The Dark-Hunters (378 page)

He cut her words off with a kiss. “Look, we don’t have to settle this right now. I’m asking you for the rest of your life. Literally. There’s no such thing as divorce in our world. We have three weeks to act on this. So I want you to really understand what you’re signing on for, okay?”

“Okay, but let’s not forget that in three weeks, we could be dead or in jail, which for you would probably mean death anyway.”

“True.”

Susan let him pull her into his arms. She honestly wasn’t sure about this, and she was glad he was giving her time to think it over. But she couldn’t let him be alone and not have any shot for making a human connection again. That was just wrong and cruel. Especially given how kind he’d been to her through all this.

Still, they had a long way to go and it was getting scarier by the minute. She didn’t know what tomorrow would hold. She only hoped that for them, there was a tomorrow, period.

*   *   *

“What do you mean, they got away?”

Trates sighed as he faced the human bastard he’d rather suck dry than deal with. But Stryker wanted this human alliance even if he thought it was completely stupid and beneath them. So here he was, playing nice with the chief of police when what he really wanted to do with Paul Heilig was rip his throat out and drink in his putrid soul.

“We had them trapped in an alley when Acheron showed up and killed every Daimon there. Now we’re going to lie low until he leaves.”

“Bullshit! You promised me my—”

“Listen to me, human,” Trates sneered through his clenched fangs. “You don’t want to mess with this Dark-Hunter. He’s not like the others.”

“They’re still bound to the night and when something lives perpetually on the dark side of the moon, all you have to do is drag it into daylight to kill it.”

Trates held his hands up. “I’m just here to tell you what Lord Stryker said. You do what you want. It’s your funeral.” He turned to summon the portal to return to Kalosis.

But as soon as he had his back to Paul, the chief of police ran at him.

Trates hissed as he felt a deep, biting pain in his heart. Gasping, he looked down to see a small sword blade piercing his chest … right through his Daimon’s mark.

Paul jerked his sword out an instant before the Daimon exploded into gold powder. “You’re wrong about that, Trates. It’s
your
funeral.”

And soon there would be a lot more of them. If Stryker was too big a coward to do what was necessary to protect his children, then that was his loss. But Paul wasn’t the same.

He’d already lost his wife to one Dark-Hunter, he wasn’t about to lose his sons. No matter what it took, he was going to keep them safe.

Ravyn Kontis still lived and as long as he did, Paul could hear his wife’s voice calling out to him to avenge her. And as long as a single Dark-Hunter roamed the streets of his city, his sons were at risk.

That he couldn’t allow.

Pulling his cell phone off his belt, he called his deputy chief. “Hey, I need a search warrant.”

“For?”

“The Happy Hunting Ground.” If Trates wouldn’t tell him where Ravyn was hiding, he knew one person who would.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Cael?”

Cael paused as he heard Acheron’s voice behind him. He turned around on the sidewalk to see him walking through the night’s mist. There was something really spooky about Acheron. There always had been.

He’d first met Acheron on September 15, 904, on a cool night much like this one in Cornwall. Cael had been covered in the blood of an entire raiding party of Vikings that night. The fires he’d started had singed his hair and blistered his skin.

But he hadn’t cared. All that had mattered had been avenging his wife, brother, mother, and sister who had been slain by the Vikings.

Even after all these centuries, he could still see Morag’s beautiful freckled face, hear the gentle lilt of her voice as she called out his name. With hair redder than the sun and a smile every bit as radiant, she had been his entire world.

Her and his baby sister who’d been on the brink of adulthood. Corynna had held eyes so blue they rivaled the sky and a laugh so musical that it should have belonged to a songbird.

And his father had sold them all into slavery to save his own life. But the Vikings hadn’t wanted slaves. They’d wanted victims to practice on. Bound in chains, Cael had watched helplessly as every one of them had been tortured and killed for fun while their cries of pain and pleas for death had echoed in his ears.

Not even his own death had been able to silence their agonized voices. It hadn’t erased the sight of them being beaten and dismembered. There were times even now when he came awake, shaking from the memory of it.

