The Dark-Hunters (554 page)

Only he would never blink again.

He was dead.

And so were they …

Apollymi’s heart beat with fury as her powers mounted. A feral wind exploded through the hall, sweeping her hair up as her eyes glowed red. She turned on the gods then and leveled a malevolent glare at each of them as they held a united breath in expectation of her wrath.

Until she came to Archon.

Only then did she speak in a voice that was laced with her hatred. “Look at my son.”

He refused.

“Look, damn you!” she snarled. “I want you to see what
you’ve
done.”

Archon winced before he complied and the relief in his eyes notched her wrath to an even higher level. How could she have ever allowed something so callous and putrid into her bed?

Into her body?

Apollymi growled. “Your bastard daughters deprived my son of his life. Those little whores damned him. And
you,
” she sneered the word, “dared to protect them instead of my child!”

“Apollymi—”

“Don’t you ever speak my name again.” She sealed his mouth shut with her powers. “You had every right to be afraid. But your bastard bitches were wrong. It won’t be my son who destroys this pantheon. It is I. Apollymia Katastrafia Megola. Pantokrataria. Thanatia Atlantia deia oly!”

Apollymi the Great Destroyer. All-powerful. Death to the gods of Atlantis.

It was then they scrambled for the doors or to teleport out, but Apollymi would have none of it. Drawing from the darkest part of her soul, she sealed the hall closed. No one was going to leave here until she was appeased.

No one.

If the Chthonians killed her for this, so be it. She felt dead inside anyway. She didn’t care about anything except making them all pay for their part in her son’s suffering.

Archon fell to his knees, trying to plead for her mercy. But there was nothing left inside her except a hatred so potent and bitter that she could actually taste it.

She kicked him back and blasted him until he was nothing more than a statue remnant of a god.

Basi screamed out as Apollymi turned toward her. “I helped you. I did! I put him where you told me to.”

“You didn’t do shit, except whine and piss me off.” Apollymi blasted her into oblivion.

One by one, she faced the gods she’d once considered family and turned them into stone as her relentless fury demanded appeasement. They tried in vain to subdue her, but once her wrath was unleashed, there was no power in the universe to stop her.

Except for the child they’d stupidly killed. Only Apostolos could have saved them.

The only one she hesitated at was her beloved step-grandson, Dikastis—the god of justice. Unlike the others, he didn’t cower or beg. Nor did he fight her. He stood with one hand braced on the back of a chair, calmly meeting her gaze as an equal.

But then he understood justice. He understood her wrath.

Inclining his head respectfully, he didn’t move as she blasted him.

And then there was Epithymia. Her half-sister. The goddess of wealth and desire. She was the bitch Apollymi had so foolishly trusted more than the others.

With tears of crystal ice in her eyes, Apollymi confronted her. “How could you?”

Tiny and frail in her angelic appearance, Epithymia stared up at her from where she cowered on the floor. “I did what you asked. I delivered him into the world of man and made sure he was born into a royal family. I even tried to hand him to the queen to suckle him. Why would you destroy me?”

Apollymi wanted to claw her eyes out for what she’d done. “You touched him, you slut! You knew what that would do to him. To be touched by the hand of desire and to have no god powers to countermand it … You made it so that every human who saw him was driven mad with their lust to have him. How could you be so careless?”

It was then she saw the truth in her sister’s eyes.

“You did it on purpose!”

Epithymia swallowed. “What was I supposed to do? You heard the Fates when they spoke. They proclaimed him to be the death of us all. He would have destroyed us.”

“You thought the humans would kill him in their efforts to possess him?”

A tear slid down Epithymia’s cheek. “I was only trying to protect us.”

“He was your nephew,” Apollymi spat.

“I know and I’m sorry.”

Not as sorry as she was going to be.

Apollymi curled her lip. “So am I. I’m sorry I ever trusted you with the one thing you knew I loved above all others. You ungrateful bitch. I hope your actions haunt you into eternity.” Apollymi blasted her sister.

And yet she was unappeased. Even with all of them dead and gone …

The hole inside her was still there and it hurt so much that all she could do was scream. She screamed until her throat was raw. Throwing her arms out, she splintered the hall until there was nothing left but rubble. Nothing left but her memories of her hope for a son now dead.

