The Dark-Hunters (179 page)

This was not what he wanted to hear tonight.

Wulf growled at Ash. “I really hate it when you say things like that.” He paused as another thought occurred to him. “If she’s so important, why aren’t
you
here guarding her?”

“Mostly because this ain’t
Buffy
and there’s not one single Hellmouth to guard. I’m up to my armpits in Armageddon down here in New Orleans and not even I can physically be in two places at once. She’s your responsibility, Wulf. Don’t let me down.”

Against his better judgment, Wulf listened to Ash give him Cassandra’s address.

“And Wulf?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever noticed that salvation, much like your car keys, is usually found where and when you least expect it?”

He frowned at Ash’s esoteric words. The man was really, really strange. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll see.” Ash hung up.

“I really hate it when he plays Oracle,” he said between clenched teeth as he turned his SUV around and headed toward Cassandra’s.

This sucked. The last thing he wanted was to be near a woman who had seduced him so completely.

A woman he knew he could never touch in the real flesh. That would be an even bigger mistake than the one he’d already made. She was an Apollite. And for the last twelve hundred years, he had spent his life pursuing her kind and killing them.

And yet the woman called out to him in a way that tore through him.

What was he going to do? How could he uphold his code as a Dark-Hunter and keep away from her when all he really wanted to do was take her into his arms and see if she tasted as good in real life as she had in his dreams …

*   *   *

Kat thoroughly searched the apartment before she allowed Cassandra to lock the door.

“Why are you so nervous?” Cassandra asked. “We defeated the Daimons.”

“Maybe,” Kat said. “I just keep hearing that guy’s voice in my head telling me that it’s not over. I think our friends are going to be back. Real soon.”

Cassandra’s nervousness came back with a vengeance. It had been way too close tonight. The mere fact that Kat had refused to let them fight the Daimons and had opted instead to hide in a corner of the bar told her just how dangerous these men were.

She still wasn’t sure why Kat had pulled her away from them.

Neither one of them cowered from anyone or anything.

Not until now.

“So what should we do?” Cassandra asked.

Kat triple-locked the door and pulled the gun from her purse. “Put our heads between our knees and kiss our butts good-bye.”

Cassandra was stunned by the unexpected words. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” Kat offered her an encouraging smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m going to go make a call, okay?”

“Sure.”

Cassandra went to her room, and did her best not to relive the night her mother had died. There had been a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach all day long. Just like she had now.

She wasn’t safe. No Daimon had ever attacked the way they did tonight.

The Daimons at the club hadn’t come out to feed or to play. They had been specially trained and had come out as if they had known exactly where she was.

Who she was.

But how?

Could they find her even now?

Terror filled her. She went to her dresser and pulled open the top drawer. In it was a small arsenal of weapons, including the dagger of her mother’s people that had been handed down to her.

She didn’t know how many people had a dagger for a security blanket, but then there weren’t many people who grew up the way she had either.

She secured the sheath to her waist and hid it at the base of her spine. Her death might be imminent in a few months, but she had no intention of dying one day sooner than she had to.

A knock sounded on her front door.

Cautiously, she left her room and walked into the living room, expecting to see Kat in there curious about their unannounced visitor too.

Kat wasn’t there.

“Kat?” she called, taking a step toward Kat’s room.

No one answered.

“Kat?”

The knocking continued, more demanding than it had been before.

Scared now, she went to Kat’s room and pushed open the door. The room was empty. Completely. There was no sign that Kat had ever been in there.

Her heart hammered. Maybe Kat had gone out to the car for something and gotten locked out?

She went back to the door. “Kat, is that you?”

“Yeah, let me in.”

Cassandra laughed nervously at her stupid behavior and swung open the door.

It wasn’t Kat outside.

The dark-haired Daimon smiled at her. “Did you miss me, princess?” he said in a voice identical to Kat’s.

She couldn’t believe this. It couldn’t be real. This kind of stuff happened in movies, not in real life.

“What are you, the friggin’ Terminator?”

