The thought of her coming under attack, targeted by the enemy, had his gut churning with acid, scouring his insides and filling him with a need to find her.
Rather than surrendering to that need, he kept his senses locked on her, satisfying his need to know she was safe.
He looked to his right at the garden, and then heaved another sigh. He needed to cool off.
He looked down at himself.
And wash off.
Black blood streaked his clothes, thick lines of it that were glossy against his jeans and navy long-sleeve. It had dried on his gloves too.
Rather than seeking solitude in the garden, he followed the raised walkway back to the main room of the house and banked right, heading for the panels that had been pushed aside to join the house to the garden.
And almost ran straight into Cal.
His younger brother stopped dead, narrowly avoiding the collision. “You good?”
Daimon nodded. “Yeah. You?”
He looked down at Cal’s hand and stilled as his gaze caught on the blue script that tracked along the inside of his brother’s right forearm.
His favour mark.
Before he could stop himself, he said, “It can take me to the Underworld, right?”
His heart missed a beat and thudded hard against his chest, his breath stuttering from his lips as he waited, the need to find Esher blazing back to life inside him, stronger than it had been in the garden before Cass had come to him.
Cal placed a hand over the ink. “It can, but I don’t really have the strength to use it right now… and if I did, I’d be the one going.”
Daimon lifted his gaze to lock with Cal’s.
For once, his brother looked serious.
Cal’s fingers tightened over his arm, pressing into his flesh. “It’s my fault he went. I should have stopped him.”
“I can bring him back, Cal.” Daimon reached for his brother’s hand, filled with a need to rip it from his arm and read the words written on his skin, a gift from Hermes. He stopped just short of touching his brother, labouring for breath as he saw how close he had come to grabbing him. He flexed his fingers and eased them back, swallowed and looked into Cal’s eyes. “I need to bring him back.”
“I know.” Ares’s deep voice rolled over him like a soothing wave, chasing the cold from his veins.
Daimon looked across at him, his brow furrowing.
“I know,” Ares repeated and raised his hand, ghosted it over Daimon’s shoulder, the closest they could come to touching each other without risking injury. “But you know he wouldn’t want you there.”
He did, and it was hard to swallow that bitter pill.
Esher had turned on him when he had tried to stop him from entering the gate, his other side firmly in control. That side of Esher would fight him if he tried to reach him, would believe he was trying to interfere with his hunt and would lash out. His brother would hate himself if he hurt anyone in his family, especially Daimon. He knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier on him. He needed to find his brother and bring him back.
To the only home they had right now.
Ares sighed, his broad shoulders lifting with it. “Father has legions scouring the Underworld for the wraith, thankfully to assist Esher rather than capture him and bring him in for breaking into the Underworld again. All we can do is wait for someone to find Eli and therefore Esher and for Dad to send word, or for Esher to capture his prey and come home.”
Daimon forced himself to nod.
It wasn’t enough for him, and it pained him to pretend that it was. He kept his eyes off the mark on Cal’s arm, deeply aware of it and the power it held, that it could take him to the Underworld.
To his real home.
The place where he belonged, where his power would no longer be a problem.
“You need to take five?” Ares canted his head, concern warming his dark eyes as he stared into Daimon’s.
Daimon blew out his breath and nodded, grateful for the fact his brother could see that he was struggling, that this was all becoming too much for him and he needed to get away for a while. He wanted to be here for Esher, keeping Aiko company and keeping the place in order, waiting for him to return, but being here was a constant reminder that Esher was missing and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“No more than an hour or two, okay?” Ares’s eyes gained a hard edge that quickly faded back to concern. “You’ll be careful?”
Daimon nodded again. “Anything feels off, I’ll step back here.”
Ares still looked reluctant to let him go.
So Daimon stepped without saying another word, landing on the broad white terrace of his home on the steep side of Victoria Peak, Hong Kong spread in all its towering neon glory below him.
Rather than feeling relieved to get away from the mansion and finally have the space he needed, all he felt was concern.
Worry about a witch.
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
A single thought flowing through him.
No good could come from that.
Chapter 7
Cass remained with her back to the wall at the end of the corridor near the kitchen, lingering long after Daimon had stepped, his power disappearing from the tangle that filled the air.
She inwardly cursed.
She should have known better than to approach Daimon when he had been seeking solitude, but some ridiculous part of her had needed to be near him.
Had needed him to know he wasn’t alone, even when he felt he was.
The same ridiculous part that had hoped he would show her that the same was true for her.
She wasn’t afraid, not of anything.
She wasn’t.
She didn’t feel this pressing need to be close to him because she wanted him to protect her, to save her from the fate that loomed on the horizon ahead of her, casting her future in a black shadow.
She could protect herself. She always had. She didn’t need anyone.
She didn’t.
