The Dark-Hunters (491 page)

Tate took a step back, as did Simone.

Even Jesse.

“Um, Sim,” Jesse said, stepping behind her. “He can do that freaky eye thing because he’s a god, right? He’s just screwing with us about being a demon … right?”

She wanted to believe that. It made sense …

But every instinct in her body told her that Xypher didn’t have that kind of sense of humor.

Xypher’s eyes faded back to that eerie blue. “My mother was a Sumerian demon whom my father seduced and I was raised with her people so I have a little more insight into the gallu than most.”

Simone crossed herself. Was he serious? And yet she knew the truth. She just wanted to hear him say it in no uncertain terms. “You’re a gallu?”

“Genetically speaking, yes. But I don’t crave or live on blood. Well, my enemies notwithstanding.”

He’s a demon …

Simone didn’t know why that was harder for her to accept than him being a Greek god, but it was. Probably because of the reputation demons had. The thought of being attached to one really didn’t sit well with her.

She glanced at the body on the ground and shivered. Had Xypher ever done that to an innocent?

Was that why they’d killed him and sentenced him to Tartarus?

It was then it dawned on her exactly how little she knew about the creature she was now bound to. What he was capable of.

How had her life been put into his hands so callously?

Tate gestured toward the body. “Can you kill whatever did this?”

Xypher gave a subtle nod. “But why should I?”

Tate was aghast. “To stop innocent people from dying.”

Xypher scoffed. “Innocent? That man on the ground was a rapist and a murderer. When you learn his identity, you’re going to find that he got off light. I assure you, I would have done a lot worse to him.”

“How do you know that?” Simone whispered.

He gave her a cold look that chilled her all the way to her soul. “Evil knows evil. It’s how we find each other or, in the case of the Dimme, how you avoid being taken down by a more vicious opponent.”

Jesse’s eyes widened respectfully. “Wow. So you’re like Satan’s bloodhound?”

Xypher gave him a droll look. “Lucifer has his own demons he commands. I’m not one of them.”

“Great history lesson on demons and their feeding habits.” Tate slapped his hands together. “So, out of curiosity, how do I write up my report? Random demon slaying? Yeah. That’s going to read real well.” He turned to Simone. “You think I can get a job as a janitor with a medical degree?”

She patted his arm affectionately. “I wouldn’t mention the degree. It would make you overqualified. But if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you’ll need a job when they send you off to Mandeville.”

“Thanks, Simone.” His tone was as dry as the desert. “I’ll remember that next time you ask me for a letter of recommendation.”

“And I’ll remember that when you apply to be a janitor at Tulane. See if I help you find work.”

“Ow!” Tate groused. “You’re vicious.”

“Hey, Doc?” An older police officer approached them. “Homicide wants to know if you’re ready to wrap up and move the body.”

“Yeah, we’re done.” He lowered his voice so that only Simone and Xypher could hear. “Random demon slaying. Maybe I should just write it up as a mugging gone wrong.” He paused and looked at Xypher. “You’re sure about the cause of death?”

“When the body gets up in a few and tries to kill you, you’ll have your answer.”

Tate sighed heavily.

“What are you going to do?” Simone asked before he could withdraw.

Tate shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t destroy the body. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, followed by one major firing and public humiliation.”

Xypher scratched his cheek before he spoke. “At the very least, sever the head. You’ll thank me for it later.”

Tate snorted. “You think ‘oops’ would cover that?” he asked Simone.

“Tate!” she snapped, horrified at the thought of it. “Our profession has a bad enough reputation. You can’t do something like that or else we’ll never live it down.”

“I’m trying to be reasonable here. You know the ME test didn’t exactly cover this. What do you tell your students about the odder elements of our job?”

“I don’t. I merely tell them that there are some things that can’t be explained.”

“Yeah,” Tate said with a nervous laugh, “this definitely qualifies as inexplicable.” He glanced back to Xypher. “Is there anything other than decapitation or absolute destruction that will keep the body down?”

“Quartering.”

Tate rolled his eyes. “You’re not helpful.”

