Ascension (14 page)

Before she could step into the hallway, she ran smack into Ryker. He gripped her shoulder with one hand, the other holding a bottle of raki. She scanned him from head to toe. He’d changed from his surfer boy attire to a black tee and camos tucked into military-issue boots. It was totally hot.

Speaking of hot . . . his gaze heated her blood as it traveled slowly over her freshly healed skin. Her breath hitched. His escaped in a long, slow sigh.

A soft sound from Haven, much like a giggle, reminded them they weren’t alone. Kyana looked away.

“You okay to get back to work?” he asked after a tense, awkward moment.

“Yeah, but the next person who asks me that will be walking with a limp. Let’s go.”

As she brushed past him, he thrust the raki into her hand. “It’s fifty/fifty. Please feed.”

Pleased that he’d been thinking about her while she’d been asleep, she tore off the cap and swallowed a burning sip. “Thanks,” she said, twisting the cap back on.

As they started downstairs with Haven trailing behind them, Ryker’s fingers rested on the small of her back. It was such a mindless touch, she doubted he even realized he’d done it. Doubted that he had any idea how it affected her.

But when they hit the first floor, his touch vanished and her skin instantly returned to subzero temperature.

An annoying chirp sounded behind them as they reached the front door, and Haven pulled her cell phone from her hip.

She grinned. “It’s Drake! You two go on. Geoffrey said he’d meet you in front of Spirits.” She flipped open the phone and spun around. “Drake! Where are you? Are you okay?”

It took all of Kyana’s willpower not to snatch the phone from Haven’s ear and stomp on it. Zeus, she hated Drake Mallone. “C’mon. Let’s go before I vomit listening to their baby talk,” she muttered when they’d moved out of Haven’s hearing distance.

“What’s wrong? It’s kind of sweet.” Ryker shut the door behind them and they stepped into the gray of dusk. The bodies of the slain Leeches had already been swept up by the cleaning members of the Order, but traces of their blood, and Kyana’s, was still splattered on her wall, the sidewalk, and the street, and sprayed the palm trees. She was going to have to hire someone to pressure wash the place when things calmed down.

“Sweet in the sense of watching a Leech devour a newborn. You have to be perverse to enjoy it.”

Chapter Fourteen

“W
hat the hell took you so long?” Geoff all but shouted the minute Kyana arrived outside Spirits. He’d been talking to Marcus, who excused himself and ducked back inside. “I sent Haven after you nearly an hour ago.”

Kyana wasn’t the least bit intimidated by Geoff’s show of anger. The twinkle in his dark blue eyes said he’d found something good. She could’ve been a day late and he would’ve still been waiting.

“Let’s go in. You can tell us what has you so excited.”

Geoff placed his hand on the door, keeping Kyana from opening it. “Not in there. Follow me.”

Geoff led them through Below to a small garden behind the Healing Circle—a sort of hospital for the mystical types. He sat on the lone bench and Kyana sat beside him. Ryker chose to remain on his feet, towering over them both. “Okay, what gives? I haven’t seen you this excited about something since that time we went out deliberately looking to be ambushed.”

“You wanted to be ambushed?” Ryker leaned against a large oak. “Why would you do that?”

“We were bored,” Geoff said, as if that explained everything.

In short, it did. Until the breakout, things were known to get dull from time to time. They’d had to make their own sort of entertainment. Kyana felt Ryker’s questioning gaze burning into her face. “What? He’s a bad influence. Glare at
him
.”

Geoffrey laughed. “Sorry, lass. Not taking the credit for that one. It was all you and your mate, Silas. I just tagged along for kicks.”

Pulling the conversation back to the present, Kyana said, “Have you found something that will help us find our traitor?”

“Oh have I.” He pulled some crumpled pages from his hip pocket. “Back in the day, Cronos was well loved. According to the stories, even his exile didn’t make his followers waver. When he told them that he’d be back, they believed him.”

Kyana’s gaze found Ryker’s. Icky had been told the same thing.

“That kind of magic doesn’t exist anymore,” Ryker insisted.

“Some apparently believe it still does.” Geoff smoothed the pages on his knee. “Stories of Cronos’s greatness are still being passed down through the generations. From what I understand, not many follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. But there are a few”—he winked, holding the pages just out of Kyana’s reach—“that may even surprise you.”

