The Dark-Hunters (148 page)

“But I digress. Archon liked me. He said, ‘Simi, you a quality demon.’ Have you ever seen a non-quality demon, though? That’s what I wanna know.”

Amused, Ash listened as she rambled on about gods and goddesses worshiped in his mortal lifetime. Gods and goddesses long dead now. He loved to listen to her nonlinear tales and logic.

It was like watching a small child as it tried to sort out the world and remember something. There was no telling from one minute to the next what would come out of her mouth. She saw things clearly, like a child.

If you had a problem, you killed it.

End of problem.

Subtleties and politics were beyond her.

Simi just was. She wasn’t amoral or vicious, she was just an extremely young demon with godlike powers who had no comprehension of deceit or treachery.

How he envied her that. It was why he shielded her so carefully. He didn’t want her to learn the hard lessons that had been dealt to him.

She deserved to have the childhood he had never known. One that was sheltered and protected. One in which no one was allowed to hurt her.

He didn’t know what he would do without her.

She’d been nothing more than an infant when she’d been given to him. Barely twenty-one himself, the two of them had pretty much raised each other. They were both the last of their kind on this earth.

For more than eleven thousand years it had been just the two of them.

She was as much a part of him as any vital organ.

Without her, he would die.

The door of the temple opened. Simi hissed, baring her fangs, letting him know Artemis had returned early.

Ash turned his head for confirmation. Sure enough, the goddess was striding toward him.

He let out a tired breath.

Artemis pulled up short as she saw Simi sitting at his feet. “What is it doing off your arm?”

“Talking to me, Artie.”

“Make it go away.”

Simi huffed. “I don’t have to do nothing you say, you old heifer cow. And you are old. Really, really old. And a cow, too.”

“Simi,” Ash said, stressing her name. “Please return to me.”

Simi cast an evil glare at Artemis, then became a dark, amorphous shadow. She moved over to him and laid herself over his chest to become a huge dragon on his torso with fiery spirals that wrapped around and down both of his arms.

Ash laughed darkly at the sight. It was Simi’s way of hugging him and tweaking Artemis at the same time. Artemis thoroughly hated it whenever Simi covered so much of his body.

Artemis let out a disgusted sound. “Make it move.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you back so early?”

She instantly became nervous.

His bad feeling tripled. “What happened?”

Artemis walked to the column at his feet, wrapped her arm around it and leaned against the marble. She played with the gilded edge of her peplos as she worried her lip.

Ash sat up straight, his stomach knotted. If she was this evasive something had gone mind-blowingly wrong. “Tell me, Artemis.”

She looked exasperated and angry. “Why should I tell you? You’ll just get angry at me and you practically stay that way anyway. I tell you, then you’ll want to leave and you can’t leave and then you’ll yell at me.”

The knot in his gut tightened. “You have three seconds to talk or I’m forgetting about your fear that one of your family members will discover I’m living in your temple. I will use my powers and I will find out what has happened on my own.”

“No!” she snapped, turning to look at him. “You can’t do that.”

A tic started in his jaw.

She moved back, putting the column between them. She took a deep breath as if for strength, then spoke in the voice of a small, frightened child. “Thanatos is loose.”

“What!” he roared, lowering his legs to the floor and coming to his feet.

“See! You’re yelling.”

“Oh, trust me,” he said between clenched teeth, “this isn’t yelling. I haven’t even come close to it yet.” Ash pushed himself away from the banister and paced angrily around the long balcony. It took all his strength not to lash out at her. “You promised me you would recall him.”

“I tried, but he got away.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there and now he refuses to heel.”

Ash glared at her.

Thanatos was on the loose and the only one who could stop him was under house arrest in Artemis’s temple.

Damn her for her tricks and promises. There was no way he could leave here. Unlike the Olympians, once he gave his word, he was bound by it.

It would kill him to break his oath. Literally.

