On any other night, she’d have simply let nature have its forceful way, would have landed wherever fate dictated and then worked her way back to West Jones Street. But not this time, because then she might miss seeing Aristos when he left the brownstone. He’d be walking down those steps soon, just as he had the night they’d first met.
But this next sighting of him might be her final one, for certainly their last encounter had not gone as she’d expected. He had been so furious with her, a reaction she never could have anticipated.
I am naught but a dead woman, she reminded herself. That is all he thinks of me. He believes that I abandoned him, found him horrifying.
Oh, but his wings had been mesmerizing. A welcome explanation after a courtship where she’d known he wasn’t human but never learned enough about what he truly was. Until he’d landed on her balcony the night when they had planned to give themselves to each other. She’d known nothing yet understood everything about him in a moment.
He was far more glorious than she’d even imagined. With that, another voice ripped into her memories, one that didn’t belong to Aristos, but she could not hear it clearly enough to identify the speaker. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to recall what had happened next. She could see Aristos, there on her balcony, waiting, and then . . . Someone had blocked her from him; someone had pulled her back as she’d gone to open the French doors.
Ari! Ari, help me.
She’d cried out to him, but he’d already been turning away, believing her terrified of him. Yes, that was it! But who had been in her room that night, and what had that person done or said to keep her from Ari, filling her with such terror that he would forever believe she’d rejected him?
Oh, why could she not remember? She worked at the memories, trying to unravel them as she twined her insubstantial fingers through the branches. But no matter how hard she puzzled over them, the memories remained as vague as a river mist.
Chapter 6
Eros dipped his red- feathered quill into the inkpot; smiling in anticipation, he began scrawling conjured words of romance upon the parchment. His pen moved quickly, yet even so, he could not keep pace with the agile movements of his sensual imagination.
Dominick slid a palm against Adrianne’s ripe, swelling flesh, his fingertips alive with need, he wrote with a flourish. Moving his mouth lower, dangerously so, Dominick brushed a kiss upon his beloved’s mound, urging her aggressively, tantalizingly, hungrily . . .
He hesitated, frustrated by his inability to convey the eager passion he felt thrumming in his god’s veins. Too many adverbs; not precise enough.
He tossed down the quill in disgust; he, lord of all love, reduced to this! Penning a dull, lifeless imitation of what he could easily create with one strategic aim of his bow, all because of a dare his father had issued. No, not a dare, he thought, a test of strength. His father had wagered that Eros could not go a month, much less six, without creating passion between mortals.
Dominick and Adrianne weren’t even well written, much less a reflection of his true skill. He’d only begun scribing their imaginary courtship as an outlet of sorts, a salve to the heat of his unanswered addiction. As proof to Ares that he lived off more than love and lust and tupping.
His father had sworn such discipline impossible. “You are obsessed,” he’d scoffed. “You have no other outlet for slaking your need than to meddle in the affairs of mortal hearts.”
Ares despised what he, his own son, treasured. Love, in all its giddy, charming sensation. Although Eros did not limit his craft to sensual love. He dispensed doses of brotherly affection; enjoyed occasionally besotting wayward fathers with their deserving offspring; adored creating bonds between fellow soldiers. One particular favorite was sorority rush season, weaving those bonds of deep sisterhood between young women, the kind that lasted lifetimes.
Yet courtly love, in all its forms and enthrallments, remained Eros’s true intoxication.
His father could never appreciate such rarefied gifts.
Eros had been born of the war god’s loins, his mere existence a cruel twist of Olympian fate. A fate he could never change because his bow had no impact upon any deity. Otherwise, he would have sighted his most powerful arrow upon his own father, seizing his greedy affection. Alas, his mighty aim was impotent within his own family.
