The Dark-Hunters (165 page)

“What if I hurt her?” Zarek asked.

“Do you plan on hurting her?”

“No, but I can’t live here and she—”

“Why don’t you ask her, Z?”

“What about her mother?”

“What about her? You were willing to fight Artemis for Thanatos. Isn’t Astrid worth just as much?”

“More.” He met Ash’s gaze with fired determination. “Where is she?”

Before Zarek could blink, he found himself in the atrium Acheron had shown him.

Atty looked up with a hiss. “No man is allowed here!”

The one Acheron had called Clotho started to attack him. But she pulled up sharply as Acheron appeared beside him.

Zarek ignored them as he concentrated on Astrid who sat there with tears in her eyes, staring at him as if he were an apparition.

His heart pounding, he walked over to her and knelt down before her chair.

“Stars aren’t supposed to cry,” he whispered so that only she could hear him. “They’re supposed to laugh.”

“How can I laugh when I have no heart?”

He took her hand into his and kissed the tip of every finger. “You have a heart.” He placed her hand over his. “One that only beats for you, princess.”

She offered him a trembling smile. “Why are you here, Zarek?”

He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I’m here to collect my rose, if she’ll come home with me.”

“Don’t even go there,” Atty cried. “Astrid, please don’t tell me you’re going to listen to that drivel?”

“He’s a man, baby sister,” Lacy chimed in. “If his lips are moving, he’s lying.”

“Why don’t the three of you stay out of this?” Acheron said.

Atty stiffened. “Excuse me? We’re the Fates and—”

A sideways glare from Acheron cut her off midstream.

“Why don’t we leave them alone?” Atty said to her sisters. The three of them hurried off while Acheron watched Zarek and Astrid with his arms folded over his chest.

Zarek still hadn’t taken his gaze off Astrid. “You going to be a voyeur, Ash?”

“Depends. You going to give me something to look at?”

“If you keep standing there, I am.” He looked over his shoulder then.

Acheron inclined his head to him and turned around to leave. As he did so, the breeze caught a portion of his shirt and blew it back, showing a flash of one shoulder.

Zarek started at the red welts it revealed. Welts he knew from experience came from a whip.

“Wait!” Astrid said, stopping Acheron. “What about Zarek’s soul?”

Acheron stiffened ever so slightly before he called out, “Artemis?”

She shimmered in beside him.

“What?” she snarled back.

He nodded toward them. “Astrid wants Zarek’s soul.”

“Oh, like I care, and what is
he
doing here anyway?” She narrowed her eyes at Astrid. “You should know better than to bring him here.”

Ash cleared his throat. “I brought Zarek here.”

“Oh.” Artemis calmed instantly. “Why did you do that?”

“Because they belong together.” He smiled ironically. “It’s
fated.
”

Artemis rolled her eyes. “Don’t even go there.”

Astrid came to her feet. “I want Zarek’s soul, Artemis. Return it to him.”

“I don’t have it.”

They were all stunned by her words.

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Acheron asked, his tone sharp and angry. “Don’t tell me you lost it.”

“Of course not.” She looked over at Zarek and Astrid, and if Zarek didn’t know better, he’d say she looked embarrassed. “I never really took it.”

All three of them stared at her in disbelief.

“Come again?” Ash asked.

Artemis curled her lip as she looked at Zarek. “I couldn’t take it. That would have involved my touching him and he was disgusting back then.” She shuddered. “There was no way I would have put my hand on him. He smelled.”

Open-mouthed, Acheron looked at Zarek. “You lucky bastard.” Then he turned back to Artemis. “If you didn’t touch him, how has he been an immortal Dark-Hunter all this time?”

Artemis gave him a haughty sneer. “You don’t know everything after all, now do you, Acheron?”

He took a step toward her and she squeaked, putting more distance between them.

“I injected him with ichor,” she said quickly.

Zarek was stunned. Ichor was a mineral found in the blood of the gods that was said to make them immortal.

“What about his Dark-Hunter powers?” Acheron asked.

“Those I gave to him separately, along with the fangs and such so that you wouldn’t realize he wasn’t like the others.”

