Hellhound (17 page)

“Baking makes me feel better.”

I almost gawked at her. Lydia awkwardly smiled.

“What? An undertaker can’t be domestic?” she asked.

To each their own, I supposed.

“Don’t look at me that way, Ms. Independent.” Lydia sassily
settled her hands on her hips.

“Hey, whatever makes you happy.”

I couldn’t deny that the cake was extremely delicious.
I hadn’t eaten cake in a long time. Cake was something rare for me, usually
presented and eaten on a happy or momentous occasion. Celebrations, ceremonies,
and throne ascensions all required cakes.

 “What type of business are you taking over?” I hoped
that it wasn’t a bakery or clothing store.

“A computer franchise.”

All right, that was more like it. Mythian women should
exude power, in my humble opinion.

“What do you do to relieve stress?” Lydia asked me.

I bit my lower lip and looked at my fork before taking
another bite. My former lover excelled in relieving my stress in a black, foggy
room like a pounding wave. He used to crawl over my body with moist lips and
pressing hands like a lucid, serpentine animal.

I dispelled the thought. No point in remembering the
good times, no matter how good they were.

When I failed to answer, Lydia spoke in a serious tone,
“What brings you by, Selene?”

I smiled to wave off the odd tension in the room. “I
guess no one would think that I came by just to visit?”

Lydia shook her head, plastering smirk on her mouth.
“How is the hunt going?”

“Does everyone know about my assignment?”

“What the tracker did was pretty dramatic, and boldly
evil. It affected all of us here. Since you’re the Hellhound, we suspected that
you would get the job.”

“As dismal as it is.”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I looked up from another bite of cake.

“Push your feelings aside to do your job? We all know
that you loved him, and now you have to hate him.”

I became rigid. “It’s easy to hate someone who killed
your father, Lydia. I wasn’t forced to change my emotions. They naturally altered.
I hate that I haven’t caught him yet, but I’ll be grateful for the day that I
do bring him in.”

“Of course.” She stared at her feet and slowly chewed
on a third bite.

My questions for her floated around my head until I
organized them. I wanted to start with Ashton to ease into this conversation.
“Lydia, how are things for you?”

“Fine. Why do you ask?”

“How are things between you and Ashton?”

She stiffened slightly. “As with any other member of
the clan.”

“You know what I mean. I know about you two, it’s all right.”

“I’m sure that I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“I don’t like being lied to.”

My upfront demeanor rattled her. I softened the
edginess to our conversation. “Look at who I chose to mate with. That was more
scandalous, and more public, than you and Ashton. Both men are trackers, but
you’re an undertaker. The clan can get over it. I’m in line for the throne, and
I ran against the grain doing what I did. No one here can have a more
disreputable mating than what I had.”

She nodded politely in agreement.

“Anyway, Ashton confirmed it.”

She stared at me wide-eyed.

“I don’t think that he meant to. I haven’t told
anyone. It’s not my business. Who would I tell?”

“I guess things were going okay, until the murders. I
haven’t seen Ashton around for a while. But, I suppose that he’s out on
assignment.”

“Yeah.” If Lydia didn’t know what his mission was, I
wasn’t going to tell her.

“I hoped that things would get back to normal for us,
so that we could work stuff out and approach the Council. Of course, the
incident pushed back plans.” Then she quickly added, “Not that our little fling
shouldn’t dwarf in the aftermath.”

“It’s okay. Many lives were ruined because of that
day. It’s not selfish to be concerned with your own.”

“Well, I expected that we would get back together
after a reasonable amount of time elapsed, but I haven’t seen him. Now I think
that our
relationship
was nothing more than a fling.” She shrugged.

“When was the last time you saw Ashton?”

“Oh gosh, that’s been a while. Weeks, I think.”

Ashton must not have returned after taking the new
job. Ashton asked Damares to lie for him, to tell the Council that they were
together at the time of the murders. He told Damares that he was with Lydia,
but since their current relationship was both new and undetermined by the clan,
it couldn’t come out in the open like this. Damares agreed, to my dismay,
knowing that something of the sort transpired between the two, since she and
Lydia were close. But she wouldn’t ask Lydia about it, not wanting to embarrass
her friend.

I mulled over the facts, also recalling my
conversation with Damares just after the incident. Lydia was downstairs during
the murders.

“Lydia, you saw the murders, right?”

She didn’t respond.

“It’s okay, I know that you did. The Council told me,
and I’ve viewed your memories.”

“Yeah, I saw some of what happened. As you know, I
didn’t see all of it.”

“But enough to incriminate Demetrius.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the Council right away? I was
the one who ended up finding them.”

“I’m sorry that you had to see that. I was terrified.
I ran, and then hid because I thought the killer would find me in the hall and
murder me, too. Then I went to my room to get my bearings. You can’t expect a
person to be calm after seeing something like that.”

“Seeing the murder must’ve been awful.” I attempted to
present a look of consternation, as if hearing about it for the first time.
Glancing away with creased brows, I nodded my head.

“Yes, it was.” Her voice was distant. Lydia was a new
undertaker. She was the determined sort, and very intelligent. Even for her,
witnessing such a hideous crime in her own domicile took its toll. Clearly, the
woman hadn’t fully recovered.

“You’re certain that the killer was Demetrius?”

She met my eyes, carefully arranging her thoughts into
words. “I know what I saw, and I saw him.”

“I wonder if the cerebral chamber filters out
fantasies, or drug-induced recollections.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wonder if someone drugged you and you only thought
that you saw Demetrius kill Nathanial.”

