The Dark-Hunters (82 page)

“Answer my question, Bacchus,” Camulus said. “I’m not one of your dickless Greeks to be kept waiting for an answer.”

Rage flared in Dionysus’s eyes. “You better take a more civil tone with me, Cam. I’m not one of your flaccid Celts to shake in terror of your wrath. You want to fight, boy, bring it on.”

Camulus shot to his feet.

“Whoa, hang on a second,” Styxx said, trying to calm them down. “Let’s save the fighting for when you two take over the world, okay?”

They both looked at him as if he were insane to come between them.

No doubt, he was. But if they killed each other, he’d never die.

Cam glared at Dionysus. “Your pet is right,” he said. “But when I have my godhood back, you and I are going to talk.”

The gleam in Dionysus’s eyes said he was looking forward to it.

Styxx took a deep breath. “So, is the woman with Talon?” he asked Dionysus.

Dionysus smiled coldly. “Just like clockwork.” He looked at Camulus. “Are you sure this will immobilize him?”

“I never said it would immobilize him. I said it would neutralize him.”

“What’s the difference?” Styxx asked.

“The difference is he’s about to become an even bigger distraction and concern for Acheron. Yet another way to weaken the Atlantean in the end.”

Styxx liked the sound of that.

Now they would just have to ensure that the Dark-Hunter and the woman remained together. At least until Mardi Gras, when the threshold between this world and Kolasis would be thin enough to breach so that they could release the Atlantean Destroyer from captivity.

It had been six hundred years since the last time this had occurred and it would be over eight hundred years more before it occurred again.

Styxx cringed at the thought of living another eight hundred years. Another eight centuries of lonely, never-ending monotony and pain. Of watching his keepers come and go, grow old and die, as they lived out their mortal lives surrounded by family and friends.

They didn’t know how lucky they were.

As a human, he had once feared death. But that was ancient aeons ago.

Now the only thing Styxx feared was that he would never escape the horror of his existence. That he would keep on living, century after century, until the universe itself exploded.

He wanted out, and up until thirty years ago he hadn’t had a hope of it.

Now he did.

Dionysus and Camulus wanted to reclaim their godhoods and they needed the Destroyer and Acheron’s blood to do it. It was a pity Styxx didn’t have Atlantean blood in him or he would gladly offer himself up as sacrifice.

As it was, Acheron alone held the key to the Destroyer’s release.

Styxx was the only creature alive who could deliver Acheron to them.

Just a few days more and everything would be set right. The old powers would return to dominate the earth and he …

He would finally be free.

Styxx sighed in sweet expectation. All he had to do was keep the Dark-Hunters at each other’s throats and keep them distracted while he prevented the gods from killing each other.

If either Talon or Acheron ever realized what was happening, they would stop it. They alone had the power to do so.

It was him against them and this time, this time, he would finish what he had started eleven thousand years ago.

When he was through here, the Dark-Hunters would be without leadership.

He would be free and the earth as all knew it would be a whole new place entirely.

Styxx smiled.

Just a few days more …

Chapter 3

Talon woke up to find his arm on fire.

Hissing, he jerked his hand away from the sunlight that was streaming in through the window, across an extremely pink bed. He pushed himself back against the white wicker headboard to avoid any more of his body from coming into contact with the deadly rays.

He blew cool air across his hand, but still it burned and ached.

Where the hell was he?

For the first time in centuries, he felt a wave of uncertainty run through him.

Talon was never out of his element. Never out of control. His entire life was one of extreme balance and moderation.

Never in his Dark-Hunter existence had he found himself unsure or confounded.

But right now, he had no idea where he was, the time of day, or who the women were he heard on the other side of the pink drapes.

Squinting against the bright sunlight that painfully pierced his eyes, he looked around the odd room and realized he was trapped between two open windows. His heart hammered. There was no safe way off the bed. The only direction he could go was to his left and into the corner that was occupied by a frothy pink nightstand.

Damn.

