Esher (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 3)

by Felicity Heaton

  The humans were getting what they deserved, and it was glorious. Beautiful. Gods, it was beautiful. He groaned, pleasure rolling through him as he caught a male by his throat and focused on him, only a split-second of his attention but enough to have blood pouring from his eyes and nose. He tossed the dead mortal aside and sought his next target, his scarlet eyes scanning the carnage.

  A female ran, wailing as she tried to escape.

  He stepped, landing in front of her so she slammed into him.

  A growl curled up his throat.

  “You dare touch me?” He lifted his hand and her scream cut short as water blasted upwards from the ground, impaling her, spraying as blood from her skull. “Impudent wretch.”

  He spat on her corpse and turned in a slow circle, hungry for another kill, his chest heaving as he breathed hard.

  When he saw only the dead, he stooped, ran his hands through the blood coating the earth and smeared it down the side of his face.

  A hunting he would go.

  He grinned.

  The path before him wavered and he frowned. He turned his head, and his scowl deepened as the village became transparent at the edges of his vision, allowing him to see something else beyond it.

  Another plane.

  One that his brother stepped through from, his wet white hair plastered to his brow and his blue eyes showing a flicker of fatigue, and wariness.

  Fear.

  “Esher.” Daimon slowly raised his hands. “Listen to my voice, Esher.”

  No. He didn’t want to calm down. He was hunting.

  “It isn’t real, Esher.” Daimon edged towards him, and Esher’s eyebrows dipped lower, a sensation that he might be telling the truth going through him when Cal stepped through the wall of a building beyond him, dragging a shrieking valkyrie by her broken wing behind him.

  “Anyone know what her charm is?” Cal’s words slowed as he looked around and arched a blond eyebrow. “What’s with the change of scenery?”

  “I think the daemon is weakening, allowing us to move between the illusions.” Daimon didn’t take his eyes off Esher. “You need to calm down now, because you’re dangerously close to doing what she wants.”

  He blinked and looked between his brothers. What who wanted?

  He was doing what he wanted.

  He wanted to kill all the humans.

  It was time they all paid for what they had done to him.

  “Aiko needs you to pull your shit together, Esher. Don’t do this to her. She needs you to be strong and not let the darkness pull you under.” Daimon held his hands up, revealing a device that held an image in his right one.

  A female.

  He stared at her.

  Aiko.

  His little butterfly.

  “They’re going to burn her.” Cold fear gripped him and he pivoted on his heel, his voice dying as he stared across the village.

  Aiko was gone. So was the platform where she had been bound.

  “It isn’t real.” Daimon moved another step closer to him, grunted and stilled, and looked down.

  The scent of blood swirled around Esher.

  Familiar blood.

  Daimon touched his side, pulled his hand away and stared at it.

  Crimson coated his glove.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and then threw his head back and roared as he swept his arms up into the air.

  A thousand shards of clear ice shot up around them, forming a wall thirty metres tall.

  Esher continued to stare at the blood.

  The darkness that had been fading swept back in, stronger than before, pushing at his fragile control. Daimon was hurt. His brother was in pain. Wounded.

  Not by humans.

  But by a filthy, fucking daemon.

  He snarled and scanned the village, but only his brothers stood with him within the wall of ice that cut through several of the buildings.

  It wasn’t real.

  The illusion wavered in places, thinning around the edges of his vision as he scanned it again, but solid wherever his eyes landed. Daimon was right, and the shapeshifter was weakening, her strength drained by using her power to create the illusions, but she also had the upper hand, had managed to stab Daimon before any of them had sensed her.

  Wind whipped past him, pushing him sideways towards his brothers as it built, forming a wall within the barrier of ice, one designed to keep the daemon contained and where Esher wanted her.

  They were back on track with their plan at least.

  He glanced at Daimon, at the wound he clutched as he growled obscenities.

