Stygian

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  And as he studied them, he realized that their timing here was a bit suspicious. “You two looking for Helios?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Shadow said at the same time. He glared at Ruyn. “Why are you lying?”

  “Why are you being honest?”

  “I didn’t get the lie memo.” Shadow smirked. “You have to keep me up to speed on these things. Otherwise, expect absolute honesty.”

  “Really? Thought you were Prince of Shadows?”

  Shadow grimaced. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Dubious? Nebulous? Questionable character?”

  “You have me confused with your mother.”

  Urian let out a low whistle at that. “Hey, now, no need to invoke that dig. That’s seriously going low, Shadow. I’m flagging that play. And on that note, I need to get back.”

  As he started to leave, Ruyn stopped him.

  When he looked back at his former brother-in-law, Ruyn laid a verbal bomb on him. “There’s something weird going on in the Nether Realm. Something has kicked the proverbial hornets’ nest and they’re going crazy. Watch your back, brother. The gods are crazy, and we’re in their way. Which means they’re going to be coming for us.”

  February 15, 2004

  Urian pulled out his cell phone and masked his number to appear to be that of a Dark-Hunter’s Squire. He called their senior dispatch and made sure to disguise his thick Greek accent. “Uh, yeah, I was at Dante’s Inferno and I just saw a couple Daimons in there cruising for vics. You might want to wake a Hunter and send one in before they kill somebody.”

  “Thanks, Squire. Could you give us your ID?”

  He hung up, knowing they’d comply. They always did. Back in the day, he’d call in the reports like that from pay phones to lure Dark-Hunters out to kill them.

  Never, ever in those days would he have dreamed he’d be using this tactic to protect Apollo’s heiress.

  Hades is sitting on icicles.

  Worse? One of Davyn’s friends, Jensen, was on the strike team. He’d tried to get the moron to stay home.

  He hadn’t listened.

  At least he’d been able to get Davyn to stay out of it.

  Standing on the rooftop of the building next to the club, Urian watched the alleys as people came and went. His phone rang. He glanced down to see Phoebe’s number.

  He answered immediately. “Hey, zoi mou.”

  “Don’t call me ‘your life’ right now. I hear that and it makes me afraid you have bad news.”

  “God, no, Phee. Your sister’s fine. I don’t have eyes on her, but the guys aren’t here yet so she’s safe.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I can feel Kat inside. There’s no mistaking her power. And it’s calm. No fire-bolts are flying. No one’s calling the cops.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Eimai trellos gia sena.”

  “You know that’s just Greek to me, right?”

  He laughed at her teasing tone. “I’m crazy for you.”

  “Ah … well hurry up. Save my sister and get your hulking sexy ass home. You know whenever you speak Greek to me you make me horny.”

  And those words made him instantly hard. “That was mean.”

  “I know. Get here soon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He hung up the phone and sobered as he saw his friends arriving.

  Crap! If the Dark-Hunter didn’t arrive, he was going to have to go into that club, and ruffle some Were-Hunter fur to protect Cassandra himself.

  That would go over like a Charonte in Artemis’s temple.

  Shit …

  Urian had just reconciled himself to that miserable fate when he finally saw the huge hulking predator swaggering toward the door. Yeah, there was no missing that kind of arrogant stride.

  Dark-Hunter.

  Thank the gods.

  Saluting the bastard in silence, Urian stepped back into the shadows. Now he was off to get laid and put this shitty night to rest. He’d deal with his father later.

  And deal he would.

  Because there would be hell to pay. But the smile on Phoebe’s face when he told her that Cassandra was safe would be worth it.

  His wife would definitely return the favor and show him her gratitude.

  Yet as he opened the portal to take him to Elysia, he couldn’t help thinking he was living on borrowed time and that everything was about to come crashing down.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  Death was coming. And the bastard already had him marked.

