Authors: Gena Showalter
“Aeron is…Prepare yourself,” Torin began, “because this is the main reason I hunted you down.”
“Did something happen to him?” Maddox demanded as darkness shuttered over his thoughts and anger overtook him.
Destroy, obliterate,
Violence beseeched, clawing at the corners of his mind. “Is he hurt?”
Immortal Aeron might be, but he could still be harmed. Even killed—a feat they had all discovered in the worst possible way.
“Nothing like that,” Torin assured him.
Slowly, he relaxed and gradually Violence receded. “What, then? Cleaning a mess and throwing a fit?” Every warrior here had specific responsibilities. It was their way of maintaining some semblance of order amid the chaos of their own souls. Aeron’s task was maid service, something he complained about on a daily basis. Maddox took care of home repairs. Torin played with stocks and bonds, whatever those were, keeping them well-moneyed. Lucien did all the paperwork and Reyes supplied them with weapons.
“The gods…summoned him.”
Maddox stumbled, shock momentarily blinding him. “What?” Surely he had misheard.
“The gods summoned him,” Torin repeated patiently.
But the Greeks hadn’t spoken to any of them since the day of Pandora’s death. “What did they want? And why am I just now hearing about this?”
“One, no one knows. We were watching a movie when suddenly he straightened in his seat, expression dead, as if there were no one home. Then a few seconds later he tells us he’s been summoned. None of us even had time to react—one minute Aeron was with us, the next he was gone.
“And two,” Torin added with barely a pause, “I tried to tell you. You said you didn’t care, remember?”
A muscle ticked below his eye. “You should have told me anyway.”
“While you had barbells within your reach? Please. I’m Disease, not Stupid.”
This was…this was…Maddox did not want to contemplate what this was, but could not stop the thoughts from forming. Sometimes Aeron, keeper of Wrath, lost total control of his spirit and embarked on a vengeance rampage, punishing mortals for their perceived sins. Was he now to be given a second curse for his actions, as Maddox had been all those centuries ago?
“If he does not return in the same shape he left, I will find a way to storm the heavens and slaughter every godly being I encounter.”
“Your eyes are glowing bright red,” Torin said. “Look, we’re all confused, but Aeron will return soon and tell us what’s going on.”
Fair enough. He forced himself to relax. Again. “Was anyone else summoned?”
“No. Lucien is out collecting souls. Reyes is gods-know-where, probably cutting himself.”
He should have known. Even though Maddox suffered unbearably each night, he pitied Reyes, who could not live a single hour without self-inflicted torture.
“What else did you have to tell me?” Maddox brushed his fingertips over the two towering columns that flanked the staircase before beginning to climb.
“I think it will be better if I show you.”
Would it be worse than the announcement about Aeron? Maddox wondered, striding past the entertainment room. Their sanctuary. The chamber they’d spared no expense creating was filled with plush furniture and all the comforts a warrior could desire. There was a refrigerator crammed with special wines and beers. A pool table. A basketball hoop. A large plasma screen that was even now
flashing images of three naked women in the middle of an orgy.
“I see Paris was here,” he said.
Torin did not reply, but he did quicken his steps, never once glancing toward the screen.
“Never mind,” Maddox muttered. Directing Torin’s attention to anything carnal was unnecessarily cruel. The celibate man had to crave sex—
touch
—with every fiber of his being, but he would never have the option of indulging.
Even Maddox enjoyed a woman upon occasion.
His lovers were usually Paris’s leftovers, those females foolish enough to try to follow Paris home, hoping to share his bed again, not knowing just how impossible such a thing was. They were always drunk with sexual arousal, a consequence of welcoming Promiscuity, so they rarely cared who finally slid between their legs. Most times, they were all too happy to accept Maddox as a substitute—even though it was an impersonal joining, as emotionally hollow as it was physically satisfying.
It had to be that way, though. To protect their secrets, the warriors did not allow humans inside the fortress, forcing Maddox to take the women outside in the surrounding forest. He preferred them on their hands and knees, facing away from him, a swift coupling that would not rouse Violence in any way or compel him to do things that would haunt him forever and still another eternity.