“I didn’t bite him and create this situation. You asked a question and I answered it. If you want another answer, then ask a different question.”

Tate scratched his brow with his middle finger. “I’m having visions of Shaun of the Dead appearing in my lab.”

Simone laughed. “You mean Tate of the Dead.”

“Exactly. And let us not forget that at the end of
Night of the Living Dead,
they shot the black man who survived the zombie attacks. Not a good precedent and I’m having a bad flashback here, Sim.”

Shaking his head, Tate clapped his hands together and started away from them as if he were heading for his doom. “Okay, wish me luck … and much fire power—remember not to let the sheriff shoot me at dawn.” He glanced back at the victim. “At least this time I know not to assign the body to someone else.”

“Bonne chance, mon ami.”

“Yeah, thanks, Simone. I’d personally like to
bonne
your
chance
for this.”

She stepped back as he left them and approached the body so that he could oversee the moving of it.

Simone looked away as she thought of Gloria and wondered what had happened to her. Rubbing her arms, she whispered a silent prayer for the poor woman.

Jesse cocked his head as he studied her. “What’s wrong, Sim?”

“Just thinking of Gloria. I wish I knew what happened to her. I hate that we lost her.”

Xypher frowned. “Who was Gloria?”

Simone gave him an irritated look because he didn’t know. “She was the other ghost who was there with the Daimons when you came crashing into my world.”

“Oh, the blonde.”

“Yes, the blonde.”

Tate groaned as he returned to their group and caught that bit of their conversation. “Yeah … Speaking of, her family is due in any minute to claim her body. What am I supposed to tell them when we can’t give the body over? Again, I don’t think ‘oops’ will quite cover it.”

“Hey!” the cop shouted. “Doc, I don’t think this guy’s dead. I just saw him move.”

Simone paled at those words. Worse, she saw the decedent’s foot moving herself. “Xypher, it’s starting.”

Before she could blink, he threw his hand out. An instant later, the entire body burst into flames.

The police officer shouted for help while several other cops scrambled for fire extinguishers.

She glared at Xypher. “Did you do that?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Sometimes my powers work. Sometimes they don’t. Looks like this time they did. Yea, us.”

Tate wrinkled his nose as he watched the police running around. “I’m not sure I should thank you for this or not … you think they’ll believe there was some kind of gas in the body that made it move, then spontaneously combust?”

Simone let out an elongated breath as she silently wished him luck on that one. “If anyone can make it work, Tate, you can.”

“Yeah, here’s seeing you at the unemployment office soon.” He left them to aid the officers in putting out the flames.

Simone watched them work as the true horror of it all sank in. “So that man really was eaten by a demon.”

“You didn’t think I made that up, did you?”

“No.” She dragged the word out. “Not exactly, anyway.” She frowned as she raked her gaze over that body that was made for sin up to those clear, breathtaking eyes. No one would ever guess Xypher was anything other than human, yet she knew better. “Are you really part demon?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes people do, for no apparent reason.”

“But I’m not human.”

His being demonspawn at least explained some of his acerbic personality. It also excused it … almost. Then again with him being a demon, she was lucky he was housebroken and not trying to scare everyone they met on the street.

I am bound to a demon
 … It sounded like a bad sci-fi movie.

Baffled, befuddled, and just plain confused, she went to get his bags where they’d left them on the ground. Right now, she just wanted to go home and get her bearings.

She led them away from the scene, toward her condo.

“Buck up, Sim,” Jesse said cheerfully. “At least the demon didn’t eat you.”

“Yet, you mean.”

Xypher took the packages from her hands. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you get hurt.”

“Not unless it means you get a shot at your enemy, right? Then I’m fair game for death.”

He didn’t comment.

“All righty then,” she said, trying to lighten the mood and not think about the fact that he would most likely sacrifice her to achieve his goal. “Let’s make our way back safely, shall we?”

Xypher nodded as he tried not to think about the fact that he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t protect her even at the expense of his vengeance. While he had demon blood in him, he wasn’t completely heartless. Even at his worst, he had a code of ethics and those ethics would not allow Simone to get hurt in the crossfire.

Damn me for it.

