The Dark-Hunters (272 page)

It wasn’t.

Amanda stood there, her face pale, her hair disheveled, her gown coated in blood.

But she was alive!

Shrieking, Tabitha ran for her and pulled her into her arms, holding her tight as her tears flowed yet again, only this time in happiness.

Amanda was alive!
The words echoed in her mind.

“I love you, I love you, I love you!” she breathed against her sister’s neck. “And if you ever die on me again, I’ll kill you so dead!”

The two of them stood there locked in an embrace.

Valerius smiled at the sight of them, grateful for Tabitha’s sake that Amanda was whole.

His smile died when his gaze met Kyrian’s as the Greek came down the stairs with Acheron behind him. There was nothing but open hatred in the Greek’s eyes.

“Where’s Kassim?” Otto asked.

“He’s dead,” Ash said wearily. “He’s upstairs in the nursery.”

Both Valerius and Otto winced.

Tabitha let go of Amanda as she caught sight of Kyrian.

“You were dead,” she breathed. “I saw you.”

“They both were dead,” Ash said as he stepped past the twins and headed into the living room. He held his hand up and clenched it into a fist.

Desiderius’s body vanished instantly.

“You’re a god?” Valerius asked him as Ash’s earlier declaration finally seeped into his mind.

Ash didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.

“Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Kyrian asked.

Ash shrugged. “Why should I? By tomorrow none of you will even remember that you ever learned this about me.”

Tabitha frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Ash took a deep breath. “The universe is an extremely complicated thing. All any of you need to know is that Amanda and Kyrian are now immortal. No one will ever be able to kill them again.”

“What?” Amanda asked, stepping away from Tabitha.

Ash looked to Kyrian. “I promised I wouldn’t let you die and I am bound by my oath.”

“Wait!” Tabitha said. “You’re a god. You can bring back Tia!”

Ash’s face turned pale. “Tia is dead?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“No,” Ash said quietly. He got that faraway look as if he were listening for something very faint. “She wasn’t supposed to die tonight.”

“Then save her!”

He looked as sick as Tabitha felt. “I can’t help Tia. Her soul has passed on. I can’t force it back into her body against her will. Amanda and Kyrian’s souls refused to leave their daughter and I got here in time to restore them.”

“What about my unborn baby?” Amanda asked. “Was it hurt by this?”

Ash shook his head. “He’s fine and would appreciate it greatly if you’d drink more apple juice.” Ash lifted his hands and everything in the house went back to what it had been before the Daimons had come.

Nothing was out of place.

“Ash,” Tabitha said, moving to stand beside him. “Please bring Tia back for me.”

He cupped her face in his palm. “I wish I could, Tabby. I really do. But know that she’s watching out for you and that she loves you.”

She saw red at his words. “That’s not good enough for me, Ash. I want her back.”

“I know, but right now I have other people to check on.”

“But my sister…”

Ash took Tabitha’s hand and placed it into Valerius’s. “I have to go, Tabitha.” He turned to Otto. “Jean-Luc is alive, but seriously hurt. I need you and Nick to get him back to his boat.”

“We don’t know where Nick is,” Otto said quietly. “I found his mother dead.”

Ash vanished immediately.

“I really hate it when he does that,” Kyrian said as he shifted a now-sleeping Marissa in his arms.

Tabitha didn’t move while her sister sat down on the floor and started crying.

Tabitha sat beside her and pulled her close.

“What a day,” Amanda sobbed. “I saw my husband killed. Kassim … Tia and now Cherise.”

“I know,” Tabitha said. “I’m not so sure we’re the ones who won this time around.”

“No,” Kyrian said as he joined them on the floor. “We’re still here and they’re not. To me, that’s winning.” He pulled his wife against his chest and kissed her on the head.

Tabitha turned to see Valerius heading for the door with Otto.

By the time she caught up, he and Otto were outside the house.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

“We didn’t want to intrude on a family moment,” he said quietly. “Your sister needs you.”

“And I need you.”

Valerius was stunned as she walked into his arms.

