The Dark-Hunters (447 page)

She shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m the other pantheon, remember? Why?”

“Because I think Kat was bitten by them.” He went back to her on the bed. She was shaking now so badly that her teeth were chattering. And she still didn’t wake or respond to him. “I need you to stay here while I get her help.”

Kytara’s face paled as she realized what was wrong with Kat. “There’s no help for this. You know that.”

He shook his head. There was no way in hell he was going to let Kat die. Not like this.

Or worse, kill her for it. There had to be something they could do. Anything, and he was willing to move the heavens and earth to save her. “I refuse to believe that.” He picked Kat up from the bed and faced Kytara. “Watch Zakar for me. Don’t let him out of your sight, and whatever you do, don’t kill him.”

She made an indignant squawk. “Are you kidding me? I’m not a babysitter.”

He gave her the most hostile glare he could muster. “No, I’m not kidding. I don’t want my brother dead. You said he’s fractured. If that’s the case, then we can fix him. But first I have to save Kat.”

“It’s impossible, Sin, and you know it. You’re insane and you’re wasting your time.”

“We’ll see.” He paused before he left. “And Kytara, if my brother isn’t still breathing when I return, the Oneroi are going to be the least of your concerns.”

She gave him an indignant huff.

Ignoring her, Sin closed his eyes and flashed him and Kat to the last place he needed to visit …

Kalosis.

And he naturally manifested right in front of a Charonte who eyeballed him as if he were a prime steak on a plate. But Sin wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. He ignored the beast.

“Apollymi!” Sin shouted as he walked down the long, narrow hallway with no idea where to go to find her. “I need you.”

She appeared in front of him with her hands on her hips and her face flaming angry.

Until she saw Kat in his arms.

Apollymi’s countenance instantly changed to one of concern as she rushed forward to place her hand on Kat’s brow. “What happened?”

For some reason, that one single question coming from Kat’s grandmother hit a raw nerve in him, and all the repressed emotions he’d been holding back came rushing forward. His throat tightened as fear for Kat overwhelmed him.

But there was more to it than that. The thought of her dead …

Sin hadn’t hurt like this in so long that it was all he could do to draw a breath. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t.

Swallowing against the lump in his throat, he spoke in a hushed tone. “I think she was bitten by a gallu demon and she’s becoming one of them. I need you to heal her … please.”

Tears filled Apollymi’s eyes as she met his gaze, and he saw a hopelessness there that tore through him like fire. “I can’t heal something like this.”

Anger singed him. “I saw you mend her when she was hurt. You can heal this. I know it.”

She shook her head. “I can heal wounds, but this … this is in her blood. It’s spreading through her. I can’t fix this. It’s beyond me.”

He felt as if someone had just sucker-punched him. He shifted Kat in his arms so that he could press his lips against her feverish temple. Every laugh she’d ever given him … every touch burned through him now.

The thought of never hearing another sarcasm-laden quip …

It couldn’t be over. He couldn’t lose her over something so stupid as a bite they’d failed to cauterize. If not for helping him, she wouldn’t even be in this.

No, there had to be something else he could do.

He glared at Apollymi as he felt his own tears pricking his eyes. “I won’t let her die like this, Apollymi. Do you hear me? There has to be something. Anything. Don’t tell me that out of two pantheons we don’t have a solution.”

She brushed a loving hand through Kat’s pale hair. “Maybe her father can do something. He understands demons a lot better than I do.”

A chill went over Sin at her words—the last known address for Ash was Artemis’s bed. “What?”

Apollymi locked gazes with him. “You have to take her to Olympus. Apostolos is the only one I know who might have a solution or cure for this.”

Personally, he’d rather have both eyes gouged out than ever step foot on Olympus again. The last time he’d ventured there, it’d cost him everything he had, including his dignity.

But one glance at Kat’s beautiful face and the obvious pain she was in and he knew he was willing to walk through the fires of hell to make her better.

“Where is he on Olympus?”

“Artemis’s temple.”

Of course he was. Where else would Acheron be when Sin needed him?

How unfair was this? But his past didn’t matter right now. Only Kat did.

“All right,” he breathed, “but I can’t go there on my own. Artemis stripped that power from me to keep me from killing her.”

