The Dark-Hunters (276 page)

“Bullshit!”

Acheron paused his hand in mid-strum, then gave him an angry stare. The swirling silver eyes turned red, warning that the destroyer side of Acheron was coming to the forefront.

Alexion didn’t care. He’d served Acheron long enough to know his master wouldn’t kill him for insubordination. At least none that was this mild. “I know you know everything, boss. I got that a long time ago. But you’ve also taught me the value of free will. True, Kyros has made some bad choices, but if I go to him as me, I know I can talk him out of this.”

“Alexion…”

“C’mon,
akri.
In over nine thousand years, I have never once asked you for a favor. Never. But I can’t just go in and let him die like the others. I have to try. Don’t you understand? We were human together. Brothers in arms and in spirit. Our children played together. He died saving my life. I owe him one last chance.”

Acheron gave a heavy sigh as he began playing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” “Fine. Go. But know that as you do this, whatever he decides, it’s not your fault. I knew this moment was coming from the day he was created. His choices are his own. You can’t accept responsibility for his mistakes.”

Alexion understood. “How long do you give me?”

“You know the limits of your existence. You can have no more than ten days before you have to return. At the end of the month, you must render my judgment to them.”

Alexion nodded. “Thank you,
akri.
”

“Don’t thank me, Alexion. This is distasteful work I’m sending you to do.”

“I know.”

Acheron looked up to stare at him. There was something in his swirling silver gaze that was different this time. Something …

He didn’t know, but it sent a raw chill over him. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Acheron went back to playing the guitar.

Alexion’s stomach knotted in apprehension. What did the boss know that he wasn’t sharing?

“I really hate it when you don’t tell me things.”

Acheron gave a lopsided grin at that. “I know.”

Alexion stepped back, intending to return to his room, but before he could turn around, he felt himself slipping. One minute he was in the throne room at Katoteros and, in the next, he was lying facedown on a cold, dark street.

Pain slammed into him with resounding waves of agony that took his breath as he felt the rough, pungent asphalt against his face and hands.

As a Shade in Katoteros, he didn’t really feel or experience anything this real. Food had no taste, his senses were all muted. But now that Acheron had placed him in the human world …

Ow! Everything hurt. His body, his skin. Most of all his skinned-up knees.

Alexion rolled over and waited for his body to fully transition into his control again. There was always a burn when he came to earth, a brief period for him to get used to breathing and “living” again. As his senses awoke, Alexion realized he could hear people fighting around him. Was it a battle?

Acheron had done that to him a few times in the past. It was sometimes easier to drop him unnoticed into the middle of the chaos. But this didn’t look like a war zone. It looked like …

A back street.

Alexion pushed himself to his feet and then froze as he realized what was happening. There were six Daimons and a human fighting in the alley. He tried to focus his sight to be sure, but everything around him was still fuzzy.

“Okay, boss,” Alexion said under his breath. “If I need glasses, fix it, ’cause I can hardly see shit right now.”

His sight cleared instantly. “Thanks. But you know, a little warning before you dumped my ass out here would have been nice.” He straightened his long, white cashmere coat with a tug. “By the way, couldn’t you, just once, drop me either in a La-Z-Boy or on a bed?”

All he heard was the sound of Acheron’s short, evil laugh in his head. Acheron and his sick sense of humor. He could be one serious bastard when he wanted to.
“Thanks a lot.”
Alexion let out a long, irritated breath.

Turning his attention to the fight, he focused on the group. The human was a short man, probably no taller than five five or five six and appeared to be in his mid-twenties. As the man turned toward him and Alexion saw his face, he realized who he was. Keller Mallory, a Dark-Hunter Squire—one of the people who helped to shield and protect a Dark-Hunter’s identity from the humans.

Squires weren’t supposed to engage Daimons, but since Squires were integral to the Dark-Hunter world, they were prone to be targeted.

Apparently, tonight was Keller’s turn to get his butt kicked.

Alexion rushed toward the Daimon who was headed at Keller from his back. He grabbed the Daimon and flung him away from the Squire.

“Run!” Keller said to him.

