The Dark-Hunters (437 page)

She, on the other hand, moved to the other side of the room, far away from him.

“What are you doing, Artemis?”

“I had something to tell you.”

“Have,” he corrected. “And yes, we’ve already ascertained this. What is it?”

“You’re getting angry.”

Disgust filled him that she was continuing to play this game. “You didn’t make me promise not to.”

“Only because I knew you would and then you’d die.”

“Artemis!”

“Fine,” she said in a huff. “Don’t shout at me. I can’t stand it when you do that.”

“I’m about to do more than shout.”

“Okay, be that way. Do you remember when you were first brought back from the dead?”

Remember it? It haunted him daily. It’d been one of the more painful moments in a life marked by agony. “What about it?”

“Well…” Biting her lip, she twisted her hand in her gown. “There were months where you wouldn’t come to my temple even though I tried to summon you.”

“Yes. I was just a little pissed at what you and your brother had done to me.”

“But I want you to remember that I did do my best to summon you.”

She was a little too eager about this for his tastes, but he sought to ease her stress in spite of the fact that what he really wanted to do was choke her. “I remember, Artemis. You damn near drove me insane with your insistent shrieking that I come to you.”

“And when you finally came, do you remember what happened?”

Ash let out another frustrated breath. He could see that moment clearly. Artemis had met him outside her temple here in her forest. He’d stood in the center of a clearing, glaring at her. He’d been hungry and furious, and he’d wanted her blood in the worst sort of way.

She’d approached him cautiously that day as if terrified of him. “Please don’t be angry at me, Acheron.”

He’d laughed bitterly. “Oh, ‘angry’ doesn’t even begin to describe what I am at you. How dare you bring me back?”

She’d gulped. “I had no choice.”

“We all have choices.”

“No, Acheron. We don’t.”

As if he’d believed it. She’d always been selfish and vain and no doubt that was the only reason he’d been brought back when he should have been left dead. “Is this why you’ve been summoning me? You want to apologize?”

She’d shaken her head. “I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. I would do it over again in a heart pound.”

“Beat,” he’d snarled.

She’d waved the word away with her hand. “I want there to be peace between us.”

Peace? Was she insane? She was lucky he didn’t kill her right now. If it weren’t for fear of what could happen to the innocent, he would have.

“There will never be peace between us. Ever. You shattered any hope of it when you watched your brother kill me and refused to speak up on my behalf.”

“I was afraid.”

“And I was butchered and gutted on the floor like an animal sacrifice. Excuse me if I don’t feel your pain. I’m too busy with my own.” He’d turned to leave her then, but she’d stopped him.

It was then he heard the muffled whimpering of a baby. Scowling, he’d watched in horror as Artemis withdrew an infant from the folds of her
peplos.

“I have a baby for you, Acheron.”

He’d jerked his arm away from her as fury singed every part of him. “You bitch! Do you honestly think that could
ever
replace my nephew you let die? I hate you. I will always hate you. For once in your life, do the right thing and return that to its mother. The last thing a babe needs is to be left with a heartless viper like you.”

She’d slapped him then with enough strength to split his upper lip. “Go and rot, you worthless bastard.”

Laughing, he’d wiped the blood away with the back of his hand while he stared venomously at her. “I may be a worthless bastard, but better that than a frigid whore who sacrificed the only man to ever love her because she was too self-absorbed to save him.”

The look on her face had scorched him. “I’m not the whore here, Acheron. You are. Bought and sold to anyone who could pay your fee. How dare you think for one minute you were ever worthy of a goddess?”

The pain of those words had seared a permanent place in his heart and soul. “You’re right, my lady. I’m not worthy of you or anyone else. I’m just a piece of shit to be dumped naked in the street. Forgive me for ever sullying you.”

And then he’d vanished from her, and for two thousand years he’d avoided any and all contact with her. The only thing he’d accept from her was vials of her blood so that he could eat and live.

