Night Embrace (Dark-Hunter 2)

Chapter 8

It was near midnight when Ash left Club Runningwolf's.

Where the hell was Talon? He should be out on the streets, patrolling.

Ash had been trying to reach him for hours.

He called Nick again only to find out that Nick had neither seen nor heard from Talon either.

This was so unlike the Celt. He could sense that Talon was all right and not hurt, and if he wanted to, he could track Talon down. But Ash had never been that intrusive with his powers. Having been hunted and stalked, he couldn't bear to do that to anyone else. Not unless it was a dire emergency.

Free will was not something he would tamper with lightly.

As Ash returned the phone to his jacket, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

"Look how helpless she is..."

"Yes, but she's strong enough to feed us all."

The voices whispered through his mind much like Spider-Man's spidey-sense...

And the wall-crawler thought he had super powers.

Pah-lease.

Ash closed his eyes and located the source of the voices. Four male and two female Daimons were in an alley off Royal Street. He started for his motorcycle, then stopped himself. There was no way he'd reach them in time by conventional means.

Glancing around, he made sure no one could see him, then he gathered the ions in the air around him. He let his body disintegrate into nothingness and used his powers to bend the physics of time and matter.

Unseen, he whispered through the city, straight to the alley where they had a woman cornered. She stood cringing, surrounded by the Daimons, her arms wrapped about her.

"Please don't hurt me," she begged. "Just take my purse and leave me alone."

The tallest Daimon raked his hand through her hair and smiled evilly. "Oh, this won't hurt. Not for long anyway."

Acheron solidified. He summoned a shield for the woman, to protect and confuse her. In her mind, she would see and remember an unknown figure scaring her attackers away.

In reality, he whistled.

The Daimons turned toward him in unison.

"Hi," he said nonchalantly as he walked toward them. "You Daimons wouldn't happen to be planning on sucking the soul of an innocent human, now would you?"

They looked at each other, then started to run.

"Oh, I don't think so," Ash said, throwing another shield up behind them to keep them from fleeing the alley. "No Daimon gets out of here alive."

They hit the invisible wall and rebounded off it.

"Man," Ash said, feigning a cringe. "It really makes you feel for the bug on a windshield, doesn't it?"

They scrambled to their feet.

The tallest of them, who was almost even in height to Ash, narrowed his eyes. "We're not afraid of you, Dark-Hunter."

"Good. It makes the fight more fair that way." Ash spread his hands out, creating a staff with his thoughts.

The male Daimons rushed him at once while the women backed away.

Acheron flipped the first Daimon to reach him over with his staff, then rammed the tip of it into the second. He embedded one end of the staff into the concrete and used it to balance as he jumped up and kicked at a third. He released the blade from the toe of his boot and sent it straight into the Daimon's chest. The Daimon disintegrated.

Ash landed gracefully on the street while the first two pushed themselves up and the other two backed off.

"Oh, come on, girls," he taunted them. "Don't be bashful. At least I give you a fighting chance, which is more than you give your victims."

"Look," the leader said, his voice shaking. "Let us go and we'll give you some important information."

Ash scoffed. "What information could you possibly have that would be worth me letting you go so that you could kill more humans?"

"It's worth it," another one said. "It's about-" His words broke off into a strangled cry.

Before Ash could move, all the Daimons disintegrated.

For the first time in centuries, he was too stunned to move.

What the hell just happened?

The human woman came flying up from her crouch and launched herself into his arms. "You saved me!"

Ash frowned. He couldn't figure out how she could see him until she kissed him passionately.

"Dammit, Artemis," he snarled, pushing her away. "Get off me."

She made an irritated noise low in her throat. Releasing him, she flashed from her blond human disguise into her fiery goddessness. Her auburn hair curled around her shoulders as she stood, hands on hips, and pouted at him. "How did you know it was me?"

"After eleven thousand years, don't you think I know what you taste like?"

Sulkily, she folded her arms over her chest. "If I'd been a real human, I bet you would have slept with me tonight."

He sighed disgustedly and allowed his staff to fade into vapor. "I don't have time for your petty jealousy. You know, I do have other things to take care of."

She licked her lips and stepped to his side, then trailed her hand over his shoulders. She leaned to whisper in his ear. "I'm one of those things you need to take care of, love. Come home with me, Acheron. I'll make it well worth your while." She ran her tongue around his ear, raising chills over his body.

Ash shrugged her away. "I have a headache."

"You've had a headache for two hundred years!"

He looked at her dryly. "And you've had PMS for eleven thousand."

She laughed at that. "One day, my love, one day..."

Ash put a little more room between them. Enough so that she couldn't casually run her hands over his body. "Why are you here?"

She shrugged. "I wanted to see you fight. I just love the way you get all serious and lethal. The way your muscles ripple when you move. It really turns me up."

For once he didn't bother to correct her misuse of American slang. Instead, his vision turned dark that she would manipulate him like this. He hated the games she played, especially when they involved the lives of other people. "So you created Daimons out of nothing and then killed them?"

She closed the distance between them. "Oh no, they were real. And I'm not the one who zapped them. Believe me, I love the way your body moves when you attack. I would never give them in while you fought."

"You mean 'take them out'?"

"Mmm... in... out..." Artemis nipped at his shoulder while she ran her hands down his chest. "You keep talking like that and I will take you home with me."

His head was starting to pound. He removed her hand from his crotch where she cupped him. "Artie, could you stay focused for a minute? If you didn't zap them, who did?"

"I don't know."

He moved away from her. Again.