Still it hurt.

Apollymi wiped the tears from her face as she stood, looking at what she’d done. There was no satisfaction to be felt.

There was only justice to be done.

“One down…”

She turned then and headed to the island kingdom Archon had created for her.

Atlantis.

Those poor fools had thought to strike out at Apollo by killing his son and mistress. Today they were cowering in fear of being discovered by him and punished for their actions. But it wasn’t the Greek god who wanted them dead.

It was she. Their patroness.

It would be by her hand and for the acts they’d committed against her son that they would suffer and die.

No mercy. It was what they’d given Apostolos and it was what she’d return to them.

With one swipe of her arm, she sank the entire island into the sea and listened to the beauty of their terrified screams and pleas for clemency and deliverance as the elements struck and ended their putrid lives. It was the sweetest music she’d ever heard. Let them beg …

If only Apostolos and Xiamara could be here.

Wincing in pain, she pushed her grief aside as she struck out on their behalf.

The last of the island kingdom faded into the sea just as the sun was setting. Apollymi turned then and looked to the land of Greece.

They were the last to suffer. Not just the humans who’d hurt her child, but those fucking gods who thought they were so smart and smug.

Most of all, Archon’s bastard daughters would pay. They thought themselves safe on Olympus under the care of their mother. But the three Fates were nothing in comparison to the daughter of Chaos.

To the mother of absolute destruction.

Their dying screams would be the ones she’d relish most.

JUNE
25, 9527
BC
MOUNT OLYMPUS

Small and thin in stature with dark hair and eyes, Hermes flew through the hall of Zeus until he stood before his father, who only looked a few years older than he. Hermes wasn’t sure what was going on, but most of the gods were gathered here and lounging about.

They ignored Hermes until he spoke. “You know the saying, don’t kill the messenger? Hold that thought really, really close to your hearts.”

Zeus scowled at him as he stood up from the chair where he’d been playing chess with Poseidon. Dressed in a flowing white robe, Zeus had short blond hair and vividly blue eyes. “What’s going on?”

Hermes gestured toward the wall of windows that looked down onto the human realm. “Have any of you taken a look out at Greece in the last, say, hour or so?”

Artemis held her breath as a bad feeling went through her while she sat at a banquet table across from Aphrodite, Athena and Apollo.

Apollo rolled his eyes and waved his hand in arrogant dismissal. “What? Are they reacting to the fact I cursed the Apollites?”

Hermes shook his head in a gesture of sarcastic denial. “I don’t think that bothers them nearly as much as the fact that the island of Atlantis is now gone and the Atlantean goddess Apollymi is cutting a swathe through our country, laying waste to everyone and everything she comes into contact with.” Hermes gave Apollo a smug look. “And in case you’re curious, she’s headed straight for us. I could be really wrong here, but I’m guessing the woman’s extremely pissed.”

Artemis shrank back at those words.

Zeus turned on Apollo. “What have you done?”

All arrogance now gone, Apollo blanched as fear tinted his eyes. “I cursed my people, not hers. I didn’t do anything to the Atlanteans, Papa. Unless their blood was mixed with my Apollites, they were unharmed by my curse. This is not
my
fault.”

Her stomach drawing tight, Artemis covered her mouth as she realized what pantheon Acheron must have belonged to. Terrified of what she and Apollo had set in motion, she left the hall where the gods prepared for war and went to her temple so that she could think without their angry shouts in her ears.

“What can I do?”

She was just about to summon her koris to her when the three Fates appeared in her room: As triplets in the height of youthful beauty, their faces were perfect duplicates of each other. But that was the only thing that united them. The eldest, Atropos, had red hair while Clotho was blond, and the youngest, Lachesis, had dark hair. They were the daughters of the goddess of justice. No one was sure who their father was, but many suspected Zeus.

The one thing every god on Olympus knew was that these three girls were the most powerful of the entire pantheon. Even Zeus didn’t try to circumvent them.

Since the moment of their arrival a decade ago, everyone had given them a wide berth. When the three of them held hands and made a statement, it became the law of the universe and no one was immune to it.

