He should have been able to sense them. Daemons caused a disturbing feeling in his gut, a swirling sensation that alerted him to their presence together with the coppery odour of them.
Esher nodded. “It’s not so much the world she’s affecting but your perception. That’s how I see it.”
“So she can strip us of our senses. That sounds like a bundle of fun.” Valen snorted and then grinned, his golden eyes brightening dangerously. “I want a shot at her next time. Reckon a little lightning up her arse will stop her from casting illusions.”
“Someone had to protect the European gates.” Keras’s tone didn’t brook any arguments. It never did.
Valen looked at Esher. “Swapsies next time? Come on… please? Think of it as an early birthday present.”
Esher flatly said, “No.”
Attempting to get Esher to surrender a chance at getting his hands on the illusionist was like attempting to get his brother to go out and get chatty with the mortals. It was pointless, because it wasn’t going to happen.
“I’ll take gate duties next time. You can have your shot at her but you’ll owe me.” Daimon’s pale blue eyes glittered like ice as he smiled in a way that said the favour Valen would owe him would be big.
“But then it’s not a birthday present.”
“Focus.” Keras said the word calmly, his tone level, but he might as well have shouted it.
Everyone fell silent and looked at each other like kids who had just been told off by their father rather than men who had just been issued an order by their leader.
Ares came up to stand behind Keras, backing him up. “Get on with it.”
The fiery edge to his brown eyes said he wanted to hurry things along for the same reason Marek did. He wanted to see his woman.
“So how did the gate call me?” Marek looked at each of his brothers in turn. “They were daemons at the gate… A gate that is closed to traffic. It shouldn’t have called to me. It should have remained dormant.”
Valen scuffed a hand over his violet hair, pushing the longer lengths back before he stroked the roughly chopped short sides. “The gate in Rome did something similar once and I was ambushed by daemons.”
“And you are just mentioning this now?” Keras levelled him with a look that was almost a glare.
As close as Keras came to one.
Valen shrugged. “Didn’t seem like much at the time. I fought the daemons and figured the Hellspawn who had been waiting for it had been scared off by them or maybe got bored waiting on the other side and left.”
It was a reasonable explanation for what had happened in Rome, where the gate was used regularly.
But it didn’t explain what had happened to the twin gate tonight.
Daimon said what all of them were thinking, but none of them wanted to ask.
“Is there a chance there’s more than only daemons in our enemy’s ranks?”
Marek really didn’t want to consider that.
“Anything is possible.” Keras spun the ring faster around his thumb, the action giving away his agitation even when his carefully schooled features and placid emerald eyes hid it. “Everyone is to report any unusual gate activity to me and Marek for study. Any incidents where the gate called and no one was waiting for you on either side when you got there. We need to know what we are dealing with, because there is a very real possibility we are dealing with more than daemons.”
A shiver rolled down Marek’s spine at the prospect.
Who in the Hellspawn world would turn against him and his brothers—and Hades?
What if it wasn’t only Hellspawn involved?
He looked at his brothers and their grave expressions revealed their thoughts were traversing the same unsettling paths his were.
What if this went higher?
He only had to look at the history of his world to see there were a thousand grudges in play, and hundreds of people who might want to unseat Hades from his throne. Two attempts to do such a thing had happened in the past, the last one resulting in daemons being banished from the Underworld.
What if whoever was behind that uprising had been biding their time, waiting for this moment to strike and make another attempt?
“I’ll hit the books and see what connections I can make,” he said and Keras finally acknowledged his existence, nodding his head in Marek’s direction. “I’ll try to come up with a list of people who might possibly be involved.”
And he was going to start with whatever few accounts of the last uprising in the Underworld existed in this world and in his library.
“We are on high alert. Be careful at the gates and be on your guard, especially you.” Keras thawed a little as he looked at Marek, and Marek nodded, letting him know he would be careful.
The enemy wouldn’t get the jump on him again.
“Call if anything happens in Seville, even something that seems ordinary like the main gate calling to you. Do not go there alone without backup. We need to face this threat together. We are at our strongest together.” Keras reached across the gap between them and laid a hand on Marek’s left shoulder.
Marek knew that, and was glad his brother did too. It was part of the reason he hated Keras being so cold and distant towards him. It weakened them.
They were strongest when they were a united force. They didn’t need Enyo driving a wedge between them, not right now, not when there was so much at stake. They needed to remain united, not divided, and that meant Keras needed to keep his head.
He wasn’t sure his brother could manage that where Enyo was concerned though.
She provoked his darker side, the possessive nature that ran as deeply in Keras’s veins as it did in Marek’s.
A possessive side that had Marek stepping to the front porch, jamming his feet into his boots and teleporting again.
Only it wasn’t Seville that was his destination.
He landed in a shadowy alley near the square where the vampire slayer had asked him to meet her.
