“No,” Ares snarled, pivoted towards him, and kicked off.
He wouldn’t make it. Neither would Daimon, not even if he stepped.
All he could do was watch as Valen ran the blade across his wrist and blood gushed from the wound.
“Stronzo!” Eva barked and lunged for him, her short black hair flying out of her face as she reached for the blade.
Valen sagged as blood poured from his wrist, splattering across the surface of the gate and spreading outwards, and Eva grabbed him instead of the knife. She caught him as his knees gave out.
He breathed hard from between gritted teeth, his eyes rapidly darkening as they narrowed.
Eva muttered soft words in Italian, sweet chastising ones coupled with a few strong swear words that Daimon decided his brother deserved.
Valen leaned heavily on her slender shoulders, his arm shaking as he tried to keep holding it out over the gate. Eva took hold of his arm for him, helping him, and he looked at her, a hell of a lot of love in his eyes that was still strange to see. Valen’s default setting for his entire life had been caustic, and it had only gotten worse in the centuries after their sister had died and Zeus had punished Valen for his insubordination by removing his favour from him, leaving a ragged scar down the left side of Valen’s face and neck, a permanent reminder of what he had done.
So it was weird seeing his brother looking at someone with genuine warmth in his eyes.
With love.
The blood Valen was spilling onto the gate seeped across the surface, muting the colours.
“I think it’s working,” Valen slurred.
Eva struggled to keep him on his feet.
Daimon wasn’t sure how their youngest brother, Calistos, was going to be able to handle closing the main gate in Seville if closing London was draining Valen this much. Cal had been out of sorts since they had lost the chance to discover the location of his twin sister, Calindria’s, soul and Esher had disappeared. Cal was blaming himself for both of those things. Daimon doubted he was strong enough to handle closing Seville on top of all that.
“Think I’m—” Valen cut off as he suddenly dropped, his knees hitting the bottom of the shallow pond, and Eva yelped as she was dragged down with him.
Daimon looked at the gate as he called on his power, summoning one last wave of ice. It rose up around the inside of the wall, the shards only seven feet tall but enough to keep the daemons at bay while Ares checked on Valen and the gate.
A gate which Daimon could no longer feel, not as he could before. The power that flowed from it now was muted, barely there. Had Valen done it?
The rings slowly began to shrink, the innermost one winking out of existence as it touched the central violet disc.
It was closing.
“Is he good?” Daimon hollered, keeping his focus on the wall of ice, aware the daemons were still there and still trying to get to them.
Ares looked up from his position crouched next to Valen and nodded. “Think so. He’s out cold though.”
Daimon didn’t like the sound of that.
Closing the twin gate had been taxing on Cal, but he hadn’t passed out.
Ares pulled a phone from his pocket, the screen casting white highlights in his overlong tawny hair and across his face as his thumb danced over the device. “Calling in a retrieval.”
Because neither he nor Daimon could teleport with Valen without harming him.
Eva tore the hem of her T-shirt and bound Valen’s wrist, muttering obscenities in Italian under her breath the whole time.
Beyond Ares, Valen and Eva, the last ring of the gate shrank into the central disc. It shrank too and then disappeared with a violent flash.
Gone.
For now.
Once the enemy was dead and the threat over, Hades would want the gates opened again. Their father had sent a Messenger to Keras to say he had stopped all traffic through the gates, but had made it clear he couldn’t keep the Underworld closed for long.
Gods, goddesses and Hellspawn didn’t appreciate being caged in that realm, having their freedom taken from them. Hades’s staff were already dealing with hundreds of complaints.
Considering the alternative was them all losing their home and being ruled by whoever was behind this uprising, Daimon figured they could put up with their freedom being impacted a little.
Daimon kept an eye on Valen as Eva tended to him, worry a constant weight in his heart as his senses remained locked on the daemons. They retreated into the night, but he kept his boots firmly planted where they were, resisting the urge to follow them and eradicate them all.
Valen needed him here.
The ice walls surrounding them were beginning to crack as Marek appeared, black ribbons of smoke curling from the shoulders of his torn charcoal linen shirt and onyx daemon blood streaked across his face and darkening his wavy brown hair.
His earthy eyes shimmered with green and gold flakes as he looked down at Valen where he lay in Eva’s arms. “Cal suffered the same fate.”
Daimon cast a glance at Ares. Concern etched hard lines on his older brother’s face, unease that ran through Daimon too as he thought about not one but two of their brothers out cold with no sign of coming around.
If he had known closing a gate would cause this to happen, he would have spoken out against it rather than going along with it. The look on Ares’s face said he wasn’t sure what he would have said, and Daimon didn’t envy him.
Marek looked just as conflicted as he stooped and lifted Valen into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder.
Daimon was glad he wasn’t one of the oldest of their group. He felt the weight of responsibility enough as it was. He couldn’t imagine how heavily it weighed upon Keras, Ares and Marek’s shoulders.
Keras was under enough pressure as it was, without having to order them to close the gates knowing full well they would end up like Valen and Cal.