So here he was, climbing the walls of his palace, waiting for some sign of his father’s approval. It was enough to bring on madness, Eros thought, despising the quiet that filled his normally lively home. A dulling dust had crept over the place during these past months. Crimson arrows and bows hung useless in his corridor, quivering every time he came near, practically begging to be put back into service. Those weapons of love missed working their magic almost as much as he did. He’d tried explaining the details of his recent pact to them, but his living arsenal never had been much on patience.
But they were very high on loyalty, a bond that went both ways. Eros had found them, a battalion of castoff soldiers cursed by his own father’s hand, transformed to standing stones, forever overlooking the Straits of Salamis. Ares had left these mighty men of valor, these Greek fighting warriors, lifelessly observing the battleground, unable to defend their beloved homeland.
Eros had taken pity upon the soldiers. Knowing firsthand how cruel his father could be, he’d transformed and conscripted them into his arsenal. They held rank and name, as they had in life, and he hoped that perhaps one day Ares might be persuaded to return them to their human state—a power he himself did not possess. At the moment, his arsenal did not understand the wager he’d made with his father. He pitied them, hanging uselessly in the hall of weapons; they surely felt as if they’d been turned to stone again.
Eros understood the sentiment, that deathly pall of uselessness.
That was where Dominick and Adrianne had entered into his affairs. Although imaginary, they at least provided some outlet for his talents. He’d hoped that, like the dossiers he had always maintained on his pairings, imagining their amorous intersection would give him purpose. He stared at their insipid tale upon the scroll, and despite himself, a thrill charged through his veins. Creation. Love. Seduction. Ah, it was only on the page, but it mimicked the real-life wicked rush.
He blew on his latest passage, urging the ink to dry. He wondered when his hard-won temperance would earn his father’s favor.
“Still trying your hand at verse?”
Eros started, turning over the inkpot, his hands and arms becoming drenched in crimson color. “Father. You were not expected.” He struggled to sound composed, even as he dripped ink ingloriously.
Ares stared down his nose. “We wouldn’t want you to appear drenched in blood. Not like a real warrior; then again, perhaps you’ve put those arrows of yours to legitimate use at last.”
Eros blotted at the ink, but it only smeared into a greater mess.
His father sniffed. “Go clean yourself, boy.”
Eros’s face flamed hot. Neither of them ever aged, and although he was this god’s son, he hadn’t been a “boy” in many millennia. Still, he found himself muttering, “Yes, my lord,” as he hurried toward the bathing rooms for a towel.
When he returned, Ares was reading from his scroll, sneering at Adrianne and Dominick’s tale of mortal love. “What a waste,” his father declared, dropping the parchment back onto the bed as if it were a lethal snake.
Eros quickly rolled it up, trying to blot away the remnants of spilled ink. “You know my gift must find an outlet, father,” he explained, hating how nervous and jittery he sounded. “It has been months since I worked my own arrows to any romantic effect.”
“Months, and yet the mortal populace moons and sexes onward, no end to their need for love.” Ares wandered toward a large Delacroix canvas that hung over the bed, one with surging bodies twined in an orgasmic, voluptuous display. “If it were me, I’d begin questioning my relevance, seeing as how humans carry on quite well without you, Eros.”
�
�It is their way. I did not sire the need in them. That came from the Highest.”
“Don’t mention Him.”
“Merely stating, father, that you cannot blame me for the existence of the emotion.”
“But for its many permutations and lasting effect . . . clearly you have no significant relevance. Even you must realize that after so many months of abstinence.”
For some reason, Eros thought of the arrows and bows hanging in his hall of weapons, how the god before him had taken that battalion of brave men and robbed them of everything, made them useless.
And had always wished to do the same to him.
“So what inspires your visit, Ares?” He kept his voice chilly, refrained from calling the god by either a worshipful title—or a familial one.
Surprisingly, the deity smiled. “Well, well. A spirit of rebellion has been birthed in my son after all this time? Perhaps self-denial has toughened you as I’d hoped.”
Eros held his tongue, waiting. There would be more. There was always more whenever his vain father spoke, and often much was revealed because of Ares’ insane self-adoration.