  When Daimon noticed him looking, his brother turned towards him and clapped a hand down on his shoulder, the touch brief but enough to reassure him, and leave a glittering patch of frost on the black material of his coat.

  Valkyrie came around, shrieking like a banshee. She didn’t have a chance to move. Cal was on her in a heartbeat, hands against her shoulders, pinning her to the ground.

  “What was her charm again?” He looked up at Daimon and then Esher.

  “Vambraces.” Esher nodded towards the cuffs protecting her forearms.

  She screamed and frantically wriggled, her gold eyes flashing fire as Cal shifted his weight, using his knees to trap her shoulders as he caught hold of her arms. He tore one vambrace off her and then the other, and she sagged, fear flooding her eyes as she stared up at him.

  “I really want to kill you.” Cal sounded as happy about Keras’s capture-and-question plan as Esher felt. His brother leaned over her and ran a hand down his face, over three red streaks that cut over his jaw and down his neck. “I’ll make you pay for this later.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “For now, it’s night night time.” Cal smashed his fist into her face, and she slumped, body going lax beneath him.

  His brother was a cheat when it came to fighting with his fists, used his control over the air to propel his punches so he hit with the force of a tornado.

  Cal pushed off her and the moment he was clear of her, Esher directed some of the rain at her, focusing it there. Daimon used it, crafting a box of clear ice at least a metre thick on all sides, leaving the valkyrie stretched out on a floor made of it.

  Esher drilled a single hole in it, because Keras would be annoyed if she died from asphyxiation.

  Satisfied that she wasn’t going anywhere, he turned his focus back on his surroundings. The village illusion held, but it was still thinner at the edges of his vision as he glanced around, revealing the park.

  His senses sparked.

  He turned on a pinhead and lashed out with a whip made of water, cracking it hard in the direction of the movement.

  It hit nothing in the illusion.

  But something screamed.

  Something female.

  The coppery and vile scent of daemon blood flooded his nostrils.

  The village wavered and some of the buildings crumbled, the ground transforming into the grass of the park.

  His gaze zipped to the far side of their icy arena as something moved there, and he kicked off, darkness swallowing him for a heartbeat as he stepped, teleporting into her path.

  He froze as he landed and Aiko stood before him, her fluffy jumper soaked from the rain, and her short faded denim skirt saturated and sticking to her legs. She pushed her wet hair out of her face and gazed up at him.

  “You’re alright. I was so worried.” She reached for him.

  He watched her hand edging towards him, told himself to move, to smack it away and step, but he couldn’t convince his body to obey him.

  Her brown eyes warmed, showing her love, heating him through.

  He shook his head, trying to clear it, because it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Aiko. It was just another illusion, one meant to weaken him and lure him away from her. Aiko was at the mansion, not here in the park. She was safe.

  He shot his hand out and it went straight through her.

  Her laughter rang through the park, gaining a strange
echo, and then another, and he slowly looked around him, his eyes widening as a hundred Aikos looked at him, laughed at him.

  One of them was the shapeshifter.

  He scanned as many as he could, seeking the source of the blood he could scent in the air, sure he would find the wound on the Aiko that was the daemon in disguise.

  Three of the Aikos threw themselves at him, and he grunted as they hit him, knocking him backwards.

  “Which is the daemon?” Cal hollered as he fought six of them off, scattering them with a blast of wind, sending them toppling into the others.

  “I have an idea.” Daimon stepped and appeared beside Esher, ripped one of the clones off him and pushed her aside.

  Esher closed his eyes and shoved the other two, unable to bring himself to fight them when he was looking at them, seeing Aiko before him.

  “Make it rain harder.” Daimon closed ranks with him, and Cal joined them, fending off the false Aikos as they tried to reach him and Daimon.

  Esher nodded. That he could do. It took only a brief thought and it was lashing down, the rain a thick wall around them, soaking him and his brothers to the bone.

  Daimon’s eyes brightened, began to glow white in the darkness.

