The Dark-Hunters (426 page)

Kat glared at him. “Ditto.”

He tried to move past her, but the woman was like Velcro. Kat attached herself to his body and kept him from reaching Artemis.

Artemis scoffed at their struggle. “Get out of the way, Katra, so I can zap him.”

Sin paused as he finally calmed enough to realize something highly significant. He looked back and forth between Katra and Artemis.

And as he did so, he knew exactly how to get the upper hand back.

He pulled the long, ornate dagger out of its sheath in his boot before he grabbed Katra and held the blade to her throat. He cut a gimlet glare at Artemis. “Give me my powers back, Artemis, or I’ll take your daughter’s life.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Kat
cringed as Sin spoke a truth that only the bravest of souls would even dare whisper. And never within Artemis’s hearing range.

Kat leaned back against him, away from the knife. “Damn, boy, you have an unholy gift for pissing off people.” As was evidenced by Artemis’s shriek of outrage. “Why don’t you tell her that dress makes her look fat while you’re at it?”

He answered by pressing the blade closer to Kat’s throat. “I’m not playing, Artemis.”

Artemis’s face turned to stone. “And neither am I.”

Before Kat could even blink, the dagger left her throat. She was pulled from Sin’s arms by an unseen force an instant before the knife was ripped from his hand and plunged into his chest, three times. On the third time, it was left buried to the hilt where it slowly rotated in his chest.

Sin cursed foully before he jerked it out.

Kat held her hand up toward Artemis, trying to defuse the situation. “Matisera—”

“Stay out of this, Katra. Go home.”

By the tone of Artemis’s voice, Kat knew she should obey. But she couldn’t stand by and let Sin die if what he’d said about the gallu was true. They couldn’t be left without someone who knew how to fight them.

Artemis stalked toward him. “It’s time I finish what we started.”

Sin pushed himself up from the floor and ran at Artemis, but he didn’t come close before he was slammed into a far wall. He growled, then slung his arm out.

Artemis went flying.

Kat took a step toward her mother to protect her. But before Kat could take two, Artemis’s voice rang out. “Deimos!”

Kat came to a halt at the same time a large, fierce man appeared by Artemis’s side. Dressed all in black, Deimos had short jet-black hair that was streaked with wide white stripes—a much different hairstyle than he’d had the last time they met. He was terrifying in appearance, especially with the tattoo that started out as a light eyeliner around his electric blue eyes and then zigzagged from his tear ducts down his cheeks to his neck. Beautiful and deadly, he stood before them with his legs braced wide apart, his head tilted low like a predator and his arms held at his sides, close to his weapons—one sword and one gun—ready to fight.

“Suck his powers out and kill him,” Artemis snarled.

Kat gaped at the order. Once issued, it couldn’t be taken back. Deimos was one of the most dangerous of the Dolophoni. A son of the dreaded Furies, he was the one the gods called out when they needed a relentless Terminator, and he wouldn’t stop until Sin was dead.

Deimos ran at Sin and slammed him to the floor.

“What have you done, Matisera?”

“What I should have done in the beginning.” Artemis tried to flash Kat out of the room, but since Artemis had traded Kat’s service to her grandmother, she didn’t have that power anymore.

Kat’s mother snarled at her, “Leave us, Katra. Now.”

But she couldn’t. She was the reason Sin was in this mess, and though he was giving Deimos a good fight, in the end she knew who would win it.

And it wouldn’t be Sin.

Sin was fighting with one hand tied behind his back and three nasty chest wounds while Deimos could draw from the power of the entire Greek pantheon to kill him—it was one of many benefits bestowed on the Furies and their children. And though Sin might deserve to die, he didn’t deserve death like this.

Not after what they’d done to him and not if what he’d said was true. They would need him to fight the demons of his own pantheon.

“Sorry, Matisera.” Kat barely registered the confusion on Artemis’s face before she ran at Sin. He was against the wall, fighting, while Deimos was pulling out his sword to finish him off. Kat grabbed Sin from the side and flashed them from his apartment to her own place in Kalosis.