Pausing, Jesse gave him a look that told him the ghost didn’t think much about him. He was used to it. The Greek gods had given him the same look once they realized a Sumerian demon was genetically attached to their pantheon.

The moment Xypher had learned to infiltrate dreams and shown his god powers, Zeus had sent his minions out to drag him to Olympus in chains.

Even though Xypher was barely more than a child, Zeus had tried to kill him. But Poseidon had stopped his brother from making that mistake. “The Sumerians are looking for a reason to call out the Chthonians on us. You kill that boy and we’ll all have to answer for it.”

The Chthonians were essentially the gatekeepers of the universe. They made sure that the pantheons didn’t war among each other since such things tended to lead to the ultimate destruction of the earth and everyone who called it home.

Zeus had curled his lip at his brother. “Then what would you have me do with him?”

“Strip his emotions and train him like the rest of Phobetor’s brats. There’s no longer anything to fear in an Oneroi. And once he’s trained, we’ll be able to use him to spy on the Sumerians for us.”

And so Xypher’s brutal training had begun.

Young and stupid, Xypher had actually thought his father would come to his rescue.

He hadn’t. In fact, it’d been his father who’d helped to beat him and strip his emotions to prove his loyalty to Zeus. If Xypher had been a full demon, they wouldn’t have been able to subjugate him. Unfortunately, he had too much of his father’s blood in him for that.

They’d broken him on a hot summer’s day when he’d decided it would be easier to give in to the training than to suffer any more abuse. All of his emotions had bled out of him until he was numb to everything. No taste, no smell. Nothing that could induce an emotion.

Honestly, he’d welcomed it. All the years of pain were gone. And at least the Greeks weren’t quite as bloodthirsty as the demons. They hadn’t made him fight for every morsel. Bleed for every comfort.

To be a demon meant to take and destroy. Food was only given to those who could kill for it.

I should have stayed an Oneroi.

Things had been so much simpler then. All he had to do was monitor the sleep of humans. Make sure other Skoti didn’t fixate on one particular human too long. The gods permitted the Oneroi and Skoti to exist so long as they didn’t disturb the balance of the universe or make the human host insane from their dreams.

Whenever the Skoti came too close to breaking those two laws, the Oneroi were sent in to either drive them away or kill them.

It’d been a cushy life.

Until Satara had come to him. A handmaiden to the goddess Artemis, she’d been as beautiful and alluring as any immortal. She’d summoned him into her dreams and there she’d shown him kindness and the softer emotions he’d never experienced before. They’d made love like they were on fire. Her every breath, every touch, had given him pleasure.

When she was with him, he felt alive …

Xypher cursed as he remembered the bitch. Sultry and seductive, she’d made him pay dearly for wanting to be something more than what he was.

It was a mistake he’d never make again.

“You okay?”

He blinked at Simone’s soft voice that interrupted his thoughts. “Never better.”

“Dang,” Jesse said, leaning closer to Simone. “If that’s his ‘never better’ it makes you wonder what ‘never worse’ looks like, huh?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. Xypher didn’t know why, but there was something utterly charming about her expression and actions.

“Shh, Jesse, play nice. Remember, he can hurt you.”

“Yeah, and I want to know right now who I can complain to about that. It just doesn’t seem right.”

Xypher narrowed his eyes on him. “How did you get to be a ghost, anyway? You annoy one person too many and they cut your throat?”

“Ha, ha,” he said sarcastically. “No, it was a car wreck on a really rainy night as I was taking my girlfriend home from work. The last thing I heard was her telling me to go left at the light. So when the big bright light came, I went left and next thing I knew, I was trapped here on earth.”

Xypher rolled his eyes. “That is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Jesse snorted. “Really? The most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard was this half demon, half god who—”

“Jesse!” Simone snapped. “Again, I feel compelled to remind you that he can hit you and make it hurt. Bad.”

That quelled the ghost a bit.

Xypher frowned as he watched the two of them. They were extremely comfortable together … like family. He’d never been that close to anyone or anything and it made him wonder what had happened to cause that bond between them. “How did you end up with Simone?”