The Naturals: All In Part 30

"Am I?" Nightshade countered.

"Incurable. Painful." I spoke the words out loud without meaning to, but didn't pull back from talking once they'd made their way out of my mouth. "You wouldn't just hand away your secret. Not this easily. Not this fast."

Nightshade's eyes lingered on mine a moment longer. "There are limits," he admitted, "to what one might say. Some secrets are sacred. Some things you take to the grave." His voice had taken on a low, humming quality. "But then, I never said your Agent Briggs had been afflicted with that poison."

That poison. Your poison. Your legacy.

"Go." Judd spoke for the first time since the man who'd killed his daughter had been brought into the room. He met Sterling's gaze and repeated himself. "He's telling the truth. Go."

Go get the antivenom.

Go save Briggs.

"We're done here," Sterling said, reaching for the b.u.t.ton on the wall.

"Stop." The word burst out of my mouth. I couldn't draw my gaze away from the killer's. You brought me here for a reason. You do everything for a reason-you all do.

Nightshade smiled. "I thought," he said, "that you might have some questions for me."

I saw now, the game he was playing. He'd brought me here. But staying? Listening to him? Asking him for answers?

That was on me.

"Go," Judd told Sterling again. After a split second's hesitation, she did as he said, dialing her phone on the way out. Judd turned back to me. "I want to tell you not to say another word, Ca.s.sie, not to listen, not to look back."

But he wouldn't. He wouldn't make me walk away. I wasn't sure he could walk away himself. You can look at the files, Judd had said, back when this all began, but you're not doing it alone.

Neither one of us was doing this alone now.

"Beau Donovan." I turned back to the monster waiting patiently on the other side of the gla.s.s. I couldn't make my mouth form the words to ask about my mother, not yet. And I couldn't-wouldn't-bring up Scarlett. "You killed him."

"Was that a question?" Nightshade asked.

"Your people left him in the desert fifteen years ago."

"We don't kill children." Nightshade's tone was flat.

You don't kill children. That was a rule they lived by. A sacred law. But you have no problems leaving them in the desert to die of their own accord.

"What was Beau to you? Why raise him at all, if you were going to turn him out?"

Nightshade smiled slightly. "Every dynasty needs its heir."

My brain whirred. "You weren't raised the way Beau was."

The rest of them, Beau had said, they're recruited as adults.

"The term Master suggests an apprentice model," I continued. "I'm a.s.suming Masters choose their own replacements-adults, not children. The cycle repeats every twenty-one years. But the ninth member, the one you call Nine-"

"Nine is the greatest of us. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation."

Your leader, I filled in. Beau hadn't just been born in their walls. He'd been born to lead them.

"You left him to die," I said.

"We do not kill children," Nightshade repeated, his voice just as flat as it had been the first time he said the words. "Even if they prove themselves unworthy. Even when they fail to do what is asked and it becomes clear they will never be able to take the mantle to which they were born. Even when the way must be cleared for a true heir."

What did they ask you to do, Beau? What kind of monster were they molding you to be? I couldn't let my mind go down that path. I had to concentrate on the here and now.

On Nightshade.

"And the little girl?" I said. "The one I saw you with. Is she worthy? Is she the new heir? A true heir?" I took a step forward, toward the gla.s.s. "What are you doing to her?"

I don't believe in wis.h.i.+ng.

"Are you her father?" I asked.

"The girl has many fathers."

That answer sent a chill down my spine. "Seven Masters," I said, hoping to jar him into telling me something I didn't know. "The Pythia. And Nine."

"All are tested. All must be found worthy."

"And that woman I saw with you? She's worthy?" The question tore out of me with quiet force. My mother wasn't worthy.

My mother fought.

"Did you take her, too?" I asked, my mind on the woman I'd seen. "Did you attack her, cut her?" I continued, my heart pounding in my chest. "Did you torture her until she became one of you? Your oracle?"

Nightshade was quiet for several moments. Then he leaned forward, his eyes on mine. "I like to think of the Pythia more as Lady Justice," he said. "She is our counsel, our judge and our jury, until her child comes of age. She lives and dies for us and we for her."

Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

Lives and dies.

"You killed my mother," I said. "You people took her. You attacked her-"

"You misunderstand." Nightshade made the words sound reasonable, gentle even, when the room around him was charged with an unholy energy.

Power. Games. Pain. This was the cult's stock-in-trade.

I reached for a piece of paper and drew the symbol I'd seen on Beau's chest. I slammed it against the gla.s.s. "This was on my mother's coffin," I said. "I don't misunderstand anything. She wasn't part of the pattern. She wasn't killed on a Fibonacci date. She was attacked with a knife the same year you were 'proving yourself worthy' with poison." My voice shook. "So don't tell me that I don't understand. You-all of you, one of you, I don't know-but you chose her. You tested her and you found her unworthy."