They landed in a pile of twisted limbs in the center of her dark living room. Sin hissed before he pushed her away. Kat didn’t go far. He was bleeding profusely, but what concerned her was the gaping wound his dagger had left. If he were mortal, that would have been fatal to him, and it was probably causing him enough pain right now that he was wishing it was.

She scooted herself toward him. “You need to be tended.”

He glared at her. “Where are we? What did you do?”

“I kept you from dying.”

He pushed her hand away from his wound. “Oh, believe me, I could have held my own.”

Kat sat back on her legs. “Yeah, you were doing a real bang-up job of it. I particularly liked the way you were bruising his fists with your face. A few minutes more and I’m sure your heart would have been on the attack … after it was ripped from your chest.”

He grimaced at her. “What do you know?”

“More than I want to most days.”

Sin frowned at the catch in her voice as she spoke. It was apparent that she was weary, no doubt of Artemis and her machinations. They were enough to wear down even the stoutest of immortals.

And as much as he hated to admit it, she was probably right about him getting his ass kicked. He should have known better than to go up against Artemis without his full powers. It’d been stupid, and he was lucky the Dolophonos hadn’t torn his heart out. But he’d wanted his revenge, and nothing else, especially something as trivial as common sense, had mattered.

Katra moved forward and ripped his shirt open to expose the jagged wounds in his chest from the dagger Artemis had repeatedly planted there. He started to shove Kat away, but before he could, she manifested a cool rag in her hand so that she could clean the wounds. Her kindness made no sense to him whatsoever given her genetic makeup. Not to mention, he wasn’t used to anyone helping him for any reason. Everyone he’d ever known had turned their backs on him and left him to suffer.

People weren’t kind and he knew it. Not unless the act of kindness could benefit them in some way.

“Why are you helping me?”

She gave him a withering glare. “Who said I’m helping you?”

He arched a brow at her as he looked pointedly at her hand that was wiping away his blood.

She cleared her throat before she answered. “I don’t like to see people get screwed over, okay?”

“And why don’t I believe that? Oh wait, I know. Because you’re the daughter of the biggest bitch who has ever lived. One who makes her entire life an event of screwing over anyone she comes into contact with.”

“Would you stop saying that?” Kat said from between clenched teeth.

Like that would ever stop him. “She is a bitch.”

“Not that, the other part. And actually you better stop saying both or I’m going to tend this wound with a salt poultice.”

“Why? Aren’t you proud of Mommy dearest?”

Kat’s green eyes met his and they were smoldering. “I love my mother with everything inside me and I would kill or die to protect her. That’s why you need to stop talking like that about her because I
will
kill you.”

Sin paused as a frightening thought went through him. If Katra was Artemis’s daughter …

He could remember Artemis pulling him toward her bed as his head was fuzzy from drink. She’d torn his shirt from him and then thrown him down on her mattress.

Artemis was supposed to be a virgin.…

An awful feeling went through him. “Oh shit, you’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

Kat screwed her face up as if that was the most repugnant thought she could imagine. “Don’t flatter yourself. Your genes could never have created me.”

Yeah, right. She was beautiful and tall—taller than Artemis, which could easily have come from him. Her skin was a darker hue.… His stomach shrank in trepidation. “Then who’s your father if it’s not me?”

“That’s hardly any of your business.”

“It is me, isn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes at him before she knitted his wounds closed with her fingers. “Men and their egos. Trust me. My mother wouldn’t have you in her bed even if you were dipped in chocolate-coated caramel.”

Oh, now that really offended him. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know I happen to be damn good in bed. My skills are unsurpassed. I wasn’t just a god of the moon. I was
the
Sumerian god of fertility. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“You have a lot of penis envy over the other fertility gods?”

He shoved her hands off him, then started to get up only to wince and fall back.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell the other gods about your small penis problem.”

She appalled him. “You
are
your mother’s daughter.”

“And I told you to stop saying that.”

“Why?”

“Because no one’s supposed to know about me.”

He scoffed at the anger in her tone. “What are they? Blind? You look just like her.”

