The Dark-Hunters (385 page)
Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Vampires, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
Otto arched a brow at her. “I think she’s learned to embrace the bong.”
Susan slapped at his shoulder playfully. As she pulled her hand back, Otto grabbed her wrist. “What’s this?” he asked, turning it over to see her mark.
A pall went over the room.
Susan balled her hand up, but it was too late for that.
“You can’t mate with him,” Otto growled. “It’s against the rules. You’re a Squire.”
Susan’s heart pounded as she tried to think up a lie.
“Actually,” Leo said, leaning back in his chair, “that’s not true.”
Otto released her. “What do you mean?”
Leo squirmed a bit before he answered. “I kind of forgot to swear her in. She’s still technically a civilian.”
Otto was aghast. “Leo…”
“Hey, we had a tough week, you know? I was going to get around to it, but things came up.”
To her amazement, Otto visibly relaxed. “Damn. Another good Dark-Hunter lost. And I really liked the leopard, too.”
Susan went cold at his words. Were they going to kill Ravyn for mating with her? “What do you mean, you’re going to lose him?”
Leo gave her an agitated glare. “You haven’t read all the manual yet, have you?”
“Well, no. The thing’s something like five thousand pages long.”
Leo tsked at her. “You should read chapter fifty-six.”
“Why?”
It was Otto who answered. “That’s the chapter that tells you how you can free your Dark-Hunter and marry him.”
Susan gaped at that. Ravyn hadn’t said anything about that to her. “Are you serious?”
“Always. I don’t have a sense of humor … well, Roman general and Tabitha not withstanding.”
She had no idea what he was talking about and honestly she didn’t care.
“You know,” Leo said, distracting her. “I like this article, Sue. What say we make it front-page?”
Her head still spinning from her latest discovery, she nodded at him. “That’d be great. I’ll … um … I’ll see you guys later.”
She left them alone and headed back to her car as quickly as she could. Could she really be able to get Ravyn out of his service to Artemis?
The thought thrilled her.
At least until she got home and brought it up to Ravyn, who didn’t seem pleased by the prospect at all.
“No,” he said firmly.
She couldn’t believe his automatic answer. “What do you mean, no?”
He crossed his arms over his chest as he faced her in the hallway. “What I said. No. I’m not getting my soul back from Artemis.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to be mortal.”
That didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t he want to be free? For someone who hated cages, he seemed awfully happy to live in bondage to a Greek goddess.
“But you can leave—”
“No, Susan. I can
die.
” He shook his head. “I don’t want to die and I damned sure don’t want you to die on me, either. I want us to bond when you’re ready and I want us to be together forever.” He gestured at the window that looked out onto the city. “I have a job to do here in Seattle. A really important one. I go back to being a Were-Hunter and then I go from this to being a Sentinel again and that’s the last thing I want to do.”
She frowned at the unfamiliar word. “What’s a Sentinel?”
“Essentially, it’s the Arcadian equivalent to a Dark-Hunter. Only instead of chasing Daimons, I chase down other Were-Hunters. And I lose all immortality. But wait, it gets better. The minute I return to being mortal again, the Katagaria have a clear shot at you because you’re my mate.”
“Oh.…” Suddenly the idea of him getting his soul back wasn’t so appealing to her, either. “They’d really do that?”
“Yes. We are at war and they’ll stop at nothing to hurt us.” He cupped her cheek in his hand as his black eyes and the sincere adoration there warmed her. “But if you really want that for us, then I’ll call Ash and we can ask for the test to restore my soul. I leave it up to you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Susan bit her lip as she considered that. “What if Ash won’t let us be together if you continue being a Dark-Hunter?”
“He let Cael have Amaranda. Do you really think he’ll stop us?”
He had a point. “I don’t know. I mean, after all, you only
think
you love me.…”
Ravyn laughed at that and rolled his eyes. “There’s no thinking to this, Susan. I
do
love you. Why else would I volunteer to spend eternity with you? Have you any idea how long that is?”
“No,” she said, giving him a devilish grin before she kissed him. “But I’m going to find out.”
EPILOGUE
Spent from sex, Nick lay naked on the floor, panting beside Satara who was laughing as she stroked his chest. His entire body burned and he now heard voices in his head that echoed and screamed.
What have I done?
When Satara had come to him and told him about her connections to the Daimons and gods, he should have turned her away, but her offer to strike back at Ash had been too good to pass up. He knew that as a Dark-Hunter he’d never have the ability on his own to kill Ash. But with his life force tied to a god’s …
He could do it.
And he felt that power now seeping through him. It hummed and sang with an unimagined beauty. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t Dark-Hunter.
He was …
Nick frowned as he saw his reflection in a silver globe that was on the bottom shelf of the Daimon’s bookcase. Rolling toward it, he pulled it closer to him until he could see his eyes.
His breath caught sharply in his throat as he stared at his distorted face.
It couldn’t be.
The door to the room opened to show him the demigod Daimon who’d allowed him to share his powers. No longer wearing sunglasses, he looked at Nick with the same swirling silver eyes that Ash had.
The same eyes that Nick now had, too.
“Who
are
you?” Nick breathed.
