The Darkest Pleasure (30 page)

She needed him. He released Aeron instantly and rose to shaky legs. Aeron’s body went limp, but he remained awake, watching Reyes. Legion began kissing Aeron’s face and chest, cooing to the warrior.

A gun cocked. “No one moves until we figure this out.”

Reyes paid the command no heed, nor did he acknowledge whoever had issued it. He rushed to Danika and crouched beside her. The stones around her were soaked. She’d pulled the knife from her side, opening the wounds. She was pale, too pale, and tears burned in her eyes.

“I tried…to help,” she said with a weak smile. “For once.”

“You did, angel. You did help me.” Gently as possible, trying not to cry himself, he gathered her in his arms. Her muscles were so frail, she was unable to move on her own. “Lucien, I need you!”

Footsteps. “I’m here.” Lucien stood beside the bed, mismatched eyes concerned.

“Don’t take her soul,” Reyes choked out. “Just…don’t. I need time to fix her.”

“You know if I’m summoned to do so, I cannot stop myself,” was the guarded reply.

Reyes smoothed a shaky hand over Danika’s brow. “Stay with me, angel.” Never had he felt so helpless.

“Always,” she said with another of those weak smiles. “Love you.”

Oh, gods. The words, delivered now, nearly slayed him. “I love you. So much. I cannot live without you.” He didn’t turn
away from her as he begged, “Lucien, find a healer. Bring him here. Please.”

Lucien nodded and disappeared.

There were multiple fists against the door next to his, and then feminine commands could be heard. “Open this door! You didn’t have to lock us back in. We wouldn’t have interrupted you. What’s going on?”

“Danika. Danika, are you okay?”

“Let them in,” Reyes shouted, praying she would be strengthened by her family.

Someone opened the door, and two of the women rushed inside Reyes’s bedroom. They spotted Danika in his arms, bleeding, and gasped. They were rushing to her side a moment later. The third, the grandmother, was in casts and had to be carried.

One of the warriors shouted, “No, Aeron. No!”

Another growled, “I don’t want to shoot you!”

That’s when Reyes saw that Aeron had stood. Having all four women in the same room must have heightened his bloodlust to another degree, giving him all the vigor he needed.

Danika’s sister screamed as the warrior reached for her, missed as she scrambled away.

Her mother turned, splaying her arms to block Danika. “Leave my babies alone, you animal!”

Hearing this, Danika struggled to sit up.

“No,” Reyes commanded. “Don’t move.”

Aeron strode forward. The warriors were jumping in front of him, trying to knock him down. No one shot at Aeron, though, as they’d threatened. Reyes couldn’t blame them. In the end, he hadn’t been able to kill his friend, either.

Aeron batted the seasoned warriors away like flies, getting closer and closer to the women. Legion was flying between the warriors, as well, biting them as she’d done Reyes. “No hurt my friend.”

Unlike Reyes, they didn’t remain standing and didn’t grow stronger from the pain.

They fell, unmoving, the creature’s saliva poison to them.

And soon there was no one standing in the way of Aeron as he bore down on his targets.

T
HIS IS IT
. There’s no more time.

Paris dropped to his knees for a third time in the center of his room. He didn’t have to cut himself, didn’t have to summon Cronus, for the god king appeared of his own accord the moment Paris hit the floor.

“I have already raised Sienna from the dead,” the king said. “She waits in my throne room and can be here in seconds. She can be yours, if only you’ll say the words.”

Oh, to hold her again. To touch her soft skin, to gaze into her lovely eyes. To have her delicate hands tracing his body with reverence. She hadn’t liked him, but she had been attracted to him. She had allowed him inside her body, and it had been the greatest moment of his endless life.

“If you do not choose her, perhaps I will keep her for myself. It’s been quite a while since I allowed myself a mortal.” Cronus shrugged, lifting the hem of his white robe.

Paris bit the inside of his mouth. He should have known better than to summon this god and beg a favor. The thought of Cronus touching her, kissing her, sickened him.
She is mine!
“Why do you hate us so much?”