  February 16, 2004

  Urian entered his father’s study with the pride and grace of a lethal predator. Looking neither left nor right, he made his way straight to where his father stood in front of his desk to report his findings from the Inferno, where he’d gone earlier to speak to the owner Dante Pontis’s brother, Sal. A smarmy little panther.

  After that encounter, he still felt the need to shower and he’d barely spent fifteen minutes talking to the were-beast.

  His father narrowed his gaze on him. “Any word?”

  Urian shook his head. “Not yet. The Were-Hunter said he’d lost her scent, but that he will pick her up again.”

  His father clapped him on the back. “I want at least twenty standing by. There’s no way she’ll escape us all.”

  Effing awesome. Make this as hard on me as you can. Outwardly, Urian showed no emotion whatsoever. “I’ll summon the Illuminati.”

  His father inclined his head to him. “Good. And this time, I’ll go with you.”

  That was a whole lot of disconcerting. His father never went on these runs with them. For that matter, Urian couldn’t remember the last time his father had even left Kalosis.

  Normally Trates brought the meals here for his father to suck the souls of humans out in their main hall.

  Damn, the world really was coming to an end. And he had a front-row seat for it.

  A part of him wanted to warn his father that the human realm was extremely different than it’d been the last time he’d ventured out, but experience had taught him to never do such a thing. His father tended to view “advice” as condescension. And that never went well for the person giving it.

  Not even his sons.

  So Urian bit his tongue and summoned his soldiers for their raid on Cassandra’s apartment. But in the back of his mind was the question of how to safely get her out of there now that his father was going with him. It’d never been easy in the past.

  This was going to be a hell of a lot harder.

  Yet there was no way he could let her die. Phoebe would never forgive him for it.

  Shit. This was about to get ugly.

  Urian was still trying to come up with a plausible escape plan for Cassandra, but damn it, every one of their people was right on top of him. He couldn’t take a breath that one of them didn’t exhale.

  It was ridiculous. He was about to feign a heart attack. If only a Daimon could have one.

  Frustrated, he had no choice but to watch as his father knocked on the front door of Cassandra’s apartment and pretended to be a deliveryman.

  Using his powers, he listened carefully to see if Kat was in there with her.

  “Kat?” He heard Cassandra calling.

  No one answered.

  “Kat?” she tried again.

  His father knocked again, more demanding this time.

  Urian heard the sounds of rushing feet, as if his sister-in-law were searching the rooms for something. He could taste her fear as she headed to the back of the apartment.

  His father vanished, no doubt intending to meet her there.

  Cassandra stopped moving. “Kat, is that you?”

  “Yeah, let me in.”

  Urian flinched as he realized that wasn’t Katra’s voice, but his father pretending to be her. Crap! He’d heard the kori speaking enough to recognize the difference in cadence.

  He’s going to kill her …

  Cassandra laughed nervou

sly as she opened the door and Urian flashed himself to the back to run interference, and hopefully save her life.

  Sadly, he misjudged the distance and ended up landing inside her apartment, a few feet behind her. Good going, dumbass.

  Lucky for him, she was too mesmerized by his father to notice that she had company inside her home, and his father was too busy taunting her to care that he’d screwed up. That was bad enough. Worse? Another Daimon popped in beside him.

  Seriously? He couldn’t catch a break tonight with them. Leave it to him to get stuck with an overachiever.

  “Did you miss me, princess?” his father taunted from outside her back door in a voice identical to Kat’s.

  Cassandra stood there, gaping. “What are you, the friggin’ Terminator?”

  His father smirked. “No. I’m the Harbinger who is merely preparing the way for the Destroyer.” He reached for her.

  Cassandra stepped back and almost into Urian, who also had to take a step away from her to keep from being a rude awakening that she had an uninvited guest—courtesy of a loophole she didn’t realize about apartment buildings. He also had to shove his companion out of her way.

  Still unaware of them, she pulled out a dagger from her waist and sliced his father’s arm.

  His eyes turning red, his father hissed.