Afterward, Maddox would send the females home with a warning: never return or die. It was that simple. To allow a more permanent arrangement would be foolish. He might come to care for them, and he would definitely hurt them, which would only heap even more guilt and shame upon him.
Just once, though, he would have liked to linger over a
woman as Paris was able to do. He would have liked to kiss and lick her entire body; he would have liked to
drown
in her, completely losing himself, without fearing his control would snap and cause him to wound her.
Finally reaching Torin’s quarters, he blocked those thoughts from his mind. Time spent wishing was time wasted, as he well knew.
He glanced at his surroundings. He’d been in this room before, but he did not remember the wall-to-wall computer system or the numerous monitors, phones and various other equipment lined throughout. Unlike Torin, Maddox eschewed most technology, for he had never quite gotten used to how quickly things seemed to change—and just how much further each new advancement seemed to pull him from the carefree warrior he’d once been. Though he would be lying if he claimed not to enjoy the convenience such gadgets provided.
Survey complete, he faced his friend. “Taking over the world?”
“Nope. Just watching it. It’s the best way to protect us, and the best way to make a little coin.” Torin plopped into a cushioned swivel chair in front of the largest screen and began typing on the keyboard. One of the blank monitors lit up, the black screen becoming intertwined with grays and whites. “All right. Here’s what I wanted you to see.”
Careful not to touch his friend, Maddox stepped forward. The indistinct blur gradually became thick, opaque lines. Trees, he realized. “Nice, but not something I was in dire need of viewing.”
“Patience.”
“Hurry,” he countered.
Torin flicked him a wry glance. “Since you asked so nicely…I have heat sensors and cameras hidden through
out our land so that I always know when someone trespasses.” A few more seconds of tapping and the screen’s view shifted to the right. Then there was a swift flash of red, there one moment, gone the next.
“Go back,” Maddox said, tensing. He wasn’t a surveillance expert. No, his skill lay in the actual killing. But even he knew what that red slash represented. Body heat.
Tap, tap, tap
and the red slash once again consumed the screen.
“Human?” he asked. The silhouette was small, almost dainty.
“Definitely.”
“Male or female?”
Torin shrugged. “Female, most likely. Too big to be a child, too small to be a grown man.”
Hardly anyone ventured up the bleak hill at this time of night. Or even during the day. Whether it was too spooky, too gloomy or a sign of the locals’ respect, Maddox didn’t know. But he could count on one hand the number of deliverymen, children wanting to explore and women prowling for sex who’d braved the journey in the last year.
“One of Paris’s lovers?” he asked.
“Possibly. Or…”
“Or?” he prompted when his friend hesitated.
“A Hunter,” Torin said grimly. “Bait, more specifically.”
Maddox pressed his lips together in a harsh line. “Now I know you’re teasing me.”
“Think about it. Deliverymen always come with boxes and Paris’s girls always race straight toward the front door. This one looks empty-handed and she’s gone in circles, stopping every few minutes and doing something against the trees. Planting dynamite in an attempt to injure us, maybe. Cameras to watch us.”
“If she’s empty-handed—”
“Dynamite and cameras are small enough to conceal.”
He massaged the back of his neck. “Hunters haven’t stalked or tormented us since Greece.”
“Maybe their children and then their children’s children have been searching for us all this time. Maybe they finally found us.”
Dread suddenly curled in Maddox’s stomach. First Aeron’s shocking summons and now the uninvited visitor. Mere coincidence? His mind flashed back to those dark days in Greece, days of war and savagery, screams and death. Days the warriors had been more demon than man. Days a hunger for destruction had dictated their every action and human bodies had littered the streets.
Hunters had soon risen from the tortured masses, a league of mortal men intent upon destroying those who’d unleashed such evil, and a blood feud had erupted. The battles he then found himself fighting, with swords clanging and fires raging, flesh burning and peace something of lore and legend…
Cunning had been the Hunters’ greatest weapon, however. They had trained female Bait to seduce and distract while they swooped in for the kill. That’s how they managed to murder Baden, keeper of Distrust. They had not managed to kill the demon itself, however, and it had sprung from the decimated body, crazed, demented,
warped
from the loss of its host.
