Dark Descendant

TWENTY

I managed to doze fitfully through the darkest hours of the night, but was up and out of bed as soon as the sun peeked up over the horizon. I was tired, dejected, and on the verge of a headache, but I knew I wasn’t getting any more sleep. I ventured down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, then fixed myself two hearty mugs full and took them back upstairs to my suite. With the tribunal at nine, I knew the rest of Anderson’s clan would be getting up earlier than usual, and I didn’t want to run in to anyone.

If I’d thought I could avoid the tribunal, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Pissed off as I was at Jamaal, I thought that having his eye put out and then having to live with the guilt of leaving Steph to Alexis’s tender mercies was punishment enough. He might still think I was a spy—Steph getting hurt proved that Konstantin was a bastard, but not that I wasn’t in league with him—but I seriously doubted Jamaal would make another unsanctioned attack against me.

I wasn’t really one of Anderson’s people, no matter what he claimed to Konstantin. And moving into the house hadn’t even saved Steph. There was no good reason for me to follow Anderson’s orders and attend the tribunal. Maybe I should have just packed my bags and gone home. But Jamaal was being punished on my behalf, so when nine o’clock rolled around, I headed for Anderson’s study.

Anderson had pulled in additional chairs from somewhere and pushed his usual furniture to the walls. Jamaal sat with his back to the wall on a metal folding chair, and the rest of the chairs were set up in a semicircle around him. In the center, directly facing Jamaal, was Anderson, his chair larger and more comfortable-looking than all the rest, looking almost like a throne. The others were all ranged around him, and there was only one empty seat, between Maggie and Blake. Apparently, I was the last to arrive.

Dragging my feet a bit, I made my way over to the empty seat. No one was talking, the tension in the room so thick I could almost feel it sliding against my skin.

Jamaal sat with his head bowed and his hands clasped in his lap, the picture of penitence. His eye was no longer bandaged, but it wasn’t finished healing yet, either. The flesh all around the socket was swollen and bruised, but the eye itself seemed to have regenerated. I breathed a little sigh of relief at that. Like I said, a bleeding heart.

“Where’s Steph?” I whispered to Blake as I took my seat. I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, although I supposed having her sit in on the tribunal wouldn’t be such a hot idea.

“Still sleeping,” he answered, his voice equally soft. “She took a Valium, so she’ll be out for a while.”

I wanted to ask where Steph had gotten a Valium—it didn’t seem like something the Liberi would have around—but just then Anderson called the tribunal to order. He asked me to tell everyone exactly what had happened last night, and I squirmed. Silly, perhaps, seeing as it was after the fact and everyone already knew, but I didn’t want to sit there and publicly rat Jamaal out. Guess I still wasn’t over my fear of being seen as a tattletale.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “We all know what happened.”

“It’s necessary,” Anderson said in a clipped voice that told me he didn’t appreciate his orders being questioned. Gone entirely was his usual, easygoing manner. This morning, he was all alpha-male leader, grim and intimidating.

I struggled to come up with a tactful way to explain the situation, but to my surprise, Jamaal put me out of my misery.

“I fucked up,” he said quietly. He raised his head and looked us squarely in the eye, one by one. It wasn’t a gesture of defiance, but one of accountability.

“I convinced myself Nikki was working for Konstantin, and I decided to teach her a lesson,” he continued. There was misery in his eyes, but his voice was flat as he recounted the facts. “I thought if I ambushed her at the auction, I’d have the time to do what I wanted without fear of being interrupted. I waited by her car, and when she came running into the parking lot, I jumped her. She tried to tell me Alexis had her sister, but I wouldn’t listen. I told myself she was lying again, and I wouldn’t let her leave. She managed to fight me off.” Was there a hint of approval in his voice when he said that? Hard to believe he’d approve of me taking out his eye.

“But my attack delayed her, and she was unable to get to her sister in time. Because of me, Alexis brutalized an innocent woman.” His voice wasn’t so flat anymore, and the words rasped out of his throat. “I have no excuse for anything I’ve done, and I’ll willingly take whatever punishment you think I deserve.”

A long, tense silence followed Jamaal’s speech. I glanced at the other Liberi, trying to be subtle as I read their faces. There were a couple of people—specifically, Maggie and Jack—who regarded Jamaal with expressions of sympathy. Logan and Leo looked neutral, like they didn’t care what happened to Jamaal one way or another. Blake was giving him a death glare, and Anderson looked cold and deadly.

“You’ve broken our trust,” Anderson said, and he sounded about as warm as an iceberg. “You disobeyed my direct orders, and you hurt someone who was under my protection. Pack your bags. I want you out by noon.”

Jamaal’s jaw dropped, and his face turned ashen gray. “No,” he whispered, not in refusal but in dismay. “Please.” He gripped the seat of his chair until his knuckles turned white, as if he were holding onto it for dear life. “Anything but that.”