Through the pounding pain in his head, the night before came flooding back to him with stunning clarity. The attack.

The woman …

The great big whatever slamming into him.

Though his body ached and was sore, his Dark-Hunter powers had allowed him to heal while he slept. In a few hours, even the soreness would be gone.

Until then, he needed out of this death trap of sunlight. Closing his eyes, Talon willed a dark cloud to cover the sun so that the bright daylight would no longer play havoc with his eyesight.

If he wanted to, he could summon enough clouds to turn the day sky as dark as night. But it wouldn’t do him any good.

Daylight was still daylight.

His unique Dark-Hunter powers gave him a great deal of control over the elements, weather and healing, but not control over Apollo’s domain. Light or dark, the daytime still belonged to Apollo, and even though Apollo was technically retired, the Greek god would never tolerate a Dark-Hunter walking about on his shift.

If Apollo caught sight of him outside or near a window during the light of day, Talon would be nothing more than a strip of fried bacon on the sidewalk.

Extra-crispy Celt didn’t appeal to him in the least.

His eyes no longer burning, Talon started to leave the bed, then paused. There was nothing between him and the patchouli- and turpentine-scented sheets.

What’s happened to my clothes?
He was quite sure he hadn’t undressed himself last night.

Had they…?

He frowned as he searched his memory. No, it wasn’t possible. If he’d been awake enough to have sex with her, he would have been awake enough to leave this place long before sunup.

“Where is it?”

He looked up at hearing the unfamiliar voice on the other side of the pink tie-dyed fabric, which was hung to form a wall around the bed.

Two seconds later, the fabric slid open to reveal an attractive woman who appeared to be in her late thirties. Her long black hair was pulled into a thick braid and she wore a long flowing black skirt and tunic.

She looked remarkably similar to the woman he’d met last night. And at first glance, she would be easy to mistake for her younger counterpart.

“Hey, Sunshine, your friend’s awake. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, Starla. I didn’t ask.”

Oh, but this is getting stranger and stranger.

Unperturbed by his presence, the woman walked into the room to the side of the bed where the nightstand stood. “You look like a Steve,” she said as she bent down, lifted up the pink scarves, and started digging through a stack of magazines that was hidden beneath it. “Are you hungry, Steve?”

Before he could answer, she raised her voice. “It’s not here.”

“It’s under the old copies of
Art Papers.”

“It’s not here.”

Sunshine entered the room. Walking with the grace of a fairy princess, she wore a long-sleeved purple dress so bright, he had to squint from the hue. As she crossed in front of the window, he realized the material was rather sheer, gifting him with a pleasant view of her lush, ample curves and the fact that she wore nothing beneath that dress.

Nothing except her tanned skin.

His throat went dry.

She was wiping paint from her hands with a towel as she moved to the nightstand without even glancing his way.

“It’s right here,” she said, pulling out a magazine and handing it to the older woman.

Finally, Sunshine looked to the bed and met his gaze. “Are you hungry?”

“Where are my clothes?”

She cast a sheepish look at Starla. “Did you ask his name?”

“It’s Steve.”

“It’s not Steve.”

Sunshine paid him no attention as she turned Starla to face him. Both women stared at him lying there on the bed as if he were some inanimate curiosity.

Talon moved the pink sheet up higher over his waist. Then, suddenly self-conscious, he moved his bare leg under the cover as well, and bent his knee so that the center part of his body wasn’t quite so obvious underneath the thin cotton.

Still the two women stared at him.

“You see what I was telling you?” Sunshine asked. “Does he not have the most incredible aura you’ve ever seen?”

“He’s definitely an old soul. With Druid blood. I’m sure of it.”

“You think?” Sunshine asked.

“Oh, yeah. We need to talk him into letting us do a past-life regression and see what we come up with.”

Okay, they were both nuts.

“Women,” he said sharply. “I need my clothes, and I need them
now.”

“See,” Sunshine said. “See the way his aura changes. It’s absolutely living.”