Where the demon resided now, Maddox didn’t know.
“The gods surely hate us,” Torin said. “What better way to hurt us than to send Hunters just when we’ve finally carved out a somewhat peaceful life for ourselves?”
His dread intensified. “They would not wish the
demons, crazed as they would surely be without us, loose upon the world. Would they?”
“Who knows why they do any of the things that they do.” A statement, with no hint of a question. None of them really understood the gods, even after all these centuries. “We have to do something, Maddox.”
His gaze flicked to the wall clock and he tensed. “Call Paris.”
“Did. He’s not answering his cell phone.”
“Call—”
“Do you really think I would have disturbed you this close to midnight if there were anyone else?” Torin twisted in the seat, peering up at him with forbidding determination. “You’re it.”
Maddox shook his head. “Very soon, I’m going to die. I cannot be outside these walls.”
“Neither can I.” Something murky and dangerous shimmered in Torin’s eyes, something bitter, turning the green to a poisonous emerald. “You, at least, won’t obliterate the entire human race by leaving.”
“Torin—”
“You’re not going to win this argument, Maddox, so stop wasting time.”
He tangled a hand through his chin-length hair, frustration mounting.
We should leave it out there to die,
Violence proclaimed.
It
—the human.
“If it
is
a Hunter,” Torin said, as if hearing his thoughts, “if it is Bait? We can’t allow it to live. It must be destroyed.”
“And if it’s innocent and my death-curse strikes?” Maddox countered, tamping down the demon as best he could.
Guilt flashed over Torin’s expression, as though every life he was responsible for taking clamored inside his conscience, begging him to rescue those he could. “That is a
chance we have to take. We are not the monsters the demons would have us be.”
Maddox ground his teeth together. He was not a cruel man; he was not a beast. Not heartless. He hated the waves of immorality that constantly threatened to pull him under. Hated what he did, what he was—and what he would become if he ever stopped fighting those black cravings and evil musings.
“Where is the human now?” he asked. He would venture into the night, even if it cost him terribly.
“At the Danube border.”
A fifteen-minute run. He had just enough time to weapon up, find the human, usher it to shelter if it was innocent or kill it if circumstances demanded, and return to the fortress. If anything slowed him down, he could die out in the open. Anyone else foolish enough to venture onto the hill would be placed in danger. Because when the first pain hit, he would be reduced to Violence and those black cravings would consume him.
He would have no other purpose but destruction.
“If I don’t return by midnight, have one of the others search for my body, as well as Lucien’s and Reyes’s.” Both Death and Pain came to him each night at midnight, no matter where Maddox was. Pain rendered the blows and Death escorted his soul to hell, where it would remain, tortured by fire and demons almost as loathsome as Violence, until morning.
Unfortunately, Maddox could not guarantee his friends’ safety out in the open. He might hurt them before they completed their tasks. And if he hurt them, the anguish he would feel would be second only to the agony of the death-curse that visited him every night.
“Promise me,” he said.
Eyes bleak, Torin nodded. “Be careful, my friend.”
He stalked out of the room, his movements rushed. Before he made it halfway down the hall, however, Torin called, “Maddox. You might want to look at this.”
Backtracking, he experienced another slap of dread. What now? Could anything be worse? When he stood in front of the monitors once more, he arched a brow at Torin, a silent command to hurry.
Torin motioned to the screen with a tilt of his chin. “Looks like there are four more of them. All male…or Amazons. They weren’t there earlier.”
“Damn this.” Maddox studied the four new slashes of red, each one bigger than the last. They were closing in on the little one. Yes, things could indeed be worse. “I’ll take care of them,” he said. “All of them.” Once more he leapt into motion, his pace more clipped.
He reached his bedroom and headed straight to the closet, bypassing the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. He’d destroyed his dresser, mirror and chairs in one fit of violence or another.
At one time, he’d been foolish enough to fill the space with tranquil indoor waterfalls, plants, crosses, anything to promote peace and soothe raw nerves. None of it had worked and all had been smashed beyond repair in a matter of minutes as the demon overtook him. Since then he’d opted for what Paris called a minimalist look.