Hellhound (36 page)

“Selene must not continue on this road. She is meant
for you, and even her father will not stop her.”

“Elder Augustus will not stand up to her? That seems very
strange.”

“He is soft-hearted when it comes to her, which means
danger. If the Council does not stand united, then we are destined to fall.”

“What do you propose we do?”

Claudius smiled wickedly. “We must destroy Demetrius.”

“If we kill him, Selene will go rogue, possibly try to
kill us, thus destroying the entire clan.”

“You are wise, my boy. We must go about this in
shadow, not going directly for the tracker’s throat.”

Claudius turned silent, and Nathanial thought. He
suggested, “Now if we kill Elder Augustus and incriminate Demetrius, Selene
will hate him and he will be killed. Then, after her time of mourning, we’ll
marry. She’ll ascend to the throne with me. I hate the idea of destroying Elder
Augustus. I actually like him.”

“Can you like him when his weakness shallows the way
for rebellion?”

“I suppose not.”

“How will we do this without having blood on our
hands?”

“Ashton.”

“How?”

“Ashton despises Selene because she gets to carry on
in the things that she wants to do, instead of the things that she ought to do,
and no one stands up to her or punishes her. Ashton wants to leave us and start
a new life as a shape-shifting free agent, free to live and do whatever he
wants without the protection, or regulation, of a clan.

“He can shift to look like Demetrius and kill Elder Augustus.
We’ll incriminate him. Selene will have to hunt Demetrius and destroy him.”

“And what will we do when she realizes that Demetrius
was innocent?”

“Shine the light on Ashton. We’ll call him back to the
clan and give the archers a kill order. He’ll get shot in the brain so that
Selene wouldn’t be able to retrieve his memories. I’ll plant evidence to prove
that he did this, and divulge his secret life.”

“So you will not allow him to leave the clan?”

Nathanial laughed. “Of course not! To have a rogue free
agent is deadly, and contrary to our goals. His behavior, and his rebellion, is
deserving of punishment.”

“You’ll double-cross him? You’ll make a fine Elder, my
boy!”

“But you must stay out of this, Father. In case Selene
gets a hold of Ashton’s memories, no one should suspect you.”

“You’re loving, but Ashton’s kill order will be called
as soon as Selene realizes that Demetrius is not the real killer.”

“Clean cut plan, Father. I’ll think of all the
necessary details, and leave you to rest without worry.”

“Do you truly believe that Ashton will do this?”
Claudius inquired, a bit skeptical.

“Why not? I’ll grant him the right to leave the clan,
to just walk away. I’ll tell him never to return here. He’ll be lured by the
prospect of never having to obey summons, and will never be forced to enter the
cerebral chamber. He yearns to live among the mortals, to challenge them, and
control them. This is forbidden, and this is why he’ll commit to such a crime.
His stakes are high. Illicit freedom and control over humans for the murder of
one Elder. He’ll do this all right, but he’ll never know that he won’t live
long enough to see that freedom. When other clans figure out what he is, living
contrary to the rules, someone will eventually kill him.”

“Wicked son of mine.”

Like father, like son.

Flipping through more memories, Claudius stayed out of
the plan after that. Nathanial took care of everything else, but he never
suspected Ashton would turn on him at the first notion that Nathanial wouldn’t
keep his word. He knew all along Ashton was the real killer but was bent on
bringing down Demetrius first.

I supposed Ashton returned to the domicile after the
murders when Demetrius was brought in as Claudius’s puppet, to legalize his split
from the clan. Nathanial told Ashton that the Council granted him this freedom,
and he never knew Claudius was in on this. So when Claudius assigned Ashton to
help me, he told Ashton that he was free to leave without consequence once
Demetrius was dead. Like all things, it had to be official, meaning that he
would be dismissed in front of the Council. I would never hunt him down as a
rogue if he left in this manner. He planned to kill him in any case.

Without the belief of legally separating from the
clan, Ashton wouldn’t have bothered to “help” me, and he certainly wouldn’t
have returned to the clan.

Now the story felt complete, and all the loose,
tattered ends were cut.

I learned a little more about Claudius while I slept.
He was a bitter man who yearned for the old days of ruthless power. Some of the
common themes in ancient times were powerful men who took what they wanted. Case
in point: Zeus who slept with an innumerable amount of women.

Claudius desired my mother shortly after his wife
passed away. She nervously rejected his advances. He tried harder and harder
when the plan to murder my father was underway, and mistook her siding with him
on my situation as a sign that she finally softened up to him. He became a bit
more hostile about it after the death of my father, and my mother frantically
pushed him away again.

I reminded myself to speak with her about this later. I
felt a twinge of regret for thinking ill of her before, but I understood why
she couldn’t tell me. She feared for my safety. Well, she no longer had
anything to fear. I didn’t know how to be there for her before, but I protected
and avenged her in the end. These horrible times could be put behind us.
Finally!

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I woke up sore and cramped. I’d slept in the recliner
too long, and one too many times. I didn’t need as much sleep as humans, but
the surge of memories and powers kicked my butt when they came from an Elder.

I had to see a few people today. I wanted to speak with
my mother, first and foremost. I wanted to comfort her, though that wasn’t my
specialty. She needed to understand that she wasn’t alone, that she never would
be as long as I lived. She should be able to come to me with anything,
especially with the heinous actions of Claudius.

Damares was on my list, too. I wondered what happened
when she went downstairs and saw Ashton’s corpse. Perhaps she mauled him beyond
the point of recognition. We liked to think we were civilized, but in the end,
our kind was pretty barbaric.

