Chapter Eleven
I grabbed Babs, left the shelves behind, and sat down at the main table in the center of the briefing room. I’d just finished wiping away the sword’s tears and polishing up her face when the others trooped into the Bunker.
Zoe and Mateo both nodded at me, and Zoe even came around the table to sit next to me, but Ian scowled as he dropped into the chair across from mine. I ignored him. I was here, whether he liked it or not, and I didn’t have anything to prove to him. Not one thing. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway.
A moment later, Takeda strolled into the Bunker wearing the same dark gray tracksuit that he’d had on in gym class earlier. He looked at the four of us gathered around the table. If he was surprised that I was here, he didn’t show it or comment. Then again, I imagined it took quite a lot to crack the Samurai’s ever-calm attitude.
“Okay, team,” he said. “Where are we at? Report.”
Mateo grabbed the remote from the center of the table and passed it over to Ian, who hit some buttons on the device. Images of a large mansion appeared on the monitors on the wall.
“Our suspect, Lance Fuller, is throwing a party tonight. All of the academy kids have been invited, including the four of us,” Ian said. “We think that Lance might use the party as a cover to meet with the other Reapers. He might be planning to hand the chimera scepter over to them, maybe even Sisyphus himself, if the Reaper leader shows up. But the party will also give us a chance to snoop around the mansion. If we’re lucky, we might be able to find the scepter before Lance meets with any Reapers.”
Ian hit some buttons, and more photos of the mansion appeared on the monitors, showing the spacious rooms inside, as well as the pools, tennis courts, and landscaped grounds that surrounded the sprawling structure.
Each image brought back memories. I had gone to Lance’s back-to-school party last year, and I had even flirted with him a little when we’d both been getting sodas in the kitchen. It had been one of the best nights of my life. Then, a few days later, my parents had been killed, and everything had changed.
I shifted in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable, and my charm bracelet clattered against the table. I winced at the harsh jangling sound.
“Something wrong, cupcake?” Ian asked.
“Just wondering when you’re going to get to the point.”
Ian opened his mouth to snipe at me, but Takeda crossed his arms over his chest, silently telling the Viking to focus on the briefing.
“We’ll do our usual operation,” Ian said. “Zoe and I will infiltrate the mansion, while Takeda and Mateo stay in the van. Mateo will hack the security system so the two of them can see and track our progress through the mansion. Zoe will use her gadgets on any locks or alarms that we encounter, and I’ll watch her back in case we run into any Reapers while we’re searching for the chimera scepter. Once we have the scepter, we’ll remove it from the premises, then wait for the Reapers to arrive. Depending on how many of them show up, we’ll either capture them ourselves or call for Protectorate backup.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Ian had come up with a solid plan. Takeda nodded, along with Zoe and Mateo, but I raised my hand as though we were in class.
“And what do I get to do, professor?” I asked.
Ian rolled his eyes, as though the answer should have been obvious. “You get to flirt with Lance like you did on the quad this morning.”
I frowned. Not the assignment I’d expected. “Why me? Zoe is way cuter.”
The petite Valkyrie perked up and blew me a kiss, making blue sparks of magic shimmer in the air around the two of us. I grinned back at her. It was true. She was way cuter than me.
“Because you’re the one Lance personally invited to his party,” Ian said. “You’re the one he knows, so you can keep tabs on him while Zoe and I search the mansion. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Yes, I can handle being the distraction. Why don’t you give me something more challenging to do?”
“Because I don’t trust you,” Ian snapped.
He didn’t trust me? He didn’t even know me, but he’d already condemned me for what my parents had been, just like everyone else at this stupid school. Well, I’d had enough of his attitude and insults. Anger roared through me, and I shot to my feet, my hands balling into tight fists.
“You don’t trust me?” I snarled. “Well, I don’t trust you either. How about I make you eat your own teeth? How would you like that, Viking?”
Ian shot to his feet as well. “Bring it on, cupcake—”
A sharp whistle cut through the air, making us all wince. Takeda blew on his silver gym whistle two more times before letting it drop back down around his neck.
“That’s enough,” Takeda said, his voice as calm as ever. “We have work to do. The two of you need to get over your petty dislike of each other. Now, gear up. We leave for the party in thirty minutes.”
Ian and I kept glaring at each other, our hands still clenched into fists.
“That’s an order,” Takeda said, a little bite in his voice this time. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Fine,” Ian muttered. “But when this goes sideways, remember that you’re the one who wanted her on the team.”
He gave me one more hostile glare before he marched out of the briefing room.
* * *
Mateo started talking to Takeda about some computer equipment that he needed for the mission. Zoe got to her feet, grabbed her purse from the table, and crooked her finger at me.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you get ready.”
