Cain spit out teeth like watermelon seeds. His right eye swelled, purple as a plum. The ripe, red strawberry that had been his nose gushed juicy blood. It coated my hands and splashed on my chest, my face. Delicious.
“Sabina, stop!” Adam called.
I looked back. Instead of the ridiculous cheerleading uniforms, they were back in street clothes, which they accessorized with scowls.
“Don’t hurt him.” Adam came forward, his hands extended like he was going to pull me away. “We need him.”
“Daughter.” The word came out muffled and wet, pitiful and pleading.
I swiveled back around to look down and gasped. The male lying under me was no longer Cain. Instead, Tristan lay broken and hurting beneath me. Through the shattered teeth and bloody gums, he slurred, “Mercy.”
I fell back onto the stained concrete floor, my mouth working in numb shock. Blood gurgled from his lips.
“Well, well, well,” a taunting male voice said behind me. Asclepius stood with his arms crossed. Fucking gods and their bad timing.
My fingers were still cramped into fists. My stomach roiled and burned, like I’d swallowed an acid cocktail. But I rose as gracefully as I could, not wanting to kneel before the god.
Once I faced him eye-to-eye, I realized that while we were still in the fight ring, the crowd had disappeared. So had Adam and Giguhl. A bloodstain on the dirty concrete floor was all that was left of my father.
The god came forward and nudged at the pool of blood with the toe of his sandal. “Has anyone ever suggested that you check into some anger management classes?”
“What do you want?” I snapped. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and tried to get my heart rate back to normal.
Asclepius raised a brow. “Surely you haven’t forgotten your promise so soon?”
I grimaced. Actually, yeah, I kind of had. But it’s not like I could tell him that. “Of course not. Just don’t have much to report yet.”
“Sabina, I told you I expected you to make a concerted effort to uphold the terms of our bargain.”
“And I told you I’d need some time.”
“Ah, yes. The Cain situation. Any progress there?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but kind of.”
Asclepius threw back his head and laughed. “In other words, you’re no closer to stopping him than you were when we last spoke. Pitiful.”
I rose slowly. “Look, dude, I’ve asked around and no one’s heard of this Nyx. I’ll keep trying, but you’re going to have to lay off with the pressure.”
“No, you look, girl. I am not some mortal you can boss around. I am a god and my will cannot be ignored.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, sure.”
Asclepius slammed his staff into the floor. The ground shook with the impact. “Do not test me!”
My heart rate picked up. But instead of showing him he’d intimidated me, I raised my chin. “I said I’d get to it. That’s the best I can promise right now.”
He thought for a moment, rubbing his thick, gray beard methodically. “All right, Sabina Kane. I will give you more time. However, when next we meet, I will expect concrete progress. I want that vest.”
“I hear you loud and clear. Trust me, I want my debt to you cleared ASAP.”
He nodded. “As do I. I’d wish you luck on finding Cain, but”—he shrugged—“I don’t really care.” Asclepius waggled his fingers. “Bye now.”
The next evening, I called everyone together in the living room to discuss the plan.
“You want me to what now?” Giguhl said, his voice rising.
“It’ll be just like that time we took Clovis to the Pit of Despair, remember?”
Erron raised a hand. “Can someone fill us in here?”
Alexis nodded that she’d appreciate a summary, too.
Adam, Giguhl, and I each took turns sharing the details of the Clovis Trakiya situation that happened six months earlier. Clovis was half vampire, half demon and all sorts of pain in my ass. The Dominae had sent me to infiltrate his cult of dark race brainwashees who claimed to want peace among all the races, but really Clovis was just trying to take over all the races.
When the inevitable showdown occurred at a vampire vineyard, I’d managed to trap Clovis in a circle and summoned Giguhl. The demon had dragged Clovis back to Irkalla. Last we’d heard, he was playing hide-the-hot-poker with a bunch of Lust demons in a nasty region of the underworld called the Pit of Despair.
My idea was basically to re-create that play but to have Giguhl trap Cain in the hotel instead of taking him to Irkalla. The demon would have to stay behind while we went to meet Persephone, but I could just summon him through my cell phone and send him and Cain back out before any witnesses realized what was going on. Easy peasy.
When we finished explaining, Erron snorted. “You really think it’ll be that easy?”
“Well, why not?” Giguhl said. “Clovis wasn’t exactly a pu**y, seeing as how he’s half vamp and half demon. Cain’s smart but he’s still a human. I’m in.”
Alexis shrugged. “Why not? If it doesn’t work, we can just beat the shit out of Cain and throw him into the trunk of a car.”
Giguhl nodded. “I vote we do that anyway.”
Erron scooted back from the table. His color was better than it had been even before the attack, and he moved like a male in perfect health. We’d filled him in on how we healed him, but instead of being grateful he’d alternated between surly and silent.
“You’re fooling yourselves,” the Recreant said. “If it was that easy to be rid of him, don’t you think someone else would have tried it before now?”
Giguhl raised a black, scraggly brow. “You got a better plan?”
“Yes. Don’t go. He won’t kill Persephone. She’s the only ace he’s got up his sleeve right now.”
“The minute he thinks I don’t care enough to save her, he’ll kill her,” I said. “Then he’ll go after someone I really do care about.”
“Let him try,” Adam said, his jaw hard.
“Tough talk, Adherent,” Erron taunted. “But if you recall, Orpheus and Tanith weren’t exactly weaklings and he managed to kill them like that.” He snapped his fingers and a flame sputtered up from the tips.
“In the past, Cain’s always had the advantage, but this time we’re the ones with surprise on our side. All we have to do is trap him.”