She scoffed as if absolutely amazed. “I’m in my right
mind. I wasn’t hallucinating, or fantasizing. That’s sick and twisted! I woke
up just fine and chipper that day. I always skip breakfast, and that day I skipped
drinking my normal cup of coffee, so no one could have slipped something into
my drink or food. I met and talked with plenty of people, which none have
suggested that I appeared weird that day.”

“Maybe the man only looked like Demetrius.”

“I’ve seen him a handful of times. I wouldn’t have
known him if I ran into him in the street. I only thought that the killer
looked like him, but I wasn’t sure. That’s why I entered the cerebral chamber
and let the Elders work it out. They confirmed that it was him. You saw the
memory. It was him. Are you saying that it wasn’t him, Selene?”

“No, I just need to know why he did this, and...”

“Perhaps you still have feelings for him after all? You
want him to be innocent. Maybe emotions are not like faucets that you can turn
on and off at your leisure.” Lydia was getting red and heated.

“I just wanted to cover all the unvisited
explanations. I’m not accusing you of anything,” I assured her.

The room remained quiet, and I allowed the
conversation to drift into silence for a few moments before speaking again.
“Don’t worry. I’m assigned to hunt him.”

“And that doesn’t affect you?” she snapped.

“He killed my father. I’ll do my job just fine. What
did you see exactly?”

“Oh, no. The Council told me that I shouldn’t speak
about this to anyone. Besides, you’ve already seen it.”

“But I’m not just anyone, Lydia, now am I? I’m charged
with bringing him in. I’ve seen it, but it’s not enough. It’s missing
something. I’m missing something. Do you know how good I am at what I do?”

“Of course I know. Everyone knows.”

“So you also realize my frustration and humiliation to
have hunted him without a real trace. I need to catch him. I have to bring
closure to my loss, and this embarrassing leash that he seems to have on me. I
hope that you won’t tell anyone about this conversation.”

She shook her head. “Of course not. No one brings it
up with me, anyway. The excitement and edge has died down. We all know who the
accused is. It won’t resurface until he’s brought back in.”

“So I need to know every little detail so that I can
figure out why he did this, or where he might go, or what, if any, plan he had
after committing the crime. Did he say anything? Look anywhere? Go someplace?
Do you even remember what time it was?”

Lydia looked up into a faraway space between the wall
and the ceiling behind me as she considered the events, going over them charily
but precisely.

“I went down to the sub levels on some business. Normally,
I shouldn’t have been down there, but Danther told me that it needed to be done
right then and there. I argued that it could wait. I hadn’t even eaten at that
time, but he was adamant, so I went down. I remembered thinking that the level
was quiet.”

“No sub sentries or minions?”

“Not one. Maybe they were in a meeting or something.”

I supposed, considering the strict clan organization,
that groups of people held meetings to stay up to date and on the ball. We were
summoned here for a ceremony at the time. Perhaps they met somewhere for a
briefing.

“I went and did my business, which didn’t take too
long.”

“What exactly was your business?”

She turned red. “Fixing an upper component of the cerebral
chamber.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Why were you the one working on it? I didn’t realize
that you possessed special abilities or skills to work on the cerebral chamber.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that either.”

I intently looked at her. A slither of jealousy
writhed within my being.

“I don’t believe that I was the right person for that
job, but because I live here and was readily available, they assigned the task
to me. If you lived here, they would’ve used you, I’m sure. No one has a
mastery over the cerebral chamber like you do.”

I was stunned. “Why would you think that I have
mastery over it?”

“Well, don’t you? You’ve expressed many powers from
Mnemosyne. I guess we just all assumed that you possessed them all.”

Well, we knew what people said about those who assumed.

“I left the area that I was working on to go down so
that I could check it by entering the chambers one level below. Afterward, I
headed toward the elevator, passing the throne room. That’s when I heard the
commotion. The door to the throne room was slightly opened, and when I peered
inside, the tracker stood over Elder Augustus’s body.

“He looked dead, not sure how long he’d been dead or
laying there. I could only guess that he hadn’t been dead for long since
Nathanial didn’t seem suddenly concerned or surprised. He did look shocked when
the tracker turned and stabbed him three times with a dagger. Then he dropped
it, and he sort of stood there for a second.”

I cringed at the mental image, recalling her memory in
Danther’s eyes, the visual from the recording. I corralled my emotions.

“Did he look around? Did he look like he regretted
anything?” I probed. I could only hope.

“No. He sort of smiled, which was utterly disconcerting.
That’s when I panicked and backed away, moving toward the elevator. Halfway
down the hall, I realized that he would probably travel that same passage to
get back up, so I squeezed into a dark corridor nook, wedged between the walls
behind a statue, and waited for what felt like a good long while.”

“Did he walk by? Did he run? How long after you saw
him that he crossed you? Did you hear any noises?”

Lydia looked away again. She thought about it, bit her
lower lip, and then stared at me. “I don’t remember actually seeing him pass. There
must be another way out other than the main elevator, I’m sure. I don’t know
why or how he knows about it, but I must’ve waited for five minutes. I didn’t
hear anything, or see anyone. So I left then.”

“Where did you go?”

“Straight to my room. I was in such shock that I
crashed in front of the door and sat there until the sentries pounded down our halls
to question us. I didn’t utter a word until I met with the Council. The sentries
told us that we couldn’t leave our rooms, and they only wanted trackers to go
downstairs with them. But, I volunteered to go because I wanted to speak with
the Council. I’m sure that I looked frantic and guilty about something when the
Council kept me for questioning. No one else should’ve known that I saw one of
the murders.”