The Dark-Hunters (558 page)

Given the severity of the punishment, Acheron might have thought the god loved his sister. But he knew better. Apollo was no more capable of love than Artemis was. It was nothing more than a show of power. A warning to others who might think of turning on Apollo, who was now telling everyone that he’d destroyed Atlantis to get back at the Apollites.

Stupid bastard. And stupid people for believing his lies.

Acheron kept his silence, not to protect the god, but only because Apollo’s pathetic arrogance amused him.

By his own stupidity the god was going to be undone. Even now Acheron’s mother sat in her prison, plotting the god’s death … along with Artemis’s. No sooner had Apollo damned his people than Apollymi had gone to Strykerius, Apollo’s condemned son, and shown him how to circumvent death by taking human souls into Apollite bodies and thus elongating their lives.

No wonder Savitar had failed to tell Acheron the name of the goddess Acheron would be fighting.

It was his own mother. She was the one leading the Daimon army that was set on its own vengeance. He should have known.

But then, his revenge had been more direct. He’d hunted down the ones who’d killed his sister and nephew—those who’d survived his mother’s attack—and he’d made them wish they’d never been born with nerve endings.

Now he was at war with his mother.

Acheron sighed heavily. “One day, I’m going to kill those damned Fates.”

But it wouldn’t be today. Today he was meeting with Artemis to see why she’d been shrieking and threatening to kill him these past months. Between her and his mother ranting at him, this was the first time since he’d died that his head had been clear of their incessant nagging.

He felt the ripple of power down his spine that signified her arrival. He stiffened in expectation of her shrewish voice. When she didn’t start yelling at him, he turned his head to find her hesitating.

“Why so nervous, Artemis?”

“You’re very different now.”

He laughed at her acute sense of perception. He
was
different. No longer a subservient slave, he was a pissed-off god who wanted the entire world to leave him alone.

“I don’t like your hair black.”

He gave her a droll stare. “And I don’t like your head attached to your shoulders. Guess we can’t all have what we want, huh?” He narrowed his gaze on her. “I don’t have time for this shit. If all you want is to gawk at me, then you can admire my back as I walk away from you.”

He turned his back to her.

“Wait!”

Against his better judgment, he hesitated. “For what?”

She had approached him cautiously as if terrified of him. “Please don’t be angry at me, Acheron.”

He laughed bitterly at her words. “Oh, anger doesn’t even begin to describe what I am at you. How dare you bring me back.”

She gulped as her features drew taut. “I had no choice.”

“We all have choices.”

“No, Acheron. We don’t.”

As if he believed that. She’d always been selfish and vain and no doubt that was the only reason he’d been brought back when he should have been left dead. “Is this why you’ve been summoning me? You want to apologize?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. I would do it over again in a heart pound.”

“Beat,” he snarled, correcting her.

She waved the word away with her hand. “I want there to be peace between us.”

Peace? Was she insane? She was lucky he didn’t kill her right now. If it wasn’t for fear of what could happen, he would have.

“There will never be peace between us. Ever. You shattered any hope of it when you watched your brother kill me and refused to speak up on my behalf.”

“I was afraid.”

“And I was butchered and gutted on the floor like an animal sacrifice. Excuse me if I don’t feel your pain. I’m too busy with my own.” He turned to leave her then, but she stopped him again.

It was then he heard the muffled whimpering of a baby. Scowling, he watched in horror as she withdrew an infant from the folds of her peplos.

“I have a baby for you, Acheron.”

He jerked his arm away from her as fury singed every part of him. “You bitch! Do you honestly think that could
ever
replace my nephew, whom you let die? I hate you. I will always hate you. For once in your life, do the right thing and return that to its mother.”

She slapped him then with enough force to split his lips. “Go and rot, you worthless bastard.”

Laughing, he wiped the blood away with the back of his hand while he stared venomously at her. “I may be a worthless bastard, but better that than a frigid whore who sacrificed the only man to ever love her because she was too self-absorbed to save him.”

