The Dark-Hunters (277 page)

Acheron Parthenopaeus.

“He’s Acheron’s brother,” Kyros said as if he could hear her thoughts. “And he’s told me lots of things about our fearless leader that have left me cold. Acheron isn’t who or what you think he is and neither are we.”

*   *   *

“So how did you do that thing that made all them Daimons explode?”

Sitting next to the Squire who was driving him back to Danger’s home, Alexion winced as Keller continued to ramble on with questions and comments. The man had three speech speeds: fast, faster, and “shut up before my brain explodes from trying to follow you.” He’d always been told that Southern Americans spoke slowly.

That was apparently a myth.

He hadn’t had a headache since he’d been human, but for the first time in nine thousand years, he was beginning to feel throbbing pain between his temples.

Much like an irritating toddler, Keller kept going, picking up speed with every word. “Now, you haven’t answered me and I gotta know. You know, if we could all think them Daimons into pieces it would sure be a whole lot easier. Can you imagine all of us just looking at them—and boom! They’re dead. You got to tell me how you do that. C’mon. I have got to know, you know?”

Alexion flexed his jaw before he answered. “It’s a trade secret.”

“Yeah, but I’m in the trade. Squires need to know, too. We’re not the ones who are immortal so it seems we should know first, you know? C’mon, tell me how you did it.”

Alexion stared at him in warning. “I would show you, but it would kill you to use it.”

Come to think of it, that wasn’t such a bad idea …

He opened his mouth to tell him.

“Don’t.”

Alexion growled at Acheron’s voice in his mind.
“Either do this yourself, or stay out of my head.”

“Fine, you’re on your own from now on. I’m outta here. I’m going to go play solitaire or something.”

Yeah, right. Acheron playing a game. As if he had a minute to spare.

Keller pulled into the driveway of a small mansion in northwest Tupelo, which was Dangereuse’s domain. The Dark-Huntress had been assigned to the area for the last fifty or so years. Her home was designed after a French chateau complete with a courtyard that was set off to the left side of the house.

Keller pressed the control in his dark green Mountaineer for the garage door to open. “Fine, be that way. Don’t share, but when I get killed, I’m going to haunt you for not telling me diddly when you had the chance to save me. You know, that’s just not right. Not right at all.” He whipped the dark green SUV into the garage, then shut the garage door behind them.

Even though it was a three-car garage, there was no other car inside. He had assumed that Dangereuse would have returned before now. “Where is your mistress tonight?”

“I dunno. She took off about an hour after sundown and I ain’t heard nothing since. Wish she’d been here, though, to get those Daimons. I thought I was toast until you popped into the alley. And speaking of popping in, how did you do that, anyway? Where did you come from? I know you had to have some way to get here, you know?”

Alexion got out of the car slowly as he tried to get his bearings. He’d only seen her house a time or two in the sfora. But things looked very different in person than they did through the mist’s distortion.

“Hey?” Keller snapped his fingers as he came around the SUV. “Did you hear me? How did you get to Tupelo without your own car?”

“I have special talents.”

“Are you one of them teleporters?”

Alexion took a deep breath for patience, which was wearing thin in this new body. That was the hardest part about the Krisi—the judgment—and coming to earth. He wasn’t used to all the bright colors, sounds, and emotions that were filtered through a real body. At times, he was like an overstimulated toddler—one who had the ability to level a city if he got pissed enough.

Keller was even more inquisitive and annoying than Simi on her worst day. And that was quite an accomplishment. “Don’t ask me any more questions, Keller. I’m just going to lie to you and I’d rather not have the stress of trying to remember what lie I handed you.”

Scoffing at that, Keller took him into the house, which was done in contemporary retro decor. The small foyer that led from the garage to the kitchen was a dark purple color.

Keller dropped his keys in a basket on the counter. “Why you want to lie to me?”

“I don’t want to,” he said drolly, “which is why I said not to ask me anything else.”

The Squire snorted. “You hungry? You want something to eat or drink?”

Alexion sighed at the man’s repetition. Keller tended to ask everything at least twice.

“No.” Alexion looked about the dark yellow kitchen. There was a lot to be done and he needed Danger to return home so that he could begin this. Kyros was already following the usual game plan of the Dark-Hunters in the past. About a week ago, he’d started calling for Dark-Hunters to congregate in and around his Aberdeen, Mississippi, location so that he could convince them to his way of thinking.

