The Dark-Hunters (413 page)

He took a deep breath before he answered. “Honestly, I’d rather have my brains ripped out through my nostrils, but I wanted to stay with you, and without the permits you would never have allowed me near you. I had no choice except to call on him. Besides, you can’t blame him really. He has every right to hate us.”

Her chest tightened at the thought of Arik’s seeking out a bitter enemy for no other reason than to be with her. It was incredibly romantic, if not somewhat stupid. “Compassion looks good on you, Arik. You should wear it more often.”

He took her hand into his and toyed with her fingers. “I’m trying to, but honestly, I’d rather be wearing you.” He offered her a smile that warmed her heart.

“Ooo, that was a good one.”

He lifted her hand to his lips to nibble her fingers. “It’s the truth.”

God, she was in love with this man … god … or whatever he was. They’d known each other such a short time and yet it seemed like forever. She’d confided everything to him, and here he was, trying to help her.

How could she let him go?

She already knew that answer. She couldn’t. He’d come to mean too much to her. And as that thought went through her, it was followed by another. There was someone who knew more about this than Tory or even Arik.

“Apollymi?”
she let her mind shout, hoping that the Atlantean goddess hadn’t abandoned her.

“Yes, child?”

“Is there some way to free Arik from his bargain without killing him? Can he be made mortal?”

“A god can do anything. Free me and I will grant you any wish you have.”

“Do you swear it?”

“On the lives of my Charontes. You free me and you will never want for anything so long as you live.”

Geary pulled Arik into her arms and held him against her. She was grateful he couldn’t hear her thoughts or her conversation with the goddess.

He felt so good in her arms.… She never wanted to let him go.

Don’t make a pact with a god,
her mind warned. In all her ancient readings she couldn’t recall a single time that such a bargain had worked in the favor of the person who made it.

Not once.

But that was fiction and this was real. Apollymi was real and so were Arik and Solin.

Geary would allow Arik to take her back to Atlantis and then she would let Apollymi guide her. After all these centuries, the goddess would be free again.

Geary’s only hope was that Apollymi would keep her word. But even then, Geary’s doubt was strong.

What choice do I have?

She couldn’t allow him to die if she could stop it. And she was willing to make a deal with the devil to ensure Arik’s life.

CHAPTER 17

The next four days were filled with answering official inquests about the exploding boat, dealing with the insurance company, and trying to calm down Tory, who wanted to head right back to the site and excavate even though much of their data had gone up in flames. The only ones happy about the delay were Thia, who had more time to spend with Scott and Brian, and Kichka, who was able to hunt uninterrupted for stray mice in the alley behind their flat.

And deep inside, Geary was more than fine with the delay, too, since it meant more time with Arik. He proved himself to be a tremendous help to her. He kept her completely grounded even while her temper was snapping, and he had an unnatural ability to get the Greek officials to bend to his will. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he had his god powers back.

But he was definitely still human. He just knew how to influence people to get what he wanted.

She sighed as she lay naked in bed with him in the late afternoon. It’d been a particularly grueling day. Between dealing with her usual business with the salvage company and a couple of clients who didn’t want to pay for having their cargoes retrieved or their boats towed, and the insurance company that was trying to prove she’d intentionally blown up her boat to get the money out of it, she was thoroughly exhausted.

The only good thing had been the mind-blowing sex, and now Arik was rubbing her back while she lay beside him.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. He’d been unusually quiet all day.

“Nothing.”

She turned her head to look up at him. He was completely naked except for the sheet that was pooled in his lap. His hair was mussed and his lips swollen, while he had a day’s worth of whiskers on his cheeks. He was a little flushed from their play, which only made his eyes paler and bluer. “I don’t believe that. You seem preoccupied. What’s on your mind?”

He squeezed her shoulder with a touch so expert it wrung a moan from her before he answered. “You’ve had enough stress. I don’t want to add to it.”

“Oh, what the heck?” she said with a smile. “Add away. At this point, one more problem would be nothing to me.”

Laughing, he kissed the shoulder he was working on before he moved down to massage her arm. “I was just thinking how strange it is that no one has attacked us these last few days. I keep waiting for the Dolophoni to return.”

She propped herself up on one arm to watch him. “Maybe Apollymi scared them off.”

He took her free hand into his and massaged it between his fingers. The small circles went up her arm and made her literally melt. “I don’t know. They’re not the type to scare all that easily.”

He did have a point, but honestly, she preferred the thought that Apollymi had scared them off. That meant they wouldn’t be back. “So what exactly are you thinking about their absence?”

“That they’re waiting for me to get comfortable here so that they can strike while I’m not looking.”

She liked that thought even less. “Maybe you’re just being paranoid.”

“Do you really think so?”

No. But she couldn’t bear to say the word out loud. It was just too hard to think about. And the other thing she didn’t want to think about bulldozed its way into her thoughts right behind it—Arik’s time here was getting shorter by the second.

Which triggered her to glance at the clock. As soon as she realized the time, she jumped up, clutching the sheet to her breasts. “Hey, we need to get going if we’re to meet Kat on time.”

Arik nodded even though he was starting to dread this meeting and he didn’t know why. He’d been the one to suggest they return to Atlantis, and yet he had a bad feeling that he couldn’t place. Something was going to go wrong. He knew it.

Perhaps he’d been human long enough to develop a degree of intuition. Or maybe he’d been attacked enough to know that the most likely place for the Dolophoni to strike next time would be underwater, where he and Megeara wouldn’t be able to escape or really fight.…

It was a chilling thought.

Because of that, he kept it to himself as they showered, dressed, and then headed for their rendezvous with Kat. He didn’t want anything to taint Megeara’s happiness after the last few days she’d had. Everyone had been chipping small pieces of her joy away, and he much preferred her smile.

