Sins of the Night (28 page)

“
Sorry,
akri.”

“Don't call me
akri,
Xirena. I'm not a control freak.”

“You are good, quality people, Alexion. Xirena will sleep now.”

“You two talking?” Danger asked.

“For only a second. She's going to sleep for a while.” He rubbed his chest where Xirena now rested as a permanent part of his being. “Now I understand why Acheron jumps every now and again for no reason. Simi must be twitching on him.”

Danger laughed. “I hope you don't start doing that. People around here might think you're having a seizure. Next thing you know, they'll be throwing you down on the ground and putting a stick in your mouth.”

“Really?”

She laughed again. “No. C'mon, gullible. Let's go eat.”

*   *   *

“So why aren't you eating this time?” Danger asked as they sat in a small family-owned Italian restaurant down the street from her house, looking over the menu.

“I told you, I can't taste anything.”

She gave him a piercing glare. “C'mon, Alexion, don't lie to me. With the exception of the popcorn, you haven't eaten anything since you've been here, have you?”

He looked away from her.

Danger reached across the table and took his hand. She wanted an answer to this. “Please tell me the truth.”

Alexion considered the ramifications of being honest with her. But then she wouldn't remember it, so why not? She already knew more than she should.

But what if it disgusted her?

Then again, that might be beneficial. She might find the truth so repellent that she'd leave him to do this alone, and not be in danger anymore.

He didn't know, but in the end, he found himself confiding in her. “Have you ever studied Greek myth at all?”

“A little.”

Good, that would make this a little easier on him. “Do you remember when the heroes would travel to the Underworld what they had to do to be able to speak with Shades?”

She thought it over for a few minutes before she answered. “They made a blood sacrifice.”

He braced himself mentally for her possible reaction. “And what did the Shade do with their sacrifice?”

Her face went pale as she realized the truth of him. “It drank the blood so that it could speak.”

He nodded.

Danger sat there horrified at what he was telling her. “You live on blood?”

Again he nodded.

She went completely cold at the next thought that entered her mind. There was only one person he could feed from. Only one person he was ever around. “You drink Ash's blood?”

“Yes.”

“Ew!” she said, scooting her chair back. She had a horrible image in her head of the two of them feeding each other. “So you suck on Ash's neck?”

“Hell, no!” he said in an offended tone. “A, never in a million years—I'd rather be dead and tortured, and B, you go near that man's neck and you better have a will made out. He can't stand for anything to touch his neck.”

“Then how do you feed?”

“He literally opens a vein, drains his blood into a cup, and gives it to me to drink. I know it's disgusting. I know you're horrified. But if I don't feed, I return to what I was and I don't know if it's true or not, but Artemis claims that if I return to a Shade, there's no way to bring me back again.”

She thought about that until she remembered something he had told her yesterday. “But you said you were different from the other Shades. Do they drink blood too?”

“No. Acheron brings them back another way.”

“And that would be?”

“I don't know. Acheron never shared that secret with me, probably because he knows I'd want to kill him for the injustice of it.”

She couldn't blame Alexion there. Ash really had screwed him up. “So how did he learn this other way?”

He sighed. “About three hundred years after he brought me back, he met a…”—he hesitated as if searching for the right word—“teacher who taught him how to use his god powers. Savitar is the one who showed Acheron how to bring back the dead without using blood for it. But it was too late for me. Because I live off his blood, he and I are bonded much like two classic Hollywood vampires.”

Now they were back to being gross again. “So he has to feed from you too?”

“No. Well, actually I guess, in theory, he could. But I think he'd rather die than feed from a man.”

Oh, yeah, like the alternative was any better. “So he feeds off women? Stryker was right, he is a Daimon.”

“Calm down,” Alexion said, taking her hand in his. “He's not a Daimon or an Apollite. And he doesn't prey on people. He only feeds from one person and she's not human either.”

And in that instant she understood who. “Artemis.”

He nodded.

Everything made sense now. No wonder Acheron put up with all of them. He really had no choice. “So neither one of you can eat?”

“We can eat. We just don't have to. I don't eat out of habit. Since I can't taste food, it's rather futile.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Because you do need food to fuel your body, and I want you to live a long and happy immortality.”

*   *   *

“You summoned me,
akri?
”

Stryker turned away from his window, which looked out onto the city in Kalosis where daylight never shone. The lights there sparkled like diamonds in the darkness, while his people lived in fear of the gods who had cursed them and the one god who had saved them.

Being one of the first who was cursed, he, unlike the majority of the others here, knew what it had once felt like to have sun on his skin. He remembered the time when he'd loved his father, Apollo, when he would have given his life for him.

And then in a fit of anger over a Greek whore, his father had cursed the entire race he'd created. Every Apollite adult, every Apollite child … even Apollo's own son and grandchildren had been cursed so that they could never walk in daylight again.

Stryker's wife, who had been Greek, had been spared the curse. But his sons and daughter hadn't.

Strange how after eleven thousand years he couldn't remember what Dyana had sounded like, but he still recalled his daughter's precious face. She'd been lovely until the day she had died on her twenty-seventh birthday, cursing her grandfather's name as she disintegrated into dust. To his eternal pain, she had refused to turn Daimon and be saved.

His sons hadn't. They had followed in his footsteps and had sworn allegiance to Apollymi, the Atlantean god who had shown them how to feed on human souls so that they didn't have to die. For centuries his family had been virtually intact.

Until his aunt Artemis had created her damned Dark-Hunters.

One by one, his sons, her blood nephews, had been destroyed by the Dark-Hunters she sanctioned.

