The Dark-Hunters (563 page)

He stood up immediately and offered her his hand. “Sorry for the confusion,” he said graciously as she shook it. “I’m really glad to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot of…”

“Mixed things, I’m sure.”

He laughed good-naturedly. “Well, you know how our circles go.”

“Not broad enough most days.”

He laughed again. “True. Do you have the book with you?”

She set her briefcase down on the small chair in front of his desk and opened it. She’d very carefully wrapped the book in acid-free paper to protect its delicate condition. “It’s extremely brittle.”

“I’ll be careful.”

She watched as he unwrapped it and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said with a note of awed reverence in his voice, “it’s just amazing. I’ve never seen a bound book this old.”

By his face she’d say it also brought back some kind of painful memories for him. “Can you read it?”

He opened the cover carefully before he studied the brittle pages. “It looks Greek.”

“Yes, but can you read it?” she repeated, hoping that he could at least recognize some part of it.

He looked up and sighed. “Honestly? I can make out some of the words from basic root meanings, but this particular dialect is something I’ve never seen before. It definitely predates my area of expertise … probably by several hundred years or more.”

She wanted to curse in frustration. She was so tired of hearing that. “Do you know of anyone who might be able to translate it?”

“Yeah, actually, I do.”

It took a full minute for that unexpected answer to seep in. Dare she even hope so? “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “He’s the historian I always go to whenever I need information. There’s no one in the universe who knows more about ancient civilizations than he does. In fact, he knows so much about them you’d think he lived through them.”

This was even better than she’d hoped for.

“Where does he teach?”

Julian closed the book and wrapped it back up. “Ironically, he doesn’t. But you’re in luck, he’s here in town for a few weeks helping with Project Home Again and Habitat for Humanity.”

Her heart was racing with the prospect of having someone corroborate that the book was as old as Atlantis—to have them verify it was Atlantean in nature …

It would be a dream come true if he could actually read some of it.

“Is there any chance we could meet with him?” she asked breathlessly.

“Hold on a second and let me see.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed it.

Tory chewed her thumbnail and silently prayed to talk to the one man who held the key to her book. She’d give anything to meet him …

Julian smiled at her. “Hi, Acheron, it’s Julian Alexander. How you doing?”

She could faintly hear the voice at the other end of the phone.

Julian laughed at something the man said. “Leave it to you … look, the reason I’m calling is I have a colleague here in my office who has something we need you to take a look at—I personally have never seen anything like it, and I think from a historic point of view you’d be very interested in it, too. Any chance we can stop by?” He shook his head. “Yeah, it’s some really old shit—nice phraseology, by the way.” He paused as he listened. “Yeah, okay.”

Julian looked at her. “Can you leave right now to see him?”

“Absolutely.” She’d crawl over broken glass to meet the man!

He returned to his call. “She can do it. We’ll see you in a few.” He hung up and smiled. “He’s a little busy at present, but he’s more than happy to look at it.”

“Oh, bless you both!”

Julian returned the book to her. “Would you like to follow me over?”

“Sure. Where are we going?”

He picked his jacket up off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. “Acheron’s doing volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity. He’s over on Esplanade on a rooftop.”

Tory frowned at the image in her mind of a stodgy classics professor on top of a roof. “So his name is Acheron…?”

“Parthenopaeus.”

She laughed. “Good grief, I never thought I’d meet someone more Greek than me.” With a name like that, he had to be old. No modern parent would be so cruel.

With a strange twinkle in his eye, Julian grinned. “Yeah, he’s amazing when it comes to historical facts. Like I said, he knows ancient Greece better than anyone I’ve ever known or heard of.” He led her out of his office.

“How long has he been studying it?” she asked as he locked his office door.

“Since the moment he was born.”

She cradled her briefcase to her chest. “Poor thing, he sounds like me. I swear my father was reading the
Iliad
to me the instant I was conceived.”