Hoping like hell she would be waiting for him.
Chapter 7
To say Caterina was annoyed was an understatement. She was fuming. She should have known better than to think the first man she had been attracted to in close to a decade would turn out to be punctual, respectful of her and her time, or interested enough in her to show up at all.
She should have left when she had said she would, but she had foolishly remained, wasting a further two hours in the hope the warrior would keep his word and join her on the hunt for the remaining vampires.
Had he gone without her?
She jammed her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket as she navigated the narrow alleys and swore under her breath, because if he had, she would never forgive him, not even if he apologised a thousand times over. She didn’t need anyone protecting her. She never had.
When the police had started eyeing her where she had been waiting in the square for close to three hours, she had decided to call it. The warrior was a no-show.
It wasn’t going to stop her.
She didn’t know locations of possible vampire nests in the city as he proclaimed he did, but she knew where a vampire nest had been, and she might be able to get some information from it, possible clues as to other nest locations.
She followed the alleys into the gothic quarter, feet unerringly carrying her back to the building where she had slain four vampires last night. The warrior wasn’t the only one who knew this city. She could have found her way to the old nest blindfolded.
Caterina checked the wider avenue when she reached the arched wooden door of the nest, scouting in both directions to make sure she was alone. Satisfied that she was, she pushed the heavy door open and slipped inside, moving quietly in case any vampires had returned. She drew the blade from beneath her jacket and silently eased through the shadows towards the courtyard.
The vampires from last night were little more than ash swirling in the light breeze now, their dust spread around the worn flagstones.
She paused at the edge of the shadows and listened. Distant voices and the sounds of traffic on one of the main arteries were the only noises that reached her. She edged into the courtyard and checked all around it, her breath lodged in her throat as she checked every shadowy alcove beneath the walkway that ran around all four sides of it, columns and arches supporting the floors above. She kept her back to the wall and moved right, following that walkway around, listening the whole time. When she heard nothing other than the noises of the city, she moved forwards along the wall opposite the arched entrance, heading towards the corridor the vampire had emerged from last night.
As she neared it, the start of a set of steps became visible in the gloom. She swiftly closed the distance between her and them, and followed them upwards to the first level of the building. It was quiet, only the sound of her breathing breaking the silence as she took in the peeling crimson painted walls and the scant threadbare furniture.
She had seen more luxurious nests in her time.
This one looked as if someone had thrown it together in a hurry, forgoing luxury for the sake of having a modicum of comfort. A recent nest? Or perhaps these vampires had been young and poor, a new group that lacked the funds of their more established counterparts.
There was money in murder.
She had seen vampire nests filled with trinkets made of purest gold, sumptuous fabrics and expensive art and technology. She supposed that the dead had no need of money or whatever had been on their person, or in their house, when the vampire had killed them.
Caterina moved through the drawing room, heading for the next one. This one was in a better state, the eggshell-blue walls freshly painted where bookcases didn’t line them. A desk stood to her right, with its back to the windows that overlooked the courtyard.
She hurried over to it, set her sword down on the worn mahogany top and rifled through the papers scattered across it, setting aside any she found interesting.
The air to her left shifted.
Caterina grabbed her blade from the desk and lashed out with her weak hand, panic lancing her as her heart rate jacked up and her mind screamed that a vampire had caught her off guard, something she had sworn would never happen.
The tip of her blade settled against the throat of the man towering over her.
His right eyebrow arched as his earthy eyes slid down to her sword, the flecks of gold and emerald emerging in them as he stared at it and then at her. He casually edged her blade away from his throat.
“Fast reactions you have there.” His deep voice rolled over her, warming her despite her effort to remain unaffected by him.
Cold towards him.
She ignored him, set her sword down on the desk and continued her work, clinging to her mood as she found several interesting receipts but not much else. Apparently, the nest had placed a few orders for better furniture before she had killed some of them and sent the rest running. It looked as if they had been settling in for the long haul. Which wasn’t in her favour at all.
She had been hoping this would be a satellite nest of a larger group of vampires, ones she had dealt with before, but it was looking more and more like a new group, recently formed, which meant the chances of finding them at any of the two locations of previous vampire nests she knew in Barcelona was slim to none.
“I am sorry.” He moved around to the opposite side of the desk, into her line of sight.
She kept her focus on the papers, shifting another pile aside, refusing to give up even when she knew it was pointless. She wasn’t going to find any information here.
The information she needed was in the head of the dark-haired man opposite her, the one who obviously wanted to get her attention as he leaned over and planted his large hands on the edge of the desk.
“Something came up.”
She shrugged stiffly, trying to let those words roll off her. They sank into her instead, softening the sharp edge off her mood and threatening to make her lose her grip on it. He had stood her up. She had waited three damned hours for him, longer than she had ever waited for a man before.