Lydia needed to know the truth. It would hurt to
discover the man she loved was just using her, but better to know the truth so
she didn’t feel the need to defend him somehow for the rest of her life. If his
crimes didn’t sever her love for him, then knowing his true feelings should.

I wanted to thank Angel for his help, as well as
Carter for pulling into the throne room at the last minute. Some sub sentries
were swayed to lie for the right price, but Carter wouldn’t keep his mouth
clamped when it came to backing me up.

I thought of exposing all the conversations, plots,
and betrayals to the Council. Claudius was renounced upon his death, and the clan
knew this, so there wasn’t a point in dragging this out any farther. I wasn’t
quite satisfied though. It felt good to annihilate the old man, but much like
Ashton, it was a hollow victory. Nothing could bring back my father, or
Demetrius.

Wait. I lurched up in my seat and flipped through
Claudius’s memories. He stood over Nathanial’s body in the tomb. Everyone
departed after the burial ceremony. He ordered the doctors to encompass
Nathanial’s body to keep him cold and fresh.

“But he’s dead,” they argued, unable to see the point
in complying.

“Preserve his body.”

They did this, commanded to wipe the strange request
from their memories. They couldn’t literally forget, but they sure weren’t able
to speak about it ever again. At this desperate point, Claudius formulated a
plan to bring back Nathanial.

The streamlined procedure embedded in my mind, and the
powers to do so were at my fingertips. I looked up at the bedroom entrance. I
couldn’t bring back my father because his body was long gone, but Demetrius was
still technically alive. His body was fresh from the memory retrieval.

With a deep, desperate breath, I moved into the bedroom
and stood over Demetrius. He was in the exact same position that he’d been in
when I left him. His eyes closed in restful slumber, his hands rested on his
stomach, and his chest moved in and out with the effort enforced by the
ventilators.

I placed my hands over his body. My fingers spread wide,
and slightly bent down. I closed my eyes and concentrated, rousing up Claudius’s
powers from his great ancestor, Zeus. I needed just the right amount of
electricity to bring Demetrius back. Too little wouldn’t do anything, and too
much could kill him.

Demetrius didn’t need the surge of ordinary voltage,
since his heart was still beating. He needed the surge of god-like electricity
to mend his entire body. If the lightning of Zeus could resurrect a dead man,
it could certainly amend a living one.

I felt the heat sizzle down my arms and gather at my
fingertips. The lightning burrowed and sparked, which actually hurt. It felt
like literal sparks erupted from my flesh, and I briefly pondered how Claudius
dealt with the pain from greater acts of power.

Then I realized the simple physics of electricity.
Demetrius wasn’t grounded, which wasn’t required in this case since he needed
to take in the electricity without an outlet, but he also needed a heat
conductor to level out the energy. Ah, the crescent.

I pulled it out of my back waistband and snapped it
over Demetrius’s wrists. They formed around him and automatically injected him.

I proceeded.

My essence clawed to the surface, ignited by sparks,
and filled the room with smoke and a burning odor. The air thickened until I
hardly saw beyond the bed. A light wind formed between sparks and the cloud
spiraled out of control. I was caught in a thunderstorm. Instead of rainwater
dampening my clothes, particles of dusty air molecules clung to me and singed
my flesh.

I tried not to jump, and after a few minutes, became
accustomed to the pain. I gritted my teeth and continued.

A roll of thunder moved around the bedroom and snapped
the bedroom door shut. I jerked my head to the right, forcing myself to calm
down.

I placed my hands over Demetrius’s body, palm side
down, and concentrated the energy. Lightning extracted from my fingers snapped
and struck all across his body. Something about the special metal from the
depths of Tartarus aided.

Claudius knew he missed a key component to reviving
someone, and I had it. The thing my lover so hastily traveled to the bowels of
the earth to retrieve for me ended up saving his life.

While controlling one ability, I harnessed another.
With my left hand maintaining a hovering position over Demetrius’s chest and
striking him with lightning, I moved the other hand from his brain down to his
heart. I moved the flow of electric blood through his veins. A silver glow
crawled to the surface of his skin \and pulsated as the blood filled with my
essence and charged by this electric power.

The sight wasn’t pretty. The vessels tried to rip
through his skin. My heart grew heavy, and a lump formed in my throat. I fought
back tears. I hated to see Demetrius like this, hurting and near dead.

I was afraid that any moment his flesh would tear and
blood would splatter everywhere. I was afraid I was going to kill him, but I
pressed onward because the only thing worse than being the cause of his death,
was sitting idly by and watching him die.

My world filled with crazy, unexplainable things that
somehow worked because of our powers. I hoped this would be one of them. It had
to be one of them!

Demetrius’s shocked body jolted up once, twice, and
then a third time. On that last jerk, his torso lifted far from the bed, his
eyes shot wide open, and his mouth gaped to take in precious air around the
tube in his mouth. He choked on it and pulled it out of his throat.

The lightning diffused in the air, and I released the
hold over his blood. His veins returned to their less superficial places and
pulsated with the normal, black hue.

I removed the crescent, freeing Demetrius’s hands. I
dropped my hands while he looked around dazed and confused. He puffed, ripped
off the wires from the machines, and looked up to meet my stare.

My essence returned to my pores, the cloudiness
cleared, and the wind and thunder suddenly ceased. It would take a while to get
used to Claudius’s powers.

“What’s going on, Selene?” he asked in a rustic, dry
voice.

Overfilled with a happiness I was sure I would never
experience again, I jumped on the bed, straddled his waist without bearing
down, and kissed him. His lips were dry and cracked, but I didn’t care. They
tasted of him. They tasted so good.

Demetrius wheezed, took me by the elbows, and pulled
away. His shimmering green eyes, so full of life, watched me.