The look on her face scorched him. “I’m not the whore here, Acheron. You are. Bought and sold to anyone who could pay your fee. How dare you think for one minute you were ever worthy of a goddess.”

The pain of those words seared a permanent place in his heart and soul. “You’re right, my lady. I’m not worthy of you or anyone else. I’m just a piece of shit to be dumped naked in the street. Forgive me for ever sullying you.”

Then he vanished from her.

Their relationship was now over. There was no power in the universe that would ever make him speak to her again.

You need her blood.

So what? Let the world die for all he cared. Better everyone should perish than he spend five more minutes enslaved to that bitch. He was tired of being everyone’s scapegoat. For once he was going to think of himself and screw the rest of them.

“I’m through, Artemis. Completely through.”

GREECE
, 7382
BC

Acheron felt a presence behind him. He spun around, staff ready to strike, expecting it to be another Daimon attacking him.

It wasn’t.

Instead, he found Simi hanging upside down in a tree, her long, burgundy bat-like wings folded in against her child-like body. She wore a loose black chiton and himation that rippled gently with the night’s breeze. Her blood-red eyes glowed eerily in the darkness while her long black braid dangled from her head, down to the ground.

Acheron relaxed and set one end of his staff against the damp grass as he watched her.

“Where have you been, Simi?” he asked sharply. He’d been calling for the Charonte demon for the last half hour.

“Oh, just hanging about, akri,” she said, smiling as she swung herself back and forth on the limb. “Did akri miss me?”

Acheron sighed. He loved Simi more than his life, but he wished he had a mature demon as his companion. Not one that even at five thousand years old functioned on the level of a five-year-old child.

It would be centuries before Simi was fully grown.

“Did you deliver my message?” he asked.

“Yes, akri,” she said, using the Atlantean term for “my lord and master.” “I delivered it just as you said, akri.”

The skin on the back of Acheron’s neck crawled. There was something in her tone that concerned him. “What did you do, Simi?”

“The Simi did nothing, akri. But…”

He waited as she looked about nervously.

“But?” he prompted.

“The Simi was hungry on her way back.”

He went cold with dread. “Who did you eat this time?”

“It wasn’t a who, akri. It was something that had hornies on its head like me. There were a bunch of them actually. All of them had hornies and they made a strange moo-moo sound.”

He frowned at her description. “Do you mean cows? You ate cattle?”

She beamed. “That’s it, akri. I ate cattle.”

Then why was she so worried? “That’s not so bad.”

“No, it was actually rather good, akri. Why didn’t you tell the Simi about cows? They are very tasty when roasted. The Simi liked them a lot. We need to get us some of them moo-moos. I think they’d fit in the house.”

He ignored her side commentary. “Then why are you worried?”

“Because this really tall man with only one eyeball came out of a cave and was screaming at the Simi. He say the Simi was evil for eating the cows and that I would have to pay for them. What does that mean, akri? Pay? The Simi know nothing about pay.”

Acheron wished he could say the same for himself. “This really big man, was he a cyclops?”

“What’s a cyclops?”

“A son of Poseidon.”

“Oh, see, that’s what he said. Only he had no hornies. He had a big, bald head instead.”

Acheron didn’t want to discuss the cyclops’ big bald head with his demon. What he needed to know was what to do to make amends for her voracious appetite. “So what did the cyclops say to you?”

“That he be mad at the Simi for eating the cattle. He said the horny cows belonged to Poseidon. Who is Poseidon, akri?”

“A Greek god.”

“Oh, see then, the Simi is not in trouble. I just kill the Greek god and all’s fine.”

He had to hide his smile from her. “You can’t kill a Greek god, Simi. It’s not allowed.”

“There you go again, akri, saying no to the Simi. Don’t eat that, Simi. Don’t kill that, Simi. Stay here, Simi. Go to Katoteros, Simi, and wait for me to call you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a stern frown. “I don’t like being told no, akri.”

Acheron grimaced at the ache that was starting in the back of his skull. He wished he’d been given a pet parrot for his twenty-first birthday. The Charonte demon was going to be the death of him … again.

