Chapter 5
"Welcome to kolasi," Stryker said under his breath, speaking the Atlantean word for hell as he surveyed the leaders of his Daimon army that was ever ready to attack at his command.
For eleven thousand years, he, as the son of the Atlantean Destroyer, had led them.
Handpicked by the Destroyer herself and trained by Stryker, these Daimons were all elite killers. Their own brethren referred to them as Spathi Daimons. A term that had been bastardized by both the Apollites and Dark-Hunters who didn't understand what a true Spathi was.
Instead they applied the term to any Daimon who fought them. But that wasn't right. The true Spathi were something else entirely.
They weren't the children of Apollo. They were Apollo's enemies, just as they were the enemies of the Dark-Hunters and humans. The Spathis had long ago forsaken whatever Greek or Apollite heritage they might have had.
They were the last of the Atlanteans and were proud of it.
Unbeknownst to the Dark-Hunters and humans, there were thousands of them. Thousands. All far older than any pathetic human, Apollite, or Dark-Hunter dared dream. While the weaker Daimons lived in hiding on earth, the Spathis used laminas or bolt-holes to travel from this realm to the human one.
Their homes existed in another dimension. In Kalosis, where the Destroyer herself resided under imprisonment and where the lethal light of Apollo never shone. They were her soldiers.
Her sons and daughters.
Only a very select few of them could summon the laminas on their own-it was a gift the Destroyer didn't bequeath often. As her son, Stryker could come and go at will, but he chose to stay near his mother's side.
As he had for the last eleven thousand years...
All this time, they had planned well for this night. After his father Apollo had cursed them and left Stryker and his children to die horribly, Stryker had embraced his mother willingly.
It was Apollymi who had shown him the way. She who had taught them to take the souls of humans into their bodies so that they could survive even though his father had damned them all to die at twenty-seven.
"You are my chosen ones," she had told him. "Fight with me and the world shall belong to the Atlantean gods once more."
Since that day, they had recruited their army with care. The three dozen generals who lounged around him in the "banquet" hall were the best fighters among them. They all waited for word from their spy as to when the missing heiress would reappear.
She'd been out of their reach all day. But now that the sun had set, she was within reach once more.
Any moment now and they would be free to ran the night and rip her heart out of her.
It was a precious thought Stryker cherished.
The doors to the hall opened and from the darkness outside came Stryker's last surviving son, Urian. Dressed all in black like his father, Urian had long blond hair that he wore in a queue secured by a black leather cord.
His son was more handsome than any other, but then all of their race were beautiful.
Urian's deep blue eyes flashed as he walked with the pride and grace of a lethal predator. When Stryker had first brought his eldest son over, it had been strange to play father to a man who was physically the same age as him, but that aside, they were father and son.
More than that, they were allies.
And Stryker would kill anyone who threatened his child.
"Any word?" he asked his son.
"Not yet. The Were-Hunter said he has lost her scent, but that he will pick her up again."
Stryker nodded. It had been their Were-Hunter spy who had brought the news to them last night of the fight where a group of Daimons had died in the bar.
Normally such a fight would be meaningless to them, but the Were-Hunter had told them that the Daimons had called their victim "the heiress."
Stryker had been searching the earth for her. Five years ago, in Belgium, they had almost killed her, but her bodyguard had sacrificed himself to them and allowed her to escape.
Since then, there had been no sightings of her. No telltale encounters with any of their people. The heiress had proved herself to be every bit as crafty as her mother.
So they had played the game.
Tonight, that game would end. Between the patrols Stryker had out in St. Paul and the Were-Hunter who served him, he was sure she would be found tonight.
He clapped his son on the back. "I want at least twenty of us standing by. There's no way she'll escape us all."
"I'll summon the Illuminati."
Stryker inclined his head in approval. The Illuminati comprised him and his son, as well as thirty others who were the bodyguards of the Destroyer. Each of them had taken a blood oath to his mother to see to it that she would be free of her netherworld so that she could rule the earth once again.
When that day came, they would be the princes of the world. Answerable only to her.
That day was finally upon them.
Wulf didn't know why he was headed for the Inferno tonight, other than he felt a compulsion inside him that wouldn't listen to reason.
He suspected it was from his insane need to feel closer to the woman who haunted his dreams. Even now he could see the beauty of her smile, feel her body welcoming his.
Or better yet, taste her.
Thoughts of her tormented him. They opened up feelings and needs that he had cast aside centuries ago without ever looking back.
Who needed it? Yet there wasn't anything he wanted more than to see her again.
It didn't make sense.
The chances of her being in the same place tonight were next to impossible.
Still, he went. He couldn't help it. It was as if he had no control over himself, but was being driven by some unseen force.
After parking his car, he walked down the quiet street like a silent phantom in the cold frigid night. The winter winds whipped around him, biting his exposed skin.
It had been a night much like this one that had brought him into service for Artemis. He'd been on a quest then too. Only then the nature of the quest had been different.
Or had it?
You're a wandering soul, looking for a peace that doesn't exist. Lost you will be until you find the one inner truth. We can never hide from what we are. The only hope is to embrace it.
To this day, he didn't really understand what it was the old seer had tried to tell him the night he'd sought her out, wanting her to explain to him how Morginne and Loki had swapped their souls.
Perhaps there was no real explanation. After all, it was a freaky world he lived in and it seemed to get stranger by the minute.
Wulf entered the Inferno. Painted black inside and out, it had iridescent flames painted inside and out, as well, that sparkled eerily under the muted, dancing lights of the club.
The club's owner, Dante Pontis, met him at the door where he and two other "men" were taking cover charges and checking IDs. In human form, the Katagari panther was ironically dressed like a "vampire." But then Dante thought such things were funny-hence the name of the club.
Dante wore black leather pants, biker boots that sported red and orange flames, and a black poet's shirt. The panther had left his shirt unlaced and the ruffled collar curled around his neck while the silk laces fell down his chest. His long black leather coat had a nineteenth-century look to it as well, but Wulf knew it to be a copy-one of the advantages to having been alive then was that he well remembered the fashions of that time period.
Dante's long black hair fell freely about his shoulders. "Wulf," he said, flashing a set of fangs Wulf knew weren't real.