if she wasn’t really seeing what was in front of her. She kept blinking and peering at the dagger in her hand like she didn’t know if it belonged to her. I’d seen that dazed look before, and I knew she had a concussion.
Ian crouched down beside her, making sure she was all right, even though he was hurt just as badly as she was. His shirt was torn, and blood oozed out of the deep gash that Drake had sliced all the way across his arm, shoulder, and back.
Takeda looked them over, making sure they were okay for now, then pulled his phone out of his pants pocket, hit some buttons, and started talking to someone. I yanked out my earbud and stuffed it into my jeans pocket so I wouldn’t have to listen to his conversation. Mateo did the same, and the two of us headed over to the others.
“Are you guys all right?” Mateo asked, his face creasing with worry.
“Just fine and dandy,” Zoe said, her words slurring a bit.
Ian grimaced and slowly straightened up. Every movement made more blood trickle out of his wound, and he swayed on his feet again, as though he might pass out from the pain. “We’ll live,” he rasped. “That’s what matters, right?”
Mateo helped Zoe to her feet, while I went over and put my arm under Ian’s good shoulder. He stepped forward, trying to shrug me off, and almost fell on his face, but I grabbed him around the waist and steadied him.
“You need to lean on me, Viking,” I said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Ian opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but he clamped his lips shut. That alone told me how much he was hurting.
“Tell me that you got them,” he rasped again.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. We lost them in the woods.”
Ian’s gaze locked onto the black and red Reaper mask that Drake had left behind on the desk. Fresh pain glimmered in his gray eyes, and I knew it wasn’t caused by his wounds. Once again, my heart ached for him and this new, shocking betrayal he’d suffered.
“C’mon,” I said in a gentle voice. “There’s nothing else we can do tonight. Let’s get out of here.”
Ian stared at the Reaper mask a second longer. Then he nodded and let me guide him out of the ruined office.
Chapter Seventeen
Two hours later, we were back in the Bunker.
Takeda had used his magic to heal everyone’s wounds, including my bumps and bruises, and we had all showered and put on clean, blood-free clothes. Now we were gathered around the briefing table, along with Aunt Rachel.
Thanks to the security cameras and our earbuds, Takeda had seen and heard most of what had happened in the mansion, but Ian, Zoe, and I still recapped everything for him, including Lance trying to get me to become a Reaper and join him, Drake, and the mysterious Sisyphus.
“And you have no idea who Sisyphus could be?” Takeda asked. “Or what he wants with you?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of anyone by that name before, except for the guy in the classic myth.”
“You’re absolutely sure?” he asked again. “No one comes to mind? Not even someone your parents might have mentioned to you?”
“Rory said she didn’t know anything,” Aunt Rachel said. “She would tell you if she did.”
“I know she would,” Takeda replied.
Aunt Rachel crossed her arms over her chest, annoyed by his ever-calm tone.
Takeda eyed her a moment, then looked at the rest of us again. “So we don’t know who Sisyphus is, and we still don’t know what the Reapers are planning. Lance Fuller was our best lead—our only lead. Now he’s gone, and we have no idea where the Reapers might be. Or more important, where they might strike next.” Takeda rubbed his forehead, as though he had a migraine, in a rare sign of frustration.
We all slumped in our chairs as the cold, hard reality of the situation set in. My first mission with Team Midgard had not been a rousing success. More like a complete and utter failure. The others looked as sick and exhausted as I felt, and a sense of defeat hung over the room like a dark cloud.
“What about Drake?” Ian asked.
Takeda quit massaging his forehead. “What about Drake?”
“You haven’t said anything about Drake. I told you that he was alive. That he had survived the warehouse explosion. My brother. I told you that he was alive and here in Colorado, and you haven’t said one word about him. Not one single word.”
Takeda shrugged, but an emotion flared in his eyes, ruining his calm façade. It almost looked like…guilt.
Ian picked up on it too, and he leaned forward. “Wait a second. You’re not surprised that Drake is alive. Not at all. Did you—did you know that he was alive?”
Takeda paused a moment before answering. “I had my suspicions.”
Ian shot to his feet, making his chair topple to the floor with a loud bang. “Your suspicions? What does that mean?”
“You know as well as I do that the Protectorate never found Drake’s body in the rubble. Officially, he was declared dead, but the possibility always existed that he had somehow survived.”
Ian’s hands clenched into fists. “You never told me that.”
Takeda’s face softened. “You were having a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that Drake was a Reaper. I didn’t want to say anything about him possibly being alive. Not until I knew for certain that he was.”
“And when did you know?” Ian snapped. “Because I’m guessing it was before tonight.”