“Oh, we can only hope.” Apollymi touched him on the shoulder. “Do me proud,” she whispered. Then, louder, she called out to her son, “Apostolos?”

Ash’s answer was almost instantaneous. “Yes, Matera?”

“I have Sin here with Katra. She’s ill and she needs you, but I can’t send them there without your help.”

Sin barely had time to blink before he found himself on the balcony of Artemis’s temple.

The large doors to his left opened to show Acheron in a pair of black leather pants and a long, heavy silk Atlantean robelike
formesta
that billowed out around his boots as he walked. “What’s wrong?”

Sin met him halfway across the balcony. “A gallu bit her.”

Ash’s face paled. “Where?”

“I don’t know and I’m really not sure. We went to a cavern to free my brother and several of them showed up and attacked us. It’s the only time I think it could have happened, but she didn’t tell me she’d been bitten.” He looked down at her, wondering why she’d kept that secret from him. “She was fine until a short time ago. She told me she had a headache and then she started burning a fever. I thought she was sick until Zakar told me she was converting.”

Acheron took her from his arms and carried her inside to a white chaise where he laid her down. Sin’s heart sank at how pale she appeared. Her eyes were rolled completely back in her head, but at least her teeth were no longer chattering.

Then again, he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“Katra?” Ash asked, kneeling down by her side. When she didn’t respond, he laid his hand on her cheek.

She screamed the instant Ash touched her face, then tried to bite him.

Ash jumped back, out of her reach.

Sin cursed at the sight of her double set of fangs. She really was converting.… Agony welled up inside of him at the thought of losing her. He was nauseated and wanted to kill Kessar for this.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?”

Ash looked up at the pain he heard in Sin’s voice. And in that one moment, he had a realization about their relationship that made his insides shrink. Why else would Sin have come here and not be after Artemis to kill her?

He could have just left Katra with Apollymi and returned home. Instead, he’d come here with her and now watched over her with fear in his eyes and agony in his voice.

There was only one conclusion to be drawn.

Sin was Katra’s lover.

Ash wanted to curse in anger, but it was too late for that. They’d already been together. He could feel it. Besides, he barely knew his daughter—who was he to parent her now and tell her that she shouldn’t have slept with Sin? She was a grown woman.

One who was in deep trouble.

And unfortunately, Ash couldn’t get her out of this alone. To cure her, he needed help. Standing up, he pinned Sin with a gimlet stare. Ash had to know the truth of what existed between them.

Katra’s life depended on it.

“What does Katra mean to you?”

A wall came up inside Sin over that question. Ash could almost hear it closing, but he couldn’t tell if it was motivated by suspicion, fear, or guilt.

“Why do you ask me that?”

Ash ground his teeth as he glanced back to his daughter, who was thrashing about on the chaise. There was only one way to save her, and it broke his heart. It was the last thing he wanted to do to anyone. But it was the only way to get the demon out of her.

“I have to bond her to someone.”

Sin was confused by Ash’s strange behavior and his words. Ash was reticent about helping his daughter, and Sin couldn’t understand that. He would have brought down the heavens to protect his own. Why was Ash so upset now?

“Okay. What’s the problem with that?”

Ash seared him with that swirling silver gaze that seemed to be able to see straight to his soul. When Ash spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “Listen to me, Sin. I’m going to have to summon the demon out of her … by draining her blood. If I know the demon within, it won’t let go of her until I’ve taken so much blood that she’s going to die from it. The only way to save her will be to bond her to someone else by using their blood. When I do this, she will need that person for the rest of her life to feed from. She’ll be a vampire.”

Sin hesitated. He wanted to make sure he understood exactly what Ash was saying. “But not a gallu.”

“No. She’ll be just as she was … unless she goes too long without feeding. Then she’ll turn cold and will feed from anyone who’s capable of sustaining her.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Still Ash was hesitant. It was obvious he didn’t like the thought of bonding them together, and Sin couldn’t understand why until Ash continued. “Blood bonds like this are very sexual. She’s my daughter. For an obvious reason, I don’t want to bond her to me.… That leaves”—he hesitated—“you.”