No one.

Artemis couldn’t imagine why they’d be here in her temple. “If you don’t mind, I’m a little busy right now.”

Lachesis grabbed her arm. “Artemis, you must listen to us. We’ve done something terrible.”

That was why the gods lived in fear of them. They were always doing something terrible to someone. “Whatever it is, it’ll wait.”

“No,” Atropos said grimly, “it won’t. Apollymi is coming here to kill us.”

Stunned by that proclamation, Artemis scowled at them. “What?”

Atropos swallowed. “You must never tell anyone what we’re about to tell you. Do you understand? Our mother made us swear to keep it a secret.”

“Keep what secret?”

“Swear to us, Artemis,” Clotho demanded.

“I swear. Now tell me what’s going on.” And most important, why it involved her.

Atropos spoke in a whisper as if afraid someone outside the temple might hear her. “Our father is Archon—the king of the Atlantean gods. He had an affair with our mother, Themis, and we were born of it. Our mother sent us to Atlantis to live and our father took us in. Apollymi is our stepmother and we unknowingly cursed our half-brother when we learned of his coming birth.”

“It was an accident,” Clotho blurted out. “We didn’t mean to curse him.”

Lachesis nodded. “We were just children and didn’t understand our powers yet. We never meant to curse our brother. We didn’t, we swear!”

Artemis went cold inside. “Acheron? Acheron is your brother?”

Clotho nodded. “Apollymi barely tolerated us while we lived with them. We were a reminder of our father’s infidelity and she hated us for it.”

That didn’t make sense, any more than their fear did. Artemis tried to sort through what they were telling her. “But everyone knows that Archon has never been unfaithful to his wife.”

Lachesis snorted. “That’s a lie the Atlantean gods keep so that Apollymi won’t harm them. You don’t understand just how powerful she is. She can kill us without even blinking. All the gods fear her power. Even Archon. He’s as faithless as most men and so here we are.”

“She wants us dead,” Clotho interjected.

Still Artemis was piecing the story together. “How exactly did you curse Acheron?”

“We were so stupid,” Atropos said. “When Apollymi began to show her pregnancy, we spoke out of turn and gave Apostolos the power of final fate. We said he’d be the death of us all and it seems today we are about to see our demise met.”

Artemis was even more confused. “But it’s not him who threatens us. It’s his mother.”

Clotho nodded. “And she will kill all of us for our part in his curse. Including you.”

“I did nothing!”

Atropos scoffed at her as the young women encircled her. “We know what you’ve done, Artemis. We see all. You hurt him even more than we did. You turned your back on him while Apollo gutted him on the floor and Apollymi knows it.”

Fear tore through her. If what they said was correct, there would be no mercy from Apollymi. Truthfully, she didn’t deserve any, but on the other hand, Artemis really didn’t want to die. “What can we do? How do we defeat her?”

Atropos sighed heavily. “
You
can’t. She’s all-powerful. The only one who can check her powers is her son.”

In that case, they were in serious trouble since Acheron was now dead. Couldn’t someone have told her this
before
she’d left him to Apollo? This information was just a little late in coming and would have been much more beneficial earlier in the day.

“We’re dead,” Artemis breathed as images of her being gutted by Acheron’s mother went through her head.

“No,” Clotho said firmly, shaking her arm. “You can bring him back.”

Artemis scowled at the woman. “Are you insane? I can’t bring him back from the dead.”

“Yes, you can. You’re the only one who has the power.”

“No, I don’t.”

Atropos growled at her. “You drank of his blood, Artemis. You absorbed some of his powers.”

Clotho nodded. “He’s the final fate. He can resurrect the dead, which means you can too.”

Artemis swallowed. “Are you sure?”

They nodded in unison.

Still, Artemis was uncertain. Granted she’d tasted Acheron’s powers, but that particular one was reserved for only a very select group of gods and if they failed to bring him back …

It could only get worse.

Atropos took her by the arm. “The Atlantean gods used their combined powers to bind Apollymi. So long as Apostolos is alive in the human realm, she’s locked in Kalosis.”