Glancing up at the painting again, Ares narrowed his eyes. “One must admire the intense passions of these humans, son. And for that, I do give you long overdue credit. Imagery such as this, well, it almost reminds me of battle . . . the thronging bodies, the need for domination.” He pivoted, facing Eros again. “I believe I’ve been overlooking the possibility for a critical alliance.”
Eros’s heart thundered at the words. Alliance? Did his father intend to extend some sort of partnership or approval? He’d waited, for so many millennia, waited and hoped that one day some other mystery of love would bring his father here, compel him to love his own son as he should.
He swallowed. “What . . . partnership do you have in mind?”
“Ah, not a partnership, per se. A joining of our skills for battle. Intrigued?” Ares lifted a golden eyebrow, smiling openly.
“Absolutely, father.” He nodded vigorously, not listening to the doubts that tried to surface in his mind. The urgent reminders that Ares was a bloodthirsty, craven god and not to be trusted. “I am eager.”
Ares extended a hand, ready to shake on the arrangement. “I suppose even fighting with me is better than sitting uselessly in the palace all day.”
His father’s hand was there for the taking; a bargain; an alliance. For one last moment, Eros hesitated. “This is love spelling you want from me, correct? I do not have the skills of warfare and battle that you trade in.”
His father’s smile grew blindingly bright. “That is precisely what I want from you, Eros. Your divine skill with love’s bow and arrow. Strategic, powerful, relentless. You will be a welcome addition to my current fight.”
The desert was balmy at night. Eros remembered that much about Iraq during late October, although he’d not visited the bleak, sand-burned land in almost a year. There hadn’t been much love to make or conjure in this forsaken place, not for a while.
He reminded himself of the reason that he’d traveled here tonight. After so many, many millennia, his father needed him, wanted his help. That assignment had led him here, the first phase of his quest, part of a much larger and overarching assignment. Once he found his quarry, he would take her to Savannah. The rest of the pieces would fall into place then.
Layla. Layla Djiannis. She was the one he sought here in the heavy blanket of darkness. When he’d stared into the cascading pool, the heady waters that often revealed intimate love and relationship knowledge, hers had been the first face that he’d seen; he’d also quickly grasped the multitiered mayhem she could cause in the arena of love. At least for his father’s targeted group. Layla, it appeared, could solve quite a few problems on Eros’s behalf, not least, helping him earn his father’s long-denied approval . . . and all in the name of love.
Sable kept to the shadows along West Jones Street. Clomping his centaur’s hooves on the uneven cobblestones angrily, he castigated himself. As he always did upon returning to this piece of human land, night after cursed night.
Why, by the name of every unholy thing, was he—a Djinn demon—lurking around a mortal’s home? And not even because he hoped to consume this particular human female, as he should have done months ago, but out of some paltry need to—what? Protect the annoying, compassionate little bitch?
Disgusted by his ongoing obsession with Sophie Lowery, he galloped down to Whitaker Street, vowing never to return in search of her again. As he reached the intersection, however, he found himself unable to continue, and instead cut a turn, heading back to the brownstone where she lived. He would wait, hidden as always, until he saw her arrive, reassured of her safe return.
Just once more, he promised himself, hissing in revulsion at his inability to stay away. He blamed the mortal for the alteration in his otherwise robust and hateful demonic nature. If she’d not healed him, not taken those hands of hers and . . . He flinched, closing his eyes and battling away the memory of her soft fingertips moving across his chest.
A thin, feminine cry pierced his consciousness, and he glanced down the street. She was back: that damned apparition he’d been seeing ever since he started lurking around Sophie’s house two months ago. The same one who always nodded politely every time they met, as if he wasn’t half-covered in horned protrusions, and his body, once winged and beautiful, now cursed into the gruesome form of a centaur.