Her fingers itched to reach out and snatch the papers from him, but she wouldn’t play his game. She’d learned a long time ago to let him wear himself down. He’d eventually get tired of being the only one to know his secret and tell her.

Ryker, however, hadn’t learned that. When Geoff waved the pages trying to get her to reach for them, Ryker leaned forward and took them.

“Hey, that’s taking the fun out of everything.”

“We don’t have time for
fun
,” Ryker growled, handing the paper to Kyana. “What is he, five?” Ryker whispered in Kyana’s ear as he leaned in to scan the names with her.

Kyana chuckled. “More like two hundred and five.” She leaned in closer to Ryker. “Peter Pan syndrome. He’s the poster boy.”

Geoff glared, but quickly forgot the insult as Kyana began to read the names on the list. “So these are descendants of original worshippers?”

Geoffrey nodded. “After a little checking, I discovered that at least fifteen are dead, and another fifty were in human lockup when the breakout happened. They could be dead now too but regardless, they weren’t free to unlock Hell.”

“So many in jail?” Ryker asked.

“Hey, they’re not exactly holding to morals down here. Why would they be Above? It’s my guess that most of these window lickers have committed their share of crimes.”

Kyana looked at the names with the sloppy asterisks next to them. She read each one, but none of them was familiar to her. “There are still a lot who aren’t dead or in prison,” she muttered.

“About thirty that I found, yeah. But that’s a good sixty-five less than you would be searching through.”

“And how many more are there that we’re unaware of because their families never supported Cronos? There are bound to be new recruits,” Ryker said.

“At least as many as those on this list who never supported the beliefs of their ancestors,” Kyana said, flipping back to the first page to begin scanning the names to see if she recognized anyone to give her a starting point. “Not everyone with a great-great-great Cronos-supporting granny is going to carry on the tradition.”

That meant a lot of these names were going to be useless.

She kept scanning, waiting for a glimpse of the names Geoffrey had thought might surprise her.

“Oh, and there is one other thing.”

Not bothering to look up, Kyana nodded. “Sure, what?”

“As payment for gathering that list, there’s one person on it that I get to question personally.”

“Payment? I thought a clean house was payment.”

Geoffrey’s eyes hardened. “Let me question him and you’re off the hook.”

The fine hairs on her nape stood at attention. She shook her head and returned to quickly scanning the list. She spotted him about halfway down the second page. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, lass, I’m sure.”

Ryker leaned over Kyana’s shoulder to find the name that had caused the conversation to halt. “Drake Mallone? Isn’t that—”

“Yeah,” Kyana answered before he could finish asking his question. “Haven’s boyfriend.”

Kyana was halfway back to the portal alcove before Ryker caught her. He spun her around to face him, gripping her shoulders painfully. “Neither one of you will go anywhere near this man.”

“Watch yourself, Surfer Boy. We’re working together. I don’t take orders from you.”

“True, but you do take them from Artemis. If we determine that Drake Mallone is, or has ever been, a Cronos supporter,
I
will question him. Do you understand?”

“His name’s right there.” Kyana slapped the crumpled pages against his chest. “What more do you need?”

“Proof.” Ryker’s grip loosened. “You said yourself that most on that list will not be Cronos supporters. Just because his ancestors might have been, doesn’t make him a traitor.”

“But he could be.”

“Maybe. And if he is, he’ll need to be questioned. A lot. I won’t have either of you bloodsuckers quieting someone who can potentially lead us to a whole herd—and possibly to the key to Tartarus.”

Bloodsuckers? Kyana stepped back. She’d thought they were beyond trading insults.

Ryker flinched. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah,” she said. “You did. But it’s okay. We
bloodsuckers
have thick skin.” She turned for the portal once more. “We won’t touch him, but we
will
be there for questioning, and I want to make damned sure that Haven isn’t around when we do it.”

“Kyana, wait.” This time, it wasn’t Ryker who tried to stop her. It was Geoffrey. “We can’t just pounce on Haven’s beau without solid proof first. At least proof that he’s a supporter.”

He was right, but that knowledge did nothing to soothe Kyana’s temper. “And how do we get that?”

