The Dark-Hunters (100 page)

It was near midnight when Ash left Club Runningwolf’s.

Where the hell was Talon? He should be out on the streets, patrolling.

Ash had been trying to reach him for hours.

He called Nick again only to find out that Nick had neither seen nor heard from Talon either.

This was so unlike the Celt. He could sense that Talon was all right and not hurt, and if he wanted to, he could track Talon down. But Ash had never been that intrusive with his powers. Having been hunted and stalked, he couldn’t bear to do that to anyone else. Not unless it was a dire emergency.

Free will was not something he would tamper with lightly.

As Ash returned the phone to his jacket, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“Look how helpless she is…”

“Yes, but she’s strong enough to feed us all.”

The voices whispered through his mind much like Spider-Man’s spidey-sense …

And the wall-crawler thought he had super powers.

Pah-lease.

Ash closed his eyes and located the source of the voices. Four male and two female Daimons were in an alley off Royal Street. He started for his motorcycle, then stopped himself. There was no way he’d reach them in time by conventional means.

Glancing around, he made sure no one could see him, then he gathered the ions in the air around him. He let his body disintegrate into nothingness and used his powers to bend the physics of time and matter.

Unseen, he whispered through the city, straight to the alley where they had a woman cornered. She stood cringing, surrounded by the Daimons, her arms wrapped about her.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she begged. “Just take my purse and leave me alone.”

The tallest Daimon raked his hand through her hair and smiled evilly. “Oh, this won’t hurt. Not for long anyway.”

Acheron solidified. He summoned a shield for the woman, to protect and confuse her. In her mind, she would see and remember an unknown figure scaring her attackers away.

In reality, he whistled.

The Daimons turned toward him in unison.

“Hi,” he said nonchalantly as he walked toward them. “You Daimons wouldn’t happen to be planning on sucking the soul of an innocent human, now would you?”

They looked at each other, then started to run.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Ash said, throwing another shield up behind them to keep them from fleeing the alley. “No Daimon gets out of here alive.”

They hit the invisible wall and rebounded off it.

“Man,” Ash said, feigning a cringe. “It really makes you feel for the bug on a windshield, doesn’t it?”

They scrambled to their feet.

The tallest of them, who was almost even in height to Ash, narrowed his eyes. “We’re not afraid of you, Dark-Hunter.”

“Good. It makes the fight more fair that way.” Ash spread his hands out, creating a staff with his thoughts.

The male Daimons rushed him at once while the women backed away.

Acheron flipped the first Daimon to reach him over with his staff, then rammed the tip of it into the second. He embedded one end of the staff into the concrete and used it to balance as he jumped up and kicked at a third. He released the blade from the toe of his boot and sent it straight into the Daimon’s chest. The Daimon disintegrated.

Ash landed gracefully on the street while the first two pushed themselves up and the other two backed off.

“Oh, come on, girls,” he taunted them. “Don’t be bashful. At least I give you a fighting chance, which is more than you give
your
victims.”

“Look,” the leader said, his voice shaking. “Let us go and we’ll give you some important information.”

Ash scoffed. “What information could you possibly have that would be worth me letting you go so that you could kill more humans?”

“It’s worth it,” another one said. “It’s about—” His words broke off into a strangled cry.

Before Ash could move, all the Daimons disintegrated.

For the first time in centuries, he was too stunned to move.

What the hell just happened?

The human woman came flying up from her crouch and launched herself into his arms. “You saved me!”

Ash frowned. He couldn’t figure out how she could see him until she kissed him passionately.

“Dammit, Artemis,” he snarled, pushing her away. “Get off me.”

She made an irritated noise low in her throat. Releasing him, she flashed from her blond human disguise into her fiery goddessness. Her auburn hair curled around her shoulders as she stood, hands on hips, and pouted at him. “How did you know it was me?”

“After eleven thousand years, don’t you think I know what you taste like?”