Yet no matter how rude or insultingly he treated the spirit, she never ceased to be horribly gracious. He shivered, keeping his distance now, but oddly enough, she seemed unmoving tonight. Normally she floated along the street, head held high. Didn’t she realize that she was dead? He’d even tried, once, to point out that pitiful fact. All in the name of helpful cruelty, of course, but she’d maintained her poise, smiling up at him.
Tonight she seemed to have become tangled in the branches of an oak. For a moment, he stepped forward to help her, but then started to laugh. He owed kindness to no human, dead or alive. But she’s one of them, an inner voice murmured. She’s like Sophie. With the same annoying, beautiful, cursed blue eyes.
He slid back into the shadows, concealing himself. Why by Ahriman or Zeus or any other deity did his path keep colliding with Daughters of Delphi? Well, you fool, perhaps because that same blood—piddling trickle that it is—flows in your own half-demon veins.
Perhaps that was why he’d been susceptible to Sophie, allowing the skinny imp of a mortal to approach him right after that recent battle when he, along with the Spartans, had taken up arms against Ares. Perhaps that was why he’d actually allowed that particular Daughter to touch him. To heal him. To take on some of his pain.
He frowned at the memory, torn between fury and revulsion, but much as he hated the fact, he did rather owe Sophie. Because of her, he bore only half as many of the hideous horns across his body as he’d had before she’d laid her warm hands upon his body. Not that he’d asked for help, not that any Djinn worthy of the name ever would.
He sighed. And so he found himself here once again. Night after night, out of some—he spat over his shoulder in disgust at the thought—obligation. Had he lost his demonic mind? He should trot on down the cobblestone street and find a soul to suck dry. Locate some depressed art student to siphon, mainlining their suicidal tendencies like the pleasing, heady drug such emotion truly was. His mouth curved upward in a smile at the thought, but another urge snuffed it out.
Shame. When had he ever felt shame for his wicked desires?
Never. Until Sophie had touched him.
He blamed her. All her fault, all her problem, and now his burden. As if in reaction to the litany, that smooth skin along his chest grew warm, the place that had been littered with aching horns until she’d healed him. Every time he thought to turn back to his basest desires, his simplest needs, his chest grew hot—as if she were touching him all over again.
Damn it, Sophie, he thought, glancing up and down the street. It was late and getti
ng later. Didn’t she know that creatures like him existed? That they lived to inspire rape and murder and every depravity that existed in between?
She should be back by now. What of those blasted cats she fostered, each with its own special name that she’d given it? Someone should be feeding the pests. Her potted daisies—had she even thought to water them today? He hated the small kick of concern that flooded into his sinister heart.
“Sophie,” he said on a growl. “You should be more careful. If something happened to you . . .”
He could not, would not, let himself finish the sentence. Instead, he forced his way farther into the shadows, ensuring that if she should come whistling around the corner, swinging her thin arms, she’d not discover him. Even with her gifts, he still knew how to hide in the mid-dimensions, and so he moved into darkness.
Suddenly, the sound of feminine voices echoed down the quiet street. Remaining concealed, he peered outward, wondering whether Sophie approached, perhaps with a friend.
But it wasn’t Sophie’s voice, he realized, and the second female was not a friend. Not of the Daughters themselves, and certainly not of the polite spirit who currently stood engaged in eager conversation with her. Far too eager, he thought with a twisted smile, considering the danger that little ghost now entertained.
Layla Djiannis. In the Americas. What an interesting twist of fate, and a useful bit of knowledge. What mischief did his dark cousin wish to make here in Savannah? And with his friendly little ghost, no less?
Yes, most intriguing indeed, he decided, easing farther into the shadowy spaces.
Chapter 7
Ari awoke feeling like a jackhammer was going to town inside his skull—and still under the spell of that erotic, disturbing dream. The one where he’d been lying in bed, Juliana slowly massaging his entire body, unfastening his pants, untying his freaking Nikes. And that last bit, with the cross-trainers? It had actually been sexy as hell.
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