No doubt the Squire thought he was a human, too. Alexion kicked a discarded dagger up from the street and caught it in his fist. Enjoying the “realness” of the fight, he tossed it straight into the heart of the Daimon, who quickly exploded into a golden powder. The dagger fell to the street with a clatter. Alexion held his hand out for the dagger, which immediately shot up from the ground and returned to his grip.

Keller turned to gape at him.

The distraction cost Alexion as one of the Daimons came running up to him from behind to bury a dagger deep between his shoulder blades. Curling his lip in disgust, Alexion felt his body burst apart. He hated it when that happened. It wasn’t painful so much as it was irritating and disorienting.

Two seconds later, his body rematerialized.

His expression terrified, Keller stumbled away from him.

Playtime was over.

The remaining Daimons took off at a dead run but they had only a few seconds before they, too, exploded. Only they weren’t about to be put back together again.

Still not appeased over the aggravation they had caused, Alexion straightened his coat with a tug at the lapels.

Daimons … they never learned.

The Squire’s face blanched as he backed up and stared in horror. “What the hell are you?”

Alexion sauntered up to Keller and handed him the dagger. “I’m Acheron’s Squire.” It was kind of true. Okay, not really. It was a lie, but Alexion had no intention of letting anyone know his real relationship with Acheron.

Not that it mattered. Keller didn’t buy it. “Like hell. Everyone knows Acheron doesn’t have a Squire.”

Yeah, right. If everyone on earth put together all the correct information they had about Acheron, it wouldn’t fill a fairy’s thimble. Alexion tried not to laugh at the poor man who thought he understood the world around him while the truth was he didn’t know jack about shit.

“Apparently everyone’s wrong since here I am, sent to you by the head honcho himself.”

The athletically built young man scanned him from head to toe. “Why are you here?”

“Your Dark-Huntress, Danger, called for Acheron and since he’s busy, I was sent to check things out and report back to him on what’s happening. So here I am. Joy, oh joy of my life.”

That didn’t seem to soothe the man at all, but then sarcasm was seldom soothing. Although, to be honest, Alexion found a great deal of entertainment from it. Which was probably a good thing since sarcasm was Acheron’s native tongue.

“And how do I know you’re not lying?” Keller asked, his eyes still filled with doubt.

Alexion forced himself not to laugh. The man was smart. It was all a lie. Acheron knew exactly what was happening … at all times. But it was true that his boss couldn’t come here in person. Not while all the Dark-Hunters in the area were suspicious of him. They would never believe the truth from Acheron’s lips.

If they were to choose wisely and live through this, they needed to hear the truth from an “impartial” third party, and that was why he’d come. His goal was to save them from their own stupidity.

Provided they weren’t all terminally stupid.

Alexion pulled a small cell phone out of his pocket. “Call Acheron yourself and hear the truth.”

Chapter 2

“I’m telling you the truth, Danger, Acheron is going to kill all of us. We know too much about him and he won’t suffer us to live.”

Dangereuse St. Richard stood in the receiving room of Kyros’s antebellum mansion outside of Aberdeen, Mississippi, with her arms folded over her chest. She’d never been on the best of terms with the ancient Greek Dark-Hunter. Tonight, she wasn’t in the mood for his bull, especially not after the stories she’d heard that said Kyros had turned Rogue and was allowing Daimons to live—and this from the lips of the Daimons she’d dusted earlier tonight.

She had no patience with anyone who betrayed the Dark-Hunter Code.

The sole job of a Dark-Hunter was to kill Daimons who were former members of the cursed Apollite race—children of Apollo who had offended him and been cursed to live in the night, and to die at age twenty-seven. If Apollites chose to start sucking human souls before that birthday, they became Daimons who could live indefinitely. But for every Daimon who lived, countless human souls died.

It was something she refused to tolerate. If she could kill Kyros for it, she would. But for one Dark-Hunter to kill another was instant death. She couldn’t even attack him. Whatever she did to him, she would experience ten times worse.

Thanks, Artemis, for
that
particular gift.

Until Acheron answered her call for help, there was nothing she could do to stop Kyros from his madness.