My throat tightened in sympathy. Damn it, it was too easy for me to empathize with him! I’d been kicked out of too many homes in my life not to know the sickening lurch of it. And most of the homes I’d been kicked out of hadn’t really felt so much like homes to me as way stations. Jamaal might not have an easy rapport with the rest of Anderson’s people, and he definitely held himself a bit aloof, but this was truly his home.

What would he do if he were no longer part of Anderson’s crew? His divine ancestor wasn’t Greek, so he couldn’t become an Olympian even if he wanted to. And if being separated from Emmitt had worsened the effects the death magic had on him, I couldn’t imagine what being separated from all his friends and his home would do to him.

“Maybe he deserves another chance,” Jack said into the silence.

That surprised me—and everyone else, too, by the look of it. Jack seemed to have embraced his trickster heritage with gusto, and I’d never seen him be serious about anything. Of course, Jamaal, with his nonexistent sense of humor, was Jack’s favorite target. The jokes sometimes had some pretty sharp teeth, but he wouldn’t have teased Jamaal so much if he didn’t like him.

“He’s had enough chances,” Blake countered with a snarl. “He’s proven he can’t control himself—or won’t—and there’s no place for him here.”

“Surely he’s learned his lesson,” Maggie put in softly, and I was glad I wasn’t the only bleeding heart in the room.

“Too late!” Blake snapped.

The tribunal was about to devolve into a free-for-all, but Anderson nipped that in the bud.

“Show of hands. How many of you think we should give Jamaal another chance?”

Maggie, Jack, and I all raised our hands. I got a couple of startled looks—and a sneer from Blake—but I was sure giving Jamaal another chance was the right thing to do. I didn’t think he would fall over himself in gratitude because I supported him, nor did I think he would suddenly be convinced I didn’t work for Konstantin. Maybe I’d end up regretting the decision later, but I couldn’t vote to throw him to the wolves. Steph might have been hurt because of him, but that certainly wasn’t what he’d meant to happen. And there was no guarantee Steph wouldn’t have been hurt if I’d made the rendezvous in time.

Blake, Logan, and Leo didn’t raise their hands, despite the sad look in Leo’s eyes. That left us deadlocked, though in truth I wasn’t sure how much our opinions really counted. Anderson had made it very clear: his house, his rules.

Anderson thought about it for a long moment, then nodded. “Since Nikki, as the injured party, is willing to give you another chance, I’ll let you choose your punishment. You can either pack your bags and leave. Or you can submit to an execution once a day for the next three days.”

There were gasps and winces all around the semicircle of Liberi, and I saw the flicker of fear in Jamaal’s eyes. Nevertheless, he didn’t hesitate in his answer.

“I’ll submit to whatever I have to if you’ll let me stay.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what it all meant. Obviously, the Liberi couldn’t die, so this wasn’t a real execution we were talking about. (Not to mention that a real execution is a one-time deal.) But something about it sure gave the rest of the Liberi the shivers.

Anderson nodded regally. “Logan will perform the executions,” he continued. “I’ll leave it to him to decide the methods.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll convene at sunset at the clearing. Attendance is mandatory.” He shot a look at me, as if knowing how little I’d want to watch whatever was going to happen. “Jamaal, you will remain downstairs until the sentence has been fully carried out. No passing through the door, or you’re out. Clear?”

Jamaal held his chin high. “Clear.”

Anderson stood from his chair, still running arctic cold. “Everyone out,” he said as he turned his back on all of us and headed toward his desk to pull it out of the corner it had been shoved into. I think more than one of us considered offering to help him put the room back to rights, but we all thought better of it.

I gave Maggie a significant look as we left the room, and she got the message, following me up to my own suite.

“I don’t want to go into this thing tonight uninformed,” I told her as soon as I’d closed the sitting room door. “Jamaal can’t die, so what’s with the execution thing? And why did everyone look so sick about it?”

Maggie shuddered as she dropped onto the sofa, wrapping her arms about herself like she was cold. “It’s not true that we can’t die,” she said. “We just don’t stay dead.”

I joined her on the sofa, feeling a similar chill. “Huh?”

“If we’re dealt a serious enough wound, we die. Our bodies will heal the damage eventually, and we’ll revive, so it’s not permanent. But it is dead.

“I’ve never had a fatal wound myself, but from what I’ve heard, it’s horrible. It has nothing to do with the pain of the wound or of the healing—though that can be considerable in itself, depending on the cause of death—but dying itself is a massively unpleasant experience. Even as an immortal, you want to avoid dying at all costs.”

I salted this information away for later. I probably wasn’t cruel enough to kill Alexis over and over again if I ever got my hands on him. But at least for now, it made a comforting, if gruesome, fantasy.