I followed her out of the briefing room, down one of the hallways, and into the armory. Gray metal lockers hugged one of the walls, while swords, daggers, and other weapons lined another wall.
I eyed the weapons, wondering if I should take one of them with me instead of the cursed Babs. But Babs had said that she would reappear in my hand no matter what I did or where I left her, and I didn’t want to hurt the sword’s feelings by choosing another weapon, especially if it wouldn’t keep me safe from her curse anyway. Besides, we were going to steal the scepter from Lance, not fight him for it. I should be fine taking Babs with me tonight.
Zoe moved past the weapons to the far end of the wall, where some shelves held several oddly shaped items. At first glance, the items looked like ordinary swords, daggers, and spears. But on closer inspection, I noticed that all sorts of buttons, wires, and battery packs were attached to the weapons, making them anything but ordinary.
Zoe crouched down, then stood up on her tiptoes, scanning the items on each shelf and humming to herself all the while. She finally grabbed something that looked like a small gun with three long metal prongs sticking out of the barrel.
She noticed my curious stare and struck a pose with the item. “A lockpick gun. Put this in just about any lock, pull the trigger, and it’s open sesame. The gun does all the work of jimmying the lock instead of someone wasting precious seconds actually picking it open. I made it myself.”
“You invent things?”
Zoe nodded and dropped the lockpick gun into her purse. “Yep. Mateo does all the computer stuff, but I like messing around with tools and weapons and seeing what I can come up with. Like this little beauty.” She grabbed a dagger off one of the shelves and held it out where I could see it. “This one’s my favorite. I call it my electrodagger.”
It looked like an ordinary silver dagger—until Zoe pressed her thumb against the blue stone set into the hilt. Blue-white sparks of electricity sizzled up and down the blade, making me jerk back in surprise.
“It’s a dagger and a stun gun.” She beamed at me, pride filling her face. “Why carry two weapons when you can have them all in one?”
I grinned back at her. “Now, that is cool.”
Zoe shoved the electrodagger into her purse, along with a few more gizmos, then grabbed a small glass case that contained several wireless earbuds. She stuck one of them into her own ear, then handed one to me and gestured that I should do the same. The device slid easily into my ear, and I could barely tell it was there.
“Check, check,” Zoe said.
Her voice echoed in my ear, and I flashed her a thumbs-up, telling her that I could hear her loud and clear.
“All you have to do is talk in your normal voice, or even whisper, depending on the situation, and we’ll be able to hear you through your earbud,” she said. “And you can hear the rest of us too. This is how we communicate with each other during missions.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
We both removed our earbuds. Zoe put them back into that glass case, then slid the whole thing into her bag. The sides of her blue-plaid purse were already bulging, as if the enormous bag were going to explode from all the spy gear she had crammed inside, but Zoe looked over the shelves again, debating whether she needed anything else.
I didn’t know the Valkyrie—didn’t know her at all—but she seemed nice enough. Or at least willing to give me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my parents. It was one thing to trade insults with Ian while we were in the safety of the Bunker. But now that we were getting ready to leave the academy, anything could happen, and I wanted to know what kind of people were going to be watching my back.
“Can I ask you something?” I said. “About…Ian?”
Zoe kept staring at the gadgets. “You mean why he’s been so snarky to you?”
“Yeah. What’s his problem? He doesn’t even know me, and he already hates me.”
“Maybe that’s because you remind him of himself.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
Zoe glanced around the armory, as if making sure that we were still alone, then looked at me again. “Ian’s family, the Hunters, are a big deal in the Protectorate. Like almost as big a deal as the Quinns. His entire family, they’ve all been members of the Protectorate going back I don’t know how many generations, including his mom and dad. His parents…well, let’s just say they aren’t the best. All they do, all they really care about, is traveling all over the world on Protectorate missions. So it was pretty much just Ian and his older brother, Drake, growing up together.”
“So?” I asked. “What does that have to do with me?”
“So Ian absolutely adored Drake. Loved and looked up to his big brother more than anyone else. We’re talking some serious hero worship here, especially when Drake graduated with honors from the New York academy and went to work for the Protectorate.”
I sighed. “Let me guess. A group of Reapers killed Drake, and now Ian hates all Reapers as a result.”
“If only it were that simple.” Zoe glanced around again, making sure that we were still alone. “It turned out that Drake was secretly a Reaper—and that he had been a Reaper for years.”
My eyes widened. “No way.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So what happened?” I asked, totally caught up in her story.
