Chapter 4
Four
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
That was impossible. Of all times for Ryan to stage an impromptu visit. His first ever. Just when she’d offered safe harbor to Caius and Anandra.
A coincidence?
If only Gus believed in those.
The forty-three didn’t get involved. It was a directive they’d all agreed to follow.
Even Gus.
If they found out she’d broken that agreement, there would be consequences. Big, terrifying consequences. Gus might have to become a hermit in truth if that happened.
“I don’t have to tell them,” Gus whispered.
Hope bloomed in her chest.
The forty-three and Ryan were well used to her hermit-like tendencies. They wouldn’t find it strange if she suggested an alternative meeting point.
Caius and Ryan’s paths need never cross.
Gus signed out, letting the container wall revert to its natural metal state as she headed downstairs to grab Anandra’s meal and drink. Neither were as warm as they should have been, but she figured someone as hungry as Anandra wouldn’t mind.
Gus let herself back into the garden where she’d left the boy and Caius. Distracted as she was, she almost didn’t notice the trees’ distress. Whispers brushed along the periphery of her senses. A warning came seconds before a storm of ki attacked from the forest.
Gus barely had time to dodge. She sidestepped, dropping the plate in favor of hurling the mug of masala chai.
It sailed through the air, unerringly finding its victim as if guided by a higher power. In this case, the instincts that had been beaten into Gus as a child. Not to mention the will of the trees around them. None of whom appreciated the assault on their water bearer.
There was a soft grunt as the mug found its mark.
Gus crossed the short distance in seconds, fishing Anandra out of the bushes and dumping him on the ground in front of her. “Is this how you repay kindness?”
Ungrateful little shit.
A perfectly good cup of chai wasted. Gus should have left him to the mercy of the humans.
Anandra scooted backward on his butt, leaving deep grooves in the garden bed and accidentally damaging a few of her ferns in the process.
If she’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to now.
Breathe, just breathe, Pityrodia Augustensis. This is a child. You can’t poison him.
No matter how much she wanted to.
“You’re one of them,” Anandra gasped.
The fear he was giving off was enough to make Gus pause. Having been terrified a time or two in her life, she recognized that cloying, heavy feeling enough to know when someone was faking it.
Anandra wasn’t.
“Who is ‘them’?” Gus asked.
In the short time since she’d left him, something had changed for Anandra. Enough for him to now consider Gus an enemy.
“Them,” Anandra hissed, curling protectively in on himself almost immediately after. As if afraid Gus might hit him.
“This is ridiculous,” Gus muttered, feeling a headache coming on. “Again, who is them? And why do you think I’m one of them?”
Earlier, Gus had cut Anandra off when he tried to explain what was going on in hopes of remaining uninvolved, but Ryan’s impending arrival and the child’s own actions had changed things.
She needed to get to the bottom of this.
And fast. It was the only way she was going to be able to reclaim her hard earned peace and quiet.
The boy must have sensed something reassuring in Gus’s manner. Maybe the fact that she hadn’t followed up his attack with further violence.
His expression was cautious as he pointed to something at Gus’s feet.
She looked down, a frown creasing her brow. “Atropa Belladonna.”
Deadly nightshade. This one had just come into bloom. The plant was known for its distinctive dull green leaves, violet flowers and shiny black berries that grew along its branches.
Careful though, eating those berries wouldn’t leave you feeling too good after.
“That’s what set you off?” Gus asked.
Granted, belladonna was highly toxic, but she doubted he knew that. The plant was native to old Earth. Specifically, central and southern Eurasia. It wasn’t something a Tuann would have come across.
“Our captors had that plant tattooed on their forearm,” Anandra volunteered.
“All of them?” Gus asked, her voice pitched slightly higher than usual.
His cautious gaze on hers, Anandra nodded.
“Wait here,” Gus ordered.
She rushed out of the garden, not bothering to lock the door behind her. Caution was forgotten as she made a beeline straight to where she’d left the humans’ bodies.
“Please, please, please. Don’t let it be what I think it is,” Gus chanted, grabbing the first arm she found and lifting it.
Except her worst fear proved true. There, on the human’s forearm, was a tattoo. Atropa Belladonna. Just like Anandra said.
Gus lowered herself to a seated position, her mind reeling and her face blank with shock.
