Fire & Flood (Mythverse #1)

Book 2 Chapter 34

34

Val and I rush towards the quad, following the sounds of screams. Hand in hand, we pass the spot where Jenn Lamont’s ashes were found, and I shudder, fighting a sudden rush of déjà vu. But this time it’s not the embers of a vampire that has brought shocked students out to see what has happened. It’s Nico carrying a corpse.

And not just any corpse—Nico is carrying his mother.

He lowers her body to the ground, the face still recognizable even though it’s bloated. Nico is in shock, stuck halfway through a shift. His teeth are long when his eye locks on mine in the crowd.

“Edie…she’s dead.”

I step forward, I can’t help but react to his pleading, desperate eye.

“Themis kept me for questioning after the mission,” he goes on. “They didn’t tell me what happened until after they’d banished her. They didn’t even let me say goodbye.”

He stumbles toward me, weak as the day I found him in the desert. But this time it’s not physical wounds that have harmed him. Nico is hurting on the inside, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He holds on to me like I’m the only other person in the quad, though we’re surrounded by most of the school.

“I tried to follow her scent through the swamp,” he says, sobbing into my shoulder. “I couldn’t just let her go like that. I wanted to say goodbye. But I couldn’t…” He takes a deep breath. “It was so hard to find her smell, since now she’s…” he shudders. “Human.”

“What happened?” I ask, wiping tears from his cheeks.

“I finally found her trail, followed her as best I could. I came across a place where there were sure signs of a struggle. And she was there…dumped in the swamp like a piece of trash!” he spits out the word. Finally, he notices the crowd around him. “Which one of you bloodsuckers did this?” he asks.

“She deserved it!” someone shouts and Nico whirls.

“You wait until she’s defenseless and alone—then you attack! You don’t have an ounce of honor.”

“She had no honor,” Val says from behind me, and I turn, Nico pressing up against me from behind as he lunges at Val.

“What has happened now?” Themis asks, bursting through the crowd.

“This is all your fault!” Nico shouts, shifting and leaping for Themis’ throat. In one motion Themis reaches out her hand, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and holds him to the ground. He howls and struggles, and when he can’t break loose, shifts back into human form.

“You hated her,” he yells from the ground, even though Themis is practically crushing his windpipe. “You hated how good she was. This is all your fault,” he repeats.

“Maddox has no one to blame for this but herself,” Themis says quietly. Her eyes scan the crowd and rest on Hepa where she stands with Jordan. “Hepa, bring me a sedative. The strongest we have.”

Hepa nods and hurries off. Themis once again turns her attention to Nico. “Your mother loved the Academy, but it was a sick love.” She tells him. “You must cut out a sickness.”

Hepa returns with the sedative and Themis holds it above Nico’s struggling form. “Are you a sickness, Nico?”

Her eyes flash and he stops struggling. She holds the vial to his mouth and he drinks. Almost immediately his body sags. A moment later his eyes slide closed.

Themis stands over Nico’s unconscious body, waiting until his tongue lolls out the side of his mouth before turning to the rest of us.

“Everyone, back to what you were doing.”

Despite her words, no one leaves. We all stand there watching as Themis and some healers carry Nico and his mother’s corpse away.

I turn to Val, burying my face in his chest. “This is terrible!” I sob. “Maddox was insane but she didn’t deserve to be murdered! Who would just…?” But Val’s arms aren’t around me. He’s not giving me any comfort, and his body is rigid.

“No,” I say, backing away, hoping he’ll tell me I’m wrong. Hoping he’ll stop my racing thoughts.

“It was for Larissa,” he says the words without inflection.

“You…you…” I don’t have words for him. Suddenly I realize why his mood changed so drastically. He killed Maddox. That made him feel better. Not awful. Not torn over taking someone else’s life.

Life goes on, he said. But because of him, Maddox’s won’t.

“Stay away from me,” I tell him, following the trail of healers to the infirmary, my thoughts a mixed jumble.

Yes, Maddox killed in cold blood. Maybe there is some justice is doing the same to her. An eye for an eye. Isn’t that what I wanted when I came to MOA? Revenge?

I don’t want that anymore, I realize. If we all keep killing to even the score—where does it ever end? All my hunger to kill monsters and avenge my family somehow disappeared when I wasn’t looking.

I am with Nico when he wakes.

“I’m so sorry…” I start but he shakes his head.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Edie.”

“What will you do?” I ask. Behind us, Fern cleans up the table where some vials have overturned. I lower my voice. “You can’t attack Themis again. That was foolish.”

I don’t remind him it was futile. She swatted him out of the air like a mosquito.

“I’ll stay at the Academy,” he says. “Help Zeus. Keep an eye on Themis. My mother wouldn’t have run away and neither will I.”

“Please don’t…” What do I say? Please don’t kill Val, even though he probably murdered your mom? “Make the divisions among the students any worse,” I finish lamely. “I know you’re upset about your mother, but the guilty will be punished.”

He reaches out and grabs my hand. “If you’re with me, Edie, I think I can control myself.”