If he’d had his way, he’d have never seen her again. But then she’d used the powers she’d stolen from him to create the Dark-Hunters under the guise of using them to protect the humans from the Daimons Apollo had created. The reality was, she’d used the Dark-Hunters to tie Acheron to her forever and to force him to come and barter with her for their freedom.

They were the only reason he had anything to do with her. Them and the guilt he felt over their creation.

Damn them all for it.

But that was the ancient past and it was best left alone. “Why are you dredging up such bitter memories now, Artemis?”

And as soon as the words left his lips, he had sudden clarity.

“I have a baby for you, Acheron.”

Ash stepped back as disbelief and pain slammed him hard in the stomach. “The baby…”

Artemis nodded. “She was your daughter.”

CHAPTER NINE

Acheron
staggered away from Artemis as his rage ripped through him with razor-sharp talons. He put his arm against the wall and watched as his skin turned blue. His breathing was ragged as his teeth grew to large fangs and his vision became cloudy.

He wanted Artemis’s blood so badly, he could taste it. More than that, he wanted to rip her throat out.

“Damn you!” he snarled.

“I tried to tell you. I gave her to you and you rejected her.”

He spun around to glare at her. “You said, ‘I have a baby for you.’ Not ‘I
had
your baby,’ Artemis. There’s a big fucking difference. I thought the baby was nothing more than an offering to you from one of your worshipers that you were trying to pawn off on me to make amends for my dead nephew, and you knew that.” All of her handmaidens had come into her service in such a manner. Back then, it was nothing for people to leave infants as offerings to the gods.

He raked his hands through his hair as more hated memories surged and tore through him.

He could see himself again as a young man on the cold stone slab, chained down and held in place by servants as the surgeon came forward with a scalpel.

Acheron hissed and flinched at the remembered pain.

His breathing ragged, he approached Artemis with his hands clenched into fists so that he didn’t begin choking her. “They sterilized me. There’s no way I could father a child. It’s not possible.”

Her face hardened. “As a human you were sterile. But on your twenty-first birthday…”

His godhood had been unlocked.

He wiped his hands over his face as he remembered that. All the scars on his body had been removed. Physically, he’d been restored.

Obviously it hadn’t all been on the surface. That night must have undone their surgery, too. Dammit, how could he have been so stupid?

“Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”

She glared at him. “I tried. You wouldn’t listen to me or speak to me. ‘I hate you, Artemis. Go die.’ That’s all I heard from you for two thousand years.”

Ash laughed as bitter grief assailed him. For once, she was right. He’d been the one who ignored her. Dear gods, who would have thought
this
was what she’d been trying to tell him?

Worse, she had held his daughter out to him and he’d cursed her for it. Now he cursed himself for being so damn blind and stupid. How could he not have known? How could he have allowed his anger at her to blind him to something so important?

He could kill himself for his own stupidity. He had denied his own child. Gods only knew what she must think of him and his rejection.

“It’s been eleven thousand years, Artemis. You know, you could have mentioned this to me before now.”

Her eyes were filled with tears. “I wanted to hurt you then. I held her out to you and you insulted me and refused what I loved more than anything else in this universe. You have no idea what I went through trying to prevent anyone from knowing I was pregnant. I suffered through her birth alone, with no attendants. No one to help me in any way. I didn’t have to have her, you know.”

Artemis was still trying to hurt him with that last remark, but he wasn’t willing to let her get away with it. “Then why did you?”

“She was a part of you and she was mine. The only thing in my life that has ever been purely mine. There was no way I wouldn’t have had her. By the time you started talking to me again, she was grown. I didn’t see the point of losing you over something I couldn’t help when I’d already done everything I knew to do to make you love me.”

Ash gave a bitter laugh. “I’m happy for you, Artie. You got to love my daughter and I’m nothing but a stranger to her. Thank you.”

“Don’t be so surly. I didn’t have her long to myself before she went behind my back to find your mother. She’s just like her father—ever out to punish me when all I want to do is hold her.”