In fact, she could feel the drain on her powers just from being in the same room as Kyros. Dark-Hunters weren’t allowed to spend any significant amount of time together without draining each other’s powers.

The room she and Kyros stood in was dark and musty, and should have been decorated with antiques instead of the modern furniture that clashed with the neoclassical design of the house. The walls were painted a deep, antebellum gold while the ceilings held exquisite white medallions. The hardwood, pine floors under her feet were scuffed and in bad need of repair. How odd for a Squire not to take better care of his Dark-Hunter’s property.

But that was neither here nor there. Right now she had much more pressing business with Kyros than the fact that he had no taste and his Squire had no clear understanding of his job description.

“Okay, Kyros.” She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Acheron is a Daimon who feeds off humans and all of us were created solely so that he could fight a war with his mother, the Daimon queen, who no Dark-Hunter has ever heard of. Uh-huh.”

He slammed his hand down on the cherrywood desk he sat behind. “Dammit, woman, listen to me. I’m more than nine thousand years old. I was there in the beginning—one of the first Dark-Hunters ever created—and I remember stories of Apollymi from my childhood. She was called the Destroyer and she was Atlantean … just like Acheron.”

So it was a coincidence. Two Atlanteans did not a family make. She most certainly wasn’t the only French Dark-Hunter, she wasn’t even the only one to come out of the French Revolution, and none of them were related by a long shot.

Kyros would need a lot more proof than that to convince her that Acheron was the son of this Atlantean god-queen.

She gave him a bored stare. “And this Atlantean Destroyer is now leading the Daimons and sending them out to battle against Acheron, who is just using us and the humans as cannon fodder to protect himself? Really, Kyros, put down the crack pipe … or go write children’s fantasy novels.” She leaned forward and whispered loudly. “I’ll bet you even know exactly who conspired to kill Kennedy, huh? I’m sure the money from D. B. Cooper is what financed your stunning collection of furniture.”

He bolted to his feet and approached her. “Don’t patronize me. I know I’m right. Have you ever seen Acheron eat food? We all know he’s a lot more powerful than the rest of us. Didn’t you ever wonder why?”

That was a no-brainer in her book. “He’s the oldest and has had his powers a lot longer than the rest of us. You know the saying ‘practice makes perfect,’ and that man has had a
lot
of practice. As for food, I haven’t been around him enough to notice.”

“Yeah, well, I was around him a lot once upon a time ago, and while Brax and I ate, he never did. After we were created, Acheron wrote down his bullshit rules and the rest of us have been blindly following them for centuries without questioning them or him. It’s time now that we started thinking for ourselves.”

She made a noise of sarcastic amusement. “And what has suddenly brought on this grand epiphany of yours?”

Kyros laughed at that as an evil, spooky look came over him. “Do you really want to know?”

“
Pourquoi pas?
Why not?”

“Stryker!”

Danger frowned at his shout. Half a minute later, something flashed so bright in the room, she had to turn away to keep her light-sensitive Dark-Hunter eyes from burning. But the hair on the back of her neck rose as she sensed a Daimon’s sudden presence in the room. Hissing in anger, she pulled the dagger out of her boot and straightened to confront it.

Kyros grabbed her arm. “No. Don’t.”

Her temper raged at his actions. “You would invite a filthy Daimon into your house?”

The question had barely left her lips before the Daimon sensation ceased. The newcomer still stood there, but he no longer cast that warning beacon that announced a Daimon presence to a Dark-Hunter.

A bad feeling went through Danger as she looked at the newcomer. Like Acheron, he stood a dead six feet eight, with long black hair that flowed around his shoulders, and he wore a pair of opaque sunglasses over his eyes.

“What’s going on here?” she asked Kyros.

Kyros let go of her. “Yeah. I didn’t believe it, either, at first. But he can mask the Daimon in him so that we can’t feel his presence.”

“How?” she asked.

The Daimon laughed, flashing her a set of fangs. “It’s a trait that runs in my family. My mother can do it. I can do it and my brother can do it.”

Scowling at the two men, she didn’t understand what he was talking about.

Not until he removed the sunglasses and revealed a set of swirling silver eyes that she had only seen on one man before …