Closing the gates was something they needed to do, but Daimon feared the cost of shutting them down was dangerously high.
He only hoped he was wrong about that.
Marek held his hand out to Eva. Her blue eyes reluctantly shifted away from Valen and landed on it. She placed hers into it and they both disappeared.
Ares was quick to follow them.
Daimon lingered, waiting for the ice walls to break because he wanted to be sure all evidence of their existence would be gone by morning, when mortals would enter Hyde Park. He didn’t want them seeing anything out of place.
That was the only reason he hadn’t teleported.
It had nothing to do with the sorceress who was probably waiting in Tokyo to give him hell.
He scrubbed a hand over the spikes of his white hair, watching the ice begin to crumble.
The ancient Edo period mansion felt far too small with her staying in it, but when he had suggested she bunk elsewhere, Cass had been quick to launch into an argument with him. Her ward, Marinda, was staying in the mansion with Cal since the London townhouse that was his home had been breached by Eli and the enemy, which meant Cass had decided she was also staying in Tokyo, right under Daimon’s feet.
Daimon rubbed the back of his neck and huffed.
The sorceress had a bad habit of just deciding things, and no one got a say in them.
Daimon had been staying in Tokyo to take care of the mansion, which was primarily Esher’s home now although their father had built it for all of them, and so he could be there for Aiko. Aiko was devastated by Esher’s disappearance, and Daimon needed to look after her for his brother.
He was doing his best, but some days were harder than others.
Some days, Daimon’s dark thoughts and fears about his brother weighed too heavily on him and he couldn’t face her, or anyone.
His phone vibrated and he didn’t bother to check the message that had come in. It would be from Keras, asking him where he was.
He focused on the wall, raised his hand and curled it into a fist. When he squeezed it, the ice sh
attered, and Daimon stepped. Darkness whirled around him, cool and comforting, a connection to the Underworld that he savoured, and then his boots hit gravel.
He opened his eyes and looked at the mansion, aching inside.
It felt empty without Esher in it, even when all his brothers and their women were there, crowding the long main room of the single-storey horseshoe-shaped building. Morning sunlight reflected off the glazed grey ribbed tiles of the roof and brightened the white panels that filled the spaces between thick dark wooden beams. It warmed his back, casting his shadow out before him, across the gravel and the steppingstones, to the base of one of the large stone lanterns that were dotted around the front garden.
From inside, voices rang out, a cacophony that had him wanting to teleport to his own home in Hong Kong to get some peace and quiet.
And avoid the owner of the angry female voice that for some damned reason he picked out from the blur.
“You should have taken me with you. Now look what happened. I could have helped,” Cass snapped, her words harsh and clipped, bringing out her Russian accent as they rang with the fury he could sense coming from her.
Keras didn’t respond to that. He carried Cal towards the right side of the mansion, disappearing from view with Marinda hurrying behind him. Cass turned, her pale blue eyes tracking her ward, a worried edge to them that almost made him feel there was a warm heart somewhere beneath that irritating, haughty exterior of hers.
Daimon forced himself to walk to the front porch, stepped up onto the raised wooden deck as he toed his boots off, and steeled himself only a little before entering the house.
As expected, Cass’s eyes immediately leaped to him.
He cursed when he realised they were alone.
She strode towards him, the thigh slit in her long black dress flashing a lot of creamy flesh at him. He swore she never took the damned thing off. Would it kill her to wear something less revealing, less figure-hugging? The soft black material embraced ample breasts and a small waist, and flared over curvy hips. It flashed every inch of her and made it impossible not to notice things about her.
Things he didn’t want to notice.
Before she could open her mouth to launch her first salvo, he held his hand up and strode past her.
“Not interested.”
Daimon made a beeline for the garden nestled between the three sides of the house, needing air and some space because he felt as if he was drowning.
Had been feeling that way since Cass had come crashing into their lives.
He couldn’t get a moment alone, and gods he needed a moment to breathe.
Cass stepped into his path, the flare of anger in her ice-blue eyes rapidly fading into something far worse—concern.
She gave him a once-over. “Those wounds need looking at.”
She pointed to his chest and then his legs, and he had never been more aware of his own body as he was whenever she was gazing at it.
“I’m not in the mood for you, Cass. Just leave me alone.” He stepped past her, heading for the garden and the air he badly needed.
Space to rein his riotous feelings back under his control.
Needs he had no right to feel.
“Daimon, wait…” She started after him again.
Wanting to be sure she got the message and left him alone, he turned on her with a growl as his feet hit the wooden planks of the covered walkway that ran around all three wings of the house.
“I don’t have time for this right now. Esher is still missing, I’m tired and injured, and we don’t know when or where the enemy will attack next and I need to take care of Valen.”
Cass inched back a step with each harsh word he threw at her. It wasn’t like the sorceress to shrink away from someone, especially him.
“I just want to help,” she bit out, a little too sulkily for him to not feel anything other than like a royal dick. “Let me help with Valen.”