Laughing, Julian led her out to the parking lot. She got into her white Mustang GT and followed his black Range Rover over to Esplanade. There were still a lot of homes in New Orleans that hadn’t been repaired since Katrina. It did her heart good to know that Julian’s friend would be kind enough to help out with the rebuilding. It said a lot for the man, especially given how old he must be.

She parked on the street behind Julian and grabbed her briefcase. As they neared the house that was teeming with volunteers, she tried to pick out who this incredible historian was that the leading expert in the world would consult.

There was a handsome older man handing a piece of lumber off to a younger man. He looked like he might be a historian.

Julian headed toward him. “Hey, Karl, could you tell Ash that I’m here to see him?”

“Sure.” He headed away from them and rounded a corner, out of sight.

Julian held his hand out for the book. Tory pulled it out and gave it over to him.

She scanned the area and looked up at the roof where five people were sitting. Two were women and three were young men. But it was the one off by himself who captured her attention. Wearing a black tank top, he had the best set of arms she’d ever seen. Tanned and gorgeous, every muscle was honed to perfection … and it wasn’t just his arms. The sweat from his hammering made the shirt cling to a muscled back that had been custom-made for licking.

He wore a black ball cap turned backwards and even from where she stood she could see the black earbuds that led to an iPod in the back pocket of his ragged jeans. His left foot kept time to the beat while he worked.

She sucked her breath in sharply at the sight he made. Mama, if that man had a face even remotely cute, he’d be a god among men.

Her phone started ringing. Distracted, Tory glanced at it to see her friend Kim calling. She shut it off and then looked back at the roof.

Dang, Mr. Hottie was gone. It was just as well … she didn’t have time for men anyway and a guy like that would never look at a woman like her. She glanced around again for the man they’d come to find.

She saw the one who’d gone for Acheron. He headed off to the other side of the house without saying a word. A couple of people came from around the corner and then she saw the guy from the roof …

Holy gods of Olympus. He was unbelievably tall, lean and ripped. His shirt clung to that perfect body and didn’t quite reach the waistband of his pants. Instead, it exposed a mouth-watering glimpse of a hard tanned washboard stomach. His jeans rode low on his narrow hips, dipping down so much that it made her wonder if he had on underwear. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses and was chewing gum in the sexiest manner she’d ever seen. Sweaty and gorgeous, he reached up to pull the ball cap off … and set free a mane of coal-black hair with a red stripe in the front.

No … surely this wasn’t …

Of course it was. She’d know that meticulous, sexual lope anywhere.

He slowly pulled the earbuds out as he approached them. “Hey, Julian.”

And when he looked at her, she wanted to scream.

“You fucking asshole!” she snarled, shocked at the fact that such language actually left her lips in front of Dr. Alexander. She’d very seldom in her life used such, but then she’d never hated anyone as much as she hated this guy.

She looked at Julian. “You go to him for advice? He’s only what? Five years old? I swear I own older sweaters.” She whirled around to go back to her car.

“Didn’t you want me to look at something?” the man taunted with a hint of laughter in his voice.

Those words put her into a realm of pissed off the likes of which she’d never known before. Raw, unmitigated fury blinded her and before she knew what she was doing, she’d jerked a hammer off the sawhorse beside her and thrown it at his head.

Unfortunately, he ducked it … then laughed. Laughed!

Unable to stand his mockery, she rushed to her car, hoping she didn’t give into the urge she had to run them both down.

*   *   *

Julian turned a wide-eyed stare at Ash. “Damn, Atlantean, what did you do?”

“I apparently made a new friend.”

Laughing nervously, Julian shook his head. “I made a friend like that once. The bastard almost gutted me.”

“Yeah.” Ash felt a wave of guilt that he’d hurt her so badly. But it was nothing compared to what would be done to him if she’d succeeded in her quest. “Guess I’ll get back to my roof.”

Julian inclined his head to the street. “I have to go and find her so I can return this.”

Ash went cold as he saw the small square package in Julian’s hand. “Return what?”

“It’s a journal she found on some dig in Greece.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.” Julian pulled it out and handed it to him.