This was what she’d dreamed of, and no matter what, he was going to give it to her.

Megeara was beautiful in a light summer top and jeans as she drove him out to the docks, which looked like they had a gaping hole where her old boat had been. In a weird way, he missed that boat and was sad to see it gone. He could only imagine how hard it must be for Megeara, since it was the same boat her father had used on his expeditions. She didn’t say it, but Arik could tell by the longing on her face as she looked to the empty moorings that she missed the boat, too.

For this excursion, they were going to use one of her smaller company boats—just to make sure no one knew what their intent was. It was also small enough that they could man it with just the three of them.

“Is Tory going to be here?” he asked.

Megeara parked her car in the sandy lot that was off to the side of the marina. “No. I told her I needed her to reconstruct the excavation maps that’d been destroyed. She has no idea that we’re even heading out today. She thinks we can’t move until she finishes her project.”

“That was evil of you.”

She gave him a shy smile. “I think we’re all a bit evil when it comes to protecting our families.”

“Are we?”

Geary turned in the seat to look at him. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No, not really. I mean, yes, I know the definition of family, but our families on Olympus don’t work the same way yours does and we don’t have the same attachment for each other.”

“What about your mother?” Geary asked. “Surely she took care of you?”

He nodded. “True, she birthed me.”

“And then?”

“I was handed off to attendants who tended my needs until I was old enough to be trained.”

“Yeah, but didn’t one of the attendants love you?”

He frowned at her. “They were servants, Megeara, not family. There was no love, and even if there were, I was too small to remember it.”

“How small?”

Arik sat quietly, thinking, but nothing came to mind. He didn’t have very many memories of childhood, and there was nothing there as he struggled to remember anyone taking care of him. “I don’t remember. That’s just the way it’s always been done and I’m sure I was no exception. I honestly remember nothing of being a child, except for my training.”

Geary was doing her best to understand his world, but it made no sense to her. “And what kind of training was this?”

He sighed as if the matter irritated him. “Even though we’re cursed, we still have residual emotions when we’re born. Those have to be stripped from us and we have to be shown how to enter dreams, as well as what is allowed for us to do there and what is forbidden. Then we have to learn how to fight the Skoti who will ultimately fight us for control of the human host. It takes years to fully master our powers, and it’s all very complicated.”

It sounded like it. But one part of that stuck out in her mind. “And how do they strip emotions from you?”

“Usually by beating,” he said in an empty tone. “It’s actually quite Pavlovian. You show an emotion and the punishment is such that you learn it’s better to feel nothing than to suffer the consequences of having them.”

“Does the training ever fail?”

“Sometimes.”

“So what do they do then?”

“They execute us.”

She wouldn’t have been more stunned had he reached over and slapped her. “You have got to be kidding me!”

“No,” he said in all earnestness. “At least I don’t think I am.”

Still, Geary was incredulous over his blasé tone and that they would simply kill the Oneroi for no other reason than they continued to have emotions. How cruel was that? “And all of you accept this?”

He appeared to be equally baffled by her standpoint as she was by his. “Have we a choice? Unless we mount a revolution against Zeus, this is what we have.”

“Maybe it’s time you did revolt.”

He scoffed at her indignation. “It’s not that simple. The pantheons have a balance of power and you have to be extremely careful adjusting it. One wrong move and you can destroy the entire world. What good would overthrowing them be then, when we’d all be dead?”

As much as she hated to admit it, she’d lost this argument. “You make an awesome point.”

“Yeah.”

Geary opened the door and got out while his words haunted her. Her poor Arik. She had to save him from this nightmare he was caught up in. She couldn’t bear the thought of returning him to that life where there was no one to care for him. To hold him or love him. It just wasn’t right.

“Why are the gods so callous to our suffering?” she asked as he joined her in front of the car.

He took her hand in his before he answered. “The world is filled with suffering. If you open yourself up to it, it will consume even a god. But not all of them are callous. ZT is one who cares.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t a god.”

“True. He is
technically
human, but he does have the powers of a god and immortality, and he does care about humanity in spite of what he says. And in spite of what they’ve done to him, he’s never lost his compassion for others. There are several more like him who feel the same way. Who protect humanity.”

“Yes, but is there a true god who does so?”

He thought about it a few seconds before he answered. “Apostolos.”

Geary was surprised by his choice. “Apollymi’s son?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“That’s what the rumor says.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

Arik shrugged. “You hang out in dreams and you hear all kinds of fascinating things. Apostolos is alive and I’ve heard his mother speaking with him. I know that he often tries to calm her down when she’s extremely irate and threatening to destroy the world.”

Geary took a second to let that soak in. “How ironic that the Great Destroyer’s child would be the one who cares about the very people she wants to destroy.”

“It is, but he does. He understands the grand scheme of things and consequences better than anyone else, and unlike the other gods, he won’t punish people for their mistakes.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say that if I had to choose between my life and his, I’d much rather live mine.”

Geary frowned. Jeez, how horrible had Apostolos’s life been that Arik would make that declaration? It was a scary thought. “Wow. You seem to know a lot about him even given the fact you hang out in dreams.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been in his a time or two, too. I just hope he never remembers it or I’m really screwed.”

“Hi, guys.”

She looked up as she heard Kat’s voice. The tall blonde stood on the docks in a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt.

“Hey, babe. Glad you made it.”

Kat shrugged. “Well, if you really intend to go poking around Atlantis again, I want to be there for it.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Arik said under his breath.

Geary scowled at Arik’s odd tone but chose to ignore it as they neared Kat on the docks. “Do you have all the gear ready?”

“I do.”

Geary was grateful.

“Did you tell anyone what we’re doing?” Arik asked Kat as they joined her by the boat.