Acheron gave her a tired, repugnant stare. “Oh, I know I’m going to hate the answer for this one. But I have to know. What about the sunshine, Artemis? Since he has his soul my guess is he was never banished from daylight, was he?”

The look on her face confirmed it.

“You bitch!” Zarek snarled, rushing toward her.

To his surprise, it was Acheron who stopped him from reaching her.

“Let me go. I want to rip her throat out!”

Astrid pulled him back. “Leave her alone, Zarek. She has her own problems.”

Zarek hissed at Artemis, baring his fangs.

Fangs that instantly vanished.

Zarek ran his tongue over his human teeth.

“A gift,” Acheron said.

Zarek calmed a degree and then even more when he realized Astrid had her arms wrapped around his waist. Her front was tight against his back so that he could feel her breasts against his spine.

Closing his eyes, he savored the feel of her.

“You are free of Artemis, Zarek,” Astrid said in his ear. “You’ve been judged innocent and you’re immortal. Tell me, what do you want to do with the rest of eternity?”

“I want to go lie on the beach someplace warm.”

Astrid’s heart caught at his words. She’d foolishly thought he would say something about her.

“I see.”

“But most of all,” he said, turning in her arms to face her, “I want to piss off everyone.”

“Everyone?” she asked, her heart breaking even more.

“Yeah,” he said, granting her a rare smile. “The way I figure it, if I leave you, only me and you are unhappy. If I take you with me, everyone but us is pissed, especially that mangy thing you call a wolf. That has serious appeal for me.”

She arched a brow at that. “If you’re trying to woo me with that one, Prince Charming, you’ve—”

He stopped her words with a kiss so supreme that her toes curled. Her heart pounded.

Zarek nipped her lips, then pulled back to stare down at her. “Come away with me, Astrid.”

“Why should I?”

His gaze burned into hers. “Because I love you, and even if I’m lying on the sun itself I’ll be freezing there without you. I need my star so that I can hear laughter.”

Laughing with excitement, she gave him an “Eskimo” kiss. “Bora Bora, here we come.”

Zarek finished her words off with a real kiss.

A really
l-o-n-g
one.

15

Ash opened the door to the small, cramped cell where Thanatos was kept.

Part of him wanted the man’s blood for Bjorn’s life, which Thanatos had taken, and for the people he had hurt. Most of all, he wanted his blood for Simi and her newfound fear.

But part of him understood why Thanatos had gone mad.

He too possessed a degree of insanity. It was what had kept him alive these last eleven thousand years.

Thanatos looked up as he entered, his face pale and tormented. “Who are you?”

Ash stepped aside so that the light from outside could illuminate the poor man on the floor. “Just call me the final fate. I’ve come to you to grant you peace, little brother.”

“You’re going to kill me?”

Ash shook his head as he reached down and pulled his dagger from the sheath at Thanatos’s waist. He held it up and looked at the ancient etchings that covered the blade. Like all Atlantean daggers, this one was wavy from the hilt to the point. The cross hilt was solid gold and held a large ruby at its center.

It was the dagger of a long dead people who were more myth than real. Such a treasure as this was beyond value.

In the hands of the wrong person this weapon could do more than just hurt Simi. It could destroy the very world.

A surge of rage tore through him. At times, it was next to impossible not to kill Artemis.

But that wasn’t his place. Like it or not, he was here to protect her, even from her own stupidity.

Ash summoned his Atlantean powers and used them to dissolve the dagger into nothingness.

No one would ever hurt his Simi again.

And no one would destroy the world. Not while he was here to guard it.

He extended his hand to Thanatos. “Stand up, Callyx. I have a choice for you.”

“How do you know my name?”

Ash waited until he had taken his hand before he pulled him to his feet and answered his question. “I know everything about you and I’m very sorry for what you lost. I’m even sorrier that I couldn’t stop it.”

“It was the Thanatos powers, wasn’t it?” he said quietly. “The other Thanatos killed my wife, not Zarek.”

Ash nodded. He had tried to erase Callyx’s memory all those centuries before, but Artemis had returned the memory to the Apollite so that she could turn him into her servant.

“The humans have an old saying. Absolute power destroys absolutely.”