Sulkily, she folded her arms over her chest. “If I’d been a real human, I bet you would have slept with me tonight.”

He sighed disgustedly and allowed his staff to fade into vapor. “I don’t have time for your petty jealousy. You know, I do have other things to take care of.”

She licked her lips and stepped to his side, then trailed her hand over his shoulders. She leaned to whisper in his ear. “I’m one of those things you need to take care of, love. Come home with me, Acheron. I’ll make it well worth your while.” She ran her tongue around his ear, raising chills over his body.

Ash shrugged her away. “I have a headache.”

“You’ve had a headache for two hundred years!”

He looked at her dryly. “And you’ve had PMS for eleven thousand.”

She laughed at that. “One day, my love, one day…”

Ash put a little more room between them. Enough so that she couldn’t casually run her hands over his body. “Why are you here?”

She shrugged. “I wanted to see you fight. I just love the way you get all serious and lethal. The way your muscles ripple when you move. It really turns me up.”

For once he didn’t bother to correct her misuse of American slang. Instead, his vision turned dark that she would manipulate him like this. He hated the games she played, especially when they involved the lives of other people. “So you created Daimons out of nothing and then killed them?”

She closed the distance between them. “Oh no, they were real. And I’m not the one who zapped them. Believe me, I love the way your body moves when you attack. I would never give them in while you fought.”

“You mean ‘take them out’?”

“Mmm … in … out…” Artemis nipped at his shoulder while she ran her hands down his chest. “You keep talking like that and I
will
take you home with me.”

His head was starting to pound. He removed her hand from his crotch where she cupped him. “Artie, could you stay focused for a minute? If you didn’t zap them, who did?”

“I don’t know.”

He moved away from her. Again.

She stamped her foot like a child who just had her favorite toy taken away and glared at him. “I hate it when you mess up your hair, and what is this thing you have in your nose?”

Ash felt the stud vanish and the hole close. He clenched his teeth. No doubt his hair was blond again too. “Dammit, Artemis, you don’t own me.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously. “You belong to me, Acheron Parthenopaeus,” she said, her voice full of rage and possession. “All of you. Mind, body, and soul. Don’t you ever forget it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You have no real hold over me, Artie. We both know that. When all is said and done, my powers make a mockery of yours.”

“Oh no, love. So long as your Dark-Hunter army and the humans they protect mean more to you than you do, I will always have power over you.” She smiled coldly at him, then flashed out of the human realm.

Ash cursed and felt a childish impulse to send a lightning bolt slashing through the alley. No doubt she was trying to lure him back to her temple.

Like an idiot, he was going to go. He had to. He still didn’t know who had zapped the Daimons, and if it wasn’t Artemis, then there was someone else toying with him.

And woe to any other fool who dared to cross him. He tolerated Artemis because he had to.

He didn’t have to put up with anyone else. And by Archon’s thorny hammer, he’d tear the head off the next person who annoyed him.

*   *   *

“So,” Sunshine said to Talon as she sat on his bed wearing nothing but a borrowed T-shirt, her legs tucked up under her. “Are you planning on keeping me here forever, or what?”

Lying on his side, he picked through the platter she had made for them until he found the M&M’s he had insisted she include. “Depends. Do you plan to keep making me eat this healthy crap or can I have the leftover steak out of the fridge?”

She wrinkled her nose at him as she munched another strawberry. It still amazed her that she had found his small, secret stash of fresh fruit in the bottom drawer of his refrigerator. The man seemed to have an aversion to eating anything nontoxic.

“I don’t see how you stay healthy eating the garbage you have in your cabinets. Did you know I counted five different kinds of potato chips?”

“Really? There should be six. Did I eat all the barbecue?”

“You are not funny.” But she laughed anyway.

“Relax,” he said, reaching for the banana chips she’d made. “Have a banana.”

She gave him an arch look, then trailed her gaze impishly down his gorgeous naked body. “I already had your banana.”