He went cold at her words.
You’ve got to be kidding me.…
“My mother knows about her?”

“Of course the bitch does. I had to give up my protection of my daughter to your mother to save you that night in New Orleans when Stryker was about to kill you.”

Ash seethed in anger even though he didn’t know why. He’d been screwed over by his mother and Artemis more times than he could count. There had never been a woman in his life who hadn’t lied and betrayed him.

Not a one.

Simi had been the only pure thing he’d ever known. And even she had gone behind his back to seduce his best friend. She’d lost her innocence and he’d gained an enemy who now had no intention of stopping until Ash was dead.

Or until Ash killed him.

Yeah, women were the very bane of Ash’s entire existence. He wished he’d been born gay so that he would have spared himself centuries of pain at their hands.

But there was nothing he could do to change the past. Letting out a long, angry breath, he glared at Artemis. “And where is my daughter now?”

“That’s why I’m here. I sent her to kill Sin.”

“You what!”

Artemis squeaked and put more distance between them. “Don’t worry. She’s too much like you and wouldn’t do it. So I had to call out Deimos to do it.”

Oh, this was going to be good. “Let me guess. Deimos is on the loose now after both of them?”

She nodded. “I told him not to hurt Katra, but he doesn’t listen. And somehow he knows she’s my daughter.”

Now it all made sense. “You want me to stop Deimos.”

“I want you to kill him.”

He laughed in disbelief.

“Don’t shake your head at me,” she snapped. “I know you can do it. You’re a god-killer. His powers are nothing compared to yours.”

He cut a lethal glare at her. “Oh, you have no idea, Artie. Not really. In fact, you’re lucky I don’t cut you down right now where you stand.”

“You can’t. You swore you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking right now your death might be worth mine.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He growled, knowing she was right. If he died, it would unleash his mother on the world and mankind would go up in a fiery blaze. Damn him for caring about that.

He released a slow breath before he asked Queen Dense the obvious. “So how can I protect my daughter if you won’t let me out of here?”

“If Katra needs you, you can go to her. But she has to be in danger first.”

Ash paused at hearing his daughter’s name for the first time. “Katra?” In Greek, it meant “pure.”

Artemis nodded. “She looks just like you.” Holding her hand up, she summoned an image of Katra’s face so that he could see her.

Tears gathered in his eyes as he saw the beauty of his daughter, but he refused to let them fall. And as he looked at her image, he was stunned to realize that he did know her. It was the face he’d seen in his dreams. The blond woman he couldn’t identify. Somehow his mind must have known she was out there and it’d been struggling to tell him.

“Have I ever seen her?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Just once that I know. She was rushing out with the other
koris
when you showed up unexpectedly. You glanced at her before I made you look at me.”

He remembered that. He’d been struck by the fact that one of the
koris
was obviously taller than Artemis when he knew that Artemis couldn’t stand having a woman taller than her around her. “The tall blonde…”

“Yes.”

Ash swallowed the pain that swelled inside of him. To think he’d been that close to her … it cut him deep. “Does she know about me?”

“I never kept the identity of her father from her. It was why she went to visit your mother.”

A sick feeling settled deep in his stomach. “What did you tell her, Artie? That I rejected her?”

Her eyes snapped fire at him. “You know, Acheron, I get tired of you hurting me, too. Really tired. Had you been decent to me, you would have known all about her. So don’t you dare take that hostile tone with me. I did the right thing. You were the one who walked out on her. I was there for her, raising her, while you were off pouting.”

Pouting. Yeah. That was so him. He’d been learning to use his powers and had been trying to control a very young Simi who had never been in the human world before. Those early years after Artemis had brought him back had been hard and frightening.

And he’d had no one to turn to. His mother had been bitter and irrational every time he tried to speak to her. Artemis had nagged without cessation. If Savitar hadn’t appeared to him to show him how to channel and use his powers, he’d have been completely lost.

But that was the past and he couldn’t change it. All he could do was make sure that no one hurt his daughter from this point forward. “Simi!”