“I would be the one man on your list, after Acheron, who you want to kill, and you’re now my minion, Nick. Welcome to my hell.”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Copyright © 2006 by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
Excerpt from
The Dream-Hunter
copyright © 2006 by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-93434-3
EAN: 978-0312-93434-7
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / June 2006
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / December 2006
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781429906074
First eBook edition: August 2012
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THE DREAM-HUNTER
SHERRILYN KENYON
Contents
PROLOGUE
SANTORINI, GREECE, 1990
Completely motionless, Megeara Saatsakis stood on the edge of a cliff looking out on waters so perfectly blue they were almost painful to behold. The air was fragrant with sea salt, cooking olives from the merchant carts, and bright sunlight in a homey scent that was completely unique to this region. The hot sun caressed her tanned skin while the fierce breeze whipped her plain white dress against her body. Boats glided over the gentle waves in a surreal manner that took her back to the days of her childhood when she’d walked these cliffs and shore with her father and mother while they’d done their best to instill in her what it meant to be Greek.
It was truly one of the most beautiful scenes in all the world, and any other twenty-four-year-old would love to be here.
She only wished she were one of them.
Instead she hated this place with an unreasoning fervor. To her, Greece was death and sorrow.
Utter misery, and she would rather have fishhooks pounded into her body than ever step foot on this land again.
Her long blond hair, which she had swept back in a ponytail, slapped against her skin as she sought some peace for her troubled thoughts. But there was none to be had.
Only bottled-up rage met her.
Her estranged father was dead. He’d died as he’d lived … in pursuit of a stupid, reckless dream that had taken not only his life but also that of her mother, her brother, her aunt, and her uncle.
“Atlantis is real, Geary. I can feel it radiating out to me even as I speak. It sits in the Aegean just below us, like a lost, glittering gem, waiting for us to find it and show the world what beauty it once held.”
Even now she could hear her father’s hypnotic voice as he held her hand on top of the water for her to feel the softness of the waves as they whispered against her tiny palm. She could still see his handsome, enthusiastic face as he first told her why they spent so much time in Greece.
“We’re going to find Atlantis and show the wonder of it to everyone else. Mark my words, babe. It’s there and our family is the one that’s been chosen to uncover its magic.”
That had been his lunatic dream. One he’d spent a lifetime trying to give to her, but unlike the rest of her kookie family, she wasn’t stupid enough to buy into it.
Atlantis was a bogus myth made up by Plato as a metaphor for what happened when man turned against the gods. Like Lovecraft’s
Necronomicon,
it was only a fictional invention that people wanted to believe in so badly they were willing to sacrifice everything to find it.
Now her father lay in his grave on the island he’d loved so much. He’d died broken and bitter, a shell of a man who’d buried his beloved brother, his son, his wife …
And for what? Everyone had laughed at him. Ridiculed him. He’d lost his job, along with his respectability, as a professor years ago, and the only way he’d been able to have his research published was in vanity presses.
Hell, even the vanity publishers had laughed at him and several had turned him down, refusing to even take his money to publish his ridiculous work. Still he’d carried on in his feverish desire to give people even more reason to laugh at him, which they’d done with relish.
But even with that, at least she’d seen him one more time before he passed and he hadn’t died alone as he’d feared. Somehow, against the doctor’s prognosis, her father had managed to hold on until she caught a plane from the U.S. and made it to his hospital room to see him. Though their meeting was brief, it had been enough to make peace with him so that he could die without guilt over abandoning her for his search.
If only she could have found a bit of that peace for herself. There still was no such forgiveness inside her where he was concerned. No matter how much her grandfather had tried to explain her father to her, she knew the truth. The only thing that man had ever loved had been his dream, and he had sacrificed his entire family …
her
entire family for it.
Now at twenty-four, because of him, she had no brother and no parents.
She was utterly alone in the world.
And her deathbed promise to her father to carry on his work burned inside her like a rampaging fire. It was one of the few times in her life that she’d been weak. But the sight of him as a frail, troubled man lying on a cold hospital bed while he desperately clung to life had torn her apart, and even though they’d barely spoken these last eight years, she hadn’t had the heart to hurt him when all he wanted was to die forgiven.
She curled her lip as she watched the waves roll against the white shore. “Find Atlantis, my ass. I won’t ruin myself like you did, Dad. I’m not that stupid.”
“Dr. Kafieri?”
She turned at the sound of a heavily accented Greek voice to find a short, rotund man in his mid-fifties staring at her. A cousin to her father, Cosmo Tsiaris had been their family attorney here in Greece. A pseudo-partner in her father’s salvage company, Cosmo had been instrumental in helping her father gain permits and investors for his antediluvian quest.
Although she’d known Cosmo all her life, she cringed at his greeting. Kafieri had been her father’s name—one she’d cast off years ago after her applications to college had been rejected even though she more than met the requirements for admission. No self-respecting classics, history, or anthropology department would ever accept a Kafieri into its ranks for fear of the taint. So she’d learned to use her mother’s maiden name to save her credibility and reputation.
Like the rest of her immediate family, Geary Kafieri had died on these shores.
“I’m Dr. Megeara Saatsakis.”
A bright smile curved his lips. “You married!”
“No,” she said simply, which made him literally deflate before her eyes. “I legally changed my name from Kafieri eight years ago when I went back to the States and sued for emancipation from my father.”
She could tell by Cosmo’s face that he didn’t understand her reasoning, and that was fine by her. With his patriarchal mind-set, he’d never comprehend it.
Frowning, he didn’t comment on her words as he held a small box toward her. “I told Eneas that in the event of his death, I would make sure this was given to his daughter. That would still be you, yes?”