Anger roiled through him. Had she listened to him the first time, they wouldn’t be reliving this nightmare. “You swore to me nine hundred years ago when I killed the last one that you wouldn’t recreate Thanatos. How many people did that one kill? How many Dark-Hunters? Do you even remember?”

She stiffened and returned his glare. “I told you, we needed someone to corral your people. You won’t do it. You won’t even control your demon. It was the only reason I made another one. I need someone who can execute them when they misbehave. You, you just make excuses for them. ‘You don’t understand, Artemis. Waa, waa, waa.’ I understand, all right. You prefer to tend to anyone but me so I created someone who listens when I speak.” She glared meaningfully at him. “Someone who actually obeys
me.
”

Ash counted to ten three times while he clenched and unclenched his fists. She had a way of making him want to lash out and hurt her that came dangerously close to breaching all of his control.

“Don’t get me started on that one, Artie. It seems to me ‘obey’ isn’t a word that belongs in the same sentence as your executioner.”

Driven mad by his confinement and thirst for vengeance, the last Thanatos had ripped through England with such force that Ash had had to fabricate stories of a “plague” to keep the humans and Dark-Hunters from learning the truth of what had actually destroyed forty percent of the country’s population.

Ash raked his hands over his face at the thought of what Artemis had unleashed onto the world again. He should have known when he asked her to recall it that it was too late for her to do so.

But like a fool, he had counted on her to do as she promised.

He should have known better.

“Damn you, Artemis. Thanatos has the powers to gather Daimons and make them do his bidding. He can call them from hundreds of miles away. Unlike my Hunters, he walks in the daylight and is impossible to kill. The only vulnerability he has is unknown to them.”

She scoffed at him. “Well, that’s your own fault. You should have told them about him.”

“Told them what, Artemis? Behave or the bitch-goddess will unleash her insane killer on you?”

“I am not a bitch!”

He moved to stand before her, pressing her back against the column. “You have no idea what you have created, do you?”

“He’s nothing more than a servant. I
can
recall him.”

He looked at her trembling hands and the beads of perspiration on her forehead.

“Then why are you shaking?” he asked. “Tell me how he got loose.”

She swallowed. But wisely gave him the information he sought. “Dion did it. He was bragging in the hall about it right before I came to tell you.”

“Dionysus?”

She nodded.

Ash cursed himself this time. He shouldn’t have removed the god’s memory of their fight in New Orleans. He should have let the idiot know exactly what he was dealing with. Left Dionysus so scared of him that the Olympian god would never again dare to confront him or any of his men.

But no, he’d sought to protect Artemis. She didn’t want her family to know who and what he was.

To them he was only her pet. A human curiosity, easily discarded and dismissed.

If they only knew …

He’d removed enough of everyone’s memory of that night so they would only recall that a fight had happened and who the winners were.

Not even Artemis remembered everything.

Artemis had promised him Dionysus wouldn’t go after Zarek for retribution. But then Artemis had thought to kill Zarek herself.

When would he learn?

She could never be trusted.

Ash moved away from her. “You have no idea what it does to someone to lock them away. To place them in a hole where they’re forgotten.”

“And you do?”

Ash fell silent as suppressed memories flooded him. Painful, bitter memories that haunted him whenever he dared to think of the past.

“You’d best pray that you never learn what it feels like. The madness, the thirst. The anger. You’ve created a monster, Artemis, and I’m the only one who can kill it.”

“Then we’re in for a bit of a problem, aren’t we? You can’t leave.”

He narrowed his eyes.

She stepped back again. “I told you, I will contact the Oracles and have them bring him home again.”

“You better, Artemis. Because if you don’t get him under control, the world is going to become the very thing that makes you wake up screaming at night.”

*   *   *

Zarek lay on the beach, still inside Astrid, as the waves ran over their bodies. This dream was so real and intense that he never wanted to wake from it.

What would it be like to have her for real?

But even as he thought about that, he knew the truth. A woman like Astrid had no use or need for a man like him.

