The Dark-Hunters (625 page)

Phobos held his hands up. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s not a felon. I just need to talk to him for a minute.”

The secretary snorted. “I thought you said you knew him.”

“I do.”

“Then how are you going to talk to a man who’s mute?”

Phobos snapped his attention to Delphine, who was as shocked as he was by that disclosure.

Surely Zeus wouldn’t have been that cruel …

What was she? Insane? Of course he would.

Sick at the thought, Delphine looked back to where “Jericho” had his head under the hood of another car. What exactly had been done to him? Zeus had taken his godhood, his life and most likely his voice and eye.

Getting his help was looking less and less likely by the second.

“You stay here,” Phobos said as he put his hand on the knob of the door that led from the office to the garage.

No problem there. She’d rather confront a rabid lion than try to gain a favor from a man the gods had screwed over so badly. Why on earth or beyond would
this
man ever help them?

Hoping for the best, she walked to the window to watch Phobos. She closed her eyes and opened herself up to the ether so that she could hear their conversation.

The shop was loud with mechanical noises and a radio playing “Live Your Life” by T.I. Several of the men were chatting and joking while they worked. One was singing along, off-key, while he added air to the tires of a red Jeep.

Phobos paused beside the white Intrepid where Cratus stood.

Cratus glanced up, and his face froze an instant before he looked back down and continued working.

Phobos stepped closer. “We need to talk.”

Cratus ignored him.

“Cratus—”

“I don’t know what you’re doing in here,” an older man in a coverall matching Cratus’s said as he stopped beside Phobos, “but you’re wasting your time trying to talk to old Jericho there. Boy can’t speak.” The man shook his head. “Not that he needs to. The way he works on a car is magic.” The man looked at the others and laughed. “Trying to talk to Jericho…” More laughter joined his before he walked off to work on the Jeep where the man was singing.

“Jericho,” Phobos tried again. “Please give me one minute of your time.”

If looks could kill, Phobos would be a distant memory. Jericho flipped the wrench in his hand before he walked over to another car.

Phobos glanced at Delphine, who shrugged in response. She had no idea how to persuade him.

Sighing, Phobos followed him. “C’mon, I—”

Jericho spun on him so fast that Delphine didn’t even realized he’d moved until he had Phobos slung over the hood of a car and pinned in place by a tight hold on this throat. “Fuck off and die, you putrid bastard,” he snarled in the ancient Greek language of the gods as he banged Phobos’s head furiously against the hood.

Every mechanic who heard his deep growl paused to stare at him.

“Be damned,” a tall, lean African-American man said. “He can speak after all. Anybody know what language that was?”

“Russian?”

“Nah, I think it’s German.”

“Dude,” a younger guy said, pulling at Cratus’s arm. “You’re going to dent the hood and when you do,
that
will come out of your paycheck.”

Grimacing, Cratus slung Phobos off the hood like a rag doll. Phobos rolled halfway through the bay before he caught himself.

His features looking shaken, Phobos pushed himself to his feet. When he spoke, he continued to use their language so that the humans wouldn’t understand them. “We need your help, Cratus.”

As he moved past Phobos, Cratus drove his shoulder into Phobos’s, making Phobos grimace in pain and rub his arm. He went back to the Intrepid. “Cratus is dead.”

“You’re the only one—”

Cratus growled at him. “You’re dead to me.
All
of you. Now get out.”

Delphine projected her thoughts to Phobos. “Should I come in?”

“No. I don’t think it’ll help.” Phobos turned to Cratus. “The fate of the entire world is in your hands. Don’t you care?”

The feral look Cratus gave him said no. Well, that, and for him to go to Tartarus and rot.

Delphine sighed. What were they going to do now? They needed the god of strength. One who could pull power from the primal Source to combat the most evil of beings. Without Cratus, they didn’t stand a chance of winning against Noir and his army of Skoti.

The older man walked over to Cratus. “So what country are you from, anyway?”

Cratus ignored him as he returned to his work in silence.

