Esher (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 3)

by Felicity Heaton

Even if she was mortal.

  Eva spoke, arresting his attention, her Italian accent thickly lacing her words. “It was a good session. I think next time we should use some dummy weapons.”

  Eva was teaching Megan to fight?

  Sensible, he supposed.

  Mortals were weak, no match for a god or even a daemon.

  The little female he had met hadn’t even been able to fend off a human male. A powerful need filled him as that thought flowed through him, one that struck him silent and froze him in place halfway through drawing the knife down the chopping board to push the meat into the pot.

  His mother’s words swam in his mind, her voice whispering at him to forgive, and to learn to love the mortals again.

  His own ones followed, a denial that had been nothing more than a growl at the time—that he would never forgive them and he would never love a mortal.

  But he wanted to protect her.

  His fascinating little butterfly.

  CHAPTER 7

  The day had turned hot at some point, and even with the panels opened to allow air to flow into his room, Esher hadn’t been able to slip back to sleep after waking from a nightmare. Agitated from trying, he had left his room, grabbed a bite to eat and a glass of water, and had tried to focus on small tasks to keep his mind occupied. Trimming the topiary. Feeding the fish. Enjoying the cherry blossoms.

  None of it had held his focus for long.

  His mind had kept drifting, and it had always returned to one subject.

  Her.

  She had slipped into his usual nightmare, inserting herself into the scene, but not where he had expected her to be. Rather than being one of his tormenters, with the other humans, she had been the one bound before him.

  They had tortured her to weaken him.

  Gods.

  Esher ran a shaky hand over his black hair and drew in a deep breath to calm his turbulent emotions as he walked, afraid that if they got the better of him Daimon would feel it and would realise he had left the safety of the mansion grounds.

  He needed to walk.

  He needed space.

  He had been cooped up in the mansion for days now, and he was feeling stronger, more than able to take care of himself if anyone dared to attack him. Besides, it was daylight. Not even a strong daemon could withstand this much sunshine. They would be insane to try.

  Strings harmonised with a brass section in his ears as he paused at a crossing and waited for the lights to change in his favour. Ahead of him, on the other side of the road, the park was busy, mortals soaking up the sunshine as they walked alone or with friends, and occupied the benches.

  And seemingly every inch of the broad path beneath the trees.

  Fucking Sundays.

  Normally if he came for a walk in Yoyogi Park, he had it mostly to himself, with only a smattering of humans, a low enough number that it rarely bothered him.

  But on a Sunday, it felt as if every person in Tokyo was trying to squeeze into the open spaces to enjoy the small pocket of nature.

  He couldn’t blame them, but that didn’t mean he had to accept their presence.

  The red light flicked to green on the other side of the street, and he edged away from the mortals as he crossed, giving himself at least three metres space. Better. Now he just had to survive the heaving park and find a quiet spot to make his own.

  The solitude of the garden at the mansion was starting to look appealing again, but he needed this. He needed to see the modern buildings that crammed into every street around the park, and hear the noise of the trains as they constantly rumbled into the station, and the revving of car engines as they pulled away from the traffic lights. He needed it because it was miles away from how the world had been all those centuries ago, a contrast that reminded him that he wasn’t there now. The world was different now.

  His kind could move undetected through the streets, and even if a mortal witnessed something out of the ordinary, they normally kept it to themselves, believing themselves overworked, or even fucking blessed to have seen something they believed was supernatural.

  It was a far cry from the days when just being different had been enough to raise an army or a mob against you.

  Witches still had a bad rap though. Some of them for a good reason. He had met a few in his eight hundred plus years, and quite a number of them had deserved the reputation they had gained among mortals. The rest of them were alright, as long as you didn’t cross them.

  Even gods could be cursed.

  He strolled down to the entrance of the park and looked up as he moved into the shade of the towering trees that stretched from either side of the dirt path to tangle together high above it. The air was instantly cooler, the perpetual shade keeping the heat of day at bay, and he breathed a little easier as it washed over him while the music danced in his ears and sunlight sparkled through the small gaps in the green canopy above.

  Esher tugged at the collar of the grey t-shirt he wore beneath his dark blue linen shirt, wafting air down his chest, enjoying the coolness of it as it bathed his skin.

  A human suddenly closed the distance between them, leaping into his path, and his hand twitched, a heartbeat away from backhanding them away from him when he froze, the awareness that blasted through him halting him in his tracks.

  He lowered his blue gaze to the petite female standing before him, a vision in a black ruffled skirt, violet stockings, platform pink patent shoes, and a tank with a diamante skull on the front. Her bunches swayed as she canted her head and said something he didn’t hear over the music pounding in his ears.

  When she continued to speak, her enticing glossy lips shifting in a symphony in time with the rising strings, he gathered his wits enough to pull on the cord in front of his chest, tugging the buds from his ears.

  “Sorry,” he said in Japanese, and a pink hue climbed her cheeks. “Music was on.”

  “It’s you again.” Her smile hit him hard, reaching her dark chocolate eyes, and she rocked on her heels, her hands locked behind her back.

  For a split-second, he considered leaving, and that was strange.