They didn't kill children. They left them to die. But my mother?

"You killed her," I said, the words rough against my throat and sour in my mouth. "You killed her and stripped her flesh from her bones and buried her."

"We did no such thing." The emphasis on the first word somehow managed to break through the haze of fury and sorrow clouding my mind. "There can only be one Pythia."

Every instinct I had told me this was what Nightshade had brought me here to hear. This was what he'd traded his last remaining bit of leverage to say.

"One woman to provide counsel. One woman to bear the child. One child-one worthy child-to carry the tradition on."

One woman. One child.

You killed her.

We did no such thing.

All are tested. All must be found worthy.

My mother had been buried with care. With remorse. I thought of the woman I'd seen with the little girl.

One woman. One child.

I thought about how a group could possibly persist for hundreds of years, taking women, holding them, until captive became monster. Lady Justice. The Pythia.

I thought about the fact that the woman I'd seen by the fountain hadn't taken her child. She hadn't run. She hadn't asked for help.

She'd smiled at Nightshade.

There can only be one Pythia.

"You make them fight." I wasn't sure if I was profiling or talking to him. I wasn't sure it mattered. "You take a new woman, a new Pythia, and..."

There can only be one.

"The woman," I said. "The one I saw with you." My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. "She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother."

"We all have choices," Nightshade replies. "The Pythia chooses to live."

Why bring me here? I thought, aware, on some level, that my body was shaking. My eyes were wet. Why tell me this? Why give me a glimpse of something I'm not blessed enough to know?

"Perhaps someday," Nightshade said, "that choice will be yours, Ca.s.sandra."

Judd had been standing ramrod stiff beside me, but in that instant, he surged forward. He slammed the heel of his hand against the switch on the wall, and the pane darkened.

You can't see us. I can see you, but you can't see us.

Judd took me by the shoulders. He pulled me to him, blocking my view, holding me, even as I started to fight him.

"I've got you," he murmured. "You're okay. I've got you, Ca.s.sie. You're okay. You're going to be okay."

An order. A plea.

"Two-one-one-seven." Until Nightshade spoke, I hadn't realized the speaker was still on. At first, I thought he was saying a Fibonacci number, but then he clarified. "If you want to see the woman, you'll find her in room two-one-one-seven."

The Pythia chooses to live. The words echoed in my mind. Perhaps one day, that choice will be yours.

Room 2117.

The hours after Nightshade's interrogation blurred into nothingness. Sterling called to say that Briggs had received the antivenom. She called to say that he was expected to make a full-if slow-recovery. She called to say they found the woman.

They found the little girl.

Fewer than twenty hours after Nightshade had named my mother's killer, I stepped into room 2117 at the Dark Angel Hotel Casino. You could smell the blood from fifty yards away. On the walls. On the floor. The scene was familiar.

Blood. On the walls. On my hand. I feel it. I smell it- But this time, there was a body. The woman-strawberry blond hair, younger than I remembered-lay in her own blood, her white dress soaked through. She'd been killed with a knife.

Wielded by Nightshade, before he was captured? One of the other Masters? A new Pythia? I didn't know. And for the first time since I'd joined the Naturals program, I wasn't sure I wanted to know. This woman had killed my mother. Whether she'd had a choice, whether it was kill or be killed, whether she'd enjoyed it- I couldn't be sorry she was dead.

The little girl sat in a chair, her small legs dangling halfway to the ground. She was staring blankly ahead, no expression on her face.

She was the reason I was here.

The child hadn't said a word, hadn't even seemed to see a single one of the agents who had come into this room. They were afraid to touch her, afraid to remove her by force.

I remember coming back to my mother's dressing room. I remember there was blood.

I made my way through the room. I knelt next to the chair.

"Hi," I said.

The little girl blinked. Her eyes met mine. I saw a hint-just a hint-of recognition.

Beau Donovan had been six years old when he'd been abandoned in the desert by the people who'd raised him, deemed unsuitable for their needs.

Whatever those needs might be.

You're three, I thought, slipping into the girl's perspective. Maybe four.

Too young to understand what was happening. Too young to have been through so much.

You know things, I thought. Maybe you don't even know that you know them.

Beau had known enough at the age of six to uncover the pattern once he was older.

You might be able to lead us to them.

"I'm Ca.s.sie," I said.

The child said nothing.

"What's your name?" I asked.

She looked down. Beside her on the ground, there was a white origami flower, soaked in blood.