Yet she couldn’t stop herself from hurrying through the main room of the mansion to Calistos’s room, poking her head inside, looking at Mari and saying, “I’m going to rest for a while if you don’t mind.”
Mari shook her head. “No. Of course. I’m a little tired myself.”
Mari was absolutely that, if tired was a synonym for horny. Her friend was restless, fidgeting with folding clothes and idly cleaning the sparsely furnished room. When Cass lingered, Mari gave her a look that screamed that she wanted her to go away so Cal would come to her.
Cass had far too much dignity to be a cockblocker. It was beneath her. Mari was her ward but she was a grown woman, and Cass accepted that grown women had needs.
Especially when a handsome god was in the vicinity.
Where had her handsome god gone?
She dipped her head to Mari, turned and rounded the corner, and strode past Calistos, murmuring, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
For some reason, he shuddered.
She supposed she had been on his case since meeting him. He wasn’t used to this side of her—the one that didn’t want to string his entrails around the mansion like bunting.
The moment she reached her temporary quarters in Keras’s room, she slid the panel that acted as a door closed and focused, checking her surroundings. All the brothers were far away enough.
She muttered an incantation, one that would give the illusion she was in the room, and then followed it with another spell.
One that transported her to Hong Kong.
The moment she touched down on the winding road that cut up the side of the steep hill of Victoria Peak, she paused. What was she doing? Hadn’t she already disturbed Daimon’s solitude? She stood there on the narrow road, the only sound the trees rustling in the gentle breeze and her heart beating in her ears.
Why couldn’t she leave him alone?
She stared straight ahead of her, up the slope that would lead to his
impressive modern home perched on the side of the hill, one she had visited more than once during her study of him before she had met Calistos.
Before she had really met Daimon.
Back then, everything had been so uncomplicated. He had been nothing but a target, someone to study and catalogue so she could be sure he was worthy of being one of Mari’s protectors as Eric had wanted.
Now?
Now she wasn’t sure what he was to her, but she knew what he couldn’t be.
Now everything was too complicated.
She told herself to leave, to give him the peace he needed, but her feet carried her forwards against her will.
She needed to see him.
Just needed to see he was all right and then she would go.
She would keep her distance so he wouldn’t sense her, would watch over him to make sure nothing happened while he was lost in his thoughts. Ares wasn’t the only one who had noticed that the disappearance of Esher weighed heavily on Daimon and despite his best efforts to do what he felt was right, taking care of the family home that Esher cherished and Aiko, sometimes it became too much for him.
During her study of the brothers, she had watched Daimon taking care of Esher, always there for the beast, always watching over him, always ready to bring him back from the edge. She had mused that the fates had gotten their entrance into this world the wrong way around, and that Daimon should have been the older brother.
Now she could see how wrong she had been.
Daimon needed his older brother as deeply as Esher needed him, possibly even more so. He was falling apart without him, gradually succumbing to whatever dark things plagued him and stole pieces of his strength each day.
Each hour that Esher was missing.
She reached a fork in the road and stopped, her eyes fixed on the illuminated white concrete, glass and steel building at the end of the route in front of her. The city lights reflected off the thick glass that acted as a railing around the terrace.
And shone on the man standing at those railings, his profile to her, wind tousling his white hair.
She slowly lifted her hand and lightly pressed her fist to her chest, fighting the need to go to him, to show him that he wasn’t alone and lift that sombre look from his face, shattering the hopelessness that she could see in his eyes.
He would hate her for it.
He was hurting, and he would lash out at her.
And then he would hate himself.
She had been caught up in that cycle with him several times since Esher had disappeared, seemed as bound by some cruel master of their fates as he was, feeling as if someone behind the scenes was pulling strings to make her do these reckless and foolish things.
Things she knew would only end in the same way.
With him lashing out.
With her hating herself.
With him hating himself.
And then a brief truce, a point where they were calm around each other, able to enjoy the others company without inflicting pain.
Daimon stepped.
As she stared at the black vapour trail of his teleport, her heart whispered at her to follow.
She knew where he was going.
She summoned the spell, even though it taxed her to do it, had her legs wobbly beneath her when she landed near the water.
She stared across the narrow stretch of it to the Star Ferry dock, watched him boarding one as he often did, making the journey from the island to the Kowloon district. She couldn’t understand why he did this ritual. He avoided contact with others, especially with humans, yet he always chose to cross the water in this manner—on a rickety green and white double-decker boat that was always packed with humans.
And he always took the same route when he reached the other side, walking the Avenue of the Stars for a short distance before he stopped to stare back across the water at the Hong Kong island skyline, taking it in.
Or did he see something else?
She had done her research and knew that if the brothers focused they could see the future of this world in all its morbid fiery horror, and sometimes even when they weren’t trying.
She muttered the spell again, risking it, and transported herself to the other side of the water, landing near a group of tourists. They would provide her cover.