  Because when faced with a human trying to interact with him without him prompting it, he always ignored them and moved on as quickly as possible, evading them.

  But something about her, his little butterfly, soothed him and made him want to stay.

  Calmed him more than being alone.

  “How is your arm?” Her English words were stilted, lacking confidence that she seemed to exude when speaking her native tongue, and she nodded towards his arm when he just stared at her.

  Esher looked down at it. He had finally taken the bandage off two days ago, had meant to discard it in the bin, but in the end had placed it in a box that stood on his chest of drawers in his room. Which was strange too. He had no reason to want to keep the used bandage, yet he couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

  “It’s fine now, but thank you.” He stuck to Japanese for her, wanting her to be comfortable so she would speak more with him.

  Also strange.

  Feminine giggling had her looking to her right and widening her eyes in a way that screamed ‘shut up’ at the pair of females sitting beneath the tree on a bench. The two females from the day she had been walking in Shibuya. Her friends?

  They were dressed like her now, Gothic Lolitas enjoying a day off in the park. It was common on a Sunday in Yoyogi Park, the proximity of the Harajuku shopping street bringing them into the area.

  “Wait.” She held her hand up between them, and then hurried to her friends, grabbed a black satin bag with a crimson frill around the zipper and a collection of figures dangling from the strap, and a green drink in a clear plastic cup, and bounced back to him.

  She sipped on the matcha iced smoothie as she walked away from him, her ruffled black skirt bouncing with each step, flashing a lot of leg. When she paused and looked back at him, a little frown wrinkling her nose, he followed, assuming it was what she wanted.

 
; “I’m glad your arm is better. I was worried.” She hit him with another high-beam smile as he caught up with her.

  Had she really been worried about him?

  She looked the type to worry about strangers, and she was studying medicine. She was gentle, and good, he could see it in her as she kept glancing at his arm whenever she had the chance, checking the wound that was barely a scar peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his navy shirt, needing to see for herself that he was better.

  He gazed at his boots as he carefully rolled up the lead of his earbuds and put them in his breast pocket. Her feet were tiny compared with his, her step light despite the thick two-inch platform soles of her shoes. With them on, she fell short of his shoulder. How small would she be against him without them?

  “What’s your name?”

  When he looked up at her face, she covered her mouth, a blush staining her cheeks, and her obvious embarrassment over asking such a question outright, something out of place for a Japanese female, almost teased a smile from him.

  “Esher.” He had no qualms about her knowing it, mostly because she would offer hers in exchange.

  “Esher. Esh-er… Esh-errr.” She frowned as she tried to wrap her mouth around it, her chocolate eyes on the path in front of her. Those warm eyes lifted to him again, and another smile curved her lips. “I’m… you would say it… Aiko Matsumoto.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aiko.” And it was. Strange.

  She giggled. “How long have you been in Japan to know the language so well, but not learn the customs?”

  “A long time,” he countered, “but you didn’t strike me as the sort to want to be given an honorific or go with tradition. I can call you Matsumoto-chan if you preferred? Or maybe Ai-chan?”

  She laughed, the sound more entrancing than even the most beautiful classical piece, and shook her head as she waved her hand in front of her face. “No. Aiko is fine.”

  With that, she broke away from him, her eyes darting everywhere as she sipped her drink through the straw, taking in all the nature that surrounded her.

  Its beauty was lost on him as he watched her, his little butterfly more stunning and fascinating than a few ancient trees.

  She pirouetted to face him and walked backwards in front of him. “Are you alone in Tokyo?”

  Esher shook his head, frowned when his hair fell down over his left eye and obscured her, and pushed it back, threading his fingers through the black lengths as he watched her. A flicker of sorrow crossed her features, but it disappeared when he spoke.

  “I live with one of my younger brothers.” Technically true, although Daimon was spending more and more time in Hong Kong recently.

  Was she relieved because he didn’t live with a female?

  “What do you do? It’s unusual for foreigners to live in Japan. Do you teach?” She moved back to beside him again.

  Teaching was a common profession for foreigners, but the only teaching he did was to daemons and constantly trying to make them learn the lesson that he wasn’t going to let them near the gate to the Underworld.

  Still, he didn’t want to be thought of as a teacher. It reminded him too much of long, boring lessons in the Underworld, listening to various tutors drone on about history and such, and it was leagues from what he really did.

  “I work in defence.” Also technically true.

  Her eyes widened. “Like the military?”

  He shrugged as they rounded a bend in the path, an enormous torii gate coming into view. “Something like that.”

  Aiko passed beneath the imposing wooden structure of two columns supporting a curved beam, with another beam intersecting them below it. Apparently, some believed it was lucky to walk through the gate that marked an entrance to a Shinto shrine.

  Maybe if you were human.

  Esher walked around the thick left column, feeling the power in the gate as he avoided it.

  He never had gotten along with the local gods.

  Even walking the sacred grounds on the other side of the gate as he was now was often enough to cause a mild sense of discomfort, as if someone was giving him the evil eye.

  Aiko moved back to walk beside him, on his right this time, and her eyes fell to his arm. “You have so many scars.”

