Chapter 6
Jess gaped while Abigail backed away at Zarek's dire words, but she couldn't go far. Zarek threw up his hand to hold her in the hallway next to them. Even before he'd married a goddess, Zarek had held some impressive telekinetic powers. Nowadays, they were downright sick.
He gave Zarek a disbelieving stare as he digested his orders to kill her. "You're telling me that Acheron, my boss, the really tall Atlantean pain in most of our asses, actually authorized the killing of a human?"
Zarek shrugged. "I can see your confusion. It is highly out of character for him. But since she's been killing off Hunters ... I guess he figures it's tit for tat. Or maybe he's just having a really bad day."
"You're seriously not joking?"
Zarek let out an irritated growl. "Really? How many more times are you going to ask me that? I could be on a beach right now with my wife, son, and daughter, baking in the sun while they frolic and play. Am I? No. I'm here, and I want nothing more than to yank you around with bullshit 'cause this gets me off more than my wife running in a bikini."
Jess counted to ten before he let Z rile him. That was the thing about Zarek. The man had a short fuse, and Jess's wasn't all that far behind his. Not that he blamed Z for it. As bad as Jess's childhood had been, it was a picnic in paradise compared to what Z had suffered.
Still, those orders were so contrary to what they normally were that he couldn't wrap his head around it. Acheron profaned hurting humans in any way. Why would he be okay with it now?
That alone told him just how scary this whole thing was. Playtime was over.
Jess removed the gag from Abigail's lips. No need in making this worse on her. He expected her to shriek and curse. At the very least, head-butt him again and fight.
Instead, she was remarkably calm, given the fact she'd just heard Zarek call for her death. "You are not sacrificing me ... to anything," she said between clenched teeth.
Zarek scoffed. "You started this, babe. The choice is simple. Either you die alone, nobly like a good sport, or the entire world dies with you, which I don't think they'd appreciate much. So put on your big-girl pants and own up to what you and your stupidity caused. It's Joe Versus the Volcano time."
He folded his arms over his chest. "But in the end, I don't give a shit what you do. With the exception of the cowboy there and my family, I hate people with a passion that makes your feelings for Jess look like a schoolgirl crush. Lovely thing about my current situation, I'm truly immortal. You annihilate humanity and the world ... I'm still good. So whatever you decide, it won't affect me personally. I would say you're the one who'll have to live with the guilt. But either way, you're dead. Whatever. I delivered my message. My job here is done, and I need to get back to the one that I'm still not sure how I let them talk me into doing-which is even weirder and scarier than the Dark-Hunter gig." He turned his attention to Sundown. "Jess, call me if she wusses, and I'll make sure you survive the holocaust." He vanished.
"Thanks, Z," Jess called after him. "Always nice chatting with you."
Now what should he do? Really ... it was the kind of thing that even his vast and varied experiences had never prepared him for. Yes, he'd dealt with Daimon outbreaks galore. A run-amok Daimon slayer up in Alaska who'd walked in daylight. But Daimons who were demons and could convert anyone they bit, and all-out death prophecy were a whole new territory for him.
Jess wasn't sure where to go with that.
Abigail's eyes were filled with a mixture of panic and suspicion. She did not appear happy. Not that he blamed her. He'd hate to be told he had to sacrifice himself to save the world. It would seriously muck up even a great day. And honestly, he wasn't sure he'd be any more inclined to do it than she was.
"He was lying." Her voice had a tiny tremble in it.
Wouldn't it be great if life were that easy? You got bad news, you called it a lie and everything was fixed....
One could only hope.
Jess sighed in sympathy. "Unfortunately, Zarek doesn't lie. And as you saw, he doesn't pull punches either. He's as frank and tactless as the summer day is long." He cut the rope on her hands and let it fall to the floor. "You still going to fight me?"
She rubbed at her wrists. "Given what he said, I was thinking about running."
Well, at least she was honest. That, he could appreciate. He slid his knife into the back of his pants, waiting to see when she'd bolt.
Abigail stood there, unsure of what to think or do. Sundown watched her with a nonchalance she knew was misleading. His reflexes were as honed as any she'd ever encountered or fought. The fact that her demon-enhanced powers weren't enough to subdue him said it all. None of the others she'd killed, including Old Bear, had stood toe to toe with her for very long.
Never mind knocking her out and kidnapping her.
In fact, Old Bear had barely put up a fight. Why, if he was so important, hadn't he fought harder?
Why hadn't she double-checked his identity? How could Jonah have made such a bad mistake?
And before she could decide on an action, the ground beneath them shook. The force of it was so great that it knocked both of them off their feet.
Abigail hit the floor with enough impact to steal her breath and bruise her elbow. Gah, that hurt. She definitely could have done without that on top of all the other delights this day had held.
Pushing herself up, she met Sundown's gaze from across the hall. "Was that an earthquake?" While rare in Vegas, they did happen. But usually they were minor. This one had felt much, much larger.
"I don't know." He got up and went into a room across the hall.
You should run for it while he's distracted.
The only problem was, she didn't know where to run to. Since there were no obvious windows or stairs, she'd have to search for an exit. That would probably be obvious to Sundown, who'd then stop her.
And that thought died as he turned on the TV and she heard the news.
It wasn't an earthquake.
The ground outside the city was bubbling and opening up, and scorpions were flooding out of the crevices like some bad horror movie as they overran everything. Thousands and thousands of them.
How could there be so many? She'd never seen more than a handful in her entire life. Honestly, it looked like the earth was vomiting arthropods.
She shivered in revulsion.
Sundown let out an audible breath. "Now, there's something you never think about seeing, huh? Zarek definitely wasn't exaggerating about the plagues he mentioned. Why couldn't it be locusts like other people have? No. Leave it to Old Bear to do something different."
She shook her head in denial. "I didn't do this." It wasn't possible. There had to be another explanation as to why this was happening. One that didn't point the finger at her.
Maybe the scorpions were bored?
Or the Scorpion King was ticked off that no one had built a casino for him? At this point, she was willing to grasp any straw that didn't tell her to kill herself to save the world.
"Hon, you're the one who said you killed Old Bear. I tried to deny it, but you corrected me. And if you did cut his head off, you did do this. Accept it." He flipped the channel to another view of the scorpions swarming over a road downtown toward people who were screaming and running to get away from them. "Welcome to the apocalypse. Ain't she pretty?"
Abigail felt sick as more tremors shook the ground under them. She braced herself against the wall to keep from being thrown off her feet again. "He looked like a Dark-Hunter," she insisted. "He didn't correct me when I called him one."
Sundown arched a brow at her. "He had fangs. So what? Plenty of things not a Dark-Hunter have fangs, including Hollywood actors and kids playing vampire. You should have checked his membership card before you attacked. Good grief, what if you'd run across a Masquerade group? Would you have slaughtered a bunch of innocent kids?"