Could he have growled that last word and spoken it with any more distaste?

But Sin could understand what had put a burr up Ash’s saddle. As a father he’d have felt the same way. “You’re offering your daughter to me?”

A muscle worked in Ash’s jaw as he averted his gaze from Sin. “I condemned my best friend to death for taking the innocence of the only daughter I’ve ever known.” His eyes misting, he looked at Katra, and the love he had for his daughter actually choked Sin up, and it gave him a new respect for Ash.

Ash cleared his throat before he spoke again. “I try to always learn from my mistakes. I don’t like what you’ve done, but I’m not going to see either of you die for it. I’ve let my emotions do enough damage to people I care about. But before I entrust her life to you, I have to know how much she means to you.”

Sin held his arms out like a supplicant as he admitted something to Ash he didn’t even want to admit to himself. But it was the truth. “I’m standing before you in the temple of my worst enemy and I’m not trying to kill Artemis. What do you think Katra means to me?”

Ash inclined his head to Sin. “This isn’t a typical blood bond I’m doing. Once this is done, there will be no way to undo it. You understand?”

Yes, he did. “Whatever it takes, Acheron, save her.”

Ash actually looked relieved, but it passed by his face so quickly that Sin wasn’t sure if he saw it or imagined it. “Hold her legs.”

Sin went to her feet and held her ankles while Ash took her hands into his. Then, in the blink of an eye, Ash changed forms. No longer human, he had mottled blue skin and black lips and horns. His eyes were a monstrous red that swirled with yellow. And while Sin watched, Ash’s incisors grew to long, razor-sharp fangs.

Gaping, Sin had never seen anything like this. “What are you?”

Ash gave a bitter laugh. “I am death and sorrow.” And then he leaned over Kat and bit into her neck.

Kat screamed and tried to fight, but Ash didn’t stop. Sin held her feet as tight as he could without hurting her while Ash drew back and spat her blood onto the floor. Only it didn’t hit the marble. Instead, it splashed into what appeared to be an invisible jar of some kind. Her blood swirled around before it slid to pool in the bottom.

Sin curled his lip as Ash repeated the gesture again and again like someone siphoning gas from a car. And as Ash continued to spit the blood into the jar, the blood congealed. Before long, it was forming a small, angry demon. It tried to run at Ash, but it couldn’t. It seemed to be stuck to the jar’s bottom like an insect on flypaper. Even though it was headless, it managed to shout in a language Sin had never heard before as it raised a fist, then slapped against the side of the jar, wanting release.

Ash ignored it.

Sin focused his gaze on the mottled blue skin of Ash’s hand as he held Kat’s hands in place. Ash’s long black hair was draped over both of them while Ash’s red eyes glowed.

“Kat doesn’t turn blue like you, does she?”

Ash cut Sin a harsh glare with those spooky fire eyes that made his weird-ass silver eyes suddenly attractive by comparison. “I have no idea,” he said before he returned to suck more blood from her.

As Ash continued to drain her, Sin cringed and hoped it wasn’t causing her pain. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being hurt because of him.

Once the demon was completely formed in the jar, Ash released Kat and sat back on his haunches. Kat had long since stopped fighting them. Now she lay quietly against the white cushions, serene and unmoving.

Sin held his breath in fear. She was so pale.… Her skin was no longer healthy looking. It held a grayish cast, and her lips appeared to be turning bluish.

She was dying.

“Acheron?” He hated the note of panic in his voice.

Ash grabbed Sin’s arm and pulled it across Kat’s body. “She’ll most likely attack you. Don’t let her take too much blood or she could kill you.”

“You sound like you’re going somewhere.”

“I have to take care of the gallu spirit.”

Sin sucked his breath in sharply as Acheron used a long black claw to slash open his wrist. He hissed in pain. Acheron held Sin’s arm over Kat’s lips to let the blood drip into her mouth. As soon as the first drop touched her teeth, her eyes opened.

Frantically she grabbed Sin’s wrist and held it to her mouth so that she could drink. Her breath scorched him as her tongue tickled his skin while she sought to get as much of his blood as she could.

Without looking at them, Acheron picked up the invisible jar with the demon who kept screaming at them, and vanished.