The Dark-Hunters (289 page)

“I thought it was ‘as a woman scorned.’”

“Angered, scorned, either one. I come from a long line of vengeful women. My grandmother would have given Madame Defarge a run for her money any day.”

He nodded. “Then I’ll make sure I don’t tweak that portion of your personality. The gods know I’ve had my fill of vengeful women.”

Danger sighed at his light tone about a matter she was sure he didn’t find amusing. In fact, his words made her heart catch. “I guess you have.”

She squeezed his hand. “So what happened to the kids after Ash turned their mother into stone?”

“Acheron found them a good home. He’s not the type of person who would leave a child to suffer over something he did.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that about him.”

Neither of them spoke again while they rode the rest of the way to the MSU campus. It was an overcast night without much moonlight. But what little light there was reflected against the trees, forming eerie, monsterlike shadows.

Danger had always liked to drive at night. There was something very peaceful about it. Well, except for when the occasional deer turned suicidal and decided to play “chicken” with her on the highway. That she could leave behind.

But at least she didn’t have to worry about that in Starkville. It’d grown so much over the last few years that until they headed back toward Tupelo, deer dodgers wouldn’t be a problem.

Alexion looked out the car window as Danger drove them past the sorority houses toward central campus. It looked as if a party of some sort were going on at one house. He could see cars parked in the lot with kids hanging out of the windows while others leaned up against the frame, talking to the ones inside. Groups of college students were milling about on the porch and in the yard while more could be seen inside, dancing.

“Look at them,” he said quietly. “Do you remember being human and that age?”

She glanced over at the partying co-eds. “Yeah, I do. At that time in my life, I thought I was going to be one of the greatest actresses in France, like my mother. I thought Michel and I would retire wealthy, to the countryside, to raise our multitude of children and to watch our grandchildren play.” She sighed as if the memory were too painful to dwell on for long. “What about you?”

Alexion let his mind drift back all those countless centuries ago. It wasn’t something he did often, for many reasons. But old dreams never really died. They were always there, living as regrets for what might have been.

“I wanted to retire from the army. I never really wanted to join in the first place. But my father insisted on it. When they came to our village for boys, he grabbed my older brother and I, and literally threw us at the recruiters. He wanted us to be more than just simple farmers trying to eke out a living from a stingy soil that would rather see us starved than fed. He thought a soldier’s calling would be our chance for a much better life.”

“What happened to your brother?”

Alexion paused as he remembered Darius’s face. His brother had been full of life and had never wanted anything more than to be a farmer with a good wife by his side. All he’d ever talked about was going home again, seeing the cattle and tending the fields.

His heart ached at what had happened to both of them. “He died about a year before I did. I would have, too, had I not been in a regiment with Kyros. For some reason I never understood, he took me under his wing.”

“He was older?”

“By only three years, but at the time it seemed like he was an adult while I was just a terrified kid.”

Danger could hear the admiration in his voice. It was obvious he’d once worshiped his friend. No wonder he wanted to save him.

“The other boys didn’t think much of me,” he confided. “Like Kyros, they came from a long line of soldiers and thought that I should go back to the farm. They didn’t want to waste time training or supplying someone they figured would die soon anyway. Better to save the food for someone who could earn his keep.”

She didn’t need his sfora to see how they’d made their displeasure known. Nine thousand years later, she could still hear the pain in his voice.

“But you hung in there.”

“As Nietzsche said, ‘that which doesn’t kill you—’”

“Will only require brief hospitalization. And if you’re a Dark-Hunter, just a good day’s sleep.”

Alexion laughed at her humor. She definitely had a unique way of looking at things.

He returned his attention to the campus and to the cars that sped past them with stereos thumping and kids screaming and laughing just from the sheer joy of being alive.

How he envied them. With the exception of Danger, who had an incredible knack for poking his sore spots, he normally felt nothing at all. “You have no idea just how amazing this world is. It hasn’t really changed all that much since your birth, but mine…”

“Yeah, you’re from what, the Bronze Age?”