“Hate you?” Cronus laughed, but there was no humor to the sound. “Hate is too simple an explanation. You could say I’m prone to dislike anyone who once served my enemies. And yet I admit I am still intrigued by you Lords of the Underworld. There is more humanity in you than I would have expected to see in men who are part demon. Even now, as the one called Aeron stalks toward his prey, he screams inside his mind to stop, to turn away.”

Paris stilled.

A sigh. “He has surprised me, I must say. He had the grandmother in his grasp, had only to cut her throat. Yet he managed to suppress his bloodlust long enough to escape her. He even managed to wipe the memory from his own mind. The will-power required for such a thing…I marvel.”

But Aeron would not be able to make himself forget the slaughter of those four innocent women, Paris knew. From the beginning, the tormented warrior had known the act would change his life forever. And not for the better. Aeron would be eternally haunted.

So would Paris, knowing he could have done something to prevent it.

“I see the way your mind is churning,” Cronus said, crouching in front of him. Their gazes locked, blue against fathomless brown. “Know that if you choose Aeron, you will never again see Sienna. I will make sure of it. Just because I can.”

“And if I choose Sienna?”

“Aeron will slay the Ford women. All but Danika. Her, I have decided to keep. The others are useless to me, so are of no consequence.”

“Why, then, did you damn Aeron’s soul with the killing of them?” Paris asked, incredulous.

Cronus shrugged. “I knew one of them was my Eye, my seer into the spiritual realms, but I did not know which one until recently. I thought to destroy the entire bloodline so it could not be used against me again. Therefore, all had to die. Yet now, having watched the youngest girl, I am reminded of all the Eye once did for me—before Zeus seduced her from my side and used her against me. Unlike her ancestor, Danika’s heart has been given. She will not be swayed by other gods.”

“Why not simply free Aeron, then, if you no longer have need to destroy Danika and her family? If you
want
Danika alive? Why put his freedom in my hands?”

“Because you presented me with a question I have come to realize my humans face daily. Who is of greater import, a lover or a friend? And now, demon, I am through waiting for your answer.”

Paris gulped. The ultimate choice. He’d known he would have to make it, but here and now, in the moment of truth, he knew he would hate himself, no matter his decision.

“Choose,” Cronus said, his voice booming angrily. “While Sienna paces the heavens, Aeron is even now upon the women. He is raising his dagger. Sienna is crying, uncertain of her future. Aeron is—”

“Aeron,” he said, falling forward, already mourning all over again the only woman he ever could have loved. “I choose Aeron.”

W
ITHOUT WARNING
, Aeron collapsed beside the bed. Legion curled into his side, stroking his face. Reyes watched, blinking in shock as a smile lifted the now-sleeping warrior’s lips, and peace, such peace, smoothed the lines around his eyes.

What the hell had just happened? Aeron had been poised for the deathblow, Reyes unable to act. And then everything had stopped, frozen, no one able to breathe, to move. Then the sleeping, poisoned warriors awoke as if nothing had ever been wrong. And
then
Aeron had fallen.

Everyone turned and looked at everyone else, confusion scenting the air. Lucien arrived a moment later with the healer, a sputtering human who almost soiled himself when he spied the huge crowd of hulking warriors.

“Reyes,” Danika whispered.

Bending down, Reyes kissed her temple. “No talking, love. Save your strength. The healer will—”

“I’m having a vision.”

He did not care about a vision; he cared about her. “Try to push it to the back of your mind. Just stay with me while the
healer patches you up, all right?” He turned to the man in question, commanding, “Fix her. Give her Tylenol. Whatever you have to do, fix her.”

The human kicked into gear, rushing forward. “Of course, of course.”

“I’m in heaven, lying on a marble dais.” Danika smiled, her eyes glassy. “I’m covered in white and the angels are singing.”

“What? No, no.” He shook his head in violent denial as he realized what she was saying. “Hold on, just hold on.”

The healer crouched beside her, already removing tools from a black case.