She wrapped her arms around him and held him close while Otto turned off her car.

“I’ll leave the keys in it and see you guys later.” He got into his Jag and drove off.

“Thank you,” Tabitha whispered as she tucked her head in below his chin. “I wouldn’t have made it through tonight without you.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t of more help and I’m so sorry about Tia.”

He felt her tears scalding his chest through his shirt.

“Your mother said she wanted you home.”

Tabitha nodded. “Yeah, I need to go see her. She draws her strength from us.” She pulled away as Amanda came out onto the front porch. “I’m going to see Mom.”

Amanda nodded. “Tell her I’ll be there tomorrow morning. I don’t want her to see me like this.”

Tabitha looked at Amanda’s bloodied gown.

“Yeah, that’s the last thing she needs.”

Then Amanda did the most amazing thing of all: She reached out and pulled Valerius close for a hug. “Thank you for coming, Valerius, and for keeping Tabitha safe. I really appreciate it.” She kissed his cheek before she pulled away.

Valerius had never been more stunned in his life. In that moment, he felt a strange sense of almost belonging somewhere. It was such a foreign, odd sensation that he wasn’t sure how to cope with it.

“My pleasure, Amanda.”

She patted his arm, then went back into her house.

Valerius helped Tabitha into her battered car and for once he took the driver’s seat. He didn’t say a word as she gave him directions to her mother’s house in Metairie.

Neither of them spoke the entire way. His heart ached for her. Taking her hand, he held it quietly in the darkness while she stared out the passenger side window.

When they reached her mother’s house, he got out and opened the door for her.

Tabitha drew a ragged breath as she contemplated facing her mother. For once her courage was gone.

Valerius handed her the keys.

She frowned at him as he stepped away from her. “What are you doing?”

“I was going to head back.”

“Don’t leave me, Val. Please.”

He brushed a tender hand down her cold cheek and nodded. He kept his hands on her shoulders and in truth she needed to feel his touch as she knocked on the door.

Her father answered it, his face grim. His dour look lightened and tears filled his eyes as he saw her and pulled her up into a rib-crushing embrace. “Thank God at least you’re all right. Your mother has been out of her mind with fear for you.”

She hugged him back. “I’m okay, Daddy, so’s Amanda and Kyrian.”

Her father released her, then narrowed his eyes on Valerius. “Who are you?”

“He’s my boyfriend, Daddy, please be nice to him.”

Kindness was the last thing Valerius expected, so when her father held a hand out to him, he was stunned.

Valerius shook it and then was led into a house that was packed full of the Devereaux clan.

And as he stepped into the living room, Valerius felt something he’d never felt in all his life.

He felt like he’d come home.

Chapter 16

Ash entered Artemis’s temple on Olympus without any preamble. In the middle of the large main room, which was surrounded by columns, she reclined on a white throne that looked more like a chaise longue.

Her
koris,
who had been singing and playing lutes, immediately rushed from the room and as one rather tall blond
kori
ran past him, he paused and turned to look after her.

“What are you doing here?” Artemis asked, and for once her tone was hesitant.

He turned back toward her and shifted the backpack on his shoulder. “I wanted to thank you for what you did tonight, but as I considered that, it dawned on me that you have never once in eleven thousand years done anything for me for free. The sheer fear factor of that realization alone has made me come seeking you. So what gives?”

Artemis wrapped her arms around herself as she sat on her white throne. “I was worried about you.”

He laughed bitterly at that. “You never worry about me.”

“I do, too. I called and you didn’t answer me.”

“I almost never answer you.”

She looked away, reminding him of a cringing child who had been caught doing something wrong.

“Spill it, Artemis. I have a lot of crap to clean up tonight and don’t want you on top of it.”

She took a deep breath. “Very well, it’s not like I can keep it from you.”

“Keep what from me?”

“A new Dark-Hunter was born tonight.”

His blood ran cold at that. Literally. “Damn you, Artemis! How could you do this?”

She came off her throne ready to battle. “I had no choice.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, Acheron. I had no choice.”