“No, I don’t. I look mostly like my father. I only have my mother’s eyes. How you guessed it is beyond me.”

There was no surprise there, either. “You have the same voice.”

Kat pulled back and frowned. “Do I?”

“Yes. The accents are different, but the tone of it isn’t. You sound just like her.”

Kat pushed herself to her feet and moved away from him, disturbed by his disclosure. He was highly perceptive. Something most men weren’t. Then again, people in general weren’t normally that perceptive, and it made her wonder if anyone else had ever picked up on the similarities in her and Artemis’s voices. If they had, they’d been smart enough to keep it to themselves.

“Thanks for the help,” Sin said, indicating his mended chest before he repaired his shirt with his powers. Then he tried to leave her house by flashing out only to learn that he couldn’t. “What the…?”

Kat shrugged at his angry glare. “You have to stay here.”

“Bullshit,” he growled.

“No, no shit here,” she said, indicating her clean floors with her hand. Then she cupped her broken arm to her chest. “You leave this place and you’re a dead man. Trust me. The moment you spoke that which will not be spoken and my mother called out the Terminator to destroy you, your death warrant was signed.”

Every part of him bled fury. “I won’t be held hostage. You understand?”

She laughed at his righteous indignation. “Oh yeah, right. This from the man who knocked me out and then bound me up like a mummy? What was that action?”

“That was different.”

“Yeah, only ’cause I was the victim. Oh wait, you’re right. I’m doing this to protect you and you did yours to kill me. Maybe I should let you leave. It would serve you right.”

“Then why don’t you?”

She took a breath to calm herself before she spoke. Anger accomplished nothing and she knew that. It was what had gotten her mother into more messes than an entire crew of Molly Maids could get her out of. “Because I want the truth about what happened the night you came to Olympus. Artemis said that you tried to rape her.”

He made a choking noise as if touching Artemis was the worst thing he could imagine. “And what do you think?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t exactly shown me any high moral fiber here. Maybe she’s right and you did.”

He moved to stand in front of her. His eyes practically glowed gold in the light as he raked a disgusted look over her. “Trust me, baby. I’ve never had to force myself on any woman. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I did. Do you think me dumb enough to try it on Olympus under the noses of the other gods?”

He had a point, but she wasn’t about to let him know that. “You’re arrogant enough. You might.”

“Yeah,” he said in a low, feral tone, “arrogant but not stupid.”

“Then why were you there?”

His features blank, he moved away from her, which made her wonder what he was hiding. There was something about that night that he didn’t want to even think about—she could feel it.

“Answer my question.”

“It’s none of your business,” he snapped. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” He started for the door.

Kat held her hand up and clenched her fist. The door immediately vanished. “I wasn’t kidding. You can’t leave.”

The next thing she knew, she was lifted from her feet and pinned to the wall. “And neither am I. Let me out of here or you will regret it.”

She shook her head slowly. “Kill me and you’ll never get out.” She felt the pressure holding her to the wall increase before it set her back on the floor with a gentleness that surprised her. “Thank you.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “I have to get out of here. There’s less than three weeks to Armageddon and I have a lot to do to prepare for it.”

“Yeah, and right now I have a broken arm that needs to be tended. So I tell you what. You sit here contemplating Artemis’s murder and Armageddon, and I’ll be back in a few. But don’t break or touch my stuff … or I’ll take it out of your hide.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he did, she flashed herself out of her small house and into the main palace of Kalosis.

Kat manifested in the main foyer and had to take a moment to locate her grandmother with her thoughts. As was typical of her grandmother, Apollymi was outside, in her garden.

Out of respect, Kat walked the short distance through the throne room to the gilded doors that opened out onto the grounds. Her grandmother didn’t like for people to pop in on her unexpectedly—Kat was the only one who knew why. Once as a child, she’d done that and caught her grandmother weeping hysterically in grief and pain—it was something Apollymi couldn’t stand for other people to see.

As the Great Destroyer, she only wanted people to see her strong and ruthless. But Kat’s grandmother was much more than just that. She had a heart and she ached, just like everyone else in the universe.