“Hurry,” he ordered the human. But he needn’t have bothered. Danika’s eyes closed and her head lolled to the side. She disappeared a moment later, and he was clasping only air.

His scream echoed through the heavens and earth, finally resounding in hell.

“W
HERE IS SHE
?”

“What the hell did you do with her?”

Reyes was slumped in a chair in the entertainment room, a glass of ambrosia-laced brandy in his hand. Danika’s mother and sister stood in front of the television where homemade movies of Danika as a child played. Her grandmother sat beside him, her cast-clad legs outstretched.

He’d had Lucien fetch the movies three days ago and had not left the chair since. Right now, they were his only link to Danika and, hopefully, his key to finding her.
Danika
.
I miss you, my love.
He didn’t care that Hunters were most likely gearing for another attack. Didn’t care that his friends were preparing for war.

Footsteps. A slap across his cheek. He fingered his jaw, but for once he was too numb to enjoy the pain.

“Talk to us!” the sister demanded.

“Please,” the mother begged. “Fight your evil side and help us.”

“Leave him alone,” the grandmother told them, patting his hand. “I used to see demons in my dreams, and this man is no demon. He loves our girl and is doing everything in his power to bring her back.”

Was he? He felt as if he should be doing more. But what, he didn’t know. “If I knew where she was, she would have been rescued by now,” he finally answered. “I failed her. There. Does that make you feel better?”

Silence.

“Well, get her back!” Tinka, the mother, shouted.

“I don’t know how.” The admission was painful, so painful, and not in a good way.

Five days had passed since Danika had vanished. In those five days, Aeron had regained consciousness, his need to kill completely gone, as if it had never been a part of him. He’d apologized—
forgive me. Please forgive me, for I doubt I will ever be able to forgive myself. I love you, would never purposely…Gods, Reyes, I’m so sorry
—and Reyes had done the same: begged for forgiveness.
I love you, too, my friend. I should have taken better care of you. Can you ever forgive me?

They’d embraced, and Legion, who was never far from Aeron’s side, had cheered. But Reyes’s sense of loss had not faded. He had summoned the gods over and over, praying, begging, all to no avail.

He didn’t know what else to do.

Tinka and Ginger, the sister, began pacing and muttering in front of him. Every so often, he could see the TV. He thought he heard a young Danika laughing.

“Who took her?” one asked.

“I heard one of the monsters—uh,
warriors
—say it was the work of the gods,” the other replied. “And we all heard Danika say that she saw herself in the heavens.”

“If Danika saw the heavens, she’s in the heavens,” the grandmother said. “Trust me. I know.”

“Okay, then. Let’s pretend the warrior was right and the gods took her.
Why
was she taken by them?”

“Probably because she is a portal.” He refused to use the word
was.
That would mean Danika was…dead. Gone. No longer reachable.

All three women stopped and eyed him sharply. “What are you talking about? What kind of portal?”

He explained, trying to hold back his tears. Pain was close
to whimpering inside his head. On the screen, Danika laughed again. What was she doing? He leaned to the side. She was blowing out birthday candles. He imagined a child of hers—of
theirs
—would look just as sweet, and he would have smiled at the image if he hadn’t been so miserable.

“My baby was a portal between—”

“Is,” he and the demon growled in unison. “
Is
a portal. She’s still alive.”

“That’s just not possible,” Tinka said. Then she held up her hands. “She’s alive, that’s not what I meant. I just…It’s too hard to believe she was some kind of gateway between heaven and hell.”

“You’ve seen wings pop out of a man’s back, daughter,” the grandmother said staunchly. “Believe it.”

“But how could I not have known?” Tinka whispered brokenly. “How could I have missed something like that?”

“Her dreams,” Reyes said. “It was always her dreams.”

“I was once just like her.” Mallory uttered a sad little sigh. “First time I saw one of her paintings, I nearly fainted. I was frightened for her, I admit, and didn’t know what to do. Had I not fought my own visions so terribly, I might have realized what was going on and might have been able to help her cope.”