Phobos moved to stand by his side. “Zeus is willing to forgive you for what you did. He’s offering you your godhood back. We need you desperately.”

When Cratus still refused to respond, Phobos let out a frustrated breath. “Look, I understand why you’re mad. But my brother’s life is on the line here. If you don’t help me, Noir
will
kill him.”

Cratus didn’t even twitch as he worked.

A muscle worked in Phobos’s jaw. “Fine. When the world ends and everyone here is dead, remember you’re the only one of us who could have stopped it.”

Cratus continued ignoring him.

Phobos turned and headed back to her.

Delphine kept waiting for Cratus to reconsider and stop Phobos. But he really appeared to have meant what he’d said. He didn’t care.

Even she, who had nothing save muted emotions, had more feelings than this man showed.

“We’re so dead,” Phobos said in a dire tone as he rejoined her. “Maybe we ought to join the other team before they pound us into hash.”

Delphine cast a hopeless glance back at the man in the garage. “Maybe I should try.”

He shook his head. “There’s no reaching him. He’s past help.”

“I can try to contact him in his dreams tonight. He won’t be able to run from me then.”

He didn’t tell her no, but his look reiterated the fact that he thought she was wasting her time. “You want backup?”

“I think I’ll be more effective alone.”

Phobos snorted. “Good luck. If you need me, I’ll be on standby.”

Delphine glanced back at Cratus. He was working, but she saw the agony in his one eye. It was so deep and biting that it made her ache for him.…

How strange to have those feelings. But they meant nothing. She had a mission to fulfill.

I’ll be seeing you tonight.
And she definitely didn’t intend to fail.

*   *   *

Jericho paused as he saw the grease on his hand covering the tattoo he’d used to hide the words of condemnation his own mother had burned into his skin at Zeus’s command. Old memories tore through him anew as he thought about the way the Olympians had turned on him.

And all because he’d refused to murder an infant. Closing his eyes, he remembered that one defining moment so clearly. The small hut … the goddess’s screams as she begged him for mercy.

“Kill me, not my baby, please! For the sake of Zeus, the baby’s innocent. I’ll do anything.”

He’d tightened his grip on the child, fully intending to fulfill his duty. The baby’s father had gone at his back. But the god of pain, Dolor, had caught him and cut him down before the goddess who’d tried so desperately to save her family.

That baby’s only sin had been its birth.

And as he’d looked into that small, trusting face and the baby had smiled up at him, unaware of what was going on, he’d faltered.

“Kill it,” Dolor had snarled.

Cratus had pulled his dagger out to slice its throat. Laughing, the baby had reached for him, its eyes twinkling with fire and joy as its tiny fingers wrapped around his large hand.

So he’d done the only thing he could. He’d used his powers to put the baby to sleep, then smuggled it out and given it over to peasants to raise.

One moment of compassion.

An eternity of shame, abuse and degradation.

Now they dared to ask him for a favor after all they’d done to him. They were out of their collective minds.

And he was through with them.

“Hey, man,” Darice said, coming up to him. “Why didn’t you ever tell us you could speak?”

Because talking to Darice might lead to friendship. And if he made that mistake, Darice would die right before him. Brutally and mercilessly.

Zeus had taken everything from him.

So he ignored Darice while he unbolted the alternator that needed to be replaced.

Darice made a sound of disgust. “Whatever. Guess you’re too good to associate with the rest of us.”

Let them think that. It was much easier than trying to explain a truth they would never accept. He was alone in this world. As always.

Darice wandered over to work on the Toyota that had come in earlier. He and Paul joked good-naturedly while they set about flushing the radiator and putting in new plugs.

Jericho had just pulled out the alternator when a shadow fell over him. Looking up, he found the shop owner, Jacob Landry. Short and pudgy, Landry had salt-and-pepper hair that was receding and a pair of greedy blue eyes.

“I heard there was some trouble here with you earlier.”

Jericho shook his head no.

“Um-hmmm. Charlotte done told me that you can speak, too. Is that true?”

He nodded.