Acheron had appeared to him after he’d taken his vengeance on those who’d preyed on his family, and had shown him, a simple peasant bastard, how to fight the Daimons and how to live again when he had nothing in this world worth living for.

He owed everything to the Atlantean leader of the Dark-Hunters. Had Acheron not shown him how to put the past behind him and go forward with his life, he’d have never made it to this time and place.

Never made it to Amaranda.

Through her, he’d found the one thing he’d thought was lost to him forever.

Love.

Most of all, she gave him solace, peace, and acceptance. She was his haven in a harsh life that had been nothing but violence and fighting until the day she’d entered it. And he would do anything to hold on to that and to her.

Except hurt Acheron. Cael was nothing if not loyal, and he hated being torn between the two people he loved most in this world.

He offered Acheron a lopsided grin and used a greeting from one of Acheron’s favorite cartoons. “Greetings, O Great Gazoo. How nice of you to join us here on planet Earth again.”

Ash rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Barney. How’s Betty and Bam Bam doing?”

“Great, if I could only get them away from Wilma and Pebbles. Those women are nothing but trouble.”

“Nah, they’re good women. It’s the ones in red who are always the downfall of good men.”

Laughing, Cael extended his hand to Acheron. “Ain’t it the truth, my braither?”

Ash reached out and took his hand. Cael went to clap him on the back, only to have him move out of reach.

Cael didn’t miss the grimace Acheron quickly hid. “You okay?”

Acheron shrugged his shoulders as if trying to alleviate something uncomfortable. “I hurt my back earlier. It’ll be all right though.”

Cael nodded. “It’s good to be immortal, huh?”

“Some days, anyway.”

They grew silent as they stood out on the open street, in front of a small coffee shop where a group of college students were lolling about, studying and talking while music filtered out of the store. Cael wasn’t far from home, but he had no intention of taking Ash there. He’d always kept as much distance as possible between his boss and his wife.

Acheron knew things that no one had a right to know and it always chilled him.

“Did you need something?” Cael asked.

Ash didn’t speak as a thousand thoughts went through his mind. He wanted to warn this man and knew that if he did so, he’d change so many more fates than just Cael’s. The endless chain of change was playing out in his mind.

A thousand lives rewritten because of one spoken word …

Don’t speak.

That was so much easier said than done. How he hated knowing what was to come and being constricted by a human conscience from preventing it. Then again, if not for that conscience, it wouldn’t matter what happened to Cael one way or another. He wouldn’t care about anything except himself.

He’d become Savitar.…

Ash winced at the thought. Recovering himself before Cael realized what he was doing, Ash rubbed his cheek. “No, I just wanted to wish you a good night.”

By Cael’s face he could tell the Celt didn’t believe him. “Yeah, okay. I’ll catch you later.” He turned and started heading for his home.

Ash stood on the street, watching him walk away. Every part of him wanted to call Cael back and warn him.

And every part of him knew why he couldn’t. He didn’t know if he should curse or thank Artemis for this gift.

But then, the only thing worse than knowing the future was not knowing it, which happened whenever the future involved him or someone whose future directly influenced his.

“Hi there, cutie.”

He turned his head to find an extremely attractive college student by his side. With black curly hair, she was dressed in jeans and a tight green top that displayed her curves to perfection. “Hi.”

“You want to go inside for a drink? It’s on me.”

Ash paused as he saw her past, present, and future simultaneously in his mind. Her name was Tracy Phillips. A political science major, she was going to end up at Harvard Med School and then be one of the leading researchers to help isolate a mutated genome that the human race didn’t even know existed yet.

The discovery of that genome would save the life of her youngest daughter and cause her daughter to go on to medical school herself. That daughter, with the help and guidance of her mother, would one day lobby for medical reforms that would change the way the medical world and governments treated health care. The two of them would shape generations of doctors and save thousands of lives by allowing people to have groundbreaking medical treatments that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford.