“No,” he said calmly in his own voice. “I’m the Harbinger who is merely preparing the way for the Destroyer.”

He reached for her.

Cassandra stepped back. He couldn’t enter the house without an invitation. Reaching behind her, she pulled out her dagger and sliced his arm.

He drew back with a hiss.

She spun as she saw someone behind her.

It was another Daimon. She caught him in the chest with her dagger.

He evaporated into a golden-black cloud.

Another shadow passed over her.

Spinning around, she kicked Stryker back, but he didn’t go completely out the door. Instead, he only blocked it more.

“You’re quick,” he said as his arm healed instantly before her eyes. “I’ll give you that.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Daimons came at her from all directions. How the hell had they gotten into her home? But she didn’t have time to contemplate that. Right now, all she could focus on was survival.

She kneed the next Daimon who reached her and fought a second one. Stryker stayed back as if the fight amused him.

Another Daimon, this one with a long blond ponytail, attacked. Cassandra flipped him over. As she went to stab him, Stryker came out of nowhere to grab her arm.

“No one attacks Urian.”

She shrieked as he wrenched the dagger from her hand. Cassandra moved to strike him, but the instant her gaze met his, all thoughts scattered.

His eyes turned to a strange, swirling silver. They moved in a hypnotic dance that held her spellbound and turned her thoughts to oatmeal.

All the fight inside her instantly vanished. A sly, seductive smile curved Stryker’s lips. “See how easy it is when you don’t fight?” She felt his breath against her throat.

Some unseen force tilted her head to the side to give him access to her neck and to the throbbing carotid artery she could feel pounding in terror.

Inside, Cassandra was screaming at herself to fight.

Her body refused to obey.

Stryker’s laughter rumbled a moment before he sank his long teeth into her neck. She hissed as pain sliced her.

“Am I interrupting?”

Cassandra could only vaguely recognize Wulf’s voice through the numbed haze of her mind.

Something jerked Stryker away from her. It was a few seconds before she realized it was Wulf knocking the Daimon back.

Wulf whisked her up into his arms and ran with her. Cassandra could barely keep her head from lolling back as he headed for a large dark green Expedition and tossed her inside it.

The instant Wulf was in the car, something struck it hard. Out of the darkness, a large, black dragon appeared on the hood.

“Let her out and you can live,” the dragon said in Stryker’s voice.

Wulf answered by putting his SUV in reverse and gunning it. He turned the wheel and sent the beast flying.

The dragon shrieked and blew a blast of fire at them. Wulf kept going. The dragon took flight and dove at them, then arced up, high into the sky, before it vanished into a shimmery cloud of gold.

“What the hell was that?” Wulf asked.

“He’s Apostolos,” Cassandra murmured as she struggled to snap herself out of her daze. “He’s the son of the Atlantean Destroyer and a god in his own right. We’re so screwed.”

Wulf let out a disgusted sound. “Yeah, well, I don’t let anyone screw me until they kiss me, and since there’s not even a snowball’s chance in hell of me kissing that bastard, we’re not screwed.”

But as his Expedition was suddenly surrounded by eight Daimons on motorcycles, he reconsidered that.

For three seconds at least.

Wulf laughed as he surveyed the Daimons. “You know the beauty of driving one of these?”

“No.”

He swerved his Expedition into three of the bikes and knocked them from the road. “You can swat a Daimon like a mosquito.”

“Well, since they’re both bloodsucking insects, I say go for it.”

Wulf glanced sideways at her. A woman who could keep her humor even in the midst of death. He liked that.

The remaining Daimons must have rethought acting out Mad Max with him and dropped back from his SUV. He watched as they faded out of sight in his rearview mirror.

Cassandra let out a relieved breath as she pushed herself up more in the seat. She turned her head and tried to see where the Daimons had vanished. There was no sight of them.

“What a night,” she said quietly as her thoughts cleared and she remembered everything that had happened in the apartment. Once more, panic consumed her as she remembered Kat hadn’t shown up. “Wait! We have to go back.”

“Why?”