He smiled at her. “I think it would be more correct to say my banana had you.”

Sunshine laughed again as she leaned over to feed him a strawberry. He held her hand to his lips while he ran his tongue over her fingers and gently nipped her skin before he let her withdraw.

He was unlike anyone she’d ever met before.

But unfortunately, it couldn’t last.

Her heart sank as the reality of it hit her. She needed to get out of here before leaving him became even more difficult than it already was. She didn’t want to hurt him or herself.

“You know, Talon,” she said, picking through the strawberries. “It’s been fun the last couple of days, but I really do need to get back home.”

Talon swallowed his food and took a drink of water. That was easier said than done. He couldn’t take her home, not if the Daimons were still after her and not if Ash wanted her protected.

Dereliction of duty wasn’t something the Atlantean was forgiving about.

Dark-Hunters were protectors. Anyone who failed to uphold their code quickly found themselves spending eternity in painful torment.

Not that he needed that threat. The truth was, he didn’t want to see Sunshine hurt. He liked her a lot more than he should.

Worst of all, he liked spending time with her. It had been so long since he’d just shared an evening with someone. And she was so easy to talk to. So funny and warm.

“Would you stay the night if I asked you to?”

He saw the sadness in her eyes. “I would like to, but what about tomorrow? You can’t exactly take me home then, and if I use your boat, you won’t have a way to leave your cabin.”

“I could take you home tomorrow night.”

She reached out and toyed with his small braids. Her smile was gentle and filled with regret. “No, Talon. As much as I would like to, I need to get back home. I have a job to do and I’m not independently wealthy. Every day I’m not in the Square, it’s a day I’m not making money. I have to eat, you know. Wheat germ isn’t cheap.”

“If it’s just the money—”

“It’s not, Talon. I have to get back to my life.”

He knew she was right. Sooner or later they would have to part company.

He would take her back as she wanted and then he could still protect her after dark, hidden in the shadows.

“Be a part of the world, but never in it.”

He remembered the long-ago night Acheron had said those words to him.

“Because of what we do, we have to interact with people. But we must be unseen shadows who move among them.

“Never let anyone know you. Never give them a chance to realize you don’t age. Move through the darkness ever watchful, ever alert. We are all that stands between the humans and slavery. Without us, they all die and their souls are lost forever.

“Our responsibilities are great. Our battles numerous and legendary.

“But at the end of the night, you go home alone where no one knows what it is you have done to save the world that fears you. You can never bask in your glory. You can never know love or family.

“We are Dark-Hunters.

“We are forever powerful.

“We are
forever
alone.”

Talon drew a deep breath. His time with her was over. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you back.”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. And as he tasted her, his thoughts drifted back into the past.

“Speirr?” his uncle’s irate voice called from the other side of his door. “Can you please tear yourself away from your wife’s embrace for one afternoon to actually attend business with me? My troth, the way you two carry on I can’t imagine why you don’t have five dozen children by now.”

Nynia laughed from above him as she gently rode him. “You’re in trouble again.”

“Aye, but you’re worth it, Nyn.”

As she so often did, Nynia leaned over and rubbed noses with him before she kissed him passionately and slid off him. “You’d best be going or your uncle will have both our heads.”

Talon winced at the memory and the pain it awoke inside him.

Sunshine pulled back and rubbed her nose against his just like Nynia had always done.

He went cold.

Something wasn’t right. These memories, her actions …

The way she awoke his emotions.

He cupped Sunshine’s cheek so that he could stare into her dark brown eyes. There was nothing about her features that reminded him of his wife, but her actions …

“Talon? What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t speak. He didn’t dare tell her that she reminded him of a woman he had loved fifteen hundred years ago.

“Nothing,” he said quietly. “You need to dress.”

She got up.

“Speirr?”

Talon grabbed the blanket and covered himself as Ceara shimmered into his cabin.