“So why were you calling the Simi, akri?”

“I wanted your help with the Daimons.”

She relaxed and went back to swinging on her limb. “You didn’t seem to need any help, akri. The Simi thinks you did quite well with them on your own. I particularly liked the way that one Daimon flipped up into the air before you killed him. Very nice. I did not know they were so colorful when they exploded.”

She flipped off the limb and came to stand by his side. “Where we go now, akri? Will you take Simi somewhere cold again? I liked that last place we went. The mountain was very nice.”

Acheron?

He paused as he felt Artemis summoning him. He let out another long-suffering sigh.

For two thousand years, he’d been ignoring her.

Still she insisted on calling out to him.

There was a time when she’d sought him out in the “flesh,” but he’d blocked her from that ability.

Her mental telepathy to him was the only contact he couldn’t sever entirely.

“Come, Simi,” he said, starting his journey that would take him back to Therakos. The Daimons there had set up a colony where they were preying on the poor Greeks who lived in a small village.

Acheron. I need your help. My new Dark-Hunters need a trainer.

He froze at Artemis’s words.

New Dark-Hunters? What the hell was that?

“What have you done, Artemis?” His voice whispered along the wind, traveling to Olympus where she waited in her temple.

So, you do speak to me.
He heard the relief in her tone.
I had begun to wonder if I would ever hear the sound of your voice again.

Acheron curled his lip. He didn’t have time for this.

Acheron?

He ignored her.

She didn’t take the hint.

The Daimon menace is spreading faster than you can contain it. You needed help and so I’ve given it to you.

He scoffed at the idea of her help. The Greek goddess had never done anything for anyone other than herself since the dawn of time.

“Leave me alone, Artemis. We’re through, you and I. I have a job to do and no time to be bothered with you.”

Fine then. I shall send them out to face the Daimons unprepared. If they die, well, who cares for a human? I can just make more of them to fight.

It was a trick.

Yet in his gut, Acheron knew it wasn’t. She probably had made these Dark-Hunters and if she truly had, then she would definitely do it again.

Especially if it would make him feel guilty.

Damn her. He would have to go to her temple. Personally, he would rather be disemboweled.

His gut tightened at the memory and it didn’t appreciate his jest.

He looked to his demon. “Simi, I need to see Artemis now. You return to Katoteros and stay out of trouble until I summon you.”

The demon grimaced. “The Simi don’t like Artemis, akri. I wish you’d let the Simi kill that goddess. The Simi want to pull out her long, red hair.”

He knew the feeling.

“I know, Simi, which is why I want you to stay at Katoteros.” He stepped away, then turned back to face her. “And for my sake, please don’t eat anything until I get back. Especially not a human.”

“But—”

“No, Simi. No food.”

“No, Simi. No food,” she mocked. “The Simi don’t like this, akri. Katoteros is boring. There’s nothing fun there. Only old dead people who want to come back here. Bleh!”

“Simi…” he said, his voice thick with warning.

“I hear and obey, akri. The Simi just never said she would do so quietly.”

He shook his head at the incorrigible demon, then willed himself from earth to Artemis’s temple on Olympus.

Acheron stood on top of the golden bridge that traversed a winding river. The sound of the water echoed off the sheer sides of the mountain that rose up all around him.

In the last two thousand years, nothing had changed.

The entire area at the top of the mountain was made up of sparkling bridges and walkways, covered by a rainbow fog, that led to the various temples of the gods.

The halls of Mount Olympus were opulent and massive. Perfect homes for the egos of the gods who lived inside them.

Artemis’s was made of gold, with a domed top and white marble columns. The view of the sky and world below was breathtaking from her throne room.

Or so he had thought in his youth.

But that was before time and experience had jaundiced his appreciation. To him there was nothing spectacular or beautiful here now. He saw only the selfish vanity and coldness of the Olympians.

These new gods were very different from the gods Acheron had learned about since his days as a human. All but one of the Atlantean gods had been full of compassion. Love. Kindness. Forgiveness.