“Boy, why you want to lie to me? I done told you when I hired you that I don’t play that bullshit. You want to work here, you come to work on time, keep your personal life at home and give me no lip and no lies. Comprende?”

“Yes, sir,” he said as he tried to keep the hostility out of his voice. He hated that he was reduced to belly-crawling to assholes like this just so that he could eat. “It won’t happen again, Mr. Landry. I promise.”

Landry poked him sharply in the shoulder. “It better not.”

Jericho tightened his grip on the wrench in his hand, wanting to give Landry a taste of what he was capable of. There had been a time when he’d have gutted anyone who talked to him like that. Never mind someone who’d actually dared to touch him uninvited. Before his human life had begun, everyone who came into contact with him quivered in fear of his strength and sternness.

But Landry was a bully. He enjoyed his minuscule power over the people who worked for him. He only felt good about himself when they were groveling for their livelihood.

And as much as it sucked, Jericho needed this job. As the world became more modern, it was getting harder and harder to find people who could make fake IDs at a reasonable price and who were willing to let him live off the grid.

Other immortals were allowed to accumulate wealth, but that, too, was beyond him. Any time he tried to save even a dollar, Zeus cleaned him out. One catastrophe after another.

So had been his existence for so many centuries that he no longer even bothered to count them.

He was nothing and he would never have anything again. Not even dignity.

Sighing, he went back to work, hating himself and this life.

You could change that.…

It had to be bad for Zeus to send someone to ask for his help.

You could be a god again.…

The dream of that thought tormented him. It was tempting except for one thing. He’d have to look at the very beings who’d turned their backs on him and left him to this pathetic state. Every one of those bastards had ignored him.

Every one of them.

Or worse, they’d tortured him.

Every single night. For thousands of years, the Dolophoni—the children of the Furies—and the dream gods had come to him and killed him. And every morning, he was resurrected to live this miserable existence right where he’d left off the night before.

Over and over. Bloody and violent. No matter how hard he tried to fight them off, he held no powers against them. They gleefully held him down and beat him or carved him to maximize the pain of his sentence. Every organ in his body had been torn out of him so many times that the pain was seared into his DNA. He dreaded every night and the horror it would ultimately bring.

Just last night, two of them had cut his heart out …

Again.

At the end of the day, he would never forgive what had been done to him. So what if something was threatening the world? If the world was to end, then at least he’d have some peace.

Maybe this time he’d actually stay dead.

*   *   *

Delphine returned to Olympus so she could spend the rest of the day researching her latest target. For hours, she watched him work in solitude. While the other men joked and laughed with each other, he kept to himself. Bitterly alone. Every now and again, she’d see him look up at the others and their camaraderie with a glint of longing so potent it made her ache.

They ignored him as if he were invisible.

At six-thirty, he washed up after the others were finished and leaving. He pulled his coveralls off, tucked them into a beat-up black cloth backpack that he slung over his shoulder and headed out on an older-styled motorcycle.

He stopped briefly to go into a small grocery store on a corner where he grabbed a loaf of bread, chicken salad spread, a paperback novel, and a six-pack of beer. Without speaking to a single person, he paid for it, tucked it into his backpack and went home to a tiny one-room efficiency apartment. The place was so rundown even the scuffed, chipped linoleum floor dipped in the middle. She wondered how the building kept from falling down around him.

It had to be the most depressing thing she’d ever seen.

There was no furniture whatsoever. Not a single piece, or even a TV or computer. Worn blankets were pinned to the windows for curtains, and his bed was only a threadbare sleeping blanket on the floor with a single pillow that was so old and flat he might as well not have it. Next to that, he had one additional pair of shoes and a small stack of clothes and one old wool jacket.

That was it.

Her heart clenched as she watched him open a beer, then wash the coveralls in the sink before he hung them up to dry in the rundown bathroom. Brushing his hand through his dark hair, he went back to the kitchen—which had no stove and only a filthy old refrigerator—to make a single sandwich out of the bread that had been flattened in his backpack. He ate it in silence while sitting on the sleeping blanket, reading his book.