“Well, since Drake was a rookie member of the Protectorate, he was assigned to guard some weapons, armor, and artifacts that were being stored at a warehouse near the New York academy. But after the battle in North Carolina, stuff started disappearing from the warehouse. Takeda got suspicious, since no one but Protectorate members are supposed to know where the warehouse is. I don’t know how, but he realized that Drake was the one leaking information to the Reapers, so he set a trap for him. Takeda told Drake about a shipment of artifacts coming to the warehouse, then sat back and waited for Drake and the other Reapers to try to steal the artifacts. Takeda wanted to catch and arrest all the Reapers at the same time, including Drake.” Zoe bit her lip, stopping her story.
“What happened?” I asked. “What went wrong?”
“Drake bought Ian along to the warehouse the night of the Protectorate raid. Ian didn’t realize that they were meeting a bunch of Reapers, but Drake finally told Ian that he was a Reaper and he wanted Ian to join them. As you can imagine, Ian didn’t take that well.”
No, that wasn’t the kind of thing you took well. That was something that shattered your heart in an instant and made you question everything you thought you knew about the people you loved.
Zoe shook her head. “Ian was absolutely devastated. But that’s not even the worst part.”
“What was that?”
“Drake told Ian to either join the Reapers or die,” she said. “Of course Ian refused, but Drake attacked him. Ian didn’t have a choice. He defended himself, and he stabbed Drake in the chest.”
I sucked in a horrified breath. So that was why Ian hated Reapers and everything to do with them—he had been forced to fight his own Reaper brother. I had thought that finding out about my parents was bad, but this was worse—so much worse. At least my parents had never tried to force me to join the Reapers. They had never attacked me, and they had never made me choose between my life and theirs.
“Ian left to get help for Drake, but one of the Reapers set off some sort of bomb,” Zoe continued in a sad voice. “The warehouse exploded. Ian got out, but Drake didn’t. He’s still buried somewhere in the rubble.”
“Poor Ian,” I whispered.
“Yeah. You can say that again.”
We fell silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
“Look,” Zoe said. “Ian is a really great guy. Ian, Mateo, and me—we’ve all been friends for years. Ian and I lived next door to each other in New York. When he wasn’t with Drake, Ian was hanging out at my house. He’s like the brother I never had, and he’s always watched out for me.”
“But?”
She let out a breath. “But finding out the truth about Drake almost destroyed him. So when Linus Quinn and Takeda put together the Midgard, Ian was the first one to volunteer. Ian thinks that if he stops Sisyphus and these new Reapers, he can somehow make up for not seeing the truth about Drake.”
I shifted on my feet. Just like I wanted to make up for my parents’ evil actions. Ian Hunter and I were far more alike than I would have thought possible.
“Mateo and I just joined the team to keep Ian from doing something stupid, like getting himself killed.” Zoe sighed. “But Amanda was the one who died instead.”
Guilt and grief flashed in her hazel eyes, and blue sparks of magic fizzed in the air around her before slowly winking out one by one.
“Amanda’s death wasn’t your fault,” I said. “If it was anyone’s fault, then it was mine for not confronting the Reaper as soon as I spotted him in the library. But none of us realized that the Reaper was going to summon those chimeras. And you said yourself that Amanda went into the library without waiting for backup.”
“I know that, but I still feel guilty.” Her face twisted with regret. “Although it’s not like I could have helped Amanda against the chimeras.”
I felt guilty too, but I wondered at her words. “What do you mean? You’re a Valkyrie.”
Zoe let out a bitter laugh. “And Valkyries are supposed to be these great, amazing, superstrong fighters, right? Well, guess what? That particular magic skipped right over me.”
She waved her hand, causing more blue sparks to streak out of her fingertips. “I’m not any stronger than you are, Rory. In fact, I’m probably not as strong, given how short I am. I’m not a great fighter either. Not like you are. The only reason I’m here is to watch Ian’s and Mateo’s backs.”
She sighed and waggled her fingers again, watching the shower of sparks. Zoe glared at the flashing lights, then snapped her hand into a tight fist, snuffing them all out.
“Anyway, we need to get going. The others are probably waiting on us.”
She gave me a grim smile, then left the armory. But I stayed where I was, thinking about everything she’d said.
My hand crept to my charm bracelet, and I opened the heart locket, staring at the photo of me with my parents. That was the last happy moment I remembered having with them before they were killed. I wondered what Ian’s last happy moment with his brother had been.
Sympathy surged through me, softening my anger and annoyance at the Viking. Ian didn’t hate me because my parents had been Reapers—he hated himself for what he’d been forced to do to his brother. Because Drake had died and he had lived. I was a reminder of his own guilt, grief, and heartache.
Still, just because I felt sorry for the Viking didn’t mean I was going to let him take his emotions out on me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and tonight I was going to show him that. I was going to show Ian and the others that I could be a part of the team and help them stop the Reapers—for good.