  Frost swept over his gloves and up his arms, spreading and forming ice flowers as it branched outwards and thickened.

  Esher gritted his teeth as he felt the pull on his power as Daimon focused his own on it, ripping command of the raindrops from him one by one.

  “You… might… want to… shield… us.” Daimon bit the wounds out, breathing hard between each one as his eyes blazed white.

  Not good.

  Esher pushed his focus to the rain, fighting to control it at the same time as Daimon forced his will upon it, and Cal grunted beside them, wavering on his feet as his own power came under their brother’s influence.

  Esher had barely managed to convince the rain to avoid hitting them, forming a dome over them that spread three metres in all directions, when it hit.

  A polar vortex.

  The temperature dropped so suddenly, it stole Esher’s breath, had his teeth chattering as frost formed on his clothes and sent Cal to his knees as he shook, gripping himself and desperately rubbing his arms.

  Esher struggled for air as it thinned, the effect of the vortex created by combining Cal’s wind and Daimon’s ice as he chilled the rain Esher had provided making the atmosphere within the boundaries of the vortex thinner than beyond the towering thick ice walls surrounding them.

  The temperature plummeted further as Daimon growled, shards of ice forming on his shoulders and rising from his hair like a crown, his outstretched hand trembling as he struggled to control the vortex he had created.

  Snow blanketed the ground, creeping towards them.

  “Daimon, dial it back,” Cal snapped, sounding weak now.

  Esher shoved Daimon hard, shattering his focus, and the wind eased, the snow halting and the air grew thicker, easier to breathe.

  It remained freezing within the sphere of the ice walls though, the temperature well below zero, closing in on minus fifty Celsius.

  As the stormed cleared, and the temperature slowly rose, Esher’s eyes gradually widened.

  Daimon’s plan had worked.

  The illusion was gone, and in the centre of the icy arena, on a thick blanket of snow, the daemon sat clutching her knees, her breath fogging the air.

  Esher had half a mind to kill her, would be easy given the freezing temperatures too. Any water he called now would become ice in an instant, and gods, he wanted to drive a spear of it right through her black heart.

  But he had promised his brothers he would capture her.

  So he trudged towards her through the knee-deep snow, savoured the way she lifted her head, revealing ashen skin that was almost blue and suited her black lipstick, and how she whimpered when he closed his hand around her throat and hauled her onto her feet.

  How fear lit her eyes as he squeezed his fingers tighter.

  Kill her.

  It was tempting, beyond tempting, and he struggled against the urge as he stared at her, at the bitch who had killed his beloved Aiko, who had hurt his brother, and threatened his world.

  “Esher,” Daimon’s voice cut into his dark thoughts. “We need to mark her with the counter-wards and take her to the others.”

  He was going to kill her.

  Later.

  Once she had spilled her guts to his brothers.

  CHAPTER 29

  Keras took hold of the daemon’s arm as soon as Esher appeared in the mansion courtyard with her. When his brother tried to lead her away, Esher kept hold of her, stopping him.

  “What are you going to do with her?” Because he needed to know where she would be held during her interrogation, and because he wanted to know where he had to go when his brother was done with her, and he could kill her and erase her filth from his home.

  “You don’t want to know.” Keras glanced towards one of the buildings set to one side of the property beyond the bathhouse, one Esher kept locked at all times.

  One that contained his cage.

  Esher growled, the vision of metal bars closing in on him tearing at him, tugging the darkness back to the surface, and pulling a startled and fearful gasp from the daemon beside him.

  She began struggling, trying to break free of him, and it was only when Keras touched his other arm that he realised he had closed it around her throat and had been choking the life out of her.

  Tears streaked her cheeks, her eyes wild and mercury irises swirling with panic as he released her and she sucked down air.

  He shoved her away from him, into Keras, and ignored his brother’s glare, not caring that he had forced the daemon against him.