“My bodyguard,” she said, gripping his arm. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

He kept his gaze on the road ahead of them. “Was she in the apartment?”

“Yes … maybe.” Cassandra paused while she thought it over. “I’m not exactly sure. She went to make a phone call in her room and then she wasn’t in there when I went to see if she’d go with me to the door.” She released his arm. Fear and grief warred inside her heart. What if something had happened to Kat after all these years they’d been together? “Do you think they killed her?”

He glanced at her, then changed lanes. “I don’t know. Was she the blond woman in the bar?”

“Yes.”

He pulled his cell phone off his belt and made a call.

Cassandra chewed her nails as she waited.

She heard someone’s faint voice on the phone.

“Hey, Binny,” Wulf said. “I need a favor. I just left the Sherwood student apartments over by the University of Minnesota and we may or may not have a casualty there…” He glanced at Cassandra, but his eyes betrayed no clue as to what he was thinking or feeling. “Yeah, I know tonight’s been a real freakfest. You don’t even know the half of it.” He switched hands with the phone.

“What’s your friend’s name?” he asked Cassandra.

“Kat Agrotera.”

He frowned. “Why do I know that name?” He relayed it to whomever he was speaking to.

“Shit,” he said after a brief pause. “Do you think they might be related to her?”

Once again, he glanced in Cassandra’s direction. Only this time, his scowl was most sinister. “I don’t know. Ash told me to guard her and now her bodyguard holds a last name that ties her to Artemis. Could it be a weird coincidence?”

Cassandra cocked her head at that. She’d never before thought about the fact that Kat’s last name was also one of the many epithets the ancient Greeks had used for Artemis.

She’d met Kat in Greece after she had fled from Belgium with a load of Daimons hot on her heels. After helping her out in a fight one night, Kat had told her she was an American come to touch base with her Greek heritage that summer.

It had been a bonus that Kat had said she was a martial arts expert with a knack for using explosives. Cassandra had explained to her that she was looking for a new bodyguard to replace her old one and Kat had signed on with her immediately.

“I just love to put a hurt on evil things,”
Kat had confessed.

Wulf sighed. “I don’t know either. Okay. You go look for Kat and I’ll take Cassandra home with me. Let me know what you find. Thanks.” He hung up, then returned his phone to his belt.

“What did she say?”

He didn’t answer her question. Not exactly anyway. “She said Agrotera is one of the Greek names for Artemis. It means ‘strength’ or ‘wild hunter.’ Did you know that?”

“Sort of.” A drop of hope welled inside her. If that were true, maybe the gods hadn’t abandoned her family after all. Maybe there was some hope for her and for her future. “Do you two think Artemis sent Kat to protect me?”

His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to think at this point. I was told by Artemis’s mouthpiece that you are the key to the end of the world and that I had to protect you and—”

“What do you mean, ‘key to the end of the world’?” she asked, interrupting him.

He looked as surprised as she felt. “You mean you don’t know that?”

Okay, so it was obvious Dark-Hunters could get high and delusional.

“No. In fact, I’m thinking right now that one, if not both of us, needs to put down the crack pipe and start this night over.”

Wulf gave a light laugh at her comment. “If it wasn’t for the fact I can’t get high, I might agree with that.”

Cassandra’s mind raced. Was there any truth to what he had just said? “Well, if you’re right and I’m key to the world’s destruction, then if I were you I’d be making out a will.”

“Why?”

“Because in less than eight months, I turn twenty-seven.”

Wulf heard the catch in her voice as she spoke those words and he more than understood the doom she was facing. “You said you were only half-Apollite.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never known a half-Apollite to survive the curse, have you?”

He shook his head. “Only the Were-Hunters seem immune to the Apollite curse.”

Cassandra sat silently, watching the traffic out the window while she contemplated what had happened tonight.

“Wait,” she said as she remembered the Daimons coming into her apartment. “How did that guy get into my house? I thought Daimons were forbidden to enter your home without an invitation.”

Wulf’s answer was far from comforting. “Loophole.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, arching both brows. “What do you mean, ‘loophole’?”