Ash’s hand shook as he made himself betray no emotions. But inside … inside he was raw with grief. He opened the cover and saw the handwriting he knew so well.

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of my birth. Father woke me up with a new necklace and Mother and I spent the morning in our garden. Father was always kind enough to let her visit for the anniversary of my birth.

Ash clenched his teeth as he pictured the garden that Ryssa had kept so meticulously groomed. He’d never known that she’d shared it with her mother.

“You can read it, can’t you?”

Ash nodded. “It’s an old dialect. Provincial.”

“Well, I’d say it would make her happy to know that, but after her reaction to you, I’m not so sure.”

Neither was he. Then again, he deserved her anger. “Mind if I hang on to this?”

Julian hedged. “It’s not really mine. However, I trust you to do what’s right with it.”

“Believe me, I will.”

Julian inclined his head to him, then turned to leave.

Ash stood there, holding his sister’s journal. He couldn’t believe it’d survived so well. It’d been buried under the sea since the day he’d sunk Didymos. But unlike his mother, he’d made sure that all the living people were gone before he’d obliterated it.

Now he had a piece of his past returned to him like a haunting ghost. The question was what was he going to do with it?

CHAPTER THREE

Three days later as she walked across campus, toward her office, Tory was mad enough to spit out iron nails. How dare Dr. Alexander give her journal to that … that …

One day she was going to think of a word that would adequately describe Acheron’s particular breed of low, gutter, nasty, vile … ness.

“Dr. Kafieri?”

She turned to see Kyle Peltier, one of her students, running up to her. He was a typical junior, with blond hair and a sweet face. He’d just transferred from another school this semester and was one of her better students. “Yes?”

“A friend of mine asked me to give you this.” He held out a box wrapped in kraft paper.

She stared at the unexpected gift. “I don’t understand.”

“Me, either, but when he asks for a favor, you do the favor without asking why.”

Tory frowned at his cryptic words as she took the box. Kyle immediately rushed off before she could ask him anything more. “Well, that was interesting.” The box was heavy. She shook it, but couldn’t figure out what it might contain.

Her current luck, a bomb.

Pushing the thought aside, she made her way to her small office, grabbed a cup of coffee and then set about opening it, which was easier said than done. It was like the giver had hermetically sealed it shut with tape. “I hate when people do this!”

Finally, after no less than five minutes, she was able to detach the lid from the box and pull it free. Opening it up, she froze. It contained a hammer, a handful of olive leaves, a note attached to a single red rose, and a leather pouch the same size as a small book. Her heart pounding, she picked up the brown leather pouch and opened it to find her journal.

A smile curled her lips. So the little monster had done the right thing. Now she was able to laugh about the hammer and the olive “branches” he’d put inside. She picked up his note and opened it to find a beautiful masculine script.

I’m really not the asshole you think I am. The journal’s from a young woman in an isolated part of Greece and documents her life for about eighteen months. It’s pretty much boring reading, but if you want more details, call me. 555-602-1938.

Eirini,

Ash

Eirini—Greek for peace. Tory shook her head. Not the asshole she thought—yeah, right. But it was kind of a sweet gesture and he had returned her journal.

With a rose.

Holding it up, she inhaled the sweet scent and debated whether or not she ever wanted to lay eyes on the troll again.

*   *   *

With his arms crossed over his chest, Urian frowned at Ash while Ash sat on his throne in Katoteros and played the guitar. Almost as tall as Ash, Urian had long white-blond hair that he wore pulled back into a ponytail. A former Daimon, Urian had been saved by Ash after Urian’s father viciously cut his throat. And like his father, Urian had a most acerbic personality that he was more than proud of.

Not willing to deal with Urian’s ill mood swings or explain himself, Ash ignored the man while he continued to sing Matchbox 20’s “Push” under his breath.

Simi lay on her stomach, watching QVC as she devoured a tub of barbecue-flavored popcorn. She was dressed in black tights and a short plaid skirt with a pink and black peasant top and corset.