It was only in his dreams that he could be wanted. Needed.

Human.

He moved to her side so that he could watch the water run over her naked body. Her hair was wet, plastered to her skin. She looked like a sea nymph that had just swum ashore to bask in the warm sunlight and seduce him with her curves and silken skin.

She looked up at him with a sweet smile that made his heart pound as she ran her hand over his arms and chest.

Astrid lay in silence, watching him, too. Zarek looked so lost now, as if their lovemaking had left him confused.

She wondered what it would take to tame this man, just a little. Only enough so that other people could see what she saw.

At least now he let her touch him without cursing or withdrawing from her.

It was a start.

She trailed her hand lower over the hard planes of his chest, down the perfect definitions of his abdomen. Hunger ignited in his eyes as she moved her hand lower.

Astrid licked her lips, wondering if she dared be even more bold with him. She still wasn’t sure how he would react to anything.

She played with the small, crisp hairs that ran downward from his navel, raking her fingers through them. He was already starting to harden …

Zarek held his breath as he watched her. Her hand felt wonderful on his body as she drew circles around his navel and trailed her fingernail down the short, light dusting of hair on his stomach.

Already he was craving her again.

Then she moved her hand lower.

He growled as she cupped his sac in her palm. Her warm hand enclosed him, squeezing him exquisitely.

His groin jerked, and all the blood rushed back into the region, making him hard and aching for her.

She ran her finger down his shaft to the tip, where she toyed with him. “I think you like it when I do that.”

He answered her with a kiss.

Astrid moaned at the passion he showed. He throbbed in her hand while his tongue danced with hers, exciting her to the highest level of need.

She pulled away reluctantly, desperate to give him what was unknown to him.

Kindness.

Acceptance.

Love.

The word caught in her mind. She knew she didn’t love him. She barely knew him, and yet …

He made her feel again. Touched the emotions she had feared were forever lost. She owed him much for that.

Kissing his lips lightly, she scooted down his body.

Zarek frowned at her actions. He didn’t know what she had planned until she laid herself over his stomach. Her bare back was exposed to him as she continued to stroke him with her hand.

He ran his hand through her long, wet blond hair, trailing it over her bare back while her breath tickled his hip. Her skin was so soft, so tender. There wasn’t a blemish anywhere on it.

She moved lower.

Zarek gasped as she took the tip of his shaft slowly into her warm mouth.

He was frozen by pleasure. The feel of her lips and tongue caressing him was unlike anything he’d experienced before. No woman but Astrid had ever touched him there. He’d never allowed it.

But he doubted he could deny her anything after this. She had laid claim to him in a way no one ever had.

Astrid moaned at the salty taste of him. When her sisters had told her about this, she had always considered it obscene and nasty. At the time and for centuries afterward, she couldn’t imagine herself ever doing something like this with a man.

But she did it for Zarek; there was nothing obscene about the feelings inside her. Nothing obscene about the way he tasted.

She was giving him a rare moment of pleasure, and strange as it seemed, she enjoyed it, too.

He gripped her shoulders and groaned in response to every lick, nibble, and suckle she gave him. His warm response urged her on. She really wanted to please him. To give him all the things he deserved.

Zarek arched his back, letting her have her way with him. It amazed him that he allowed her to do this. Never before had he trusted a lover with his body. He’d always been in complete control.

The woman didn’t touch him. Ever.

She didn’t caress or kiss him.

He bent her over, did his business, and walked off.

But with Astrid it was different. He felt as if he were sharing himself with her. As if she were sharing herself with him.

It was mutual and wonderful.

Astrid started as she felt Zarek’s fingers slide down her cleft. Opening her legs for him, she gave him access as she continued to pleasure him with her mouth.

Zarek turned more to his side all the while his fingers stroked and delved.

She shivered at the warmth of his touch as the cool surf rushed around them. The heat of the sun on her skin was nothing compared to the heat his touch provided.