  “Just tell me when you’re done with her.” Because he didn’t want to see the damned cage, not until he had to see it, was left with no choice but to place himself inside it in order to protect this world.

  This world.

  He waited for his usual thoughts to fill his mind, images of himself lighting the fuse and watching it all burn, giving the mortals what they deserved.

  They didn’t come.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face as he realised the reason behind that—he wanted to protect this world now.

  He almost wanted to protect the humans.

  Almost.

  The only human he wanted to protect came screaming out of the house at full speed and barrelled into him, knocking the wind from his lungs as they collided, and then again as she caught him around the nape of his neck and dragged him down for a kiss that was so soft, so full of love and relief, that it stole his breath.

  He swept Aiko up into his arms. His Aiko. The real Aiko. His little butterfly.

  He held her as Keras and Ares escorted the daemon away, and Daimon and Cal appeared, done with their clean-up duty in the park, leaving no evidence of the battle behind.

  Including the dead valkyrie.

  Daimon’s cold snap had been too much for her, the air inside her icy cage dropping so low that she had been asphyxiated after all. They had vowed not to mention that to Keras and the others.

  Daimon nodded as he passed him, and wearily trudged after Keras and Ares. It would be a while before Daimon regained his strength after combining their powers. The first time Daimon had attempted such a trick, he had passed out and had slept for three days straight. Cal nudged Esher in the ribs, winked at him a few times, and went into the house.

  Esher scowled at his back, but his anger over his brother intruding on his moment with Aiko and insinuating they were going to be up to something soon, something wicked, melted away as Cal entered the house and his voice rose in the night, loud enough for the neighbours to hear as he regaled Valen and Marek, Megan and Eva with the tale of their battle, embellishing a few things as he went.

  Gods, it was good to be home.

  He tucked Aiko closer to him, absorbing the warmth of her in his arms.

  Literally.
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  “You’re freezing,” Aiko murmured against his chest and wriggled, and he reluctantly eased his grip on her.

  “Daimon.” It was all the explanation he offered, but it drew a smile from her, one that had a hint of relief about it as she glanced at his brother’s back and then up into his eyes again.

  “I’m glad you’re all safe.” Her eyes drifted back to Keras though as he walked down the corridor that led towards the bathhouse, and they darkened.

  Esher smoothed his hand across her cheek, luring her back to him, out of the mire of her thoughts that coloured her eyes, and had him wanting to go after the daemon too—for her sake.

  He didn’t like that look in her eyes, those dark desires he could see in them, born of her pain. They made him want to hold her, to tell her that he would never let her fight, would never let her near another daemon, didn’t want her to sully herself by getting blood on her hands.

  He was violent enough for both of them, would carry out the revenge she needed, retribution he wanted too.

  He led her to his room and changed his clothes, swapping his combat gear for a pair of blue jeans, a black t-shirt and his favourite blue-grey shirt. He focused on buttoning it, forcing his mind away from the daemon and the things he wanted to do to her, the pain he wanted to inflict on her, and the death he wanted to deliver. When he was cleaned up, he led Aiko to the main room of the mansion and made himself sit on the couch with her, holding her as he listened to the end of Cal’s theatrical rendition of what had happened in the park and watched Megan healing the wounds on his brother’s face and neck.

  “Daimon has a wound that needs healing too,” Esher said, and Megan nodded, and he did his best to focus on Aiko and those in the room with him.

  But all the while, his senses were locked on the building where his cage was stored, where Keras had the daemon held captive and at his mercy.

  Where he wanted to be.

  Aiko brushed her palm across his cheek, shattering the hold his urges had on him, and he leaned into her touch. He tilted his head and pressed a kiss to her palm, and held her closer to him, manoeuvring her onto his lap. His eyes met hers and he held them, let her see in his that nothing bad was going to happen to her. The daemon was secure, trapped by the cage, and no daemon could penetrate the wards around the mansion.