“You know, I’ve never seen that before. It’s really different.” Then Starla drifted out of the room as she flipped through the magazine.

Sunshine was still wiping paint off her hands. “Hungry?”

How did she do that? How could she shift from one topic to the other and then back again?

“No,” he said, trying to keep her on the main point. “I want my clothes.”

She actually cringed. “What happened to the tags in your pants?”

Talon frowned at the odd question. He was keeping a rein on his irritation and temper, but something about being around this woman made it difficult. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, you know they were covered in blood…”

A bad feeling settled into his stomach. “And?”

“I was going to clean them, and—”

“Oh shit, you washed them?”

“It wasn’t the washing that damaged them so much as the drying.”

“You dried my
leather
pants?”

“Well, I didn’t know they were leather,” she said softly. “They felt really soft and strange so I thought they were pleather or something. I wash my pleather dress all the time without it disintegrating and shrinking like your pants did.”

Talon rubbed his forehead with his hand. This was so not good. How on earth could he get out of her apartment in the middle of the day with no clothes on?

“You know,” she continued, “you really shouldn’t cut the tags out of your clothes.”

It had been a long time since he had felt real, deep aggravation, but he was starting to feel it now. “Those were
custom,
handmade leather pants. They never have tags.”

“Oh,” she said, looking even more sheepish. “I would have bought you some more, but since they didn’t have tags in them, I didn’t know what size to buy.”

“Great. I live to be stuck in strange places, naked.”

She started to smile at him, then pressed her lips together as if thinking better of it. “I have some pink sweatpants that really wouldn’t fit you, and even if they did, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to wear them anyway, would you?”

“No. Did you wash my wallet too?”

“Oh, no. I took it out of your pants.”

“Good. Where is it?”

She became quiet again and a feeling of doomed dread consumed him.

“Do I want to know?” he asked.

“Well…” He was beginning to hate that word since it seemed to portend doom for him and his belongings. “I put it on the washing machine at the Laundromat with your keys, and then I realized that I didn’t have change for the washer, so I went to the change machine. I was only gone a second, but when I got back your wallet was gone.”

Talon grimaced. “And my keys?”

“Well, you know when you wash just one thing it unbalances the machine? Your keys ended up getting jarred off the top of it and they went down a small drain.”

“Didn’t you get them back?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t reach them. I had three other people try, but they’re gone too.”

Talon sat in stunned disbelief. Worse, he couldn’t even get mad at her since she’d only been trying to help him. But he really, really wanted to be mad.

“I have no money, no pants, no keys. Do I still have my jacket?”

“Yes, it’s safe. And I saved your Snoopy Pez dispenser from the washer too. And your boots and knife thing are right here,” she said, holding them up from the floor by the bed.

Talon nodded, feeling strangely relieved by the knowledge that she hadn’t destroyed everything he’d had on him last night. Thank the gods his motorcycle had been left by the Brewery. He shuddered to think what she might have done to it. “Is there a phone I can use?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Could you please bring it to me?”

“It’s not cordless. I always lose those things or I drop them someplace and break them. The last one I had ended up drowning in the toilet.”

Talon looked uneasily at the woman and the faint sunlight in the room. He wondered which one of them was the most lethal to him.

“Would you mind pulling down the shades?” he asked.

She frowned. “Does the sunlight bother you?”

“I’m allergic to it,” he said, falling into the lie Dark-Hunters used when caught in similar situations.

Although he doubted if
any
Dark-Hunter had ever found himself in a situation similar to this one.

“Really? I’ve never known anyone allergic to sunlight before.”

“Well, I am.”

“So you’re like a vampire?”

The word hit just a little too close to home. “Not exactly.”

She moved to the window, but when she pulled the shade down, it fell.

Gray sunlight spilled across the bed.

With a curse, Talon shot into the corner, narrowly missing the pale sunbeams.

“Sunshine, I…” Starla’s voice broke off as she entered the room and caught sight of him standing naked in the corner. She eyed him in an odd, detached way, as if he were an interesting piece of furniture.