“That’s a lot to put on someone,” Fern says.

Nico growls at her. “No one asked your opinion, witch. This is between me and Edie.” He sits up, takes my other hand. “My mother approved of you. She wanted us to be together. After you killed the baby on the field of battle, I knew you were on the right side, finally. There’s a place for violence and bloodlust, Edie. I think you know that now. And the best way to honor my mother’s memory is to do what she wanted. Edie, will you be mine?”

The room is closing in on me. I think I was just proposed to by a one-eyed werewolf who my sister tried to kill, and whose mother my kind-of-vampire-boyfriend murdered, after she, in turn, murdered his fiancée.

What am I supposed to say?

If I say no, will Nico go on a killing spree?

If I say yes…well, by the look on Nico’s face, if I say yes, we’ll be consummating that decision right here in the infirmary.

“Can I have some time?” I ask and his face grows stormy. “Emotions are high right now,” I clarify. “I want to focus on my work at the Academy. I need to graduate from the assassination class.” At least that’s something he understands.

Fern tries to save me. “Edie, I need to speak with you about something.”

I look down at Nico. “We’ll talk later. Just…if you feel like killing someone…please don’t.”

He nods, which is as good an affirmation as I can hope for.

Fern takes me outside and we walk in one of the gardens. “Edie, I’ve been talking to my contacts about our little bundle of joy.”

“And…?”

“We have a home for her. If you take her to”—she looks around to make sure we’re alone—“the island, someone will be waiting there for you.”

“You knew all along?” I ask. “That Mavis was Emmie and where she was?”

Fern swallows. “I’m still working to help the monsters. And so are you…whether you mean to or not. You aligned yourself with the monsters and became a traitor to the Academy the moment you saved that baby. Bringing her to them is treason. Everyone involved could be banished—or worse. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Her eyes narrow at me and I do. She doesn’t just mean me. She means Cassie and Jordan and Greg and Hepa, too.

“It’s the right thing to do,” I tell her.

Fern nods. “I don’t want students to die. I don’t want monsters to die. I want peace.”

“Is it possible?”

“If we work together. Will you work with us?”

“I’ll get the baby to the island,” I tell her, not fully answering. “When?”

“Tomorrow. Can you keep her secret until then?”

“The history of my entire life was kept a secret from me until I was seventeen. I’m pretty sure I can keep my mouth shut for twenty-four hours,” I tell her.

I might be able to keep my mouth shut, but keeping a baby manticore’s mouth shut is a totally different thing.

“Oh my gods,” Jordan says, holding the wailing baby three feet in the air as pee dribbles out of it. “It doesn’t stop making noise and it doesn’t stop making messes.”

“It’s a baby,” Cassie reminds him, wrapping the wriggling monster into a fresh blanket while she coos at it. It immediately settles, and a scorpion tail pops out of the bundle to boop her nose.

“Awwww….” Cassie smiles at me, her good humor completely restored. “I think she likes me.”

“I think two weeks from now that same move will take your nose right off your face,” Greg says, as he shakes a vial.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Manticore milk potion, I guess?” he says. “Fern says I have to shake it and it will self-heat to the right temperature for a manticore baby which is—”

“Pretty gods-damned hot,” Jordan says, holding out his forearm to show me a burn on his wrist. “I was checking it to make sure it was the right temperature like we do for bottle-fed kittens at home, and it gave me a second-degree burn.”

“Baby didn’t mind though, did you?” Cassie says, popping the bottle in its mouth and switching to baby talk. “You took it right out of Jordan’s hands and got down to business, didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s kind of what I’m worried about,” Greg says. “What if her next order of business is eating something that tastes like shifter?”

“She wouldn’t!” Cassie snaps, glaring up at him from the baby.

“Cassie,” I say quietly, “she might. None of us have any experience raising babies, let alone a monster baby. And we can’t risk being caught in the dorms with her, either. You know she’d be killed if she was found, and all of us punished.”

Cassie turns her head back to the baby and begins to sway her arms, humming softly.

“Cassie, you did a noble thing, but don’t make your sacrifice meaningless,” I say, crossing the room to stand next to her. I peer down into the blanket, expecting to see something hideous. Instead, I see that Hepa was right. The manticore baby is adorable.

She’s like an overgrown kitten, her little wings pressed against her back, scorpion tail wrapped around her front paws, glowing leonine eyes locked on Cassie’s as she drinks from the bottle.

“Oh my gods, she’s cute,” I say, entranced.

“I know, I know,” Cassie says, with glee. “I just want to rub her wittle belly,” Cassie says, snuggling one hand into the bundle. The baby starts to purr.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “But we still have to get her back to her people.”

“I know we do,” Cassie says, still rocking the baby. “Eventually.”

“Eventually, as in tomorrow,” I tell her.

“What?” everyone asks.

I hold my arms out, and Cassie hands over the baby reluctantly. It’s warm and solid in my arms, the golden eyes locking onto mine.

“I hope you like flying,” I tell her.