As predicted, Daimon walked to the same spot he always did and stopped, gazing across the water that rippled with colour from the neon on the buildings on the opposite bank.
His handsome face hardened.
She suspected he wasn’t viewing the here and now, but rather what was to come.
She fell into studying him, as she always did whenever he wasn’t aware of her, whenever he came to this spot, trying to piece together a clearer picture of him.
He idly touched the roll-neck of the top he wore beneath his long black coat, stroking his gloved fingers along it, his eyes still locked on the skyline. His shoulders trembled, a brief shudder she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching him so closely. His power was acting up.
Did it hurt him when it did that? Did he hate the cold that wracked him? Was it the reason he kept his distance from everyone?
She couldn’t imagine what it was like to live as he did, unable to touch anyone, fearing he might kill them by mistake if he let them get too close to him.
Hades was an unsympathetic bastard to force Daimon to remain in this world when he was suffering because of it.
Daimon masked it well, but she could see it, especially when his brothers and their women were around. He often singled out Ares, secretly watching him interact with Megan. She wanted to know why he watched Ares more than the others. Because Ares shared his problem? Because Megan was immune to the heat that constantly shimmered over his skin?
She wanted to reveal herself and ask Daimon about it, but more than that, she wanted to watch him, drinking in this side of him, this quiet thoughtfulness, and how handsome he was when he wasn’t snapping at her.
If she revealed herself to him, he would push her away.
He frowned and lowered his head, pulled a phone from his jeans pocket and stared at it, the screen illuminating his face. He pocketed it again and turned away from the view, his long legs swiftly carrying him back the way he had come.
Where was he going in such a hurry?
She trailed after him, curiosity gripping her. That curiosity only increased when he stopped where the pedestrian pathway met the road and hailed a cab. She hurried to catch up with him, hailing a taxi for herself when she reached the road and slipping into the back of it.
Felt like a cliché as she said, “Follow that cab.”
It was strangely thrilling as the vehicle pulled away, tailing the one Daimon was in as it moved deeper into the heart of the city, beyond the business districts and high rises to smaller buildings and a more suburban setting.
“Stop,” she hissed as the cab Daimon was in pulled up outside a long stone building that had a colonial air about it.
Daimon stepped out of the taxi and jogged up the steps, pushed one of the large double doors open and disappeared inside.
Cass paid her driver and slipped out onto the pavement. She eased towards the three-storey building, her heart hammering in her throat and that curiosity tugging her forwards, even as part of her screamed to leave and not snoop into things for once.
Her gaze drifted over the building, with its columns and tall sash windows. It looked like a bank or the head office of some grand company in Europe, was out of place among the tattered buildings that surrounded it. Someone had taken great care of this one building while the others of its age had fallen into ruin around it.
She came to an abrupt halt as she reached the five steps that led up to the door, her gaze snagging on the brass sign mounted on the wall beside it.
An orphanage?
Why had Daimon come to an orphanage?
She was so busy staring at the sign trying to find an answer to that question that she missed the door opening.
>
“It’s no problem. If anything happens again, call me. Little guy needs some extra attention to help him settle in, that’s all.” Daimon turned away from the middle-aged Chinese woman and froze. “What are you doing here?”
Cass tensed, her eyes leaping to him, instinct pushing that same question to the tip of her tongue.
He huffed and for a moment, she thought he would lash out at her, but then he calmly turned to the woman behind him and offered her a warm smile. “Anything, really. Just call.”
She nodded and disappeared inside.
Daimon closed the door, the sound of it slamming cranking up the tension Cass felt.
She braced herself.
Rather than turning on her, he casually walked down the steps and up to her.
“This goes no further. Got it?” he said, and she wanted to argue with him, because she hadn’t meant to snoop, and she knew he was angry with her but she didn’t want him kicking her out of the Tokyo mansion or banishing her or whatever he had in mind. She would stop irritating him, would pretend she didn’t give a damn about him, if he would relent and let her stay. He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “None of my brothers know about this place.”
Her eyes widened.
Oh.
He meant, knowledge of this place went no further than the two of them, not things between them went no further and she was out on her backside.
“I’ve never seen you come here before.” Her shoulders went rigid when he frowned at her and she realised she had just confessed to following him before tonight. “I had to study all of you. I had to be sure Mari was in safe hands.”
Daimon looked back over his shoulder at the building.
“Is that what you do here?” She glanced at the sign and then back at him. “You keep children safe?”
He sighed, raked fingers through his hair again and looked as if he wouldn’t answer those questions.
But then he nodded.
“There’s a lot of less fortunate children in this city. Kids who have no parents… Kids who have parents who hurt them. I opened this place for them. Everyone gets an education, food and the choice of finding new parents. My brothers don’t know about it and I don’t want them to know. Do you understand that, Cass?”
Daimon: Guardians of Hades Series Book 6 Page 7