Except for Urian …

The pain of that thought was enough to drive him insane. He wanted his son back with a need and grief so strong that it was crippling.

Now it was just him. He, alone, was left. So much for his dreams of eternity spent with his family.

But life seldom turned out the way one planned.

“Akri?”
Trates said again, drawing Stryker's attention back to his second-in-command.

Stryker focused his gaze on the tall Daimon. “I want you to gather together the Illuminati.” They were the strongest and bravest of the warrior Spathi Daimons. “Tell them they are going to have a treat.”

Trates looked confused by that. “A treat?”

He nodded. “If I know the Alexion, and I do, he will pull all the Dark-Hunters together to deliver his ultimatum before he dies. I think we should have a little surprise waiting for him when he does.”

“But if all the Dark-Hunters are together … they'll kill us.”

Stryker laughed evilly as he patted Trates on the shoulder. The poor fool was not half the strategist Urian had been. “You forget, Trates, that when they are together, the Dark-Hunters weaken each other. In that form, they will be easy pickings for us.”

Still Trates didn't join his humor. “What if the Alexion doesn't kill himself? He has the power to kill us even without Artemis's servants.”

Stryker clenched the hand on Trates's shoulder, digging his fingers into the Daimon's flesh.

Trates pulled away with a hiss.

“Don't you think I've thought of that?” he asked Trates, who stood rubbing his bruised shoulder. “The Alexion has one major weakness.”

“And that is?”

“The Dark-Huntress he travels with. She is our key to destroying him.”

He looked horrified. “She's a Dark-Hunter, she'll kick our ass.”

“I don't think so.”

“And why is that?”

Stryker went to his desk where a black wooden box sat. He opened the box and pulled out the deep red stone medallion, then cradled it in his palm. “Because I have something I think she'll want returned to her.”

The Daimon's eyes widened at the sight of what should never have fallen into Stryker's hands. “How did you get her soul?”

“I have my ways.” Stryker laughed again. “If she interferes or if the Alexion refuses to do the right thing, then they can both suffer eternal torment.”

Chapter 20

It was one of the most incredible nights of Alexion's extremely long life—but then all of his time with Danger was special.

Even so, he'd never seen anything like this. To be sitting in the middle of people as if he were no different from them … there were no words that could describe that miracle. He'd heard them laugh at the movie, take a deep breath at tense parts, and even talk around him. Unlike the other moviegoers, the talking hadn't bothered him in the least.

For a time, he'd been one of them.

No wonder Acheron sought this out. Now he understood completely.

Hell, he even liked his feet sticking to the floor of the theater. But the best part was when Danger pulled the armrest up so that they could share her tub of popcorn. She'd leaned her head against his chest and there in the dark they had cuddled.

“So this is what being normal feels like, huh?” he asked as they left the theater in the middle of the crowd.

“Yeah. Kind of nice, isn't it?”

Alexion nodded as he watched groups of young adults and teenagers veer off together. He draped his arm over Danger's shoulders. A touch of magnolias filled his head—he adored this woman's scent.

“Do you see a lot of movies at the theater?” he asked her.

She wrapped her arm around his waist as they left the building. There was something unbelievably intimate about this. “Not too many. I spend most nights at home when I'm not culling the Daimon herd.”

He couldn't understand such forced solitude when she, unlike him, had a choice in the matter. “Why?”

“It makes me lonely to come out.” She indicated a couple to the side of the building who were kissing in the parking lot. “It reminds me of what I don't have anymore, and what I won't have again after you leave.”

Alexion pulled her to a stop and held her close. He cradled her body with his and closed his eyes, wishing both their lives were different. “If I could, I would give you what you want.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

He tilted her chin up so that she was looking at him. “I will always be with you, Danger.”

Danger could see the sincerity of his words in his eyes. That meant a lot to her. Yet it wasn't enough. “But I won't know it, will I?” His eyes darkened with remorse, making her regret her words. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. “It's okay, Alexion. I didn't mean to bring the moment down. I'm just grateful we had tonight.”

“Me too.” He gave her a squeeze before taking her hand and leading her toward her car.

They didn't say much as they headed back to her house. It was an average, quiet night. As they drove past the tiny white house where Elvis Presley was born, Danger glanced over at him. “Do you know who Elvis is?”

Alexion smiled. “King of rock and roll, baby. Of course I know him. Simi adores him.”

She laughed. “One day I have to meet this Simi.” She indicated the house with a tilt of her head. “He was born right there, and I rode past this house a dozen times when he was only a few weeks old, never realizing the infant inside would have so much impact on American culture.”

“Yeah. That's the weirdest of Acheron's gifts. He would have known exactly what was coming for the child.”

What she wouldn't give for that ability. It would be the best, to be able to see into the future “Can you tell?”

“Not without the sfora. Acheron doesn't let me channel powers that he thinks I can't handle.”

Danger frowned. “Why doesn't he think you can handle that one?”

“Because there are times when even he can't.”

“How so?”

Alexion expelled a long breath and was quiet a few seconds before he answered. “It's hard to know that serious ill-fortune is about to strike someone and not intervene to make it better for them.”

“Then why doesn't he intervene?”

“Because people learn from their mistakes, Danger. Pain and failure are a natural part of life. It's kind of like a parent who watches their child fall down while learning to walk. Instead of coddling the child, you set them back on their feet and let them try again. They have to stumble before they can run.”

She shook her head in denial. It seemed callous to her. “I don't know about that. It seems cruel to me. Most people get a little more injured than just a skinned knee.”

“Life is cruel sometimes.”

True. She knew that better than anyone. Her heart clenched as she saw the faces of her family.

They had been on their way to safety when her husband's garrison had overtaken them.