Hellhound (21 page)

“If only you’d taken him. It would have made a
difference.”

I clenched my lips. “I didn’t kill him.” The words
emerged slowly, sharply so there was no misunderstanding.

“Of course. It was
his
fault.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I wish that I had better news,
Claudius. I wish that I could bring him in and we could both find peace. I hate
him just as much as you do. He took a very important man from my life, too. I’m
trying my best here, but it isn’t enough.”

“Work harder,” he snapped.

I controlled the bubbling anger in my heart. So much
was expected from me. Finally, I said, “Working harder is all that I can do, or
give up.”

He jerked his head. “No, you can’t give up. You need
to bring him in soon, before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

Claudius looked away as if biting off his own words.

“Destroying the tracker now or later won’t bring
either one of them back.”

“I expected that you would’ve brought him in already.”
He jumped to his feet, pushing the chair back so that it fell. The sound was
brisk against the marble floor.

I slapped my thighs and dug my hands into my back
pockets. “What can I say? He’s a formidable enemy. It would be like Nathanial
taking you down. You taught him everything that he knew, so in the end, you’ll
always have the upper hand, no matter what.”

“Have you at least gotten close enough to him?”

“Yes, but he fights hard, and he’s as strong as I am.”

“Even after all the essences that you’ve taken?”

I shook my head. “Everything’s political, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Everything is full of lies or secrets, right?”

“That’s how the world works.”

“So what are your secrets?”

He glared at me.

“I know that you must have many.”

“And you also know that you overstepped your
boundaries.”

“Fair enough. I do wonder, however, if I ever take the
throne, will the tables turn between us? Will we be equals then?”

“Perhaps.”

“I don’t even want the throne,” I commented bitterly.
The throne caused nothing but problems.

“You have to take it, Selene. It’s in your blood.”

“My blood flows as black as the rest of me. My essence
will always be dark.”

“You don’t have a choice. You must ascend to the
throne and marry.”

I scoffed, almost snickered. “Marry who?” I looked
around as if we were surrounded by unworthy suitors. “Nathanial was the only
one in line for reputable marriage with me.”

He clenched his teeth, and slammed his fist down on
the table.

Shaking my head, I moved away from Claudius and
stopped at the door. Without looking back, I said, “Like I’ve told so many
people—that day changed things for everyone, not just you.”

“I haven’t dismissed you!”

“You didn’t summon me, either,” I muttered and left.

Chapter Sixteen

Finding Claudius beat up over his son’s untimely death
soothed me. I admitted that his stone-cold emotions triggered a faint thought
that he had something to do with the hideous situation, but no man in his right
mind would murder his child. Claudius grieved heavily, in silence, and all
alone. He was a man who braved all the elements, emotions included, but did so
in solitude.

When feelings were pent up, they exploded sooner or
later. His finally went nuts. I felt bad for him. Even I hadn’t grieved so
heavily. Then again, when did I have time? I couldn’t wallow in misery over so many
things at once. I knew when Demetrius was dead I would find relief. Then I
could concentrate on getting over my father. Until then, the state of my mind
had to be strong, because who knew how long it would take to capture Demetrius.

As soon as I stepped out of the throne room, the door
slammed shut behind me, shaking the foundation. I cringed and swiveled on my
heels to face the closed double doors. The material was heavy, so I guessed
that Claudius used his powers to slam it like that. Jerk. Well, better the door
to take the brunt of his powers than me.

“Are you all right?” Carter’s thick voice carried when
he emerged from the darkness, speculating my grievance.

I looked around the gloomy corridor. “What’s up with
the lights?”

“Repairs.”

“I’m all right, thanks.” I headed to the elevator.

Carter looked furious. I could see it in his dark eyes
and felt his hostility leak from his pores like poisonous fumes, but he calmed
me with words of honey. It both startled and comforted me.

We paused at the elevator. Carter leaned passed me to
push the down button, barely brushing against me.

“May I join you?”

We both turned and snarled at Danther, who cautiously
approached. Carter stepped in between us, holding his arm out to prevent
Danther from getting closer to me.

“You can wait for the next elevator,” Carter said
dismissively.

“I’d rather go down with Selene, if you don’t mind.”

“And I’d rather that you didn’t, if
you
don’t
mind.”

Danther looked past him at me. I shrugged. What did he
want me to say? If we were caught alone, I would more than likely kill Danther.
He didn’t want to ride down with me.

The elevator door silently opened behind me. I stepped
backward into it without checking to see if anyone else stood in waiting. I
blankly stared at Danther. Carter turned away from the minion, placed one foot
in the door of the elevator, and leaned over to kiss my forehead. He moved away,
grinned, and turned his back to me to face Danther.

I held my breath until the elevator fully concealed me
to move down one level. Carter surprised me more and more every time in passing.
It was touching to see how romantic feelings for a person could soothe even the
most lethal and capricious beasts known to my kind.

Too bad, Carter, if only he weren’t a sub sentry.
Adding another strike against him was the fact that my life rocked in the
iridescent waves of chaos, throwing it upside down. It was just too soon after
the death of my father and the betrayal of my lover to confide in another man.

I walked down the dim corridor, acknowledged by three
sub sentries as I passively moved toward the chamber.

“Where are you going?” a sub sentry whom I didn’t
recognize asked.

“Who are you?”

“Zander.”