And right now, all Tracy could think about was how cute his ass was in leather pants, and how much she’d like to peel them off him.

In a few seconds, she’d head into the coffee shop and meet a waitress named Gina Torres. Gina’s dream was to go to college herself to be a doctor and save the lives of the working poor who couldn’t afford health care, but because of family problems she wasn’t able to take classes this year. Still Gina would tell Tracy how she planned to go next year on a scholarship.

Late tonight, after most of the college students were headed off, the two of them would be chatting about Gina’s plans and dreams.

And a month from now, Gina would be dead from a freak car accident that Tracy would see on the news. That one tragic event combined with the happenstance meeting tonight would lead Tracy to her destiny. In one instant, she’d realize how shallow her life had been, and she’d seek to change that and be more aware of the people around her and of their needs. Her youngest daughter would be named Gina Tory in honor of the Gina who was currently busy wiping down tables while she imagined a better life for everyone.

So in effect, Gina would achieve her dream. By dying she’d save thousands of lives and she’d bring health care to those who couldn’t afford it.…

The human race was an amazing thing. So few people ever realized just how many lives they inadvertently touched. How the right or wrong word spoken casually could empower or destroy another’s life.

If Ash were to accept Tracy’s invitation for coffee, her destiny would be changed and she would end up working as a well-paid bank officer. She’d decide that marriage wasn’t for her and go on to live her life with a partner and never have children.

Everything would change. All the lives that would have been saved would be lost.

And knowing the nuance of every word spoken and every gesture made was the heaviest of all the burdens Ash carried.

Smiling gently, he shook his head. “Thanks for asking, but I have to head off. You have a good night.”

She gave him a hot once-over. “Okay, but if you change your mind, I’ll be in here studying for the next few hours.”

Ash watched as she left him and entered the shop. She set her backpack down at a table and started unpacking her books. Sighing from exhaustion, Gina grabbed a glass of water and made her way over to her …

And as he observed them through the painted glass, the two women struck up a conversation and set their destined futures into motion.

His heart heavy, he glanced back in the direction Cael had vanished and hated the future that awaited his friend. But it was Cael’s destiny.

His fate.…

“Imora thea mi savur,” Ash whispered under his breath in Atlantean.

God save me from love.

*   *   *

Susan leaned back against the wall as she sorted through files on Jimmy’s computer. “Dammit, Jim. I’m just a reporter, not a mind reader,” she said, feigning a Bones McCoy quote from
Star Trek.
“Couldn’t you have at least left me an obvious crumb to follow? Is one loaf of bread too much to ask?”

Sick to her stomach, she decided to take a break and clicked on the photos folder.

A bittersweet pain lacerated her chest as she flipped through pictures of him and Angie at a party last year. God, what she wouldn’t give to hear Angie tell her she was five by five again. To hear Jimmy’s raspy voice teasing her about being too uptight all the time.

“You okay?”

Startled, she jumped at Ravyn’s deep voice as he entered the room with that silent cat walk of his. “You scared me.…” She paused to watch him come closer. Honestly, he was the best-looking thing she’d ever seen in her life. He had his hair pulled back in a ponytail and even though his shirt was untucked, it didn’t disguise the fact that he was ripped with sinewy muscles. Distracting herself from that thought, she indicated the laptop with her chin. “I was just spying on Jimmy’s pictures.”

He handed her the coffee he’d gone upstairs to get for her. “Maybe you should close the file.” He sat down beside her so that he could look at the screen, too.

“No, it’s okay. I just found this one set of pictures from Jimmy’s Halloween party at his precinct last year. He went as Frankenstein and Angie was—”

“Bride of Frankenstein?”

“No … she went as a Holy Cow.” Susan smiled at the memory. “She was always a bit offbeat that way.”

Ravyn laughed as she showed him the picture of Angie in a cow suit with a halo suspended above her head and a giant wooden cross around her neck. He’d only seen her a couple of times in the shelter while they’d held him, but the woman had seemed decent enough.

But his smile died when Susan flipped to the next picture and he saw the people in it.