Someone had stolen her name and was using it to do some very bad things.
Belladonna wasn’t just any organization. It was her organization.
“No wonder Ryan decided on a visit. Someone is setting me up,” Gus whispered through numb lips.
The would be leader of the forty-three wasn’t coming to Titan to check on Gus. He was coming to kill her.
Gus let that sink in.
Someone wanted her dead. Whether because of a grudge or because they saw her as easy pickings. Weak. There for the destroying.
They’d declared war on her and everything she’d built.
Belladonna and its crimes would trace back to her. The plant obsessed hermit stupid enough to name her organization after one of the most infamous poisons of all time.
In retrospect, not her brightest moment.
And since Gus actually was the person behind Belladonna’s creation, she doubted denial of her involvement would work.
Someone, somewhere, was bound to put two and two together.
Ryan’s impending visit made Gus think he already had. Even if that wasn’t his purpose in coming, there was still Kira and Jin to consider. They were bound to pull on that thread. It would lead them right back to her.
Gus could guess what would happen then. Kira would rampage. Jin would wield his own brand of snarky chaos.
And Gus. Gus would bleed.
She might die. Maybe not. Kira had a soft heart. Their history might stay her hand.
Not the forty-three’s though.
“Think. Think. Think.”
Forewarned was forearmed. She knew where the knife was coming from. There was still time to change her fate if she was brave and clever enough to figure out a way out of this.
Caius was the key.
The uncharacteristic impulse that had led her to intervene on his behalf may have just become Gus’s saving grace. From this moment on, he was the most important person on Titan. Her survival depended on his.
First, though, she needed information.
Gus scrubbed at her cheeks, feeling steadier now that she had a plan of attack. She might not have her siblings’ appetite for destruction, but she was no slouch. She wasn’t going to just roll over and let the mastermind destroy her life. Not after everything she’d endured.
A search of the other two bodies uncovered tattoos in various stages of completion.
The second Gus revealed was the most finished and belonged to the man she’d pegged as their leader.
It had a skull whose eye socket the belladonna was growing through.
Several clusters of berries decorated the stalk.
The last was only half finished. It lacked a skull, and there was only a single cluster of berries resting beneath the purple bell shaped flowers.
Gus wondered if the number of berry clusters was their way of determining rank. The fewer clusters, the lower they were in the hierarchy.
Not that it mattered. They were all going to die. By her hand or someone else’s.
The sight of the tattoos extinguished the small hope Gus held that this might all be a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake. Here was the evidence.
“I told you to wait in the garden,” Gus said, folding the arm she’d been examining back against the man’s chest. There hadn’t been enough time for rigor mortis to set, so it went fairly easily.
“Would you have waited just because someone told you to?” Anandra asked.
Gus pushed herself to her feet. “Probably.”
In her experience, disobedience invited punishment. Gus wasn’t a fan of pain. If there was a way to avoid it, she would. Even if that made others call her a coward.
Her response seemed to take Anandra off guard. His gaze flitted from Gus to the bodies behind her. “You’re really not with them?”
Gus followed his gaze, barely restraining her sneer. “Oh no, I am their death.”
A little dramatic but accurate.
“Come—I promised you food,” Gus ordered, trusting Anandra to follow as she glided past on whisper silent feet.
Unsurprisingly, the boy did. His hunger—or curiosity—compelling him to trail in her wake.
For the second time that day, Gus prepared two mugs of masala chai. The first she set in front of Anandra. Along with a plate of food.
The second she kept for herself as she claimed a seat across from the boy.
She took a sip, the knots in her stomach settling as she stared at the boy over the rim of her mug.
For someone who’d likely been fed swill for who knew how long, he was being awfully picky. Not touching the food or drink Gus had made him.
Gus lowered her mug. “Problem?”
Reluctantly, Anandra reached for the drink. Unable to hide his suspicion, he took an experimental sniff.
Gus was gratified by his look of surprise upon his first sip.
Anandra held the mug away, tilting it so he could examine its contents more closely. “This tastes like laug.”
Of course it did. That’s why Gus had made it. To give Anandra a taste of home. A gift in circumstances as trying as these.
She had a feeling this boy had walked through a hell she knew all too well. The fact that something familiar was also likely to loosen his tongue was neither here nor there.
“I’m glad you like it,” Gus murmured into her own mug.