“You did help her. The stories you told her gave her the strength and courage to face her nightmares rather than run from them.” His eyes burned and he rubbed them with the back of his wrist.
My Danika, sweet Danika.

Mallory squeezed his hand.

Tinka’s pacing renewed. Again, Reyes was given a momentary glimpse of the TV screen. There was a blur as the camera stopped rolling and picked up on another date. In this one, Danika was probably eleven years old and painting. She was covered in the stuff, a living rainbow.

He felt closer to her like this. He could not, would not, give her up. Had begged Anya for a miracle, like the one she’d per
formed for Maddox and Ashlyn. She’d tried to help him, but had failed. He’d even asked his friends to take his head and end this torment. They’d refused. In the end, he’d been a bit relieved, knowing his soul would go to hell, placing him only farther away from Danika.

Somehow, someway, she was in heaven. Alive—he would not believe otherwise, ever—but there all the same.

If he had to earn his way there, he would do it. They
would
be together again.

Ginger and Tinka seemed to have forgotten his presence as they continued to pace and talk.

“The man does seem to love her.”

“
Seem
is the key word. I don’t care what my mother says; I can’t forget what he is. What
all
of them are.”

“Demons.”

“Yes. The very demons Danika used to paint.”

Still does,
he thought, but remained silent. Damn them. He wanted them out of his way so he could see the screen fully and without interruption.

“But he cried when she disappeared.”

“He sobbed, actually.”

Still want to.
Pain curled into a ball in the corner of his mind, licking at its emotional wounds. The creature had fallen in love with Danika just as Reyes had. Was lost without her. They were two halves of the same whole, so Reyes supposed it stood to reason they would love the same woman.

“If anyone can bring her home, it’s him.”

He listened vaguely, still drinking in those flickering visions of little Danika. Even then she’d been an angel, full of light and hope for the future.
I’m nothing without her.

“Are you listening to me?” Ginger stood in front of him, hands anchored on her hips. She was taller than Danika, even thinner. Pretty, but she was not his angel.

“No,” he said. “Move.”

Tinka joined her daughter, linking their arms. “There has to be something else you can try.”

“Bring her back,” Ginger said, “and we’ll stop trying to convince her to leave you.”

“Not that it did any good. She wanted you in her…in her…” Tinka sobbed. “In her life.”

The two women embraced. Reyes’s chest ached.

Pain took no notice.
Want my angel.

Me, too.

Need her.

Ginger and Tinka released each other and clomped off to the corner to whisper. Finally Reyes was able to see the screen in full detail. There was Danika, proudly waving her hand in front of the finished painting.

“They mean well,” Mallory said.

“I know.”

“Maybe, if I concentrate hard enough, my visions will come back. Maybe I can discover a way to fix this.”

Maybe. But he would not get his hopes up. Reyes noticed the design of Danika’s painting for the first time. He frowned, grabbed the remote control. The camera panned away from the painting, showing a frowning woman—a younger version of the grandmother, who was studying the colors and the lines.

Reyes pressed Rewind. When the painting reappeared, he pressed Pause. Ginger strode back in front of him, determination radiating from her.

“Move,” he told her.

“Uh, excuse me. You—”

“Move!”

Gasping, she raced out of the way. “Fine. No need to shout.”

His gaze locked on the painting once more. Could it be—was it…? It was. It really was. He shot to his feet, numbness giving way to anticipation. “Mallory. Look at the painting and tell me what you see.”

She obeyed, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God. Is that…is that…?”

“I think so.” He might just have found the way to save Danika.

D
ANIKA FLOATED
on a sea of black, surrounded by winter’s chill.

Every so often she could feel the brush of fingertips across her face and neck, and knew a cloth draped her naked body because the cool silk somehow kept her from drifting away into absolute nothingness. Too, she periodically heard a voice inside her head.

Tell me what you see.

She knew what the speaker wanted: to know what the demons in hell and angels in heaven were doing and saying. She also knew the speaker couldn’t invade her mind without an invitation, for he had tried, over and over again, to scan her visions and had failed.