It was a familiar cycle. Every few centuries a lot of Dark-Hunters would find love and go free from their service to Artemis. Inevitably, one of the older remaining Dark-Hunters would think he had figured out why and somehow Acheron always got blamed for tricking them. Jealousy and boredom were a lethal mixture that could cause the most bizarre delusions. Convinced of his reasoning, the Dark-Hunter would contact the others, trying to lead them to freedom too, which meant they would all turn on Acheron.

Alexion would be sent in to either save them or judge them Rogue and kill them.

In the beginning, while he was in a human body in this realm, he’d felt like a traitor to his own kind, and yet he understood why it was necessary. Order must be maintained at all costs. The Dark-Hunters had way too much power over humanity for them to start abusing it.

There were few beings in the universe who could battle a Dark-Hunter and live, and humans weren’t one of them.

But this time … this time something was different. He could feel it deep inside him, and it wasn’t just because Kyros was involved. There was something else here.

Something evil.

Keller was still talking, though to be honest, Alexion wasn’t listening. His thoughts were on other things. He paused as he walked into the living room and saw an old painting above the mantel. It was a family portrait of an older man, a young woman, and two small children—a boy and an infant girl. Painted outdoors in what appeared to be a courtyard very similar to the one he’d seen beside this house, it was obvious the portrait was from the late eighteenth century.

It must have been Danger’s human family.

Dangereuse had become a Dark-Hunter during the French Revolution. Her husband had betrayed her father and her father’s noble children to the Committee. She had been trying to smuggle them out of Paris, when they had all been captured. He shuddered at the fate that had befallen all of them.

“What are you going to do for clothes tomorrow?” Keller asked as he moved to stand in front of him. “You don’t got none, do you?”

Arching a brow, Alexion looked down at the clothes on his body.

“I mean other clothes,” Keller snapped. “Jeez. Don’t be so literal.”

Alexion met the Squire’s gaze. Keller was an odd but likable man. For a nuisance. “They’ll be delivered.”

“By who? You got you a Squire or something? Now that’d be something, wouldn’t it? A Squire for a Squire?”

One corner of Alexion’s mouth quirked up as he thought of Simi, who constantly brought things to him because she thought he might want or need them. “I definitely have something.”

Keller frowned at him. “Yeah, okay. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to a room upstairs where you can sleep. It’s real nice. Acheron has used it a few times whenever he was here in the past, but it’s been a while since we last saw him. Well, okay, I’ve never seen him here, personally, but I know from Danger that he’s been here before. I think the last time was before I was born. Or maybe not. Sometimes I get Danger’s stories mixed up. Do you ever do that with Acheron? I bet he has a lot of stories to tell, being that he’s older than dirt. His house must be really cool, huh?”

Rolling his eyes, Alexion rubbed his thumb against his temple while Keller rambled on.

As they left the living room and headed toward the stairs, Alexion caught a faint trace of magnolias in the air. It was mixed with something else … something definitely feminine. It must be the Dark-Huntress’s scent and his body reacted to it instantly.

He was hot and heavy with sudden need. At his home in Katoteros, there was no one to have sex with. Nothing but long lonely nights that left him edgy and hard. The only benefit to being sent in to judge was that he usually had a day or two to find himself a woman and ease the deep-seated ache.

You have much more pressing concerns than getting laid.

That was one theory anyway, but judging by the throbbing erection he had at the moment, he would definitely argue it.

“How long have you served Dangereuse?” he asked the Squire. It was unusual for a male to be Squired to a female. Usually the humans who made up the Squires’ Council forbade a Squire to serve a Dark-Hunter if the Squire might be sexually attractive to the Dark-Hunter. Since Dark-Hunters and Squires were supposed to have a platonic relationship, the Council always tried to give the Dark-Hunter a Squire who was the opposite of what sexually attracted him or her.

It made him wonder if Dangereuse might be attracted to women, as opposed to men.

“About three years. My dad is the current Squire for Maxx Campbell over in Scotland, and after I graduated college, I thought I’d like to join the family business, you know?”