  Then she spun about and realized they were in the apartment with her. Awesome. With a piercing scream, she caught his friend in the chest with her dagger.

  He evaporated into a golden-black cloud before Urian could pull him to safety. Grinding his teeth, he cursed himself for not being quicker.

  Spinning around, Cassandra kicked his father back, but he didn’t go completely out the door. Instead, he only blocked it more. Which prevented her from escaping.

  “You’re quick.” He healed his arm, causing her to gasp at his powers. “I’ll give you that.”

  Cassandra lifted her chin defiantly, reminding him of a gesture Phoebe used whenever Urian pissed her off. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  She kneed the next one of their guys who reached her and fought Urian’s second-in-command. His father stayed back, watching her carefully so that he could learn her techniques and use them against her.

  Urian knew if he didn’t get her out of here, or shield her movements, his father was about to attack her any second and end her existence.

  It was now or never.

  Determined, he rushed her.

  To his shock, she didn’t run away. Rather, she caught him under the arm and flipped him over. Urian hit the ground with a loud grunt that left him reeling. Just as she went to stab him, his father came out of nowhere and grabbed her arm before she could pierce his Daimon’s mark.

  “No one attacks Urian!”

  She shrieked as he wrenched the dagger from her hand. Then she made the fatal move as so many had before her.

  Cassandra met his father’s eyes that swirled like mercury silver. Those eyes were hypnotic. They danced and held everyone spellbound. Turned their thoughts to oatmeal.

  Urian literally watched as all the fight inside her vanished. A sly, seductive smile curved his father’s lips. “See how easy it is when you don’t fight?”

  He tilted her head to the side to give him access to her carotid artery. His father met Urian’s gaze and let laughter rumble deep in his throat a moment before he sank his teeth into her neck.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Urian bared his fangs as he recognized that deep baritone. This was the one he affectionately called the Muppet Dark-Hunter because his accent reminded him of the Swedish Chef.

  The huge bastard jerked his father away from Cassandra. Which was good, but …

  Urian ran to check on him while the Dark-Hunter whisked his sister-in-law up into his arms and ran with her. “Get them!” he shouted at his team, knowing they’d never catch up. So it gave them a chance to get away, and Urian an excuse to let them.

  Or so he thought.

  No sooner did he touch his father’s shoulder than his father’s eyes turned red and he sprang to life. Worse, he shifted into his dragon form and launched into flight.

  Cursing, Urian went running to catch them.

  He manifested a motorcycle just so that he could chase after Wulf’s dark green Expedition.

  Cassandra and crew had just locked the doors when his father struck the roof in his large black dragon form.

  “Let her out and you can live,” the dragon said in Stryker’s voice.

  Wulf answered by putting his SUV in reverse and gunning it. He turned the wheel and sent the beast flying.

  The dragon shrieked and blew a blast of fire at them. The Dark-Hunter kept going, without slowing. The dragon took flight and dove at them, then arced up, high into the sky, before it vanished into a shimmery cloud of gold.

  “What the hell was that?” Wulf asked.

  “He’s Apostolos,” Cassandra murmured as she struggled to snap herself out of her daze. “The son of the Atlantean Destroyer and a god in his own right. We’re so screwed.”

  Wulf let out a disgusted sound. “Yeah well, I don’t let anyone screw me until they kiss me and since there’s not even a snowball’s chance in hell of me kissing that bastard, we’re not screwed.”

  But as his Expedition was suddenly surrounded by eight Daimons on motorcycles, he reconsidered that.

  For three seconds at least.

  Wulf laughed. “You know the beauty of driving one of these?”

  “No.”

  He swerved his Expedition into three of the bikes and knocked them from the road. “You can swat a Daimon like a mosquito.”

  “Well, since they’re both bloodsucking insects, I say go for it.”

  Urian wasn’t amused as he heard their conversation. And definitely not when Wulf almost clipped him. Braking, he motioned for the other four Daimons with him to let them go.