“No,” Callyx whispered. “Absolute vengeance does that.”

Ash was glad to see some clarity had come to the Apollite while he’d been banished to this nether hell.

“You said you had a choice for me?” Callyx asked hesitantly.

“I have worked a bargain so that you can either be set loose in the Elysian Fields for your eternal rest or I can place you alive at your current age in Cincinnati, Ohio.”

Callyx frowned. “What is Cincinnati, Ohio?”

“It’s a nice city in a country called America.”

“Why would I want to go there?”

“Because there’s a sophomore student at Ohio State University who’s majoring in dance that I think you might want to meet.” Ash opened his hand and showed him a picture of the girl. She was lovely, with long blond hair and big blue eyes, and stood in a circle of friends after class.

“Dirce,” Callyx breathed, his voice breaking on her name.

“Actually, she’s now Allison Grant. A human woman.”

Callyx’s eyes were tortured as he met Ash’s gaze. “But I would be an Apollite, damned to die in just a few years.”

He shook his head slightly. “If you choose to be with her, you’ll be human, too. You won’t remember anything about being Callyx or Thanatos. In your world there won’t be any such thing as Daimons or Apollites. No Dark-Hunters or ancient gods. You’ll be completely ignorant of all this.”

“Then how will I find her if I don’t remember who I am?”

Ash closed his hand so that Dirce was no longer visible. “I will make sure you find her. I swear it. You’ll be a student there yourself.”

“And family?”

“You’ll be an orphan whose rich uncle Ash died and made you the sole heir to his estate. Neither one of you will ever want for anything as long as you live.”

Callyx’s lips trembled. “You would do that for me even though I killed one of your men?”

Ash’s jaw flexed at the mention of Bjorn. “Forgiveness is the better part of valor.”

“I always thought it was ‘discretion.’”

Ash shook his head. “Discretion is easy. It’s finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard.”

Callyx thought about that in silence for several minutes. “You’re a wise man.”

Ash gave a half-laugh at that. “Not really. So, have you decided?”

Callyx’s gaze burned into his before he spoke the answer Ash knew he would. “There’s no choice. How can I know paradise without Dirce? I want to go to Cincinnati.”

“I thought you might feel that way.”

Stepping back, Ash granted Callyx his wish.

Alone in Thanatos’s cell, Ash glanced around the dark, dank walls and fought down his own demons. Artemis had had no right to condemn him to this.

One day she was going to get her comeuppance.

But first there was the matter of Dionysus to attend to. The next time the god of wine wanted to let loose one of Artemis’s pets on Ash’s men, he would think twice.

He also had a few other people to take care of. There was still the small matter of deleting from Jess, Syra, and the Squires the information about the bow-and-arrow mark.

No doubt he should delete it from Zarek as well, but he’d done enough damage to him.

Zarek wouldn’t tell anyone and he had more important things to occupy himself with.

Besides, if everything turned out the way Ash knew it would, Zarek would learn a lot more interesting things about him and the Dark-Hunters than just the secret of their mark.

*   *   *

Artemis sat alone on her throne, toying with her pillows. Acheron had been gone a long time now and she was beginning to worry.

He couldn’t leave Olympus, but he could do other things …

Things that could get her into a great deal of trouble if Zeus ever learned of them.

Maybe she had been foolish to let him have an afternoon of freedom on her mountain.

Just as she was ready to go find him, the doors of her temple opened.

She smiled at the sight of Acheron striding through them.

Her Acheron was gorgeous.

His long blond hair flowed around his shoulders and the black leather pants hugged a body that had been created for seduction. A body made to please others.

The doors closed behind him.

Her body warm, she pushed herself up in sweet expectation. She recognized the feral look in his eyes.

The raw, unadulterated hunger.

Desire flowed thick and heavy through her veins as she felt the moisture suddenly pooling between her legs.

This was the Acheron she loved best.

The predator. The one who took what he wanted and didn’t negotiate.

His clothes dissolved from his body as he neared her.

So did her own.

She shivered at the magnitude of his powers. Powers that made a mockery of hers.

He’d gone too long without feeding. They both knew it. Whenever he reached a certain point, his compassion died and he became amoral and unfeeling.