Takeda sighed, the soft sound laced with heavy regret. “I always suspected that Drake might still be alive, but it seemed far more likely when we put the Midgard together and discovered that a Reaper student was planning to steal an artifact. Once we realized that student was Lance, I grew even more suspicious. I knew that Lance’s dad and Drake had worked together at the New York warehouse, and it seemed likely that Drake was the one who’d recruited Lance to become a Reaper.”
“But I signed up for the Midgard weeks ago…” Ian’s voice trailed off, and fresh anger sparked in his eyes as a new thought occurred to him. “The Midgard. This whole mission. It’s all been about finding Drake, hasn’t it?”
Takeda nodded. “Part of it, yes. I knew that Drake was Sisyphus’s top lieutenant. I thought that if we could find Drak
e, then he would lead us to Sisyphus and all the artifacts the Reapers have stolen.”
Instead of appeasing him, Takeda’s confession only made Ian angrier. “All this time, you knew that my brother was alive, and you let me think that he was dead—that I had killed him,” Ian snarled in a loud, angry voice. “How could you do that to me?”
“Because I didn’t have any way of actually proving it, and I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case I was wrong.” Takeda shook his head. “Drake’s betrayal hurt you so much. I didn’t want you to get hurt again by realizing that your brother was still alive. That Drake could be cruel enough to let you think you’d killed him. You had done enough already—sacrificed enough already. I didn’t want to ruin whatever love you might have left for your brother on top of everything else.”
A tense, heavy silence fell over the room. Everyone else glanced back and forth between Takeda and Ian, but I stared at the Viking. For once, his guard was down, and his hurt was written all over his face for everyone to see. For the third time tonight, my heart ached for him. The two of us were far more alike than different. Both of us had been lied to and betrayed by the people we’d loved the most.
“But I trusted you. After everything that happened with Drake, you and Zoe and Mateo were the only ones I trusted. How could you do this to me?” Ian asked, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper. “How could you?”
Takeda winced, guilt creasing his features. He opened his mouth to explain, but Ian snapped up his hand, cutting him off.
“Forget it,” he growled. “I don’t want to hear it right now.”
Ian whirled around, kicked his chair out of the way, and stormed out of the briefing room.
* * *
Once again, that tense, heavy silence fell over the room.
Takeda reached down, picked up some papers, and started shuffling them from one side of the table to the other. He didn’t look at anyone, but his lips pinched into a tight line, and his fingers curled around the papers like he wanted to rip them all to shreds. It was the most emotion I had seen him show so far.
He hadn’t liked lying to Ian, but he had done it anyway because he’d thought it was the best thing for the Viking. Just like my parents had lied to me about being Reapers. I could understand Takeda’s reasoning—and my parents’ too—but that didn’t lessen the sting of what they’d done. I didn’t know which betrayal was worse, Takeda wanting to protect Ian from his brother or my parents wanting to protect me from their secret lives as Reapers.
“Well,” Zoe drawled. “That went well. Not.”
She started to get to her feet, but I got up instead and waved my hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll go talk to him. Unfortunately, I have experience with this sort of thing.” I looked at Aunt Rachel. “I’ll see you at home later tonight. Okay?”
She nodded.
I left the briefing room and started searching the Bunker for Ian. It didn’t take me long to find him. All I had to do was follow the loud crashing, clanging, and banging of a weapon slamming into a target over and over again.
I found Ian in the training room, whacking at a plastic dummy and hacking it to pieces with his battle ax. I stood in the doorway and watched him. After about two minutes, he got tired of cutting up the poor dummy, dropped his ax on the mat, and stalked over to one of the boxing bags dangling from the ceiling. Ian didn’t bother taping up his hands. Instead, he started punching the bag over and over again, even though his knuckles quickly bruised from the vicious repeated blows.
“You know that’s not going help anything, right?” I called out. “Busting up your hands hurts you a lot more than it hurts the bag. Trust me, I know.”
Ian ignored me and kept right on hitting the heavy bag, his blows even harder than before. I wasn’t lying. I did know what he was going through. Okay, okay, so the brother I thought I’d killed in self-defense hadn’t suddenly come back from the dead. But when I’d learned the truth about my parents, I had felt the same guilt, rage, and disgust that Ian was experiencing right now. I also knew that he didn’t want to talk about it any more than I had wanted to talk about my feelings back then. Or wanted to talk about them right now. But one thing had helped me, and I thought it might help him too.