The man seemed to love to end sentences with those two words.

Keller continued on without pause. “I wish I’d grown up over there, but when I was a kid, Dad was stationed in Little Rock, serving this Dark-Hunter named Viktor Russenko who got killed a few years back. Did you know him?”

“Yes.”

“Damned shame what they did to him. Some Daimons caught him alone and jumped him. Poor guy. He didn’t stand a chance. It was awful, you know, so the Council thought my dad needed a change of scenery. I think Scotland was a good move for him. Maxx seems to be a really laid-back Dark-Hunter. Do you know him too?”

Alexion nodded at the name. He knew much about the Highlander Dark-Hunter who had been recently relocated from London to Glasgow. “How does your father like it over there?”

“It’s all right, but he misses home. They talk funny over there and not many can understand his accent. He’s real Southern sounding.”

Now there was the pot describing the kettle.

Keller continued to ramble on as he led the way into a medium-sized bedroom that had an adjoining bathroom. Alexion cocked his head as he felt something strange go through him. It was cold, almost sinister, and he couldn’t place it.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was …

“Acheron?”
He sent the mental call out through the dimensions.

His boss didn’t answer him.

Then as soon as the sensation had come, it was gone.

How strange …

Chapter 3

Danger didn’t know what to believe as she headed home from Aberdeen to Tupelo. She’d stayed too long with Kyros and her powers had waned a lot more than she should have allowed. She felt weak and sick, and in truth, she wanted nothing more than to lie down for a while and give herself time to recover.

Most of all, she needed time to think through everything they had told her tonight. To be honest, Stryker had made some rather convincing arguments.

“You have been trained that all Daimons are evil and out to prey on humans. Well, newsflash, we’re not the ones who are in the wrong. Acheron is. He was cast out of our home realm, Kalosis, because even our mother could no longer abide his rampant killing. It’s why he uses you to kill us now. He wants revenge on us.

“Your powers wane when you’re together because Acheron took your souls and has devoured them. That’s why the first Dark-Hunters were allowed to stay together. In the beginning, their souls weren’t dead. He actually did have them. But after Acheron ate the souls of Kyros and Callabrax … then they were like the rest of you and could no longer be together without it draining their powers.”

Still, that hadn’t made sense to her.

“Whether you like it or not, little girl, your souls are dead. That’s why you can’t be in a room with another soulless being. The energy that sustains you, that keeps you animated, begins to clash with the energy of the other soulless being. Why do you think you don’t lose your powers around a Daimon? We have a soul inside us, and it allows us to be together without harm. That’s why you can be with Acheron and not feel the drain and why Acheron can go into a cemetery and not be possessed. He, unlike you, has a stolen soul inside him.”

Danger had still been skeptical.
“That doesn’t make sense. What about Kyrian and the other Dark-Hunters who have gotten their souls back?”

Stryker’s answer had been automatic.
“They didn’t get
their
souls back, they got someone else’s.”

That had been the most ludicrous thought of all.
“Yeah, right. We all know that anytime a soul enters a body that it’s not meant for, the soul withers and dies in a matter of weeks. Kyrian has had his soul back for years now.”

Stryker had laughed evilly at that.
“That’s not true if the soul comes from an unborn baby. That’s why Daimons covet pregnant women so much. If you take the soul of the unborn, it can sustain you until the body dies.”

Those words had left her cold. To do such a thing was an abomination.

She still wasn’t sure if it was possible.

“How could Acheron get such a soul?”
she’d asked.

“Where do you think the medallions come from that he uses to restore a Dark-Hunter to his or her previous human state? Our mother is the keeper of souls.”
He had looked at Kyros.
“The Greek word for ‘Destroyer’ is the Atlantean word for ‘soul.’ Your people made the assumption that Apollymi was a god of destruction, but in truth, she is a guardian of souls. My brother uses a demon to steal those souls from her whenever he needs one. He then returns the souls to a handful of you every so often so that the rest of you will continue to obey him. He knows you have to have hope in order to not turn on him and become disgusted with your existence and duties. It’s why you must go to him whenever you want to be free. He does this whole ‘I have to petition Artemis’ bullshit when in truth what he has to do is break into our mother’s temple and steal a new soul. Trust me, there is no Artemis to petition.”