  Her words were soft, not meant to hurt, but they carved his heart open and he fell silent as he struggled against the surge of memories that collided with fragments of his nightmare. He battled them, trying to hold them at bay, but the nightmare had left him weak against them, allowing them to easily push at him, rousing his other side, the one that whispered to him and had him eyeing all the mortals passing by, a desire to punish them rising inside him. His gaze drifted over Aiko and back again. The need to leave warred with a desire to stay near her, to protect her from the cruel humans who wanted to hurt her, and him.

  When they neared the grand shrine, she moved away from him, and he reached for her, his heart lunging into his throat. His hand stopped just short of her bare arm as she paused and looked his way, her eyes falling to it and then rising to his face.

  “I just need to go inside. Come too,” she said softly, warm light in the midst of the darkness raging inside him.

  Esher shook his head and let his hand fall to his side, and she stared at him a moment, concern filling her eyes before she rallied, blinking and then smiling again.

  “Will you wait?” She moved a step closer to him, and it struck him that she didn’t want to part from him either, and gods, that was the strangest thing yet.

  He nodded, still struggling with the tide of memories and unable to find his voice as they raged inside him, a violent sea he was trying to tame—for her sake.

  She moved away from him, stopping at the rectangular stone trough of water beneath an elegant open-sided wooden structure topped with a sweeping copper roof that had gone almost turquoise over the centuries. She purified herself, and then walked towards the main gate of the shrine, an imposing wooden building that stood twice as tall as the walls around it, topped with the same sweeping copper roof, and he took a step towards the shrine, wanting to follow her.

  An invisible barrier repelled him, and he bared his teeth at the shrine and the gods who forbid him to enter it.

  He had tried to get them to manifest and explain themselves so they could understand each other, but the bastards refused to speak with him, merely repelled him whenever he tried to enter a shrine.

  Unable to follow her, he drifted away instead, towards the shade of the trees where no humans ventured, and put his earbuds back in to block out the noise so he could focus on calming himself.

  No matter how loud he made the music, the gnawing feeling persisted, thoughts of Aiko at the mercy of the humans filling his mind, tormenting him with images of her from his nightmare—bound and bleeding.

  Close to death.

  He closed his eyes, wanting to shut out the world, sure it was the presence of all the humans pushing him deeper into his memories.

  It only worsened things.

  Instead of seeing only flashes of images from his nightmare, he replayed the whole damned thing, felt himself bound and fighting against the ropes that bit into his arms, felt his throat burn as he screamed at them to stop and begged the bastards for mercy they refused to give.

  The whispers grew louder, becoming chanting that goaded him into showing them no mercy in return.

  They were ants, and he would crush them for what they had done to him.

  Warm, soft fingers brushed his right hand, caressed the inside of his wrist where his favour mark stood pronounced on his skin, and chased the dark memories away, allowing light to filter back in and breath to fill his lungs again.

  He slowly opened his eyes and looked down into Aiko’s, and didn’t stop her when she lifted her hands and carefully removed the noise-cancelling headphones from his ears. He stood mute, staring at her, shaken to his core and weak to his bones.

  She smiled gently. “You moved, and your smile is gon
e. You’re serious again.”

  Had he smiled for her? He might have. More than once, he had wanted to do it, and maybe he had, but he couldn’t remember now. Everything was clouded again, just like the sky. Heavy black ones were rolling in, and he could feel the rain coming. It was partly his fault. His mood had taken a nosedive, speeding the weather that had already been building in the distance.

  Strangely, he didn’t want it to rain, was sure this time he wouldn’t find any comfort in it, because it would separate him from Aiko.

  But he couldn’t contain his pain to stop it.

  “I need to get out of here,” he husked, his eyes darting over all the humans as they stared at him.

  She nodded. “We can visit the teahouse by the pond. Hardly anyone goes there.”

  Sounded like heaven to him.

  He followed her as the clouds reached them, blocking out the sun, and the wind picked up. They backtracked towards the torii gate, and she stopped a short distance from it, a frown marring her face as she stared at a sign and then at him.

  “It’s closed.” She sounded as disappointed as he felt.

  Esher didn’t hesitate. He grabbed her waist with both hands, eliciting a squeak from her, and lifted her over the gate, doing his damnedest not to look at her panties.

  They were pink.

  She dropped to the leaf-litter on the other side, landing in a crouch, and moved aside. He vaulted the gate.

  “I’ve never broken a law before.” She looked more excited than upset about the fact she was breaking into the garden, and he didn’t have the heart to mention that she was hardly going to get arrested for being in the garden when it was closed. Reprimanded maybe, like a slap on the wrist. This was Z grade breaking the law.

  If she wanted to see A grade, he could show her.

  She crept along the narrow path through the thick trees like a damned ninja, and he strolled past her, the need to reach the teahouse and the quiet driving him. If a human was around and spotted them, he would deal with them.

  And for once, he didn’t mean by killing them.

  He would wipe their memory.

  The elegant single storey wooden building came into view around a bend in the path, nestled with its back against the trees, and wood-framed glass panels protecting the walkway beneath the flared roof, and the paper panels of the interior.