“Fine,” he muttered, and took some of the bite out of his tone as he added, “I’d appreciate that.”
He turned to his right, towards the southern wing of the house where Valen’s quarters were.
Cass murmured, “It wouldn’t kill you to let me help you too.”
He knew that, but he couldn’t. He needed to keep his distance from her.
He’d made a promise.
He drew his long black coat back and slipped his right hand into his pocket, and clutched the pendant hanging from his phone.
A promise he intended to keep.
Chapter 2
Cassandra could feel Daimon withdrawing, pulling away from her as he turned his back to her and strode towards the wing of the house where she had been sleeping in Keras’s room. She wanted to push him, wanted to know why he did that. He changed so frequently she couldn’t keep up.
One moment he would be lashing out at her verbally, as scathing as could be, and the next he softened and accepted her presence, would even go as far as speaking with her as if she was a normal human being.
Not something he wanted to wipe from the face of the Earth.
She remained where she was on the covered walkway, staring after him, trying to make sense of him and feeling as if she would never understand him. The temptation to follow him was great, especially when rather than entering Valen’s room that was directly in front of her, he banked right and headed towards the garden instead.
Cass held herself back.
Because he needed space.
It hadn’t taken her long into her study of him and his brothers to notice that he was closest to Esher, and it had taken her less than a second to see how deep that love ran when Esher had leapt into the gate in pursuit of the wraith.
Or perhaps it had taken her longer than that.
In the short time since Esher had been missing, she had witnessed a dramatic change in Daimon.
It was as if he was slowly falling apart before her eyes and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
There was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
He wasn’t going to be whole again until Esher returned.
What happened if he never came back?
It wasn’t any of her concern, and neither was Daimon’s state of mind. The reason she had studied these gods, and the reason she was here now, was for Marinda’s sake and to keep the vow she had made to Marinda’s father, Eric, who had been murdered by the brothers’ enemy.
A promise to keep Mari safe.
That was her priority.
Daimon was just a nice distraction, a bit of eye-candy that brightened things up while she was keeping an eye on her ward. He was nothing to her. Just some harmless fun.
He couldn’t be anything more than that.
Her gaze drifted after him and she idly tracked him as he crossed the arched vermillion and black wooden bridge that spanned the koi pond at the start of the lush rolling garden. He paused at the apex of it and gazed down into the water, his profile to her, too far away for her to make out any details.
Not that she needed to be close to him to know how he would look.
Lost. Adrift. Hurt.
Lonely.
It was none of her business. These gods meant nothing to her.
Daimon meant nothing to her.
She had to remember that, had to remember her duty, even when it felt like a sword hanging over her, ready to fall and sever her from her life, throwing her into servitude that grated and had her mood blackening whenever she thought about it.
Cass pulled down a breath and purged it, and all her feelings. When she was calm again, as empty as she could manage, all her worries and desires washed from her, she padded barefoot towards Valen’s room.
Eva looked up as Cass entered the sparsely furnished room, her blue eyes filled with concern and fear. It was strange seeing the assassin afraid of something. Cass shifted her gaze to Valen where he lay on top of a pile of blankets in the centre of the golden tatami mats that covered the floor, his violet hair in disarray but his face peaceful
.
Beside him, Eva tightened her grip on his left hand, clutching it as if she feared he would slip away if she let go.
Cass eased down to kneel on the other side of him and looked him over. Someone had bandaged his right arm from his elbow to his palm. Crimson spotted it, a rather nasty patch of it over his wrist. She started there, holding her right hand over it as she closed her eyes and formed the words in her mind, a powerful incantation that would speed his healing process. Heat bloomed in her hand and Eva’s soft gasp rang in her ears as light shimmered from her palm.
As she was funnelling the healing spell into Valen, she probed a little, using another incantation to study his vitals.
There was nothing out of the ordinary on the surface, but as she summoned stronger magic to delve deeper, she wanted to bite out a rather unladylike curse.
This wasn’t good.
She needed to speak with Mari.
Cass withdrew her hand and met Eva’s blue gaze. She wasn’t sure what to say to the mortal, just as she was never sure what to say to Daimon, or to Aiko, Esher’s lover. She stared at her in silence, searching for the words that wouldn’t come.
When the silence began to grate, she pushed onto her feet, and forced a smile and a slight nod. “He will be fine.”
Did those words ring with the hollowness she felt in them?
It was the right thing to say, but it felt wrong of her to utter those four words, offering hope where she wasn’t sure there was any. Perhaps that was the reason she never knew what to say to Daimon or Aiko.
She couldn’t bring herself to lie to them to make them feel better.
She hurried from the room, striding straight across the front of the main living area of the house to the other wing of it. She turned right at the end of the corridor, passing the TV area, and her pulse picked up as she neared Cal’s room.
Mari was quick to stand as she entered, her blue-green eyes bright with unshed tears and her golden hair falling down from the twisted plait that arched over the top of her head. She ran her hand over it again as she hurried to Cass, hope surfacing in her eyes.
Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Page 2