“Well, I’m Selene, and I’m entering the cerebral
chamber. Do you take issue with that?”

He scrutinized me for a few seconds and finally said,
“You might want to come back another day. It’s having issues.”

“What issues?”

“No one tells me why, they just tell me what to say.”

“Well, I’ll take my chances. Can I do that?”

He shrugged complacently. “I’ll wait for you out
here.”

“Right,” I muttered and turned to face the giant
chamber doors.

I inhaled and then exhaled, studying the ancient Greek
engravings and pictures. Most of them depicted my great ancestor, Mnemosyne,
which consoled me just a bit. I corralled every fragment of courage and will,
and concentrated on my powers, both known and unknown, harvested and unharnessed.

As mentally prepared as I could get, I raised my hand
and pressed it into the circular nook. My essence emerged from my pores in
swirls of dark red and black. A crimson glow appeared between my hand and the
bronze material, and then the entire door glowed.

My energy unlocked the chambers. The doors slid apart
at the nook with a creaking sound. I looked around one last time. Zander stood
nearby, but no longer watched me.

I stepped over the threshold. The doors closed behind
me with an echo that bounced against thick walls. I stood as close to the doors
as possible, hoping to evade the forthcoming mist that always appeared from
nowhere at the far end of the twelve foot, circular room.

Gray fog materialized having sensed that I was within
its clutches—the intangible, airy thing that I despised so much.

I held my ground. My breathing escalated. I breathed
faster and harder until I heaved. I backed away. My hands felt for the door
behind me, but the doors wouldn’t open. Once someone entered, the doors
wouldn’t open until the mist drank memories to its fill.

Panic struck. I immediately took to the walls and
climbed up like a spider monkey until I clung upside down from the ceiling. I
regulated my breathing enough to stabilize my strength. The last thing I wanted
was to fall into the cerebral chamber.

I watched wide-eyed as the mist appeared, thick,
billowing, and repressive as it rolled around the room, licking and searching
for the one who entered, for the one who summoned it from sleep. It knew I was
in here, but apparently, it, like most people, never looked up.

The fog thickened and reached closer to my height. I
could see things that I’d never seen in the cerebral chamber before, the things
that I lacked access to. Images appeared as if they were brought up on a lucid
screen. Many images appeared, some side by side, while others overlapped. There
were some posted in the forefront, perhaps newly obtained memories, and many
were stacked up in the background.

Pulled by curiosity, I reached over my head into the
fog while struggling to maintain balance against the ceiling. The fog was
barely within reach when my clawed fingers probed into the ethereal surface.
Just as skin, skull bones, and brain matter liquefied into a thick gelatin-like
state when I performed memory retrievals, the fog behaved in the same way.
Well, actually in this case, it thickened to create the same sort of viscous
fluid.

A gush of memories bombarded me. I jerked my hand back.
I gasped and wheezed for air. The cerebral chamber knew where I was then, knew
where to find my mind so that it could leech off my memories.

I crawled to the edge where the ceiling met the wall, and
dropped my legs until my boots suctioned to the wall. My knees were bent at an
angle, keeping me as close to the ceiling as possible, and my palms braced the walls
so that I crouched in the upper corner and faced the fog.

“I will find dominion over you,” I spoke to the room
as if the cerebral chamber were a person.

Portions of the mist formed to resemble the muses,
whose faces separated from the majority of the fog to peer into my eyes. I
hissed, bearing my fangs.

They spoke in whispers at first, in gibberish, in a
foreign tongue. Then their scattered, high-pitched tones tuned into my language
as they searched their infinite database to pull up any lingering memories
matching my face.

“Selene,” one said, her voice trailing and then
echoing in a haunting whisper. “Daughter of Delphine, descendant of Mnemosyne.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“We are the creations of the great goddess of memory
and knowledge,” another hummed.

The third added, “The muses.”

The first went on, “Here to add to the knowledge of
our kind by sharing the memories of the Mythians.”

“So that they will be preserved and rendered as sacred
knowledge until the end of time,” the second spoke.

“Creating an eternal plethora of wisdom from the lost
ones and the living ones,” the third added. The same things they always said.

“And you think this is right?” I barked.

“To preserve knowledge is our heritage,” the first
answered.

“You do the same, storing an individual’s memories in
your mind. Except one day you’ll face your own mortality, and all those
memories will die with you,” the second commented.

“But we will never die, nor will our knowledge,” the
third chimed.

“So you expect me to surrender my thoughts, the only
thing that I fully own and completely control, over to you?” I sneered.

“Yes,” they hissed in unison.

I dropped to the floor, landing on slightly bent knees
before erecting myself. “Screw you guys.”

I turned to push on the door. I felt the muses creep up
behind me as the mist tickled the ends of my hair. Yes, I knew there weren’t
nerve endings in hair, but I felt it.

The door wouldn’t budge. Swinging around with fangs
fully extended, I held up my palms so that my clawed fingers touched them.

Just as I did with memory retrievals, I pulled
invisible fibers of my being from the core of my torso, sucking in the memorial
elements of thought from the cerebral chamber. The muses twitched and arched,
pulling back as soon as I accomplished extracting a handful of new memories.

“You mustn’t do that,” the first snarled.

I took a step toward them. They matched my movement by
moving back. I kept walking until they backed against the wall. They were forced
to billow up and out until the fog surrounded me.

“Your memories are ours,” the third said as the fog
crashed down on me.