“How long have you been here?”
Caterina shoved a pile of papers at him, forcing him to remove one hand from the desk.
He rose to his full height and sighed, the weary edge to it making her feel like a bitch. She was the one who had been put out, left like an idiot for all to see as they came and went from the square. She had tried to remain visible to make things easy on him, given how busy the square always was, had picked a spot beneath one of the towering palm trees that dotted it, close to the circular fountain in the centre. She had remained visible all right.
Several couples had eyed her on the way into the stunning rectangular square and on the way out again after they’d had a nice meal at one of the many restaurants that spilled into it. A few of them had looked at her with pity.
“I am sorry,” he said again, softer this time and in Catalan, his voice warming her right down to her marrow.
He wasn’t going to curry favour with her by speaking her native tongue rather than Spanish or English.
She grabbed her sword and sheathed it. “There’s nothing here. I should have looked somewhere else. I’m just wasting my time in this place.”
“I’m glad you looked here.”
She lifted her gaze to him and frowned as she spotted a cut darting across the straight line of his jaw, visible through the fine layer of stubble. “Why?”
He smiled, one that warmed his eyes and curled lips made for kissing, turning his rough masculine features more handsome. “Because I found you.”
She peered deeper into his eyes and saw the relief there. Had he been worried when he had reached the square to find her gone? It struck her that part of her had been worried she would never see him again. The part she tried to tamp down as she kept a fragile grip on her mood.
“You would have easily found me, if you had been on time.” She moved around the desk, heading for the exit to her left.
He grabbed her arm before she made it more than five steps and spun her to face him. His eyes searched hers, intense and focused, sending a hot shiver through her as he palmed her elbow and drew her closer, until the heat of his body embraced her and she was aware of how tall he was, how strong he was.
How handsome he was.
“I meant to be on time,” he husked, his gaze straying to her lips. “I really did. I have other duties, things I have to do.”
“Things that take priority over hunting vampires?” She kept her gaze locked on his eyes as they brightened in that eerie way, gold and emerald flakes shining against the dark backdrop of his irises, refusing to look at his mouth because she was afraid of what she would do if she did.
The urge to kiss him was already strong, pounding as fiercely in her veins as it had last night when he had been this close to her.
He nodded. “If my brothers knew I hunted vampires, I would be in serious trouble.”
Brothers. She filed that information away and seized her chance to learn more about him.
“They’re like you?”
Another dip of his chin.
“And you fight what exactly?” When he glanced at her, a frown marring his brow, she added, “Your duty isn’t hunting vampires, so what do you fight? It’s obvious you’re some sort of warrior.”
“Warrior?” he chuckled and heat curled through her again as the rich timbre of it hit her hard. “I suppose we are warriors, with a vow to defend our home, but not from vampires. Vampires are your sworn enemy. Daemons are mine.”
Daemons. She filed that away too, her curiosity growing as she wondered what other species existed in his shadowy world.
“Like with horns, and wings, and pointy tails?” A thousand images popped into her head, all of them very biblical interpretations of the creatures.
She had her upbringing to thank for that.
While she always wore a silver cross around her neck, it was more of a deterrent to vampires rather
than a symbol of faith these days. She had witnessed too much darkness in this world to believe there was any light to balance it.
“Some of them have those things. What you would think of as a traditional demonic being. Others are different. Most appear human. It doesn’t matter to me. If they have daemon blood, I kill them.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
He grinned, a devastating one that blasted the last remnants of her anger with him into oblivion. “Because you already know about my world, so it seems pointless to lie to you, but more than that… because I am trying to make you like me again.”
She shook her head at that. “Answer one question for me—no two.”
He turned with her, ushering her towards the door. “While we move. I have a place in mind that I would like to check out.”
She could go along with that.
She let him lead her from the building and paused on the street outside it as another question came to her, one she couldn’t stop herself from voicing.
“You can teleport, can’t you?”
He looked back at her and didn’t hesitate to nod. “Among other things. Why, do you want a lift?”
A lift? He was offering to teleport her? She recalled the black ribbons of smoke that had swirled around him, making him look as if the darkness itself had devoured him in that instant he had teleported.
She shook her head. “I like my feet firmly on the ground, thank you.”
He chuckled again and started along the street towards the Carrer del Bisbe. “You might change your mind when you realise how far it is to the vampire nest.”
She hurried to keep up with him. His long legs made easy work of the distance, and although she was tall for a woman at five-nine, she struggled to remain beside him. The length of his stride and his pace meant one of two things.
Either he was in a hurry.
Or he didn’t walk with women very often.
“And you’re two hundred years old?” She let that one slip out casually, hoping he would laugh or something and reveal he had been joking about his age.
Marek: Guardians of Hades Series Book 4 Page 7