So I went over and grabbed the bag, stopping its sharp swings. Ian glared at me for interrupting, but I stared right back at him. I had faced down far scarier things than an angry Viking, including Loki and an entire academy full of Reapers. This was nothing compared with that. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself, even as I tried not to notice Ian’s broad shoulders and muscled chest and how his biceps bulged and flexed with every breath he took.
“What are you looking at?” he muttered, and lowered his fists to his sides.
I shook my head and dropped my eyes from his chest. Now was not the time to think about how gorgeous he was. “Instead of busting yourself up and having to get healed again, why don’t you do something a little more productive?”
“Like what?” he growled.
“Like get out of here. Go somewhere calm and quiet and clear your head for a little while. I can help you with that, if you want.”
“And why would you want to help me?” he growled again. “I haven’t exactly been nice to you these past couple of days.”
I shrugged. “We’re part of a team now, and teammates help each other, right?”
Ian looked at me, his anger warring with his curiosity. Finally, though, his curiosity won out. “What do you have in mind?”
I grinned. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Eighteen
“This is a bad idea,” Ian said. “A really, really bad idea.”
“Why, Viking, I had no idea that you were afraid of heights,” I said, a teasing note creeping into my voice.
“I’m not afraid of heights,” he protested. “Just of falling off them.”
I turned away so he wouldn’t see my smile.
Fifteen minutes ago, we’d snuck out of the Bunker and ridden the secret elevator back up to the second floor. Then I had used a paper clip to open the door to the stairs that led all the way up to the library roof, where we were now standing.
The roof was an enormous square, just like the library tower itself. A gray stone walkway wrapped around the area, while a matching stone balcony cordoned off the roof from the open air and a five-story drop below.
Golden light from inside the library streamed up through the stained-glass mosaic in the center of the roof, making it glimmer like a carpet of sparkling jewels. The glass was probably thick and strong enough to hold my weight, but I’d never walked across it. I hadn’t wanted my boots to dirty the colorful patterns. Looking down at the gleaming glass from this angle made me feel like I was standing in one of the wildflower fields at the Eir Ruins, and I didn’t want to do anything to spoil that illusion.
It was almost midnight, and the moon hung big and bright in the sky, surrounded by thousands of silver stars. Down below, lights burned in the other buildings on the quad, as well as in the student dorms in the distance, but no one moved or stirred, and the campus was still and quiet. A cool, crisp breeze gusted over the roof, and I drew in a deep breath, letting the fresh mountain air sweep away all the horrible things that had happened tonight.
I had discovered the library roof last year, on a day when I’d been particularly desperate to escape from everyone and everything that was bothering me. From what I could tell, nobody ever came up here but me, and it had quickly become my secret hiding spot, the one place where I could always find a little peace and quiet, no matter how bad things got. Up here, the memory of finding my parents’ bodies didn’t bother me quite as much as it did when I was down in the main part of the library. Plus, I liked looking down through the stained glass and catching glimpses of the various library levels below. I imagined that was what the gods did, up on Mount Olympus or wherever they were.
Well, except for Sigyn, of course. She seemed to be the rare goddess who walked among us mortals. I had looked for her?
??as Raven—on campus today, but I hadn’t spotted her anywhere. Maybe she had already gone back to the North Carolina academy. Or maybe Sigyn could be in two places at once. She was a goddess, after all.
Ian glanced over the stone balcony and down at the quad. He blanched a little and stepped back from the ledge. “Tell me again what we’re doing up here in the middle of the night?”
“Well, right now, we’re enjoying the peace and quiet. But if we’re lucky, we might get to go for a ride.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering him, I moved over to a corner of the roof. Over the past year, I had spent a lot of time here, and I had decided to make myself as comfortable as possible. So I’d snuck some supplies up here, including a couple of lawn chairs, a cooler full of bottled water and snacks, and, most important, three lanterns.
I dragged the lanterns out from the corner, arranged them in a tight circle, and turned them on. Together, they formed a bright beam of light that shot up into the night sky. It was my version of a superhero beacon, but what it summoned was much, much cooler than any costumed crusader.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked. “What’s that for?”
“You’ll see.”
I went over and rested my elbows on the balcony railing. Ian glanced at the lanterns again, still wondering what they were for, then came over and joined me. We stood there, side by side, soaking up the silence. I was perfectly content to stare out over the silent, empty quad below, but Ian kept tapping his fingers on the railing, shifting on his feet, and sneaking glances at me. This went on for about five minutes before he finally opened his mouth to say something—
Two shadows suddenly fell over us, blocking out the moon and starlight. Gusts of air whistled down from the sky, tangling my hair. Ian’s head snapped up. He gasped and staggered back, and I hid another grin.