As she spoke, his mind connected with hers and the images of her and Nick went through him.

“Nick?” he breathed, his heart shattering.

What had he done?

“You cursed him,” Artemis said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Ash ground his teeth as guilt consumed him. He knew better than to speak in anger.

His will, even when not thought out, made reality. One wrong word …

He had damned his best friend.

“Where is he?”

“The bower room.”

Ash started to leave, but Artemis stopped him. “I didn’t know what else to do, Acheron. I didn’t.”

She held her hand out and a dark green amulet appeared. She handed it to him.

“How many lashes?” he asked bitterly, thinking it was Valerius’s soul she offered him.

A single tear fled down her cheek. “None. It’s Nick’s soul, and I have no right to it.” She pressed it into his hand.

Ash was so stunned he didn’t know what to say.

He placed it into his backpack.

Artemis swallowed as she watched him tuck it carefully away. “Now you’re going to learn.”

“Learn what?”

“Just how heavy a burden a soul is.”

He gave her a dry stare. “That I learned a long time ago, Artie.”

And with that, he stepped back and willed himself to Nick’s prison. He opened the door slowly to find his friend in a fetal position on the floor.

“Nick?”

Nick looked up, his black eyes rimmed in red. The anger and pain Ash saw and felt from Nick tore through him. “They killed my mother, Ash.”

A new wave of guilt slammed through him. In one fit of anger and with nothing more than a single sentence, he had altered their fates and had stolen from Nick and Tabitha the two people that neither of them should have lost.

It was all his fault.

“I know, Nick, and I’m sorry.” He was sorrier than Nick would ever know. “Cherise was one of the few decent people in this world. I loved her, too.”

He loved the New Orleans crew a lot more than he should. Love was a worthless emotion that had never served him anything but misery.

Even Simi …

Ash ran his hand over her tattoo as he fought back his emotions.

He made himself numb, then reached out to Nick. “C’mon.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home. You have a lot to learn.”

“About what?”

“How to be a Dark-Hunter. Everything you think you know about fighting, surviving, it’s nothing. I have to show you how to use your new powers and to see correctly with those eyes.”

“And if I don’t want to learn?”

“Then you’ll die and there won’t be any coming back from it this time.”

Nick took his hand and allowed him to pull him to his feet.

Ash closed his eyes and took Nick home.

He’d never looked forward to training a new Dark-Hunter, but this one …

This one hurt most of all.

*   *   *

Valerius slipped out of the Devereaux house an hour before dawn. Tabitha had finally fallen asleep, and he had carried her upstairs to the room that she had shared with Amanda when they were children.

After placing her on the bed, he’d spent longer than he should have looking over the old photos on the wall of the two of them together.

Of them with their sisters.

His poor Tabitha. He didn’t know if she’d ever heal.

He called a taxi and had it drop him at his house. The place was completely dark. There was no one there now, and he realized just how reliant he’d become on Tabitha.

These last couple of weeks …

They had been miraculous.

She
was miraculous.

Now their time together was over.

Valerius opened the door to his house and listened to the silence. He shut and locked the door, then walked up the stairs to the solarium where Agrippina’s statue waited.

He refilled the oil in her lamp habitually before he realized just how stupid he’d been, both as a man and as a Dark-Hunter.

He hadn’t been able to protect Agrippina or Tabitha from the pain that was life.

Just as he couldn’t protect himself.

But then, maybe life wasn’t about protecting. Maybe it was about something else.

Something even more valuable.

It was about sharing.

He didn’t need someone to protect him from the past. He needed the touch of a woman whose warmth chased away those demons. A woman whose very presence had made the unbearable bearable.

And in all these centuries he still hadn’t learned the most valuable thing of all.

How to say “I love you” to someone.

But at least now he understood what feeling it meant.

His heart shattering, he touched Agrippina’s cold cheek. It was time to let go of the past.

“Good night, Agrippina,” he whispered.

Stepping down, he blew out her flame and walked out of the room that had been hers alone and into the one he had learned to share with Tabitha.

*   *   *