Ryker eased between Kyana and the portal and slipped Geoffrey’s list from her hand. “I was thinking about that.” He shook the papers in his fist. “This isn’t the only list that’s been created lately. The list of Chosen has also been written and rewritten with each Chosen’s death. The deaths of the Chosen means that someone other than the Fates have seen that list.”

Kyana propped a hand on her hip. “Yeah, we already know we’re dealing with a traitor.”

“A traitor with the means to sneak into the
Moerae’s
cave?”

Her hand fell to her side as she began to understand what Ryker was getting at. “So that narrows the list down to Mystics and Witches. Someone who could cast a cloaking spell.”

“Right,” Geoffrey added. “Because even if a Witch or Mystic cast such a spell on someone else, it wouldn’t have lasted long enough for our traitor to make it down to the cave and back. It would have had to have been cast again. Good thinking, wanker.”

Ryker shot Geoffrey a glare. “Okay, so we start there. We scratch off all non Mystics and Witches.”

“If we knew all the names on the list, sure. But we don’t know what race each of these names belongs to.”

“The Moerae do. We go see them, and our job is cut in half, hopefully.”

Without waiting to see if Geoffrey and Kyana would follow, Ryker stormed off in the direction of the Fates’ cave. Since Ryker had the list of names, Kyana chose to follow. He might be on to something. It was worth waiting to lash out about the whole Drake thing later to finally get somewhere now.

To get to the cave that would lead them to the River Styx, they had to pass through a wide street with an open view to the human sanctuary the Order had created on the beaches of Below. As they walked, Kyana’s gaze scanned the small white tents packed along the shores. The humans were quiet tonight; a lone bonfire in the distance seemed to have become the gathering point. She watched them, saw a young boy run out from a pack, his arms flailing over his head while his small mouth emitted a horrible siren noise that shattered the peaceful evening.

The child ran up to a smiling woman and poked his finger in her back. “Freeze, lady! You’re under arrest!”

The play session ended in a tickle fest on the sand, and Kyana didn’t realize she’d stopped walking till Ryker called out to her a fair distance away.

“Coming?” he asked, making his way back to her side.

“Yeah.” But still, she didn’t move, her mind spinning, her feet frozen to the walk that bordered the beaches. “No. Geoffrey said a lot of our names were in prison. We’re talking about a group of morally defunct people. So isn’t there a chance that even more of them have been arrested at some point?”

“I guess. Why?”

From over Ryker’s shoulder, she watched Geoffrey make his way back. “What’s going on?”

“I was just thinking,” Kyana continued. “If we’re dealing with Cronos supporters, we’re not dealing with the good guys, right? We already know a lot of them are criminals. I’m willing to bet even more are. If they support Cronos, then they support his belief of take what you want, to hell with the consequences.”

“So?” Ryker studied her, making Kyana shift uncomfortably. “Even if they were busted for something, it’s not going to bring us any closer to knowing who’s picking off the Chosen.”

“Maybe it will.”

Geoffrey eased himself between Ryker and Kyana, earning him a stern glare from Ryker. “What did you have in mind?”

“We’ve already determined that it would take a Witch or a Mystic to cloak themselves and get into the Fates’ cave to see that scroll. That makes our traitor human born. This is one time the humans actually have something useful that we don’t.”

It was Ryker who spoke. “What might that be?”

“A human fingerprint-scanning thingamajig.”

When Ryker rolled his eyes, the heat of both embarrassment and irritation crept up Kyana’s cheeks. “Why not? Humans and human borns are the only ones who’d leave fingerprints. If they touched that scroll to see the names of the Chosen, they wouldn’t have been able to conceal the evidence that they’d been there. There’s no spell for that that I know of, and even if there was, no spell is permanent. It had to have worn off by now.”

No one looked all that eager to throw Kyana a bone.

“What would it hurt to run it through the thingamajig?” she asked.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Geoffrey said. “At least it’s a place to start.”

“You’re calling it a thingamajig,” Ryker said. “How do you plan on using their computers when you don’t even know what it’s called?”

Kyana glared at him, peeved that she didn’t have an answer. “How hard can it be? Push a few buttons, ba-da-bing, done.”

“How ’bout here, lass? Look around. A thousand or more humans right in front of us. There’s bound to be at least one who can help us.”

“See.” Kyana smirked at Ryker. “Ba-da-bing.”