Alexion snorted. “No, I predate even that. We were so primitive, we really should have had dinosaurs to ride.”

“Primitive how?”

Inwardly, he cringed at the memories of how his people had lived, what they had been forced to endure just to survive. It had been survival in its purest, rawest form. “Modern” man had no idea how good they had it.

“We had no swords, no real metals, no pottery. Our daggers and spear points were made of stone that we chipped with our own hands until our hands were bloody and bruised from it. Our armor was made of leather from the hides of the animals we killed for food. We boiled and shaped it ourselves. We had no government to speak of, no real laws. If you got screwed over, there was no one to appeal to. You either handled it yourself or you let it go.”

He sighed at the harsh memories of his human life. “Hell, there were no judges, police, or politicians. We only had two classes of people: the farmers who fed themselves and the soldiers who protected the farmers from those who wanted to steal their food and kill them. That was it.”

“You didn’t have priests?”

“We had one. He’d been a farmer who’d lost the use of his right hand in a fire. Since he couldn’t support himself, he interpreted signs and the farmers fed him for it.”

Danger frowned as she tried to imagine the world he described. And she had thought her life without a proper toilet was primitive. Suddenly her eighteenth-century world looked very high tech indeed.

“My people never dreamed of a world like this,” Alexion continued. “Of having so much without backbreaking, debilitating work. And yet for all the physical improvements, people are still people. They’re killing each other to get more or to prove a point only the killer understands. Still brutalizing and torturing each other over things that in another hundred years won’t even matter.”

Danger’s eyes teared as his words struck a particular chord in her own heart. “Tell me about it. Despite all the changes in the twenty-first century, it seems that the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor. There are still countless people in the world who starve every day, and it’s not because they’re anorexic or fasting. It’s because they can’t afford food while the rich waste money all the time on trivial things. Every time I hear about famine, I ask myself if we’ve learned nothing from the past—from the revolutions, all the wars. All they did was ruin thousands of lives.”

“Chronia apostraph, anthrice mi achi.”

She frowned. “What is that?”

“It’s Atlantean. Something Acheron says a lot. Roughly translated, it means ‘time moves on, people do not.’”

Danger thought about that. It was very true and very Ash-like. “Can you imagine the world he must have known? As backward as yours—”

“His world was extremely advanced,” he said, interrupting her. “The Atlanteans most definitely weren’t in the stone age.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world he was born into was amazingly high tech. They had carriages of sorts, medicine, metalworking, you name it. The Greece and Atlantis he knew were several millennia ahead of their time.”

“Then what happened that it was all lost?”

“Succinctly put, the wrath of a goddess. Atlantis was swept into the sea, not by natural means, but by the anger of a woman who wanted vengeance on all of them. She ravished her own continent and people, then moved across Greece, throwing them all back into the dinosaur age.”

“Why?”

He let out a tired breath. “They took something from her that she wanted back.”

Danger nodded as she suddenly understood. “They took her child.”

He looked stunned that she had jumped to that conclusion. “How did you know that?”

“I’m a woman and that is pretty much the only thing that would cause a woman to destroy her own people.”

He didn’t comment. In fact, he seemed to be extremely uncomfortable about the turn their conversation was taking. If she didn’t know better, she would think he was hiding something from her.

Suddenly, Alexion went rigid in the seat beside her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Turn right.”

His tone told her it was urgent. Deciding not to argue, Danger turned off Creelman Street to the small road that ran in front of McCarthy Gym. At the end of the road was a series of parking lots.

“Stop the car.”

As soon as she did, the car’s engine turned off on its own and Alexion was out of the passenger side, headed toward the Holmes building. Danger immediately ran after him.

She caught up to him just behind the gym. As she slowed down, her heart hammered at what she saw there.

Deep in the shadows, Kyros was coming to his feet over the body of what appeared to have been Marco, a Dark-Hunter who was from the Basque region of France.

“What happened, Kyros?” she asked, her tone breathless from her sprint.

She knew Kyros hadn’t killed Marco. No Dark-Hunter could harm another. Whatever blow or wound one Dark-Hunter gave to another, the one who gave it felt the pain ten times greater than the one who received it.