Purposefully, she projected an image of Reyes. Her shadow warrior. Her love. Oh, how she missed him. Craved him. He had held her tenderly while she’d bled, his body offering her strength, his eyes begging her to heal. She’d wanted so badly to stay with him but ghostly hands had grabbed her and jerked her away.

She hated the owner of those hands and knew it was the man even now shouting,
Enough of this. Do not show me the demon again.

I will show you nothing else. Return me to him.

Silence.

How much time passed while the hands continued to touch her, the cloth continued to hold her, she didn’t know. Time was endless here…immeasurable. There was no more denying who and what she was.

I just want to go home.

The speaker once again approached her.
Tell me what you see.

Everything inside her stilled. For a moment that had sounded like—

Tell me what you see.

Reyes! The voice belonged to Reyes. Her heart sped up, her blood rushing hot and fast in her veins.
My love,
she said.

I’m here, sweet Danika. I’m here.
Two fingers traced her lips.

But the chill didn’t leave her. No, the cold remained. The scent of sandalwood didn’t fill her nose. She smelled only the sweetness of the clouds and the drift of baby powder.

In that moment, she knew it wasn’t Reyes who had spoken and her joy plummeted, fury taking its place.
Reyes doesn’t call me his sweet Danika, you sick bastard!

There was a rumble of anger.
Reyes will die by my hand if you do not tell me what you see!
The voice had returned to normal.

In her mind, she screamed and screamed and screamed. The sound was one of anguish and pain, agony and anger, and she projected it into the mind of her tormentor.

Stop. Enough.

Will you hurt him?

No.

She didn’t know whether she could trust him or not, but she quieted.
Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?

You can help me rule this world. Together, we will ensure the safety and prosperity of the heavens. No harm shall befall us.

Who are you?
she insisted.

Let me show you.
A moment later, an image of a tall, lean man floated into her head. He had a kind but formidable face, with a head of thick silver hair. He was wearing a white toga and sitting upon a bejeweled throne.

She recognized him from the painting she’d made for Reyes. Cronus.

The image in her mind shifted and she saw a woman reclining in a chaise beside the king’s throne. A beautiful woman with long pale hair and wide green eyes. Like Danika, but not. The pair smiled at each other, happy, unimaginable peace radiating from them.

You helped me once. You can help me again. With your vision
and my might, we can make the world all that it once was: sublime, serene, beautiful.

Not me. I didn’t help you.

The image faded.
No, not you precisely. But the power of the Eye passes through your bloodline. At one time, your ancestors guided my path, kept me informed. Helped me to rule. Why won’t you do the same? Once you agree, you will be free to roam the heavens. Your only job will be to observe my allies and enemies and report to me their activities. The rest of the time will be yours to use freely.

I want Reyes.
Again she projected an image of the warrior. Where was he? What was he doing? In her mind, she heard herself sob. Tears began to fall. They didn’t stay inside her mind, however, but began to rain over her entire body, the cold causing her skin to ice over.

You cannot have him. He belongs to the Underworld and you belong to me.

No!

Arguing with me does not change anything.

Then know this. I belong to Reyes, and he belongs to me. You will have no answers from me as long as I’m parted from him.

She felt the god move toward her, anger in every step.

“C
RONUS
!” Reyes shouted from the rooftop of the fortress. “Cronus, show yourself!”

The wind whipped, hostile, as if it wanted to pound him to a bloody pulp. At one time, he had been glad for that, had welcomed the sensation. Danika had changed him for the better. She had given him something to live for.

“Cronus!”

“I am here, Pain.”

Surprised, Reyes spun. The king of gods stood on the other side of the roof, his white robe swirling fiercely at his ankles. He appeared as old and frail as any human, but strength
radiated from him. Strength and power the god would never be able to hide.

“Where is she?”

“Safe,” was all the god said, inclining his head.

Still, that one word comforted Reyes as nothing else could have. She was safe. Which meant she was alive. Which meant she could be sent back to him. “Show her to me. Please. I beg you.”