  Not just because it was Phoebe’s sister, but because he didn’t want to see anyone else die tonight.

  He swerved his Hayabusa and went back to check the three Illuminati who’d been wrecked to see if they needed medical attention to get home.

  March 9, 2004

  Stryker paced the floor of the dimly lit banquet hall, wanting blood and not from one of their own. For three weeks now they hadn’t been able to find a single trace of the Dark-Hunter Wulf Tryggvason or the Apollite heiress Cassandra Peters, who was the final key to eliminating their curse for once and for all and getting Helios off their backs!

  How could they go into hiding so effectively? It didn’t make any sense!

  He had Urian working on it now, but it seemed useless. “How hard can it be to find where a Dark-Hunter lives?”

  “They are crafty, kyrios,” Zolan said from his right.

  Zolan was his third-in-command and one of Stryker’s most trusted soldiers, after Urian and Trates. He’d been promoted through the Spathi ranks for his ability to murder ruthlessly and to never show mercy to anyone.

  Like Stryker, he chose to dye his hair black and wore the Spathi symbol of a yellow sun with a dragon in its center—the emblem of Apollymi the Destroyer.

  “If they weren’t,” Zolan continued, “we’d be able to track and kill them through our servants while they slept.”

  Stryker turned on Zolan with a glare so malevolent that the Daimon shrank away from him. Only his son held enough courage to not flinch from his anger. Urian’s bravery knew no equal.

  Out of nowhere, Xedrix appeared before him in the hall. Unlike the Daimons, Xedrix didn’t bow or acknowledge Stryker’s elevated stature in their world. Most of the time, Xedrix treated him as more of a servant than a master, which pissed him off to no uncertain end.

  No doubt the demon thought Apollymi would always protect him, but Stryker knew the truth. His mother loved him absolutely and no one else.

  “Her Benevolent Grace wishes a word with you,” the demon said in a low, even tone.

  Benevolent Grace. As if! Every time Stryker heard that title for Apollymi, he wanted to laugh but knew better. His mother didn’t really have a sense of humor.

  Without delay, he willed himself to her palace and walked through the double door that led out to her private gardens where she was waiting for him.

  As usual, Apollymi leaned over her pool where black water flowed backward up a glittering pipe from this world into the human realm. There was a fine, rainbow mist and vapors around the water. It was here the goddess could scry so that she knew what was happening on earth. Past. Present. Future.

  “She is pregnant,” the goddess announced without turning around.

  Stryker knew the she that the goddess referred to was Cassandra.

  “How can that be?”

  The goddess lifted her hands up and drew a circle in the air. Water from the mirror formed like a crystal ball. Even though nothing but air held it, it swirled about until it held an image of the woman they both wanted dead. There was nothing in the ball to give him any indication of how to find Cassandra.

  Apollymi dragged one fingernail through the image, causing it to shake and distort. “Artemis is interfering with us.”

  “There’s still time to kill both mother and child.”

  She smiled at that. “Yes, there is.” She opened her hands and the water arced from the ball, back into her pool. “Now is the time to strike. The Elekti is being held by Artemis. He can’t stop you. He won’t even know that you attack.”

  Stryker flinched at the mention of the Elekti. Like the Abadonna, Stryker was forbidden to attack him.

  He hated restrictions.

  “We don’t know where to attack,” he told his mother. “We’ve been searching—”

  “Take one of the ceredons. My pets can find them.”

  “I thought they were forbidden to leave this realm.”

  A cruel half smile curved her lips. “Artemis broke the rules, so shall I. Now go, m’gios, and do me proud.”

  Stryker nodded and turned about sharply. He took three steps before the Destroyer’s voice gave him pause.

  “Remember, Strykerius, kill the heiress before the Elekti returns. You are not to engage him. Ever.”

  He stopped but didn’t look back. “Why have I always been forbidden to touch him?”

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