Had Kyros killed Marco, he would be dead too.

Kyros turned slowly to face her. He looked pale and shaken. “Don’t mess with me, Danger. Not tonight.”

“Kyros?”

His head snapped toward Alexion. If she thought he’d been pale before, it was nothing compared to what he looked like now. He stared at Alexion as if he were seeing a ghost … and that’s exactly what he was doing.

“Ias?”

Alexion walked toward him slowly. “I have to talk to you, brother.”

She saw Kyros’s gaze narrow as he took in Alexion’s white coat.

“You?” he asked, his voice disgusted and yet she heard a note of hurt beneath it. “You’re Acheron’s right hand? You’re the one who delivers his ultimatum?” He shook his head in disbelief. It’s not possible. You’re dead. You’ve been dead.”

“No,” Alexion said calmly, moving another step toward him. “I’m alive.”

Kyros stepped back. “You’re a Shade.”

Alexion held his hand out to him. “I’m real. Take my hand, brother, and see for yourself.”

Danger held her breath. Given his hostility, she half expected Kyros to attack Alexion.

But he didn’t.

He reached his hand out methodically until he could shake Alexion’s. But the instant he touched Alexion’s hand, he let go and stumbled back.

She could tell that Kyros still didn’t want to accept what was right before him.

“It’s okay,” Alexion said, as he moved another step closer to the angry, terrified Greek.

“Don’t touch me!”

Alexion drew up short. She could see the pain in his eyes that Kyros’s harsh words caused.

Kyros continued shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “It can’t be you. You can’t be Acheron’s destroyer. You can’t.”

“I’m not his destroyer. I’m here to help you avoid making a fatal mistake. Whatever you do, you can’t trust Stryker. He’s lying to you. Believe me, Kyros. We were brothers once. You trusted me then.”

Kyros’s eyes snapped fire at his former friend. “That was nine thousand years ago. We were human.”

Alexion searched his mind for the words it would take to make his friend believe him. But he could tell it wasn’t working. There was too much anger and mistrust. It was as if Kyros were looking for a reason to hate him.

“C’mon, Kyros. Trust me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Then trust me,” Danger said, moving nearer to Kyros. “You’ve known me for five years. You trusted me enough to introduce me to Stryker and let him spiel his bullshit about Acheron.” She looked over at Alexion who stood with an anguished glint in his eyes. He wanted to save his friend and she wanted to help him. “I believe Alexion, Kyros. Completely. Stryker is lying to us. He wants you to die.”

Kyros glared at Alexion. “I made myself sick over your death. Why didn’t you ever tell me that you were alive and well? Why didn’t Acheron?”

“Because I can’t live in this world,” Alexion explained in that same rational tone. “What would have been the point of telling you?”

Kyros returned the words with even more rage. “The point was that we were brothers. You owed it to me to let me know you were all right.”

“Maybe I was wrong then, but I came here now to save you.”

“Bullshit. This is just a game to you, isn’t it?” Kyros looked up at the sky as if searching for something. “Are you watching this, Acheron? Fuck you, you lying bastard. How could you not have told me?”

Kyros started away from them.

Alexion grabbed his arm. “What happened to Marco?”

He shoved Alexion away from him. “What do you care? You were sent here to kill him anyway.”

It was true. Because he’d killed the college student the night before, Marco was destined to die. “He’d crossed over to the point there was no way back for him, no reprieve. But you … there’s still time. I can save you, Kyros. If you’ll let me. Don’t be stupid,
adelfos.
”

Kyros curled his lip at him. “I don’t want your damned help. I don’t want anything from you.”

Alexion fought his own temper down. He had to remain calm and rational to get through this. But really, what he wanted to do was shake Kyros for being so blind and stupid. “Acheron isn’t a Daimon.”

“Then what is he?”

Alexion looked away, unable to answer. Yet he was torn. Part of him wanted to betray Acheron and tell his friend the truth that he needed to hear to save his life.